The process of “creative destruction,” whereby new technologies and business models displace old ones, is key to growth and innovation. The evolution of the retail industry illustrates why it is beneficial and sheds light on the pitfalls of current legislative and regulatory efforts to limit it.

Defending Digital Series, No. 10: The unique economics of the Internet have enabled the creation of vast riches for today’s Big Tech winners. But as societal priorities and business opportunities shift to the physical world and the tech industry matures, inequalities in wealth and income are likely to narrow.

A recent first-of-its-kind study of the value chain for polyvinyl chloride production in the United States provides valuable insights into the types and sequencing of policies that will be required to decarbonize chemical production.

Many attempts to increase the flexibility of wireless spectrum rights meet objections that the method of reallocation will result in a windfall for corporate license holders. Far from being objectionable, however, allowing windfalls in spectrum reallocation creates virtuous incentives.

The federal hydrogen hubs program will be perceived as a bellwether for U.S. clean energy innovation policy writ large. As such, its process for selecting winning proposals must not only be effective, but also fair, transparent, and timely.

The information technology (IT) sector makes an outsized contribution to the U.S. economy as a leading exporter that creates high-paying jobs, including for non-college-educated workers, while producing highly innovative products and services that drive broad-based growth, counteract inflation, and improve people’s quality of life.

Europe professes to want greater transatlantic digital cooperation, yet it is systemically excluding U.S. firms from participating in its technical standards-setting processes. A real transatlantic digital alliance requires real EU-U.S. cooperation on technical standards.

Continued leadership in high-performance computing (HPC) as it enters the exascale era remains a key pillar of U.S. industrial competitiveness, economic power, and national security readiness. Policymakers need to sustain investments in HPC applications, infrastructure, and skills to keep America at the leading edge.

Recent federal legislation provides $8 billion to develop at least four hydrogen hubs, but little guidance. DOE should focus its funding on the capital costs of hydrogen production and infrastructure, while generally eschewing operating expenses and support for end users.

As businesses compete for customers in the digital economy, some use deceptive tactics to manipulate consumer reviews about their goods or services, or those of their competitors, including by posting fake reviews. These fake reviews can damage honest companies’ reputation and deceive consumers into purchasing goods or services of substandard quality.

Spectrum policy takes engineering and technical realities as inputs to a decision-making process that is driven by normative principles. While many competing principles have had their heyday, these five are enduring guides to making spectrum work in the public interest.

Defending Digital Series, No. 9: The events at Mar-a-Lago and President Biden’s September 1 address to the nation demonstrate what has been clear all along. Compared to the many issues that divide Americans today, social media is a very minor factor. Policymakers should focus less on extremist language and more on clarifying what behavior is legal and what is not.

The Online Safety Bill’s loose definition of what constitutes “legal but harmful” content, overbroad scope, and general legislative overreach encroach on the civil liberties of all users—not just those in the United Kingdom.

The Digital Markets Act presents three fundamental challenges as it nears adoption: First, it will increase regulatory fragmentation. Second, its disproportionate blanket obligations and prohibitions will be economically detrimental and legally controversial. Third, it will be difficult to implement, as some of its provisions clash with other European regulations.

Data privacy regulations impose significant costs on businesses and the economy. Effective, targeted federal legislation would address actual privacy harms while reducing costs that hinder productivity and innovation.

In the United States, access to many public and private services, including those in the financial, educational, and health care sectors, are intricately linked to data. But adequate data is not collected equitably from all Americans.

Using federal procurement to advance sustainable energy goals has had only limited success in the past. To break the pattern, the White House needs a plan that aligns with agency missions, is adequately funded, and fixes perverse budget and procurement rules.

The building sector is not on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Federal RD&D investments have been disproportionately low, while national strategies that address the key hurdles of decarbonizing the building sector have been lacking.

“Defending Digital” Series, No. 8: Every industry and every profession has faced the challenge of developing a workforce that looks more like America itself. A steady flow of talent from leading universities remains the key to overcoming long-standing barriers and stereotypes.

The 117th Congress was the most AI-focused congressional session in history with 130 AI bills proposed, so it is a good moment to take stock of U.S. AI policy accomplishments to date and identify areas where there is room for continued progress.

Stringent drug price controls have significantly hampered the competitive and innovative capacity of Japan’s biopharmaceutical industry in recent decades, serving as a warning for U.S. policymakers considering introducing Medicare Part D drug price controls in 2022.

Comparisons between U.S. and European broadband prices abound, but their respective markets are built on such entirely different cost structures as to make any comparison between the two meaningless without accounting for the differences in necessary expenditures.

Compared to major competitors, U.S. output in key advanced industries is weak and declining. Congress and the administration should launch an economic “moon shot” initiative committing to increase the concentration of these industries in the U.S. economy by at least 20 percentage points relative to the global average within a decade.

The United States has consistently ranked near the top of international competitiveness rankings. But these reports are largely meaningless in measuring actual international competitiveness, providing policymakers a false sense of optimism about America’s position.

The North American innovation ecosystem is increasingly diverse. In collaboration with Macdonald-Laurier Institute, Fundación IDEA, and the Bay Area Economic Council Institute, ITIF compiled this index to identify economic differences among states and provinces and highlight regions needing more federal attention, identify cross-national innovation performance, and track the continent’s overall competitiveness in the innovation-driven global economy.

To some, spectrum sharing is an innovative necessity. To others, it is a recipe for wasting valuable bandwidth. The truth is more nuanced. The spectrum-sharing landscape is marked with promising ideas and technologies that require further investment to be generalizable solutions.

“Defending Digital” Series, No. 7: Remember all those breathless warnings that artificial intelligence would soon eliminate a wide range of “routine” jobs? So far, pretty much the opposite has occurred. Given today’s widespread worker shortages, corrosive inflation, and vast societal challenges, America clearly needs all the automation it can get.

The revised version of the Klobuchar bill (S.2992), aimed at prohibiting a few large tech companies from self-preferencing their services and forcing them to grant their rivals access to vital proprietary assets, fails to correct the critical deficiencies of the bill’s original version. This report provides a legal analysis of the new, yet uncorrected, pitfalls of the Klobuchar bill.

“Defending Digital Series,” No. 6: Big Tech was essential in getting America through the Covid19 pandemic, but during the 2020s and ‘30s, technological, competitive, and societal shifts can be expected to rein in the influence of today’s digital leaders, as consumer markets mature, and as other national and international priorities take center stage.

Despite a plethora of legislation, executive mandates, and other policy guidance to modernize aging federal IT infrastructure, agencies still need access to dedicated IT funding channels with more money and an overarching IT strategy to help guide them in how they fund IT initiatives.