With nearly three dozen new additions, the updated “Tech Policy To-Do List” now provides a menu of more than 150 actionable ideas for Congress and the administration to foster innovation, growth, and progress.
Focusing on mitigating speculative concerns about AI will limit its development and adoption. Policymakers should instead encourage innovation while crafting targeted solutions for specific problems if they occur.
From a skewed standardization law in China to mercantilist digital services tax proposals in Europe, when countries impose protectionist policies in high-value, high-tech sectors, they don’t just damage competitors; they damage the entire global innovation system.
Intellectual property regimes that tilt too far toward granting data rights run the risk of stifling needed data sharing, while regimes that tilt foo far in the other direction risk limiting incentives for data collection and innovation.
Congress should repeal and replace existing federal privacy laws with a common set of protections. We need comprehensive data privacy legislation that preempts state laws, improves transparency requirements, strengthens enforcement, and establishes a clear set of data privacy rights for Americans based on the sensitivity of the data and the context in which it is collected.
The next wave of digital innovation is coming. Countries can welcome it, prepare for it, and ride it to new heights of innovation and prosperity, or they can ignore the changing tide and miss the wave.
Future of work will be different for every country, region, worker, and student. This is clear in France, Germany, Spain, and the United States. Policymakers should respond accordingly.
The United States is the global leader in developing and using artificial intelligence (AI), but it may not be for long. Succeeding in AI requires more than just having leading companies make investments. It requires a healthy ecosystem of AI companies, robust AI inputs—including skills, research, and data—and organizations that are motivated and free to use AI.
Reducing carbon pollution to zero will require a broad set of technologies that cover all sectors of the economy and can provide energy that is as cheap and reliable as fossil fuels.
If renewables are to fully displace carbon-emitting fossil fuels, electricity systems will need technologies that provide affordable, reliable long-duration storage at grid scale.
Without a single, integrated market for digital goods and services, Latin American businesses will have difficulty gaining the scale to succeed in the digital economy. Policymakers should embrace openness, innovation, and competition throughout the region.
Southeast Asian nations significantly outperform the rest of the world in wage-controlled robot adoption, while Europe and the United States lag significantly behind.
Mid-band spectrum will be crucial for next-generation networks, so it is important that the FCC moves quickly to transition portions of this spectrum to more efficient use.
To restore robust productivity growth, Europe must fully embrace information and communication technologies (ICT) throughout its economy.
5G, AI, IoT, and more: In a reader-friendly series of two-pagers, ITIF provides overviews of important technologies that are likely to have a profound impact on the global economy and modern society.
There is no legitimate case for abandoning a 40-year-old consensus on how to apply antitrust policy in favor of a vague, hard-to-enforce alternative that represents an amalgam of conflicting goals, some of which would work against economic progress and the national interest.
Instead of overregulating, governments should adopt a policy framework based on the principle of “algorithmic accountability” to promote innovation while holding human operators responsible for harmful outcomes.
There is ample room for a bipartisan compromise that would simultaneously lock in noncontroversial bright-line protections, end the absurd back-and-forth on FCC jurisdiction, and secure funding to help close the digital divide.
This provocative new book now available from The MIT Press shows small businesses are not the drivers of our prosperity. Big firms are better for job creation, productivity, innovation, and most other economic benefits. Governments should stop tipping the scales toward small and adopt “size neutral” policies that encourage companies of all sizes to grow.
Twenty-five case studies underscore how innovators in developing countries—often enabled by robust IP rights—are achieving advances in life sciences and healthcare that benefit people around the world.
America’s lead in life sciences is being challenged. Other countries are aggressively seeking to attract and grow companies with innovation-based tax incentives, a range of firm-specific enticements, increased government research funding, improved IP protections, and streamlined regulatory approval processes. The federal government should act to ensure U.S. life sciences remain competitive.
In a report for the Canadian government ahead of the G7 Ministerial on Innovation and Employment, ITIF discusses why the coming technology wave is a progressive force G7 nations should embrace.
Rather than slow down technological disruption to protect a small number of workers at the expense of the vast majority who are benefiting, policymakers should focus on doing significantly more to help those who are displaced transition successfully into new jobs and occupations.
Most competitiveness strategies focus on broad measures such as improving the business environment or supporting better factor inputs for firms. While necessary, these steps do not constitute an effective competitiveness strategy. Policymakers must go much deeper.
The number of technology-based start-ups surged 47 percent in the last decade. These firms still account for a relatively small share of all businesses, but they have an outsized impact on economic growth, because they provide better-paying, longer-lasting jobs than other start-ups, and they contribute more to innovation, productivity, and competitiveness.
China’s systematic mercantilism is a threat to the U.S. economy and the very soul of the global trading system. America cannot respond with either flaccid appeasement or economic nationalism; it must assemble an international coalition that pressures China to stop rigging markets and start competing on fair terms.
Contrary to popular perceptions, the labor market is not experiencing unprecedented technological disruption. In fact, occupational churn in the United States is at a historic low. It is time stop worrying and start accelerating productivity with more technological innovation.
Productivity is the key to improving living standards—so policymakers should ignore conventional economists who say there is little government can do about it and instead make it the principal goal of economic policy.
America’s innovation-driven, high-tech economy isn’t concentrated around a few hubs like Silicon Valley; it is widely diffused—and every state and congressional district has a stake in its success.