Despite legislative requirements, many federal government websites are not accessible for people with disabilities. This creates obstacles for millions of Americans, especially as the COVID-19 pandemic has moved many government services online.

After discussing the opportunities and challenges that AR/VR technologies present for equity and inclusion, the series summarizes key considerations for policymakers and industry leaders and presents recommendations to establish policies and best practices.

Cloud computing drives innovation and productivity across the economy, just as the electric grid did a century ago—yet it is more capable and dynamic, and it still in its early stages. Cloud is important not just at the firm level, but also for economic growth and global competitiveness.

The European Commission has set out to ensure digital markets are “fair and contestable.” But in a paradigm shift for antitrust enforcement, its proposal would impose special regulations on a narrowly defined set of “gatekeepers.” Contrary to its intent, this will deter innovation—and hold back small and medium-sized firms—to the detriment of the economy.

In her sensationally titled report, “Killer Profits: How Big Pharma Takeovers Destroy Innovation and Harm Patients,” the deputy chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus issued an ideologically inspired jeremiad grounded in assertions that are easily refuted with data.

The United States should launch a “moon shot” in clean energy that mobilizes its unmatched innovative capabilities to combat climate change and capture global markets. The fiscal year 2022 budget is a critical opportunity for Congress to advance U.S. energy innovation.

Momentum for an infrastructure package presents a tremendous opportunity to close the digital divide. Policymakers should avoid a political stalemate by eschewing utility-style broadband overbuilding and instead focus on pragmatic expansion of cost-effective, competitive networks.

Assertions that symmetrical broadband is a national imperative are not well grounded in application demand or actual use of networks. Requiring symmetry in an infrastructure support program would drive up costs, reduce flexibility, and likely result in subsidies for redundant infrastructure in already served areas.

China’s long-standing and rampant “innovation mercantilist” policies harm global innovation by taking market share and revenues from more-innovative foreign competitors, thereby diminishing the resources they can invest in research and development toward further innovation.

Any national infrastructure package should include 21st century digital infrastructure—not only investments in core digital infrastructure, such as broadband and government IT systems, but also hybrid-digital upgrades to existing physical infrastructure to improve its performance.

From vaccines and therapeutics to delivery robots, intellectual property has played an indispensable role in facilitating development of a range of inventive products that have helped address health care, work, and social challenges brought on by the pandemic.

The Biden administration needs to renew America’s role as a power trader, but with a new focus of maintaining its relative lead, economically and technologically, over China. It will require changes in the strategy and organization of U.S. trade policy.

As other nations rapidly scale up their investments to develop and use quantum computing, U.S. policymakers should ensure the United States remains a leader. Investing in near-term applications would bolster the development of longer-term use cases, thereby helping to cement U.S. economic competitiveness and protect national security.

Chinese high-speed rail firm CRRC is less innovative than European and Japanese firms, but mercantilist policies help it dominate in China and expand globally. This starves superior firms of revenue, reduces their R&D, and slows the pace of global innovation.

Blood-based multi-cancer early detection (MCED) technologies hold the promise to revolutionize America’s cancer-screening paradigm, dramatically expanding the range of detectable cancers and identifying them at earlier stages when cancers are more treatable. Policymakers should provide a supportive regulatory and coverage environment.

As technology and industry strategy experts, we commend Congress and the Biden administration for focusing on ensuring U.S. advanced technology competitiveness. Toward that end, we offer a number of recommendations for further action.

As America seeks to counter a rising China, no nation is more important than India, with its vast size, abundance of highly skilled technical professionals, and strong political and cultural ties with the United States. But the parallels between America’s dependency on China for manufacturing and its dependency on India for IT services are striking.

The United States continues its relative fall in university research and development funding. To become the leader among OECD nations in government funding for university research as a share of GDP, investment would have to increase by $90 billion per year.

Low profit margins keep many small businesses from investing in productivity-enhancing technology, which in turn holds down wages. To break that cycle, there should be a federal program that helps them reap economies of scale and scope by collaborating in areas such as R&D, investment, marketing, and health insurance purchases.

Affordable long-duration energy storage will be needed to decarbonize the U.S. energy system. Flow batteries are promising, but for that promise to be realized, DOE must invest heavily and more effectively in research, development, testing, and demonstration.

The Biden administration has a rare opportunity to accelerate agricultural innovation and spur broad and lasting economic growth by taking a handful of discrete regulatory actions that would update longstanding policy that has enjoyed strong bipartisan support.

With the rise of China, the U.S. economic and technology environment has fundamentally and inexorably changed. America needs an advanced technology industrial policy to compete effectively—but that will require modernizing hidebound economic thinking that has long considered “industry policy” to be anathema.

Nearly one in five rural Americans still lack access to broadband Internet service. Federal subsidies could bridge that gap if they are carefully targeted through a reverse-auction program that leverages economies of scale by encouraging large providers to participate.

Transatlantic data flows are essential to organizations of all sizes and industries—not just large technology firms. The EU and United States must establish clear, consistent legal mechanisms for data transfers so both sides can thrive in an increasingly digital global economy.

If the United States is to stay ahead of China militarily and technologically, it will need to put in place a new national innovation system that focuses on making U.S. advanced technology leadership—in both innovation and production—the central organizing principle of U.S. economic and national security policy.

To advance their goals of economic redistribution, progressives—relying on faulty research, half-truths, and erroneous claims—have delegitimized the long-accepted “consumer welfare” approach to antitrust and generated a groundswell of support for a new “public interest” standard that seeks to protect competitors, especially small businesses.

In a comprehensive analysis, ITIF concludes any reform to Section 230 should preserve the fundamental principle that liability for content should reside with the content creator while also ensuring online platforms are held responsible for their own conduct.

This 12-episode podcast series asks what will happen if policymakers keep or repeal the law credited with creating the Internet and explores the opportunities for Congress to make the law even better.