Publications

Cutting federal investments in R&D may appear to save billions in the budget, but it could cost the economy trillions. In fact, ITIF estimates that cutting federal R&D by 20 percent would cost the U.S. economy up to almost $1.5 trillion compared with China’s growth pace.

In a ranking based on the total number of high-quality research articles they publish over the calendar year, Chinese universities claim 9 of the top 10 spots in the academic category.

Congress should reform and refocus the Universal Service Fund. It spends too much money, prioritizes the wrong problems, and funds it all with a high, sector-specific tax rate. Congress should reduce the overall size of the program and fund it with general revenue.

There are many technology policy issues where states have created a patchwork of regulation that impose duplicative costs on businesses, cause confusion for consumers, and act as a drain on the U.S. economy. In order to address these issues, federal preemption would streamline regulation and decrease costs and confusion.

Lawmakers in Montana, New Hampshire, and Idaho are advancing “right to compute” laws to protect individuals and businesses from limits on their ability to use computational tools and AI systems.

If the United States fails to keep pace with China in cultivating the next generation of researchers, it risks ceding ground in the very sectors that will define economic and geopolitical leadership in the 21st century.

Trade policy should focus first and foremost on defense, dual-use, and enabling sectors and largely ignore nonstrategic sectors.

States are starting to reveal how they’ll spend their $42 billion in BEAD broadband funds—and the early results show both promise and pitfalls. Some states are driving down costs and saving billions for adoption and affordability, while others risk burning through their budgets on expensive deployments. The stakes are high: BEAD will only succeed if it closes the digital divide on both access and affordability.

Beijing has provided significant support to its domestic polysilicon industry in a drive to establish Chinese firms as the dominant global suppliers of solar-grade polysilicon—and it wants its firms to expand their share of semiconductor-grade polysilicon.

The Commission should ground its analysis in consumer experience rather than arbitrary thresholds, and recognize that it is time to recalibrate its priorities to address adoption and affordability barriers that remain the primary drivers of the digital divide.