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How Federal Funding for Basic Research Spurs Clean Energy Discoveries the World Needs: Eight Case Studies

We need new breakthroughs in clean energy technology to address climate change. Recent discoveries in areas such as nuclear fusion and biofuels illustrate how government investment in early-stage research is a critical part of the process.

How Innovative Is China in the Robotics Industry?

China does not yet appear to be leading in robotic innovation, but its domestic production and adoption are growing rapidly, and the Chinese government has prioritized the industry. It is likely only a matter of time before Chinese robotics companies catch up to the leading edge.

Not Again: Why the United States Can’t Afford to Lose Its Biopharma Industry

America’s leadership in advanced-technology industries can never be taken for granted, as evidenced by its losses in telecommunications equipment, semiconductors, televisions, solar panels, and chemicals. Policymakers must recognize what went wrong in those cases to avoid a similar industrial decline in the biopharmaceutical industry.

Sharing Without Daring: Dynamic Spectrum Sharing With Certainty of Access

The dichotomy between dynamic spectrum sharing and exclusive licensing is a false one. Reliable, full-power access is possible within a dynamic sharing framework if the FCC auctions super-priority rights to commercial users.

How Congress Can Foster a Digital Single Market in America

In areas ranging from data privacy to content moderation, states are creating patchworks of regulation that confuse consumers, complicate compliance, and undermine the digital economy. It’s time for Congress to step in and establish a consistent national approach to digital policy.

Assessing India’s Readiness to Assume a Greater Role in Global Semiconductor Value Chains

India has the potential to play a much more significant role in global semiconductor value chains, provided the government upholds its investment policies, maintains a conducive regulatory and business environment, and avoids measures that create unpredictability.

User Safety in AR/VR: Protecting Teens

Teens are some of the enthusiastic early adopters of augmented and virtual reality devices and the metaverse. Their relative lack of maturity and naivete makes them more susceptible to safety threats than adults. Yet, current policy proposals are unlikely to make AR/VR safer and would make online experiences worse overall for both teens and adults.

Assessing the Dominican Republic’s Readiness to Play a Greater Role in Global Semiconductor and PCB Value Chains

The Dominican Republic is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, offers perhaps the most attractive business environment in Latin America, and is a leading candidate for nearshored investments in advanced manufacturing activity—particularly for electronics such as printed circuit boards (PCBs) and the assembly, test, and packaging (ATP) of semiconductors.

Rethinking Concerns About AI’s Energy Use

Concerns about the energy used by digital technologies are not new. With the recent surge in interest in artificial intelligence, people are once again raising questions about the energy use of an emerging technology.

National Developmentalism: The Alternative to Neoliberalism and Neo-New Dealism

Neoliberalism’s deficiencies are clear. To address the challenges America now faces, policymakers should adopt the doctrine of national developmentalism and not allow economic policy to swing back toward a revised New Dealism, as it is now doing.

A Realist Approach to Hydrogen

Clean hydrogen is expensive to produce, difficult to transport, and a second- or third-best clean energy solution in almost all proposed markets. To help drive the global green transition, a realist approach to hydrogen policy must address all these practical challenges.

The Hamilton Index, 2023: China Is Running Away With Strategic Industries

China now dominates the strategically important industries in ITIF’s Hamilton Index, producing more than any other nation in absolute terms and more than all but a few others in relative terms. Its gains are coming at the expense of the United States and other G7 and OECD economies, and time is running short for policymakers to mount an industrial comeback.

Delay Government: How Technology Can Fix Slow Federal Service Delivery

The U.S. government offers slow, outdated services. Congress and federal agencies should invest in digital technology and modernize their approach to service delivery to transform the current delay government into a modern, fast, digital-first government.

Good and Bad Reasons for Allocating Spectrum to Licensed, Unlicensed, Shared, and Satellite Uses

Policymakers inundated with self-serving arguments for specific spectrum allocation need ways to evaluate which actually advance the public interest. By focusing on the goal of productive spectrum use, one can differentiate between reasoning that would enhance productivity and that which would only advance private interests.

The U.S. Approach to Quantum Policy

In the nearly 25 years since NSF held the U.S. government’s first workshop on the topic, it has become increasingly apparent that quantum information science has the potential to drive major advances in computing power, secure communication, and scientific discovery. So, the government has rightly recognized it needs to play an active role in ensuring the nation remains competitive in this critical field.

Comparing Canadian and U.S. R&D Leaders in Advanced Sectors

R&D-intensive companies are key to national growth and competitiveness. Canada lags far behind the United States and the rest of the world in R&D-intensive firms. The Canadian government should consider reforming and expanding its SR&ED tax incentive.

Exploring Data-Sharing Models to Maximize Benefits From Data

Data-driven innovation has the potential to be a massive force for progress. Data sharing enables organizations to increase the utility and value of the data they control and gain access to additional data controlled by others.

Overcoming Barriers to Data Sharing in the United States

Without policy change, the United States will continue trending toward data siloes—an inefficient world in which data is isolated, and its benefits are restricted.

How Expanding the Information Technology Agreement to an “ITA-3” Would Bolster Nations’ Economic Growth

Completing a second expansion of the Information Technology Agreement (an “ITA-3”) could bring more than 400 unique ICT products under the ITA’s tariff-eliminating framework, which would add more than $750 billion to the global economy over 10 years.

How Skeptics Misconstrue the Link Between Drug Prices and Innovation

A recent article in the British Medical Journal contends “high drug prices” are neither necessary nor justified to sustain biopharmaceutical innovation. But it misrepresents and misinterprets the facts, highlighting how faulty the rationale is for drug price controls.

Comparing Data Policy Priorities Around the World

Instead of duplicating any one approach, U.S. policymakers should borrow from the menu of options to craft a cohesive, pro-innovation data strategy.

Restoring US Leadership on Digital Policy

The United States could regain its position as a global leader on digital policy by prioritizing a pro-innovation agenda, cooperating with its allies to advance free trade and democratic values, and pushing back against harmful narratives and policies.

How the G7 Can Use “Data Free Flow With Trust” to Build Global Data Governance

The G7 should develop a pragmatic agenda to bring the “Data Free Flow with Trust” initiative to life. If it doesn’t, building an open, rights-respecting, and innovative global digital economy only gets harder as China and others fill the vacuum from the lack of global digital cooperation.

Innovation Wars: How China Is Gaining on the United States in Corporate R&D

China wants to displace the United States as the world’s leading innovation economy. Business R&D in advanced, traded-sector industries is a key indicator of its progress—and it is catching up rapidly. Congress and U.S. state governments should respond by boosting R&D tax incentives.

Sustain Affordable Connectivity By Ending Obsolete Broadband Programs

New broadband funding programs necessitate dramatic reforms to old programs. We should reverse the status quo and sustain the Affordable Connectivity Program by shrinking the redundant hodgepodge of federal broadband programs.

Beyond Force: A Realist Pathway Through the Green Transition

Trying to force adoption of clean energy with subsidies, regulations, and exhortations will fail. The only realistic way to spur the green transition is to develop clean technologies that can reach effective price and performance parity with dirty ones. Then markets will adopt them at scale.

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