Reviews of Foreign Investment in U.S. Remain “Obscure”
“The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is an interagency committee that serves the President in overseeing the national security implications of foreign investment in the economy,” the Congressional Research Service has explained (pdf). “Originally established by an Executive Order of President Ford in 1975, the committee generally has operated in relative obscurity.”
That relative obscurity continues to prevail. A new Department of Defense Instruction says that “The DoD CFIUS process should, to the extent possible, be a transparent process.” Yet the same Instruction dictates that “Information or documentary material filed with CFIUS shall be exempt from disclosure [under the Freedom of Information Act] and will not be made public.” See “DoD Procedures for Reviewing and Monitoring Transactions Filed with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS),” DoD Instruction 2000.25 (pdf), August 5, 2010.
Two informative background reports on CFIUS were recently updated by the Congressional Research Service (both pdf). See “The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS),” July 29, 2010, and “The Exon-Florio National Security Test for Foreign Investment,” July 19, 2010.
Denice Ross, former U.S. Chief Data Scientist and Data Policy Institute lead at the Federation of American Scientists, will be honored for her stewardship of public data by the National Academy of Public Administration, where she has been named a Fellow.
Confirmation that the construction of the security perimeter and associated security infrastructure at RAF Lakenheath are still ongoing once again raises questions about whether U.S. nuclear weapons have already been deployed to the base.
Alaskans are sensibly pulling back from the vogue for bans and returning to a western tradition that has worked for more than half a century – one that welcomes innovation but also oversees it closely.
The strength of our nation’s data policy isn’t just in the rules we write, but in how effectively we translate those rules into a system that prioritizes the public good. Join us in this movement to design and build more resilient national data policies.