Summary

The Department of Labor (DOL) should update CareerOneStop’s “mySkills myFuture” website and other web properties to provide prospective career changers with comparative information on job-related pollution and safety metrics.

As the United States transitions towards a clean energy economy, a majority of workers in traditional fossil fuel industries will need to find new employment. In its January 27, 2021 Executive Order “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad”, the Biden-Harris Administration called for revitalizing “energy communities” — that is, communities whose economies have traditionally been based on the energy industry. Revitalization includes creating good and sustainable opportunities for labor. DOL is a member of the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization authorized by the January 27th Executive Order, which has been tasked with providing federal leadership to support coal, oil and gas communities during the energy transition. DOL’s “mySkills myFuture” interactive web portal guides experienced job seekers to discover new careers that match their existing skill sets. However, information presented on the portal lacks key quantitative factors that support worker well-being. To enable transitioning workers in declining fields to make more informed choices about future jobs, the DOL should update its career guidance tools to include data on health and safety risks associated with different job options.

In the 21st century, drone technology has become commonplace in warfare. In fact, drones are increasingly preferred by both state and non-state actors over other modes of warfare. But widespread use of drones in war engenders considerable controversy. Civilian casualties and collateral damage have grown alongside drone deployment with little accountability or transparency. As the Biden-Harris Administration works to rebuild America’s place on the world stage and as a member of the global community, the Administration should boost accountability for civilian deaths by rethinking when and how drones are used. Specifically, the Administration should (1) sign an executive order to boost transparency and oversight of drone technology used by the military, (2) work with Congress to review use of drones in U.S. military operations, and (3) lead efforts to launch an international drone accountability regime.

Challenge and Opportunity

In the last two decades, the use of drone strikes by the U.S. military against terrorist and militant organizations has expanded. Drones have been utilized so frequently by the U.S. government because they offer numerous advantages over manned aircraft. Drones are a cost-effective way to keep American boots off the ground and safe from danger. The fact that drones lack a human pilot means that fatigue is also lessened in military operations. Drone operators can hand off controls without any downtime, and drones can offer the same accuracy and lethality as manned aircraft. Drones can also serve as a valuable tool in surveillance operations.

But there is also a downside to this technology that makes warfare easy. Commanders are more likely to greenlight attacks when those attacks pose less of a direct risk to American military personnel. As the use of drones has proliferated, so too have the number of drone strikes ordered by the U.S. military — and the accompanying losses of civilian life.

Beginning in the early 2000s and into President Obama’s Administration, the use of drone technology increased. A 2005-2030 roadmap published by the Department of Defense noted that twenty types of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were flown for 100,000 hours in conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Under President Obama, an estimated 3,797 people, including 324 civilians, were killed in the 542 strikes carried out during the eight years of his Administration. This was the result of a dramatic increase in drone warfare. In his second term, President Obama took steps to reign in the use of drone warfare but beginning in 2017, President Trump’s Administration took it to new heights. In his first two years in office, President Trump launched more drone strikes that President Obama did in eight years. Reporting suggests that with the use of drones, President Trump launched more attacks in Yemen than all previous U.S. presidents combined. These drone strikes together killed between 86 and 154 civilians.

President Obama signed Executive Order 13732 in 2016, which required the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to review and investigate drone strikes involving civilian casualties and offer payment to families of those killed. The executive order also required the Director of National Intelligence to release annual summaries of all U.S. drone strikes conducted, accompanied by assessments of how many civilians died as a result of those strikes. But President Trump revoked this policy in 2019, arguing that the provisions were superfluous and distracting. As the use of drones increased dramatically in the first year of President Trump’s Administration, the United States also disclosed fewer details about the frequencies and fatalities of these strikes.

The time is ripe for the Biden-Harris Administration to reevaluate and rein in the use of drone warfare to both boost U.S. accountability for civilian deaths and restore America’s leadership on the world stage.

Plan of Action

The Biden-Harris Administration should take three essential actions to improve transparency and oversight of U.S. drone operations. These actions are crucial to restoring America’s place and reputation in the international community.

First, President Biden should sign an executive order committing to boost transparency and oversight of drone technology used by the U.S. government. On the first day of his Administration, President Biden imposed temporary limits on drone strikes outside of battlefields in Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq and ordered a review of U.S. drone policy with respect to counterterrorism operations. This was a welcome step, and the Administration can build on it to promote greater transparency without compromising U.S. national security. An Executive Order to Reevaluate U.S. Military Use of Drone Technology to Boost Accountability for Civilian Deaths can and should reinstate much of Executive Order 13732, but also go further. Specifically, the executive order should:

• Commit to reduce the use of drone strikes overall.
• Commit to limit collateral damage when drone technology is used.
• Require the CIA to release biannual summaries of U.S. drone strikes, accompanied by assessments of civilian casualties.
• Offer payment to the families of civilians killed as a result of a U.S. drone strikes.
• Require the CIA, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Defense to conduct a thorough joint investigation of all drone use resulting in civilian deaths.
• Provide quarterly briefings to Congress on the use of drone technology and provide reports to relevant Congressional committees on investigations into drone strikes that result in civilian casualties.

To complement this executive order, the Biden-Harris Administration’s review of U.S. drone policy should include an interagency process involving the CIA, the National Security Council (NSC), and the Departments of Defense, State, and Justice to evaluate the increased use of drones over the past decade, analyze trends in technology shaping the future use of drones, and devise a coordinated path forward to (1) increase accountability for use of drone warfare, and (2) boost American national security through a strategic counterterrorism strategy that minimizes the extraneous use of drones.

Second, President Biden should work with Congress to review the use of drones in U.S. military operations, including use of drones both within and beyond active military conflict. The Administration should provide members of key Congressional committees (e.g., the Senate Foreign Relations, Armed Services, and Intelligence Committees as well as the House Foreign Affairs, Armed Services, and Intelligence Committees) with both classified and public briefings on the Administration’s counterterrorism strategy and the role of drone technology in advancing military operations. Congress, in turn, should conduct public hearings on these topics and should ultimately act to repeal and replace the outdated 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) which have been used by multiple presidents to justify continued military action across the globe, including drone strikes.

In fact, the Biden-Harris Administration has pushed for these AUMFs to be replaced with a “narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending forever wars,” according to a statement by Press Secretary Jen Psaki in March 2021. The 2001 AUMF was passed after the Sept 11. Terrorist attacks and the 2002 AUMF was passed in the fall of 2002 ahead of the U.S.- led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Third, as one of the largest producers and sellers of drone technology worldwide, the United States should lead efforts to launch an international drone accountability regime. This effort, which could be launched through an existing international organization like the United Nations, would bring together states to:

• Sign a treaty that creates a commitment to abide by a set of international standards on the use of drone warfare, including a commitment to reduce collateral damage and loss of civilian life.
• Review and evaluate use of drone technology by nation, especially by global military leaders.
• Investigate and make public instances of drone-technology abuse.

The global accountability effort will require development of a strong set of international standards that regulate the use of drone technology — standards that will make the United States and the world safer. These international standards should include commitments by abiding states and non-state actors to: (1) commit to reducing the use of drone strikes and limiting collateral damage; (2) issue a public statement following drone strikes resulting in civilian casualties explaining the reason for the strike and relevant surrounding circumstances; and (3) publish summaries of all casualties and damage resulting from drone strikes. (4) Additionally, abiding parties that sell or purchase drone technology should commit to only sell or purchase drone technology from other abiding parties.

Conclusion

The growing ubiquity of drone strikes within U.S. military operations demands action to increase transparency and accountability. When drone strikes are used too freely, unnecessary civilian casualties can result — as recent history has already demonstrated. By strategically rethinking how the United States uses drones for warfare, the Biden-Harris Administration can rebuild accountability for civilian deaths, restore transparency to our nation’s use of drone technology, and repair our nation’s reputation on the world stage, all without compromising military operations or national security.

President Biden can take immediate action by issuing an executive order that builds on the drone-accountability policies put in place during the late Obama era while setting a new standard for the international community, as well as by ordering an interagency review of the role that drones play in U.S. operations. Further, President Biden should work with Congress to repeal and replace the outdated 2001 and 2002 AUMFs and to consider how drones can and should be used responsibly in warfare. These steps will be essential to restoring confidence in U.S. military operations both at home and abroad. Finally, as the U.S. seeks to rebuild its position in the global community, efforts led by the Biden-Harris Administration to establish an international drone-accountability regime can help check the growing use of drones in warfare globally: a result that will strengthen the security of the United States and the world.

Summary

To address the critical challenges of lifelong learning, evolving skills gaps, and continuous labor market transformation and automation, all Americans need to have access to agile and effective jobs training. Artificial intelligence (AI) and virtual reality/augmented reality (VR/AR) capabilities can deliver training tailored to the unique backgrounds, preferences, and needs of every individual. In this memo, we propose a two-stage approach that the Biden-Harris administration can adopt to help prepare Americans for the jobs of the future through responsible use of AI and VR/AR.

Stage 1 would launch a one to three pilot programs that leverage AI and VR/AR technologies to provide targeted training to specific communities.

Stage 2 would establish a national prize competition soliciting proposals to build and deliver a federal lifelong learning platform for the nation.

Summary

The Congress should dedicate $1 billion, 1 percent of the proposed workforce funding under the American Jobs Plan, for needed upgrades to Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS). Major upgrades are needed to Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems to enable states to effectively monitor and address long-term pandemic learning loss, while ensuring this generation of students stays on track for college and career in the aftermath of the pandemic. With the major influx of planned resources into K12 and postsecondary education from the recent and upcoming relief bills, there is also a critical need to ensure those funds are targeted toward students and workers who are most in need and to measure the impact of those funds on pandemic recovery. Some states, such as Texas and Rhode Island, are already leveraging funds from previous relief bills (e.g., Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security, or CARES Act), to modernize their data systems, offering a model for other states to connect education, workforce, and social services information. This demonstrates an interest and need among states for SLDS upgrades, though additional investment is necessary to address historically underfunded data infrastructure.

Summary

The future of computing innovation is becoming more uncertain as the 2020s have brought about a pivot point in the global semiconductor industry. We owe this uncertainty to several factors, including the looming end of Moore’s Law, disruptions in semiconductor supply chains, international competition in innovation investment, a growing demand for more specialized computer chips, and the continued development of alternate computing paradigms, such as quantum computing.

In order to address the next generation of computing needs, architectures are beginning to emphasize the integration of multiple, specialized computing components. Within this framework, the U.S. is well poised to emerge as a leader in the future of next-generation computing, and more broadly advanced semiconductor manufacturing. However, there remains a missing link in the United States’ computing innovation strategy: a coordinating organization which will down-select and integrate the wide variety of promising, next-generation computing materials, architectures, and approaches so that they can form the building blocks of advanced, high-performance, heterogeneous systems.

Armed with these facts, and using the existing authorization language in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Biden Administration and Congress have a unique opportunity to establish a Manufacturing USA Institute under the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with the goal of pursuing advanced packaging for scalable heterogeneous computing. This Institute will leverage the enormous body of previous work in post-Moore computing funded by the federal government (Semiconductor Technology Advanced Research Network (STARnet), Nanoelectronics Computing Research (nCORE), Joint University Microelectronics Program (JUMP), Energy-Efficient Computing: From Devices to Architectures (E2CDA), Electronics Resurgence Initiative (ERI)) and will bridge a key gap in bringing these R&D efforts from the laboratory to real world applications. By doing this, the U.S. will be well positioned to continue its dominance in semiconductor design and potentially regain advanced semiconductor manufacturing activity over the coming decades.

Summary

Climate change is an enormous environmental, social, and economic threat to the United States. Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from burning fossil fuels and other industrial processes are a major driver of this threat. Even if the world stopped emitting CO2 today, the huge quantities of CO2 generated by human activity to date would continue to sit in the atmosphere and cause dangerous climate effects for at least another 1,000 years.¹ The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has reported that keeping average global warming below 1.5°C is not possible without the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR).² While funding and legislative support for CDR has greatly increased in recent years, the United States does not yet have a coordinated plan for implementing CDR technologies. The Department of Energy’s CDR task force should recommend a governance strategy for CDR implementation to responsibly, equitably, and effectively combat climate change by achieving net-negative CO2 emissions.

Summary

Congress is actively interested in ensuring that the United States is educating the talent needed to maintain our global economic and national security leadership. A number of proposals being considered by Congress focus on putting the National Science Foundation’s Education division on a doubling path over the next 5-7 years.

This memo recommends that the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) — the R&D agency housed within the Department of Education — be put on the similar doubling path with stepladder increases in authorization levels, and targeted program starts (e.g., an “ARPA” housed at ED) focused on major gaps that have been building for years but made even more evident during the pandemic.

This increased funding for IES should be focused on:

• Establishing New Research Capacity in the form of an [1] “ARPA-like” Transformative Research Program;

• Harnessing Data for Impact through investments in [2] Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS), [3] a Learning Observatory, and [4] modernization of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP);

• Conducting Pathbreaking Data-Driven Research by [5] building a permanent Data Science Unit within IES, [6] increasing funding for special education research; and [7] investing in digital learning platforms as research infrastructure; and

• Building the Education Field for Deployment of What Works by [8] establishing a Center of Learning Excellence for state-level recovery investments in tutoring and more.

Summary

Improving university/corporate research partnerships is key to advancing US competitiveness. Reform of the IRS rules surrounding corporate sponsored research taking place in university facilities funded by tax-exempt bonds has long been sought by the higher education community and will stimulate more public-private partnerships. With Congress considering new ways to fund research through a new NSF Technology Directorate and the possibility of a large infrastructure package, an opportunity is now open for Congress to address these long-standing reforms in IRS rules.

Summary

Small to medium-sized manufacturing (SMM) companies are the backbone of the U.S. industrial base. However, they do not have the financial or technical resources needed to protect themselves from cyberthreats such as computer hacking, embedded malicious software, and “internet of things” sensors sending sensitive information to foreign counties. These cyberthreats can cause huge damage to the U.S. economy and national security. With relatively limited investment, cybercriminals can disrupt critical supply chains, damage key sectors, and delete or corrupt important information resources.

The Biden-Harris administration should address these threats through a government-industry partnership that uses “wargaming” analyses — i.e., virtual techniques to model and assess threats — to evaluate manufacturing cyberthreats and test strategies for ensuring supply-chain cybersecurity. As part of this partnership, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) should implement a pilot program to spread robust and scalable cybersecurity best practices throughout manufacturing-based supply chains. Coordinating the resources and expertise of other federal agencies — including the Nuclear Security Enterprise (NSE), the Department of Defense (DOD) Digital Manufacturing Institute (MxD), the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), and the DOD Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) program — with the resources and expertise of external entities (e.g., academic institutions) will enable the administration to become more proactive in anticipating and neutralizing cyberthreats, thus enhancing the stability and security of U.S. manufacturing supply chains.

Summary

To bring nationwide access to voter tools, the Biden-Harris administration should direct the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to establish a standard application programming interface (API) for election administration systems.

Our democracy is most representative when the greatest number of Americans vote, but access is hindered by manual, form-based operations that make it difficult for citizens to register to vote or access a ballot. As Americans faced a global pandemic and an overwhelmed postal service, the 2020 election amplified the importance of digital tools for voters to register, apply for absentee ballots, and track their ballot status. It also highlighted the deficiencies in (or lack of) these capabilities from locality to locality. Further, state legislatures have begun passing sweeping voter suppression measures that further limit ballot access.

With the next federal election rapidly approaching in 2022, the time to take steps at the federal level to expand voting access is now. While proposed legislation would mandate making these functions available online, without incentives or standards, these tools would remain available only on local government websites, which suffer from discoverability and usability hurdles. Creating a standard API for election administration systems will enable civic groups and other outside organizations to create consistent, discoverable and innovative nationwide voter tools that interoperate directly with local voter rolls, resulting in a more participatory electorate and a stronger, more representative democracy.

Summary

The Biden administration can respond to the rise in disinformation campaigns and ensure the long-term viability of American democracy by championing an expanded Corporation for Public Broadcasting to transform, revive, and create local public service newsrooms around the country.

Local newsrooms play key roles in a democracy: informing communities, helping set the agenda for local governments, grounding national debates in local context, and contributing to local economies; so it is deeply troubling that the market for local journalism is failing in the United States. Lack of access to credible, localized information makes it harder for communities to make decisions, hampers emergency response, and creates fertile ground for disinformation and conspiracy theories. There is significant, necessary activity in the academic, philanthropic, and journalism sectors to study and document the hollowing out of local news and sustain, revive, and transform the landscape for local journalism. But the scope of the problem is too big to be solely addressed privately. Maintaining local journalism requires treating it as a public good, with the scale of investment that the federal government is best positioned to provide.

The United States has shown that it can meet the opportunities and challenges of a changing information landscape. In the 1960s, Congress established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), creating a successful and valuable public media system in response to the growth of widely available corporate radio and TV. But CPB’s purview hasn’t changed much since then. Given the challenges of today’s information landscape, it is time to reimagine and grow CPB.

The Biden administration should work with Congress to revitalize local journalism in the United States by:

1. Passing legislation to evolve the CPB into an expanded Corporation for Public Media. CPB’s current mandate is to fund and support broadcast public media. An expanded Corporation for Public Media would continue to support broadcast public media while additionally supporting local, nonprofit, public-service-oriented outlets delivering informational content to meet community needs through digital, print, or other mediums.
2. Doubling CPB’s annual federal budget allocation, from $445 to $890 million, to fund greater investment in local news and digital innovation. The local news landscape is the subject of significant interest from philanthropies, industry, communities, and individuals. Increased federal funding for local, nonprofit, and public-service-oriented news outlets could stimulate follow-on investment from outside of government.

Summary

Online disinformation continues to evolve and threaten national security, federal elections, public health, and other critical U.S. sectors. Yet the federal government lacks access to data and computational power needed to study disinformation at scale. Those with the greatest capacity to study disinformation at scale are large technology companies (e.g., Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), which biases much research and limits federal capacity to address disinformation.

To address this problem, we propose that the Department of Defense (DOD) fund a one-year pilot of a National Cloud for Disinformation Research (NCDR). The NCDR would securely house disinformation data and provide computational power needed for the federal government and its partners to study disinformation. The NCDR should be managed by a governance team led by Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs) already serving the DOD. The FFRDC Governance Team will manage (i) which stakeholders can access the Cloud, (ii) coordinate sharing of data and computational resources among stakeholders, and (iii) motivate participation from diverse stakeholders (including industry; academia; federal, state, and local government, and non-governmental organizations).

A National Cloud for Disinformation Research will help the Biden-Harris administration fulfill its campaign promise to reposition the United States as a leader of the democratic world. The NCDR will benefit the federal government by providing access to data and computational resources needed to combat the threats and harms of disinformation. Our nation needs a National Cloud for Disinformation Research to foresee future disinformation attacks and safeguard our democracy in turbulent times.