Summary

The federal lab system is an enormous, $50 billion-plus enterprise of internal research and development (R&D) across the United States. As governments around the world, including China, pour billions of dollars into advanced technologies, it is imperative that we use our nation’s federal lab ecosystem as effectively as possible.

However, because federal labs have varying legal authorities, missions, and cultures, their records of local economic engagement and technology commercialization vary considerably. Universities, by contrast, have demonstrated a strong record of supporting regional innovation ecosystems through use of place (creating incubators, research parks, and adjacent innovation districts), talent (allowing university researchers to be involved with private-sector technology under approved and managed relationships), and innovation (using intermediary university foundations to take on business aspects of technology commercialization).

The Federal Authority for Science, Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Research (FASTER) Federal Labs Act will make it possible for all federal labs to use the tried-and-true tools that universities use for economic engagement and technology commercialization. The FASTER Federal Labs Act will do this by: (i) allowing surplus federal land to be used for public-private partnership facilities, (ii) creating clearer pathways for federal researchers to work with startup companies, and (iii) authorizing a federally charted tech-transfer organization based on models established at leading research universities. The FASTER Federal Labs Act will not require significant outlay of federal appropriations as many of its provisions simply give federal labs greater discretion over deployment of existing resources. The Act can be implemented relatively easily as an add-on to legislation expected to be considered by this Congress.

Summary

Algorithmic governance concerns are critical for US foreign policy in the 21st century as they relate intimately to the relationship between governments and their citizens – the very fabric of the world’s societies. The United States should strategically invest resources into the principal multilateral forums in which digital technology regulation is currently under discussion. In partnership with like-minded governments and international organizations, the Biden-Harris Administration should set clear priorities championing a collective digital rights agenda that considers the impact of commercial algorithms and algorithmic decision-making on both American citizens and technology consumers around the world.

These investments would build substantially upon initial forays into national AI regulatory policy advanced by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI) established by Congress in August 2018 and the Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence issued in January 2019. Both policy moves featured broad approaches focused on national security and competitiveness, without seriously engaging the complex and context-specific problems of international governance that must be squarely addressed if the United States is to develop a coherent approach to AI regulation.

We suggest the federal government pay special attention to impacts on people living in regions outside the geographic focus of the most prominent regulatory deliberations today – which occur almost exclusively in Washington and the developed world. Such an inclusive, global approach to digital policymaking will increase the potential for the United States to bring the world along in efforts to develop meaningful, consumer-first internet policy that addresses the economic and social factors driving digital disparities. At a time when the risk of a global “splinternet” increasingly looms, this clarified focus will help establish effective rules toward which jurisdictions around the world can converge under U.S. leadership.

The H-1B visa for “specialty occupation” workers has become a significant element of the U.S. employment-based immigration system. Less well-known is that employers of H-1B workers annually pay hundreds of millions of dollars for domestic education and training programs in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), administered by the Department of Labor (DOL) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). This fee-based funding stream was created in the late 1990s and has not been meaningfully updated by Congress in the succeeding decades. It is mandatory funding, tied to a continuous flow of H-1B filing fees rather than the annual congressional appropriations process. Both the Obama and Trump administrations seized on this unique pot of money for advancing education and training priorities for Americans without new legislation or appropriations.

The Biden administration can take even greater advantage of this funding to launch innovative programs that advance U.S. economic competitiveness and diversify the STEM talent pipeline—two mutually reinforcing goals. Specifically, in this paper we recommend:

• Reestablishing the TechHire Initiative to rapidly train U.S. workers for in-demand technology jobs
• Establishing a new Advanced Research Projects Agency—Labor (ARPA-L) to conduct high-impact R&D programs that create breakthroughs to meet America’s workforce challenges
• Significantly increasing the number of graduate research fellowships dedicated to students in STEM fields who completed their undergraduate education at non-R1 universities
• Significantly increasing the number of faculty training grants in STEM fields where a dearth of professors has created a bottleneck for graduate education (e.g. artificial intelligence)

In addition, Congress should increase the fees paid by H-1B employers to reflect (a) the increase in inflation over the past two decades, as well as (b) the ability of major corporations, which are often the most prolific sponsors of H-1B workers, to pay more than small businesses.

Background 

A Brief History of the ACWIA Fee Account for STEM training 

In the 1990s, the technology sector was growing rapidly and the demand for high-skill workers was quickly  outpacing supply. The H-1B visa, first enacted at the beginning of the decade, was becoming a popular  option to bring in such skilled workers. In 1997, the number of applications for H-1Bs exceeded the established cap of 65,000 visas for the first time. The next year, demand was so high that the cap was reached within days of the opening date for new filings—and this has been the case nearly every year since. 

Congress considered legislation to increase the H-1B cap, but faced strong bipartisan opposition, as well  as pushback from labor unions and professional associations. As a compromise, along with raising the  caps for three years, Congress established a special fee for sponsors (“petitioners”) of H-1B workers which  would be deposited into a new fund called the “H-1B Nonimmigrant Petitioner Account.” Because these  provisions were included in the American Competitiveness and Workforce Improvement Act of 1998,  immigration practitioners often refer to “ACWIA fees” and the “ACWIA fund.”  

Originally, the ACWIA fee amounted to $500 per qualifying petition. The fee was increased twice since its  creation: once in 2000 (to $1,000) and once in 2004 (to its current level of $1,500). The 2004 adjustment also specified for the first time that employers with 25 employees or fewer would pay a lower rate of $750  per qualifying petition. Congress mandated that the funds be distributed primarily to DOL and NSF to  support domestic STEM education and technical skills training programs. The current distribution of funds  is as follows (see the Appendix for full statutory details): 

• 50 percent to the Secretary of Labor for job training programs; 
• 30 percent to the Director of NSF for scholarships for low-income students enrolled in STEM  programs; 
• 10 percent to the Director of NSF for a direct matching grant program that funds public-private  partnerships in K-12 education; 
• 5 percent to the Secretary of Homeland Security to improve processing employment-based  temporary visa and green card petitions; and 
• 5 percent to the Secretary of Labor to decrease the processing time for labor certification  applications. 

With this money, DOL has relatively wide latitude to make competitive grants to businesses, business related nonprofit organizations, education and training providers (such as community colleges), “entities  involved in administering the workforce development system,” and economic development agencies.  These grants are intended to support job training programs that help both unemployed and employed  workers learn new skills to obtain a job or promotion, especially in industries experiencing significant  growth. To determine these in-demand industries, the Secretary of Labor must consult with state  workforce investment boards and take into account sectors that are “projected to add substantial  numbers of new jobs”; “are being transformed by technology and innovation requiring new skill sets for  workers”; “are new and emerging businesses that are projected to grow”; or “have a significant impact  on the economy overall or on the growth of other industries and economic sectors.”

NSF, on the other hand, has more statutory restrictions on how it can use its allocated ACWIA fees.  Scholarships for low-income individuals pursuing associate, undergraduate, or graduate STEM degrees  cannot exceed $10,000 per year for up to four years, although up to 50% of this funding stream (15% of  the total ACWIA fund) may be used for “undergraduate programs for curriculum development,  professional and workforce development, and to advance technological education.” 

NSF’s K-12 STEM education grants (10% of the total H-1B fund) must be awarded to public-private  partnerships that serve one or more of the following purposes specified by Congress: 

• Support the development and implementation of standards-based instructional materials,  models, and related student assessments that enable K–12 students to acquire an understanding  of STEM, and to develop critical thinking skills;  
• Provide systemic improvement in training K–12 teachers and education for students in STEM; 
• Support the professional development of K–12 STEM teachers in the use of technology in the  classroom;  
• Stimulate system-wide K–12 reform of STEM in rural, economically disadvantaged regions;
• Provide externships and other opportunities for students to increase their appreciation and  understanding of STEM, including summer institutes sponsored by an institution of higher  education for students in grades 7–12;  
• Foster partnerships of industry, educational institutions, and community organizations to address  the educational needs of disadvantaged communities;  
• Provide college preparatory support to expose and prepare students for careers in STEM; and 
• Provide for carrying out certain NSF systemic reform activities. 

Programs currently funded by ACWIA fees 

Both NSF and DOL provide publicly-available data on the ACWIA fees that are spent on the agencies’  programs. Table 1 includes the total amount of funding received by NSF and DOL from fiscal years (FY)  2010 to 2021 as noted in the agencies’ annual budget requests.

NSF currently uses its money from ACWIA fees to fund two programs: Scholarships in Science, Technology,  Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) and Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST). By the end of FY 2018, the agency had received almost $2 billion in cumulative ACWIA fees to support scholarships, as well as K-12 students and teachers. 

NSF must allocate three-quarters of its ACWIA receipts (30 percent of the total account) to scholarships  for lower-income students pursuing associate’s, bachelor’s, and advanced STEM degrees. Through the S STEM program, NSF makes grants to higher education institutions (about 90 in FY 2019) which then award  scholarships of $10,000 per year for up to 4 years. Between FY 1999 and 2018, the S-STEM program resulted in 87,890 scholarships for U.S. students (including both citizens and permanent residents).

Although the nature and amount of these scholarships are fixed in statute, Congress does provide the NSF  Director wide discretion to spend up to 50 percent of the current S-STEM funds “for undergraduate  programs for curriculum development, professional and workforce development, and to advance  technological education,” all of which “may be used for purposes other than scholarships.” This means  that an annual amount of around $50 million is available for such supporting programs. 

Department of Labor 

Over the past decade, DOL has used its ACWIA fee receipts to fund a series of job training initiatives,  usually tied to a presidential priority. DOL has cumulatively received about $2.5 billion in ACWIA fees to  train professionals in the United States. The Secretary of Labor has wide discretion to designate “high  growth industries and economic sectors” as targets for this funding, based on the following factors: 

• The sectors are projected to add substantial numbers of new jobs to the economy;
• The sectors are being transformed by technology and innovation requiring new skill sets for  workers; 
• The sectors include new and emerging businesses that are projected to grow; or
• The sectors in question have a significant impact on the economy overall or on the growth of  other industries and economic sectors. 

Using ACWIA fees, the Obama administration issued funding opportunity announcements for programs  to support job training for the long-term unemployed (“Ready to Work”), coding bootcamps (“TechHire”),  and apprenticeship programs, among other priorities. The Trump administration also used these funds to support its efforts to expand apprenticeship programs (“Closing the Skills Gap”). 

The Ready to Work program (RTW) was launched in 2014 as a response to those who lost their jobs during  the Great Recession and remained under- or unemployed as the economy recovered. DOL is in the middle  of evaluating the success of this program and is expected to complete its study by May 2022. In 2017, the agency released an interim report that examined the first year of grantees’ operations in Maryland,  California, New York, and Washington. The programs provided specialized, one-on-one counseling to the  participants and coordinated with local occupational training programs and employers in relevant sectors. 

TechHire was established in 2015 and has aimed to build talent pipelines in technology sectors throughout  the country. Initial funding for the program amounted to $100 million in grants to support partnerships  that train young adults and other disadvantaged groups, such as people with disabilities, individuals with  limited proficiency in English, and those with criminal records. A full evaluation on the benefits of the  program is expected from DOL in September 2021. 

Closing the Skills Gap awarded grants to 28 public-private partnerships in early 2020 that amounted to  almost $100 million. The program aims to achieve “large-scale expansions of apprenticeships in industries  including advanced manufacturing, healthcare, and information technology.” Likely because the Closing the Skills Gap program is still so new, there are no studies announced to evaluate its impact yet.

Plan of Action 

Recommendations for High-impact STEM Education and Training Programs 

As currently authorized by Congress, the ACWIA fees yield an approximately $350 million annual fund for  STEM education and training that is essentially on autopilot, funded by employers rather than taxpayers.  The Biden administration has an opportunity to focus DOL and NSF on using these funds to advance its  top priorities of economic recovery and racial equity. 

Specifically, DOL can ramp up the TechHire initiative for in-demand technology jobs and establish a new  Advanced Research Projects Agency—Labor (ARPA-L) to conduct high-impact R&D programs that create  breakthroughs to meet America’s workforce challenges. NSF can significantly increase both the number  of graduate STEM research fellowships dedicated to underserved students as well as the number of faculty  training grants in fields where a dearth of professors has created a bottleneck for graduate education  (e.g., artificial intelligence). 

Reestablish the TechHire Initiative 

The TechHire initiative, described in more detail above, has already demonstrated the value of involving  technology companies in rapid STEM training programs. One of the first TechHire grants was awarded to  LaGuardia Community College and helped them form a partnership with state and federal agencies, along  with software development and training companies. The goal was to provide intensive training in tech  skills to low-income young adults and as of 2019, over 80 percent of students in the bootcamp graduated.  Retention was over 90 percent. This is just one of the 39 partnerships established by the program, which  serves communities in 25 states.  

No further DOL funds have been awarded to the TechHire initiative since its inception in 2015, however.  Especially as our country embraces an increasingly tech-focused work environment, further tech skills  training will be essential. We recommend allocating $50 million per year to the TechHire initiative to  sustain it and establish new public-private partnerships across the country. To encourage high-impact  outcomes, the revitalized TechHire initiative could make grants above a certain award amount (e.g., $2  million) contingent on demonstration of wage gains following training, and could allow non-profits (not  only workforce boards) to serve as the lead applicant. 

Establish a new Advanced Research Projects Agency—Labor (ARPA-L) 

With the nature of work changing rapidly, one federal initiative that could significantly boost the United  States’ long-term competitiveness in high-impact industries would be the development of an Advanced  Research Projects Agency for the Department of Labor (ARPA-L). According to a Day One proposal  developed by former Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Director Arati Prabhakar and Coursera executive Jeff Kaplan, ARPA-L would drive innovation in workforce training and labor market  outcomes, where major research efforts are currently lacking. By weaving research advances together with lessons from the real world, ARPA-L aims to catalyze high-impact R&D focused on creating powerful, scalable approaches to pressing workforce issues including unemployment and market disruption. With the support of Congress and the White House, this new organization should be housed within the Department of Labor in order to best deliver bold advances that ultimately change what’s possible for America’s workers. 

The ARPA model is known for its success in creating radically better approaches to hard problems by  conducting solutions-oriented R&D. DOD’s DARPA, now in its seventh decade, conducted the pivotal R&D  for new military capabilities such as stealth and precision strike and, more broadly, for new information  technologies from the internet to artificial intelligence. DARPA’s track record inspired the establishment  of the Department of Energy’s ARPA-E and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s IARPA. Both of these ARPAs are well underway, with robust portfolios of R&D programs and encouraging results. They  demonstrate that it is possible to adapt the DARPA model for different public purposes.  

Though this ARPA model has been highly successful for national security and energy research, it has not  yet been implemented for the improvement of workforce training and education programs. ARPA-L would  be an innovative addition to DOL, particularly because the agency’s current budget does not include any funding for workforce training research and development. Some potential research and development  areas to close the skills gap include: 

• Develop and validate diagnostic systems to improve skills assessment and enable workers to  better understand how their skill set matches the needs of employers. 
• Demonstrate accelerated skill development that uses information about an individual (e.g., age,  initial skill level, and prior experience) to devise an individualized training regimen for interest and  expertise.  
• Explore and evaluate new ways to personalize and accelerate the training process by building on  advances in learning science and neuroscience. 
• Advance and test the effectiveness of emerging innovations like human-computer interaction and  mixed reality for training for complex tasks. 
• Experiment with and assess alternative certifications and micro-credentialing programs to train  and upskill youth and displaced adult workers around the country while connecting participants  directly to employers. 

In addition, ARPA-L would support timely labor market data collection and analysis to evaluate the  research and training programs. Conducting labor market analysis with ARPA-L would help with the  development of innovative training programs, as well as allowing employers, employees, and the federal  government to respond to economic changes. Some examples of useful analyses include: 

• Experimenting with and testing data tools for each worker, combining information on local job  postings, wages, and training requirements with information about credentialing and training  services to offer workers the most meaningful and actionable information for their career goals  in real time. 
• Assembling data from public and private sources on regional labor trends and testing their  effectiveness in enabling employers to make more impactful, targeted, and timely investments in  local workforce development opportunities.
• Collecting and analyzing diverse datasets to identify targeted, effective leverage points for innovative labor policy interventions.

Allocating $100 million per year from the ACWIA fund to kickstart ARPA-L would put the United States on a much better path to supporting U.S. workers and sustained wage growth in our changing national and global economy. This can be accomplished administratively in the immediate term, with Congress  authorizing and appropriating a larger program after a strong track record has been established.

Optimize STEM graduate fellowships for students from emerging research universities 

Higher education R&D funding is scarce, and is not distributed equitably. The American Physical Society  found that in 2018, out of more than 600 colleges and universities that received federal science funding,  22 percent received over 90 percent of the funds. These institutions serve only 43 percent of all students  and only 34 percent of underrepresented minority students in the United States. This distribution of funds  means that two thirds of underrepresented minority students and almost 70 percent of students who  receive Pell grant funding have significantly fewer opportunities to engage in cutting-edge scientific  research. 

Without undergraduate research experiences afforded by federal R&D funding, students at emerging  research universities are then less competitive for future NSF-funded opportunities at any university, such  as graduate fellowships. “Emerging research institution” (i.e., non-R1) is a category that includes  geographically diverse state schools and nearly all minority-serving institutions. 

NSF already uses the ACWIA fund to address this problem in part, through the S-STEM program described  above. Colleges and universities apply for competitive grants to “increase the number of low-income  students who graduate and contribute to the American innovation economy with their STEM knowledge,” for example through innovative curricula. While these institution-level awards have merit, they create a  patchwork of programs for which the lion’s share of low-income STEM students are ineligible at any given  point in time. 

In contrast, consider the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship program, where individual  students directly apply for three years of financial support, with an annual stipend of $34,000 plus $12,000  to the university where they pursue their graduate-level STEM education. Based on an increase in  appropriations, Congress doubled the total number of such fellowships over the past decade (from around  1,000 to 2,000).  

To lower barriers to graduate STEM education for outstanding students of all backgrounds, NSF should  consider allocating $50 million of its ACWIA funds to an individual-level scholarship program—like the NSF Graduate Research Fellowships—open to students who obtained their undergraduate degree from an  emerging research institution. To be clear, these fellows could pursue their graduate degree at any  research university, whether R1 or emerging. 

For its part, Congress should lift the statutory cap of $10,000 for such scholarships, which gets smaller in  real terms with each passing year.

Increase the number of faculty training grants in critical STEM fields 

The demand for faculty in cutting-edge fields, such as AI, is rising rapidly. According to a report by the  Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), the number of bachelor’s degrees in computer  science and engineering almost tripled between 2009 and 2017. In addition, the enrollment for  introductory courses in AI in 2017 was three to five times higher than in 2012. The flow of faculty moving  from institutions of higher education to industry has also increased dramatically, so it has become quite  difficult to properly support the rising number of U.S. students interested in an education in AI. 

This dearth of qualified professors represents a major long-term constraint on AI education in the United  States, and will no doubt constrain U.S. competitiveness in other advanced fields as they develop in  unexpected directions in the future. 

Therefore, NSF should consider allocating another $25 million from its ACWIA funding stream to  incentivize universities to create new faculty positions in STEM fields where there is a teaching bottleneck. To that end, NSF could expand and adapt its Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, which provides awards of up to $400,000 over five years to promising faculty members.  

Recommendations for Congress: Growing the Pie 

As described above, the ACWIA fund can significantly advance STEM education and training priorities in  the United States, without any further action by Congress, through optimal use of the existing $350 million annual funding flow. 

But the size of that flow is somewhat arbitrary, and ought to grow. This is especially important now that  experts are warning that China has the resources to surpass the United States in AI and other STEM fields  over the next few years. Congress should therefore increase the size of the pie by raising H-1B fees in an  equitable way. 

Currently, the ACWIA fee structure has two tiers based on the size of the employer filing the petition.  Congress set the fees at $750 for employers with at most 25 U.S. employees and $1,500 for employers  with more than 25 U.S. employees. However, this fee structure has not changed since 2004—during which time inflation has increased by over 30 percent—and it also does not take into account the financial resources of major corporations that hire the great majority of H-1B workers. 

Congress should update the fee structure so that (a) the two current fee tiers are increased 30% to account  for past inflation; (b) a new fee tier is added for companies larger than the Small Business Administration’s  500-employee threshold for a “small business”; and c) all fees are automatically indexed to inflation in the  future.

Higher fees for large companies were recommended by Microsoft in 2012, when it published a proposal for Congress to allocate additional 20,000 H-1B visas for professionals in STEM fields and to require large  companies to pay a fee of $10,000 for each petition. Microsoft also proposed recapturing unused green  cards and allocating 20,000 of them annually for STEM professionals. Sponsors for these green cards  would pay $15,000. These new funds, which would amount to about $500 million per year, would then  be dedicated to domestic STEM education programs. 

It is important to note that H-1B petitions in certain circumstances are exempt from ACWIA fees. These  exemptions include petitions from: 

• Institutions of higher education; 
• Nonprofit entities related to or affiliated with institutions of higher education;
• Nonprofit research organizations or governmental research organizations; 
• Primary or secondary educational institutions; or 
• Nonprofit entities that engage in “an established curriculum-related clinical training program for  students.” 

Fees are also not required for most H-1B extensions under any kind of employer. 

With these details in mind, we calculated the estimated revenue that would be generated by the  modernized fee structure proposed above. We referred to USCIS data on current H-1B employers, annual  rates of the submission of petitions, as well as USCIS’s analysis of petitions from small entities (at most  500 employees) and “non-small” entities (above 500 employees).  

We estimate that a modernized ACWIA fee structure could bring in around $1 billion per year, or about  triple the current revenue level. The data and our estimates can be found in Table 5 and Table 6 below.

Conclusion

As China and other countries ramp up spending to boost their own domestic research and development  capabilities, the United States must act to maintain its global scientific and technological leadership.

Since its creation two decades ago, the ACWIA fund has been a valuable and reliable resource to support  STEM workforce training and education programs at DOL and NSF. Congress should grow this annual  funding stream to $1 billion—at no cost to taxpayers—by modernizing the ACWIA fee structure to keep  up with inflation and reflect the size of the large corporations petitioning for most H-1B professionals. 

Even before Congress takes these overdue actions, the administration should allocate the existing annual  flow of ACWIA funds to expand the TechHire initiative, institutionalize a new ARPA–L, support a new  generation of underserved STEM graduate students, and eliminate faculty bottlenecks in critical STEM  fields. 

The time is ripe to seize this opportunity to harness America’s home-grown STEM talent to accelerate  innovation and power the nation’s inclusive economic growth.

The authors would like to thank Amy Nice, Ryan Burke, Remco Zwetsloot, Diana Gehlhaus, and Mark Elsesser for their insightful recommendations during the drafting of this report.

Summary

Technical standards underpin the functioning of digital devices central to everyday life. What might, at first glance, seem to be a wonky, technical process for figuring out things like how to ensure mobile devices can all connect to the same network, has emerged as an arena of geopolitical competition. Standards confers first-mover advantages on the companies that propose them and economic benefits on countries, and they implicate values like privacy. China has aggressively sought to promote its technical standards by encouraging Chinese representatives to assume leadership roles in standards bodies, financially rewarding companies that propose technical standards, coercing Chinese firms to vote as a bloc within standards bodies, and working to shape the standards landscape to its advantage.

In light of the growing recognition of the strategic importance of technical standards, the March 2020 report from the U.S. Cyberspace Solarium Commission (CSC) recommended that the United States “engage actively and effectively in forums setting international information and communications technology standards.” In a similar vein, the FY2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) included a provision tasking the Departments of State and Commerce and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with considering how to advance U.S. representation in international standards bodies. This paper expands on the CSC’s recommendation and proposes concrete actions to be taken in support of the aims outlined in the FY2021 NDAA. In brief, the U.S. federal government should:

1. Direct and organize departments and agencies to better coordinate input to (and participation in) international standards bodies;
2. Work with like-minded countries to advance technically sound standards proposals that preserve the free, open, and interoperable nature of the ICT ecosystem;
3. Facilitate a public-private partnership to encourage and support greater participation of U.S. companies in international standards bodies; and
4. Seek transparency reforms within international standards bodies and advocate for “cooling-off periods” that prevent former government officials (from any country) from taking on leadership roles in standards bodies for a specified period of time following government service.

Summary

Vehicle automation, coupled with simultaneous mobility revolutions of vehicle electrification and ridesharing, is set to have major impacts on society—perhaps the biggest impacts of any development in transportation since the introduction of cars over 100 years ago. But whether those impacts will be positive or not is still unknown. For example, widespread deployment of AVs could slash U.S. energy consumption by as much as 40% due to improved driving efficiency; alternatively, it could double U.S. energy consumption due to increased availability of cheap transport options. Similar uncertainty surrounds the potential impacts of AVs on physical safety, transportation access for disabled communities, overall traffic efficiency, and long-term greenhouse-gas emissions. Guiding the evolution of AVs towards the future we want requires evaluating AVs using metrics that prioritize societally beneficial outcomes. The Biden-Harris administration should create an Evaluation Innovation Engine at the Department of Transportation (DOT) to propose, refine, and standardize public-interest metrics for AVs.

The Evaluation Innovation Engine (EIE) would do for AV metrics what the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Grand Challenge did for AV development: ignite productive competition among companies to achieve state-of-the-art performance. The EIE should have two main tasks (1) convening stakeholders to discuss potential metrics and providing opportunities for public comment on how proposed metrics should be prioritized, and (2) administering annual funding rounds of ~$72 million each for private firms and other entities to create, test, and optimize algorithms for publicly beneficial AV outcomes. The EIE should be overseen by the Secretary of Transportation and staffed by representatives from pertinent DOT offices (Office of Civil Rights, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization, Office of Public Affairs) and administrations (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), Federal Transit Administration (FTA)), as well as a broad coalition of civil-society advocates.

Summary

Widespread deployment of fully automated or “autonomous” vehicles (AVs) that can operate without human interaction would make travel easier, cheaper, and safer. Reaching this highest level of automation requires AVs to be connected to 5G networks, which in turn allows AVs to communicate with “smart”, 5G-connected roadway infrastructure. The federal government can support progress towards this goal through a three-part initiative. Part 1 would establish Transportation Infrastructure Pilot Zones to field-test the integration of AV technology with 5G networks in settings across the country. Part 2 would create a National Connected AV Research Consortium to pursue connected-vehicle research achieving massive scale. Part 3 would launch a targeted research initiative focused on ensuring safety in a connected AV era, and Part 4 would create a new U.S. Corps of Engineers and Computer Scientists for Technology to embed technically skilled experts into government. With primary support from the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Defense (DOD), this initiative would also help develop a basic framework for achieving a 90% reduction in vehicle crashes nationwide, deliver new transportation services, and establish national standards for AV technology. Initiative outcomes would promote U.S. global leadership in AVs, create new jobs and economic opportunities, and prepare the U.S. workforce to integrate technology of the future into systems of the present.

Summary

As artificial intelligence (AI) applications for public use have proliferated, there has been a large uptick in challenges associated with AI safety and fairness. These challenges are due in part to poor transparency in and standardization of AI procurement protocols, particularly for public-use applications. In this memo, we propose a federal framework—orchestrated through the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) situated in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)—to standardize and guide AI procurement in a safer, fairer manner. While this framework is designed for federal implementation, it is important to recognize that many decisions on AI usage are made by municipalities. The principles guiding the federal framework outlined herein are intended to also help guide development and implementation of similar frameworks for AI procurement at the local level.

A rigorous scientific understanding of how the brain works would transform human health and the economy by (i) enabling design of effective therapies for mental and neurodegenerative diseases (such as depression and Alzheimer’s), and (ii) fueling novel areas of enterprise for the biomedical, technology, and artificial intelligence industries. Launched in 2013, the U.S. BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) Initiative has made significant progress toward harnessing the ingenuity and creativity of individual laboratories in developing neurotechnological methods. This has provided a strong foundation for future work, producing advances like:

• 3-D microscopy and ultra-fast imaging that enables real-time observations of brain-cell activity in intact tissues: key data for understanding circuit principles underlying human behavior.
• A sophisticated genetic method that could be helpful for finding new druggable targets that could be engaged to manage pain effectively, helping avoid the risks and harms of opioid drug addiction.
• A portable backpack supporting (i) simultaneous recording from a stimulator implanted into a human subject’s brain (part of an early-stage clinical trial), (ii) measurement of other biomarkers, and (iii) recording of the subject’s positions and movements within their environment. This integrated and comprehensive dataset is helping researchers understand links between neural-circuit activity and behavior in humans.

However, pursuing these ambitious goals will require new approaches to brain research, at greater scale and scope. Given the BRAIN Initiative’s momentum, this is the moment to expand the Initiative by investing in a National Laboratory of Neurotechnology (NLN) that would bring together a multidisciplinary team of researchers and engineers with combined expertise in physical and biomedical sciences. The NLN team would develop large-scale instruments, tools, and methods for recording and manipulating the activity of complex neural circuits in living animals or humans — studies that would enable us to understand how the brain works at a deeper, more detailed level than ever before. Specific high-impact initiatives that the NLN team could pursue include:

• Developing a multibeam, large-scale electron microscope to map the wiring of neural circuits.
• Determining the molecular components of each cell of the brain.
• Fabricating a diverse array of implantable and wearable devices.
• Conducting supercomputer-enabled mining of large datasets to support neurotechnology development.

The BRAIN Initiative currently funds small teams at existing research institutes. The natural next step is to expand the Initiative by establishing a dedicated center — staffed by a large, collaborative, and interdisciplinary team — capable of developing the high-cost, large-scale equipment needed to address complex and persistent challenges in the field of neurotechnology. Such a center would multiply the return on investment in brain research that the federal government is making on behalf of American taxpayers. Successful operation of a National Laboratory of Neurotechnology would require about $100 million per year.

To read a detailed vision for a National Laboratory of Neurotechnology, click here.

Summary

America faces a host of daunting problems that demand forward-looking solutions. Addressing these challenges will require us to unleash the full potential of our research and development community, leveraging new approaches to innovation that break through both technical and institutional barriers and initiate wholly new capabilities. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model has resulted in exactly this kind of high-impact innovation in defense, intelligence, and energy. This model can be applied to other critical societal challenges such as climate, labor, or health. But an ARPA must have the right core elements if it is to create the fresh solutions the country needs.

The ARPA model is distinctly different from other federal agencies in mission, operations, and culture. ARPA organizations are part of a much broader ecosystem that spans from research to implementation. Their role is to create breakthrough, paradigm-shifting solutions and capabilities. In order to position a new ARPA for success, Congress, the Administration, and the agency’s founding leaders must understand the unique properties of an ARPA and the process by which ARPAs approach and manage risk to develop game-changing advances.

To establish a strong foundation for a new ARPA to do this work, Congress and the Administration will need to address four factors:

• Purpose: Clearly and succinctly define the vital national purpose for the new ARPA.
• Operations: Set the agency up to function autonomously, with its own budget, staff, and operating practices.
• Authorities: Give the new ARPA flexible hiring and contracting authorities to draw new and extraordinary talent to the nation’s challenges.
• Leadership: Appoint an exceptional leadership team, hold them to a high standard for impact, and create room for them to deliver on the full potential of the ARPA model.

Over the course of a few years, a new ARPA can grow into a powerfully effective organization with people, practices, and culture honed to create breakthroughs. If well implemented, new ARPAs can be extraordinary additions to our R&D ecosystem, providing unimagined new capabilities to help us meet our most essential societal challenges.

Challenge and Opportunity

America faces some daunting problems today. Many millions of Americans are unable to access our nation’s rich opportunities, leaving all of us poorer without their contributions. Dozens of other countries have longer life spans and lower infant mortality rates, although we spend more per capita on healthcare than any other country. We are not yet on track to contain the damages of a changing climate or to manage its impacts. Global competition has resulted in more and more U.S. research advances being used to create jobs elsewhere. R&D alone won’t solve any of these problems. But every one of these challenges demands creative new solutions.

However, America’s phenomenally productive R&D ecosystem—with its half a trillion dollars spent annually by the public and private sectors—is not aimed at these large, society-wide challenges. How do we create a generational shift in our innovation ecosystem so that it contributes as much to meeting this century’s challenges as it did for those of the last century? What can we learn from our successful R&D history, and what approaches can we adapt to address the problems that we now face?

One part of the answer lies in the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model for innovation. This kind of innovation knocks down both technical and institutional barriers to create transformational new capabilities. ARPA organizations are part of a much broader ecosystem, spanning from research to implementation, in which their role is to create breakthrough solutions and capabilities that fundamentally change what we define as possible. In pursuit of revolutionary advances, they accept and manage a level of risk for which companies and other government agencies have no incentive.

The first ARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), was launched in 1958 at the height of the Cold War. DARPA shifted military capabilities from mass bombing to precision strike with GPS, stealth technologies, and integrated combat systems. These innovations recast defense systems, changed military outcomes, and shaped geopolitics over decades. Meanwhile, DARPA’s programs in enabling technologies also seeded artificial intelligence, developed advanced microelectronics, and started the internet. In recent years, DARPA programs have built the first ship able to navigate from the pier and cross oceans without a single sailor on board,¹ created a radical new approach to reconfigurable military capabilities to outpace global adversaries,² developed the first systems—now in operation by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey—for cities to continuously monitor for dangerous nuclear and radiological materials,³ and created a rapid-response mRNA vaccine platform⁴ that enabled the astonishingly fast development⁵ of today’s mRNA vaccines for COVID-19.

We are also starting to show that the ARPA model can be successfully adapted to other national purposes. In 2006, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) was formed to serve the intelligence community. One of IARPA’s programs has developed methods to overcome individual cognitive biases by weighting and synthesizing the judgments of many analysts. This approach provides important gains in prediction and is a new paradigm for forecasting events in a complex world. In 2009, the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E) launched in the Department of Energy. Its programs have created new power semiconductors, new battery technologies, and new methods to improve appliance efficiency, making vital contributions to our clean energy future. Both ARPAs have invigorated R&D communities by connecting them to hard, important problems and giving them a pathway to drive impact.

Implementing the ARPA model to meet other critical challenges could have enormous impact. Indeed, President Biden has already proposed ARPAs for health and climate,⁶ and others have advanced visions for ARPAs for agriculture,⁷ labor⁸ and education. In addition, the Endless Frontier Act⁹ takes inspiration from the ARPA model in its vision for an expanded technology function at NSF to address economic competitiveness.

Behind each call for an “ARPA for X” is a yearning for R&D that throws open new doors to radically better solutions. But the ARPA model is very different from other federal agencies and unlocking its potential will require much more than affixing the name. The starting point is an understanding of how ARPAs generate their outsized advances.

Though specifics vary according to the mission of a new ARPA, the essential operating model is based on these elements:

• An ARPA designs and conducts programs that run for limited periods, typically 3-5 years. Each ARPA program sets out to achieve a specific, bold goal that may seem impossible but that, if demonstrated, can initiate a major advance. Each ARPA program contracts with companies, universities, and other organizations to execute R&D efforts. It also engages the parties who can implement and scale successful program results.
• An ARPA requires exceptionally talented program managers with a rare combination of expertise, vision, and the ability to execute and deliver results.
• ARPA leadership approves a series of individual programs, constructing and overseeing a full and diversified portfolio.

ARPA Programs

An ARPA generates major advances through intelligently managed risk-taking. The fundamental unit of work for an ARPA is a solutions-oriented R&D program that aims at achieving a previously unimaginable goal. Each program has a fixed term, typically 3-5 years, and each is designed, executed, and transitioned by an ARPA program manager.

Design

The program manager designs the program to achieve a bold goal—one that may seem impossible but that, if demonstrated, could catalyze a major advance. They build a rigorous plan to achieve the goal. A set of questions known as the Heilmeier Catechism¹⁰ (from an iconic DARPA director in the 1970s) guides program development:

• What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
• How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
• What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
• Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
• What are the risks?
• How much will it cost?
• How long will it take?
• What are the mid-term and final “exams” to check for success?

These questions are easy—even obvious—to ask, but surprisingly difficult to answer well. Program managers typically grapple with them over 6-12 months to design a strong program, and agency leaders use them to guide their judgement about the potential of a new program for approval. The questions also guide program execution.

Execution

Once a program is launched, the program manager contracts with whichever organizations are needed to achieve the program’s goal. That typically means companies, universities, nonprofits, other parts of government, and other organizations with the talent and capacity to conduct the necessary R&D. Contracting this work has the obvious benefit that the ARPA doesn’t have to hire staff and provide facilities for this R&D. But even more important is the fact that this approach mobilizes individuals and organizations. Over the course of the program, these participants become a community that not only delivers the program vision but can help drive it forward beyond the term of the ARPA program.

The work of the program is to weave the threads of research from multiple domains together with lessons from the reality of use and practice in order to develop and demonstrate prototype systems or capabilities. The program rigorously evaluates how well its innovation works, how it works in specific environments, and how it can be scaled. 

An ARPA program often draws on basic research and often generates fresh research, but research is an input rather than the objective. Unlike the management of basic research, these programs drive to a specific goal. They may sometimes resemble product development, but for a prototype product that serves a public purpose rather than a visible market opportunity. Often, they require a much higher degree of risk than product development because they reach for a barely feasible goal. 

An ARPA program aims to demonstrate that a powerful new approach can work despite the risk inherent in trying something radically different. This requires actively managing the multiple efforts within the ARPA program. An ARPA program manager accelerates lines of work that show great promise and redirects or stops work that is not yielding results. They nimbly reallocate resources to keep wringing out risk and driving to the program’s objective.  

Transition

In parallel, the program manager engages the decision makers who can advance, adopt, implement, and fully scale the results of the program. If the breakthrough will require commercialization, that could include additional companies, investors, and entrepreneurs. If full-scale implementation requires changes in policies and practices, that means engaging regulators, policy makers, and community organizations. Understanding the needs and realities of implementers is important from the early stages of program design. It is sometimes the case that these implementers are skeptical about the program’s bold goal at the start. As the program unfolds, they are invited to program reviews and demonstrations. The program strives to address their concerns and may even provide support for their internal analyses, evaluations, and trials. When these engagements work well, the ARPA program manager is able to bring implementers along on the journey from wild dream to demonstrated reality. Successful transition starts when they change their minds about what’s possible. And the ultimate societal impact of the ARPA program comes when these implementers have fully scaled the ARPA breakthrough. 

A fully successful program ends with a convincing demonstration of a new capability; a community that can carry it forward; and decision makers who are ready to support and fund implementation in products, services, policies, and practices.

ARPA program managers

None of this can happen without exceptionally capable program managers. An ARPA organization hires program managers on fixed terms to design, manage, and transition these high-impact programs. ARPA leadership coaches program managers, helps build partnerships and remove obstacles, and approves and oversees all programs. But it puts enormous responsibility and authority on the shoulders of program managers. 

ARPA program managers come from backgrounds in companies, universities, nonprofits, and other parts of government, and they serve at different times in their careers. They bring a “head in the stars, feet on the ground” blend of these key characteristics: 

• The program manager is an expert in a relevant area. 
• They see the big picture and navigate easily from details to strategic outcomes. 
• They are driven to achieve a major impact. Sometimes this is manifested as a constructive impatience with the limitations of conventional organizations and approaches. 
• They are able to project a vision. 
• They are able to build and lead a community to accomplish goals. 
• They have a sound ethical core. 

ARPA portfolios

ARPA leadership approves a series of individual programs, constructing and managing a full portfolio that is diversified to maximize total impact despite the risk inherent in each program. Every program learns, not all succeed, and failure is accepted as integral to the mission.

Plan of Action 

Based on these core elements of a successful ARPA model, we offer four recommendations for policy makers as they establish new ARPA organizations. 

Purpose

Clearly and succinctly define the vital national purpose for the new ARPA. An ARPA exists to create breakthroughs for an important public need. For DARPA, this is national security. For ARPA-E, it is economic and energy security, and for IARPA, it is national intelligence. 

Operations

Set up the agency to function autonomously, with its own budget, staff and organization, and operating practices. An ARPA is a deliberate counterpoint to work already underway, originating from a recognition that something more and different is needed to achieve our national goals. An ARPA will not succeed if it is tightly integrated into its parent organization. Ironically, it may be more difficult to start a successful new ARPA in an area that already has robust federal research, because of the inclination to fit the square-peg ARPA into round-hole traditional research methods. The ARPA model is completely different than our well-honed approach to sponsoring fundamental research. The ARPA solutions-driven approach would not work well for greatly needed and highly valued basic research, and conversely, funding methods for fundamental research will not lead to ARPA-scale breakthroughs for our societal problems. This work is different, and it will require different people, different practices, and a different culture to succeed. 

Independent funding is also necessary. To develop a portfolio of programs with the potential for high impact, an ARPA requires funding that is sufficient to achieve its programs’ objectives. ARPA programs are sized not just to generate a new result, but to convincingly demonstrate a new approach, often across a variety of circumstances, in order to prove that the method can succeed and scale. 

The agency’s chain of command and Congressional authorizers and appropriators provide important oversight. However, the ARPA organization itself must bear the responsibility for designing, selecting, managing, and transitioning its programs. A new ARPA should report directly to the cabinet secretary to maintain independence and secure the support needed to achieve its mission. 

Authorities

Give the new ARPA flexible hiring and contracting authorities to draw new and extraordinary talent to the nation’s challenges. Flexible hiring mechanisms have proven to be very valuable in allowing ARPAs to attract the rare combination of expertise, vision, and execution required in great program managers. In addition, program managers must be able to contract with exceptional people and teams in companies, universities, nonprofits, and other government entities to achieve their aggressive program goals. ARPAs have used flexible contracting mechanisms to move fast and work effectively with all kinds of organizations, not just those already designed to work with government.

Flexible hiring and contracting authorities are extremely helpful tools for an ARPA organization. It’s worth noting, though, that flexible authorities by themselves do not an ARPA make. 

Leadership

Appoint an exceptional leadership team, hold them to a high standard for impact, and create room for them to deliver on the full potential of the ARPA model. A new ARPA’s director will be responsible for building an organization with people, practices, and culture honed for the mission of creating breakthroughs. This person must bring fresh and creative ways of looking at seemingly impossible problems, a rigorous approach to managing risk, a drive to achieve outsized impact, and an ability to lead people. A strong ethical orientation is also essential for a role that will grapple with the implications of powerful new capabilities for our society. 

The person to whom the ARPA director reports also plays an essential role. This individual must actively prevent others from trying to set the agenda for the ARPA. They enable the ARPA organization to hire program managers who don’t look like other department staff, undertake programs that conventional wisdom decries, manage programs actively, and develop a culture that celebrates bold risk-taking in pursuit of a great national purpose. They hold the ARPA organization accountable for the mission of creating breakthroughs and create room for the unconventional methods needed to realize that mission. 

Note that these four recommendations about purpose, independence, authorities, and leadership are interconnected. All are necessary to build the foundation for a successful new ARPA, and cherry-picking the easy ones will not work. 

Conclusion

A total of 87 years of experience across three different ARPA organizations have provided many lessons about how to build and run an organization that creates breakthroughs for an important national purpose. In establishing any new ARPA, both Congress and the Administration must create the space and allocate the resources that will allow it to flourish and realize its mission. 

Like its programs, a new ARPA will itself be a high-risk, high-reward experiment. If our challenges were modest, or if our current innovation methods were sufficient, there would be no need to try these kinds of experiments. But the problems we face today demand powerful new approaches. Adapting the ARPA model and aiming it at the most critical challenges ahead can create breakthroughs that redefine what is possible for our future. Let’s do everything possible to start new ARPAs on the right track/

Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration, Congress, and state legislatures should adopt measures to reduce the substantial health and environmental impact of America’s 5,000+ public airports while improving the competitiveness of American aviation. Aviation is our largest non-agricultural export industry, but we are losing our technological advantage to countries that have prioritized sustainable aviation technologies. Because our airports and aircraft use outdated technology, they disproportionately pollute the often-disadvantaged communities adjacent to them, causing health externalities while providing few benefits and job opportunities to local residents. Fixing this public health problem should start with the immediate phaseout of leaded aviation fuel, which is the largest source of lead emissions in the U.S. This should also be coupled with incentivizing advancements in sustainable aviation technology. The phaseout and innovation incentivization can be accomplished through regulatory agency mandates, new fees collected from combustion aircraft users, reprioritization of existing recurring federal funds for aviation, and allocation of additional funding—such as from the proposed national infrastructure plan—towards sustainable solutions. The focus of this funding should be comprehensive electrification of the entire aviation ecosystem, including airports, ground vehicles, support equipment, and aircraft. Electrification will remove the lead concern while also reducing other pollution and creating jobs. Funding for pollution mitigation and green job creation should be directed toward disadvantaged communities located near airports and U.S.-based small businesses developing green aviation technologies. These actions must be taken immediately, lest our public health continue to suffer, and lest we jeopardize the future of the U.S. aviation industry.

Challenge and Opportunity 

Small aircraft are the largest source of environmental lead pollution in the US. Blood lead levels are significantly elevated for children living within 0.6 mi (1,000m) of airports where leaded aviation fuel (avgas) is used. An estimated 16 million Americans are at risk of elevated blood lead levels because they live near a regional airport, where the majority of flight operations are undertaken by small piston engine aircraft burning leaded fuel. Lead is a neurotoxin for which there is no safe level of exposure, as determined by both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). However, the EPA has continued to permit over 2 grams of lead content per gallon of aviation gasoline, which is aerosolized into extremely dangerous microscopic particulate matter (PM) when burned in an aircraft piston engine. When inhaled, small PM is capable of directly entering the bloodstream. This lead exposure is especially dangerous for fetal development and for cognitive development in children. The science behind these effects is very well established because of decades of research into the effects of leaded automotive gasoline; this resulted in a complete ban of leaded gasoline in 1996, although aviation successfully lobbied for a special temporary exemption.

Monthly average child blood lead levels vs. sum of piston engine aircraft takeoffs and landings over time. This data was collected from over 1 million children living within 6.2 miles of 27 airports in Michigan with piston aircraft traffic. It is clear that blood lead levels rise and fall in concert with piston aircraft traffic.

Zahran et al., 2017.

Although most attention has been focused on about 30 large hub airports in the U.S., lead pollution occurs primarily at smaller regional airports due to their reliance on piston-engine aircraft. There are over 10,000 airstrips and over 5,000 public airports in the U.S., or a public airport within a 16-minute drive of the average American. The nearly 200,000 leaded-fuelburning aircraft operating from these airports are incapable of readily switching to unleaded fuel due to their outdated engine technology and the lack of availability of unleaded gasoline at most airports.

How widespread is this problem?

This is a map of regional airports where leaded avgas and other polluting fossil fuels are used. There are over 5,000 public airports in the US — or one within a 16-minute drive of the average American.

For both economic and technical reasons, a widespread, drop-in replacement for leaded aviation gasoline (avgas) has failed to emerge, despite the fact that leaded fuel was fully eliminated on our roads decades ago. Because of limited unleaded fuel supply, reduced power output, safety concerns, and pilot retraining needs, even engines theoretically capable of switching to unleaded fuel continue to use leaded fuel almost exclusively. However, simply switching to planes that use diesel or jet fuel is not the answer. Unlike cars, aircraft have no emissions control systems, and there is no existing way to install such systems. As a result, even aircraft that do not burn leaded fuel emit very high levels of PM and other forms of pollution detrimental to human health. For example, LAX alone produces nearly as much particulate pollution as all LA-area freeways combined, and LAX is just one of 39 airports in the local air district. It is critical to American public health that any policies to phase out leaded avgas concurrently foster adoption of reduced-emission and reduced-fuel-burn technologies (such as electric propulsion), rather than encourage switching to fuel-hungry and high-pollution unleaded gasoline engines, diesel engines, turboprops, and jet engines. 

This is also critical to American economic health: European and Asian companies are beating the U.S. at developing efficient unleaded-fuel engines and electric propulsion technology, winning market share in regions traditionally dominated by US-built light aircraft (e.g. where leaded fuel is unavailable or expensive). We need to invest in sustainable propulsion systems to maintain U.S. competitiveness, and lack of supportive policy action has hampered technological advancement. 

Zero funding, for example, has been allocated in the proposed American Jobs Plan to deal with dangerous aerosolized lead pollution from aviation, even though the plan dedicates $45B toward replacing lead pipes. Combating aviation pollution, however, offers a significant opportunity to pursue electrification, with a wide variety of shovel-ready airport project locations. The U.S. workforce can electrify airport infrastructure, ground vehicles, and aircraft domestically using existing and proposed federal funding as well as revenue from fees targeted at polluting aircraft. Shared charging infrastructure should be a special priority. Installing basic charging infrastructure at every one of the 5,000 public airports in the U.S. — focusing first on the 500 most heavily-used airports located closest to populated areas and in disadvantaged communities — is a highly achievable near-term goal at moderate expense. For instance, installing a 30-60 kW DC fast charger, which could charge small electric planes or ground vehicles, at the 500 highestpriority airports would cost less than $25M and could be completed in 2-3 years with sufficient federal backing.

Transitioning to biofuels or other so-called “sustainable” fuels can play a role, but should not be considered a substitute for fuel use reduction via electrification because their emissions can still be harmful. Both the biofuel supply chain and burning of biofuels, for example, emit a wide range of pollutants. Even green hydrogen, currently a tiny fraction of the world’s mostly fossil-fuel derived hydrogen supply, would still lead to emissions of water vapor. Water vapor is a powerful greenhouse gas when emitted at high altitude, and in some proposed implementations (such as direct hydrogen turbine combustion) hydrogen aircraft could also lead to significant high altitude nitrogen oxide pollution.

Electrification also offers an opportunity to better integrate airports into both urban and rural transit networks, provide clean energy and charging services to local communities (e.g., charging buses overnight), and improve resilience to power outages by offering grid storage. Electrification infrastructure at airports could include, for example, solar panels and grid storage doubling as power backup systems at airports. This would serve not just airport power needs but also those of surrounding communities, especially in remote areas prone to outages. This power system resilience is especially critical in disaster situations, where airports often serve as hubs for emergency responders.

In the near term, electrifying aviation entails plugging planes into gate power instead of burning fuel, using electric power to taxi to the runway, and operating electric tugs and ground equipment. Electrifying aviation also means investing in R&D, scaleup, and adoption of electric trainer aircraft, hybrid electric short-range cargo and passenger planes, and eventually longerrange commercial planes. As batteries and electronics improve, larger and larger planes will become more and more electric over time. To facilitate these technological advances in electric aviation and maximize public benefit, federal funding should focus on promoting adoption of electrification on routes not currently serviced or readily serviceable by rail or other alternative rapid, sustainable forms of transportation.

Plan of Action 

Infrastructure Funding 

Reprioritize existing funding sources, such as the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Voluntary Airport Low Emissions Program (VALE) program, to focus on sustainable infrastructure such as solar, storage, and chargers at both public airports and military airports. Supplement this funding by dedicating at least $10B of the proposed $25B of airport funding in the American Jobs Plan, or $20B of the proposed $56B Republican counter-offer, towards electrification across airports of all sizes. Initially prioritize: 

1. The 500 most heavily-used airports located closest to populated areas and in disadvantaged communities,
2. Regional airports that have far fewer logistical barriers to infrastructure projects than congested hubs, and
3. Airports supporting routes not currently serviced or readily serviceable by rail.

R&D Funding 

Reprioritize existing federal research funding toward technologies aimed at reducing fuel burned by aircraft, such as significantly expanding current hybrid and electric aviation initiatives at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Transportation (DOT), and Department of Energy (DOE).¹ Additional funding paid for by fees on polluting aircraft should be added to these existing pools of research dollars (see “Plan of Action” items 4-6). To remain competitive with accelerating civil and defense aviation technology development overseas, the government should direct a minimum of $2B in annual federal funding to electric aviation R&D. Funding should prioritize the development of US-designed and manufactured electric and hybrid electric aircraft technologies, including both retrofit and new-build planes, ground equipment, and ground vehicles. At least 50% of funds should be dedicated to small businesses.

The U.S. is currently the world leader in small aircraft production, but we are falling far behind Europe and Asia on electrifying fixed wing aircraft, funding development of new efficiency technologies, and implementing relevant policies. U.S. companies have instead focused primarily on low-capacity “flying cars” for carrying high-net-worth individuals short distances over traffic. The lack of funding and policy support for practical, high-impact innovation poses a significant threat to future U.S. competitiveness and jobs, especially in the export market.

Regulations 

The EPA should issue its final endangerment finding banning leaded fuels, and the Biden-Harris Administration should issue an executive order instructing the EPA and FAA to work together to eliminate lead pollution. This includes immediately implementing a 10-year phaseout mandate for the sale of leaded fuel, with use of leaded fuel banned after 2030 except for a limited number of historic aircraft. This phaseout timeline should be extended to 2040 in Alaska, due to the disproportionate impact on the greater than 80% of Alaskan communities reliant on small planes for year-round access. During the Obama Administration, an attempt was made to phase out leaded avgas, but it stalled largely because of the perceived impact on mobility in Alaska. It is critical to ensure that a phaseout plan recognizes Alaska’s needs and funds sustainable solutions suitable for an arctic operating environment.

It is not enough to simply ban lead, because this may incentivize switching to other highly polluting technologies like dirty unleaded gasoline engines, diesel engines, and far less fuelefficient turboprop or jet engines. Thus, it is critical that a leaded fuel ban be accompanied by the immediate implementation of a fuel efficiency mandate for aircraft that are based in or that regularly fly to the U.S. Inspired by the federal automotive Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards program, this efficiency mandate should utilize multiple aircraft size categories with targets based on maximum takeoff weight (e.g., <1,000 lb, 1,000-5,000 lb, 5,000- 19,000 lb, 19,000-75,000 lb, 75,000-250,000 lb, and 250,000 lb+ categories). Efficiency targets should take into consideration typical missions and technical difficulty in reducing fuel burn for various types of aircraft. For instance, <19,000 lb aircraft are readily able to use hybrid electric propulsion — and, in some cases, pure electric propulsion — with existing technology and regulations. The largest aircraft flying long distance routes, on the other hand, will initially need to focus on smaller steps such as more efficient flight patterns, plugging into gate power/HVAC, electric taxi (either onboard or via tug), etc. until future technologies are developed; therefore, larger aircraft should have less aggressive targets (similar to less aggressive CAFE standards for larger vehicles). Technologies piloted in smaller electric aircraft will eventually make their way to larger aircraft, initially as high-power subsystems. Thus, these technologies are key early targets for federal funding and mandates. The overall “CAFE” goal should be a 25% reduction in overall U.S. aviation fossil fuel burned per passenger by 2030, and a 50% reduction by 2040.

Taxes

The following programs offer pathways for making electrification programs financially sustainable beyond the initial infusions of funding for infrastructure transformation and R&D.

Immediately implement a national $10 per flight hour use tax on all aircraft with 19 passenger seats or below. This should include an additional $2 per flight hour tax on leaded fuel burning aircraft and on any other aircraft burning more than 4 gallons of fuel per seat per flight hour. It is essential to avoid solely targeting leaded fuel piston aircraft, which would incentivize a switch to less fuel-efficient turboprop aircraft and business jets. 100% of tax revenues should be dedicated to the aviation industry and airports, and at least 50% of funds should go to small businesses. Tax revenues should be allocated toward: 

1. The electrification of airports
2. A “cash for clunkers” program to retire or retrofit polluting aircraft, with commercial and government operators receiving priority for funding. This funding should only be provided for US-manufactured or US-retrofit electrified aircraft. 
3. Jobs training and career development for airport-adjacent communities. 

This would not be an undue burden on air travelers, because the owners and users of small aircraft are generally affluent. The Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association reports that the net worth of its average member is over $1.6 million. Aircraft operating in Alaska should be exempt from this tax until 2030. Revenue should exceed $260M/year based only on the base $10 fee, assuming pre-pandemic flight hour totals.

Immediately implement a $10 “Clean Skies Fee” per passenger for all international flights on planes with more than 19 passenger seats, excluding flights within North America, to be collected by air carriers from passengers at the time air transportation is purchased. The September 11 Security Fee offers a precedent for this type of fee.

An optional “Clean Skies Fund” contribution with suggested donations of $5, $10, $25, and $50 should also be offered at time of purchase for all flights on planes with more than 19 passenger seats—both domestic and international—to allow passengers an opportunity to further fund pollution-reducing technologies across the aviation ecosystem and to offset their personal environmental impact from flying. This fund is modeled after optional federal contributions such as the Presidential Election Campaign Fund.

A portion of collected funds should be provided to airlines and travel booking services in order to implement and maintain this contribution mechanism, which must be prominently featured in the booking process. Carriers will remit the fees to federal programs promoting reduction in fuel use, airport electrification, and jobs training. At least 50% of funds should go to small businesses. Revenue should exceed $2.34B/year assuming pre-pandemic international flight passenger demand.

For planes with more than 19 passenger seats, implement a similar $0.25/mile per passenger fee on all domestic and North America region flights effective in 2030 to fund fuel burn reduction and airport electrification. At least 50% of funds should go to small businesses, and all funds should be dedicated to projects that directly benefit airports and aviation, as well as increasing accessibility to all Americans.

Jobs 

The actions above should be immediately implemented in order to preserve the millions of U.S. jobs in the aerospace industry. Aircraft are the largest non-agricultural U.S. export product and one of the largest domestic manufacturing industries. As of 2018, the aerospace industry was directly responsible for over 2.4 million primarily high-paying U.S. jobs, many of which are union jobs or in STEM fields. Airlines directly employ nearly 500,000 Americans, and a wide variety of indirect jobs in travel agencies, airports, construction, and related industries are reliant on aviation. Although we support expanded low-emissions rail transportation, continued modal shift away from aviation towards automobiles would be devastating to the airline industry and increase overall emissions.

The U.S. currently leads the world in aviation manufacturing, but we are falling behind in electric aviation technology, including both airport-based ground vehicles and aircraft. We are headed towards an inflection point that will determine the future of the U.S. aviation industry. Either U.S. policy will promote adoption of more efficient technologies for aircraft as well as airport vehicles and equipment, thereby maintaining U.S. world leadership in aviation, or the U.S. will lose this market to other nations in Asia and Europe. The only way to preserve aviation jobs is by investing in efficiency and by enacting smart policies that promote private investment in and adoption of cleaner technologies. 

Not only can aviation jobs be preserved, but electrification of the aviation ecosystem will serve to create new green jobs related to air travel. This will include jobs in charging infrastructure installation, solar and storage construction, as well as related industries, which must be based locally and use U.S. labor. Further, if the U.S. leads in developing aviation electrification, there will be substantial export opportunities as other nations look to reduce aviation emissions and improve mobility. Potential clean aviation technology markets include countries such as Norway, which has committed to an electrified aircraft fleet by 2040 for all flights under 90 minutes duration, and Scotland, which has committed to a zero emissions airspace. Numerous other countries are actively considering similar policies, creating a significant opportunity for U.S. products.

Conclusion 

Aviation emissions, especially lead, are a clear and present danger to the health of Americans and the global climate. Failing to develop and deploy more efficient technology represents an equal danger to U.S. jobs and competitiveness. Thankfully, practical solutions exist today and even more are being developed to mitigate these dangers. To advance this mitigation, the Biden-Harris Administration and legislators should ensure that existing and new federal funding prioritizes holistic electrification of the aviation ecosystem, in addition to enacting legislation and regulations that ensure the success of this transition.

Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration should act to address and minimize the risks of malicious doxing, given the rising frequency of online harassment inciting offline harms. This proposal recommends four parallel and mutually reinforcing strategies that can improve protections, enforcement, governance, and awareness around the issue.

The growing use of smartphones, social media, and other channels for finding and sharing information about people have made doxing increasingly widespread and dangerous in recent years. A 2020 survey by the Anti-Defamation League found that 44% of Americans reported experiencing online harassment. 28% of Americans reported experiencing severe online harassment, which includes doxing as well as sexual harassment, stalking, physical threats, swatting, and sustained harassment. In addition, a series of disturbing events in 2020 suggest that some instances of coordinated doxing efforts have reached a level of sophistication that poses a serious threat to U.S. national security. The pronounced spike in doxing cases against election officials, federal judges, and local government officials should serve as evidence for the severity and urgency of this issue. Meanwhile, private citizens have faced elevated doxing risks as disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic and tensions around contentious sociopolitical issues have provoked cycles of online harassment.

While several states have proposed anti-doxing bills over the past year, most states do not offer adequate protections for doxing victims or mechanisms to hold perpetrators accountable. The doxing regulations that do exist are inconsistent across state lines, and partially applicable federal laws—such as the Interstate Communications Statute and the Interstate Stalking Statute—neither fully address the doxing problem nor are sufficiently enforced. New federal legislation is a crucial step for ensuring that doxing risks and harms are appropriately addressed, and must come with complementary governance structures and enforcement capabilities in order to be effective.

Summary

Access to high-speed internet is essential for all Americans to participate in society and the economy. The American Jobs Plan (AJP) proposal to build high-speed broadband infrastructure to achieve 100% high-speed internet coverage is critical for reaching unserved and underserved communities. Yet widespread access to high-speed broadband infrastructure is insufficient. Widespread adoption is required for individuals and communities to realize the benefits of being online. Federal programs that have recently funded new broadband infrastructure—namely the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Connecting America Fund Phase II (CAF II) and Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF) reverse auctions—have not adequately tied the input of broadband infrastructure funding to the desired outcome of broadband adoption. Consequently, funding has gone to internet service providers (ISPs) that offer expensive internet service that communities are unlikely to adopt. To use the AJP’s broadband infrastructure funds most effectively, the Biden-Harris Administration should prioritize affordability in funding allocation and ensure that all recipients of federal subsidies, grants, or loans meet requirements for affordable service. Doing so will support widespread internet adoption and contribute to the AJP’s stated aims of reducing the price of internet service, holding ISPs accountable, and saving taxpayers money.