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. 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.

Challenge and Opportunity 

There is overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is a dangerous global threat. Climate change, driven in large part by human-generated CO2 emissions, is already causing severe flooding, drought, melting ice sheets, and extreme heat. These phenomena are in turn compromising human health, food and water security, and economic growth.

Figure 1. Data collected from observation stations show how noticeably atmospheric CO2 concentrations have risen over the past several decades. (Data compiled by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association; figure by Klaus S. Lackner.)

Morton, E.V. (2020). Reframing the Climate Change Problem: Evaluating the Political, Technological, and Ethical Management of Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United States. Ph.D. thesis, Arizona State University.

CO2 concentrations are higher today than they have been at any point in the last 3 million years. The contribution of human activity is causing CO2 emissions to rise at an unprecedented rate — approximately 2% per year for the past several decades (Figure 1) — a rate that far outpaces the rate at which the natural world can adapt and adjust. A monumental global effort is needed to reduce CO2 emissions from human activity. But even this is not enough. Because CO2 can persist in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, CO2 already emitted will continue to have climate impacts for at least the next 1,000 years. Keeping the impacts of climate change to tolerable levels requires not only a suite of actions to reduce future CO2 emissions, but also implementation of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategies to mitigate the damage we have already done.

The IPCC defines CDR as “anthropogenic activities removing CO2 from the atmosphere and durably storing it in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products.” While becoming more energy efficient can reduce emissions and using renewable energy causes zero emissions, only CDR can achieve the “net negative” emissions needed to help restore climate stability.

Five companies around the world — two of which are based in the United States — have already begun commercializing a particular CDR technology called direct air capture. Climeworks is the most advanced company, and can already remove 900 tons of atmospheric CO2 per year at its plant in Switzerland. Though these companies have demonstrated that CDR technologies like direct air capture work, costs need to come down and capacity needs to expand for CDR to remove meaningful levels of past emissions from the atmosphere.

Thankfully, the Energy Act of 2020, a subsection of the 2021 Consolidated Appropriations Act, was passed into law in December 2020. This act creates a carbon removal research, development, and demonstration program within the Department of Energy. It also establishes a prize competition for pre-commercial and commercial applications of direct air capture technologies, provides grants for direct air capture and storage test centers, and creates a CDR task force.

The CDR task force will be led by the Secretary of Energy and include the heads of any other relevant federal agencies chosen by the Secretary. The task force is mandated to write a report that includes an estimate of how much excess CO2 needs to be removed from the atmosphere by 2050 to achieve net zero emissions, an inventory and evaluation of CDR approaches, and recommendations for policy tools that the U.S. government can use to meet the removal estimation and advance CDR deployment. This report will be used to advise the Secretary of Energy on next steps for CDR development and will be submitted to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources and the House of Representatives Committees on Energy and Commerce and Science, Space, and Technology.

The Biden administration has clearly shown its commitment to combating climate change by rejoining the Paris Agreement and signing several Executive Orders that take a whole-of-government approach to the climate crisis. The Energy Act complements these actions by advancing development and demonstration of CDR. However, the Energy Act does not address CDR governance, i.e., the policy tools necessary to efficiently and ethically steward CDR implementation. A proactive governance strategy is needed to ensure that CDR is used to repair past damage and support communities that have been disproportionately harmed by climate change — not as an excuse for the fossil-fuel industry and other major contributors to the climate crisis to continue dumping harmful greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The CDR task force should therefore leverage the crucial opportunity it has been given to shape future use of CDR by incorporating governance recommendations into its report.

Plan of Action

The Department of Energy’s CDR task force should consider recommending the following options in its final report. Taken together, these recommendations form the basis of a governance framework to ensure that CDR technologies are implemented in a way that most responsibly, equitably, and effectively addresses climate change.

Establish net-zero and net-negative carbon removal targets.

The Energy Act commendably directs the CDR task force to estimate the amount of CO2 that the United States must remove to become net zero by 2050. But the task force should not stop there. The task force should also estimate the amount of CO2 that the United States must remove to limit average global warming to 1.5°C (a target that will require net negative emissions) and estimate what year this goal could feasibly be achieved. Much like the National Ambient Air Quality Standards enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency, there should be a specific amount of CO2 that the United States should work toward removing to enhance environmental quality. This target could be based on how much CO2 the United States has put into the atmosphere to date and how much of that amount the United States should be responsible for removing. Both net-zero and net-negative removal targets should be preserved through legislation to continue progress beyond the Biden administration.

Design a public carbon removal service.

If carbon removal targets become law, the federal government will need to develop an organized way of removing and storing CO2 in order to reach those targets. Therefore, the CDR task force should also consider what it would take to develop a public carbon removal service. Just as waste disposal and sewage infrastructure are public services paid for by those that generate waste, industries would pay for the service of having their past and current CO2 emissions removed and stored securely. Revenue generated from a public carbon removal service could be reinvested into CDR technology, carbon storage facilities, maintenance of CDR infrastructure, environmental justice initiatives, and job creation. As the Biden administration ramps up its American Jobs Plan to modernize the country’s infrastructure, it should consider including carbon removal infrastructure. A public carbon removal service could materially contribute to the goals of expanding clean energy infrastructure and creating jobs in the green economy that the American Jobs Plan aims to achieve. 

Planning the design and implementation of a public carbon removal service should be conducted in parallel with CDR technology development. Knowing what CDR technologies will be used may change how prize competitions and grant programs funded by the Energy Act are evaluated and how the CDR task force will prioritize its policy recommendations. The CDR task force should assess the CDR technology landscape and determine which technologies — including mechanical, agricultural, and ocean-based processes — are best suited for inclusion in a public carbon removal service. The assessment should be based on factors such as affordability, availability, and storage permanence. The assessment could also consider results from the research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) program and the prize competitions mandated by the Energy Act when making its determination. The task force should also recommend concrete steps towards getting a public carbon removal service up and running. Steps could include, for instance, establishing public-private partnerships with prize competition winners and other commercialized CDR companies.

Create a national carbon accounting standard.

The Energy Act directs the RD&D program to collaborate with the Environmental Protection Agency to develop an accounting framework to certify how much carbon different techniques can remove and how long that carbon can be stored. This may involve investigating the storage permanence of various carbon storage and utilization options. This may also involve creating a database of storage lifetimes for CDR products and processes and identification of CDR techniques best suited for attaining carbon removal targets. The task force could recommend to the Secretary of Energy that the framework becomes a standard. A national carbon accounting standard will be integral for achieving carbon removal targets and verifying removal through public service described above.

Ensure equity in CDR.

While much of the technical and economic aspects of carbon removal have been (or are being) investigated, questions related to equity remain largely unaddressed. The CDR task force should investigate and recommend policies and actions to ensure that carbon removal does not impose or exacerbate societal inequities, especially for vulnerable communities of color and low-income communities. Recommendations that the task force could explore include:

• Establishing a tax credit for investing in CDR on private land. This credit would be similar to existing credits for installing solar and selling electricity back to the grid. Some or all of proceeds from the credit should go to help communities previously harmed by environmental injustice (i.e., “environmental justice communities”).
• Launching a CDR technology deployment program that gives environmental justice communities a tax credit or other financial benefit for allowing a CDR technology to be deployed in their communities. This “hosting” compensation would be earmarked for local environmental remediation.
• Incentivizing design of CDR technologies that deliver co-benefits. For instance, planting trees not only helps remove carbon from the atmosphere but also creates shade, provides habitat, and helps mitigate urban heat-island effects. Industrial direct air capture plants can be surrounded by greenspace and art to create public parks.
• Interviewing environmental justice communities to understand their needs and how those needs could be met through strategic implementation of CDR.

Include CDR in international climate discussions.

Because CDR is a necessary part of any realistic strategy to keep average global warming to tolerable levels, CDR is a necessary part of future international discussions on climate change. The United States can take the lead by including CDR in its nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement. The U.S. NDC most recently submitted in April 2021 does discuss increasing carbon sequestration through agriculture and oceans but could be even more aggressive by including a broader suite of CDR technologies (e.g., engineered direct air capture) and prioritizing pursuit of carbon-negative solutions. The CDR task force could recommend that the Department of Energy work with the Special Presidential Envoy for Climate and the Department of State Office of Global Change on (1) enhancing the NDC through CDR, and (2) developing climate-negotiation strategies intended to increase the use of CDR globally.

Conclusion

Global climate change has worsened to the point where simply reducing emissions is not enough. Even if all global emissions were to cease today, the climate impacts of the carbon we have dumped into the atmosphere would continue to be felt for centuries to come. The only solution to this problem is to achieve net-negative emissions by dramatically accelerating development and deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). As one of the world’s biggest emitters, the United States has a responsibility to do all it can to tackle the climate crisis. And as one of the world’s technological and geopolitical leaders, the United States is well positioned to rise to the occasion, investing in CDR governance alongside the technical and economic aspects of CDR. The CDR task force can lead in this endeavor by advising the Secretary of Energy on an overall governance strategy and specific policy recommendations to ensure that CDR is used in an aggressive, responsible, and equitable manner.

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.

Improving university/corporate research partnerships is key to advancing U.S. 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.

Challenge and Opportunity

Research partnerships between private companies and universities are critical to U.S. technology competitiveness. China and other countries are creating massive, government-funded research centers in artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, biotechnology, and other critical sectors, threatening our nation’s international technology advantage. The United States has responded with initiatives such as the corporate research and development (R&D) tax credit, the SBIR and STTR programs, Manufacturing USA institutes, and numerous other programs and policies to assist tech development and encourage public-private collaborations. States and cities have mirrored these efforts, helping to build a network of innovation hubs in communities across the nation

The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act recently passed by the Senate is designed to build on this progress. A key provision of the Act is the establishment of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Science and Technology that would “identify and develop opportunities to reduce barriers for technology transfer, including intellectual property frameworks between academia and industry, nonprofit entities, and the venture capital communities.”

One such barrier is the suite of “private use” rules surrounding corporate research taking place in university facilities financed with tax-exempt bonds. Tax-exempt bonds are a preferred financing option for university research facilities as they carry lower interest rates and more favorable terms. But the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) prohibition on “private business use“ of facilities financed using tax-exempt bonds have the unfortunate consequence of hamstringing the U.S. research enterprise. Current IRS rules place universities wishing to avoid concerns about sponsoring research from outside organizations to hold the rights to almost all intellectual property (IP) generated within their research facilities, even when the research is sponsored by private corporations. This can lead U.S. corporations wishing to retain IP rights to partner with universities overseas instead of U.S. universities institutions. Small technology companies whose business plans depend on their claim to IP rights may similarly avoid partnerships with universities.

Though the IRS has issued policies that aim to address these problems (e.g., Revenue Procedure 2007-47), such policies are so narrow in scope that most research partnerships between companies and universities are still considered private uses. As a result, universities engaged in cutting-edge, industry-relevant research face an unenviable choice: they must either (i) forego promising partnerships with the many companies unwilling to completely cede claims to IP rights, (ii) dedicate substantial time and administrative resources to track and report all specific instances of corporate-sponsored research occurring in facilities financed by tax-exempt bonds, or (iii) use funding that would otherwise be available for research to finance facilities through taxable bonds.

Forcing this choice upon universities further exacerbates a system of “haves” and “have-nots”. Large and/or well-endowed universities may have the financial resources to avoid relying on tax-exempt financing for research facilities, or to hire sophisticated and expensive legal expertise for help structuring financing in a way that complies with IRS rules. But for many — perhaps most — universities, the more viable solution is to avoid corporate-sponsored research altogether.

Complex federal rules governing intellectual property and private business use are widely acknowledged as an issue. A memo from the Association of American Universities (AAU), which represents the leading research universities in North America, notes that “[m]any universities believe that the remaining [IRS] private use regulations are overly restrictive” and “[limit] their ability to conduct certain cooperative research.” Similarly, the website of the Carnegie Mellon University Office of Sponsored Programs warns:

“While colleges and universities have lobbied the Internal Revenue Service to reconsider its position with respect to sponsored research in bond financed facilities, they have not, as yet, been successful. Consequently, if the University does not receive fair market royalties from the sponsors of sponsored research, it risks having its tax-exempt bonds become taxable, with all of the concomitant consequences.”

At a 2013 hearing on “Improving Technology Transfer at Universities, Research Institute and National Laboratories” before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology, several university witnesses and members of Congress commented on the complications that federal rules present for cooperative research conducted by universities working in partnership with corporations.

In 2014, Congress introduced H.R. 5829 to amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide an exception from the “business use” test for certain public-private research arrangements, but it did not pass as a stand-alone bill.

In June 2021, the American Council of Education and Association of American Universities released a letter to Congress on behalf of over 20 higher education organizations asking Congress to modernize rules on tax exempt bond financing.

Overly restrictive federal rules may hamstring bipartisan efforts by the new administration and Congress to accelerate tech commercialization and enhance U.S. competitiveness in science and technology (S&T). The recent U.S. Innovation and Competition Act, passed by the Senate, for instance, aims to support public-private partnerships, cross-sectoral innovation hubs, and other multistakeholder initiatives in priority S&T areas. But such initiatives may run afoul of rules on facilities financed by tax-exempt bonds…unless reforms are adopted.

Plan of Action

The administration should implement the following two reforms to clarify and update rules governing use of facilities financed by tax-exempt bonds:

1. Eliminate the requirement that universities must retain ownership to all IP generated in university-owned facilities financed by tax-exempt bonds. Instead, universities and corporations should be allowed to negotiate their own terms of IP ownership before entering a research partnership.
2. Broaden applicability of IRS safe-harbor provisions. IRS revenue procedures include safe-harbor provisions that exempt “basic research agreements” from restrictions on private business use. The IRS defines basic research as “any original investigation for the advancement of scientific knowledge not having a specific commercial objective.” This definition is too narrow. But especially today, the lines between “basic” and applied research are blurry — and virtually nonexistent when it comes to cutting-edge fields such as digitalization, biosciences, and quantum computing. The IRS should broaden the applicability of its safe-harbor provisions to include all research activities, not just ‘basic research’.

Together, these reforms would support new public-private initiatives by the federal government (such the research hubs funded under the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act); help emerging research universities (including minority-serving institutions such as historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and Hispanic-serving institutions (HSIs)) grow their profiles and better compete for talent and resources; and repatriate corporate research to the United States. Moreover — since other countries do not have similarly onerous restrictions on research activities conducted in facilities financed with tax-exempt bonds — these reforms are needed for the U.S. tech economy to remain competitive on an international scale.

These reforms require changes to tax laws, but do not require a direct outlay of federal appropriations. Reforms could be implemented as part of several tech-commercialization legislative packages expected to be considered by this Congress, including the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act or the proposed US Infrastructure bill.

Conclusion

As the Congress and the Administration explore ways to make the U.S. more technologically competitive, ensuring robust university-industry partnerships should be a key factor in any strategy. Reforming the current rules concerning corporate research performed in university facilities needs to be considered, given that the IRS rules have not been updated in over 30 years. The debate over the infrastructure bill or other competitiveness initiatives provides such an opportunity to make these reforms. Now is the time.

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.

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.

Challenge and Opportunity

Information systems are fracturing and shifting in the United States and globally. Over the past 20 years, the Internet disrupted news business models and the national news industry consolidated; both shifts have contributed to the reduction of local news coverage. American newsrooms have lost almost a quarter of their staff since 2008. Half of all U.S. counties have only one newspaper or information equivalent, and many counties have no local information source. The media advocacy group Free Press estimates that the national “reporting gap”, which they define as the wages of the roughly 15,000 reporting roles lost since the peak of journalism in 2005, stands at roughly $1 billion a year.

The depletion of reputable local newsrooms creates an information landscape ripe for manipulation. In particular, the shrinking of local newsrooms can exacerbate the risk of “data voids”, when good information is not available via online search and instead users find “falsehoods, misinformation, or disinformation”. In 2019, the Tow Center at the Columbia Journalism School documented 450 websites masquerading as local news outlets, with titles like the East Michigan News, Hickory Sun, and Grand Canyon Times But instead of publishing genuine journalism, these sites were distributing algorithmically generated, hyperpartisan, locally tailored disinformation. The growing popularity of social media as news sources or conduits to news sources — more than half of American adults today get at least some news from social media — compounds the problem by making it easier for disinformation to spread.

Studies show that the erosion of local journalism has negative impacts on local governance and democracy, including increased voter polarization, decreased accountability for elected officials to their communities, and decreased competition in local elections. Disinformation narratives that take root in the information vacuum left behind when local news outlets fold often disproportionately target and impact marginalized people and people of color. Erosion of local journalism also threatens public safety. Without access to credible and timely local reporting, communities are at greater risk during emergencies and natural disasters. In the fall of 2020, for instance, emergency response to wildfires threatening communities in Oregon was hampered by the spread of inaccurate information on social media. These problems will only become more pronounced if the market for local journalism continues to shrink.

These are urgent challenges and the enormity of them can make them feel intractable. Fortunately, history presents a path forward. By the 1960s, with the rise of widely available corporate TV and radio, the national information landscape had changed dramatically. At the time, the federal government recognized the need to reduce the potential harms and meet the opportunities that these information systems presented. In particular, then-Chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Newton Minow called for more educational and public-interest programming, which the private TV market wasn’t producing.18 Congress responded by passing the Public Broadcasting Act in 1967, creating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). CPB is a private nonprofit responsible for funding public radio and television stations and public-interest programming. (Critically, CPB itself does not produce content.) CPB has a mandate to champion diversity and excellence in programming, serve all American communities, ensure local ownership and independent operation of stations, and shield stations from the possibility of political interference. Soon after its creation, CPB established the independent entities of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR).

CPB, PBS, NPR, and local affiliate stations collectively developed into the national public media system we know today. Public media is explicitly designed to fill gaps not addressed by the private market in educational, youth, arts, current events, and local news programming, and to serve all communities, including populations frequently overlooked by the private sector. While not perfect, CPB has largely succeeded in both objectives when it comes to broadcast media. CPB supports¹ about 1,500 public television and radio broadcasters, many of which produce and distribute local news in addition to national news. CPB funds much-needed regional collaborations that have allowed public broadcasters to combine resources, increase reporting capacity, and cover relevant regional and localized topics, like the opioid crisis in Appalachia and across the Midwest. CPB also provides critical — though, currently too little — funding to broadcast public media for historically underserved communities, including Black, Hispanic, and Native communities.

Public media and CPB’s funding and support is a consistent bright spot for the struggling journalism industry.25 More than 2,000 American newspapers closed in the past 15 years, but NPR affiliates added 1,000 local part- and full-time journalist positions from 2011–2018 (though these data are pre-pandemic).26 Trust in public media like PBS remains high compared to other institutions; and local news is more trusted than national news.27,28 There is clear potential for CPB to revive and transform the local news landscape: it can help to develop community trust, strengthen democratic values, and defend against disinformation at a time when all three outcomes are critical.

Unfortunately, the rapid decline of local journalism nationwide has created information gaps that CPB — an institution that has remained largely unchanged since its founding more than 50 years ago — does not have the capacity to fill. Because its public service mandate still applies only to broadcasters, CPB is unable to fund stand-alone digital news sites. The result is a dearth of public-interest newsrooms with the skills and infrastructure to connect with their audiences online and provide good journalism without a paywall. CPB also simply lacks sufficient funding to rebuild local journalism at the pace and scope needed. Far too many people in the United States — especially members of rural and historically underserved communities — live in a “news desert”, without access to any credible local journalism at all.²

The time is ripe to reimagine and expand CPB. Congress has recently demonstrated bipartisan willingness to invest in local journalism and public media. Both major COVID-19 relief packages included supplemental funding for CPB. The American Rescue Act and the CARES Act provided $250 million and $75 million, respectively, in emergency stabilization funds for public media. Funds were prioritized for small, rural, and minority-oriented public-media stations.30 As part of the American Rescue Plan, smaller news outlets were newly and specifically made eligible for relief funds—a measure that built on the Local News and Emergency Information Act of 2020 previously introduced by Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Representative David Cicilline (D-RI) and supported by a bipartisan group. Numerous additional bills have been proposed to address specific pieces of the local news crisis. Most recently, Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO), Amy Klobuchar (D-MI), and Brian Schatz (D-HI), along with Representative Marc Veasy (DTX) reintroduced the Future of Local News Commission Act, calling for a commission “to study the state of local journalism and offer recommendations to Congress on the actions it can take to support local news organizations”.

These legislative efforts recognize that while inspirational work to revitalize local news is being done across sectors, only the federal government can bring the level of scale, ambition, and funding needed to adequately address the challenges laid out above. Reimagining and expanding CPB into an institution capable of bolstering the local news ecosystem is necessary and possible; yet it will not be easy and would bring risks. The United States is amid a politically uncertain, difficult, and even violent time, with a rapid, continued fracturing of shared understanding. Given how the public media system has come under attack in the “culture wars” over the decades, many champions of public media are understandably wary of considering any changes to the CPB and public media institutions and initiatives. But we cannot afford to continue avoiding the issue. Our country needs a robust network of local public media outlets as part of a comprehensive strategy to decrease blind partisanship and focus national dialogues on facts. Policymakers should be willing to go to bat to expand and modernize the vision of a national public media system first laid out more than fifty years ago.

Plan of Action

The Biden administration should work with Congress to reimagine CPB as the Corporation for Public Media: an institution with the expanded funding and purview needed to meet the information challenges of today, combat the rise of disinformation, and strengthen community ties and democratic values at the local level. Recommended steps towards this vision are detailed below.

Recommendation 1. Expand CPB’s Purview to Support and Fund Local, Nonprofit, Public Service Newsrooms.

Congress should pass legislation to reestablish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as the Corporation for Public Media (CPM), expanding the Corporation’s purview from solely supporting broadcast outlets to additionally supporting local, nonprofit newsrooms of all types (digital, print, broadcast).

The expanded CPM would retain all elements of the CPB’s mandate, including “ensuring universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services that are commercial free and free of charge,” with a particular emphasis on ensuring access in rural, small town, and urban communities across the country. Additionally, CPB “strives to support diverse programs and services that inform, educate, enlighten and enrich the public”, especially addressing the needs of underserved audiences, children, and minorities.

Legislation expanding the CPB into the CPM must include criteria that local, nonprofit, public-service newsrooms would need to meet to be considered “public media” and become eligible for federal funding and support. Broadly, local, nonprofit newsrooms should mean nonprofit or noncommercial newsrooms that cover a region, state, county, city, neighborhood, or specific community; it would not include individual reporters, bloggers, documentarians, etc. Currently, CPB relies on FCC broadcasting licenses to determine which stations might be eligible to be considered public broadcasters. The Public Broadcasting Act lays out additional eligibility requirements, including an active community advisory board and regularly filed reports on station activities and spending. Congress should build on these existing requirements when developing eligibility criteria for CPM funding and support.

In designing eligibility criteria, Congress could also draw inspiration from the nonprofit Civic Information Consortium (CIC) being piloted in New Jersey. The CIC is a partnership between higher education institutions and newsrooms in the state to strengthen local news coverage and civic engagement, seeded with an initial $500,000 in funding. The CPM could require that to be eligible for CPM funding, nonprofit public-service newsrooms must partner with local, accredited universities.39 Requiring that an established external institution be involved in local news endeavors selected for funding would (i) decrease risks of investing in new and untested newsrooms, (ii) leverage federal investment by bringing external capabilities to bear, and (iii) increase the impact of federal funding by creating job training and development opportunities for local students and workers. Though, of course, this model also brings its own risks, potentially putting unwelcome pressure on universities to act as public media and journalism gatekeepers.

An expanded CPM would financially support broadcast, digital, and print outlets at the local and national levels. Once eligibility criteria are established, clear procedures would need to be established for funding allocation and prioritization (see next section for recommended prioritizations). For instance, procedures should explain how factors such as demonstrated need and community referrals will factor into funding decisions. Procedures should also ensure that funding is prioritized towards local newsrooms that serve communities in “news deserts”, or places at risk of becoming news deserts, and historically underserved communities, including Black, Hispanic, Native, and rural communities.

Congress could consider tasking the proposed Future of Local News Act commission with digging deeper into how CPB could be evolved into the CPM in a way that best positions it to address the disinformation and local news crises. The commission could also advise on how to avoid two key risks associated with such an evolution. The first is the perpetual risk of government interference in public media, which CPB’s institutional design and norms have historically guarded against. (For example, there are no content or viewpoint restrictions on public media today—and there should not be in the future.) Second, expanding CPB’s mandate to include broadly funding local, nonprofit newsrooms would create a new risk that disinformation or propaganda sites, operating without journalistic practices, could masquerade as genuine news sites to apply for CPM funding. It will be critical to design against both of these risks. One of the most important factors in CPB’s success is its ethos of public service and the resulting positive norms; these norms and its institutional design are a large part of what makes CPB a good institutional candidate to expand. In designing the new CPM, these norms should be intentionally drawn on and renewed for the digital age.

Numerous digital outlets would likely meet reasonable eligibility criteria. One recent highlight in the journalism landscape is the emergence of many nonprofit digital outlets, including almost 300 affiliated with the Institute for Nonprofit News. (These sites certainly have not made up for the massive numbers of journalism jobs and outlets lost over the past two decades.) There has also been an increase in public media mergers, where previously for-profit digital sites have merged with public media broadcasters to create mixed-media nonprofit journalistic entities. As part of legislation expanding the CPB into the CPM, Congress should make it easier for public media mergers to take place and easier for for-profit newspapers and sites to transition to nonprofit status, as the Rebuild Local News Coalition has proposed.

Recommendation 2. Double CPB’s Yearly Appropriation from $445 to $890 million.

Whether or not CPB is evolved into CPM, Congress should (i) double (at minimum) CPB’s next yearly appropriation from $445 to $890 million, and (ii) appropriate CPB’s funding for the next ten years up front. The first action is needed to give CPB the resources it needs to respond to the local news and disinformation crises at the necessary scale, and the second is needed to ensure that local newsrooms are funded over a time horizon long enough to establish themselves, develop relationships with their communities, and attract external revenue streams (e.g., through philanthropy, pledge drives, or other models). The CPB’s current appropriation is sufficient to fund some percentage of station operational and programming costs at roughly 1,500 stations nationwide. This is not enough. Given that Free Press estimates the national “reporting gap” as roughly $1 billion a year, CPB’s annual budget appropriation needs to be at least doubled. Such increased funding would dramatically improve the local news and public media landscape, allowing newsrooms to increase local coverage and pay for the digital infrastructure needed to better meet audiences where they are—online. The budget increase could be made part of the infrastructure package under Congressional negotiation, funded by the Biden administration’s proposed corporate tax increases, or separately funded through corporate tax increases on the technology sector.

The additional appropriation should be allocated in two streams. The first funding stream (75% of the additional appropriation, or $667.5 million) should specifically support local public-service journalism. If Free Press’s estimates of the reporting gap are accurate, this stream might be able to recover 75% of the journalism jobs (somewhere in the range of 10,000 to 11,000 jobs) lost since the industry’s decline began in earnest—a huge and necessary increase in coverage. Initial priority for this funding should go to local journalism outlets in communities that have already become “news deserts”. Secondary priority should go to outlets in communities that are at risk of becoming news deserts and in communities that have been historically underserved by media, including Black, Hispanic, Native, and rural communities. Larger, well-funded public media stations and outlets should still receive some funding from this stream (particularly given their role in surfacing local issues to national audiences), but with less of a priority focus. This funding stream should be distributed through a structured formula — similar to CPB’s funding formulas for public broadcasting stations — that ensures these priorities, protects news coverage from government interference, and ensures high-quality news.

The second funding stream (25% of additional appropriation, or $222.5 million) should support digital innovation for newsrooms. This funding stream would help local, nonprofit newsrooms build the infrastructure needed to thrive in the digital age. Public media aims to be accessible and meet audiences where they are. Today, that is often online. Though the digital news space is dominated by social media and large tech companies, public media broadcasters are figuring out how to deliver credible, locally relevant reporting in digital formats. NPR, for instance, has successfully digitally innovated with platforms like NPR One. But more needs to be done to expand the digital presence of public media. CPB should structure this funding stream as a prize challenge or other competitive funding model to encourage further digital innovation.

Finally, the overall additional appropriation should be used as an opportunity to encourage follow-on investment in local news, by philanthropies, individuals, and the private sector. There is significant interest across the board in revitalizing American local news. The attention that comes with a centralized, federally sponsored effort to reimagine and expand local public media can help drive additional resources and innovation to places where they are most needed. For instance, philanthropies might offer private matches for government investment in local news. Such an initiative could draw inspiration from the existing and successful NewsMatch program, a funding campaign where individuals donate to a nonprofit newsroom and their donation is matched by funders and companies.

Conclusion

Local news is foundational to democracy and the flourishing of communities. Yet with the rise of the Internet and social media companies, the market for local news is failing. There is significant activity in the journalistic, philanthropic, and academic sectors to sustain, revive, and transform the local news landscape. But these efforts can’t succeed alone. Maintaining local journalism as a public good requires the scale of investment that only the federal government can bring.

In 1967, our nation rose to meet a different moment of disruption in the information environment, creating public media broadcasting through the Public Broadcasting Act. Today, there is a similar need for the Biden administration, Congress, and CPB to reimagine public media for the digital age. They should champion an expanded Corporation for Public Media to better meet communities’ information needs; counter the rising tide of disinformation; and transform, revive, and create local, public-service newsrooms around the country.

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.

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.

Table 1. Total ACWIA fee receipts received by NSF and DOL, FY 2010-2021

Fiscal Year	Department of Labor Receipts	National Science Foundation Receipts	Total Funding
2010	$114,026,000	$91,220,000	$205,246,000
2011	$130,975,000	$106,110,000	$237,085,000
2012	$161,232,000	$128,990,000	$290,222,000
2013	$143,466,000	$120,940,000	$264,406,000
2014	$161,401,000	$132,490,000	$293,891,000
2015	$175,029,000	$143,000,000	$318,029,000
2016	$139,644,000	$138,800,000	$278,444,000
2017	$160,200,000	$141,070,000	$301,270,000
2018	$150,000,000	$155,990,000	$305,990,000
2019	$195,899,000	$156,720,000	$352,619,000
2020, estimated	$194,000,000	$157,000,000	$351,000,000
2021, request	$194,000,000	$157,000,000	$351,000,000

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).

Table 2. Funding of NSF’s S-STEM and ITEST programs, FY 2010-2019

Year	S-STEM funding	ITEST funding
2010	$75,960,000	$20,850,000
2011	$77,670,000	$18,620,000
2012	$72,570,000	$21,590,000
2013	$83,980,000	$31,510,000
2014	$92,180,000	$37,230,000
2015	$109,340,000	$29,830,000
2016	$140,540,000	$44,350,000
2017	$84,380,000	$35,110,000
2018	$156,400,000	$35,860,000
2019	$114,760,000	$34,240,000

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.

Table 3. Funding levels of ACWIA programs at DOL, 2011-2020

Year	Program	Purpose	Amount
2011	H-1B Technical Skills Training Grants	“To provide education, training, and job placement assistance in the occupations and industries for which employers are using H-1B visas to hire foreign workers, and the related activities necessary to support such training”	$240,000,000
2011	Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge	“To support the development of approximately 20 high-growth industry clusters” and help them achieve “outcomes such as commercialization, business formation, expansion of existing businesses, job creation, and exports”	$20,000,000
2012	N/A	N/A	N/A
2013	Make it in America Challenge	“To support the development and implementation of a regionally driven economic development strategy that accelerates job creation by encouraging re-shoring of productive activity by U.S. firms, fostering increased Foreign Direct Investment, encouraging U.S. companies to keep or expand their businesses and jobs – in the United States, and training local workers to meet the needs of those businesses”	$20,000,000
2013	Youth CareerConnect Program	“To provide high school students with education and training that combines rigorous academic and technical curricula focused on specific in-demand occupations and industries for which employers are using H-1B visas to hire foreign workers as well as the related activities necessary to support such training to increase participants’ employability in H-1B in-demand industries and occupations”	$100,000,000
2014	H-1B Ready to Work Partnership Grants	“To provide long-term unemployed workers with individualized counseling, training and supportive and specialized services leading to rapid employment in occupations and industries for which employers use H-1B visas to hire foreign workers”	$150,000,000
2015	American Apprenticeship Initiative	“To provide a catalyst in supporting a uniquely American Apprenticeship system that meets our country’s particular economic, industry and workforce needs”	$100,000,000
2016	America’s Promise Job Driven Grant Program	“To develop and expand regional partnerships and training opportunities particularly for middle- to high-skilled H-1B industries and occupations, ensuring that communities fully maximize their Federal, state and local funds to build a competitive workforce”	$100,000,000
2016	Strengthening Working Families Initiative	“To support evidence-based strategies or innovations based on these models that remove a range of barriers to training, including child care and other needs that working families face, by investing in education and skills training in combination with customized participant supportive services”	$25,000,000
2016	TechHire Partnership Grants	“To equip individuals with the skills they need through innovative approaches that can rapidly train workers for and connect them to well-paying, middle- and high-skilled, and high-growth jobs across a diversity of H-1B industries such as Information Technology (IT), healthcare, advanced manufacturing, financial services, and broadband”	$100,000,000
2017	N/A	N/A	N/A
2018	Scaling Apprenticeship Through Sector Based Strategies	“To accelerate the expansion of apprenticeships to new industry sectors reliant on H-1B visas, to promote the large-scale expansion of apprenticeships across the nation, and to increase apprenticeship opportunities for all Americans”	$150,000,000
2019	Apprenticeships: Closing the Skills Gap	“To promote apprenticeships as a significant workforce solution in filling current middle- and high-skilled job vacancies and closing the skills gap between employer workforce needs and the skills of the current workforce”	$100,000,000
2020	H-1B One Workforce Grant Program	To fill critical shortages in economic regions by encouraging “states and economic regions to work with industry stakeholders to develop dynamic workforce strategies that train workers and jobseekers for middle- to high skilled H-1B occupations in key industry sectors,” such as “Information Technology (IT), advanced manufacturing, and transportation that are being transformed by technological advancements and automation,” as well as “other industries of the future that include artificial intelligence (AI), quantum information sciences (QIS), 5G/advanced communications, and biotechnology”	$150,000,000
2020	H-1B Rural Healthcare Grant Program	“To alleviate healthcare workforce shortages by creating sustainable employment and training programs in healthcare occupations (including behavioral and mental healthcare) serving rural populations”	$40,000,000

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.

Table 4. Recommendations for modernized ACWIA fee structure

Employer size	Current fee	Proposed fee
Up to 25 employees	$750	$1,000
Between 26 and 500 employees	$1,500	$2,000
Above 500 employees	$1,500	$5,000

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.

Table 5. Calculation of current ACWIA fee revenue and estimated increases from recommended policy changes (FY 2020 data)

Petitions filed	Estimated number of petitions submitted	Average fee paid	Total fees
Petitions without fee exemptions (63.5%)	271,141	$1,475.25	~$400,000,000
Petitions with a fee exemption (36.5%)	156,104
Total number of petitions files	427,245

Table 6. Estimated increases in ACWIA fee revenue from recommended policy changes

Petitions by employer size	Estimated number of petitions submitted	Proposed fee	Estimated total revenue
25 or fewer employees	19,912	$1,000	$19,912,041
26-500 employees	85,948	$2,000	$171,895,782
More than 500 employees	161,681	$5,000	$808,406,892
Total	267,541	N/A	$1,000,214,715

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.