Summary

The United States government needs to radically change our national approach to the commercial growth of frontier tech technology companies (e.g., new energy production and distribution, advanced manufacturing, synthetic biology, materials, robotics, mobility, space exploration, and next-generation semiconductors). Frontier tech startups can advance our nation’s future global competitive advantage, providing an opportunity to create high-tech and low-tech jobs and reshore other jobs. Coupling investment in the frontier tech innovation ecosystem with workforce training will allow the U.S. to reinvent and revitalize aspects of our declining or offshored industrial sectors and rebuild the country’s manufacturing capabilities.

The U.S. government should create a $500M fund and an administration authority that allows relevant government agencies to create public-private partnerships. This requires collaboration with private capital providers that utilizes public funding to incentivize private investment in early stage frontier tech companies. The goal is not to subsidize private investment capital in areas where the current free market system is working, but rather to identify those critical national industrial base areas where private capital is insufficiently investing and use matching grants to spur early stage private investment. This early partnership will allow increased access and collaboration between historically siloed government and venture capital innovation ecosystems. For frontier tech companies, whose growth requires both public and private capital, the U.S. must utilize our resources more efficiently to create a globally competitive future economic base.

Summary

Section 230 has been the subject of bipartisan criticism in Washington, with both President Trump and former Vice President Biden arguing that the controversial law should be revoked. As the election has approached, a flurry of legislative proposals have taken aim at the law.

This paper argues that the Biden-Harris administration should take a more targeted approach, focusing on changes that will deter some of the most harmful forms of speech while also preserving the features of tech platforms that are essential to online expression. Specifically, the next administration should modernize federal criminal law for the digital age to prohibit problematic online speech like voter suppression and incitement to riot, require platforms to comply with court orders to remove illegal content, define what it means for a platform to “develop” content, work with platforms on reporting options that will facilitate individual accountability, and incentivize platforms to share data that will inform future product design and policymaking.

The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed systematic vulnerabilities in the way that wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases are managed at national and international scales. The next administration should take three key steps to address these vulnerabilities in the United States. First, the White House should create a “Task Force on the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases”. This Task Force would convene agencies with oversight over animal imports, identify necessary policy actions, determine priority research areas, and coordinate a national response strategy. Second, the next president should work with Congress to pass a bill strengthening live-animal import regulations. Third, U.S. agencies should coordinate with international organizations to address global movement of infectious diseases of animals. Together, these actions would reduce the risk of emerging infectious diseases entering the United States, offer greater protection to citizens from zoonotic diseases, and protect American biodiversity from losses due to wildlife diseases.

Challenge and Opportunity

More than 60% of emerging infectious diseases in humans first originate in animals. More than 70% of these come from wild animals. HIV, for instance, jumped to human hosts from primates in Africa. MERS spread to humans from camels in the Middle East. Of present salience, experts believe that the virus that causes COVID-19 originated from wild animals in China (probably bats).

The risk of animal-to-human “spillover”—and the global spread of zoonotic diseases—increases when wildlife are traded and imported around the world (e.g., for food, traditional medicines, display, pets, etc.). The global spread of COVID-19 has drawn attention to problems such as lack of disease surveillance in wild animal populations and lack of disease testing in many live animals at international borders. International wildlife-trade laws do not account for public-health risks of wildlife trade. These laws also do not require collection of data on zoonotic diseases (i.e., diseases caused by germs that spread between animals and people): data that could help prevent the next pandemic. These problems are exacerbated by accelerating rates of habitat conversion and biodiversity loss coupled with increased volume and speed of international commerce.

The United States is especially susceptible to emerging zoonotic diseases because it is the world’s largest importer6 of legally traded wild animals, yet lacks domestic regulations requiring most imported live animals to be tested for diseases, pathogens, or parasites. Gaps in U.S. statutory and regulatory frameworks governing live-animal imports increase disease risks for humans while also threatening our country’s biodiversity and natural resources. In the United States, four agencies oversee some aspect of live-animal imports—but this oversight is far from comprehensive. The Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is responsible for assessing the risk of diseases in agricultural imports, but not wildlife species. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) oversees imports of only primates and some species of rodents, bats, or birds known to spread zoonotic diseases. The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is responsible for regulating imports of all wildlife (and imposes stricter standards on species previously identified as injurious), but its mandate does not cover infectious diseases or parasites. The upshot is that imports of most wildlife species to the United States are not assessed for disease risk by any agency. Most disease agents that infect wildlife (except for a small number of known zoonotic diseases) are not monitored by any agency either.

Plan of Action 

The next administration should take three key steps to address systematic vulnerabilities in the way that wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases are managed in the United States and around the world. 

Create a White House Task Force on the Control of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

This Task Force would convene agencies with oversight over animal imports (including the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), and CDC) and those supporting research (NSF, NIH) or international assistance (U.S. Department of State, USAID) to determine global research priorities on wildlife disease, and facilitate international cooperation on mechanisms to reduce demand as well as disease risk in the live animal trade. The task-force would use the One Health concept that links human health with animal health and environmental health, and that applies a comprehensive approach to understanding the drivers of disease emergence, the spread of disease, and the impacts on human health.

Work with Congress to pass a bill strengthening live-animal import regulations.

This bill would build on past legislation (e.g., H.R. 6362/S. 3210;11 H.R. 3771/S. 1903;12 and S. 375913) related to wildlife disease. The bill should:

• Reduce risk of zoonotic disease introduction to the United States by increasing surveillance of live-animal imports at U.S. borders. Specifically, Congress should give APHIS the authority to use pre-import screening, such as a process that assesses disease risk by species and country and determines allowable imports on the basis of that assessment. Congress should also expand the mission of APHIS to address not only disease issues that affect agricultural animals but also disease issues associated with zoonotic and wildlife diseases.
• Amend the Lacey Act to strengthen the FWS’s ability to identify, designate, and stop injurious species (including dangerous pathogens) from entering the United States, and from moving via interstate commerce if and when they do enter. Specifically, the Lacey Act should be amended to grant the FWS authority over emergency listing (i.e. one that is accelerated and bypasses the notice and public comment process); authority to list human and wildlife pathogens as injurious species; and authority to regulate interstate commerce in listed injurious species.
• Expand efforts to control illegal wildlife trade. President Obama’s July 2013 Executive Order on Combating Wildlife Trafficking resulted in the development of a holistic national strategy for tackling the entire trade chain of wildlife trafficking. The next administration should strive to implement elements of this strategy that have not yet been implemented, and to build on elements that have. This could include increasing the FWS’s enforcement capacity, strengthening measures to prevent and deter wildlife trafficking, increasing the severity of penalties for wildlife crime, and taking steps to reduce demand (media campaigns, behavior change) for imported wildlife.

Coordinate internationally to address diverse aspects of wildlife movement and emerging infectious diseases.

The next administration should direct USDA (primarily APHIS) and the FWS to lead the following efforts:

• Amend the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) treaty and accompanying resolutions to (i) consider disease risk as a factor in regulating wildlife imports and exports, and (ii) broaden the scope of CITES in tackling domestic markets.
• Strengthen efforts by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) to develop a systematic approach for early detection of (and rapid responses to) emerging infectious diseases of human, wildlife, and domesticated animals.
• Expand OIE’s ambit from simply assessing disease risk in livestock trade to one in which OIE works with CITES and country-based labs to expand disease surveillance in all live-animal trade, including by conducting tests. OIE should establish a publicly accessible, centralized, and curated system for monitoring the global incidence and spread of wildlife pathogens in order to facilitate early detection of disease emergence and to document disease spread. Such a system could be modeled on GISAID or EpiFlu.

Conclusion 

Regulatory gaps put Americans at risk of exposure to emerging infectious disease from unregulated and under-regulated imports of wildlife. The next administration should address these gaps by creating a White House task force, strengthening live-animal import regulations, and coordinating with international institutions to reduce the global movement of emerging infectious diseases. The result would be a nation that is healthier and safer—for humans and animals alike.

The United States lacks the basic information and digital infrastructure required to effectively respond to the emerging climate crisis. While the science and technology needed for sensible climate policy exists, efforts to leverage these technical resources are fragmented and undirected. Actors in the most important sectors of the U.S. economy are making long-term investment decisions based on inaccurate or outdated data as a result. In the past 10 years, for example, homes worth over $11.2 billion have been built in areas that are at risk from sea-level rise. Insurance companies have paid over $25 billion in claims resulting from the 2017 wildfires in California. Better information on environmental impacts of climate change will make it possible to mitigate losses from wildfires, droughts, floods, and extreme weather events. Therefore, the next Administration should invest in Earth observation to directly measure environmental change and greenhouse gas emissions.

The next Administration should also invest in modern data and information technology infrastructure to effectively and efficiently respond to climate change. Such digital infrastructure will make it easier to integrate climate science into decision making. These investments will not only strengthen the domestic economy, but will also reposition the United States as a global leader on one of the most pressing “moonshots” of our time—basic measurements of humanity’s impact on our home planet.

Challenge and Opportunity

By 2050, the cost of anthropogenic climate change to the United States is projected to be equivalent to the cost of a mid-scale pandemic, year-over-year. Yet American homeowners, small businesses, and even large enterprises are making investments with expected dividends in 10- 30 years as if the impacts of climate change are unknowable — they aren’t. The technology exists to measure the causes and effects of climate change at a resolution and frequency commensurate with economic decision-making. The challenge is to effectively organize disparate federal efforts to collect and distribute information about how our home planet is changing, so that Americans and American companies can make smart, forward-thinking choices.

Environmental information, especially about climate change, is a public good and should be provisioned by the public sector. In addition, there are sweeping economies of scale associated with Earth observation — with high upfront costs of data collection and data infrastructure, but low marginal costs to extend coverage from one state to the next. As such, the Federal Government is a natural home to lead and coordinate Earth observation.

Bolstering the Federal Government’s Earth observation will reposition the United States as a global leader on the most pressing “moonshots” of our time. Establishing capacity to collect basic information about the vital signs of our planet will be a clear diplomatic, scientific, and economic win for a new Administration. This document outlines feasible, measured, and near-term activities in support of that goal.

Plan of Action

The next Administration should take immediate and bold actions to elevate Earth observation at the federal level. Specifically, the next Administration should 

Deputize the next NASA Administrator to lead Earth observation for the Federal Government, with decisive support for budget-neutral reallocation of resources toward Earth science. NASA has the mandate, public trust, technical resources, and science budget to take a leading role in monitoring climate change. Currently, only 7% of NASA’s annual budget is dedicated to studying our home planet. The urgency of climate change requires that number to be much higher. The percentage of NASA’s annual budget allocated to Earth science should be doubled within the first year of the next Administration. Moreover, structures to support climate science within the Federal Government are insufficient. NASA leadership will organize, elevate, and operationalize existing efforts. For example, reallocation and refocusing of resources could be used within the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program to develop an ecosystem of firms capable of (i) collecting and processing climate data and (ii) creating decisionsupport tools to foster better understanding of climate change impacts and more effective adaptation responses.

Establish a Climate Corps to increase the pipeline of talent in climate-change mitigation and adaptation, with a specific branch dedicated to leveraging Earth observation data. The Climate Corps should adopt a tiered approach that puts members to work at the local, state, and federal levels, tailoring information and services delivered accordingly. The federal branch of the Climate Corps could be modeled on and work with existing programs such as the Presidential Innovation Fellows. The state and local branches of the Climate Corps would link federal investment in climate data and science with on-theground needs. Localities on the front lines of climate change require tailored scientific and technical expertise to support evidence-based decision-making. We recommend recruiting graduates with science and technical degrees to branches of the Climate Corps focused on serving such localities nationwide. Much like the Peace Corps embeds members within communities abroad, this Climate Corps branch would embed members within front-line communities at home to facilitate two-way communication about local needs, relevant scientific findings and capabilities, and informed investments at all levels of government.

Create a collaborative public-private partnership for climate data and science, much like the BRAIN Initiative brings together public and private entities to advance understanding of brain function. The partnership should be overseen by a civilian science board and should aim to allocate $5 billion over five years in applied research grants to universities and small businesses. These grants would spur development of innovative technologies to monitor Earth systems in response to community and industry needs. Supported by committed involvement from the Department of Defense (e.g., DARPA, IARPA), part of the partnership’s mandate should be to reinstate the MEDEA program (or follow-on incarnation) to make military data assets available to civilian researchers and data scientists.

Conclusion

There are moral and economic imperatives for the United States to take swift action, supported by consistent and credible data, on climate change. Global investment in Earth observation is insufficient to adequately respond to climate change. The United States can leverage its comparative advantage in scientific diplomacy and domestic talent to fill this information gap. By doing so, our nation can lead the world to the next great human achievement—a stable and productive climate.

Summary

Addressing inequality, closing achievement gaps, and tackling opportunity gaps in schools requires a highly effective educator in every classroom, a diversified teacher workforce, and an implementation of culturally responsive policies and practices. The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires State Education Agencies (SEA) to identify and close gaps in equitable access to effective teachers but does not offer specific definitions about what constitutes teacher effectiveness. There is an opportunity to build on state equity plans and collaboratively work with districts, schools, educator preparation programs, and other stakeholders to close the gap in access to effective educators, diversify the workforce, and ensure that the training of educators includes a focus on culturally proficient practices.

The homework gap—which refers to the divide between students who have home access to the technology tools necessary for education versus those without—has existed for decades.

The next administration should maximize the use of all available policy tools to close the homework gap and keep it closed. First, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should update the existing E-rate program to allow schools to ensure home access to broadband for every student and teacher (Pre-K to Grade 12). Second, the FCC, in coordination with the Department of Education, should launch a one-to-one device program for students and teachers (Pre-K to Grade 12). Third, the FCC should incentivize the deployment of “future-proof” networks that are capable of at least 100/100 mbps to meet the needs of distance learning. Fourth and finally, the FCC should provide schools and states clear guidance on the key data needed to assess their homework gap and include this data in a public facing dashboard for broader stakeholder analysis.

Challenge and Opportunity

The homework gap—which refers to the divide between students who have home access to the technology tools necessary for education versus those without—has existed for decades.

At the start of the pandemic, 55 million students were sent home due to school closures and school districts initiated large-scale distance learning efforts. However, an estimated 16 million students and 400,000 teachers lacked access to an adequate home broadband connection or device needed to effectively engage in distance learning. Recent reports find that the homework gap disproportionately impacts lower-income and minority students. For these students in the homework gap, some schools—striving to continue any form of education—began to offer paper packets. Others opted to close early for the year, understanding that if they proceeded with a distance learning program without addressing the homework gap, they would further exacerbate existing inequities in education. The pandemic has forced our nation to see the consequences of the homework gap in real time. Educational and economic experts connect the disruption in access to education to learning loss, which negatively impacts childrens’ long-term economic well-being and the U.S. economy as a whole. Of course, it is worth underlining the fact that a pandemic is not the only reason schools have been closed in recent years as the effects of climate change, including extreme heat, wildfires, flooding, hurricanes, and tornadoes, have all caused extended disruptions to in-school instruction, and will continue to in the future. It is incumbent on policymakers to support school efforts to nimbly shift to distance learning when needed.

While policymakers have made progress on this issue by focusing on connecting and resourcing anchor institutions, such as schools, libraries and other community-based organizations, efforts to date have largely focused on providing students in the homework gap with an alternative public resource outside of the home. While some of these outside supports have their own benefits (e.g. trained staff, access to printers) they force students in need of access to remain outside of the home after school hours. For a family with limited time and resources, shuttling to and from various public computing centers (e.g. libraries, community-based organizations) cuts into work hours and requires additional funds for transportation. Even when these public resources are known to be available, teachers avoid assigning homework that may require heavy use of the internet because of the lack of home access to broadband for students. With years of institutional connectivity investments in place, anchor institutions are well positioned to help close the homework gap at home for teachers and students alike, once and for all.

In Congress, several bills (See HEROES Act and Emergency Educational Connections Act) have been introduced to fund the homework gap and to be administered through the FCC’s E-rate program, indicating that significant support exists to bolster the FCC’s current commitment to ensure connectivity for schools also extends to students with both funding and necessary updates to relevant statutes.

Prioritizing the resilient delivery of education and supporting equitable access to education by closing the homework gap helps to shelter our nation’s students in times of crisis and helps to ensure that all students have an opportunity to thrive when times are calm.

Plan of Action

E-rate

The FCC should update the existing E-rate program to clarify that the program will support schools to ensure home access to broadband for every student and teacher (Pre-K to Grade 12). The E-rate program is well known to schools, libraries and community-based organizations who are already working to address the homework gap. Since the start of the pandemic, states and schools have quickly built programs to try to cover the homework gap for as many students as possible. Without reliable funding these initiatives are at risk of ending, pushing students back into the homework gap. Ensuring reliable funding depends both on Congress doing its part to legislate and commit necessary funds, as well as the FCC to modernize the E-rate program to better serve the educational needs of students and robustly support home broadband access.

Because the FCC has E-Rate as an existing program that schools already work with on connectivity, expanding E-rate to also coordinate funding for student devices is efficient, schoolfriendly, and common-sense policy. Separating the device component of the homework gap to a new program would slow down delivery of support and require schools to navigate additional and a potentially new administrative process. The FCC should collaborate with Department of Education (ED) and Bureau of Indian Education (BIE) to ensure that both the device and connectivity components of a support program meet the needs of students and educators.

Connectivity

The FCC should

• Allow schools to use E-rate funded networks to support innovative programs to deliver home broadband access to students.
• Allow E-rate funds to pay for home broadband subscriptions for students.
• Allow for consortia and bulk purchasing.
• Extend rules around pricing transparency to funds used for home broadband subscription for students and publish pricing information on the FCC website.

Devices

The FCC, in coordination with ED and BIE, should launch a one-to-one device program to

• Ensure access to developmentally appropriate devices for students and teachers (Pre-K to Grade 12), as well as supplying the kind of equipment necessary for high quality STEM learning opportunities and equitable STEM education broadly.
• Develop a joint taskforce with Department of Commerce, ED, and BIE to address supply chain constraints for devices, ensure that the educational market is prioritized, require transparency in pricing and publish pricing information on the FCC website

Infrastructure Upgrades and Deployment

The FCC should incentivize deployment of “future-proof” networks—capable of at least 100/100 mbps— that can meet the needs of distance learning. Distance learning efforts since March have revealed that even if the cost of a monthly broadband subscription could be addressed, many students still lack access to a broadband service capable of delivering a synchronous distance learning program (at least 200/10 mbps). The FCC should

• Ensure that supported networks are able to deliver synchronous distance learning programs where the FCC provides funding for broadband infrastructure deployment.
• Prioritize infrastructure upgrades and deployment in areas that have broadband service of 25/25 mbps or less. Review rules, regulations and guidance from the FCC to encourage community broadband projects and other forms of public/private partnerships to apply for infrastructure funding.
• Encourage open access of funded infrastructure.

Supporting School-level Assessments

To ensure these programs continue to serve schools and students effectively, the FCC should provide schools and states clear guidance on the key data needed to assess the current state of the “Homework Gap” and include this data in a public facing dashboard for broader stakeholder analysis. Schools across the country have already begun to assess the homework gap in their own districts down to the address level and plan to continue these assessments periodically. The Administration should also encourage these efforts by launching a national homework gap mapping project to assess gaps. The FCC should encourage data collection on

• Broadband service availability
• Broadband service speeds
• Quality of broadband service
• Service providers available
• Needs for IT support (for both students/caregivers and teachers)
• Needs for digital literacy support (for both students/caregivers and teachers)
• Location information (while remaining FERPA compliant)
• Demographic information
• Language(s) primarily spoken

Conclusion

The FCC should modernize and expand its approach to closing the homework gap. Students, parents, and teachers need the federal government to step up and commit to a historic effort to ensure poor Internet access is no longer a systemic barrier in our society. Programs must be expanded or developed to ensure that all students and teachers have continuing support for home access to broadband and devices that meet the current and future demands of distance learning. Federal funds used for the expansion of broadband infrastructure must prioritize communities that lack the ability to adequately support distance learning (25/25 mbps or less) and require that any new deployment not only meet today’s demand for distance learning but also be able to evolve to meet future educational requirements. The FCC has an opportunity to work in partnership with schools, cities, and states to develop a recurring, granular, robust, assessment of the homework gap that would provide current, actionable data to support and encourage efforts to keep the gap closed.

Summary

How can public engagement and transparency at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) be improved? Congress has wrestled with this question repeatedly over the last several years. While Congress should continue to pursue legislative reform, the next FCC Chair can immediately improve transparency and public debate on pending agency actions by adding a second monthly meeting of the FCC Commissioners.

This proposal outlines a series of actions to introduce a second monthly meeting of the FCC Commissioners. During the additional meeting, FCC staff should present on major items that might be brought before the Commission for a vote in the next several months. This forward-looking monthly meeting gives the public information needed to provide meaningful input to the Commission prior to its decision-making. The meeting would also improve the Commissioners’ own ability to respond to policy recommendations.

Summary

The next leadership team of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must prioritize restoring the agency’s authority to protect consumers and competition in the broadband market. Under the next administration, FCC leadership should quickly commence a proceeding proposing to reclassify broadband as a “telecommunications service” under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. This reclassification puts the FCC on the firmest legal ground to

1. Restore or strengthen the 2015 network neutrality rules that prohibit providers of broadband Internet access from blocking, throttling, or otherwise discriminating against certain Internet traffic
2. Fund broadband through the FCC’s four universal service programs
3. Protect consumers from fraud and privacy violations
4. Promote broadband competition, and
5. Protect public safety.

FCC leadership should simultaneously work with Congress to develop legislation to codify this authority as law, thereby protecting against potential future reversals.

Summary

The Biden-Harris Administration should launch a concerted broadband data-collection and analysis effort to support smart, timely, and informed decision-making by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and other agencies that work on broadband, such as the Rural Utilities Service. Specifically, the FCC should collect (or work with others to collect) comprehensive data on the following eight indicators:

1. Broadband deployment
2. Broadband adoption
3. Broadband performance
4. Competition
5. Pricing
6. Anchor institutions
7. Specialized networks
8. International benchmarks

These data should be centralized on a “broadband data dashboard” to support informed decision-making by the FCC as well as analysis and application by stakeholders in government and industry as well as the general public. The dashboard would also support the FCC in developing and assessing progress towards clear, quantifiable goals for each indicator.

Summary

To better prepare for future public-health emergencies, the next president should establish several high-level COVID Commissions—modeled on the 9/11 Commission—to examine our nation’s response to the 2020 pandemic. One Commission should focus on public health communication and messaging.

The next president should task this Commission with assessing the information about the pandemic: what was made publicly available, how the information affected our societal response, and what should be done to limit the impact of false and dangerously misleading information moving forward.

Summary

Semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs) will continue to play an increasingly significant role in society as smart phones, internet-of-things (IoT) devices, artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, 5G communications, and other vastly interconnected technologies redefine many facets of daily life in the United States. The interconnectedness of these technologies presents novel opportunities for adversaries to exploit these systems for financial or strategic gain. The present geopolitical difficulties between China and the US, coupled with supply chain interruptions associated with the COVID-19 pandemic have made concerns about the robustness of the IC supply chain especially germane. In particular, China’s enormous investment in expanding its production capacity of advanced ICs is of grave concern. Against this landscape, there is an exciting opportunity for the next administration to develop a sophisticated American IC security infrastructure by launching a National Secure Electronics Initiative (NSEI). The NSEI will set a goal of achieving levels of security for electronic hardware in defense and commercial sectors at the design, manufacturing, and deployment stages with quantifiable strength comparable to the protections available at the software and data level, such as the Advanced Encryption Standards (AES).

Through NSEI, the next administration will ensure that not only defense, but also municipal and commercial supply chain processes, data, toolsets, key personnel, and facilities are secured against penetration by external threats or subversion by internal threats. The NSEI will integrate defense efforts and advancements with the commercial and municipal sectors by developing a more robust innovation pipeline through investments in early stage research, working across industry, government, and academia to develop a comprehensive set of security metrics, and fully leveraging the resources and expertise of other government agencies beyond those tied to defense. Making the United States a pioneer of such efforts would also represent a significant value add for domestic design and manufacture of electronic devices.

To reach these goals, the federal government should undertake a comprehensive agenda, led by the White House via the NSEI, to greatly expand existing efforts in the secure microelectronics space, such as the DoD Trusted and Assured Microelectronics (T&AM) program, and extend those efforts to better include the commercial and municipal sectors in addition to defense. The NSEI should complement but not depend upon other potential parallel efforts in this space. For example, two pieces of legislation, the CHIPS for America Act and American Foundries Act of 2020, have recommended the expansion of onshore capacity in advanced node ICs. The Semiconductor Industry Association has made similar recommendations and provided estimates for the potential impact of either $20B or $50B worth of federal investment in this space. The technologies developed under the NSEI would improve electronic security regardless of where the devices were manufactured, but would benefit from an expansion in domestic capacity. This is critical because although an increase in US manufacturing of advanced ICs is desirable on its own merits, the security of defense, consumer, and municipal electronics should not hinge on such developments.

Accomplishing the goals outlined below will secure the nation’s place at the forefront of global microelectronics security. The consequences of inaction may lead to more powerful cyber-attacks (e.g. rising attacks on health or financial infrastructure, military hardware subversion by adversarial states) on personal data, infrastructure, or vulnerable defense targets.

Summary

Due to technology’s disruptive force in society and on the labor force, voices representing business and state governments have recently emphasized the need to revisit the social contract among firms, employees, governments, and citizens. This need has only intensified with the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic emergency associated with the pandemic has left 21.5 million workers unemployed and an additional 11.5 million workers with reduced pay to date. Today’s unemployment numbers are far worse than during the 2008 Great Recession. Underscoring the racial disparity seen in this economic crisis, Black and Latinx workers are currently experiencing higher rates of unemployment than white workers.

The next president should immediately sign two Executive Orders (EOs) to address the current crisis in work and the urgent economic emergency that has left Americans evicted, unable to pay bills, make rent, or put food on the table. The first EO would modernize unemployment insurance nationwide by boosting state unemployment insurance programs. The second would establish a U.S. Future of Work Commission tasked with developing a new model of work that addresses the key challenges the Fourth Industrial Revolution presents to American workers today.