118th Congress: National Security
The 21st century will be shaped by the US-China strategic competition. The United States and China are locked in a battle for global power, influence, and resources, and are fighting for control of the world’s most important geopolitical regions, including the Indo-Pacific and Africa. They are also vying for leadership in cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), 5G, quantum computing, and cybersecurity. This competition is not just about economic dominance; it is also about ideology and values. To ensure that we can lead in today’s world, the United States must innovate. If we don’t, we may fall behind.
Below, we provide concrete, actionable policy proposals to help the 118th Congress meet this moment. These proposals will protect our troops, cultivate an agile and effective military, and develop a national security industrial base that allows America to lead in critical emerging technologies.
Medical Readiness. To support our troops, Congress should take steps to maintain military medical readiness. Generally, at the start of a given war, the American battlefield mortality rate is higher than it was at the end of the previous war, suggesting that military medical capabilities erode between wars. This erosion is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of American troops. To better protect our troops, Congress should direct the Department of Defense to expand military-civilian partnerships (MCPs) to pursue a national goal of eliminating preventable deaths, as detailed in the above memo.
Cultivating a 21st Century National Security Innovation Base. The National Security Commission on AI warned that a digital-talent deficit at the Department of Defense (DoD) represents the greatest impediment to the U.S. military’s effective embrace of emerging technologies. To address this challenge:
- Congress should create a national civilian “STEM Corps” modeled after the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and the National Guard, as introduced in HR 6526 in the 116th Congress. A competitive process would select students to receive full tuition to attend public universities. In return for accepting the scholarship, graduates would commit to several years serving in either the “active” or “reserve” STEM Corps. Additionally, Congress should work with the DoD lengthen Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) rotations, allowing DoD representatives more time to establish strong networks in Silicon Valley. The DIU should also continue to hire rapidly from those ecosystems.
- Nearly half of all STEM PhDs and 60% of computer science PhDs in the U.S. are awarded to international students. Barriers in recruiting this talent hurt our Defense Industrial Base. Congress should create a path to citizenship for noncitizen technologists through military service, and make some changes to existing law governing U.S. military eligibility. Additionally, Congress should increase green card caps for advanced STEM degree holders working in critical industries for national defense, and establish a National Security Innovation Visa to grant DoD the ability to recruit top global STEM talent.
Combating Increasing Global Threats. Many threats to national security can only be effectively countered by working with allies. To effectively combat such challenges, we must strengthen U.S. Engagement in International Standards Bodies. The U.S. should also lead in the formulation and ratification of a global treaty on artificial intelligence in the vein of the Geneva Conventions, the Chemical Weapons Convention, and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to establish guardrails and protections for the civilian and military use of AI, as recommended by the Future of Defense Task Force.
Increasing Military Efficiency. Greater military efficiency can also be achieved by cutting down on unnecessary expenses. We can save billions on the U.S. nuclear deterrent by directing the Pentagon to wind down its current efforts to deploy an entirely new missile force, instead extending the life of our current arsenal of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs).
Appropriations Recommendations
To protect American technological advantage and compete with China across all aspects of America’s national security strategy:
- The National Defense Education Program: The Department of Defense is not only working to create high end emerging technologies, but also putting resources into training the STEM workforce, which is essential for the safety of our country. To ensure that this expertise comes from a variety of backgrounds, we must offer chances to students and teachers of all ages in underprivileged and underrepresented communities, those with ties to the military, and veterans. The National Defense Education Program does just that, and we must ensure it continues receiving full support of Congress. The program element was funded at $145 million in FY 2022.
- The role of the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has become especially important on the technology competition front, as previously highlighted by members of the Foreign Affairs Committee. By enforcing export controls, BIS can limit China’s access to technologies like AI which are used for military ends, thereby protecting America’s national security. To ensure that BIS can effectively enforce these export controls, we recommend appropriating additional funding to BIS to support their critical work.
- While well-enforced export controls ensure that the U.S. leads in the development of AI systems, we must also ensure that we advance AI technologies safely and responsibly. Congress should appropriate robust funding to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to support their work on trustworthy AI. The CHIPS and Science Act authorizes funding to establish NIST AI test beds (Sec. 10232), appropriations for which are critical.
- The National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 established the National Security Innovation Capital (NSIC) program in response to worries that American hardware startups were unable to secure sufficient funds from trustworthy domestic sources. Less than 30% of U.S. venture capital investments go towards hardware businesses, and less than 10% is invested during the early phases when it’s needed most. Many times, these startups have had to depend on overseas investors, leaving them open to the risk of their intellectual property being taken by possible adversaries. In February 2021, the DIU established this fund as a result of $15 million in appropriations from Congress. Ensuring this program is fully funded every year is critical to our global competitiveness and national security.
118th Congress: Education & Workforce
Amid growing global competition in emerging technologies, increasing adoption of automation and artificial intelligence, and economic and national security trends upended by the pandemic, the United States is facing a generational challenge. In the labor market, major shifts that were once the product of future-casting are now squarely upon us, demanding a strategic approach to help the modern workforce adapt, and ensure the education system fosters the next generation of innovators.
Individuals in the STEM workforce have made substantial contributions to the nation’s innovation, growth and technological competitiveness, and will continue to be at the core of the economy. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, STEM employment is projected to increase by 11 percent from 2020 to 2030. The Department of Defense and leading experts agree that the future of national security relies on advanced technologies such as artificial Intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, quantum computing and robotics, all of which require a strong STEM education pipeline. Unfortunately, STEM education trends in the United States have not kept up. According to the World Economic Forum, China had 4.7 million STEM graduates in 2016, India had 2.6 million STEM graduates, but the US had 568,000. The most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results reported that the average score for 9-year-old students fell 7 percentage points between 2020 and 2022, representing a 2 decade backslide in performance. And a 2021 National Academies review finds that only 22 percent of American high school graduates are proficient in science, with the average elementary classroom devoting less than 20 minutes per day to science, and 69% of elementary teachers say they are not well prepared to teach science.
The 118th Congress must act in this historic convergence of economic and educational demands. Much as the nation once rallied around its SPUTNIK moment and the Space Race, we now have an opportunity to reverse current education and workforce trends through a series of strategic investments.
Fostering a competitive job market and a strong economy. The United States built the 20th century in part through investments in education and training pathways to quality, economically-sound jobs. But today, according to a recent McKinsey Global Institute survey of 750 executives, almost 30 percent of respondents perceived the skills gap to be the biggest challenge their companies are confronting.
To help American workers adapt and upskill, Congress and federal agencies should implement training and transition strategies for high-tech sector-specific workforces, such as in the fields of quantum computing, clean energy transition, or semiconductors, as was the intent of the CHIPS for America Workforce and Education Fund included in the CHIPS and Science Act. Congress should also leverage existing programs for work-based learning and retraining by reauthorizing and modernizing federally-registered apprenticeships. Similarly, effective government programs such as the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program should be revisited and reformed to promote worker upskilling and assistance. Congress should also ensure robust appropriations for the Workforce Innovation Fund authorized by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA).
Further, the modern labor market calls for still bolder reimagining of workforce training opportunities. Just as the nation recognizes the value to national security, energy, and health presented by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model, so too should we adapt this model to prioritize worker training at scale through an ARPA for Labor.
Amid a backdrop of historic and controversial layoffs from giants within the tech industry, Congress should take steps to ensure competitive labor markets for all Americans, through increased oversight of overly restrictive non-disclosure agreements and suffocating non-compete agreements that diminish labor mobility and competition.
Strengthen STEM Education & Training Pipelines to Compete Globally. The ability of employers and workers to compete on the global stage is inextricably linked to the education and training students receive today. But as mentioned above, the system is slipping. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that our education system is failing to produce enough graduates with critical STEM and technical skills, while results from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicate that US students continue to lag behind their peers in East Asia and Europe in reading, math, and science. This stunts employers’ ability to hire and workers’ ability to secure higher-paying jobs.
Fortunately, Congress put STEM education reform at the core of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act, which authorizes new and expanded investments in STEM education and training at all schooling levels. One of the major priorities of the new Congress should be to follow through with full funding for CHIPS and Science education programs at NSF and other science agencies at authorized levels. This includes $2.5 billion in FY 2024, and $13 billion total over five years, for the NSF STEM Education directorate (see more details below). These programs scale up research and innovations in preK-12 instruction, in addition to bolstering support for R&D to improve STEM education at undergraduate and community colleges, and other scholarship & fellowship programs.
The Act also tasks the NSF to update the Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) by increasing the number of science and engineering graduate fellows supported annually, by increasing the cost education allowance, and by recruiting a more diverse pool of applicants. As was recommended by the Trump Administration’s President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), expanding the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program is a logical and easy way to expand and retain the critical American innovation pipeline.
To ensure today’s students catch up to their international peers (and that we are already looking ahead to the challenges of the next decade) the US must prioritize R&D in education in a manner similar to fields like medicine and commerce. This requires a strategic investment in the research capacity at the Department of Education, as well as in the basic data infrastructure that will allow parents and districts to understand how their students are faring in comparison to their domestic and global peers.
Appropriations Recommendations
Full Funding for CHIPS and Science STEM Education. As mentioned above, Congress has the critical opportunity to invest in STEM education programs at the National Science Foundation (NSF) authorized in the CHIPS and Science Act. These programs support vital teacher training and collaboration with the scientific workforce, improved STEM education in afterschool programs, and a dedicated focus to diversify STEM fields through higher education programs. The full authorization for NSF Stem Education is $2.5 billion in FY 2024, which includes the following top-level programmatic investments:
- $80.4 million for the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program to support STEM educators;
- $64.9 million for the NSF Research Traineeship program for STEM students and future scholars;
- $454.1 million for the Graduate Research Fellowship program for students earning advanced STEM degrees;
- $8 billion for Fellowships, Traineeships and Scholarships;
- And robust funding for Education and Human Resources Directorate operations and award management to support established STEM programs in K-12, informal, and other education setting
Other Strategic Investments in Economic Security. In addition to the initiatives laid out in CHIPS and Science, there are several other high-leverage investments Congress can make. Note: the top four recommendations are from the Alliance for Learning Innovation, a coalition advocating for research-based innovations in education, of which FAS is a member.
- $900 million for the Institute of Education Sciences. Funding for IES research and development will help identify promising evidence-based practices to counteract pandemic induced drop in NAEP scores especially in mathematics and reading. IES appropriations should rise to $900 million in FY 2024, representing an 11% increase above FY 2023.
- $514 million for the Education Innovation and Research program. The EIR program is a critical resource in supporting the development and scaling of education research in areas like STEM, social and academic learning, teacher development, and other areas. Within the $514 million allocation, funding would support projects to identify and scale use of evidence-based strategies and practices that emphasize the innovative implementation of education research, existing and new, at the school level that can lead to increased student outcomes.
- $100 million for Centers for Transformative Education Research and Translation (CTERT). The CHIPS and Science Act establishes the NSF Directorate for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP), which will prioritize new programs that support technology commercialization, regional innovation and workforce development. Congress should allocate an additional $100 million for the Centers for Transformative Education Research and Translation that will ensure support for emerging technology areas crucial for United States leadership.
- $100 million for Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems. Statewide Longitudinal Data Systems (SLDS) hold the promise of identifying promising programs and gaps where intervention may be needed. The funds will support competitive grant awards to states to focus on modernizing systems and support efforts to align investments that have been made in States with Department of Labor Workforce Data Quality Initiative (WDQI) investments.
- $122.5 million for the Department of Labor’s budget for Evaluation & Research. The Evaluation & Research programs authorized by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) are required to use “appropriate and rigorous methodology and research designs” that address the general effectiveness and impact of WIOA-authorized programs. Congress should be equipping DOL to understand which workforce interventions will actually provide Americans with the training they need to attain quality jobs with 21st century skills, and leading to smarter investments for our workers.
- $5 million to support the creation of a new STEM office at the Department of Education. Following the announcement of the Department of Education about newly dedicated staff and resources to guide the future of STEM education for the US’ approximately 50 million students, Congress should properly invest in the success of this endeavor as a down payment on America’s future economic security.
- An additional $750 million for 21st Century Community Learning Centers. A longstanding bipartisan priority, the afterschool and summer learning programs supported by the 21st Century Community Learning Centers provide students with safe environments that often provide authentic STEM learning opportunities not otherwise available to them, while simultaneously allowing their parents to remain at work. Additional investment in this program will continue to bolster both STEM education for K12 students and the current workforce.
118th Congress: Ensuring Energy Security
Recent crises, such as the pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, have led to volatile fossil fuel prices and raised national concerns about energy security. The growing frequency of blackouts across the country due to extreme weather points to an increasingly vulnerable and aging electric grid. Grid capacity right now is incapable of supporting the rapid deployment of renewable energy projects that can generate clean, reliable, domestic energy. Further, as global competition rises, the United States finds itself overly reliant on foreign manufacturing and supply chains for these very technologies we want to deploy.
In order to improve energy security, affordability, and reliability for everyday Americans, the 118th Congress should act decisively to strengthen our energy infrastructure while leveraging emerging energy technology for the energy system of the future. Below are some recommendations for action.
Transmission Lines. The current U.S. electrical grid is an aging piece of infrastructure with sluggish growth and increasing vulnerability to threats from extreme weather and foreign attacks. The 118th Congress should implement policies to revitalize domestic manufacturing and construction, strengthen national energy security and reliability, and generate new jobs and economic growth. The $83 billion worth of planned transmission projects that the ISO/RTO Board has approved or recommended is projected to add $42 billion to U.S. GDP, create more than 400,000 well-paying jobs, and boost direct local spending by nearly $40 billion. However, the rate of construction for new transmission lines must substantially increase to fully harness the new energy economy and achieve ambitious emissions reductions.
High voltage direct current (HVDC) transmission lines are particularly important for connecting renewable energy producing regions with low demand, such as the Southwest and Midwest, to high demand regions. At these distances greater than 300 miles, HVDC transmission lines transmit power with fewer losses than AC lines. HVDC lines can also avoid some of the challenges to AC transmission line development because they can be buried underground, eliminating resident concerns of visual pollution and avoiding vulnerability to extreme weather. Further, if HVDC lines are built along existing rail corridors, their construction only requires negotiation with the seven major American rail companies rather than a myriad of private landowners and federal land management agencies. Congress took an important first step to advancing HVDC technology by directing DOE to develop an HVDC moonshot initiative on cost reduction, as part of the FY 2023 omnibus bill. Now, the 118th Congress can further support this goal by working with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to eliminate regulatory obstacles preventing the private sector from building more of these lines along existing corridors. Congress should also create federal tax credits to stimulate domestic manufacturing and construction of HVDC transmission, as well as transmission line construction in general.
Manufacturing. To spur domestic manufacturing capabilities and regain competitive advantages in clean energy technologies, the 118th Congress should fund a new manufacturing-focused branch of DOE’s highly effective State Energy Program (SEP). Congress can double down on this action by scaling investments in domestic capacity to manufacture key industrial products, such as low-carbon cement and steel.
Workforce. Our nation needs a workforce equipped with the skills to build a robust energy economy. To that end, Congress could provide the Department of Energy (DOE) with $30 million annually to establish an Energy Extension System (EES). Modeled after the USDA’s Cooperative Extension System (CES), and in partnership with the DOE’s National Labs, the EES would provide technical assistance to help institutions and individuals across the country take full advantage of emerging opportunities in the energy economy, including carbon capture and storage (CCS), installation and maintenance of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, geothermal power, and more.
Permitting Reform. In order to improve government efficiency, reduce costs, and enable the construction of new infrastructure for the clean energy transition, the 118th Congress should pass legislation on permitting reform to improve National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance timelines. These reforms should include:
- Shortening the statute of limitations on litigation under NEPA to 6 months or less in order to be more consistent with state-level policies;
- Requiring that any public-interest group bringing a case against a NEPA decision to have submitted input during public comment periods;
- Clarifying the duties of federal, state, tribal and local governments when conducting environmental reviews and communicating information to project applicants and the public;
- Clarifying vague statutes, such as the requirement that agencies consider “all reasonable alternatives”;
- Clarifying the appropriate admissibility or substitutability of documents that may reduce burdens on executive staff; and
- Permitting fast-track approval to site zero-emission fueling stations (see next section), in consultation with local utility regulators.
Zero-Emission Fueling Stations. Zero-emission vehicles powered by electric batteries and hydrogen fuel cells are the future of American auto manufacturing. The 118th Congress should pass key legislation to provide the federal government and states with the authorities and resources necessary to build a nationwide network of zero-emission fueling stations, so these new vehicles can refuel anywhere in the country. This includes:
- Amending Title 23 in the United States Code so that the federal government and states can apply gas tax dollars towards funding zero-emission fueling stations;
- Directing the Department of Transportation to use “Jason’s Law” surveys to identify medium- and heavy-duty vehicle parking locations that should be used for zero-emission fueling stations; and
- Authorizing pilot programs and public-private partnerships to develop “best practices” and techniques with key stakeholders for building out a commercially viable nationwide network of zero-emission fueling stations.
Electricity Markets. Power grids are being transformed from simple, fixed energy sources and points of demand to complex webs that feature distributed energy storage, demand response, and power quality factors. “Qualifying facilities” are a special class of small power production facilities and cogeneration facilities created by the Power Utility Regulatory Policy Act (PURPA) of 1978 with the right to sell energy or capacity to a utility and purchase services from utilities while being relieved of certain regulatory burdens. The definition of “qualifying facilities” should be expanded beyond power generation facilities to include households and businesses that provide grid services (e.g., feeding power back to the grid during times of peak energy demand). This would ensure that utilities properly compensate customers if they supply these services, thus allowing individual Americans to participate in electricity markets and spurring the adoption of novel clean-energy technologies.
Geothermal Energy. The Earth’s crust holds more than enough untapped geothermal energy to meet U.S.energy needs. Yet, only 0.4% of U.S. electricity is generated by geothermal energy. There’s a major opportunity to leverage this emerging domestic source for U.S. consumers. Congress should support the Geothermal Earthshot and drive innovation by:
- Establishing a $2 billion risk mitigation fund for geothermal energy development within the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, modeled off of successful programs in Iceland, Costa Rica, and Kenya;
- Establishing a $450 million USDA Rural Development grant program to transition industrial cooling and heating systems in the agricultural sector to geothermal energy
- Expanding the authority of the Leaking Underground Storage Tank (LUST) Trust Fund within the EPA to include the conversion of existing and abandoned oil and gas fields into geothermal wells; and
- Provide $15 million for a national geothermal team within the Bureau of Land Management to develop training materials, standard operating procedures, and provide technical support to district offices to ensure timely review of geothermal power and cooling/heating projects on federal lands.
A policy memo on Empowering the Geothermal Earthshot is forthcoming from FAS.
Appropriations Recommendations
- CHIPS and Science: Research and Development in the Office of Science at the Department of EnergyA number of line items for basic science research at the Department of Energy (DOE) were authorized as part of the CHIPS and Science Act – including materials, physical, chemical, and others. These research programs are central to building a new wave of clean energy technologies and ensuring domestic energy security for decades to come. Subsections of this part of the bill include authorizations for research on nuclear energy, energy storage, carbon sequestration, and other technologies. We recommend that the Office of Science, and especially items in Section 10102 of the CHIPS and Science Act covering Basic Energy Sciences, be funded in alignment with the amounts authorized.
- CHIPS and Science: Funding for the Office of Technology Transitions and prize authorized programs Two additional line items in the CHIPS and Science Act that were authorized but are not yet funded are sections 10713 and 10714. Both authorize prize programs housed in the Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) at the Department of Energy–programs that, if funded, could support innovation and commercialization of clean energy technology. Section 10713 authorizes an awards program for clean energy startup incubators, and section 10714 authorizes a new clean energy technology prize competition for universities. Congress should appropriate the authorized funds for these programs.In addition, Congress should appropriate funds authorized in section 10715 of the CHIPS and Science Act. This section authorizes $3 million per year through FY 2027 for coordination capacity at OTT, including to develop metrics for the impact of OTT programs and to engage more effectively with the clean energy ecosystem. Additional capacity for OTT is critical to the office’s success, and to the development of clean energy technologies more broadly.
- IIJA: Funding for the Critical Minerals Mining and Recycling Grant Program in the DOECritical minerals are crucial for clean energy and semiconductor technologies. The U.S. lacks a sufficient domestic supply of critical minerals and is currently overly reliant on foreign critical minerals, which have volatile prices and are often controlled by adversarial countries. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) authorized $100 million from FY 2022 to FY 2024 for the DOE Critical Minerals Mining and Recycling Grant Program to fund pilot projects that process, recycle, or develop critical minerals. This program is not limited to critical minerals for lithium-ion battery production, and has the potential to impact critical minerals used in a variety of clean energy and semiconductor technologies. Congress should appropriate the authorized funds for this program, since it fills the pre-commercialization funding gap for scaling these technologies that is not met by other programs in the IIJA.
- FY 2024: Research and Development in the DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) and the Advanced Research Project Agency for Energy (ARPA-E)
These two offices are key investors in clean energy technologies at different stages of research and commercialization and provide a direct way for the government to scale up American-made energy technologies. To accelerate the energy transition, Congress should provide robust increases for these offices, and at least meet EERE and ARPA-E’s FY 2024 budget requests, such that they can scale up their proven ability of identifying and supporting promising candidates for energy innovation.
Science and Innovation in the 118th Congress
The United States faces a broad array of challenges, from intense competition in science and technology abroad, to the need for safe and resilient critical systems at home.
To be sure, narrowly split control of Congress adds to the complexity of addressing these challenges. But even in this situation, the 118th Congress can still create opportunities for bipartisan action to bolster American economic security, national security, and health. There are many national goals on which the parties agree. These include:
- Stronger American science and innovation
- Reliable, cleaner domestic energy
- An American society that’s safe from threat of pandemics
- Resilient, productive American agriculture
Even if there are some areas in which policy differences persist, there are many where action is possible.
To help seed the ground for bipartisan progress, we have assembled a wide-ranging menu of policy ideas on a range of critical topics.
Where do these ideas come from?
This menu of policy ideas, organized by theme, was primarily generated over the past three years through crowdsourced outreach by the Day One Project, and refined with the help of the Day One Project team to transform promising ideas into actionable policy proposals.
We have added a few additional ideas of our own, but the majority are derived from Day One Policy Memos authored by experts, scholars, and policy entrepreneurs from an array of backgrounds. Click on the links found throughout this report to access the source memos, which include rationales and plans of action for policy implementation.
118th Congress: Bioeconomy & Health Security
For the United States, the economic, societal, and national security benefits of the life sciences are vast. The U.S. bioeconomy – the part of the economy driven by the life sciences and biotech, and enabled by engineering, computing, and information science – is valued at over $950 billion. Life sciences research leads to cleaner crops through pollution-free fertilizers, and access to life-saving vaccines, like those mRNA vaccines that helped counter the devastating impacts of COVID-19. And industries built on the life sciences create good-paying jobs across the country.
The 118th Congress can adopt policy to help drive U.S. biotech and biomanufacturing to grow regional prosperity, deliver on conservation goals, and improve U.S. competitiveness and resilience. Here are some ideas.
Advancing the U.S. Bioeconomy to Create Jobs and Bolster Competitiveness. Many provisions in the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act are intended to enable the bioeconomy. Implementation should focus on three areas: cutting-edge R&D, fundamental and publicly available tools, and biomanufacturing. To further support fundamental research, Congress could direct the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to aim to maximize returns on its massive R&D budget by piloting novel funding mechanisms with evaluation through randomized control trials, funding more high-risk high-reward research, and dedicating more funding to early-career researchers. Congress could also establish a Plant Genome Research Institute (PGRI) that would drive plant genomics research and centralize federal government activities, helping to promote crop innovation and enable a diversified, localized, and resilient food system. And to ensure all Americans benefit fully, actions should be taken to address bias in medical technology at the development, testing and regulation, and market-deployment and evaluation phases.
To promote U.S. bioindustrial manufacturing scale-up and commercialization, Congress could authorize a Bio for America Program Office at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. With appropriations, the office would house a suite of initiatives:
- A Bioindustrial Production Consortium that coordinates precompetitive efforts helping to address the measurements, tools, and standards needed for advancing both research and commercial products in the bioindustrial production space, and that collaborates with BioMADE, industry, government scientists, and other stakeholders.
- BAPO Ventures, which would seed a nonprofit partnership manager to launch a U.S. Bioindustrial Production Investment Portfolio to crowd-in additional capital from non-federal government sources and makes calculated investments in early-stage, domestic bioindustrial production companies that demonstrate credible pathways to product commercialization.
- The Bioindustrial Production Scale-up Infrastructure Group, which as an initial step would work with both the interagency and non-federal government partners to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the U.S. bioindustrial production pilot- and intermediate-scale infrastructure landscape in order to develop a precision strategy for moving forward on domestic bioindustrial production scale-up capacity.
- A Bioindustrial Production Loan Program Office that relies on partners such as the U.S. Small Business Administration to help it provide debt financing for techno-economically sound, domestic demonstration- or commercial-scale bioindustrial production infrastructure projects.
Importantly, Congress can help prepare and invite more Americans into skilled jobs that support the bioeconomy, building a better future for Americans in all 50 states – including people of color, people with disabilities, and people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds – by funding modernized biology education, establishing world-class entrepreneurial hubs for biotechnology in non-traditional regions of the country, and supporting equitable access to industry-recognized certificates and work-based training.
Biotech can also be leveraged to fast-track our nation’s capability to deliver on conservation goals, remediate contaminated habitats, and detect dangerous environmental toxins and pathogens. To that end, Congress could establish a national center to achieve several important goals:
- Provide competitive grant funding across three key tracks – carbon capture, bioremediation, biomonitoring – to catalyze comprehensive environmental biotechnology research
- House a bioethics council to develop and update guidelines for safe, equitable environmental biotechnology use
- Manage testbeds to efficiently prototype environmental biotechnology solutions; and
- Facilitate public-private partnerships to help transition solutions from prototype to commercial scale.
Safeguarding Americans Against Biological Threats. The human and economic toll of COVID-19 has shown the need to be better prepared for future pandemics and epidemics. And yet, there is currently little to no economic incentive for pharmaceutical companies to engage in vaccine research for infectious diseases that have not, and yet could, cause a pandemic. To address this market failure, the U.S. should incentivize vaccine development for priority emerging infectious diseases through federal financing. Specifically, Congress should authorize and appropriate $10 billion to the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) over 10 years to create an investment fund that would:
- Leverage demand-pull mechanisms to purchase vaccines in bulk during future outbreaks and promote innovation in vaccine R&D
- Support manufacturing and distribution facilities
- Provide limited government guarantees, equities, and securities to investors in vaccine development.
Masks, especially high quality respirators, are disease-agnostic tools that can help reduce infections from respiratory diseases like the flu virus and RSV. In turn, this can reduce the burden on doctors and hospitals, and avoid additional healthcare. To that end, the mail delivery system used to distribute COVID-19 diagnostic tests should be augmented by the addition of a masks via mail program. The COVID-19 test mailing program should be restarted and expanded to include an option for ordering one box of 10 free N95 masks every quarter, for those Americans who wish to participate. Additionally, rotating face-mask inventory from the Strategic National Stockpile in a “first in, first out” method will prevent masks from being stored past their recommended shelf life, and promote continual replenishment of the U.S.’s stockpile. The recent National Strategy for a Resilient Public Health Supply Chain, as well as the bipartisan PPE in America Act (H.R.1436) and the bipartisan PREVENT Pandemics Act (S.3799), all advocate for a rotating stock system; however, steps must be taken to better operationalize its implementation and instate a timeline. Congress should authorize the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response to grant the HHS Coordination Operations and Response Element key management and distribution responsibilities for critical diagnostic and preventative measures like tests and masks.
The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was significantly worsened by the presence of diseases that persist at relatively stable case numbers within a particular region. Additional infections paired with COVID-19 infections can lead to lower survival rates and longer hospital stays, creating a drain on resources as well as higher morbidity and mortality effects. Congress should thus authorize an initiative within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that enhances the reporting and tracking of regional diseases and helps reduce the data gap that prevents actions and responses to countering circulating diseases. The initiative could be incorporated into S. 3814, the bipartisan Modernizing Biosurveillance Capabilities and Epidemic Forecasting Act.
Finally, the bipartisan Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness and Advancing Innovation Act of 2019 (PAHPAIA) will expire in 2023. This law contains several integral provisions for national health security, public health preparedness, biosurveillance, and emergency medical countermeasures, as well as authorizations for BARDA and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR). Congress should re-authorize PAHPAIA, as it forms the bedrock of America’s pandemic preparedness architecture, and consider expanding its purview to address aspects of other U.S. challenges such as wildfires and antimicrobial resistance.
Appropriations Recommendations
Bioeconomy in CHIPS and Science. There are many provisions critical to the U.S. bioeconomy in the CHIPS and Science Law, which Congress should ensure receive robust appropriations. These include:
- Coordinating and strategy activities in Title IV, focused on Bioeconomy Research and Development;
- Title III, Subtitle G, National Science Foundation Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships. The directorate is authorized at $3.4 billion overall in FY 2024. The list of critical technologies the new directorate is intended to advance (Section 10387) includes biotechnology, medical technology, genomics, and synthetic biology, all relevant to the bioeconomy. The directorate also funds the Regional Innovation Engines program promoting biotech partnerships and commercialization efforts across the U.S. in biotech.
- Title II, Section 10221, which directs the National Institute of Standards and Technology to conduct an array of activities in engineering biology and biometrology.
- Title I, Section 10103, Department of Energy (DOE) Biological and Environmental Research (authorized at $947 million in FY 2024), which funds an array of fundamental research in the biosciences.
- Title I, Section 10112, Office of Science Emerging Biological Threat Preparedness Research Initiative (authorized at $50 million in FY 2024), which establishes a cross-cutting program to leverage DOE analytical resources and tools, user facilities, and advanced computational and networking capabilities to support efforts that prevent, prepare for, predict, and respond to biological threats to national security, including infectious diseases.
Congress should provide robust appropriations to all activities, as close to the CHIPS authorizations as possible, to ensure a dynamic and innovative bioeconomy sector.
Bioproduct Pilot Program. The National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) Bioproduct Pilot Program (created in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Sec. 70501) is intended to increase economic activity in rural areas of the U.S. while also lowering commercialization risks associated with bringing biobased products to market. The program aims to study the benefits of using materials derived from covered agricultural commodities for manufacture of construction and consumer products. The program’s work also enables the development of a more circular economy, where finite resources are not just extracted and consumed but also regenerated in a sustainable manner. Adopting a more circular economy ensures that wealth and other economic benefits in the form of jobs and other opportunities are created, and stay in, rural communities, while learnings can be shared throughout the U.S. innovation ecosystem.
A total of up to $5 million is available for the program for each of FY 2022 and FY 2023. The availability of funds for the program should be extended through FY 2028, with yearly increases to a level above $5 million per year according to the requests of NIFA/the program team.
Scaling and Regionalizing Networked Bioindustrial Manufacturing. The 2023 NDAA (Division A, Section 215) directs the Secretary of Defense to establish and expand a network of manufacturing innovation institutes and intermediate scale facilities for R&D, piloting, and scaling of innovative bioindustrial manufacturing processes and products. Support for these activities is critical to ensure the industrial base can leverage bioindustrial manufacturing processes for the production of chemicals, materials, and other products necessary to support national security and secure fragile supply chains. Congress should provide $500 million in appropriations across national security bioeconomy activities including $300 million for biomanufacturing innovation institutes, in accord with the NDAA.
Countering Global Malnutrition to Enhance U.S. Security. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental impacts, and conflicts like the war in Ukraine, global rates of malnutrition are at eight percent and are forecast to become even worse. Providing life-saving treatment around the world serves a core American value of humanitarianism, and a priority for U.S. national security – the newly released National Security Strategy dedicates an entire section to food insecurity.
In 2021 legislation, Congress directed USAID to advance programs to prevent and treat malnutrition around the world and develop a Global Nutrition Coordination Plan. That legislation also directed USAID to create the Nutrition Leadership Council, which can help elevate nutrition programs across U.S. global health interventions and foster collaboration with other sectors, development agencies, partner governments, and local actors. These are important steps to create a centralized food security program with harmonized funding – a system to deploy a more effective response to end global malnutrition and improve U.S. national security.
Congress should work with the Administration to begin scaling up global malnutrition assistance in FY 2024, in accord with the 2021 legislation.
Supporting the U.S. Emergency Response Workforce. The National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) is an integral part of the United States’ pandemic and hazards preparedness and response infrastructure. NDMS has a unique ability to coordinate and deliver emergency medical services to both federal and state, local, tribal, or territorial (SLTT) agencies. During the COVID-19 pandemic, NDMS deployed all across the country to provide training, medical care, coordinate medical supply delivery, and ensure effective communication. Additional appropriations would go toward hiring more personnel and bolstering in-person activities in the wake of COVID-19. Congress should ensure NDMS is funded up to FY 2024 request levels.
118th Congress: Emerging Tech & Competitiveness
Global competition for advanced technology leadership is fierce. China continues to build scholarship capacity across science and engineering disciplines, has surpassed the United States in knowledge- and technology-intensive manufacturing, and is hot on American heels for the global lead in R&D investment. In the U.S., domestic manufacturing jobs have enjoyed a recent surge, but the U.S. trade deficit in high technology stood at nearly $200 billion in 2021, and appears set to far surpass that this year.
The federal government has played an historic role in fostering basic science and the development of critical technologies like the Internet and GPS, and federal investments have helped drive manufacturing and high-tech cluster development for nearly a century. In light of that role, the 118th Congress should act decisively to sustain America’s competitive edge in industries of the future.
R&D Policy. The most important step the new Congress can take is to ensure robust appropriations for the array of science and innovation initiatives authorized in the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. New and ongoing activities in agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy Office of Science (SC), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Commerce will drive scientific excellence, STEM talent, and industrial competitiveness in key areas like advanced communications, materials, semiconductors, and others.
Congress should also continue to build out Manufacturing USA, a network of highly effective public-private innovation institutes serving defense, energy, life sciences, and other sectors. In addition to CHIPS-authorized funding boosts, the Manufacturing USA network could be enhanced by regional demonstration centers, talent programs to align American worker skills with industry needs, and other steps.
As Congress invests, lawmakers should also seek out opportunities to fund alternative, novel models for research including, for example, focused research organizations (FROs) or institutes for independent scholarship. While the federal science enterprise remains an engine of discovery and progress, new ways of doing science can foster untapped creativity and let scientists and engineers tackle new problems or come up with unforeseen breakthroughs. For instance, the CEO-led FRO model is intended to facilitate mid-scale research projects to produce new public goods (like technologies, techniques, processes, or datasets) that in turn have a catalyzing effect on productivity in the broader science enterprise. Congress should work with agencies to create space and find opportunities to foster such novel approaches.
Congress could also consider legislative reforms to empower national labs to innovate and commercialize cutting-edge technology. For instance, legislation could extend Enhanced Use Lease (EUL) authority to allow for public-private research facilities on surplus federal lands, or create a federally chartered technology transfer organization inspired by similar models at effective universities. Such capabilities would further leverage the labs as engines for regional innovation.
Innovation & Entrepreneurship. The new Congress has the opportunity to invest in critical technologies through new funds and public-private partnerships that drive growth of frontier technology companies. Congress can also invest in the broader ecosystem to make innovation sustainable, expand the geography of innovation, and support equitable access to opportunities. Such investments would continue the momentum that Congress established in 2022.
A major element of this momentum is bipartisan support for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hubs program authorized in Section 10621 of the bipartisan CHIPS and Science Act. The new program, intended to catalyze and expand high-tech industry clusters in up-and-coming regions around the United States, was authorized at $10 billion over five years in CHIPS, and received a $500 million down payment in appropriations so far. Now, the 118th Congress should continue and expand upon that support, while more generally continuing to build out place-based and sustainable infrastructure that advances deep-tech and tough-tech industries like the bioeconomy, advanced manufacturing, and clean energy.
In addition, Congress should find ways to support early-stage companies at the technology frontier, through establishing and funding a Frontier Tech consortium or a Deep Tech capital fund to coordinate public investments across government agencies. This would ensure that government funding is used efficiently to spur private investment in early stage frontier tech companies within critical national industrial base areas.
Artificial Intelligence. As AI technologies advance, the government needs to harness them safely and efficiently. Congress should include a National Framework for AI Procurement in the next NDAA to establish a standardized process for vetting AI applications proposed for public use, in line with a 2020 Executive Order on “Promoting the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Government.” To protect the privacy and security of those using or affected by all AI products, this framework should include a strategy for investing in and deploying privacy-preserving machine learning (PPML).
Space Innovation. While some NASA language was included in CHIPS and Science, space sector innovation didn’t get nearly as much attention as it could have. The 118th should remedy this by placing special focus on investments and policy reform to enhance U.S. ability to innovate in the space sector. The potential opportunity is huge: space is likely to become a trillion-dollar sector before midcentury.
Multiple areas are ripe for action. One is in the area of orbital debris. There are thousands of pieces of space junk now in low-earth orbit – often emerging from defunct satellites or collisions – and these pose a substantial hazard to commercial space operations as well as U.S. national security. To deal with this issue, Congress could work with relevant agencies including the Departments of Defense and Commerce to develop and fund an advanced market commitment for space debris to incentivize solutions via the possibility of investment returns. Congress could also take another run at SPACE Act ideas that were left out of the final Chips and Science text, to codify responsibility for civilian Space Situational Awareness (S.S.A.) with the Department of Commerce and to authorize the creation of one or more centers of excellence for S.S.A.
Congress should also work with the Administration to advance in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing (ISAM), an emerging suite of capabilities that offer substantial upside for the future space economy. The White House has already released an ISAM strategy and implementation plan, but substantial action is still needed, and Congress can provide leadership and support in this area. For example, Congress can work with NASA to create an Advanced Space Architectures Program, which would operate under a public-private consortium model to pursue missions that develop new technological capabilities for the U.S. space sector. Congress can also encourage federal agencies and the White House to develop a public roadmap of needs, goals and desired capabilities in the emerging ISAM sector, and to work toward establishing ISAM-specific funding wedges in key agency budget requests to better track related investments for concerted appropriations decisions.
Appropriations Recommendations
- CHIPS and Science: Microelectronics Research (MICRO Act). To drive U.S. science and innovation in microelectronics and semiconductors, Section 10731 authorized the establishment of a network of Microelectronics Science Research Centers at national labs and other institutions, authorized at $25 million in FY 2024, and a broader Department of Energy microelectronics research program at $100 million in FY 2024. These are vital investments in United States technological leadership.
- CHIPS and Science: Entrepreneurial Fellowships. NSF is a vital cog in the non-medical university research ecosystem. In addition to topline funding increases, CHIPS also authorized several smart programs that should receive appropriations within a rising NSF topline overall. One of these is the Entrepreneurial Fellowships program within the newly established technology directorate (Section 10392). The fellowship program, which officially launched last fall, is intended to provide scientists with entrepreneurial training to help shift ideas from lab to market or forge connections between academia, investors, and government. The program is authorized at $125 million over five years, and Congress should ensure robust support.
- As mentioned above, Congress has so far provided $500 million in appropriations for the Regional Technology and Innovation Hub Program, as well as $200 million for the Recompete Pilot Program, a similar place-based program focused specifically on distressed regions and communities. The CHIPS and Science Act authorized these programs at $10 billion and $1 billion respectively, and if past experience is any indication, demand for support from local cluster development teams will far exceed the supply of appropriations provided thus far. To that end, Congress should continue to fund these programs through FY 2024 appropriations: at least by replicating the earlier appropriations figures of $500 million and $200 million, and ideally by getting as close to the authorized amounts as possible. Catalytic investments from the federal government are critical to the early growth of ecosystem efforts, and this program’s continuation would be a continued force in creating greater economic opportunity in communities across the nation.
- Congress should fund the Competitiveness Policy Council (authorized under the Competitiveness Policy Council Act, 15 U.S.C. §4801 et seq.) to provide future recommendations to the president on manufacturing competitiveness. This council should assemble an independent advisory group composed of business, labor, and government leaders to develop policy recommendations that benefit the workforce across their sectors, like President Reagan’s Commission on Industrial Competitiveness.
118th Congress: Resilient Agriculture, Society & Environment
Over the past several years, instability has been a national and global constant. The COVID-19 pandemic upended supply chains and production systems. Floods, hurricanes, heat waves, droughts, and fires have imposed catastrophic consequences and forced people to reconsider where they can safely live. Russia’s war with Ukraine and other geopolitical conflicts have forced countries around the world to scramble for reliable energy sources.
Congress must act decisively to fortify the United States against these and future destabilizing threats. Priorities include revitalizing U.S. agriculture to ensure a dependable, affordable, and diverse food supply; improving disaster preparation and response; and driving development and oversight of critical environmental technologies.
Revitalizing U.S. Agriculture. Every society needs a robust food supply to survive, thrive, and grow. But skyrocketing food prices and agricultural supply-chain disruptions indicate that our nation’s food supply may be on shaky ground. Congress can take measures to rebuild a world-leading U.S. agricultural sector that is sustainable amid evolving external pressures.
A first step is to invest in agricultural innovation and entrepreneurship. The 2018 Farm Bill created the Agriculture Advanced Research and Development Authority (AgARDA) as a driver of transformative progress in agriculture, but failed to equip the institution with a key tool: prize authority. Prizes have proven to be force multipliers for innovation dollars invested by many institutions, including other Advanced Research Projects Agencies (ARPAs). It would be simple for Congress to extend prize authority to AgARDA as well.
Prize authority at AgARDA would be especially powerful if coupled with additional support for agricultural entrepreneurship. Congress should fund the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Small Business Administration (SBA), and the Minority Business Development Administration (MBDA) with $25 million per year for five years to jointly develop a “Ground Up” program to help Americans start small businesses focused on sustainable agriculture.
We must also begin viewing our nation’s soil as a strategic resource. Farmers and ranchers cannot succeed without good places to plant crops and graze livestock. But our nation’s fertile soil is being lost ten times faster than it is being produced. At this rate, many parts of the country will run out of arable land in the next 50 years. Some places—such as the Piedmont region of the eastern United States—already have. States including New Mexico, Illinois, and Nebraska have already introduced or passed legislation to preserve and restore soil health; Congress should follow their example. A comprehensive soil-health bill could, for instance, create bridge-loan projects for farmers transitioning to soil-protective farm practices, expand the USDA’s Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) program to cover such practices, fund USDA Extension offices to provide related technical assistance, and support regenerative agriculture in general.
Finally, Congress should extend funding for two programs that are delivering clear benefits to U.S. food systems. With major food production concentrated in five states, often far from major population centers, the farm-to-table pathway is extraordinarily susceptible to disruptions. The American Rescue Plan Act created the Food Supply Chain Guaranteed Loan Program to help small- and medium-sized enterprises strengthen this pathway, including through “aggregation, processing, manufacturing, storing, transporting, wholesaling or distribution of food.” This program should be continued and resourced going forward. In addition, the Bioproduct Pilot Program studies how materials derived from agricultural commodities can be used for construction and consumer products. This program increases economic activity in rural areas while also lowering commercialization risks associated with bringing bio-based products to market. Congress should extend funding for this program (currently set to expire after FY 2023) for at least $5 million per year through the end of FY 2028.
Improving Disaster Preparation and Response. Every year, Americans lose billions of dollars to natural hazards including hurricanes, wildfires, floods, heat waves, and droughts. We know these disasters will happen…yet only 15% of federal disaster funding is invested to blunt their effects. In particular, current disaster policy and practice lacks incentives for local governments to proactively reduce risks.
Congress can address this failure by amending aspects of the Stafford Act of 1988. In particular, Congress should redefine the disaster threshold in ways that factor in local capacity and ability to recover. Congress should also consider (i) reducing the federal cost share for disaster response, (ii) implementing other incentive models that may induce better local hazard-reduction decisions and improve long-term resilience, and (iii) strengthening existing incentive programs. For example, the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) Community Rating System (CRS) could be improved by requiring local governments to take stronger actions to qualify for reduced insurance rates and increasing transparency about how community ratings are calculated.
Disaster management response is not the sole purview of FEMA. For example, the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program positions the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a primary disaster-response funder. To ensure efficiency and prevent duplication of effort, Congress must clarify the role of each federal agency involved in disasters.
Congress should also ensure adequate research funding to investigate evidence-based and cost-effective disaster mitigation and response strategies. A useful first step would be doubling the interagency Disaster Resilience Research Grant (DRRG) program, which already supports researchers in groundbreaking modeling, simulations, and solutions development to protect Americans from the most catastrophic consequences.
Driving Development and Oversight of Critical Environmental Technologies. Environmental technologies are critical to ensure energy and resource security. Congress can use market-shaping mechanisms to pull critical environmental technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS), forward. Operation Warp Speed demonstrated breakthrough capacity of federally backed advance market commitments (AMCs) to incentivize rapid development and scaling of transformative technologies. Building on this example, Congress should authorize a $1 billion AMC for scalable carbon-removal approaches—providing the large demand signal needed to attract market entrants, and helping to advance a clean all-of-the-above energy portfolio. This approach could then be extended to other environmentally relevant applications, such as building infrastructure to enable next-generation transportation.
Congress must also ensure responsible deployment and reasonable oversight of new environmental technologies. For instance, DOE recently launched an ambitious “Carbon Negative Shot” to foster breakthroughs in carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technology, and is also leading an interagency CDR task force pursuing the advancement of many CDR approaches. But we lack a national carbon-accounting standard and tool to ensure that CDR initiatives are being implemented consistently, honestly, and successfully. Congress should work with the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency to address this assessment gap.
Similarly, the IRA appropriates over $405 million across federal agencies for activities including “the development of environmental data or information systems.” This could prove a prescient investment to efficiently guide future federal spending on environmental initiatives—but only if steps are taken to ensure that these dollars are not spent on duplicative efforts (for instance, water data are currently collected by 25 federal entities across 57 data platforms and 462 data types). Congress should therefore authorize and direct the creation of a Digital Service for the Planet “with the expertise and mission to coordinate environmental data and technology across agencies”, thus promoting efficiencies in the data enterprise. This centralized service could be established either as a branch of the existing U.S. Digital Service or as a parallel but distinct body.
118th Congress: Infrastructure
America’s infrastructure is in disrepair and our transportation system has failed to keep pace with usage, technology and maintenance needs. As a result, 43% of public roadways are in poor or mediocre condition, roadway fatalities reached nearly 43,000 last year, and logistics and supply chain systems are ill-prepared for the increasing stresses caused by pandemics, international conflicts, and extreme weather events. In addition, our nation’s water supply system is plagued by aged infrastructure such as lead pipes that contribute to irreversible health effects, and vulnerable pipelines leading to water main breaks that lose up to 6 billion gallons of treated water daily. These conditions stem from declining public infrastructure investment, which has decreased as a share of GDP by more than 40% from its high in 1961.
The 118th Congress has an historic opportunity to develop and harness innovative technologies and methods to strengthen our economy, spur job growth, and bolster physical security with an eye toward equitable outcomes for all Americans. Our recommendations for policies that can help us achieve these outcomes are detailed below.
Reducing Transportation and Infrastructure GHGs. Commercial trucks and buses are one of the top contributors of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). To help these vehicles transition to cleaner power sources, Congress should facilitate the build-out of a nationwide network of zero-emission fueling stations that would not only help reduce GHGs but also support America’s emerging alternative fuels and vehicles industry, and the job growth that would come with it.
Another significant contributor to GHGs is air travel, specifically small aircraft, the largest source of environmental lead pollution in the United States. Congress should help bolster a more sustainable aviation industry through funding, regulations, and taxes to spur the electrification of regional airports while putting the U.S. back on track to competing with European and Asian companies in the sustainable aviation technology market.
But reducing greenhouse gas emissions of different travel modes is not enough: we need to revolutionize the way we build, in light of the emissions intensity of materials such as steel and concrete. To support a “Steel Shot” at DOE, Congress should provide funding for a Clean Energy Manufacturing USA Institute focused on clean steel, as well as funding and authorities for federal investment in commercial-scale solutions.
Harnessing the Benefits of Smart-City Technologies While Mitigating Risks. Smart-city technologies – such as autonomous vehicles, smart grids, and internet-connected sensors – have the opportunity to deliver a better quality of life for communities by harnessing the power of data and digital infrastructure. However, they are not being used to their full potential. Congress should support more widespread adoption of smart-city technologies through funding for a new Smart Community Prize Competition, increased funding for community development programs such as HUD’s ConnectHome pilot program, planning grants, and resources for regional innovation ecosystems, amongst others.
But communities should not invest in or adopt smart-city technologies without consideration for individual protections and privacy. To that end, Congress should fund the development of technologies and processes that have civic protections embedded at their core.
Putting AVs and CVs at the Forefront of Advancing Societal Benefits and Equity. The widespread adoption of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and Connected Vehicles (CVs) can revolutionize the way we travel and accelerate progress on a number of outcomes, including safety, GHG emissions, and travel times and costs. There are several ways Congress can play a role in spurring the AV and CV markets toward realizing these outcomes.
On AVs, Congress can create an Evaluation Innovation Engine at the Department of Transportation (USDOT) funded at $72 million annually to identify priority AV metrics and spur innovative technologies and strategies that would achieve them. Congress can also support AV-5G connections, critical for AV integration with the built environment, by funding a program to establish transportation infrastructure pilot zones; funding a National Connected AV Research Consortium; funding a research initiative at NSF focused on safety; and funding a new U.S. Corps of Engineers and Computer Scientists for Technology.
On CVs, Congress can help stakeholders at the federal, state, and local level realize their benefits and work towards a common strategy by creating a National Task Force on Connected Vehicles.
Supporting Communities of Opportunity. In support of a national equitable transit-oriented development (TOD) program that addresses widespread demand for affordable housing and walkable communities, Congress should pass legislation that extends the use of Railroad Rehabilitation Improvement Financing (RRIF) funds for TOD initiatives; increases RRIF’s loan authorization to $50B, creates new funding and tax incentives to support TOD initiatives; and expands USDOT’s federal credit assistance programs, among other measures.
Appropriations Recommendations
- ARPA-Infrastructure (ARPA-I). ARPA-I, authorized in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, presents a generational opportunity for USDOT to think big and take on monumental challenges across transportation and infrastructure that are ripe for breakthrough innovation. The office has received funding for initial planning and staffing but still requires considerable appropriations to begin building out an initial set of programs around high-priority infrastructure problems. Our recommendation is $500 million in appropriated funds for FY 2024 to scale ARPA-I.
- Secretary of Transportation Open Research Initiative Pilot Program. We recommend that the authorized pilot programs in Section 25013 of the IIJA be appropriated $50 million in funding for FY 2024, as authorized, to spur advanced transportation research.
- Clean Energy Manufacturing Institute for Clean Steel. We recommend that Congress appropriate $15 million in FY 2024 (a similar funding magnitude as existing institutes) for a Clean Energy Manufacturing Institute focused specifically on clean steel.
- Clean Steel and Aluminum Earthshot Appropriations. The budget request for FY 2023 included $204 million for the Department of Energy’s Energy Earthshots Initiative. We recommend this program receive robust continued appropriations in FY 2024, including $15 million to include an earthshot for clean steel and aluminum.
Annual Report 2022
About FAS
When properly harnessed, science, technology, and innovation can greatly benefit society. The challenge, however, is that the U.S. governments often struggle to capitalize on these sources of ideas, evidence, and experience to drive effective policy and governance. FAS exists to change that dynamic.
Founded in 1945, FAS envisions a world where cutting-edge science, technology, ideas and talent are deployed to solve the biggest challenges of our time. We embed science, technology, innovation, and experience into government and public discourse in order to build a healthy, safe, prosperous and equitable society.
Message from the CEO
Friends & Colleagues,
Most of the ideas people write down in Washington fail to inspire action. Yet there is nothing immutable about the status quo. At the Federation of American Scientists, we are obsessed with outcomes, not just the myriad ways that science and technology can make the world a better place, but finding new and better ways to deliver on that vision.
And in 2022, deliver we did. Our team helped inspire a critical compromise that made the generational downpayment in American science of the CHIPS and Science Act happen. Our Talent Hub placed 52 expert fellows in the federal government to deliver on the promises of evidence-based, expert-backed policy. Our policy leaders have published 200+ implementation-ready policy memos, and continue to drive their successful implementation, like the newly funded Advanced Research Projects Agency-Health (ARPA-H). Our renowned Nuclear Information Project broke readership records and kept the public informed on nuclear developments in Eastern Europe and elsewhere at home and abroad. I hope you’ll read more about all of our wins in this year’s FAS Impact Report.
This year was my first full year as CEO of the Federation of American Scientists. I spent much of that time building towards a vision that honors nearly 80 years of impact while growing in new domains and new ways. In this work, I am propelled by the sheer force of our team’s seemingly never-ending optimism. There is always someone at FAS obsessing about policy, process, and progress. From project directors, to research associates, to fellows, and to interns, everyone at FAS has a hunger to do good in the world.
Our team has doubled since last year, and that growth has significantly increased FAS’ caliber. Some organizations have extensive expertise on a topic or deep proficiency in an approach. In a growing range of policy topics, we have both. Our new teammates bring proficiency and experience that strengthen our policy portfolio, widen our capacity for change, and allows us to deliver on our theory of policy entrepreneurship. We are lucky that such deeply motivated and talented individuals seek out FAS to hone their eagerness into a disciplined edge to lead future policy leaders and policy efforts.
And as our team has grown, so have our efforts to build an inclusive and diverse workforce. With support from our newly established DEI Committee, we have instituted a set of equitable hiring processes for Team FAS and our Impact Fellowship placements. We are exceeding our commitments to gender equality for featured speakers on panels. And, we are formulating stronger commitments to promote racial equity through our internal hiring processes as well as our policy development and implementation strategy. However, we are at the early stages of this journey, and approach our DEI strategy with humility and an awareness of the critical work that still needs to be done.
It is impossible for me to fit the entire year’s successes into a single letter, but I hope our annual report brings my update to life.
If you want to support this work, you can donate here, or review our website for exciting policy opportunities, fellowships, or open positions.
Thank you for your continued support,
Daniel Correa,
FAS CEO
Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
FAS is committed–both in principle and in practice–to creating a diverse, equitable, and inclusive environment for all individuals interested in addressing contemporary issues where science, technology, and innovation policy can deliver dramatic progress.
In 2022, FAS has expanded its DEI strategy beyond its initial pledge to:
- Include commitments to reduce bias and improve accessibility in our hiring practices
- Offer equitable employee pay and policies
- Ensure our board and staff reflect a diversity of accessibility status, age, color, creed, disability, ethnicity, gender identity and expression, marital status, military service status, national origin, parental status, physical appearance, race, religion, socioeconomic status, sex, or sexual orientation
Much like our work advancing policy change, FAS approaches the mission of infusing DEI principles into our organizational culture and the importance of broadening our team’s perspectives with urgency. We also recognize that as a science organization with national reach, we can model forward-thinking approaches to these issues that others can emulate. We acknowledge that we still have a long way to go before claiming success, but FAS is committed to this journey for the long run.
Impact Highlights
Social Innovation
The Social Innovation team grew its reach across every aspect of its work, yielding high-impact legislative wins in education R&D policy, solving some of the most critical science and technology policy issues with talent through quadrupling the size of its Impact Fellowship program, and generating novel STEM education policy ideas positioned for impact.
Bolstering the Federal Workforce and Catalyzing Action through the Talent Hub
Less than two years ago, we created the Talent Hub to help federal agencies recruit world-class experts and address high-priority science and technology initiatives. Using established hiring mechanisms, the Talent Hub places FAS Impact Fellows selected by federal agencies into critical roles identified and scoped by agency leaders. The Impact Fellowship has quickly become an indispensable pathway for accomplished experts to undertake a short-term tour of public service.
The Talent Hub has grown explosively in an effort to meet surging agency demand. This year, FAS selected and placed 43 Impact Fellows in 16 different offices across 11 federal agencies. Fellows’ specializations have thus far included wildfire mitigation, cybersecurity in education, and environmental sustainability in federal supply chains. Thanks to the dozens of additional professional development sessions that FAS has provided, the breadth and depth of their work continues to grow. For example, we have recruited policymakers to teach the Fellows how to maximize their tours of service, and created Impact Fellow networking opportunities to establish a cohesive, cross-agency community of policymakers. As a result, these individuals are using their fellowships to implement landmark legislation and advance crucial societal priorities. Even still, the reach and impact of the fellowship far exceeds the work undertaken by its participants.
A core premise of the Impact Fellowship is to serve as proof of concept for federal investment in technical talent. As a direct result of our Impact Fellows’ placements in 2022, they have either directly hired or inspired the hiring of over 50 additional technologists and scientific experts. One shining example is the Institute for Education Sciences’ decision to establish an entire Data Science Unit to scale the work catalyzed by an FAS Impact Fellow.
In 2023, FAS’ commitment to talent will grow and include even more technically diverse Impact Fellows, including the addition of 30 climate science-oriented experts to support implementation of programs funded by the Inflation Reduction Act.
Talent Technical Assistance at the Department of Energy
Our team is constantly searching for new ways to ensure federal agencies have the resources, tools, and expertise needed to implement ambitious science agendas. In 2022, we deepened our work with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help it staff up to drive a clean energy future. DOE’s clean energy efforts – bolstered by allocations for new staff in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act – will require a massive influx of skilled scientists and technologists, many of whom have never considered public service and must be recruited.
Our team stepped in to assist with major hiring and recruiting efforts, working with the collaboration and support of partners such as Breakthrough Energy and Clean Energy for America. With these partners, FAS developed recruiting tools and hosted informational hiring webinars for potential applicants to the agency’s Clean Energy Corps. To date, this work has helped DOE increase short-term capacity to ramp up agency efforts on investments in clean energy technologies, and improved DOE’s long-term capacity to tackle core climate priorities.
In 2023, FAS plans to continue its federal talent partnership work with the Department of Energy, as well as expand that work to other agencies, to scope, recruit, and build pipelines to attract 21st-century talent to federal service. Building on existing assets like FAS’ Flexible Hiring Resources Guide, we will continue to develop technical assistance products for federal partners, engage ecosystem stakeholders like workforce development organizations, start-ups, and nonprofits, and communicate with agency leaders to best support their workforce operations.
Advancing Innovation in Education
Despite the critical importance of our K-12 education system, only a tiny percentage of the federal government’s research funding is dedicated to its improvement. Yet R&D can generate new insights, approaches, and tools to maximize educational outcomes across the board and address deep educational disparities. To pursue this vision, FAS has locked arms with organizations across the nonprofit, private and philanthropic sectors to launch the Alliance for Learning Innovation (ALI). As one example of its success this year, FAS worked through ALI to lead 25 key education stakeholders in a letter of support calling on Congress to increase spending on federal education R&D. The ensuing House Appropriations proposal included marked budget increases for several offices that our coalition recommended for increased funding, including the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships in STEM, the Education Innovation and Research program, and the Institute of Education Sciences.
Additionally, increased federal, state, and local investments in STEM education are urgently needed. In pursuit of this agenda, FAS hosted a “policy accelerator”––an intensive, cohort-based training in policy entrepreneurship. This program––conducted in partnership with Beyond100K––brought together participants passionate about advancing equity and representation in STEM education and beyond. Over two months, these individuals developed actionable policy memos and learned how to promote their ideas. The wide-ranging recommendations advocated how to: incorporate cultural competency into STEM curriculums, include digital ethics principles in classrooms, facilitate inter-minority serving institution collaboration, and increase representation of marginalized individuals in STEM fields, to name a few.
The STEM education policy accelerator’s focus on issues at the intersection of STEM, equity, and representation is part of FAS’ growing DEI mission, which it will continue pursuing in 2023. For example, our team will run a Racial Equity in Tech Policy Accelerator in partnership with the Kapor Center. This accelerator will identify, develop, and publish a set of racial justice and technology policy ideas to be implemented by the legislative and executive branches. Participants will include policymakers, academics, and entrepreneurs with an interest in developing their ideas about racial equity in tech into a tailored, actionable set of policy recommendations for the Biden-Harris Administration and 118th Congress.
Science Policy
The Science Policy team fosters connections between experts with ideas about how to use science to better serve the public good, and policymakers with the capacity to turn those ideas into reality. The team works across a range of priority domains, including environmental justice, wildfire prevention and mitigation, the science of science, evidence-based policy, and more.
This past year, the Science Policy team hosted two Day One Project policy accelerators and guided the development of more than two dozen Day One Project policy memos. Additionally, the team launched and piloted a new fellowship program––the Policy Entrepreneurship Fellowship (PEF)––which supported four early-career researchers in developing and executing implementation strategies for their policy ideas, an effort that yielded an outsized return on investment.
The Progress Studies Policy Accelerator
Across the science policy ecosystem, policymakers and innovators alike have been developing new paradigms to connect institutions to progress. Building on previous work done by Day One contributors to create Focus Research Organizations, FAS partnered with the Institute for Progress to host a Progress Studies Policy (PSP) Accelerator, exploring concrete ways in which successful institutions and policies help generate useful progress in the future. Over the course of seven weeks, accelerator participants developed and advanced ambitious policy ideas to reshape public institutions and drive global progress.
Following the accelerator, we published 10 Day One Project policy memos calling for bold policymaking across economic competitiveness, healthcare, artificial intelligence, and more. We were excited to see multiple recommendations from this suite of memos reflected in the CHIPS and Science Act, including a memo to establish testbeds to support the development of trustworthy and safe AI and machine learning, and a memo to invest in traineeship for STEM graduate students.
Supporting Early-Career Researchers in Policy Entrepreneurship
Early-career researchers interested in using their research for impact and to improve lives suffer from a lack of opportunity to develop their policy muscles. To address this gap, and to foster the next generation of scientist-policy entrepreneurs, FAS launched a series of programs to lift up early-career researchers and help them gain exposure to tools and networks of policy entrepreneurship.
In partnership with the National Science Policy Network (NSPN), FAS hosted an Early Career Researcher (ECR) accelerator where participants published 11 policy memos on topics ranging from the underappreciated importance of the honey bee microbiome to the growing scourge of space junk. Following the accelerator, select participants joined Team FAS as the inaugural cohort of the Policy Entrepreneurship Fellowship (PEF), and received support in efforts to implement their policy memos.
Though most ECR accelerator participants had no significant prior policy experience, many of the ideas contained in the 12 memos produced have begun to gain traction. As an example, Grace Wickerson’s memo, Combating Bias in Medical Innovation, led to the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS) launching a study to explore how racial bias in current pulse oximeter technology may exacerbate disparities in patient outcomes.
This is a really fantastic experience that you will not regret. The FAS/Day One team is incredibly attentive and dedicated to both their mission and their accelerator cohorts. That means you will get an abundance of support and really feel like the ideas you’ve had percolating in the back of your mind are made better through fantastic editing and feedback, and put into the hands of those who have the power to make them into real policy. For those of you who are serious about your science policy foray, this program is for you!
– Early Career Researcher Accelerator Participant
Evidence-Based Policy
By designating 2022 the White House Year of Evidence for Action, the Biden Administration helped make 2022 the biggest year yet for evidence-based policy at the federal level. FAS supported this effort by collaborating with the Pew Charitable Trusts Evidence Project to host an Evidence for Action Challenge, which crowdsourced creative, expert ideas for the future of data-driven policy. Ideas that emerged from the challenge included incorporating evidence on what the public values into policymaking, using unmet desire surveys to facilitate productive collaboration among federal agency staff and external experts, and launching an intergovernmental research and evaluation consortium focused on economic mobility.
FAS also partnered with the White House Office of Management and Budget to host an Evidence Forum that attracted more than 100 participants from across the evidence community. A central theme of the Evidence Forum was the potential of “living” approaches to scientific synthesis to enhance federal initiatives and programs in multiple policy domains. FAS looks forward to pursuing follow-on opportunities from the Forum in FY23. In particular, we are excited to work with our new resident fellow, Dr. Julian Elliott of Monash University, to explore how living evidence can inform the development of CDC guidelines, characterize the nature and impacts of long COVID, and much more.
Environmental Justice
In his 2020 State of the Union address, President Biden reaffirmed his administration’s commitment to promoting environmental justice (EJ). The 2021 Justice40 Initiative is a whole-of-government effort to ensure that at least 40% of the investments and benefits of select federal programs flow to disadvantaged communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution. FAS has been supporting the administration’s EJ priorities through the placement of several EJ-focused Impact Fellows at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), and through weekly strategic check-ins with CEQ’s EJ team, as well as the placement of FAS Impact Fellows. One of our Policy Entrepreneurship Fellows (PEFs), Alexa White, also focused her fellowship on the Justice40 Initiative and related EJ work. The science policy team worked with Alexa and CEQ to prepare an independent assessment of the implementation status of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC)’s Justice40 recommendations. Our analysis, which was completed after the conclusion of the fiscal year, found both progress and setbacks across implementation efforts. We look forward to working with CEQ and agencies in leveraging assessment insights to continue making historic progress on environmental justice issues nationwide in FY23, as well as looking at our own environmental and energy policy work through a justice lens.
Wildfire
By July 2023, the legislatively authorized Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission will deliver a comprehensive set of new wildfire-related policy recommendations to Congress. Ahead of this “make-or-break” year for federal wildland fire policy, FAS has conducted foundational work that will help the Commission achieve its goals, both through talent placement and targeted policy development. Building on the placement of FAS Impact Fellow Jenna Knobloch in USDA’s Office of the Undersecretary for National Resources and Environment, FAS also created a data visualization product to navigate wildfire policy’s complicated federal funding landscape and contextualize the impact of legislative momentum.
In FY23, FAS will continue addressing America’s wildfire crisis. We will place at least two additional Impact Fellows at the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Interior Office of Wildland Fire; we are scoping a third placement at the Environmental Protection Agency which will research wildfire smoke impact. Additionally, FAS has launched a Wildland Fire Policy Accelerator focused on bringing diverse scientific and technical perspectives into the Commission, particularly on topics related to the wide-ranging impacts of climate change, traditional ecological knowledge, technology, and wildfire smoke.
The Bioeconomy
In FY22, FAS laid a foundation for deploying the full scope of our policy entrepreneurship toolkit to help policymakers enable a strong U.S. bioeconomy, which is valued at more than $950 billion and promises rapid growth for a new bio-workforce. In FY 2023, FAS is positioned to respond rapidly to the many bioeconomy-related provisions authorized in the Chips and Science Act and even appropriated for in the Inflation Reduction Act–both of which were signed into law in August 2022–and the Executive Order activating a whole-of-government approach to the bioeconomy released in September 2022. Moving forward, FAS will be crowdsourcing actionable policy ideas and convening biotech and biomanufacturing industry professionals and scholars and working with experts to design a policy agenda that would help support the U.S. bioeconomy.
Technology and Innovation
Over the past year, the Technology and Innovation team at FAS has grown into a hub for entrepreneurial approaches to federal R&D and budgets, regional innovation clusters, industrial strategy for critical and emerging sectors, high-skilled immigration, strategic global development and competition, and more.
CHIPS and Science
In August 2022, President Biden signed into law the biggest investment and reform package for American science in years. The policies, programs, funding targets, and appropriated funds established in the CHIPS and Science Act will better support young people pursuing STEM careers, foster the next generation of American entrepreneurs, and help rebuild the U.S. foundation of science, technology, and innovation. The CHIPS and Science Act represents years of hard work by the science and policy communities. It also represents an enormous success for so many members of the Day One community, as more than a dozen Day One memos became law with the stroke of the President’s pen. These victories underscore the power of democratizing policy entrepreneurship and allowing more citizens to be agents of policy change. The Day One community secured several legislative windfalls, including:
- Authorization of $25M annually for NSF to create an Entrepreneurial Fellows Program. Based on Ilan Gur et al.’s Day One Project memo, this program will provide budding entrepreneurs the resources they need to bring promising laboratory innovations to the marketplace.
- Authorization of a National Secure Data Service as government-wide data infrastructure to advance statistical research. This action responds to calls made by many, including Day One Project contributors Nick Hart and Kathy Stack.
- Authorization for NIST to establish artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) testbeds. This action reflects recommendations made by Tina Huang in a Day One Project Memo to support the development of trustworthy and safe AI.
- Authorization for NSF’s Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP) Directorate to launch a flagship Regional Innovation Engines program. This program will advance translational research and regional innovation, and draws inspiration from the CEO-led structure of Focused Research Organizations proposed by Adam Marblestone and Sam Rodriques.
- Powerful new measures to enhance training and opportunities for early-career STEM professionals, thanks to the Day One Project memo and advocacy efforts of FAS’ Divyansh Kaushik. These measures include requiring federal research-funding proposals to include individual development plans for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
- Expansion of NSF’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program by 3,000 fellows, echoing recommendations for expansion made in Andrew Sosanya’s Day One Project memo.
- Stronger U.S. engagement in international technical standards bodies and standards-setting processes through a variety of measures, directly aligning with recommendations made by Natalie Thompson and Mark Montgomery in a Day One Project memo.
The FAS team also convened a coalition of leading science organizations urging the successful completion of negotiations, and provided the blueprint for a deal on expanding EPSCoR funding, a key sticking point in the final stages. FAS also continues to call for appropriations to back up the science vision established in CHIPS.
The Build Back Better Regional Challenge
In September 2022, the Economic Development Administration announced a $1 billion grant competition to:
- Provide transformational investments to regions across the country
- Grow new regional industry clusters, or
- Scale existing ones
To support this investment in national development, FAS joined a technical assistance coalition to support the implementation of the Build Back Better Regional Challenge (BBBRC). Through this partnership, FAS supported the 60 Phase 1 finalist regions with their R&D innovation and cluster-building strategy, securing specific, actionable, and high-impact commitments from their coalition, and laying the groundwork for forthcoming substantive partnerships between EDA applicants and other federal R&D and regional innovation efforts.
Reaching Global Development Moonshots
To meet the ambitious benchmarks set by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to provide an opportunity for visionaries across the world to develop and publish policy memos, FAS launched the Global Development Moonshot Accelerator in partnership with UnlockAid. Selected applicants, whose submissions covered a range of development solutions to improve human development and overcome threats to extinction, were invited to an in-person workshop in Mexico City.
Following the in-person workshop, participants continued to refine their memos, which we published during the COP27 conference to emphasize the interconnectedness of issues across a changing climate, poverty, and other global issues. Through these memos and strategic global development recommendations, we aim to support the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other global development-focused agencies in becoming more evidence-based, science-based, innovative, and effective.
Day One Project Director Joshua Schoop workshopping in Mexico City
Advanced Research at the Department of Transportation
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, signed into law in November 2021, authorized the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Infrastructure (ARPA-I). The ARPA-I authorization presents a generational opportunity for the Department of Transportation to tackle monumental challenges across transportation and infrastructure–including in the domains of safety, digital infrastructure, resilient and climate-prepared infrastructure, and many more–that are ready for breakthrough innovation. To meet the moment, FAS is supporting the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology (OST-R) in scoping advanced research priorities across a range of infrastructure topics where targeted research can yield innovative new infrastructure technologies, materials, systems, capabilities, or processes. FAS’ approach relies on a proven methodology for research program design—drawn from practitioners at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) —that begins with defining a bold goal and a rigorous plan to achieve it.
The Day One Institute
Although many state and federal programs intend to provide Americans with vital support and resources, they often fall short of their goals. These initiatives neither treat beneficiaries as customers, nor place them at the center of the design of the program and experience. As a result, they frequently suffer from low take-up, poor retention, and inadequate outcomes. The President’s Management Agenda, as well as a December 2021 Executive Order on “Transforming Federal Customer Experience and Service Delivery to Rebuild Trust in Government,” have created a mandate for government agencies to adopt more human-centered approaches to policy, products, and service design.
To meet this moment, FAS is expanding the Day One Institute in 2023. This initiative will scale successful human-centered design and innovation programming, which has been delivered by our team to over 450 civil servants since 2017. In the year ahead, the Day One Institute will pilot workshops in novel professional settings, train new instructors, and create a blended learning model to familiarize 500 public servants with human-centered design and innovation methods, tools, and practices. Over the next two years, our goal is to improve social service delivery across state and federal agencies and to enhance civil servants’ ability to foster and deliver social service programs that meet the needs of diverse customers.
National Security
Over the past year, the National Security team at FAS has worked at the forefront of addressing the emerging threats and risks of an ever-changing security environment, both domestically and internationally:
- FAS’ Nuclear Information Project served as the authoritative voice on the status and trends of nuclear weapons worldwide.
- The Project on the Defense Budget cut through the noise of the U.S. government’s industrial-age budgeting process and broke down barriers to adopting emerging technology solutions in the era of the digitally-defined battlefield.
- The Defense Posture Project laid the groundwork for a U.S. defense posture that is capable and credible, sufficiently restrained to maintain strategic stability, and fiscally sustainable.
Together, these projects contributed smart and innovative solutions to complex challenges facing our world today–––with the goal of making it a safer and more secure place.
Nuclear Information Project
After decades of declining nuclear arsenals and cooperative relations, the nuclear weapons landscape is evolving rapidly for the worse. Additionally, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine and President Putin’s overt nuclear threats have brought the world closer to wartime nuclear use than at any time since the Cold War ended. This new era of nuclear tensions has underscored the critical importance of the Nuclear Information Project (NIP). FAS’ history and well-established reputation as the go-to source for factual information and analysis on nuclear weapons issues makes it uniquely positioned to inform and advise U.S. policymakers, the news media, other organizations, as well as the general public about the status and future of nuclear weapons. In this context, this year, the project had unprecedented reach into key constituencies involved in the policy debate:
- On average, the data generated by the Nuclear Information Project was cited in external analysis every other day.
- The Nuclear Notebook on Russia’s nuclear forces in 2022 broke all previous Nuclear Notebook records by a significant margin, with over 300,000 unique reads within the first three months of publication.
- Nuclear Information Project data in the SIPRI Yearbook was covered in over 4,500 distinct online news articles within the first five days of its publication, including notable international outlets like CNN, Reuters, the Associated Press, the Guardian, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera, Le Monde, and many others.
- Additionally, data in the Nuclear Weapons Ban Monitor was used extensively to track treaty implementation during the First Meeting of States Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
The team is initiating several exciting new projects in 2023, including a pilot fellowship program to address the lack of diversity in the nuclear field and to support aspiring nuclear weapons experts committed to rethinking nuclear deterrence.
Next-Generation Defense Budgeting Project
The United States risks losing its military advantage over rapidly advancing adversaries, in no small part because the Department of Defense (DoD) and the national security community are unable to make effective and timely investment decisions. At the heart of these challenges are industrial-age resource allocation processes, namely the Department’s Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) system, which allocates resources years in advance, establishes categories for the use of funds, sets the lens for congressional oversight, and has limited execution-year flexibility.
The Next-Generation Defense Budgeting Project at FAS worked to broker Congressional consensus to establish a commission focused on generating actionable, bipartisan recommendations that will result in the most comprehensive reform of the PPBE system since the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management and the resulting Goldwaters-Nichols Act of 1986. The benefit to the nation will be a modern military capable of fielding new combat capabilities at pace with the speed of commercial innovation and within the decision cycles of our most determined advisories. This independent commission was authorized as part of the FY22 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
Fiscal Sponsorships
The FAS Fiscal Sponsorship Program seeks to support burgeoning entrepreneurs in science and technology policy. Through this program, FAS provides sponsorship and support for philanthropic endeavors in an effort to forge partnerships and expand our impact in the science community. This year, we sought to grow our fiscal sponsorships not only in number but in the structure and offerings we provide to partners.
The Organs Initiative
Led by Jennifer Erickson
In FY22, the Organs Initiative continued to deliver on its mission to drive data-driven solutions to the organ shortage that sees 33 Americans die every day for lack of an available organ transplant. Key to success was working with partners including Day One Project co-authors from Organize, the Global Liver Institute, the American Society of Nephrology, and bipartisan issue leads from the Obama and Trump administrations, as well as data/technology partners from MIT and alumni of the United States Digital Service (USDS). Over the last year, FAS collaborations delivered high-profile publications that drove Congressional oversight as well as media coverage about the need to accelerate reform of the federal government’s own organ contractors. Following bipartisan, bicameral Congressional calls for acceleration of organ donation reform as an “urgent health equity issue” in July 2021, the Biden administration issued two Requests for Information (RFI) related to accountability for organ contractors.
In response, a wide range of stakeholders echoed FAS calls for open data for evidence of effectiveness and equitable service by organ procurement organizations (OPOs) across the country. Supporters of organ donation open data include leaders of the Senate Finance Committee, the House Oversight Committee, the ACLU, public health physicians, leading data scientists, alumni of the previous four administrations (Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump), all five past Chief Technology Officers of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the National Kidney Foundation, the American Society of Nephrology, Organize, and the Global Liver Institute.
Following a high-profile bipartisan Senate Finance hearing into organ contractor failures in August 2022, and ongoing national media coverage (e.g., two front pages in the Washington Post – one on technology failures and a second on deadly patient safety lapses), the Organs Initiative will continue to work with partners to deliver on bipartisan recommendations for accountability.
Improving America’s Foster Care System
Led by Marina Nitze
One of our major projects is increasing the percentage of children in foster care who live with kin (adults they already know and trust) from 34% to 80% nationwide. Our approach is to understand more about how to find kin through our Resource Family Working Group (which has grown to 20 states representing 137,700 foster youth), where state child welfare leaders come together once a month to surface and scale promising practices and shared challenges. We have collected over 150 promising practices through the group, which are published in the Child Welfare Playbook so other states can easily copy successful strategies from one another. We published a Kin-Finding Progress Dashboard to highlight the progress each state is making toward our identified seven-point kin-finding plan.
Today, every state suffers a dearth of the foster homes their children need most—families who speak their language, live in their school districts, and share their community. Traditional recruitment tactics center around billboard ads and farmers’ market booths, and have no underlying data. In partnership with The Center for Radical Innovation for Social Change (RISC) at the University of Chicago, we are conducting gap analyses in seven states to create a real-time, data-driven recruitment “to-do” list. We have signed up Michigan, Indiana, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Arkansas, Indiana, and Oregon. New Mexico is furthest along—we have completed the gap analysis there and are in the process of rolling out data-driven recruitment dashboards across the state, with the other six states following closely behind. We have partnership agreements with the 3 major IT vendors in the child welfare space to incorporate these dashboards into their IT systems, scaling to over 40 states.
Next year, we hope to start increasing the number of kinship placements nationally by scaling our plays and dashboards through multiple national partners. For example, we will help the Grandfamilies & Kinship Support Network (which runs the federal government’s technical assistance center on kin) run a learning collaborative where every state will adopt at least one practice from our dashboard. We will also help Washington State completely redesign its kin-finding office, as a reference implementation for the rest of the country. In January 2023, we will launch a statewide data-driven foster parent recruitment campaign with Arkansas to surface and scale successful methods for closing its identified gaps in foster family homes. We expect to roll out in Indiana in June 2023. These will be our first two of seven states to demonstrate the potential impact of a data-driven foster home recruitment methodology.
Fundraising and Development
The Federation of American Scientists achieved unprecedented fundraising success in FY22, bringing in $35 million to support a growing portfolio of cutting-edge work across its science, technology, innovation, and national security programs. This is a product of the critical strategic thinking implemented daily by the FAS team to solidify the organization’s presence as an indispensable voice for evidence-based, scientifically-driven policy analysis and research.
in revenue in FY22, an increase of more than 10x over FY21
sources of diversified financial support (a more than 2x increase over FY21), with no single source representing more than 30% of our revenue
raised from individual donors
average individual donation amount
The majority of the funding FAS receives (99.83%) is restricted for the use of specific projects and initiatives, while unrestricted funding (which only accounts for 0.17% of funding) bolsters the organization’s operational capacity.
The critical work being done at FAS would not be possible without the generous support of its philanthropic partners who continue to invest in the organization’s vision for the future.
The Biden Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review
On 27 October 2022, the Biden administration finally released an unclassified version of its long-delayed Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). The classified NPR was released to Congress in March 2022, but its publication was substantially delayed––likely due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is the Pentagon’s primary statement of nuclear policy, produced by the last four presidents during their first years in office.
The NPR outlines the perceived global security environment, offers an overview of US nuclear capabilities, and considers plans for tailored deterrence, assurance, and arms control with allies and adversaries. The NPR can also be used to make changes to US declaratory nuclear policy, to consider alterations to the US nuclear stockpile, or to announce the introduction or retirement of specific weapon systems.
For more analysis, see: The 2022 Nuclear Posture Review: Arms Control Subdued by Military Rivalry
All of the nuclear-armed states––including the United States––plan to retain significant nuclear arsenals for the indefinite future.
All nine countries are modernizing their nuclear forces, several are adding new types, and many are increasing the role that nuclear weapons serve in military strategy and public statements.
For an overview of global modernization programs, see our annual contribution to the SIPRI Yearbook and our Status of World Nuclear Forces webpage. Individual country profiles are available in various editions the FAS Nuclear Notebook, which is published by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and is freely available to the public.
A brief analysis of the 2022 NPR is available below; a more robust and detailed analysis is available on the FAS Strategic Security Blog.
Major Components of the NPR
Assumptions About U.S. Competitors
The NPR suggests that “[b]y the 2030s the United States will, for the first time in its history, face two major nuclear powers as strategic competitors and potential adversaries.” This echoes previous statements from high-ranking US military leaders, including the former and incoming Commanders of US Strategic Command.
China
Given that the National Defense Strategy is largely focused on China, it is unsurprising that the NPR declares China to be “the overall pacing challenge for U.S. defense planning and a growing factor in evaluating our nuclear deterrent.”
Echoing the findings of the previous year’s China Military Power Report, the NPR suggests that “[t]he PRC likely intends to possess at least 1,000 deliverable warheads by the end of the decade.” According to the NPR, China’s more diverse nuclear arsenal “could provide the PRC with new options before and during a crisis or conflict to leverage nuclear weapons for coercive purposes, including military provocations against U.S. Allies and partners in the region.”
Russia
The NPR presents harsh language about Russia, in particular surrounding its behavior around the invasion of Ukraine. In contrast to the Trump administration’s NPR, the assumptions surrounding a potential low-yield escalate-to-deescalate policy are no longer present; instead the NPR simply states that Russia is diversifying its arsenal and that it views its nuclear weapons as “a shield behind which to wage unjustified aggression against [its] neighbors.” The NPR also suggests that “Russia is pursuing several novel nuclear-capable systems designed to hold the U.S. homeland or Allies and partners at risk, some of which are also not accountable under New START.”
Nuclear Declaratory Policy
The NPR reaffirms long-standing policy about the role of U.S. nuclear weapons but with slightly modified language. This includes: 1) Deter strategic attacks, 2) Assure allies and partners, and 3) Achieve U.S. objectives if deterrence fails.
The NPR reiterates the language from the 2010 NPR that the “fundamental role” of U.S. nuclear weapons “is to deter nuclear attacks” and only in “extreme circumstances.” The strategy seeks to “maintain a very high bar for nuclear employment” and, if employment of nuclear weapons is necessary, “seek to end conflict at the lowest level of damage possible on the best achievable terms for the United States and its Allies and partners.”
During his presidential campaign, Joe Biden spoke repeatedly in favor of a no-first-use and sole-purpose policy for U.S. nuclear weapons. But the NPR explicitly rejects both under current conditions.
Interestingly, the NPR states that “hedging against an uncertain future” is no longer a stated (formal) role of nuclear weapons. Hedging has been part of a strategy to be able to react to changes in the threat environment, for example by deploying more weapons or modifying capabilities. The change does not mean that the United States is no longer hedging, but that hedging is part of managing the arsenal, rather than acting as a role for nuclear weapons within U.S. military strategy writ large.
Nuclear Modernization
The NPR reaffirms a commitment to the modernization of its nuclear forces, nuclear command and control and communication systems (NC3), and production and support infrastructure. This is essentially the same nuclear modernization program that has been supported by the past three administrations.
But there are some differences. The NPR also identifies “current and planned nuclear capabilities that are no longer required to meet our deterrence needs.” This includes retiring the B83-1 megaton gravity bomb and cancelling the nuclear sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N). These decisions were expected and survived opposition from defense hawks and nuclear lobbyists.
The review also notes that “[t]he United States will work with Allies concerned to ensure that the transition to modern DCA and the B61-12 bomb is executed efficiently and with minimal disruption to readiness.”
Nuclear-Conventional Integration
Although the integration of nuclear and conventional capabilities into strategic deterrence planning has been underway for years, the NPR seeks to deepen it further. It “underscores the linkage between the conventional and nuclear elements of collective deterrence and defense” and adopts “an integrated deterrence approach that works to leverage nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities to tailor deterrence under specific circumstances.”
This is not only intended to make deterrence more flexible and less nuclear focused when possible, but it also continues the strategy outlined in the 2010 NPR and 2013 Nuclear Employment Guidance to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons by relying more on new conventional capabilities.
Beyond force structure issues, this effort also appears to be a way to “raise the nuclear threshold” by reducing reliance on nuclear weapons but still endure in regional scenarios where an adversary escalates to limited nuclear use. In contrast, the 2018 NPR sought low-yield non-strategic “nuclear supplements” for such a scenario, and specifically named a Russian so-called “escalate-to-deescalate” scenario as a potentially possibility for nuclear use.
A significant challenge of deeper nuclear-conventional integration in strategic deterrence is to ensure that it doesn’t blur the line between nuclear and conventional war and inadvertently increase nuclear signaling during conventional operations.
Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
The Biden administration’s review contains significantly more positive language on arms control than can be found in the Trump administration’s NPR. The NPR concludes that “mutual, verifiable nuclear arms control offers the most effective, durable and responsible path to achieving a key goal: reducing the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy.”
In that vein, the review states a willingness to “expeditiously negotiate a new arms control framework to replace New START,” as well as an expansive recommitment to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), and the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT). However, the authors take a negative view of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), stating that the United States does not “consider the TPNW to be an effective tool to resolve the underlying security conflicts that lead states to retain or seek nuclear weapons.”
The Trump NPR perceived a rapidly deteriorating threat environment in which potential nuclear-armed adversaries are increasing their reliance on nuclear weapons and follows suit. The review reverses decades of bipartisan policy and orders what would be the first new nuclear weapons since the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, the document expands the use of circumstances in which the United States would consider employing nuclear weapons to include “non-nuclear strategic attacks.”
- Nuclear Posture Review Report, February 2018
- FAS 2018 Nuclear Posture Review Resource Page
- Hans M. Kristensen, “New Data Shows Detail About Final Phase of US New START Treaty Reductions,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, January 2018
- Hans M. Kristensen, “NNSA’s New Nuclear Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, November 2017
- Hans M. Kristensen, “The Flawed Push For New Nuclear Weapons Capabilities,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, June 2017
- Adam Mount, “Trump’s Troubling Nuclear Plan,” Foreign Affairs, February 2018
- Adam Mount, “Letting It Be An Arms Race,” The Atlantic, January 2018
- Adam Mount, “The Case Against New Nuclear Weapons,” Center for American Progress, May 2017
The third Nuclear Posture Review set out from the start to produce a comprehensive public document. In this way, the review served several purposes: it provided an opportunity to interpret President Obama’s Prague commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons, to explain the strategic benefits of the New START treaty and to establish the force structure to comply with it, and served as a prominent and public way of communicating with allies and adversaries. The central compact was that as long as nuclear weapons exist, the United States will maintain a safe, secure, and effective deterrent. In this way, the NPR could endorse modernization and sustainment investments while reducing the role and number of nuclear weapons. Though relatively modest in terms of force structure changes, the document’s main innovation was to declare that the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear weapons states that are party to and remain in compliance with their obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty.
- Nuclear Posture Review Report, April 2010
- Report on Nuclear Employment Strategy of the United States, June 2013
- Hans M. Kristensen, “The Nuclear Posture Review,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, April 8, 2010
- Hans M. Kristensen, “Nuclear Posture Review to Reduce Regional Role of Nuclear Weapons,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, February 22, 2010
- Hans M. Kristensen, “New Nuclear Weapons Employment Guidance Puts Obama’s Fingerprint on Nuclear Weapons Policy and Strategy,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, June 20, 2013
- Hans M. Kristensen, “US Nuclear War Plan Updated Amidst Policy Review,” FAS Strategic Security, April 4, 2013
The second NPR was marked by inventive concepts and poor public relations. The intention was to produce a classified document that would be briefed publicly. In open testimony, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith described the NPR as an attempt rethink deterrence for a world where Russia was no longer an enemy. The nation’s strategic posture would no longer depend on Mutual Assured Destruction, but one Feith said would have “the flexibility to tailor military capabilities to a wide spectrum of contingencies.” Operational concepts would rely more on prompt conventional strike and defensive capabilities. To enhance flexibility, the NPR seemed to endorse development of new earth-penetrating warheads and also required a responsive infrastructure that could quickly produce and test new capabilities if a threat arose. Moving away from MAD allowed for a reduction of deployed warheads below 2,200, but the NPR mandated no further modifications to force structure. Three months after the initial briefing, selections of the classified report leaked to the media and were widely criticized by arms control groups and foreign officials. Fairly or unfairly, many read the leaked sections as blurring the line between nuclear and conventional weapons and refusing to accept mutual vulnerability. Administration officials scrambled to clarify but never fully dispelled concerns, leaving more questions than answers.
- “Excerpts of Classified Nuclear Posture Review,” 1/2002
- Amy F. Woolf, “The Nuclear Posture Review,” Congressional Research Service, 1/2002
- Douglas J. Feith, Testimony before Senate Armed Services Committee on the Nuclear Posture Review, 2/2002
- Keith B. Payne, “The Nuclear Posture Review: Setting the Record Straight,” United States Nuclear Strategy Forum, 2005
- Hans M. Kristensen, “STRATCOM Cancels Controversial Preemption Strike Plan,” FAS Strategic Security, July 25, 2008
- Hans M. Kristensen, “The RISOP is Dead – Long Live RISOP-Like Nuclear Planning,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, July 21, 2008
- Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris, and Ivan Oelrich, From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence, FAS Occasional Paper No. 7, April 2009
- Hans M. Kristensen, “White House Guidance Led to New Nuclear Strike Plans Against Proliferators, Document Shows,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, November 5, 2007
- Hans M. Kristensen, “The Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons: New Doctrine Falls Short of Bush Pledge,” Arms Control Today, 9/2005
President Clinton ordered the first NPR to examine the role of nuclear weapons after the end of the Cold War. A five-person steering group led six working groups. The established process broke down in the summer of 1994 over tensions the steering group and the military stakeholders. In the end, the review failed to generate a unitary document; its results were briefed to the press and to Congress. The 1994 NPR established a force structure to comply with the START II Treaty and ordered cuts to each leg of the triad: conversion of four Ohio-class submarines and all B-1 bombers to conventional missions, reduction in B-52 and Minuteman III inventories, and elimination of Minuteman II and Peacekeeper ICBMs. Secretary of Defense Bill Perry summarized the NPR as an attempt to provide leadership for further reductions while hedging against the emergence of threats.
- Office of Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), “DOD Review Recommends Reduction in Nuclear Force,” 9/1994
- US Strategic Command, “Overview of Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) Results,” 9/1994
- John Deutch and Adm. William Owens, Senate Armed Services Committee “Briefing on the Results of the Nuclear Posture Review,” 9/1994
- Hans M. Kristensen, “The 1994 Nuclear Posture Review,” nukestrat.com, July 8, 2005
FAS Expert Analysis
Adam Mount, “The Biden Nuclear Posture Review: Obstacles to Reducing Reliance on Nuclear Weapons,” Arms Control Today, January/February 2022
Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda, “After Trump Secrecy, Biden Administration Restores US Nuclear Weapons Transparency,” FAS Strategic Security Blog, 6 October 2021
Commission on PPBE Reform’s Congressional Language
S. 1605 — National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2022
SEC. 1004. Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform.
(a) Establishment.–
(1) In general.–There is hereby established an independent commission in the legislative branch to be known as the “Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution Reform” (in this section referred to as the “Commission”).
(2) Date of establishment.–The Commission shall be established not later 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.
(b) Membership.–
(1) Number and appointment.–The Commission shall be composed of 14 civilian individuals not employed by the Federal Government who are recognized experts and have relevant professional experience one or more of the following:
(A) Matters relating to the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process of the Department of Defense.
(B) Innovative budgeting and resource allocation methods of the private sector.
(C) Iterative design and acquisition process.
(D) Budget or program execution data analysis.
(2) Members.–The members shall be appointed as follows:
(A) The Secretary of Defense shall appoint two members.
(B) The Majority Leader and the Minority Leader of the Senate shall each appoint one member.
(C) The Speaker of the House of Representatives and the Minority Leader shall each appoint one member.
(D) The Chair and the Ranking Member of the Committee on Armed Services of the Senate shall each appoint one member.
(E) The Chair and the Ranking Member of the Committee on Armed Services of the House of Representatives shall each appoint one member.
(F) The Chair and the Ranking Member of the Committee on Appropriations of the Senate shall each appoint one member.
(G) The Chair and the Ranking Member of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives shall each appoint one member.
(3) Deadline for appointment.–Not later than 30 days after the date described in subsection (a)(2), members shall be appointed to the Commission.
(4) Expiration of appointment authority.–The authority to make appointments under this subsection shall expire on the date described in subsection (a)(2), and the number of members of the Commission shall be reduced by the number equal to the number of appointments so not made.
(c) Chair and Vice Chair.–The Commission shall elect a Chair and Vice Chair from among its members.
(d) Period of Appointment and Vacancies.–Members shall be appointed for the term of the Commission. A vacancy in the Commission shall not affect its powers and shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment was made.
(e) Purpose.–The purpose of the Commission is to–
(1) examine the effectiveness of the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process and adjacent practices of the Department of Defense, particularly with respect to facilitating defense modernization;
(2) consider potential alternatives to such process and practices to maximize the ability of the Department of Defense to respond in a timely manner to current and future threats; and
(3) make legislative and policy recommendations to improve such process and practices in order to field the operational capabilities necessary to outpace near-peer competitors, provide data and analytical insight, and support an integrated budget that is aligned with strategic defense objectives.
(f) Scope and Duties.–The Commission shall perform the following duties:
(1) Compare the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process of the Department of Defense, including the development and production of documents including the Defense Planning Guidance (described in section 113(g) of title 10, United States Code), the Program Objective Memorandum, and the Budget Estimate Submission, with similar processes of private industry, other Federal agencies, and other countries.
(2) Conduct a comprehensive assessment of the efficacy and efficiency of all phases and aspects of the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process, which shall include an assessment of–
(A) the roles of Department officials and the timelines to complete each such phase or aspect;
(B) the structure of the budget of Department of Defense, including the effectiveness of categorizing the budget by program, appropriations account, major force program, budget activity, and line item, and whether this structure supports modern warfighting requirements for speed, agility, iterative development, testing, and fielding;
(C) a review of how the process supports joint efforts, capability and platform lifecycles, and transitioning technologies to production;
(D) the timelines, mechanisms, and systems for presenting and justifying the budget of Department of Defense, monitoring program execution and Department of Defense budget execution, and developing requirements and performance metrics;
(E) a review of the financial management systems of the Department of Defense, including policies, procedures, past and planned investments, and recommendations related to replacing, modifying, and improving such systems to ensure that such systems and related processes of the Department result in–
(i) effective internal controls;
(ii) the ability to achieve auditable financial statements; and
(iii) the ability to meet other financial management and operational needs; and
(F) a review of budgeting methodologies and strategies of near-peer competitors to understand if and how such competitors can address current and future threats more or less successfully than the United States.
(3) Develop and propose recommendations to improve the effectiveness of the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process.
(g) Commission Report and Recommendations.–
(1) Interim report.–Not later than February 6, 2023, the Commission shall submit to the Secretary of Defense and the congressional defense committees an interim report including the following:
(A) An examination of the development of the documents described in subsection (f)(1).
(B) An analysis of the timelines involved in developing an annual budget request and the future-years defense program (as described in section 221 of title 10, United States Code), including the ability to make changes to such request or such program within those timelines.
(C) A review of the sufficiency of the civilian personnel workforce in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation to conduct budgetary and program evaluation analysis.
(D) An examination of efforts by the Department of Defense to develop new and agile programming and budgeting to enable the United States to more effectively counter near-peer competitors.
(E) A review of the frequency and sufficiency of budget and program execution analysis, to include any existing data analytics tools and any suggested improvements.
(F) Recommendations for internal reform to the Department relating to the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process for the Department of Defense to make internally.
(G) Recommendations for reform to the planning, programming, budgeting, and execution process that require statutory changes.
(H) Any other matters the Commission considers appropriate.
(2) Final report.–Not later than September 1, 2023, the Commission shall submit to the Secretary of Defense and the congressional defense committees a final report that includes the elements required under paragraph (1).
(3) Briefings.–Not later than 180 days after the date specified in subsection (a)(2), and not later than 30 days after each of the interim and final reports are submitted, the Commission shall provide to the congressional defense committees a briefing on the status of the review and assessment conducted under subsection (f) and include a discussion of any interim or final recommendations.
(4) Form.–The reports submitted to Congress under paragraphs (1) and (2) shall be submitted in unclassified form but may include a classified annex.
(h) Government Cooperation.–
(1) Cooperation.–In carrying out its duties, the Commission shall receive the full and timely cooperation of the Secretary of Defense in providing the Commission with analysis, briefings, and other information necessary for the fulfillment of its responsibilities.
(2) Liaison.–The Secretary shall designate at least one officer or employee of the Department of Defense to serve as a liaison between the Department and the Commission.
(3) Detailees authorized.–The Secretary may provide, and the Commission may accept and employ, personnel detailed from the Department of Defense, without reimbursement.
(4) Facilitation.–
(A) Independent, non-government institute.–Not later than 45 days after the date specified in subsection (a)(2), the Secretary of Defense shall make available to the Commission the services of an independent, nongovernmental organization, described under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and which is exempt from taxation under section 501(a) of such Code, which has recognized credentials and expertise in national security and military affairs, in order to facilitate the discharge of the duties of the Commission under this section.
(B) Federally funded research and development center.–On request of the Commission, the Secretary of Defense shall make available the services of a federally funded research and development center in order to enhance the discharge of the duties of the Commission under this section.
(i) Staff.–
(1) Status as federal employees.–Notwithstanding the requirements of section 2105 of title 5, United States Code, including the required supervision under subsection (a)(3) of such section, the members of the commission shall be deemed to be Federal employees.
(2) Executive director.–The Commission shall appoint and fix the rate of basic pay for an Executive Director in accordance with section 3161(d) of title 5, United States Code.
(3) Pay.–The Executive Director, with the approval of the Commission, may appoint and fix the rate of basic pay for additional personnel as staff of the Commission in accordance with section 3161(d) of title 5, United States Code.
(j) Personal Services.–
(1) Authority to procure.–The Commission may–
(A) procure the services of experts or consultants (or of organizations of experts or consultants) in accordance with the provisions of section 3109 of title 5, United States Code; and
(B) pay in connection with such services the travel expenses of experts or consultants, including transportation and per diem in lieu of subsistence, while such experts or consultants are traveling from their homes or places of business to duty stations.
(2) Maximum daily pay rates.–The daily rate paid an expert or consultant procured pursuant to paragraph (1) may not exceed the daily rate paid a person occupying a position at level IV of the Executive Schedule under section 5315 of title 5, United States Code.
(k) Authority to Accept Gifts.–The Commission may accept, use, and dispose of gifts or donations of services, goods, and property from non-Federal entities for the purposes of aiding and facilitating the work of the Commission. The authority in this subsection does not extend to gifts of money. Gifts accepted under this authority shall be documented, and conflicts of interest or the appearance of conflicts of interest shall be avoided. Subject to the authority in this section, commissioners shall otherwise comply with rules set forth by the Select Committee on Ethics of the Senate and the Committee on Ethics of the House of Representatives governing Senate and House employees.
(l) Legislative Advisory Committee.–The Commission shall operate as a legislative advisory committee and shall not be subject to the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act (Public Law 92-463; 5 U.S.C. App) or section 552b, United States Code (commonly known as the Government in the Sunshine Act).
(m) Contracting Authority.–The Commission may acquire administrative supplies and equipment for Commission use to the extent funds are available.
(n) Use of Government Information.–The Commission may secure directly from any department or agency of the Federal Government such information as the Commission considers necessary to carry out its duties. Upon such request of the chair of the Commission, the head of such department or agency shall furnish such information to the Commission.
(o) Postal Services.–The Commission may use the United States mail in the same manner and under the same conditions as departments and agencies of the United States.
(p) Space for Use of Commission.–Not later than 30 days after the establishment date of the Commission, the Administrator of General Services, in consultation with the Commission, shall identify and make available suitable excess space within the Federal space inventory to house the operations of the Commission. If the Administrator is not able to make such suitable excess space available within such 30-day period, the Commission may lease space to the extent the funds are available.
(q) Removal of Members.–A member may be removed from the Commission for cause by the individual serving in the position responsible for the original appointment of such member under subsection (b)(1), provided that notice has first been provided to such member of the cause for removal and voted and agreed upon by three quarters of the members serving. A vacancy created by the removal of a member under this subsection shall not affect the powers of the Commission, and shall be filled in the same manner as the original appointment was made.
(r) Termination.–The Commission shall terminate 180 days after the date on which it submits the final report required by subsection (g)(2).
Resource Allocation Questions To Be Answered
The Day One Project recently conducted a white-boarding session with 20 PPBE experts. The product of this seminar is the following list of broad questions about the financial barriers to the Department of Defense’s efforts to modernize the US military. These questions, and the research necessary to answer them, can serve as a roadmap for the Commission on Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) Reform’s work.
- Do PPBE and related resource allocation processes, including the appropriations process, limit the ability of emerging technologies to cross the “valley of death” into operations and contribute to DoD’s inability to compete in time with agile competitors?
- Is the DoD’s current planning process able to translate future concepts of operations into the programming guidance necessary to develop future warfighting capabilities, or is it overly constrained by the construct of a weapons system program?
- Does the current emphasis on a predictive requirements system hinder the Department’s ability to rapidly adopt emerging technologies and undermine its use of recent procurement reforms?
- Is the Department’s reliance on manual data calls, PowerPoint presentations, and PDF spreadsheets hosted on different enterprise systems a hindrance to effective budgetary oversight and digital transparency?
- Are year-of-execution reprogramming authorities big enough or flexible enough to allow the Department to take advantage of the dynamics of the emerging technology market?
- Are DoD’s programmatic measures of effectiveness and performance structured to value adherence to original predictions over the potential of unforeseen outcomes? Is the DoD measuring the right things?