数据管理系统

菜单

21:17:12

序号	标题 / 预览内容	原文长度	来源	发布时间入库时间	下载
3232661	无图 <p>Regulating how AI is used—not how it"s built—is the only way to protect innovation and give small startups a fair shot. Rob and Jackie sit down with Matt Perault, Head of Artificial Intelligence Policy at Andreessen Horowitz, to discuss the significant burden regulatory frameworks can place on smaller tech companies and the critical role of government in AI regulation.</p>MentionedEzra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance, (Simon and Schuster, March 2025).Robert D. Atkinson and Meghan Ostertag, “Congress Should Fully Fund NSF’s TIP Directorate to Make America More Competitive Versus China,” (ITIF, June 2025).Robert D. Atkinson, “2025 Bromley Memorial Lecture: US Science Policy at a Crossroads,” (ITIF, March 2025).RelatedMatt Perault, “A Policy Blueprint for US Investment in AI Talent and Infrastructure,” (Andreessen Horowitz, Marc 2025).Auto-Transcript<p>Rob Atkinson: Welcome to Innovation Files. I"m Rob Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: And I"m Jackie Whisman. I head development at ITIF, which I"m proud to say is the world"s top-ranked think tank for science and technology policy.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: And this podcast is about all sorts of different technology issues and their relationship to policy. So, if you"re into this stuff, be sure to subscribe and rate us.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: Our guest is Matt Perault, Head of Artificial Intelligence Policy at Andreessen Horowitz. He oversees the firm"s policy strategy on AI and helps portfolio companies navigate the AI policy landscape. Matt recently released new policy proposals on behalf of the firm that outline how broad AI disclosure mandates impact small startups. That"s mostly what we"re going to talk about today, but I think we"re going to expand it a bit so that we get a better understanding of your work. Thanks for being here, Matt.</p><p>Matt Perault: Thanks for having me on.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: If you live under a rock and you don"t know what Andreessen Horowitz is, it"s one of the leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms, really doing amazing work. They support startups, but also think about startup policy, which I think distinguishes them from a lot of other VC firms that kind of have their head focused only on the Valley. I really enjoy reading Mark Andreessen"s prolific posts and other social media; very insightful. And Matt, really glad to have you here.</p><p>Matt Perault: Thanks so much. It"s a good place to start. The focus for us really is on figuring out a policy agenda for "little tech". As you described, some people see a mismatch between our firm being large and the companies in our portfolio, and how we describe our work. We are a large venture capital firm. So, I think there are people who say, "How can this large firm be a voice for little tech?" From our perspective, the challenge in terms of the political economy of little tech is that there aren"t that many voices who support small startups. You guys obviously do, and there are others out there. Engine is a wonderful organization. Obviously, Y Combinator does this work too. But there aren"t that many voices for little tech firms.</p><p>So, what we see repeatedly, I think, are policy frameworks designed to regulate various different parts of the tech ecosystem, including AI, in ways that we think are disproportionately harmful for little tech. Sometimes they advantage large tech companies. Sometimes they disadvantage them, but disadvantage them less than they would disadvantage smaller companies. Our goal as a firm is to try to ensure that there"s a level playing field so that small companies, which are already going to struggle to compete with larger tech platforms, are able to compete as effectively as they possibly can.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: It"s such an important issue because smaller firms don"t have the money, they don"t have the time; they"re just trying to meet payroll and do their work. They really don"t have the time or resources to come to Washington to advocate. We see that certainly in other countries where they"ve put in place these policy regimes that purportedly are to rein in large tech, but they end up with so much collateral damage. We see that in Europe, where recent studies from good, objective, independent European academics have shown how harmful some of these policies have been to startups. That kind of gets lost a lot of times in the dialogue.</p><p>Matt Perault: I think that"s exactly right. I assume you"re referring primarily to the work that"s been done around privacy regulation and GDPR?</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Yep.</p><p>Matt Perault: I heard a presentation a couple of weeks ago from a competition law scholar who said there are many studies showing that as a result of GDPR in Europe, there"s been a decrease in VC investment and a decrease in startup formation. The way that he framed it is there"s literally no study on the other side that has suggested that GDPR has actually led to more VC investment in Europe and more startup formation.</p><p>Europe has kept going with other laws that we would expect—and who knows if this will be right or not—but we would expect would have similar impacts on market concentration, like the Digital Services Act, which is focused on content moderation. And certainly, I think the EU AI Act that we"re concerned about in terms of the impact that it would have in Europe, but also concerned about the way that model might get adopted into various different regimes in the United States at the federal level.</p><p>You said in your last comment, talking about the ability of startups to fly to Washington D.C., but as we know, policy isn"t just made in Washington D.C. It"s made in 50 state capitals. In our experience, founders struggle to have the time to do that, and then to ensure that they can advocate effectively for their interests. They certainly struggle to travel to 50 state capitals and try to ensure that state regulation isn"t making it harder for them to compete.</p><p>Actually, I think that"s been one of the most interesting and also most challenging components of my job so far. Figuring out how to be as effective a resource as I possibly can be to the little tech companies in our portfolio. There are several reasons that are quite challenging. The main one is that I"m the head of AI policy. Most of the firms that we work with might not have a head of policy, let alone someone who"s focused just on AI regulation. Some of them don"t have general counsel; many of them don"t.</p><p>So, the companies that so far I"ve ended up doing the most direct work with are the companies that have more built-out teams. So, they have someone who"s closer to and equivalent to me. I think that makes structural sense, but I"m not sure it makes sense from a long-term policy perspective. Companies that are really small, that might not have general counsel, might not have a head of policy. It"s conceivable that they"re going to be impacted by whatever regulatory environment is created for AI. But not only do they not have a voice in the policy conversation, it"s even challenging to figure out how to staff a call with one of their investors. I think that just structurally makes it really challenging and puts them at a significant disadvantage in ensuring that the regulatory regime that we get in an area like AI is one that"s workable for them.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Absolutely.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: One thing that you proposed recently is a policy framework that starts with the principle: "regulate use, not development," which really resonates with us. Can you unpack why that distinction is so important, especially for the smaller tech companies and the broader tech ecosystem?</p><p>Matt Perault: Let me start with the second part of that—regulating development. I think, I have not done this, I don"t know if you guys have, but looked at all the different AI proposals and classified them based on whether they regulate use or development. My guess is that 80 plus percent regulate development, maybe higher than that, 90 plus percent. And development-focused regulations are regulations that impose various different requirements on the development process.</p><p>I was going to say "burdens," and I don"t want to necessarily use a term that sort of suggests that it"s necessarily negative, but from our perspective, if you"re introducing requirements on the development process, you are burdening it. It essentially functions as a tax on AI development itself.</p><p>And if AI development were problematic in most or all cases, then we might want that; we might want to tax the math and science of the creation and building of AI. But AI development is not necessarily problematic. And actually, I think if you were just at a very high level saying, "Is it the policy agenda of 50 state governments to have more innovative, more aggressive AI development or not?" I think most policymakers would say, "We want more". But the concern, I think, is "we want more of this, but we do want to address harmful use cases".</p><p>There are cases where AI could be used in a harmful way. The odd thing about focusing a policy agenda on regulating development is it doesn"t really target harmful use. So, I think the idea of regulating development is: people are building this technology, as they build it, there will be harmful things that come from it. And so, as a result, what we can do is make it harder to develop the technology in ways that might be problematic and therefore will cause less harm, and it"s conceivable that would be the case. But as I"m describing, you don"t just dampen the harmful development, you dampen the beneficial development as well.</p><p>So, I think the question is, is there a way to target harmful use without getting in the way of the productive development that we would want to see? From our standpoint, that is a tool and a perspective that"s available to policymakers. And that means focusing on enforcement of existing law where AI would be used in a harmful way. The former chair of the FTC made the point that we agree with: that there"s not an exception to existing law for AI. So, if a person or a company uses AI in a way that violates consumer protection law, that would be a violation of consumer protection law. The same goes for civil rights law. The same goes for antitrust law. The same goes for criminal law. And I think importantly, there"s federal criminal law, but the bulk of criminal laws are at the state level.</p><p>So states, I think, have an important role to play in regulating harmful use as well. From our perspective, the primary initial thrust for lawmakers should be focusing on ensuring that existing law can be enforced against harmful uses. I think we actually want to make sure that enforcement agencies at the state and federal level are well-equipped to do that enforcement. And that means having the personnel that they need, it means having the financial resources that they need. I think importantly, it means having the technical understanding that they need in order to enforce existing law.</p><p>Of course, it"s conceivable also that existing law wouldn"t be sufficient, and if existing law is not sufficient, then we think it"s important for policymakers to think about how to address marginal risk that"s created by AI, but focusing the new law on harmful uses that are related to AI. So to the extent AI is a contributor to problems in deepfakes or fraud or other kinds of harmful activity, punish those harmful uses. Don"t make it harder to develop the underlying technology.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: You mentioned they regulate development, and a lot of proposals want to do that, and in a lot of ways it"s just bizarre. Can you imagine NHTSA at DOT regulating how cars are made and they say, "We"re sorry. You can"t use arc welding; you have to use gas welding"?</p><p>Matt Perault: Right.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: No, what they say is, "The joint has to be this strong". You don"t worry about how the metal is put together. And the reason for that is because, A: the government can never know enough about that. And B: maybe there"s a third way of doing welding that"s even better. And AI to me is such a dynamic field. Every day it changes. So, I don"t see how the government could ever figure out the right way to do development.</p><p>Matt Perault: I think it"s challenging. And again, initially I thought of that as a way to just leave space for development. That"s what I thought the primary thrust of that direction of travel would be. But the more that I thought about it, the more I thought it"s not just about leaving space for development. It"s also that if you"re serious about harmful use of AI, you wouldn"t regulate development. Regulating development, I think, is problematic from our perspective for two reasons. One, it makes it harder for little tech companies to build AI tools. And the second is it"s not the most efficient, direct, helpful, and likely to be a successful mechanism for protecting consumers.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Yeah, it"d be like saying we"re going to regulate traffic safety by regulating welding rather than having speed limits.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: That"s right. I was just going to ask on that point, like, what are the most critical things the government needs to get right when it comes to federal AI policy?</p><p>Matt Perault: So, I think the primary focus for the federal government needs to be making clear that there"s not an exception to existing law for AI. And then I think it"s important to ensure that federal and also state enforcers have the resources they need to make that real, to ensure that you can enforce existing law when it comes to harmful uses related to AI. Then there are, I think, a lot of structural things that the government can do to help make it easier for little tech companies to compete.</p><p>And the position of our firm is not that little tech companies deserve a special handout. The perspective is instead, let"s try to not make it more difficult for them to compete in an area where I think competition is already really challenging. Even in a world where there"s a level playing field, AI is an industry with high barriers to entry. You have significant data needs, you have significant talent needs. You need the engineers in order to build the AI tools; you need access to computers and energy in order to build an AI model. And so that on its own is challenging.</p><p>There are other things I think the government can do, that kind of help to level the playing field a little bit there. So, we suggest, for instance, the creation of a national AI competitiveness institute that would provide access to data and access to compute resources for researchers and government entities, and also potentially for startups.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: This is very much tuned to our thinking. We"ve actually been writing about AI policy for over a decade. And from the very beginning, we said, "Don"t regulate inside the engine, regulate how it"s used". If you want it to be used in a certain way, then that"s how the law should state it. And then related to that also is the role of government to be an enabler. That"s one of our big criticisms of the Europeans, is they see this as a Gulliver"s thing. You"ve got to tie this monster down as opposed to your point, that there are already existing laws out there. If you want to use AI to give somebody a loan, and it has a bias against a protected class—</p><p>Matt Perault: Yep.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: —you are going to get prosecuted. The law says you can"t do that. You can"t do it personally. You can"t do it with a spreadsheet. You can"t do it with AI. The $64,000 question as we speak today, which is June 25th: Congress is debating in the Big Beautiful Bill a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. And some people love it. Some people hate it. The motivation for it is particularly for small companies, but also for us. I think of us, having to comply with 50 different privacy rules as a not very big think tank. So there the spirit is to say, "Wait a minute, let"s not have 50 different rules for a startup to comply with". What are your thoughts on that?</p><p>Matt Perault: We wrote a piece a couple of months ago thinking through how to think about the federal role and state role in AI governance. I think sometimes when people talk about preemption, that can sound—and sometimes people actually literally say—that it basically means the federal government should act and states should not, and that"s not the way that we think about it.</p><p>We think that it"s important for states and the federal government to each play the role that the Constitution assigns to them in AI governance. And in general, I think that means the federal government should play a role in governing the national AI market. That"s core to Congress"s competency, to regulate interstate commerce. But that doesn"t mean states should do nothing.</p><p>I think it"s important that states actually police harmful conduct within their borders. There are some areas where it"s clear that states have primary competency. And so that"s for things like state criminal law, which is the overwhelming majority of the body of criminal laws at the state level. And it"s important that if AI is used in ways that violate state criminal law, that people are held to account. I think that"s important not just in those kind of individual use cases, but it"s important for the overall long-term health of the technology.</p><p>One thing that I didn"t know coming into a venture capital firm is how long-term our interests are. Our funds have a 10-year life cycle, which means we"re aiming for this industry to be successful over a long period of time. It doesn"t work from our point of view if there"s some sort of short-term boom and then people start to be really scared of the technology, they experience a lot of harms associated with it, it"s not a good user experience, and then the market crashes. That"s not going to work in terms of our fund performance.</p><p>I think states being active in terms of policing harmful conduct within their jurisdictions is important. But as you"re describing for a small think tank, it"s certainly true for most tech companies, but particularly the smaller ones, trying to navigate a 50-state patchwork is really challenging. Sometimes people think about it as an abstraction. It"s not an abstraction in AI. There are over a thousand bills introduced, I think, in this set of state sessions. There are a significant number of them that have been modeled on the EU model for governing AI in some form. There are things that are closer to the EU model, things that are further away from it, but that include a lot of the elements.</p><p>That model requires, I think, a pretty significant investment of compliance resources. You have to do things like make determinations about whether you"re engaged in high-consequential decision-making, whether the model that you"re developing poses an unreasonable risk of critical harm. You have to make these kinds of assessments, and then in many of the bills that have been introduced, engage in a fairly robust compliance process. </p><p>So, you have to do impact assessments. Sometimes you need a third-party body to help you with the impact assessments, to engage an auditing function to ensure that you"ve done your impact assessments correctly. That"s burdensome for little tech, and it"s disproportionately burdensome for little tech.</p><p>If that was allowed to continue, that would make these markets more concentrated and it would make it harder for little tech to compete. I think that"s clearly a problem. I think it"s great that Congress is taking some action to address that. There are many different ways to do it. And the main misperception of the moratorium is that it actually does include a fairly broad exception, and the exception is for AI laws at the state level that are generally applicable.</p><p>That would mean, for instance, if there is a violation of an unfair and deceptive trade practices law at the state level where AI was used as part of that violation, an attorney general could enforce that law against a perpetrator. And I think that is a really important exception that brings this model a little bit closer to the way that we outlined it in the piece about the roles of the state government and federal governments.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: On that kind of same topic, government procurement is also a huge topic here, especially for the smaller tech companies trying to break in. What changes do you think would make it easier for government to access the best systems and also level the playing field for companies of all sizes?</p><p>Matt Perault: We"ve talked a little bit about that in response to the White House"s call for comments on a national AI action plan. The basic idea, I think, is making sure that little tech companies are able to compete alongside larger, more established players in the procurement process. Primarily around streamlining the process so that companies that can devote fewer resources to the kind of administrative bureaucratic overhead that would be needed in order to compete in the procurement process, are able to actually compete.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Matt, my son did a Silicon Valley startup, not funded by you guys, I have to say. It was another firm. Began with the letters KP. And he had a great time. He was doing computer software stuff, and it was just fantastic experience, and he ended up deciding he wanted to get his PhD. So he applied for and received an NSF fellowship to do machine learning. One of the problems now is that, again, I don"t say this in a partisan way, but because of the funding cuts at NSF, they"ve cut their PhD fellowships, I believe, in half.</p><p>This is hard stuff and it"s still early, and we need people, we need PhDs to be able to do this. So, I"m just curious, how do you see that? I mean, we certainly rely on and should on foreign talent, but there"s this backlash against that. What are your thoughts on that, and particularly how it relates to startups? Maybe their attraction is, "Hey, we"re more flexible, we"re more innovative, you"ve got a little more freedom, and maybe you"ve got options". But they just certainly can"t pay as much initially on average as say, a larger company can.</p><p>Matt Perault: I think it"s an important question to examine, and it"s something that we"ve been concerned about as well. I thought it was encouraging that the NSF put out a request for comments related to AI research and development. So, what would be the right way for the NSF to think about a research agenda for AI? And we submitted comments in that process, and we haven"t yet seen what the NSF is going to develop in response to it. But I"m hopeful that they will be responsive to some of the concerns that you"re expressing now. And I think there are a whole bunch of components of it.</p><p>Obviously, ensuring that there"s sufficient talent is important. We suggest ensuring that there is opportunity for research and development really at the frontier, focused on foundational and disruptive AI research. There"s been lots of discussions about open-source tools and the role that open-source tools can play in innovation and competition. We think it"s important that researchers can focus on that.</p><p>There"s also a lot of stuff on AI governance that"s interesting as a potential research agenda. I was actually frustrated in my academic work. I was previously at UNC and before that at Duke. It felt to me like there were relatively few academics doing empirical research on various different governance regimes and trying to evaluate their effectiveness. Like we talked earlier about GDPR. It would just be so helpful if there were more and more studies really looking in a detailed way about GDPR"s impact in Europe. And my hope would be there would be similar ones for other governance regimes and tech policy in Europe too, like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, so that we can learn some things about how those different regimes play out in practice.</p><p>Hopefully that would mean the next time they"re implemented, they"ll be implemented more effectively, or that Europe would consider shifts to those regimes if they learn things about how they could be implemented better. And so, I think NSF could play a role in funding that kind of research. And then there were two other components of our comments as well. One was focused on the use of AI in government itself, which I think is really important, figuring out how to use AI in a way that creates government efficiencies.</p><p>And in particular, I think enables the government to deliver services more effectively to people. And then the final thing is thinking about improvements in research design. I recently read, as I think many people have, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson"s book Abundance, and there"s a really interesting chapter there just thinking about not just research on its own terms, but research on research. How do we think about a research agenda that"s likely to be more effective? And how do we apply research methods to the process of research itself so that government funding results in stronger research yields, more effective research yields? And I think it would be helpful if NSF was focused on that as well.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Yeah, NSF has a program that they put in place, but also Congress in the CHIPS and Science Act called TIP—Technology Innovation Partnerships. We actually have a report coming out on it, and it"s a good program that tries to do some of that.</p><p>Just a quick comment before we wrap up. I was talking to a colleague of mine who"s head of a CS department in the US, and one of the things he was lamenting was the salaries are so high now and the supply is limited. A lot of faculty end up looking to, as perhaps you have done, looking to the private sector. His point was we need to have longer-term commitments to AI research centers for faculty. So they"ll know for five years you"re going to get a good amount of money, you"re going to be able to train your PhD students. And I think that"s something we should be thinking of. And you can speak to this, Matt, a lot of academics want to stay in academia because the work is so interesting, but if the funding is so insecure, et cetera, et cetera.</p><p>Matt Perault: Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this. Part of what you"re describing feels to me like the kinds of things that you and I worry about when we think about antitrust law, generally, about incumbents and complacency. I"m not sure that guaranteed locked-in funding, independent of performance and essentially shielding institutions from competition, is a positive thing.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Sorry, I was arguing you would have to go through a competition to win this. So for five years, or three years or four years, you would be able to have a program and then it would be rebid.</p><p>Matt Perault: I guess there are different mechanisms for it. My experience in academia suggested that there are really important, meaningful reforms that need to happen in academia to create stronger incentives to produce research that is oriented around real-world impacts, and specifically more focused on how to create good tech policy.</p><p>I just think there is actually a relatively small amount of academic research that"s focused on that question. And traditionally there"s been a trade-off for people pursuing academic careers where they know the salaries are not going to be competitive with the private sector, but they"re going to have a significant amount of freedom to do research and writing and thinking. People self-select based in part on whether that trade-off seems appealing to them. That still seems generally right.</p><p>When you go into an organization, you are operating on behalf of the organization and there"s a decrease in freedom that happens as a result of that. And I think researchers who really want to pursue completely independent research—there"s some of that certainly that happens at tech companies, but primarily that"s going to happen in academia.</p><p>I think that still continues to be the primary incentive. If there are ways to spur more interesting, dynamic research, and part of that is providing some protection to academics who engage in it, that makes sense to me, but I"m wary that the current conversation about academic reforms is somewhat more focused on protecting a prior business model.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: A hundred percent. That"s something we"ve been pushing. I just actually gave an Alan Bromley Memorial Science Policy Lecture, which said exactly that. Matt, we are out of time. This is great. We could do this for another 30 minutes, and as we were talking about earlier, we could do a podcast just on biking.</p><p>Matt Perault: I am looking forward to that one.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: This is great. Thank you for being with us.</p><p>Matt Perault: Thanks a lot.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: And that’s it for this week. If you liked it, please be sure to rate us and subscribe. Feel free to email show ideas or questions to [emailprotected]. You can find the show notes and sign up for our weekly email newsletter on our website itif.org. And follow us on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn @ITIFdc.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: We have more episodes and great guests lined up and we hope you"ll continue to tune in.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: Talk to you soon.</p> Podcast: The Case for Smarter AI Regulation, With Matt Perault \| ITIF	查看 29610	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232660	无图 <p>The temptation to impose digital services taxes (DSTs) on America’s Big Tech giants is proving hard for governments all around the world to resist. At a time of tight national budgets, there’s cash to be grabbed. DSTs are often politically popular as many citizens believe that tech companies (and America) should be punished for various real and imagined sins. There’s also understandable envy at Big Tech’s wealth and scale. Most recently, DSTs have become a useful bargaining chip in high-stakes trade negotiations.</p><p>But from a legal perspective, these motivations are largely irrelevant. Instead, policymakers must justify why they should be allowed to tax the major digital companies very differently from the leading firms in other industries. This challenge explains why so much of the DST debate has centered around obscure and abstract notions of a company’s “physical presence” and whether the company’s users “create value.”</p><p>International trade law has long stipulated that companies can only be taxed in countries where they have a physical presence and where value is created. Digital businesses don’t necessarily need a physical presence in every country, but they clearly have a strong virtual one in most. Legally, that’s a plausible stretch, but DST defenders must also argue that, while digital companies don’t create new value in many countries in which they operate, their users do. This claim takes us into much murkier and academic territory.</p><p>Theorists have been debating the nature of economic value for centuries without a clear consensus, and the nature of user-created value seems to be similarly in the eye of the beholder. There are at least three relevant forms:</p>Activity. Just about every consumer activity can lead to some form of value creation. When you buy a car, a washing machine, or groceries, you can easily create value for others in the form of transportation, clean clothes, or nice meals. Social media content, messaging services, and blogs can be seen in a similar creating-value-for-others light.Skills. Companies have long sought to leverage the knowledge and skills of their users, which is why many firms support user groups, brand ambassadors, product evangelists, and other forms of customer interaction and feedback. Digital users create similar value whenever they upload an instructional video to YouTube, edit a Wikipedia page, post a product review, or become an influencer in some other way.Data. While DST supporters like to stress the value of the user data digital service providers accumulate, just about every modern company seeks to leverage its user data to profile, target, and serve its customers. Whether this data comes from transactions, surveys, focus groups, analytics, algorithms, machine learning, or the Internet of Things, it’s not unique to digital service firms.<p>DST proponents argue that while digital and non-digital companies both leverage user-created value, it’s significantly greater in the former. But this is more a difference in degree than in kind. More importantly, does anyone really believe that this abstract debate compellingly explains why tech companies should be taxed radically differently than other sectors? It’s obvious that DST supporters are making the user-value argument much more out of necessity than conviction. No matter how flimsy, it provides legal cover for policymakers to do what they want.</p><p>That’s why it’s important for opponents of such unprecedented cash grabs to argue more coherently and effectively against the logic of digital uniqueness. Since digital is not unique, there’s no logical reason why the United States couldn’t impose an “Analogue Production Tax” (APT) on European companies that sell in the United States but don’t produce here. Perhaps we should start with a 5 percent tax on all Porsche profits in America since their profits are not currently taxed by the U.S. Treasury but user value is certainly added in the United States.</p><p>Thankfully, President Trump called out this DST nonsense when he cancelled trade talks with Canada unless they got rid of their DST plans. Canadian Prime Minister Carney did the smart thing and repealed it. Now the president should do the same with the rest of America’s trading partners.</p> The Tortured Logic of Digital Services Taxes \| ITIF	查看 4290	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232659	无图 <p>Canada’s innovation system has a structural problem. And it needs a structural solution: an institution designed to make the system deliver, not just add to it.</p><p>More than 50 countries have built dedicated innovation agencies to convert research into economic strength. Canada has not. Instead, we have 134 federal innovation programs. Each is layered on the last to patch failures without addressing the system’s design flaws.</p><p>What Canada needs is a new federal institution that makes the system more than the sum of its parts: a Canadian Innovation and Industrial Transformation Agency. It would act as mission control for innovation by coordinating strategy across departments, linking support from research to commercialization, and building the industrial capabilities Canada needs to compete on more than just natural resources.</p><p>This isn’t a new realization. The 2011 Jenkins Panel recommended the establishment of a Canadian Industrial Research and Innovation Council to rationalize and deliver federal business innovation programs. We’re overdue to finish the job, but this time with a mandate and machinery built for today’s geopolitical and economic realities.</p><p>The case for institutional reform is in the data. Canada’s R&D intensity and comparative advanced industry output have lagged for years. We consistently struggle to move technologies from lab to market at scale.</p><p>One root cause is an outdated policy architecture: a linear model that funds university research and then calls it a day, assuming innovation will magically emerge fully formed at the end. But real innovation systems don’t move in straight lines. They loop, link, and compound. Without institutions to manage that feedback and carry technologies through deployment, progress stalls.</p><p>For decades, we’ve treated innovation as a policy file, not a system. We’ve staffed it with generalists and managed it through siloed programs and compliance. The result isn’t progress, it’s paperwork. No agency is mandated to steer strategy across departments, sequence support, or commercialize. Programs operate in isolation. Firms graduate from the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) with nowhere to go. The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) moves slowly and isn’t built to coordinate across sectors. The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive acts more like a grant than a credit, rewarding firms for staying in their lane and punishing them if they scale.</p><p>These programs matter, but they operate in isolation—stranding firms, fragmenting funding, and stalling technological advancements. The system is built to avoid picking winners and, therefore, cannot build them.</p><p>If any department were meant to coordinate the system, it would be Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED). But ISED governs programs, not systems. Like all departments, it was built for policy, not delivery. That’s not a failure of leadership. It’s a failure of design.</p><p>Departments can’t coordinate what they don’t control. What’s missing isn’t intent. It’s institutional machinery. Canada needs a system operator: an agency with the authority, mandate, and talent to move technologies from research to deployment at scale.</p><p>Faced with this gap, recent debates floated two institutional fixes: a DARPA-style tech funder (CARPA) and the Canadian Innovation Corporation (CIC). CARPA would place high-risk bets on early-stage technologies with missions. CIC would streamline program delivery and improve client service. Unfortunately, both were shelved. What’s needed is a combination of the two proposals—an institution that takes responsibility for the system itself. That’s why we need a Canadian Innovation and Industrial Transformation Agency with the authority to coordinate strategy, steer delivery, and close the structural gaps that hold back deployment.</p><p>The institution wouldn’t run every program, but it would govern the pipeline, link disconnected efforts, and ensure innovation support moves with speed, sequence, and sector focus by:</p>Running strategic intelligence for the system: Build a live picture of Canada’s industrial position by tracking where capacity exists, where scale-up stalls, and where rivals are advancing. Produce sector roadmaps that identify technological choke points, regulatory bottlenecks, and policy tools pulling in opposite directions. Use this intelligence to steer action across government, anchor decisions in real-world trajectories, and provide a shared baseline.Coordinating delivery across the pipeline: Structure innovation support as a true pipeline, not a program catalogue. Align mandates, budget cycles, and delivery timelines across departments to ensure that public research, commercialization funding, permitting, and procurement reinforce one another. Identify duplicated effort and gaps. Rewire the system to move in sequence, not in parallel.Operating at market speed, with technical depth: Build a delivery team of engineers, scientists, commercialization veterans, and procurement professionals, not just policy generalists. Run competitive calls, manage contracting, and make deployment decisions on commercial timelines rather than quarterly planning cycles. Use a separate pay band and flexible hiring authority to attract and retain staff with sector fluency and operational credibility.Building commercialization muscle where it’s missing: Invest in testbeds, demonstration sites, and early procurement pathways to de-risk adoption of emerging technologies. Prioritize sectors where private capital is scarce or timelines are long, such as biomanufacturing, agri-tech, and quantum. Close the capital gap by giving technologies a place to prove and scale.Laying the foundation for navigable service delivery: Create a single point of entry and a structured path through R&D, demonstration, and scale-up support so firms don’t have to start from scratch with every application or interpret siloed eligibility criteria. This agency wouldn’t replace all programs, but it would serve as the coordinating centre of gravity so firms can access the right support at the right time, without hiring consultants to decode the system.<p>It must be a Crown corporation. Not a secretariat or special office. Only a Crown can operate outside standard government HR, IT, and procurement constraints while maintaining strategic accountability to Ministers. That accountability can be enforced through mandate letters, corporate plans, and quarterly reporting. Anything less would leave the agency trapped inside a system built for policy, not delivery. Its internal structure would combine strategic intelligence, sector-specific delivery teams, a central coordination unit, and dedicated staff for demonstration, procurement, and regulation.</p><p>While civilian in focus, the agency would directly support Canada’s dual-use technology objectives across AI, biomanufacturing, and quantum. That makes it a natural contributor to Canada’s new 5 percent NATO commitments. The work must be structured to qualify under NATO’s R&D accounting rules, but the agency itself should remain outside the Department of National Defence to preserve a civilian industrial focus. This will require close coordination with Defence and co-reporting arrangements, ensuring accountability for national security priorities without importing military delivery culture.</p><p>The agency’s launch should include the full transfer of existing delivery tools: the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) and its 350 staff; the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF); Innovation Solutions Canada (ISC); the Department of National Defence’s Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program; and design and appeals functions related to the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit. Additional funding would be required for DARPA-style missions, technology demonstration programming, and agency operations. The $200 million annually earmarked in Budget 2022 for the Canadian Innovation Corporation (CIC) is a floor, not a ceiling.</p><p>This isn’t a new idea. Canada has launched strategic industrial tools before, including the Defence Industry Productivity Program (DIPP), Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC), the Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative (SADI), and IRAP itself, which is now 75 years old. The institutional memory exists. What’s missing is the machinery to coordinate, scale, and deliver across the system.</p><p>Other countries have figured this out. Finland’s Business Finland combines innovation funding with export promotion and investment targeting. The UK’s Innovate UK connects challenge-based R&D with industry-led development. Japan’s NEDO manages both early-stage tech bets and large-scale demonstrations.</p><p>It’s reasonable to ask: If countries like Finland or the UK succeed with agencies like Business Finland or Innovate UK, why does Canada need this mission control agency?</p><p>Because those agencies operate in stronger systems. Their success reflects not just internal design but the coherence of the surrounding policy environment—something Canada lacks. Here, departments operate in silos. Procurement doesn’t talk to permitting. Research funding isn’t sequenced with deployment or export strategy. It is a failure of coordination. And it is why, despite spending billions, we continue to underperform. A CIC-style agency would improve delivery, but it wouldn’t fix the fragmented architecture. This agency would.</p><p>It would take responsibility for the core system functions that currently fall through the cracks, such as publishing sector-level capacity maps, coordinating permitting timelines across jurisdictions, sequencing capital support through IRAP, SIF, regional development agencies, and more, and ensuring that technologies developed with public R&D dollars actually reach procurement and export markets.</p><p>This isn’t a call for endless new funding. It’s a call to rewire how we support innovation, and to back that system with a stable, long-term revenue base. One option: a grand bargain that accelerates permitting in exchange for a modest resource levy, using resource revenues to help build the institutions of Canada’s future.</p><p>Some will say this would step on the toes of departments. Yes, it would. That’s the point.</p><p>Departments control key innovation levers like procurement, training, regulation, and infrastructure, but they aren’t built to align them toward industrial goals. The result is policy beige. This national agency would be structured to advise, align, and coordinate—not override. But it would need clear authority to set direction, manage shared files, and publish performance data across the portfolio. It would be a delivery institution, not a policy shop. ISED would remain the federal government’s lead on innovation policy and economic development strategy, while this agency would focus on its role of execution and coordination.</p><p>This isn’t about replacing programs. It’s about governing them coherently, strategically, and at speed. Canada doesn’t need more pilots. It needs a national operator to move technologies from lab to market and transform innovation into industrial strength.</p><p>We’ve layered delivery band-aids on a system that never had a working circulatory system to begin with. It’s time to stop duct-taping holes and start building architecture.</p> Canada Doesn’t Have an Innovation System: It Has 134 Programs \| ITIF	查看 11594	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232658	无图 <p>The U.S. Supreme Court"s recent decision inFree Speech Coalition v. Paxton—in which the court upheld Texas"s age verification requirements for adult websites—marks a pivotal moment in online content regulation. The Court has opened the floodgates for state-level age-verification legislation not just for adult websites, but for any online service. Congress should act swiftly to both protect children’s safety online and prevent a fragmented regulatory landscape that burdens online services and users alike.</p><p>The best solution is for Congress to pass legislation requiring a standardized “trustworthy child flag” system. When first creating a new user account, such as during device setup, parents could opt to designate an account as belonging to a child. These accounts would transmit a “flag” that signals to apps and websites that a user is underage. Congress could then also require those that serve age-restricted content to check for this signal for their users, allowing them to restrict underage users from age-inappropriate content automatically. Because the setting is tied to the account, not the device, it would carry over when a child logs in on a new phone, tablet, or computer. To ensure consistency and reduce compliance costs, Congress should also preempt state child age verification laws and replace them with this unified, privacy-respecting approach.</p><p>In Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton (2025), the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that states may require websites with a significant portion of adult content to verify users’ age to prevent minors from accessing such content. The case challenged Texas HB 1181, which requires age verification for websites with more than one-third of their content deemed "harmful to minors," and the Court"s decision upheld the state"s authority to implement such requirements despite First Amendment challenges from adult entertainment industry groups.</p><p>Many states will likely take this decision as a green light to continue introducing age verification bills aimed at protecting minors from harm. Over 40 states and Washington, DC have introduced or passed laws requiring some form of age verification to access online services. While these laws are well-intentioned, they are also deeply flawed.</p><p>There are several approaches that states are taking to implement age verification. Some states require each individual online service to verify that their users are over a certain age. Texas and Utah have implemented one of the most stringent approaches. The law requires users to submit a copy of their government-issued identification to the operator of the online service before they can gain access, a limitation for adults who do not have a government ID. Nine states are currently considering this approach, and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Congressman John James (R-MI) have introduced a similar bill at the federal level. Other states, like Maryland and California, have adopted age-appropriate design codes, which establish standards that online services must follow to make their services safe for children. With these types of bills, online services may also have to collect and retain information from users’ government-issued IDs.</p><p>Some states require app stores to handle age verification. These policies require app store providers to obtain verifiable parental consent before allowing a minor to download, purchase, or use certain apps. Users would only need to verify their age once per app store. This approachis less burdensomefor users since they only have to verify their age once at the app store, rather than with each service. It also better protects privacy than requiring separate age verification for each online service because a user’s data is confined to one app store (or stores) rather than multiple platforms, when designed correctly. However, it does not address age verification for websites, a considerable gap. It would be more effective to require age verification, when necessary, at the device level, requiring users to verify their age once with their device’s operating system when creating an account.</p><p>While many of these laws, like Texas HB 1181, target adult websites, some, like Florida and Arkansas, target social media platforms, including those that do not contain a significant portion of adult content or that restrict youth from viewing such content. These laws are based on the premise that social media is harmful to children. Although most social media platforms already forbid children under 13 from creating accounts, some lawmakers believe that the age should be higher or that children should not have access to social media at all. While the Supreme Court’s ruling in Paxton determined that age verification for adult websites is constitutional, there is a much stronger free speech argument against age verification for social media.</p><p>Ultimately, the Supreme Court’s decision establishes a precedent that age checks are indeed on the way for many users, at least for adult websites. Rather than allow each state to set its own method for age verification, the best solution for protecting children online and for allowing adults to continue to access adult content is for Congress to require a device-level national child flag system. Rather than using ID checks, this opt-in process gives users, children, and parents alike control over their online experiences and creates a national age verification standard, rather than a fragmented state landscape.</p> Supreme Court Ruling Sparks Age Checks—Here’s a Smarter Fix \| ITIF	查看 5515	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232657	无图 <p>As the Trump administration races against the clock to negotiate trade deals before reciprocal tariffs snap back into place, reports suggest these agreements will be narrower in scope than originally envisioned. This reality demands strategic prioritization. The administration should focus on what matters most for America’s economic and national security future: defending our technology industry from foreign attacks.</p><p>With limited bandwidth for negotiations, we can no longer afford to treat all trade sectors equally. The United States should not pursue trade negotiations that undermine its technological advantage. Every hour spent negotiating agricultural quotas while foreign governments systematically attack our technology companies through “non-tariff attacks” is an hour lost. As Xi Jinping himself identifies technology as “the main battleground of the global playing field,” we must align our priorities accordingly.</p>The New Weapon: Non-Tariff Attacks on American Tech<p>While traditional trade negotiations focus on tariffs and market access, a more insidious threat has emerged. Foreign governments have weaponized domestic regulations to systematically target American tech companies through three sophisticated tactics:</p>They design regulations with surgical precision to capture U.S. firms while exempting domestic competitors. The EU’s Digital Markets Act “gatekeeper” criteria predictably ensnared five American companies while initially sparing European rivals. India’s data protection laws single out U.S. firms as “data fiduciaries.” Turkey’s revenue thresholds magically capture American companies while protecting local players.These measures extract massive resources from American innovation. EU fines against U.S. tech firms totaled $6.7 billion in 2024 alone—one-fifth of the EU’s entire tariff revenue base. France collected over $2 billion in digital services taxes since its inception. Each billion extracted is capital lost to American innovation.They hide behind legitimate policy goals while pursuing strategic objectives. As Andreas Schwab, the EU’s own rapporteur for the Digital Markets Act, admitted: “Let’s go down the line—one, two, three, four, five... But let’s not start with number 7 to include a European gatekeeper just to please Biden.” This isn’t about fair competition; it’s about targeting American success.<p>These attacks directly benefit China. When foreign regulations force U.S. firms to exit markets or share technology, Chinese competitors fill the vacuum. While Europe extracted $6.7 billion from U.S. tech companies last year, China deployed 969 million 5G subscriptions and raced ahead in quantum computing and AI. The January 2025 emergence of DeepSeek, which achieved breakthrough AI performance at a fraction of U.S. costs, illustrates what happens when resources are diverted from innovation to fighting discriminatory regulations.</p>The Strategic Choice<p>With the 90-day reciprocal tariff deadline creating urgency and negotiating bandwidth at a premium, the Trump administration faces a strategic choice: Continue haggling over commodity exports while our technology leadership erodes, or recognize that some battles matter more than others.</p><p>A bipartisan coalition of policy experts recently urged the administration, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Bessent, Commerce Secretary Lutnick, USTR Greer, and Senior Counselor Navarro, to prioritize these non-tariff attacks in trade negotiations, citing over 100 examples of discriminatory policies targeting U.S. tech companies worldwide.</p><p>Canada’s swift repeal of its digital services tax after Trump threatened trade action demonstrates what’s possible when priorities are clear. But much more remains.</p><p>Some might argue these aren’t traditional trade issues. That’s precisely why they matter. Economic competition has evolved. In an era where algorithms matter more than agricultural exports and data flows determine power more than commodity shipments, protecting technology leadership is the paramount trade priority. R&D-intensive tech sectors drive both radical breakthroughs and incremental innovations that cascade throughout the economy. Moreover, advanced technologies increasingly serve dual purposes—powering both commercial applications and defense capabilities. In the strategic competition with China, control over foundational technologies such as AI, quantum computing, and semiconductors will determine not only economic prosperity but also military advantage and global influence for decades to come.</p><p>As the coalition letter makes clear: “Non-tariff attacks on U.S. technology leadership through undue or disproportionate measures represent one of the most significant trade challenges of our time.”</p><p>Every negotiating hour matters. Every trade-off counts. In the competition for technological supremacy that will determine economic and military power for decades, we cannot afford to bring yesterday’s priorities to tomorrow’s fight. The Trump administration must put defending American tech at the very top of the trade agenda. The U.S. national security and long-term economic competitiveness depends on getting this priority right.</p> Time for Strategic Clarity on the US Trade Agenda \| ITIF	查看 5221	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232656	无图 <p>Countries are adopting a more protectionist stance since the U.S. government announced “Liberation Day” tariffs. At the same time, free trade negotiations are increasing, perhaps marking a new trade policy paradox: many countries are protecting their domestic industries from the uncertainty of U.S. trade policy, while simultaneously negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with other nations—free trade protectionism. This could evolve into a new global trade order, lacking enforceable generally agreed-upon rules and a bypassed American economy.</p><p>The Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance (GTIPA), a network of nearly 60 think tanks from all continents and income groups, ranging from Bangladesh to Germany, released a report analyzing how countries are adapting their trade and economic policies. The report reveals common patterns in how economies respond to tariffs: ironically, with both openness and protectionism.</p><p>More countries in the Global South, particularly members of the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Pakistan, and South Africa, are turning closer to China. Chinese investments make that easier. Many U.S. allies are also abandoning the United States, seeking to cut their own deals with China with most concerned that U.S. tariffs against China will unleash a flood of cheap, subsidized Chinese goods into their markets.</p><p>Policymakers generally prefer to negotiate with the United States rather than retaliating with their own tariffs. Even so, some countries are working to reduce their dependency on U.S. trade and broaden their export market alternatives. The Australian government, for example, launched an expansive policy to boost domestic manufacturing, diversify its supply chain, and accumulate strategic reserves of critical minerals. Meanwhile, Australia is also increasing its engagement with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union (EU), India, and the UK.</p><p>Canada is expanding its West Coast pipeline capacity, enabling oil exporters to bypass the U.S. market. Germany is pressing Brussels to finalize the long-stalled agreement between the EU and Mercosur (a group of South American economies) and to ease requirements in trade negotiations with India and Indonesia. Mexico is leveraging its membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and a modernized EU agreement to boost market access beyond North America.</p><p>Free trade protectionism is also occurring in economies that are often out of Washington"s immediate attention. Brazil, a founding member of the BRICS, has revived its “neo-industrialization” program, linking new tax credits to local-content rules in the automotive, agricultural, and telecommunications sectors, while also accelerating efforts to secure the long-pending EU-Mercosur agreement and exploring trade talks with Canada. North Macedonia has provided zero-interest loans for its textile and wine sectors and is relying on the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), the Open Balkan initiative, and the Berlin Process to foster intra-regional trade. Pakistan is openly adopting an import substitution approach and offering tariff-rebate schemes to firms that commit to local sourcing, but is also courting partners in ASEAN, Central Asia, China, and the Middle East to move toward regional integration.</p><p>Given that the United States is the largest and most important player in the global trading system, the shock from President Trumps trade policies are expected to have large and cascading effects. U.S. tariffs are leading to targeted protectionism; nations are pulling back from American markets and seeking new trade partners. This emerging model—free trade among allies, but protectionism toward the United States—may be a preview of the next global trade order: fragmented alliances, bypassed U.S. markets, and a sidelined World Trade Organization.</p> Free Trade Protectionism: U.S. Tariffs Are Creating a New Trade Policy Paradox \| ITIF	查看 3980	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232655	有图 <p>U.S. antitrust policy has long assaulted and undercut American firms trying to compete in tough global markets. “Trustbusters” have historically shown no interest in whether U.S. firms can succeed internationally. Instead, their focus has been singular: fragment markets to drive down prices for consumers, regardless of the broader consequences.</p><p>No other non-Anglo economy would dare attack its own national champions the way American antitrust enforcers do. Just look at the aggressive lawsuits and investigations targeting the few remaining U.S. global tech leaders—Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.</p><p>And if the absurdity of these “anti-monopoly” zealots isn’t already obvious, consider this: our trading adversaries, like the EU, are lobbing antitrust ordnance at U.S. tech companies to give their own companies the upper hand.</p><p>There’s no better cautionary tale of self-sabotage than how the U.S. government single-handedly decimated American leadership in the copier business. Specifically, what it did to Xerox.</p><p></p><p>America invented the copier business. Through Xerox, it led the world in innovation, created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, and ran a trade surplus in copiers. Xerox’s dominance was so complete that its brand name became a verb. That, as it turns out, was its fatal mistake.</p><p>Nothing draws the antitrust hounds like the scent of success. And so the government pounced, bringing down its prey and effectively ceding global leadership to Japan. Mission accomplished?</p><p>Xerox’s rise was classic American entrepreneurship. Once a start-up, it built its dominance with innovation and intellectual property—more than 2,000 patents—and modest profits. In 1970, Xerox PARC launched in Silicon Valley, which went on to develop many foundational technologies of the personal computing era (things we now take for granted). In 1968, its profit margin was just 11.1 percent, lower than the average U.S. corporate profit rate of 11.5 percent.</p><p>But none of that mattered. A gradual rise, modest profits, and no evidence of predatory behavior didn’t deter the trustbusters. In 1972, the Federal Trade Commission filed a suit against Xerox, accusing the firm of monopolizing the copier market. Three years later, Xerox settled the case by signing a consent decree. It was less a negotiation than a shakedown, similar to when a local store owner complies with the Mafia’s demand to turn over 10 percent of revenue for “protection.”</p><p>As former Boston Consulting Group consultants Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt wrote: “Practically speaking, they [the FTC] forced Xerox to license their patents to the world.” As the key remedy, the company was forced to license any three of its patents for free, the next three for a maximum royalty of 1.5 percent, and the remainder of its portfolio for nothing. Even worse, Xerox was required to provide its Japanese competitors with written “know-how,” including detailed drawings, blueprints, and technical specifications for existing and future machines. An estimated 1,700 patents were handed over.</p>American antitrust enforcers targeting their own national tech champions<img src="https://cdn.sanity.io/images/03hnmfyj/production/d666aafa81afcfe3c0dd9c14854ee4d9d91490d2-455x416.png" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>The FTC’s Bureau of Competition chief at the time openly said he would be “dissatisfied if Xerox’s market share isn’t significantly diminished in several years.” He got his wish. Within four years of the consent decree, Xerox’s U.S. market share collapsed from around 95 percent to less than 14 percent. Japanese competitors, such as Canon, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Konica, and Minolta, gained most of that ground. They must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven, or wondered how Americans could be so stupid.</p><p>Only in the United States would the destruction of a world-leading company be celebrated as a policy success. Talk about insanity.</p><p>Some argue the case boosted innovation. Maybe, but not in the United States. A recent working paper found that while U.S. antitrust action against Xerox did promote innovation, the gains accrued almost entirely among Japanese firms.</p><p>If your standard is consumer welfare, then sure, the Xerox case was a win. However, if your standard is national tech competitiveness and job creation, it was a disastrous mistake.</p><p>So, were the FTC enforcers just incompetent? Clearly not. But they were captured by a uniquely Anglo-American ideological affliction—one that says:</p>The government’s role is to enforce a “level playing field” by eliminating market power.No industry is more important than another.International competitiveness is a myth; countries don’t compete, only firms do.The only thing that matters is short-term consumer welfare through lower prices.<p>With this worldview, of course it makes sense to fire antitrust shells at any company that succeeds, regardless of its strategic importance to the nation.</p><p>To make matters worse, U.S. enforcers have long been happy to play into the hands of jealous rivals. That Yelp convinced regulators in both the U.S. and EU to target and weaken Google wasn’t seen as rent-seeking or even problematic. Instead, it was framed—indeed, celebrated—as consumer advocacy. As Lenin supposedly said, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” In this case, American firms are happy to turn their government against one another, even if it weakens the entire nation, so long as consumers claim some marginal, short-term benefits.</p><p>While these past assaults were destructive, at least the countries that benefited from our ideological naïveté were largely allies, like Japan. But today, the winner is Beijing. And that’s a whole different ball game.</p><p>The new left-right, neo-Brandeisian anti-corporate coalition has created a regime that threatens not just U.S. companies but the future of American technological leadership. This antitrust alliance risks jeopardizing the future of the republic in the service of an outdated, narrow, and short-sighted ideology.</p><p>If we keep this trend up, Chinese tech firms will dominate U.S. markets, while our own firms shrink and stop investing in innovation. But hey, at least we can say that consumers will have more choices. Oh joy.</p> US Antitrust as an Anti-Competitiveness Weapon \| ITIF	查看 6353	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232654	无图 <p>In its push for digital sovereignty, the European Commission is reportedly planning to replace Microsoft Azure with the French cloud provider OVHcloud or another European alternative. But this move, while politically symbolic, would be costly. Far from enhancing security, this migration would sacrifice sound procurement and EU legal obligations in service of a hollow vision of digital nationalism. It burdens taxpayers, ignores practical realities, and risks delivering inferior outcomes. Instead of prioritizing symbolic gestures, the EU should rely on objective, measurable metrics to deliver best-in-class public services using best-in-class digital solutions.</p><p>The Commission’s move is not justified by any genuine security concerns. Every cloud service provider operating within the EU—regardless of its nationality—must already comply with identical data protection standards under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR also includes specific restrictions on international data transfers and comprehensive safeguards for personal data processing, making the nationality of the cloud provider irrelevant to data security.</p><p>Moreover, the Commission has no legitimate grievance against Microsoft’s cloud offerings. The company established its EU Data Boundary project specifically to enable European customers to store and process data exclusively within the EU. Microsoft’s “Defending Your Data” programme includes legally binding commitments to challenge government requests for customer data, whilst the recently launched European Security Program provides additional governmental assurances. The company has invested billions in European data centre capacity operated by European personnel and partnered with local providers, including Germany’s Delos.</p><p>Furthermore, the EU’s commitments under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Government Procurement require transparent, merit-based supplier selection rather than discriminatory practices based on corporate nationality. By limiting consideration to European alternatives—OVHcloud, Germany’s IONOS, France’s Scaleway, and Italy’s Aruba—whilst dismissing American providers, the Commission appears to use digital sovereignty as a pretext for protectionist procurement that violates its international trade obligations as well as its own public procurement principles.</p><p>The Commission’s current Microsoft Azure arrangement delivers precisely what European institutions need: proven reliability, comprehensive security, and global-scale infrastructure at competitive prices. Microsoft’s global market share advantage over OVHcloud reflects genuine technical strengths and economies of scale that directly benefit European taxpayers through lower costs and better service. Abandoning this successful partnership in favour of less mature or scalable alternatives could prove unnecessarily costly and disruptive.</p><p>Some three-quarters of large-scale cloud migrations exceed initial budgets, with just over ten percent of migration projects stretching for three quarters or longer beyond their planned timelines. Why fix what isn’t broken? The Commission already enjoys enterprise-grade cloud services that comply with all European data protection requirements whilst delivering global connectivity and cutting-edge capabilities.</p><p>Before rushing to a European alternative, the Commission should consider previous failed attempts at European digital sovereignty. The EU’s social media sovereignty experiment provides one such cautionary tale. In April 2022, the European Data Protection Supervisor launched EU Voice and EU Video, European-operated alternatives to Twitter and YouTube using the open-source software Mastodon and PeerTube, in an effort to promote European digital sovereignty. Despite the EDPS declaring the pilot “successful in delivering alternative, privacy-friendly and user-focused social media platforms,” both platforms closed in May 2024 when no institution would assume operational responsibility.</p><p>The project attracted 40 institutional accounts but failed to achieve sustainable adoption—Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager never used her EU Voice account during the entire two-year pilot. The experiment’s failure shows that replacing digital services with European options is not as simple as policymakers suggest. The European Commission continues operating its own separate Mastodon instance, but most EU institutions maintain dual-platform strategies rather than abandoning American platforms entirely.</p><p>EU policymakers should also note that digital sovereignty is not a one-way street—if the EU discriminates against foreign providers, it risks retaliation. Should every other country’s government agencies abandon European solutions like SAP? Picking trade fights with America over cloud security concerns that existing regulations already address seems particularly ill-timed, with the EU seeking a trade deal with the United States in the next month, where failure to reach an agreement could potentially trigger retaliatory measures.</p><p>European institutions require reliable, cost-effective technology solutions that enable public service delivery. The European Commission should stick to objective metrics such as data security, regulatory compliance, cost effectiveness, and operational reliability, to dictate procurement decision making, which invariably involves maintaining partnerships with leading global providers to deliver superior outcomes.</p> Brussels Risks Prioritising Symbolism Over Substance in Cloud Procurement \| ITIF	查看 5527	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232653	无图 <p>Canada is not on the map. Literally. According to the 2024 Global Innovation Index, Canada has zero entries among the world’s top 50 science and technology clusters. Toronto comes in at number 54, while Vancouver and Montréal remain unmentioned. These are not fringe cities; they are the anchors of Canada’s innovation economy.</p><p>But none of them crack the global top 50. That’s not just a data point. It reflects a deeper problem: Canada has not built a single tech or science cluster with enough scale, concentration, and visibility to matter globally. This is a structural failure that demands a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) to fix it. Canada should identify and support one technology cluster that can break into the top 50.</p><p>We argue that the only way to do this is to concentrate resources in one place. And we believe the best candidate for elevation is Waterloo. To make that happen, the federal and Ontario governments should collaborate. They can start by expanding research funding for the University of Waterloo. But most importantly, they should create an incentive: Tech start-ups based in Waterloo and firms relocating R&D and innovation production from outside Canada to the region will pay no tax for a decade.</p><p>Waterloo is not Canada’s biggest tech hub, but it is the best shot at scale. It ranks as North America’s top small tech talent market for the fourth consecutive year, has added over 9,000 tech jobs since 2018, and boasts a higher concentration of tech workers than Toronto. It hosts Canada’s top engineering school, a robust start-up infrastructure, and a track record of globally relevant firms. The foundation is there. What’s missing is the national policy weight to push it over the top.</p><p>Trying to elevate Toronto or Montréal risks spreading investment too thin. Both cities have strong tech sectors, but they’re large and fragmented, with many institutions and priorities competing for attention. Major new incentives to really boost these locations would require significant resources that Canada does not have.</p><p>The federal government already funds regional innovation through the Global Innovation Clusters program. But its model—five sectoral clusters across multiple provinces—prioritizes balance over scale. Despite the name, the program has not produced clusters in the economic sense: concentrated, self-reinforcing ecosystems of firms, talent, and capital.</p><p>Real clusters are more than proximity. They are dense, place-based systems of innovation and production. They require co-location of firms, active labor mobility, embedded R&D institutions, shared infrastructure, supply chain interdependencies, and a culture of iterative learning between firms and universities. Canada’s current model funds valuable networks, and while it should be continued, it does not build concentration. If everything is a cluster, nothing is.</p><p>Canada’s broader innovation model reinforces this pattern. Programs are designed to distribute support broadly, not build concentrated strength. And that’s fine. But an additional and different approach is needed. Clusters offer a way out, not by narrowing participation, but by concentrating capital, talent, and ambition in one place, allowing a sector to build a self-reinforcing gravitational pull.</p><p>Designating Waterloo as a tech and computing cluster would be the first step toward the kind of concentrated approach Canada’s current model lacks. As part of a suite of measures, tech start-ups based in the region should be tax-free for ten years. So should firms outside Canada that relocate meaningful R&D and innovation production.</p><p>On its own, a tax exemption will not build a cluster. But it will signal that one is being built. The University of Waterloo should also receive more funding for research and commercialization. Together, these are early incentives while longer-term institutions and infrastructure take shape. This is not about picking winners. It is about backing the conditions that allow winners to emerge at scale, enabling them to compete globally.</p><p>The evidence for this approach is strong:</p>In Clusters from the Inside and Out, Wolfe and Gertler show that real clusters emerge when local institutions, civic leadership, and global linkages reinforce one another.In Do Clusters Make a Difference?, Spencer et al. use Canadian data to demonstrate that clustered regions outperform on income, employment, and innovation.In Clusters, Convergence, and Economic Performance, Delgado, Porter, and Stern show globally that strong clusters drive spillovers, increased patenting, and the emergence of entirely new industries.<p>Additionally, the benefits of clustering are not confined exclusively to the cluster itself. As a strong hub grows, adjacent regions benefit through talent spillovers, supply chain linkages, knowledge transfer, and increased market access. Clusters also anchor strategic sectors, embed key capabilities within domestic institutions, and reduce brain drain by offering high-quality work at home. They make it more likely that Canadian inventions are commercialized domestically, that Canadian IP stays in Canadian hands, and that Canadian workers gain skills that compound within the national economy.</p><p>This is not a leap of faith. It is a long-overdue application of what the world’s best-performing economies already know: If you want productivity, you have to build around scale and specialization. You need to create literal, physical zones where excellence is rewarded and where innovation does not have to beg for relevance.</p><p>Waterloo does not need a blueprint. It needs a decision. A deliberate policy choice to concentrate growth, reward ambition, and give Canada a place that can compete on a global scale.</p> Building Canada’s Tech Cluster in Waterloo \| ITIF	查看 5819	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232652	无图 <p>One of the more amusing things about Washington is how hard many people work to discover, and then loudly and proudly repeat, the prevailing political and economic groupthink. For several decades, anyone who wanted to be somebody dutifully praised the so-called Washington Consensus: markets good, governments bad.</p><p>Now that the Washington Consensus is out of fashion, many have scrambled to latch onto a new orthodoxy to signal their allegiance to. Nature abhors a vacuum, and D.C. abhors real intellectual debate. So a new techno-economic dogma has taken hold: “Okay, maybe we need some government involvement in the economy, but under no circumstances should we emulate China.”</p><p>This caution is now obligatory. A recent industrial policy playbook feels the need to clarify, “We don’t want to imitate Beijing’s playbook.” Bloomberg ran an article titled “China Is the Wrong Model for the US Economy.” One free-market scholar wrote that the United States should definitely not copy China. And Rhodium Group warned that a “headlong embrace of [Chinese] statism would be immiserating for many nations.”</p><p>The consensus has settled around a convenient middle ground: It’s okay for the government to dabble in tech policy, but under no circumstances should it implement a full-blown industrial policy of the kind China uses—that must be off the table.</p><p>Like all policy shibboleths, this is rarely questioned.</p><p>Well, it’s time to not only question it, but to reject it outright. The reality is that if the United States doesn’t become more like China, it will lose the battle for advanced technology leadership.</p><p>And before anyone starts hyperventilating and asking, “Are you saying we should become a dictatorship?!”—relax and keep reading.</p><p></p><p>Being more like China doesn’t mean suppressing civil liberties or locking up dissidents. It means four main things:</p><p>1. Investing in the Future</p><p>China invests more societal resources in innovation and long-term growth. ITIF estimates that China now spends more on R&D than the United States in nominal terms and considerably more when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). China also devotes a significantly higher proportion of its GDP to overall investment. The United States, by contrast, specializes in consumption. Even if China misallocates some of its funds, it is still likely to end up with more effective investments than the United States. In other words, China is out-investing the U.S. and that matters.</p><p>2. Targeting Strategic Sectors</p><p>China identifies and backs key sectors that provide national leverage. Unlike the United States, Beijing doesn’t believe that potato chips are the same as microchips or that all manufacturing is created equal. It treats a wide range of advanced industries as essential to its future global power—and it supports these sectors unapologetically. To the extent that the United States does this at all, it’s either an isolated intervention (such as the CHIPS Act) or filtered through social objectives (like the IRA’s climate focus), rather than being grounded in a comprehensive national competitiveness strategy.</p><p>3. Subsidizing Industry, Because That’s How You Win</p><p>China aggressively subsidizes companies in advanced, strategic industries. That’s a big reason why Chinese firms are steadily gaining global market share in everything from EVs to solar panels to telecom equipment. We can whine about “unfair” subsidies all we want, but unless the United States offers its own support—tailored, accountable, and strategic—American firms will keep losing. Take displays. How is a U.S. display company supposed to compete with a Chinese display rival whose capital costs are fully paid for by the government? The answer is simple: it can’t.</p><p>4. Building a National Techno-Economic Strategy</p><p>At a recent ITIF-hosted Chatham House Rule roundtable on industrial policy, one skeptic of industrial policy laid out three reasons why we shouldn’t “become like China.”</p>Even if we try, we can’t replicate China. No kidding! Of course we can’t. They have a different system and way more money. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t mount our own best effort.China wastes massive amounts of money. Sure! Of course they do. But waste isn’t inevitable. The United States can implement what works and adjust what doesn’t, eventually designing a more disciplined and effective approach to industrial strategy.China is still catching up while we’re innovating. Wrong! Of course, I can understand why U.S. leaders want to believe that. As ITIF recently found, China is not just catching up—it’s innovating at the frontier. Meanwhile, the United States now faces the difficult task of reclaiming some industrial ground lost over the last two decades.<p>I hate that I even have to say this, but fine—here it goes. No, the United States shouldn’t copy everything China does. Democracy is good. Rule of law is good. Intellectual property rights are good. The list goes on.</p><p>Copying some does not mean copying all. However, the fact is that we’re not emulating many aspects of China’s model that we should be.</p><p>For example, the United States:</p>Is not making winning the techno-economic war a top national priority.Is not developing sophisticated, coordinated advanced industrial strategies.Is not investing enough—directly or via the tax code—in foundational and emerging technologies.Is not supporting domestic firms as they fight for global market leadership.Is not applying the innovation principle when crafting regulation.Is not reining in anti-corporate antitrust attacks on our national champions.<p>Let’s be honest, those of us pushing for a serious industrial strategy are fighting an uphill battle. And it’s not clear if we “emulators” will prevail. We’re squeezed between the new Washington Consensus that reflexively opposes industrial policy and a left-right coalition that either distrusts government or hates big business.</p><p>Still, there’s precedent. In the 1980s and early ’90s, U.S. firms worked closely with the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration, and Congress to advocate for a strong techno-competitiveness agenda to counter Japan’s rise. Today, with Chinese state capitalism threatening to wipe out entire sectors, a similar awakening may occur. We’ll have to wait and see.</p><p>If the elites prevail and U.S. leaders continue to reject the best elements of China’s innovation and industry policy system, there may be only one hope left: to convince Beijing to emulate America’s playbook—especially in areas such as the growing animus toward large corporations, the financialization of the economy, the overproduction of lawyers, and, of course, the dominance of neoclassical economics. Maybe then (and just maybe) we’d stand a chance of winning.</p> Yes, We Do Want to Be Like China \| ITIF	查看 6863	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232651	无图 <p>When TikTok briefly went dark in the U.S. following the passage of a new law mandating its sale to a U.S. entity in early 2025, it incidentally proved that Meta faces strong competition in the social media space. Specifically, the blackout proves that the Personal Social Networking Services (PSNS) market devised by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is too narrow and excludes ardent rivals to Meta’s platforms, particularly TikTok. This evidence, which Judge James Boasberg recently ruled the FTC cannot exclude, puts another dent in the FTC’s antitrust case against the tech firm, which claims that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp over ten years ago were anticompetitive and harmed users.</p><p>Establishing monopoly power is an essential aspect of any monopolization case tried under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, as this case is. One way to prove monopoly power involves defining a relevant market. From an economic perspective, the relevant market would include all effective substitutes for the product being produced by the defendant firm. Economists establish the existence of substitutes by looking at cross-price elasticities.</p><p>Cross-price elasticities measure how the consumption of other products changes in response to a change in the price of a specific good. For example, if the price of butter increases, we may see a significant increase in the consumption of margarine. However, precisely making this calculation often requires consumption data that are not always available. In digital markets (like social media), quantifying elasticities can be even trickier since these services sometimes carry prices of zero.</p><p>The TikTok blackout thus provides important evidence of substitutability between Meta and other platforms. It amounts to a “natural experiment” that shows which apps TikTok users switch to when the cost of using TikTok rises. To analyze this, economists use a “difference-in-differences” (DiD) approach, which in this case takes U.S. users as a treatment group and a control group ideally similar in every way to the U.S. users except for the TikTok ban. The analysis examines the rate of switching for each group before and after the ban, then calculates the difference between these two rates to illustrate the effect the ban had on U.S. users switching to other apps.</p><p>Working within this framework, Meta’s expert economists found that, during the U.S. TikTok outage, many users switched to competing platforms, including Meta, which suggests the FTC’s PSNS market is too narrow. These findings are backed by another research paper, which made clear that “[b]ased on survey data, if TikTok were banned, users would largely spend more time on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.” This study also exploited the U.S. TikTok outage and employed a DiD approach to demonstrate that advertisers largely switched to Meta during the shutdown—exactly as predicted.</p><p>The FTC’s experts provided several arguments against using the TikTok blackouts as evidence of substitution. One argument referenced the “cellophane” fallacy, so named for the product at issue in the antitrust case where it was expounded. This fallacy occurs when economists measure substitution away from a product that already has a monopoly price rather than a competitive price. However, the FTC established no competitive benchmark in the case that could be used to prove that the cellophane fallacy is relevant here. In fact, the products in question are offered to consumers at no cost.</p><p>Indeed, reasonable substitution between the platforms was confirmed by one of Meta’s expert economists, John List, at trial. List conducted a modified “synthetic control” version of the DiD method to find the same result with respect to the TikTok blackout that began in India in 2020, when the platform was banned in that country. List explained that the ban led to a significant increase in engagement with Meta’s products in India. Here, the cellophane fallacy argument is mitigated by the fact that, in addition to rivals in the U.S., Meta faces competition in India from local apps, such as ShareChat.</p><p>Another FTC argument relates to asymmetric substitution. TikTok users switching to Meta doesn’t mean that the reverse would be true if Meta experienced the blackout instead. Nonetheless, saying that the TikTok blackout doesn’t conclusively prove that TikTok is a substitute for Meta doesn’t prove that it is not a substitute for Meta either. Indeed, it is generally true that if Y is a substitute for X, then X is a substitute for Y.</p><p>Another study conducted by List for the trial expressly highlighted substitution from Meta to TikTok through a field experiment. In the experiment, users were paid an hourly rate to allow the researchers to track their app usage on their devices. A treatment group was then paid extra not to use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. When these users switched to other apps, it was more likely to be TikTok or YouTube than the services that were included in the FTC’s PSNS market: Snapchat and MeWe.</p><p>This study is also relevant to another argument: The ban is akin to imposing a prohibitively high price on the service. Better evidence of substitution would come from smaller increases in the cost of using it. This is known as the “SSNIP” test, which measures user switching when a “small but significant increase in price” is imposed on a product or service. However, the field experiment did raise prices incrementally by increasing the reward for not using Meta’s apps.</p><p>Both the TikTok bans and the field experiment point to the same conclusion: TikTok, YouTube, and Meta’s apps are seen by users as close substitutes and should have been included in the relevant market devised by the FTC. Moreover—as Meta has argued in its motion for summary judgment—Meta and TikTok have substantially similar features, indicating they are close and symmetrical substitutes.</p><p>In delineating the relevant market, the use of economics can help prevent market “gerrymandering,” where plaintiffs construct the market in a way that bolsters their claim that the defendant has monopoly power. The TikTok blackouts and studies conducted by Meta’s economic experts suggest that the PSNS market defined by the FTC does not capture the actual competition faced by Meta in what is likely a broad attention market that includes non-digital goods. This significantly undermines the FTC’s theory that Meta has monopoly power and points to a likely victory for Meta in this case.</p> Economic Experiments Weaken the FTC’s Case Against Meta \| ITIF	查看 6552	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232650	无图 <p>Congress’ decision to reject a federal moratorium on state-level AI regulation is a missed opportunity. Without a pause, the United States continues to face a patchwork of state laws that confuses consumers, burdens businesses, and slows innovation. A moratorium would have given Congress time to build a coherent national framework and avoid unnecessary regulatory fragmentation.</p><p>Several state-level AI bills introduced in 2025 highlight the consequences of this disjointed approach. These proposals are meant to address concerns about bias, accountability, and transparency, but lawmakers often do not see eye-to-eye on these issues. For example, left-leaning policymakers generally want AI bias measures to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, while right-leaning ones are more concerned about reducing ideological bias. Moreover, the bills are frequently overbroad, ambiguous, and extraterritorial in scope. Instead of targeted oversight, they impose sweeping mandates that can burden developers, particularly those operating across state lines. The result is a confusing web of regulations that creates legal uncertainty, drives up costs, and stifles innovation.</p><p>These problems are evident in New York’s Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act (A 6453A), which targets frontier AI models. The law requires developers of these advanced models to maintain detailed documentation, conduct third-party audits, and report incidents within 72 hours. Violations incur civil penalties up to $10 million. Like most of the state bills, RAISE would apply to any AI system used in the state, meaning that out-of-state and even international developers would be subject to the law. The Act’s expansive enforcement and extraterritorial scope could impose duplicative rules on AI developers, such as requiring them to conduct additional state-specific audits and safety reporting.</p><p>Illinois’ High Impact AI Governance Principles and Disclosure Act (H 3529) mandates transparency measures on companies that deploy high-impact AI systems. Businesses with 10 or more employees must publish annual (or updated) reports detailing how their systems align with five governance principles: safety, transparency, accountability, fairness, and contestability. These reports must also explain technical details about system design, data sources, risk mitigation strategies, and impact assessments—presented in both plain language for the public and more detailed versions for specialists. However, the law provides little clarity on how developers should interpret or operationalize these principles. In the absence of clear standards, businesses must navigate compliance on their own, increasing legal and administrative burden. The result is a sweeping disclosure regime that overregulates without offering the specificity developers need.</p><p>California’s SB 420 further underscores the risks of regulatory fragmentation. The bill requires any developer or deployer of a high-risk automated decision system (ADS)—which includes those using AI, as well as those using less advanced data analytics or statistical models—to conduct detailed impact assessments before releasing their systems to the public. These assessments must document intended uses, potential risks of discrimination or harm, and mitigation strategies. While designed to prevent harmful and discriminatory outcomes, the bill’s broad definition of “high-risk” and extensive pre-deployment requirements create significant hurdles and costs. Like the New York and Illinois proposals, SB 420’s wide scope risks influencing compliance strategies at the national scale, in the absence of federal standards.</p><p>Together, these laws reflect a troubling trend: the emergence of expansive and inconsistent AI laws with national consequences. The issue isn’t with regulating AI, but that many state laws vary widely in substance, scope, and coherence, making them difficult to scale to the national level. A startup hoping to launch a new AI product must now adhere to dozens of state frameworks, each with its own definitions, requirements, and penalties. Large corporations may manage the added complexity, but smaller firms often cannot, and even the large ones may find themselves building out large legal teams instead of investing more in engineering, potentially facing contradictory rules. This limits competition and slows innovation, ultimately imposing greater barriers to responsible AI development.</p><p>The state-by-state regulatory framework is also a direct threat to America’s ability to compete globally. China, for example, regulates AI at the national level through centralized standards issued by central-level organizations like the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The CAC’s 2025 Measures for Labeling AI-Generated Content apply uniformly to all providers, offering a single, predictable compliance framework. While China’s approach is more top-down, it gives companies a clear rulebook, unlike the U.S., where developers face a growing list of state-specific rules.</p><p>A federal moratorium on state-level AI laws would have helped avoid this outcome. Congress could have used the moratorium to consult stakeholders, evaluate the benefits and risks of various regulatory approaches, and design a national framework that protects consumers without unnecessarily restricting innovation. Instead, developers are left to navigate a confusing legal environment, which may slow the rollout of beneficial technologies—particularly in sectors such as healthcare and government services, where responsible deployment of AI could generate significant public benefit.</p><p>Looking ahead, Congress should still consider a federal moratorium on state AI laws—particularly those that impact other states—for as long as politically feasible. States like California and Massachusetts do not want Texas or Wyoming shaping their AI rules—and vice versa. The ultimate goal is not to block AI regulation, but to effectively coordinate it at the federal level. The United States needs a unified approach to AI governance that fosters innovation and establishes regulatory clarity across state lines.</p> Without a Federal Moratorium, US AI Policy Will Fragment Further \| ITIF	查看 6195	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232649	有图 <p>Europe was once the epicenter of global innovation, giving birth to the Industrial Revolution and shaping the trajectory of the modern economy. However, over the last few decades, it has lost its edge. In the global race for technological leadership, the United States and China have seized the lead in many emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing. While the reasons are multifaceted, Europe’s ambiguity toward new technology—and its embrace of the precautionary principle—plays a key role.</p><p>Despite being home to some of the world’s best engineers, universities, and research institutions, Europe has failed to retain top talent and technology companies compared to the United States and China. For instance, DeepMind, one of the world’s earliest AI labs, was founded in the United Kingdom in 2010. However, it was acquired by Google in 2014 after struggling to secure funding from more risk-averse European venture capitalists. Today, DeepMind underpins Google’s AI leadership and stands alongside the sector’s American frontrunners, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI.</p><p>Similarly, China is emerging as a formidable AI powerhouse, with platforms such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen models performing on par with their American counterparts. Although promising European AI companies exist, such as France’s Mistral and Hugging Face, they remain few and suffer from a lack of venture funding compared to their American rivals.</p><p>Europe’s preference for secure, low-risk investments over bold bets on disruptive innovation has led to a shallower venture capital market. More risk-tolerant investors in the United States are pouring billions into AI development, while Europe has yet to produce a single trillion-dollar tech company. In fact, all seven of the world’s trillion-dollar tech firms are American, but Europe can claim only 28 businesses with valuations over $100 billion.</p><p>According to the 2024 State of European Tech report, European firms raised $426 billion over the past decade, roughly $800 billion less than U.S. firms during the same period. (See figure 1.) In China, government guidance funds have successfully facilitated public-private partnerships in venture capital-like investments, raising $700 billion as of 2021. Meanwhile, European pension funds, which manage around $9 trillion in assets, allocate just 0.018 percent to venture capital—more than 100 times less than the 1.9 percent invested by American pension funds. (See figure 2.) This lack of early-stage investment has impeded Europe’s ability to scale its start-ups into global competitors.</p><p>Figure 1: Private technology funding for Europe and the United States in the last decade</p><p><img src="https://itif-publications-production.s3.amazonaws.com/BO2qXPW4p9VANOrbxpwSm3MX_files/image001.png" rel="noopener noreferrer"></p><p>Figure 2: Pension fund allocation towards venture capital</p><p><img src="https://itif-publications-production.s3.amazonaws.com/BO2qXPW4p9VANOrbxpwSm3MX_files/image002.png" rel="noopener noreferrer"></p><p>Europe’s R&D spending is also lagging. According to the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, the United States invested nearly $900 billion—equivalent to 3.59 percent of GDP—into research and development in 2022. That same year, China, where development costs are significantly lower, allocated $450 billion (2.56 percent of GDP) toward R&D. The EU, by contrast, invested just over $400 billion in 2023, or 2.22 percent of GDP, according to Eurostat—roughly half the U.S. investment in both relative and absolute terms. While nominally similar to China’s total, Europe’s higher research costs diminish the impact of its spending. This chronic underinvestment has left Europe struggling to keep pace in high-tech industries and has weakened its ability to foster homegrown innovation.</p><p>Simultaneously, an adversarial relationship has emerged between the European Union government and the tech sector. While stringent regulations—such as the Digital Market Act, Digital Services Act, Artificial Intelligence Act, Cyber Resilience Act, and General Data Protection Regulation—are aimed at protecting consumers and European businesses, they prioritize control and oversight at the expense of flexibility. The result is a significant compliance burden that can stifle innovation. The AI Act, adopted in 2024, is the world’s first major legal framework for artificial intelligence. It classifies AI systems by risk level and imposes strict requirements on those deemed high-risk, including facial recognition and health technologies. For small start-ups, such onerous rules can be nearly impossible to navigate, deterring novel technologies from even getting off the ground and pushing cutting-edge R&D outside the EU.</p><p>By contrast, the United States and China offer far more supportive environments for innovation. U.S. initiatives, such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—and Chinese programs like Made in China 2025 and the Torch Program—are fueling progress by collectively allocating trillions toward emerging technologies. In China, designated “green zones” promote start-up growth by drastically reducing bureaucratic barriers, offering tax incentives and subsidized office space, and providing streamlined access to state-backed venture capital. These zones serve as high-tech incubators, standing in stark contrast to the fragmented, regulation-heavy environment that European start-ups face. Additionally, the EU’s patchwork of 27 different national regulatory systems creates a maze of complex legal, tax, and financial reporting requirements, hindering scalability and cross-border investment.</p><p>The results for Europe have been troubling. Since 2008, EU GDP has grown only marginally—from $16.4 trillion to $18.6 trillion in 2023, according to the World Bank. Over the same period, U.S. GDP nearly doubled, from $14.9 trillion to $27.9 trillion, while China’s GDP ballooned from $4.6 trillion to $17.8 trillion.</p><p>Europe’s innovation drag should serve as a stark warning. While the Draghi Report was a wake-up call for European policymakers, it’s unclear whether it was loud enough to disrupt them from their slumber.</p><p>It should also serve as a cautionary lesson for the United States that technological leadership is a position that must be actively defended. While the U.S. currently enjoys a strong innovation ecosystem, China is rapidly closing the gap with a coherent industrial policy and massive state support. To remain competitive and safeguard the slowing innovation pipeline, the federal government must continue investing in long-term science R&D, supporting robust public-private partnerships, and fostering dynamic start-up ecosystems by expanding programs like the CHIPS and Science Act while reducing barriers for emerging tech companies.</p><p>The United States should also avoid looking eastward to Europe for regulatory inspiration. It must remain vigilant about the consequences of regulatory overreach and legal fragmentation—especially as states begin to chart independent paths on AI, data privacy, and digital markets. For example, the California Privacy Rights Act imposes stricter data protection standards than other states. At the same time, New York’s Algorithmic Accountability Act and Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act differ significantly from the more limited federal guidelines. Though these laws aim to address legitimate concerns, they risk creating a compliance minefield that could undermine entrepreneurship and innovation. That’s why Congress should maintain the ten-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. And, as ITIF has written, Congress should enact much broader federal preemption of state digital rules that undercut interstate digital commerce.</p><p>American policymakers must likewise resist the urge to constrain the tech sector under the guise of consumer protection or antitrust. Doing so risks burdening firms and pushing talent and investment overseas. A cohesive national strategy is vital to sustaining an innovative economy. The EU’s decline illustrates how overregulation and fragmented markets can stifle innovation.</p><p>Protecting America’s position at the forefront of technological progress will require sustained investment, coordinated national policy, and a willingness to prioritize long-term technological strength over short-term political gain. Without this focus, the United States risks ceding its competitive edge to a more strategically aligned global rival.</p> Europe’s Innovation Lethargy Should Be a Lesson of What Not to Do, Even for a Leading US \| ITIF	查看 8682	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232648	无图 <p>Since the end of World War II there has been a strong, bipartisan consensus in the United States that basic research, funded largely by the U.S. government, lays the foundation for scientific progress that drives economic growth. It is, indeed, the goose that lays golden eggs. Republicans and Democrats quibbled about details, but shared a general, broad consensus in support of this proposition. The return on investment has been dramatic.</p><p>But abrupt policy reversals and dramatic budget cuts to broad swaths of government functions by the present administration, most particularly to the principal scientific agencies—the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy—have canceled, or stalled, thousands of ongoing grants and put the future of the U.S. research enterprise in doubt. Even though multiple, sometimes conflicting court decisions have ruled the cuts and layoffs illegal, the consequent chaos and confusion has disrupted lives and livelihoods of the essential agents of the research enterprise. Competitor nations have jumped to attract researchers from the U.S. to relocate to their countries, and many are doing so while many more continue to contemplate the opportunities.</p><p>The multiple negative impacts of these policy shifts have been widely noted. But amid the ongoing political tumult and policy upheaval it is worthwhile to review some of the continuing scientific fruits recently reported thanks to the longstanding bipartisan support for basic research in the life sciences. Here are a handful:</p><p>▪ May 15, 2025—the world’s first personalized CRISPR therapy given to baby with genetic disease: A baby with a rare genetic disease that kills at least half of those afflicted has been cured by scientists in Philadelphia using gene editing. The method developed could be applied to thousands of other genetic disease afflicting millions of patients.</p><p>▪ May 5, 2025—researchers delete proteins in wheat that are harmful to people with celiac disease: About one in every hundred people round the world have celiac disease, in which an abnormal immune system response to the presence of certain proteins in bread wheat can trigger a host of negative health impacts. Scientists deleted one of the major wheat proteins (using gamma radiation induced deletions, but which could be replicated with CRISPR like gene editing as well) in a move that could reduce the potential of wheat to trigger celiac disease.</p><p>▪ February 24, 2025—CRISPR transforms ordinary fat cells into cancer killing machines: Scientists have used CRISPR gene editing to turn fat cells into cancer-fighting machines that out compete tumor cells for nutrients, thus disrupting their growth. This novel approach could help overcome weaknesses in current cancer treatment regimes.</p><p>▪ May 4, 2025—India unveils world’s first genome-edited rice: Indian scientists have used gene editing to improve two local rice varieties to better resist salt and drought, with anticipated yield gains of 25 to 30 percent. The approach taken falls outside the scope of Indian regulations aimed at genetically engineered crops, thus decreasing the time to bring the new varieties to market, which is expected in 4 to 5 years.</p><p>▪ April 30, 2025—FDA okays a genus gene edit to breed PRRS-resistant pigs: Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a major problem for swine production globally, negatively impacting herd health, increasing antibiotic use, production costs, and constricting supply. The Pig Improvement Company (PIC, a subsidiary of UK based Genus, plc) recently received FDA approval to bring swine with gene edited resistance to PRRS to market, a development that should have considerable positive global impacts.</p><p>▪ July 1, 2025—a genetically engineered chestnut tree, grown in Syracuse, moves one step closer to release: In the nineteenth century, the American chestnut made up one of every four trees in the eastern deciduous forests of the United States, its nuts providing food for myriad creatures and driving a significant sector of the rural economy. A fungal disease introduced from Europe in 1904 killed all but a few scattered remnants. A genetically engineered variety that researchers at Syracuse University have improved to resist the fungus is now in the final stages of regulatory approval by USDA, the last substantial hurdle that must be cleared before restoration efforts can go large scale.</p><p>▪ May 26, 2025—India’s first gene-edited sheep is born: Indian researchers used gene editing to tweak a gene that controls muscle mass. The intervention promises to increase meat yields by 30 percent or more.</p><p>▪ June 3, 2025—malaria eradication is now seen as within reach: With support from the Gates Foundation, Target Malaria scientists have devised a method of producing sterile female mosquitoes. Produced in quantity and released into local populations, these have the potential to help eradicate targeted populations of the world’s most dangerous (to humans) animal. This holds great promise for efforts at eliminating malaria.</p><p>▪ May 14, 2025—science weaponizes our immune system to target aggressive brain tumors: Researchers have harnessed the tools of modern biotechnology to develop new, multipronged therapies that show promise in tackling fearsome, deadly, difficult to treat cancers like the glioblastoma that killed former President Biden’s son, Beau.</p><p>At the same time valuable fruits such as these are ripening, the unprecedented power of the new biological tools developed through basic research continues to improve. While CRISPR has delivered previously unimagined power to research and development teams around the world, new discoveries and refinements continue to arrive.</p><p>Overcoming the technical obstacles of converting such insights to practical tools and products is difficult, but as the record shows, it can be done. In many cases, however, the primary barrier now impeding the path of such innovative solutions to the market is excessive regulation, which is everywhere around the world in need of correction.</p><p>The most egregiously counterproductive and indefensible regulatory policies hampering biotechnological innovations over the last four decades have been in Europe, as we have noted previously. But there are signs of progress. The EU is thrashing its way toward a revamping of regulations widely admitted to be ill-considered, and a UK parliamentary committee has “greenlit gene edited plants.” But the situation in the United States is unsettled on several levels.</p><p>Although the last three administrations have mandated updates and improvements to reduce unjustified regulatory burdens on biotech innovations, only small steps have been taken where large ones are required, and the present administrative turmoil threatens to impede improvements. A recent court case overturned existing regulations, producing uncertainty and confusion that nevertheless opens some doors. The tools to fix this are in hand, and a wide basis of political support remains intact. Specific roadmaps have been provided, by ourselves and others. There are few things this administration could do that would have a more beneficial long-term impact on the ability of American innovators to deliver solutions to urgent problems. It’s time to save the golden goose.</p> Sustaining the Goose That Lays Golden Eggs: How to Continue Miraculous Biotech Advances \| ITIF	查看 7411	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232647	有图 <p>Even with the Trump administration pushing to rebuild U.S. manufacturing—or perhaps because it is—there remains considerable intellectual resistance to the idea that anything is wrong with the sector or that serious action is needed to reverse its decline.</p><p>One argument holds that concern over manufacturing is simply backward thinking. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria reflects this view when he dismisses manufacturing as an “image of the past,” suggesting that the most advanced countries have small manufacturing sectors. Ah, thanks for clearing that up.</p><p>But the narrative has shifted. Increasingly, it’s not that manufacturing is unimportant, but rather that it’s doing just fine. Healthy, even! Ipso facto: no need to intervene.</p><p>They imply it’s obvious: “Can’t you see? The manufacturing job losses are all due to automation.” Come on, get with it. As Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell puts it: “U.S. factories still make things, but those things are increasingly produced by robots.”</p><p>Hmm. Then maybe we need better robots, because U.S. manufacturing productivity has been in absolute decline for more than a decade.</p><p>Then there’s the Progressive Policy Institute, confidently asserting in an op-ed that “the U.S. still has a healthy manufacturing sector—in 2023, it was the world’s second largest after China.”</p><p>Of course it was—the United States has the world’s largest economy. Would we only acknowledge a problem if manufacturing output fell 40 percent and dropped below Japan’s, the third-largest manufacturing economy in the world?</p><p></p><p>In reality, things look far worse. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), from 2005 to 2013, the inflation-adjusted value-added contribution of manufacturing to U.S. GDP was just 66 percent of what it would have been had the sector maintained its 2005 share of the economy. And that modest growth was highly concentrated: Just 4 industries drove it, while the remaining 15 either declined outright or grew at less than half the expected rate.</p><p>But wait, there’s more. Thanks to Moore’s Law, the BEA vastly overstates output growth in computers and electronics. Remove that sector, and manufacturing’s contribution to GDP growth is just 26 percent of what would otherwise be expected.</p><p>So why the widespread denial about U.S. manufacturing’s difficulties?</p><p>Some of it is just laziness. Too many people can’t be bothered to dig into the BEA numbers. Top-line stats make it look like the sector is growing. Never mind adjusting for inflation, GDP share, or distorted growth in computers and semiconductors. Zoom out to a 65-year trend line, and the last decade’s decline barely registers.</p><p>But laziness alone doesn’t explain it. There are plenty of quasi-complicated economic issues where analysts do dig deep into the details. So why not this one?</p><p>There are two core reasons for manufacturing decline denialism:</p>Fear of protectionismBlind faith in market forces<p>The first is that admitting there’s a problem risks opening the door to protectionism, something Washington Consensus types fear more than not being invited to Davos. Leaving aside the debate about the merits of tariffs, ignoring a structural economic problem out of fear of how it might influence policy is intellectually irresponsible. The job of analysts and even pundits is to report reality, not hide or manipulate perceptions to steer policy outcomes.</p>Markets might not always get it right—we need policy?!<img src="https://cdn.sanity.io/images/03hnmfyj/production/50466edaf56a59c19ae5f200807560a8e4e222c7-195x259.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>Besides, how well did two decades of manufacturing decline denial work out? We got Trump’s tariffs anyway, despite all the op-eds insisting everything was fine. Ironically, we likely wouldn"t have gotten the tariffs at all if the United States had embraced a robust national manufacturing strategy 25 years ago. But that was never going to happen, because policymakers were relentlessly told that anyone worried manufacturing was in trouble was either a protectionist or a fool.</p><p>The second and more serious reason for denial is ideological. Acknowledging that manufacturing has faltered calls into question the bedrock of the Washington Consensus: that market forces naturally yield the optimal economic structure. Oh no. The horror.</p><p>It’s time to move past the pearl-clutching and accept the hard truth. The structure of the economy does not automatically evolve in the national interest. That does not mean socialism. It doesn’t mean Soviet-style planning. And it doesn’t mean the government picking narrow winners.</p><p>But it does mean recognizing that the United States needs a robust advanced production system—and that achieving it requires serious, sustained industrial and innovation policy.</p><p>So to the deniers: The facts are in. Reality hurts. But it’s time to face it.</p> What’s Going on With All the Manufacturing Decline Deniers? \| ITIF	查看 4953	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232646	无图 <p>WASHINGTON—Following the announcement that the U.S. government will allow Nvidia to resume sales of its H20 chip to the Chinese market, the Center for Data Innovation released the following statement from Director Daniel Castro:</p>“The decision to allow Nvidia to resume sales of its H20 chip to China is a welcome course correction. Nvidia designed this chip specifically to comply with U.S. export controls. Blocking its sale despite that compliance sent the wrong signal to both U.S. companies and global markets.Restricting U.S. chip exports not only undermines the competitiveness of leading American firms—it also risks ceding market share to foreign rivals like Huawei. That weakens the innovation engine that drives U.S. leadership in AI and semiconductors.More broadly, overly rigid export controls push Chinese AI firms to adopt alternatives outside the U.S. ecosystem, eroding America’s long-term influence in shaping global AI standards and practices.The Trump administration should stay focused on policies that preserve U.S. national security while also ensuring American companies can compete in global markets and continue reinvesting in the R&D that keeps the United States at the forefront of AI innovation.”<p>Contact: Nicole Hinojosa, [emailprotected]</p> Allowing Nvidia’s H20 Sales to China Strengthens U.S. AI Leadership, Says Center for Data Innovation \| ITIF	查看 1283	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232645	无图 <p>NTIA’s wise decision to make the largest federal broadband program tech neutral has been met with denunciations by self-styled consumer advocates, grasping at any possible criticism of the new level playing field. One avenue of attack has been to malign low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellite broadband as unfit for use in the $42 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) Program.</p><p>Critics have claimed LEO broadband will not be able to meet BEAD’s capacity requirements, that LEO networks lack scalability, that it’s more expensive to consumers, and that BEAD itself ought to be biased against LEOs. None of these claims are true.</p>Myth 1: LEO Constellations Won’t Have Enough Capacity<p>While it’s true that fiber networks generally have higher capacity than LEO networks, that’s only a relevant point of comparison if it impacts consumers’ use of their broadband service. The right broadband speed is the one that lets you do what you want with your Internet connection, not an arbitrary number. For example, a household simultaneously running two 4K video streams, two online games, and two zoom meetings would still use less than 50 megabits per second (Mbps).</p><p>To say that LEOs, which already offer over 100 Mbps, are “much slower than fiber” or “technologically inferior [and] capacity-limited” is like saying that a Toyota Camry is too slow for a highway simply because it can’t match that top speed of a Formula 1 car. If you’re never going to exceed highway speeds with either, the fact that one can go 200 miles per hour is irrelevant.</p><p>Another false comparison is between the capacity of fiber vs. LEO in today’s deployments. Critics levy accusations of capacity constraints in some areas of current LEO service as evidence that the technology itself is too slow. But the relevant comparison is what capacity will be after BEAD projects, not before. To be sure, there are some areas in which current upload speeds don’t always hit 20 Mbps, but the upload speeds of wireline technologies in the same areas are precisely zero; the alternative fiber networks don’t exist.</p><p>Yet LEO critics do not infer from the nonexistence of fiber capacity today that BEAD money should not go to fiber. And rightly so! The point of BEAD deployment funding is to create the capacity that meets Americans’ needs. Fiber ISPs will spend BEAD money to build network infrastructure that can provide at least 100 Mbps download and 20 Mbps upload service, and LEO ISPs will do the same. The fact that it’s different infrastructure in each case doesn’t matter. Consumers get high-speed service in either case.</p>Myth 2: LEO Broadband Isn’t Scalable<p>Another criticism is that LEOs are inherently suspect because their satellites have relatively short lifespans. Today’s Starlink satellites, for example, last about five years while a fiber optic cable buried underground will last around 30. The conclusion of LEO critics is that satellite companies are simply treading water with their constellations constantly on the verge of “turning to dust” and unable to “scale to future needs.”</p><p>But this criticism is stuck in the mindset of thinking of a LEO constellation as though it’s a the same business model as a wireline network. It’s not. The two types of networks have different types of variable costs. Fiber ISPs do maintenance on switches and polls and refill the gas tanks on their bucket trucks. But no one says “fiber ISPs are on the brink of collapse since they need to keep doing these maintenance tasks!” That’s just part of the business and priced into any deployment, BEAD or otherwise. Likewise, LEO ISPs launch new satellites and account for the cost (and opportunity) to replace them over time. Bidders for BEAD funds must account for all costs in their bids, and any funds won come with enforceable obligations to meet performance standards.</p><p>Furthermore, a significant difference between bury-and-forget fiber and wave after wave of LEO satellites is that new satellites get the benefits of technological advancements that happened since the prior wave. For example, Starlink is on the verge of launching its “V3” satellites which promise even more capacity and even less latency than the current models. Combine these technological benefits with the fact that satellite launches are net adds to the number of satellites in the constellation, and you get a network that expands its capacity over time. That’s the definition of scalability.</p>Myth 3: LEOs Are Actually More Expensive<p>Another false talking point is that LEOs are cheaper upfront, but they will leave consumers with higher costs over time. The confusion here stems from an apples-to-oranges comparison of urban wireline rates to the disproportionately rural Starlink rates. Consumer prices will always be lower in more densely populated areas. The relevant comparison, especially for BEAD deployments to previously unserved areas, is between rural fiber rates and LEO rates. And that comparison tells a different story.</p><p>Many existing rural wireline deployments cover their operating expenses not with direct user fees but with subsidies from the Universal Service Fund (USF). This FCC program is funded by fees on consumers’ telecommunications bills. So the real cost of rural wireline service is still borne by consumers, it’s just divided between monthly broadband bills and monthly phone bills.</p><p>Rural wireline broadband providers have stated that without USF funding, they would charge consumers $165 per month. That’s far more than Starlink’s $120 per month. So LEOs are cheaper on a monthly basis than rural fiber, not more expensive.</p>Myth 4: BEAD Isn’t (or Shouldn’t be) Tech Neutral<p>Finally, critics allege NTIA’s BEAD guidance contravenes with will of Congress which was secretly for fiber in its definition of “priority broadband project.” But the statute correctly defines that term by the capabilities of broadband networks, not by the technology that provides them. That’s a tech neutral approach that NTIA’s updated guidance complies with better than the prior heavy hand on the scale in favor of fiber.</p><p>Still, fiber advocates now look on the reformed program and claim it is now biased toward LEO satellites. In some cases, the fiber-colored glasses cause credulous misreadings of NTIA’s policy notice, such as confusing a longer “period of performance” for LEOs (which is a greater burden on them) with a longer period to meet performance metrics. That’s just a lack of reading comprehension.</p><p>In other cases, the objection seems to be more of a feeling of persecution at a favorite technology losing its place of privilege. This leads to mental gymnastics to accuse those who remove special favors to certain industries of “corruption.” But equal treatment isn’t favoritism; rejecting exorbitantly expensive deployments when comparable service can be had for far less money is good broadband policy, not a betrayal of it.</p>Conclusion<p>NTIA was right to reform BEAD so consumers can benefit from all broadband technologies, undoing favoritism to immensely expense fiber projects. LEO satellites will provide a fast and scalable option that will now be able to compete for BEAD funding on a level playing field with everyone else.</p><p>The old fiber-biased BEAD guidance was incapable of closing the digital divide. Pro-consumer broadband policy advocates should, therefore, applaud recent reforms that will lower overall deployment costs, a prerequisite for funding more effective methods of closing the digital divide.</p> Broadband Myths: LEOs Don’t Belong in BEAD \| ITIF	查看 7582	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232644	有图 <p>Like any field, innovation policy is not immune to fads. Fads are a convenient substitute for the hard work of critical thinking applied to specific times and places, which is why they spread. The latest is “mission-oriented innovation” (MOI). The idea is that the central organizing principle for government innovation policy should be to invent missions tied to societal challenges in order to justify public innovation efforts and interventions.</p><p>If there’s an international guru of MOI, it’s Mariana Mazzucato, a UK economist who proudly describes herself as “one of the world’s most influential economists... on a mission to save capitalism from itself.” Perhaps the most enthusiastic disciple of Mazzucatonomics is the European Union—an institution perennially in search of purpose. And in Mazzucatonomics, it seems to have found one.</p><p>The EU has plunged headfirst into the MOI pool, launching new innovation programs around missions such as curing cancer, restoring soil health, reviving oceans, and, of course, saving the planet from climate change.</p><p>It would be one thing if the EU were the only place drinking the MOI Kool-Aid. Europe is already lagging far behind in innovation, in part due to its rigid adherence to the precautionary principle in regulation, so we can’t expect much from Brussels in terms of boosting global technological progress.</p><p>But MOI is catching on elsewhere, too. Think tanks, scholars, advocates, and policymakers across Canada, Korea, Japan, the UK, and even the United States are getting on board. The Biden administration’s “cancer moonshot” and climate change initiatives are clear nods to the MOI playbook.</p><p>So what’s the problem?</p><p>Nothing—if you believe that growing the economy and ensuring Western nations stay ahead of China in the advanced technology race are irrelevant or even harmful. But if you care about either of those things, there’s plenty to worry about.</p>Economic growth and social progress. MOI does it all—allegedly<img src="https://cdn.sanity.io/images/03hnmfyj/production/7406a3a92e4c6f09284c9e08059badeb6056bb88-279x181.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>The core issue is that MOI diverts innovation policy from its historical focus on economic growth and global competitiveness, reorienting it toward broad social concerns. That might be fine if a democratic society decides that cleaning up the oceans is its top priority. But the MOI advocates don’t sell their formula as a tradeoff.</p><p>Instead, they promise, in the words of Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner’s classic SNL skit, that MOI is both a floor wax and a dessert topping. Stated differently, MOI will simultaneously solve pressing social problems and supercharge your nation’s lagging innovation and tech competitiveness.</p><p>Really?</p><p>What’s more likely to boost EU growth and competitiveness in the global tech race: a targeted innovation strategy for AI and robotics or one focused on cleaner oceans? Healthier soil or a revitalized European auto industry? Just asking.</p><p>Mazzucato has cleverly deployed a sleight-of-hand trick: hijack innovation policy in service of left-wing social goals, which have always been the ultimate aim. Much of the political left now explicitly rejects growth-oriented capitalism (which Mazzucato, thankfully, aims to rescue us from) and instead champions a vision of society that looks more like Hobbiton—idyllic, deindustrialized, and with perfect income equality. </p><p>The goal is to redirect industrial and innovation policy away from productivity and competitiveness and toward a utopian, post-growth vision.</p><p>In this way, Mazzucato is a 21st-century heir to 19th-century rural socialists like Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, and Henri de Saint-Simon. But instead of communal farms, her motor to achieving this new utopia is government-led innovation policy. Personally, I’d be delighted to live in Hobbiton—so long as my income doesn’t shrink and I still have access to today’s technology. Who wouldn’t? But that’s not the agenda the MOI degrowth advocates have in mind.</p><p>So what should policymakers do when confronted with a proposed innovation “mission”? They should ask themselves three questions:</p><p></p>Is this particular problem worth devoting scarce public resources to solve, given real tradeoffs and other national priorities? Just because a challenge tugs at the heartstrings doesn’t mean it merits billions in R&D spending, especially if it crowds out more growth-relevant investments.Is innovation policy the best tool for addressing the problem or achieving the goal? Sometimes it might be. Sometimes regulation or direct public investment, like building infrastructure, might be more effective.Will the proposed innovation mission actually generate the economic benefits its proponents claim, such as higher wages, stronger productivity, or more competitive domestic firms? MOI pitchmen routinely sell their ideas on these grounds—because they know that voters aren’t exactly clamoring for a communist Hobbiton. But the evidence backing their economic claims is often thin or nonexistent.<p>This is not to say there are no good missions. Some can offer dual-use benefits, like addressing social problems while also advancing productivity and competitiveness. That’s the sweet spot policymakers should look for.</p><p>One promising example: housing construction innovation. Many advanced nations face a housing affordability crisis. Innovation in construction could play a meaningful role, especially by advancing emerging technologies such as building information modeling (BIM), 3D printing, robotic assembly, and new materials. For countries that implement a construction innovation mission, there’s potential to lower housing costs and cultivate internationally competitive firms in these technologies and related industries.</p><p>That’s mission-enabled innovation—where a real-world mission unlocks growth-oriented innovation, not the other way around.</p><p>Ultimately, the most important question policymakers must ask is: What problem(s) do we want innovation policy to solve? If the answer is “faster growth in living standards, a stronger industrial base, and sustained global competitiveness,” then tread carefully with MOI. It’s an appealing vision, but one that may deliver neither the economic gains nor the social progress its champions promise.</p> Mission-Oriented Innovation or Mission-Enabled Innovation? \| ITIF	查看 6404	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232643	无图 <p>U.S. trade negotiators have long understood that to expand market access for American goods and services, they must address at least two types of policy barriers. First, there are overt barriers to trade, such as tariffs. Second, foreign governments also enact covert barriers to trade, known in the professional vernacular as “non-tariff barriers” (NTBs), whichare not officially trade policies, but they nonetheless tilt the playing field to protect a country’s domestic industries by raising the cost of doing business for U.S. companies and other foreign competitors.</p><p>But in recent years, a third type of barrier has emerged. As Hilal Aka writes in The National Interest, these policies are not benign NTBs that apply equally to all companies, but instead, policies specifically tailored to inhibit or take down a single class of companies: US big tech firms. Call them “non-tariff attacks” (NTAs). Examples of these policiesincludeantitrust regulations, content-moderation requirements, data-localization mandates, digital service taxes, and exorbitant fines. The EU’s Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, and similar laws inBrazil,India, andJapan,are examples.In the last five years, they have spread to dozens of countries around the world. US trade negotiators should take note and push back.</p><p>Read the commentary in The National Interest.</p> American Tech Companies Are Under Attack in Global Markets \| ITIF	查看 1374	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232642	有图 <p>The U.S. government rightly reversed course this past week by announcing that it would allow Nvidia and AMD to resume sales of their H20 and MI308 chips to China. Both chips were designed to comply with U.S. export controls. Blocking them would have punished leading U.S. companies for following the rules and created openings for Chinese competitors to gain ground in the global AI race.</p><p>However, not all policymakers supported the decision. Most of the criticism has focused exclusively on Nvidia, despite the change also applying to AMD. This selective scrutiny suggests that some critics may not fully understand the technical and market landscape—or may simply be singling out the most prominent player due to broader skepticism toward large tech companies. For example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) condemned the move, stating, “It is shameful that even as American companies, small businesses, and universities wait months, if not years, to acquire chips for developing artificial intelligence, Nvidia and the Trump Administration are prioritizing sending these chips to the People’s Republic of China.”</p><p>But her criticism misrepresents the facts. U.S. companies are not waiting in line for H20 chips. These chips offer far lower performance than Nvidia’s top-tier GPUs—such as the B100 and B200, as well as its older H200, all of which remain restricted. As shown in figure 1, the H20 lags significantly in all key AI performance benchmarks—memory capacity, bandwidth, data throughput, and FP64/FP32/TF32 performance. (FP64, FP32, and TF32 refer to different levels of numerical precision used in computing. Higher performance in these formats allows chips to train and run AI models more quickly and accurately.) The H20 only has a market in China because buyers there lack access to more advanced options.</p>Figure 1: Comparison of Nvidia chips<img src="https://cdn.sanity.io/images/03hnmfyj/production/e1d527857756b25cf804c6fca66f4c47a0de1dfb-1200x532.png" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>Other critics, like Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), claimed Nvidia developed the H20 to “circumvent” U.S. rules. But that’s an inaccurate and unfair characterization. Nvidia designed the chip to comply with U.S. export control rules. Penalizing companies for adhering to U.S. law—by rewriting the rules after the fact—sends a dangerous message and undermines business certainty. If policymakers believe current rules are insufficient, the proper response is to update them, not punish firms that followed them in good faith.</p><p>Rep. John Moolenaar (R-MI), chair of the House Select Committee on China, opposed the decision on strategic grounds, warning that it would “provide a substantial increase to China’s AI development.” He argued, “We can’t let the CCP use American chips to train AI models that will power its military, censor its people, and undercut American innovation.” But blocking sales of the H20 chip is unlikely to change China’s AI trajectory.</p><p>Despite trailing in chip manufacturing, China is not facing a shortage of computing power. Recent estimates find that Chinese data centers are using only about 30 percent of their available compute capacity. Denying access to lower-tier U.S. chips like the H20 may raise costs for China at the margins, but it will not stop its AI ambitions—especially as Chinese firms accelerate efforts to build domestic alternatives. Meanwhile, restricting these sales weakens U.S. firms that play a central role in the global AI ecosystem.</p><p>Allowing H20 exports supports U.S. innovation. For example, Nvidia expects to earn $15 billion in revenue from China in the second half of 2025. These earnings fund American R&D that will power the next generation of U.S. chips. Every dollar spent on Nvidia chips is a dollar not spent on a Chinese rival like Huawei. Restricting exports does not just hurt U.S. firms—it weakens America’s edge in AI and semiconductors and risks handing market share to foreign competitors. More broadly, overly broad export controls risk long-term strategic losses by pushing Chinese firms away from the U.S. AI ecosystem and encouraging the development and adoption of alternatives.</p><p>The Trump administration should maintain export controls where they clearly advance national security. But it should also ensure that U.S. companies can compete globally, reinvest in innovation, and remain central to the technologies that will shape the future.</p> Letting US Companies Sell Second-Tier Chips to China Is the Right Move \| ITIF	查看 4460	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232641	无图 <p>Korea’s economic policy is failing its talent. As Robert Atkinson and Sejin Kim write in The Korea Times, Korea’s highly educated workforce is increasingly stuck in low-quality jobs. This is not because of a lack of skill, but because of government policies that penalize growth and fragment markets, creating an economy where firm size, not performance, determines success.</p><p>At the root of the problem is a pro-small-business stance that protects micro-enterprises at the expense of scale, productivity, and upward mobility. Rather than rewarding consolidation and productivity, Korean policymakers have long treated small firms as untouchable, even when the result is lower wages, less dynamism, and stalled careers.</p><p>Just 13.9 percent of Korean jobs are in large enterprises—the lowest share in the OECD and less than half the OECD average. Meanwhile, workers in micro-enterprises earn just 54 percent of what large-firm employees make. This isn’t a minor market distortion. It’s a systematic, policy-driven undervaluation of talent in a country where nearly 70 percent of young adults hold university degrees.</p><p>The solution? Atkinson and Kim call for Korea to embrace size neutrality—reforming regulations, incentives, and labor institutions to support firms that innovate, scale, and compete, creating the kind of high-quality jobs Korea’s world-class talent deserves.</p><p>Read the commentary in The Korea Times.</p> Korea’s Labor Market Too Small for Its Talent \| ITIF	查看 1441	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232640	无图 <p>Anyone involved in business or economic policy who has spent time in Washington knows you"re not supposed to utter the term industrial policy. It’s verboten—like Voldemort, who shall not be named. Try saying it in a meeting. The response is always a nervous “We can’t use that term.” Say competitiveness or innovation policy instead.</p><p>Weird. Why?</p><p>First, what is industrial policy? Leaving aside what its opponents claim, industrial policy is any policy explicitly focused on one or more specific industries. Using this definition, policies to foster better and more affordable childcare are industrial policy; after all, childcare is an industry. Clean energy policy is industrial policy. Proposals to increase oil drilling are industrial policy.</p><p>But that’s not what ITIF means. We mean specific policies that support specific industries in their global competitiveness battles.</p><p>Free-market types love to tar the term by asserting that industrial policy must be implemented by incompetent GS-12 bureaucrats picking firms backed by crony capitalists. This is religious doctrine for think tanks like the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Cato Institute, American Action Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, American Enterprise Institute, and many more. But it’s telling that they virtually never engage beyond straw-man arguments, relying mostly on platitudes like “markets work best.”</p><p></p><p>Why does speaking this truth to power matter? Because if something is taboo and cannot be named, actually doing it (and doing it well) becomes much harder. Case in point: The level of industrial policy sophistication in Washington—both in government and among outside experts—is, frankly, amateurish and shallow. What passes for industrial policy is usually hortatory, consisting of calls for more immigration, more science funding, and light-touch regulation. Serious, sector-specific analysis grounded in decades of scholarly research on industrial policy is almost entirely absent.</p><p>So why the fear and loathing of the term?</p><p>There are several reasons. One is that free-market advocates dislike the idea that any industry is more important than another. To them, potato chips, computer chips, what’s the difference? Even worse, they recoil at the idea of pointy-headed government bureaucrats “picking winners.” Yes, government can mismanage industrial policy, for example, by mandating daycare centers in federally supported chip fabs. But it can also get it right.</p><p>Another reason is the fear that it will be used to justify tariffs and protectionism. But Trump is proof that is not necessarily the case. He hates industrial policy, having even proposed eliminating CHIPS Act funding, but loves tariffs. If anything, good industrial policy reduces the need and demand for tariffs.</p><p>Finally, industrial policy formation and implementation require a very different set of skills and educational backgrounds than those possessed by most Washington policy experts. It’s not primarily rooted in public policy, economics, foreign affairs, law, or other traditional Washington disciplines. Rather, it draws from technology, business, planning, economic history, and related fields. Like any good profession, Washington’s economic and trade establishment resists displacement and irrelevance.</p><p>So, fellow advocates of industrial policy, join me in being outspoken. You have nothing to lose but your intellectual chains—and U.S. techno-economic survival to gain.</p> Three Cheers for Industrial Policy \| ITIF	查看 3523	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232639	无图 <p>The Center for Data Innovation appreciates the opportunity to submit this response to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)’s call for views on its proposed decision report as part of its strategic market status (SMS) investigation into Google’s provision of general search services under Part 1 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) 2024.[1] The CMA proposed designating Google as having SMS in its general search services.</p><p>The Center for Data Innovation studies the intersection of data, technology, and public policy. Its mission is to formulate and promote pragmatic public policies designed to maximize the benefits of data-driven innovation in the public and private sectors. It educates policymakers and the public about the opportunities and challenges associated with data, as well as technology trends such as open data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things. The Center is part of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank.</p>Executive Summary<p>The Center recommends that the CMA avoid regulatory overreach under the new DMCCA regime by maintaining clear boundaries between distinct digital markets and recognizing the importance of dynamic competition to support innovation and regulatory predictability, while addressing concerns over search market concentration.</p><p>In particular, the CMA should:</p><p>1. Limit the scope of the proposed SMS designation to clear boundaries that do not bleed into other, distinct digital markets; and</p><p>2. Explicitly factor in the disruptive potential of AI as part of its assessment of “substantial and entrenched market power.”</p>Limit the scope of the proposed SMS designation to clear boundaries that do not bleed into other, distinct digital markets<p>In its proposed decision, the CMA concludes that Gemini—Google’s AI assistant—currently falls outside the scope of the designated “digital activity,” as its use cases are nascent, mixed, and dynamic. Yet the CMA also explicitly notes that it will “keep this under careful review” and may bring “search use cases” of Gemini within scope following further consultation. Furthermore, the CMA’s roadmap of potential measures to improve competition in search suggests it will monitor AI services, creating confusion about their regulatory status.[2] This equivocation introduces ambiguity regarding Gemini’s status and whether it too falls within the scope of regulation under the proposed SMS designation. The CMA is not excluding AI assistants from its scope if it maintains the option to regulate them as functionally equivalent to general search.</p><p>The CMA should clarify how it interprets section 20(3)(c) of the DMCCA, which allows the imposition of conduct requirements related to a product or service not directly linked to the designated digital activity, provided the SMS firm has market power in the original activity. Applying conduct requirements to AI products, such as Gemini, without first establishing market power in those products risks regulatory overreach. The CMA should clearly delineate the boundaries between general search (where it proposes an SMS designation) and generative AI (where it has not made such a determination).</p><p>This regulatory ambiguity undermines predictability for firms and contradicts the CMA’s stated objective to embed its “4Ps”—proportionality, pace, predictability, and process—into its enforcement approach. Likewise, the CMA risks contradicting its annual plan to drive growth and promote investment by discouraging competition in an emerging market.[3]</p>Explicitly factor in the disruptive potential of AI as part of its assessment of “substantial and entrenched market power”<p>The CMA’s proposed five-year horizon for assessing “substantial and entrenched market power” fails to account for the dynamic and disruptive nature of competition in digital markets. This approach reflects a static view of market power, whereas what is needed is a shift toward a more dynamic understanding of competition—one that acknowledges that dominance today can be swiftly overturned by innovation tomorrow, a phenomenon especially relevant to digital markets.</p><p>Competition in innovation-driven markets does not hinge on price or output in a static equilibrium but on firms’ ability to introduce new, superior products and services that render incumbents obsolete. This process—what economist Joseph Schumpeter termed “creative destruction”—is already unfolding in the search market, where AI-powered assistants like Perplexity AI and ChatGPT are emerging as radically new interfaces for information retrieval. These tools bypass traditional search engines and advertising models entirely, offering users conversational, multimodal, or domain-specific alternatives.</p><p>Indeed, the CMA’s own AI Foundation Models Report acknowledges that foundation models could “drive competition and disrupt incumbent firms,” and that their downstream deployment could fundamentally alter competitive dynamics.[4] These developments signal not merely incremental change but the potential for leapfrog competition—precisely the kind of disruptive innovation that is the hallmark of effective market forces and is already transforming the search space.</p><p>Given the transformative impact of AI on traditional search, reliance on current dependency metrics as indicators of competition is increasingly obsolete. Amazon’s advertising spend on Google, for example, may reflect a final-stage investment in a declining distribution channel rather than evidence of structural competitive weakness. Similarly, the CMA"s emphasis on Google’s superior search infrastructure presumes the continued relevance of traditional crawling and ranking—even as AI assistants can synthesize information from multiple specialized databases without relying on comprehensive web indexing. This shift could render Google’s infrastructure advantage a stranded asset rather than an insurmountable barrier.</p><p>The CMA should not regulate a nascent and rapidly evolving field like AI chatbots as a gateway to search in cases where competition limits the potential for market power. Nor should it impose regulation on search simply because AI is becoming integrated into traditional services—an example of digital transformation the UK should welcome as part of its broader growth agenda.</p><p>AI represents a disruptive force in search, driving innovation and increasing competition to the benefit of users. Intervention at this inflection point risks freezing market relationships just as they are becoming naturally contestable. The CMA should recognize that the current market structure represents the final phase of the traditional search era, not the foundation for future competitive dynamics, and that regulatory restraint during this technological transition would allow market forces to address competitive concerns more effectively than administrative intervention.</p><p>Regulatory action risks imposing unnecessary costs, disrupting a search market that is already evolving, and stifling progress in AI. The emergence of AI systems signals that digital markets are functioning—not failing—and warrants regulatory restraint to avoid undermining pro-competitive developments.</p>Endnotes<p><p>[1]. Competition and Markets Authority, Proposed Decision Report: SMS Investigation into Google’s General Search and Search Advertising Services, Call for Views; and Strategic Market Status Investigation into Google"s General Search Services: Proposed Decision, June 24, 2025.</p><p>[2]. Competition and Markets Authority, Strategic Market Status Investigation into Google’s General Search Services: Roadmap of Possible Measures to Improve Competition in Search, June 24, 2025.</p><p>[3]. Competition and Markets Authority, CMA’s Annual Plan to Drive Growth by Promoting Competition, Protecting Consumers and Enhancing Business and Investor Confidence, press release, March 27, 2025.</p><p>[4]. Competition and Markets Authority, AI Foundation Models: Initial Report, September 18, 2023.</p></p> Comments to the CMA on Its Proposed Google SMS Designation \| ITIF	查看 8138	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232638	无图 <p>WASHINGTON—Following the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Arielle Roth to be Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information—thereby heading the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and overseeing the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program—the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released the following statement from ITIF’s director of broadband and spectrum policy, Joe Kane:</p>We congratulate Assistant Secretary Roth on her confirmation at a critical time for NTIA. Her leadership and expertise will be critical to ensuring the BEAD program can efficiently and effectively address the remaining causes of the digital divide.She will also be a key voice on spectrum policy as the United States seeks to enhance both commercial spectrum capacity, national security, and American leadership at the International Telecommunication Union.</p> ITIF Welcomes Confirmation of Arielle Roth to Head NTIA \| ITIF	查看 927	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232637	无图 <p>WASHINGTON—In response to the Trump administration’s release of its AI Action Plan, the Center for Data Innovation released the following statement from Senior Policy Manager Hodan Omaar:</p>The AI Action Plan shows the Trump administration is serious about winning the global AI race. It marks a clear evolution from the President’s2019 AI initiativeand reflects just how dramatically the global AI landscape has shifted over the past six years. The planrightly recognizes that beating China demands a comprehensive effort—unleashing infrastructure to fuel model development, removing regulatory frictions that slow development and deployment, and promoting the export of American AI technology. These steps put the United States on a path not only to benefit from AI today, but to remain the global leader in the future.</p><p>But for Americans to support these efforts, they will need to see tangible improvements in the everyday areas of their lives where AI can make a difference—such as lower energy bills, better healthcare, faster disaster response, and more efficient public services. The plan’s commitments to launch domain-specific efforts and establish regulatory sandboxes in areas like healthcare, energy, and agriculture are important steps toward delivering those gains. Whether these efforts scale and deliver results will determine whether the plan fulfills its dual promise: AI for the American people—and American AI for global leadership.<p>Contact: Nicole Hinojosa, [emailprotected]</p> President Trump’s AI Action Plan Meets the Moment \| ITIF	查看 1511	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word

12224 1 489 Next»