Think Tank Scholar Secretly Trying to Broker US-North Korea Peace

Suzanne DiMaggio of the think tank New America helped establish an unofficial channel with the North Koreans in early 2016, according to The Wall Street Journal.  Here is more of what they say about DiMaggio:

Early last year, Ms. DiMaggio established through interlocutors in Stockholm a “track two” dialogue with North Korea, a term reflecting the fact no active U.S. officials were present at the initial meetings. She made the first of two trips to the North Korean capital in February 2016, in an early bid to help defuse the nuclear crisis.

Ms. DiMaggio has long worked to establish diplomatic channels to countries in conflict with the U.S. She held numerous track two discussions with Iranian officials before the Obama administration formally started nuclear negotiations with Tehran in 2012.

Ms. DiMaggio is Director of the US-Iran Initiative at New America and a Senior Fellow at the think tank.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post about another think tanker who has been active regarding talks with North Korea.

Congressman: CBO Should Aggregate Think Tank Reports

Here is more from The Hill:

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows (R-N.C.) is trying to eliminate 89 positions from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office's staff and require the office to aggregate think tank data instead of using its own professional expertise.

“They ought to be aggregators; there are plenty of think tanks that are out there,” Meadows said at a National Press Club event. 

In an amendment to be offered to the security-related spending bill scheduled for a House vote this week, Meadows would cut $15 million of funding to CBO staff members responsible for estimating the budgetary costs of bills in Congress, and have them "carry out such duties solely by facilitating and assimilating scoring data compiled by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Urban Institute."

Scholars at the conservative think tank R Street Institute are advising against Rep. Meadows' idea, arguing, among others things, that think tanks "may not even have the manpower or desire to generate scores for the hundreds of pieces of legislation that are produced each year."

Think Tanks Using Congressional Hearings to Help Foreign Donors?

With more foreign money flowing into US think tanks, it is becoming more commonplace for think tanks and their scholars to use congressional hearings to lobby on behalf of their foreign donors.  The Institute for Gulf Affairs recently documented an example that brings some recent think tanker testimony into question.  Here is more:

Hundreds of thousands of dollars paid by the United Arab Emirates’ Ambassador to the U.S. to a witness testifying at a congressional hearing later today are casting doubts on his credibility, leaked documents show.

The Center for a New American Security, whose Director of the Middle East Security Program Ilan Goldenberg will testify before the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee, received at least $250,000 in from the United Arab Emirates embassy, the documents show.

The hearing “Assessing the U.S.-Qatar Relationship,” is scheduled for July 26 and called by Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, chairman, House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Middle East and North Africa.

The emails also show Mr. Goldenberg’s extensive email and phone communications with U.A.E. Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba since last summer to fund CNAS work and a trip of Goldenberg and colleagues to the U.A.E.

The emails came from the group known as Global Leaks who sent it to the Institute for Gulf Affairs days ago.

The emails also show Goldenberg pushing business contracts for Lockheed Martin, while CNAS’s chief executive officer Michèle Flournoy was lobbying Al Otaiba for Polaris to win a U.A.E. government contract.

The August 2016 invoice was signed by Flournoy and submitted to Ambassador Al Otaiba to request payment for a study about U.A.E missile technology control regime. The study was given to Al Otaiba in February 2017 and distributed to U.A.E leadership, including Abu Dhabi’s crown Prince and strongman Mohamed Bin Zayed, emails show.

CNAS did not answer any questions posed by IGA but emailed the written testimony of Mr. Goldenberg delivered to the subcommittee and included a footnote acknowledging the $250,000 payment. The payment, the statement said, was for a Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) project carried out by CNAS and managed by Goldenberg. U.A.E. is not party to the MTCR.

The Institute for Gulf Affairs (formerly the Saudi Institute), a think tank run by Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmed, goes on to note that this case "raises legal and ethical questions for congressional committees who rely on witnesses possibly compromised by foreign cash."

In 2015, the House passed a rule requiring witnesses of congressional panels to disclose whether they have been paid by foreign governments.

Update: Here is a new piece from The Intercept entitled "Hacked Emails Show UAE Building Close Relationship With DC Think Tanks That Push Its Agenda."  It has lots of interesting tidbits, including about a UAE-sponsored trip for think tank scholars that was organized by Ilan Goldenberg and Brian Katulis of the Center for American Progress (CAP).

Think Tank Quickies (#277)

• Think tank European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) moving operations from London over Brexit.
• Prestigious Chinese think tank (Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, or SASS) implicated in a scheme to entice US spies to leak classified information.
• Western think tank funding cheat sheet for the Qatar-GCC conflict.
• Chart: Should you ask a question during a think tank seminar?
• New book: The Power of Ideas - The Rising of Thinkers and Think Tanks in China.
• Video: What happens when you invite 100 local high school students to Brookings.
• RAND Corp.: Strategic stability between the US and Russia is eroding.
• Watch the 2017 Prospect Magazine think tank awards on Periscope.
• Tevi Troy: Can conservatives and their think tanks find their way?
• CSIS launches "Joint US-China Think Tank Project on the Future of US-China Relations."
• Leadership Institute holds first Think Tank Opportunity Workshop.

Kushner Introduced to Russian Ambassador by Think Tank Head

This is from an 11-page statement to congressional committees that Jared Kushner has released (as reported by Axios):

With respect to my contacts with Russia or Russian representatives during the campaign, there were hardly any. ... [T]he day after the election, I could not even remember the name of the Russian Ambassador. ... I sent an email asking [Dmitri Simes of the Center for the National Interest, which hosted a Trump foreign policy speech], 'What is the name of the Russian ambassador?'"

In the statement, Kushner said that Simes had done a "great job" putting the event together and said that Simes had created the guest list and extended the invitations for the event.  Kushner also said that Simes has introduced him to four ambassadors at the event, including Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Here is more on that speech from a previous Think Tank Watch post.

Clinton Adviser Searches for Meaning in Think Tanks

Here is more from a Washington Post piece on Jake Sullivan, senior policy advisor to Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and former Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department under President Barack Obama:

Sullivan...divides his time between an empty think-tank office in Washington and Yale, where he lectures one day a week on law and foreign policy. Almost everything about his professional life is transitory, uncertain, unsettled.

He ran through a list of his early mentors who had helped him find purchase in Washington: There was Leslie H. Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, where Sullivan had spent time as a summer intern, assigned by happenstance to Gelb’s office.

There was Strobe Talbott, who runs the Brookings Institution. In 2000, when Sullivan was starting law school, Talbott had just been chosen to lead the newly formed Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. “Those were the heady days when the mainstream foreign policy consensus was that globalization was a force for good,” Sullivan recalled. He had sought out Talbott after learning that they had both been Rhodes scholars and edited the Yale Daily News.

The "empty think tank office" that the piece mentions likely refers to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where Sullivan is a Senior Fellow in the think tank's Geoeconomics and Strategy Program.

Google Pays Think Tanks to Influence Policy

Here is more from The Wall Street Journal:

Over the past decade, Google has helped finance hundreds of research papers to defend against regulatory challenges of its market dominance, paying $5,000 to $400,000 for the work.

Google has funded roughly 100 academic papers on public policy matters since 2009, according to a Journal analysis of data compiled by the Campaign for Accountability, an advocacy group that has campaigned against Google and receives funds from Google's rivals, including Oracle Corp.  Most mentioned Google's funding

Another 100 or so research papers were written by authors with financing by think tanks or university research centers funded by Google and other tech firms, the data show.  Most of the papers didn't disclose the financial support by the companies, the Campaign for Accountability data show.

Google's strategic recruitment of like-minded professors is one of the tech industry's most sophisticated programs, and includes funding of conferences and research by trade groups, think tanks and consulting firms...

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece on Google's close ties to the think tank world.

Think Tank Quickies (#276)

• AEI President Arthur Brooks weighs in on whether or not think tanks matter.
• Chart: Elite confidence in various think tanks, via Dan Drezner.
• William Burns (president of Carnegie Endowment), Jessica Mathews (also Carnegie), Leon Wieseltier (Brookings), Marie-Josee Kravis (Hudson), and Niall Ferguson (Hoover) attend Bilderberg  2017.
• Patrick Crowley (of Dayblink Consulting) to marry AEI senior media associate Meg Cahill.
• Hudson Institute hosted spring reception in New York at home of Joe and Marlene Ricketts; UN Amb. Nikki Halley sat down with Hudson CEO Ken Weinstein for an off-the-record talk.
• New America's Bretton Woods II at Sea event took place aboard super yacht of philanthropists John Evans and Steve Wozencraft.
• CSIS President John Hamre among those who attended Brzezinski funeral.
• Fred Kempe, Jim Jones, and Jon Huntsman of Atlantic Council dined at Cafe Milano ahead of their Distinguished Leadership Awards ceremony.
• Drezner: By moving from Harvard to the Hoover Institution, Niall Ferguson was able to relinquish all of his teaching responsibilities, which had become a distraction for him.
• Heritage Foundation was the only think tank that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko visited during his trip to Washington.

Think Tank Land Becoming Playground for Spies

Hacked US government emails show that certain experts at think tanks are being heavily targeted by foreign spy agencies.  Here is more from Foreign Policy:

A 2016 document from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis, and obtained by FP, warned that there have been more than a dozen recent cases of U.S. think tanks being hacked, including one breach that involved stealing data on Russia-Turkey relations. The document, which is marked “For Official Use Only,” says, “Cyber actors likely will continue to target think tanks and similar organizations, as many maintain significant connections to US government information and personnel, especially foreign policy officials.” The DHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Think Tank Watch has reported several times about Russian scholars at Western think tanks being targeted by foreign spies, and we have documented that nearly every major US think tank has been hacked over the past few years.

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch post on how a Chinese think tank was used to recruit a US spy.

Chinese Think Tank Used to Recruit US Spy

Here is more from Foreign Policy:

Caught with a bag of cash and an electronic device used to communicate with his handlers, a former government official with years of military and intelligence experience is accused of spying for China.

[Kevin] Mallory allegedly provided several classified government documents to a Chinese contact, who initially claimed affiliation with a prestigious Chinese think tank, in exchange for cash.

A Chinese handler posing as an employee of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) made contact with Mallory during trips to China in March and April.

The SASS is a reputable and internationally known think tank.  But it also maintains a close working relationship with the Shanghai State Security Bureau, a regional office of the Ministry of State Security, China's intelligence arm.

Chinese think tanks, including SASS, often work closely with the Ministry of State Security.  China's spy arm prefers to meet sources inside China, and social science academics provide a useful front for intelligence and influence operations.

Some intelligence-linked Chinese think tanks also maintain a known presence in Washington.  One of those is the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.  The institute actively engages in the Washington think tank ecosystem and also invites US officials and academics for events in Beijing.  The Center for Strategic and International Studies...has co-hosted numerous cybersecurity dialogues with the Chinese institute in recent years.

For more than two decades, the institute has sent a fellow to Washington, who stays for a year or two...

The Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences (SASS) is ranked as the 35th best think tank among the countries of China, India, Japan, and South Korea, according to the latest University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.

Think tanks in both the US and overseas are popular with spies, and a large number of spies are housed within policy shops while others are trying to spy on think tanks (and scholars) themselves.

In related news, Bill Gertz of The Free Beacon just reported that the Chinese spy network in the US may include 25,000 spies.

Heritage Gets Serious About Finding a New President

Here is more from Politico:

The Heritage Foundation has hired the executive search firm CarterBaldwin to assist in its search for a new president, according to a notification obtained by POLITICO.

The job listing, circulated by the Atlanta-based search firm on Tuesday, says the next president of the conservative think tank “has a historic opportunity to build strategically on the organization’s success, to promote unity within the conservative movement, and to positively address current public policy challenges facing our nation.” A spokesman for the Heritage Foundation did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

The top job at the influential conservative institution opened up in early May when the Heritage Foundation’s board of directors unexpectedly pushed out former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who had led the organization since 2012, citing “significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of communication and trust.”

Here is Think Tank Watch's ultimate guide to what happened at Heritage earlier this year that led to Jim DeMint's ouster.

The job as Heritage president earned DeMint $1.1 million in 2015, the highest of any of think tank head in the world.

USIP Getting Its Own Lobbyists?

These days, think tanks often do lobbying on behalf of donors, but it is quite rare for think tanks to have their own hired guns to help them with issues they have before the federal government.  However, with the possibility of certain think tanks budgets being squeezed in the new Trump era, having a support team to help on Capitol Hill never hurts.  Here is more from Politico:

The nonprofit Lobbyists 4 Good registered in August as a lobbyist “funded by the people, for the people.” The group aimed to raise money through crowdfunding to lobby for two issues: boosting the budget of the U.S. Institute for Peace and promoting campaign finance reform. It didn’t go so well. Some potential donors weren’t moved by the two causes that Lobbyists 4 Good was supporting, but others were turned off by the thought of hiring lobbyists at all. “There were a lot of pain points that we kept finding,” said Billy DeLancey, the group’s executive director. The group raised only $13,000 or so.

So Lobbyists 4 Good is trying a new model. The group terminated its lobbying registration last week, and it’s now running Kickstarter-style campaigns that allow members of the public to choose what issues they want to hire lobbyists for. “Anyone can submit a campaign, and it gets vetted through our founding principles,” DeLancey said, ensuring that people don’t create campaigns to benefit their own companies or themselves. Once donors have pledged $31,000 to a particular campaign, Lobbyists 4 Good will hire a lobbyists to work on the issue for six months. But the group has a long way to go before it can hire its first lobbyist. The campaign that’s furthest along, to lobby against United Nations funding cuts, had raised just $564 as of Monday afternoon.

Readers of Think Tank Watch may remember that the White House budget proposal earlier in the year called for deep funding cuts for the US Institute for Peace (USIP) and the Wilson Center.

Free-Market Think Tank NCPA Closing After 34 Years

Think Tank Watch has learned that the Dallas, Texas-based free-market think tank National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) is closing after 34 years in business.  Here is more from a statement on the think tank's website:

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a 501c3 public policy research organization, announced this week that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization effective immediately. The thirty-four year old free market think tank has made significant contributions to free-market public policy research and implementation, including Health Savings Accounts, Roth IRAs, automatic enrollment in 401ks, and ongoing work in the areas of taxes, healthcare, entitlements, economic development, energy and national security.
The decision to leave the world of think tanks comes after the organization has faced significant financial challenges over the last three years. The incident is not isolated, according to a June 29 Article in Exempt Magazine. The article mentions a recent survey from The Bridgespan Group, which examined the financial health of nearly 300 grantees and cites, “More than half of surveyed nonprofits have frequent or chronic budget deficits; 40 percent have fewer than three months of operating reserves; and, 10 percent showed no reserves.”
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a 501c3 public policy research organization, announced this week that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization effective immediately. The thirty-four year old free market think tank has made significant contributions to free-market public policy research and implementation, including Health Savings Accounts, Roth IRAs, automatic enrollment in 401ks, and ongoing work in the areas of taxes, healthcare, entitlements, economic development, energy and national security. The decision to leave the world of think tanks comes after the organization has faced significant financial challenges over the last three years. The incident is not isolated, according to a June 29 Article in Exempt Magazine. The article mentions a recent survey from The Bridgespan Group, which examined the financial health of nearly 300 grantees and cites, “More than half of surveyed nonprofits have frequent or chronic budget deficits; 40 percent have fewer than three months of operating reserves; and, 10 percent showed no reserves.”

NCPA...announced this week that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization effective immediately.  The thirty-four year old think tank has made significant contributions to free-market public policy research and implementation, including Health Savings Accounts, Roth IRAs, automatic enrollment in 401ks, and ongoing work in the areas of taxes, healthcare, entitlements, economic development, energy, and national security.

The decision to leave the world of think tanks comes after the organization has faced significant financial challenges over the last three years.  The incident is not isolated, according to a June 29 article in Exempt Magazine.  The article mentions a recent survey from Bridgespan Group, which examined the financial health of nearly 300 grantees and cites, "More than half of the surveyed nonprofits have frequent or chronic budget deficits; 40 percent have fewer than three months of operating reserves; and, 10 percent showed no reserves."

The news comes just days after it was announced that the conservative Washington, DC-based think tank Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) is closing after eight years in operation. 

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a 501c3 public policy research organization, announced this week that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization effective immediately. The thirty-four year old free market think tank has made significant contributions to free-market public policy research and implementation, including Health Savings Accounts, Roth IRAs, automatic enrollment in 401ks, and ongoing work in the areas of taxes, healthcare, entitlements, economic development, energy and national security.
The decision to leave the world of think tanks comes after the organization has faced significant financial challenges over the last three years. The incident is not isolated, according to a June 29 Article in Exempt Magazine. The article mentions a recent survey from The Bridgespan Group, which examined the financial health of nearly 300 grantees and cites, “More than half of surveyed nonprofits have frequent or chronic budget deficits; 40 percent have fewer than three months of operating reserves; and, 10 percent showed no reserves.”
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a 501c3 public policy research organization, announced this week that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization effective immediately. The thirty-four year old free market think tank has made significant contributions to free-market public policy research and implementation, including Health Savings Accounts, Roth IRAs, automatic enrollment in 401ks, and ongoing work in the areas of taxes, healthcare, entitlements, economic development, energy and national security. The decision to leave the world of think tanks comes after the organization has faced significant financial challenges over the last three years. The incident is not isolated, according to a June 29 Article in Exempt Magazine. The article mentions a recent survey from The Bridgespan Group, which examined the financial health of nearly 300 grantees and cites, “More than half of surveyed nonprofits have frequent or chronic budget deficits; 40 percent have fewer than three months of operating reserves; and, 10 percent showed no reserves.”

The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a 501c3 public policy research organization, announced this week that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization effective immediately. The thirty-four year old free market think tank has made significant contributions to free-market public policy research and implementation, including Health Savings Accounts, Roth IRAs, automatic enrollment in 401ks, and ongoing work in the areas of taxes, healthcare, entitlements, economic development, energy and national security.
The decision to leave the world of think tanks comes after the organization has faced significant financial challenges over the last three years. The incident is not isolated, according to a June 29 Article in Exempt Magazine. The article mentions a recent survey from The Bridgespan Group, which examined the financial health of nearly 300 grantees and cites, “More than half of surveyed nonprofits have frequent or chronic budget deficits; 40 percent have fewer than three months of operating reserves; and, 10 percent showed no reserves.”
The National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), a 501c3 public policy research organization, announced this week that its Board of Directors has voted to dissolve the organization effective immediately. The thirty-four year old free market think tank has made significant contributions to free-market public policy research and implementation, including Health Savings Accounts, Roth IRAs, automatic enrollment in 401ks, and ongoing work in the areas of taxes, healthcare, entitlements, economic development, energy and national security. The decision to leave the world of think tanks comes after the organization has faced significant financial challenges over the last three years. The incident is not isolated, according to a June 29 Article in Exempt Magazine. The article mentions a recent survey from The Bridgespan Group, which examined the financial health of nearly 300 grantees and cites, “More than half of surveyed nonprofits have frequent or chronic budget deficits; 40 percent have fewer than three months of operating reserves; and, 10 percent showed no reserves.”

Think Tank Quickies (#275)

• Sens. Todd Young (R-IN) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) Co-Chair CSIS Congressional Task Force on Reform and Reorganization of US Development Assistance.
• Karen Dynan, formerly at the Treasury Department and the Brookings Institution, joins PIIE as Nonresident Senior Fellow.
• Amb. Robert King joins CSIS Korea Chair as Senior Adviser.
• CSIS and Indonesia's PT Pertamina (Persero) launch partnership on Southeast Asia Energy Security and the Banyan Tree Leadership Forum.
• Cato Institute announces new R. Evan Scharf Chair for the Public Understanding of Economics.
• Atlantic Council names former top Pentagon official Christine Wormuth as first Director of new Adrienne Arsht Center for Resilience.
• Ambassador Daniel Fried joins Atlantic Council as Distinguished Fellow.
• Ragnheiður Elín Árnadóttir joins Atlantic Council Global Energy Center as Senior Fellow.
• Former Obama official John Morton joins Atlantic Council Global Energy Center as Senior Fellow. 
• Wilson Center appoints Amb. Nirupama Rao as a Public Policy Fellow.
  
  Ambassador Nirupama Rao as a Public Policy Fellow
  Ambassador Nirupama Rao as a Public Policy Fellow
  Ambassador Nirupama Rao as a Public Policy Fellow

Conservative Think Tank Collapses Due to Trump

Here is more from Josh Rogin of The Washington Post:

At the end of August, the Foreign Policy Initiative will cease to exist, ending an eight-year run for the conservative-policy organization. The small but active think tank has been a proponent of a hawkish, pro-defense national security policy agenda but found itself unable to survive in the Trump era.

[William] Kristol founded the non-profit organization with other neoconservative thought leaders Robert Kagan (now at the Brookings Institution), former undersecretary of defense for policy Eric Edelman and former Bush administration official Dan Senor. Although its funding wasn’t publicly disclosed, the bulk came from billionaire Paul Singer, according to staffers.

Those close to the organization said that in the new policy and political environment marked by the ascendency of Donald Trump, many donors, including Singer, are reassessing where to put their funds and FPI, although well established and well liked, simply didn’t warrant the continued investment.

Chris Griffin, the current executive director of FPI, noted that the think tank’s staff have gone on to serve in key positions with several members of Congress. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) was an FPI staffer. The organization’s first executive director, Jamie Fly, served as national security counselor to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

Is all the speculation about the death of think tanks starting to come true?  Will more think tanks collapse in 2017?  Earlier in the year The Economist said that the world has reached "peak think tank."

Even with FPI going dark, Washington, DC still has around 400 think tanks, and the US has more than 1,800 of them.

"Ideas Industry" and Think Tanks

The following are a few of Think Tank Watch's favorite excerpts from Daniel Drezner's new book The Ideas Industry: How Pessimists, Partisans, and Plutocrats are Transforming the Marketplace of Ideas.

Drezner, a professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, is a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.  He has previously worked at RAND Corporation and the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).


Think tanks in general

• "Both think tanks as institutions and individual analysts in the employ of think tanks must cater to client demands more than even the most conciliatory of academics.  Universities have larger endowments and an additional revenue stream from tuition; think tanks are much more reliant upon benefactors, donors, and grants to finance themselves.  Individual researchers at these institutions are also more interested in serving the government causing them to be more solicitous of the needs of the bureaucracy."

• "On at least one occasion, I felt like my think tank boss was trying to reverse-engineer a report I was writing.  He knew the conclusions he wanted the report to draw and just wanted to make sure that my analysis was consistent with the conclusion."

• "A century ago, America's plutocrats converted their wealth into university endowments, think tanks, or philanthropic foundations.  Today's wealthy set up their own intellectual salons and publishing platforms."

• "The proliferation of media platforms renders it impossible for any intellectual to be heard."

•  "A 2014 Chicago Council of Global Affairs survey suggest that Americans believe their voice should carry more weight in foreign affairs, while universities and think tanks should play a lesser role."

• "Two Federal Reserve economics surveyed the state of replicable findings in top-tier economics journals, and found that, on their own, they were only able to reproduce a third of the surveyed findings."

• "The comparative advantage of think-tankers has historically been the informal scuttlebutt they glean from being based in Washington, DC.  Compared to academics, policy analysts based at think tanks tend to know much more about the bureaucratic or legislative state of play surrounding a particular policy arena."

• "Donors are more likely to provide project-specific funding rather than more general financial support.  They are less interested in funding think tanks than 'do tanks.'"

• "Think tanks are competing with consulting firms, law firms, SuperPACS, lobbyists and advocacy groups.  That puts pressure on think tanks to be more responsive to donors."

On the Heritage Foundation

• "Heritage [Foundation's] Index of Economic Freedom has been an important gauge of the market-friendliness of national policies around the world; it is also a component of the US Millennium Challenge Corporation's criteria for dispensing American foreign aid.  The foundation's Center for Data Analysis had the necessary intellectual firepower to compete with the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office in modeling the economic impact of proposed legislation."

• "[Heritage] commissioned former Bush Administration Office of Legal Counsel head Steven Bradbury to write two papers on the role of the National Security Administration's controversial surveillance programs...[Then Heritage President Jim] DeMint did not like the paper's conclusions and therefore scotched its publication at Heritage."

• "In my 2016 survey of opinion leader, an overwhelming 79 percent of respondents said they had little confidence in Heritage reports, more than double the percentage of any other think tank in the survey."

• "On foreign policy questions, smaller right-wing think tanks like the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies [have] supplanted Heritage's influence."

• "Heritage [has] manage to avoid the rash of conflict-of-interest allegations that plagued more mainstream think tanks like Brookings or CSIS."

• "The decline of Heritage's intellectual quality has come as its political grip over the GOP has increased."

• "Despite backbiting about Heritage Action, its influence was large enough to entice most of the 2016 GOP presidential candidates to attend their September 2015 Take Back America candidate forum."

Trump Administration and think tanks

• "The Trump Administration has at best a strained relationship with conservative think tanks."

• "Most conservative think tanks distanced themselves from [Trump's] policies."

• "During the Republican primary, [Trump's] campaign rejected most outreach efforts by GOP-friendly think tanks to help tutor him on questions of world politics."

Think tanks after 9/11

• "The post 9/11 demand for international affairs research meant flush times for foreign affairs think tanks...salary inflation took off among think tanks fellows.  The sustained demand, combined with the pre-2008 boom in asset markets, triggered a surge in think tank budgets."

• "In the five years after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, one was hard-pressed to walk down Massachusetts Avenue in northwest Washington without seeing ground being broken for a new think tank building."

Think tanks after the Great Recession

• "The Great Recession forced some wrenching changes in the economics of think tanks.  The most direct effect was the dramatic contraction in their traditional sources of financing.  Endowments naturally shrunk in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, as did the income earned from them...Longstanding philanthropic groups like the Carnegie Corporation and the MacArthur Foundation were forced to reduce their grant giving because their own endowments contracted during the Great Recession."

• "The contraction of traditional revenue streams forced most think tanks to tap more unconventional sources.  In some cases, this has meant more partnerships with multinational corporations."

• "At the same time that the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment's government funding shrank, its private consulting revenue increased nearly tenfold." 

• "A welter of think tanks, including CFR, CSIS, and Brookings, developed corporate sponsorship programs to offer these companies select privileged access to their experts."

• "Between 2003 and 2013, corporations went from being responsible for 7 percent of large donations at Brookings to being responsible for 25 percent."

• "For the corporations, this kind of partnership can be as valuable as spending on lobbyists.  Think tank funding is less heavily regulated than more traditional forms of political spending, such as campaign contributions and lobbying members of Congress."

Tidbits about specific think tanks

• "Questions have been raised about the intellectual independence of [the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's] leaders.  Several policy analysts for Carnegie also work for lucrative consulting partnerships.  Russian dissidents, as well as multiple think tank analysts based in the US, accused Carnegie of sacrificing its intellectual autonomy and analytical rigor to maintain its Moscow headquarters."

• "Demos and the left and the Center for the National Interest on the right, have fired individuals who made public statements contrary to institutional preferences."

• "Parag Khanna was a nondescript graduate students when he pitched the New America Foundation for a grant to travel the world and write about shifts in world politics.  He received a fellowship that led him to write his first book."

• "Intelligence analysts Michael Tanji declared that 'virtual think tanks' could eventually supplant their brick-and-mortar forefathers.  He founded the online-only Center for Threat Awareness, convinced that "think tank 2.0" would prove to be leaner and meaner than organizations with such high payrolls, physical plant, and overhead.  His Center for Threat Awareness lasted only a year."

Private sector vs. think tanks

• "Stylistically, the private sector is far better at conveying ideas than university professors or think tank fellows."

• "Many ex-policymakers who are involved in consulting firms avoid disclosing possible conflicts of interest between their for-profit activities and their other roles in think tanks and policy boards." 

• "A successful for-profit consultancy is far more lucrative than a think tank fellowship."

• "Only a fool goes into foreign affairs for the money."

Corporations and think tanks

• "Defense contractors have a long track record of aiding hawkish analysts at think tanks by placing them on their corporate boards.  Jack Keane's primary affiliation in his writings is as chairman of the board of the Institute for the Study of War; his presence on the board of General Dynamics comes up less frequently.  Roger Zakheim used his visiting fellowship at AEI to push for greater military spending at the same time that he worked as a lobbyist for the defense firm BAE Systems.  CSIS has approximately seventy affiliated experts who also do private-sector consulting."

• "The financial sector has been equally active in leveraging support of think tanks research.  Hedge funds have used intermediaries to fund think tank analysts that advocate for their policy references."

Foreign governments and US think tanks

• "In 2014 alone the Atlantic Council disclosed receiving financial support from 25 different foreign governments."

• "The government of Qatar was the principal backer of the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy."

• "Even think tanks that expressly forbid receiving funds from foreign governments, such as CFR, do accept funds from foreign state-owned enterprises and foundations."

• "A Chinese construction firm with close ties to the Chinese government sponsored a new institute at CSIS for 'geostrategy.'"

• "The percentage of cash donations from foreign governments to Brookings nearly doubled between 2005 and 2014."

Wealthy individuals funding think tanks

• "Conservative funders like Sheldon Adelson, Paul Singer, and Bernard Marcus have plowed significant sums into conservative think tanks like the Manhattan Institute or the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies."

• "At the same time, more liberal institutions, such as the Truman National Security Project, have sought the support of funders like George Soros and Tom Steyer." 

Reading the entire book is highly recommended in order to get further insights into the ever-changing think tank world and world of ideas.