Think Tank Quickies (#330)

• Quincy Institute: "Think the Iran war was a disaster? Blame these DC think tanks first." 
• Euroskeptic think tanks on the rise. 
• Columbia students call out think tank's financial ties to Big Oil. 
• The Heritage Foundation is making more changes to its senior leadership as it looks to refurbish its image in Washington after a series of public relations setbacks.  Steve Chartan, previously VP for government relations at the think tank, will now serve as EVP of Heritage Action.
• The Trump-inspired realignment of the conservative think tank world.
• Inside the tense fight between Mike Pence and the Heritage Foundation. 
• Podcast: Inside the hidden world of think tanks. 
• Inside AEI's housing bill opposition. 
• WaPo: Heritage president toasted editor of controversial right-wing magazine. 
• A former general of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) revealed he was targeted by a suspected Chinese "honey trap" while a researcher at Harvard University's Asia Center. 

Pentagon Cancels Think Tank Senior Service College Fellowships

The Department of War announced in a Feb. 27 memo that it is canceling Senior Service College (SSC) fellowships at a number of universities and think tanks, in what Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says is a campaign against anti-American values and "wokeness."

Fellowships will be cancelled at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), New America, Brookings Institution, Atlantic Council, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Stimson Center.

The memo said that potential new partner institutions include the Ted Stevens Center for Arctic Security Studies, the William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, and the Africa Center for Strategic Studies. 

 

Think Tank Cited in China Spying Case

Here is more from The Times:

A former Labour adviser under investigation for allegedly spying for Beijing met the government’s Indo-Pacific minister in the Foreign Office before his arrest.

David Taylor, who is married to the Labour MP Joani Reid, met Seema Malhotra to help her prepare for a speech she gave in January at the Asia House think tank.

Taylor and two other men with links to the Labour Party were arrested by counterterrorism officers at addresses in London and Wales on Wednesday morning.

All three, alleged to have breached the National Security Act, have been bailed while the Metropolitan Police continues its inquiries.

Taylor, a former political adviser to senior Labour politicians who became a consultant and lobbyist with an interest in Asia, and his wife, the MP for East Kilbride & Strathaven, have been suspended from the party. In the aftermath of the arrests, Reid said that she had nothing to do with China, was no apologist for the Chinese Communist Party and had “never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law”.

Taylor, 39, is the head of programmes at Asia House, where he runs the all-party parliamentary group for central Asia for MPs and peers.

 

Here is a link to the speech given by Malhotra at the Asia House.

Think Tank Quickies (#329)

• CGD: The triple threat facing think tanks.
• Meet the new foreign affairs magazine: New Voyager. 
• New think tank launched to bridge talent gap in Hong Kong studies.
• Republicans accuse climate groups (Energy Foundation China and the Center for Climate Integrity) of doing China's "dirty work" in the US.
• Where is Trump's aggressive new stance toward the NATO alliance coming from?  One answer: a 2023 white paper authored by the British academic and conservative historian Sumantra Maitra.  In a paper published by the Trump-aligned think tank Center for Renewing America, Maitra sketched out a theory of what he called "Dormant NATO" - a radically re-imagined alliance in which America plays a much more minor role relative to its European allies. 
• Think tankers are members of the super-secretive Bohemian Grove society according to leaked documents.
• Sarah Ladislaw, a former senior director for climate and energy at the NSC under the Biden Administration, now runs the New Energy Industrial Strategy (NEIS) Center think tank. 
• Calls for Congress to bolster its in-house think tank's access to AI. 
• CSIS launched a project on avoiding strategic miscalculation in US-China relations. 
• Nikkei reporter Ken Moriyasu leaving newspaper to join the Hudson Institute as a Senior Fellow for Greater Asia.