CNAS Names Victoria Nuland as New CEO

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) has new leadership.  Here is more from the defense-oriented think tank:

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) Board of Directors has selected Victoria Nuland, the former U.S. Ambassador to NATO and former Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, as the Center’s new Chief Executive Officer. In addition, Robert O. Work, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and former CNAS CEO, will rejoin CNAS as Senior Counselor for Defense.

As CEO, Ambassador Nuland will lead CNAS’ efforts to develop bold, innovative, and bipartisan solutions to the most pressing national security and defense issues. She succeeds Michèle Flournoy, who will join the Center’s board of directors and co-direct CNAS’ Next Generation National Security Leaders Fellowship. She will work with Richard Fontaine, who remains the organization’s president.

Victoria Nuland also used to be a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.  Her husband, Robert Kagan, is a Senior Fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings.

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) praised the Nuland news, saying she is a "top-notch diplomat and foreign policy leader" and looks forward to her leadership at the think tank.  Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he has known Nuland for years and she is an "excellent" choice to lead the think tank.

The Nuland announcement comes after Michele Flournoy, a co-founder of CNAS, stepped down as CEO to form a new strategic advisory firm.

Secret $20 Million Gift Given to DC Think Tank

Here is what The Intercept is reporting:

The United Arab Emirates on pace to contribute $20 million over the course of 2016 and 2017 to the Middle East Institute, one of Washington’s leading think tanks, according to a document obtained by The Intercept. The outsized contribution, which the UAE hoped to conceal, would allow the institute, according to the agreement, to “augment its scholar roster with world class experts in order to counter the more egregious misperceptions about the region, inform U.S. government policy makers, and convene regional leaders for discreet dialogue on pressing issues.”

MEI was founded in 1946 and has long been an influential player in Washington foreign policy circles. It serves as a platform for many of the U.S.’s most influential figures, allowing them to regularly appear on cable news, author papers, host private briefings and appear on panels in between stints in government.

Think tanks in Washington play a role perhaps as important as K Street, though with far less public insight into their activity or sources of funds. While the political establishment is gripped by the question of Russia’s influence on the 2016 elections, Washington itself is awash in money from both foreign corporations and foreign governments.

The whole Intercept piece, authored by Ryan Grim, is worth reading in its entirety.  It has appearances by UAE Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba, think tanker Bilal Saab, UAE-based consultant Mac McClelland Jr., MEI President Wendy Chamberlain, Egyptian activist/scholar Ramy Yaacoub, Richar Mintz of The Harbour Group, Egyptian oligarch Naguib Sawiris, MEI board chairman Richard Clarke, Managing Director of Qorvis MSLGroup Michael Petruzzello, Barry Pavel of Atlantic Council, top lobbyist for Occidental Petroleum Ian Davis, former Center for a New American Security (CNAS) staffer Andrew Exum, think tank ECSSR, and many more.

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch post on the UAE's influence at other think tanks in the United States.

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).

The Think Tanker Behind Huge DoD Robot Arms Race

A former top think tank official is behind the US Department of Defense's huge push into the robot arms race and what is known as centaur warfighting.

Here is more from The New York Times:

Almost unnoticed outside defense circles, the Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the center of its strategy to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s dominant military power. It is spending billions of dollars to develop what it calls autonomous and semiautonomous weapons and to build an arsenal stocked with the kind of weaponry that until now has existed only in Hollywood movies and science fiction, raising alarm among scientists and activists concerned by the implications of a robot arms race.

 “China and Russia are developing battle networks that are as good as our own. They can see as far as ours can see; they can throw guided munitions as far as we can,” said Robert O. Work, the deputy defense secretary, who has been a driving force for the development of autonomous weapons. “What we want to do is just make sure that we would be able to win as quickly as we have been able to do in the past.”

Mr. Work, 63, first proposed the concept [of centaur warfighting] when he led a Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security. His inspiration, he said, was not found in typical sources of military strategy — Sun Tzu or Clausewitz, for instance — but in the work of Tyler Cowen, a blogger and economist at George Mason University.

In his 2013 book, “Average Is Over,” Mr. Cowen briefly mentioned how two average human chess players, working with three regular computers, were able to beat both human chess champions and chess-playing supercomputers.

It was a revelation for Mr. Work. You could “use the tactical ingenuity of the computer to improve the strategic ingenuity of the human,” he said.

Although the article does not mention it, Think Tank Watch should point out that Tyler Cowen also hails from the think tank world, as General Director of the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center. 

As for Mr. Work, he still has extremely close ties to the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), and speaks there from time to time.  Robert Works' biography can be found here.

Michele Flournoy, who is Hillary Clinton's likely pick for Defense secretary if she becomes president, is Co-Founder and CEO of CNAS.  Her think tank biography can be found here.

Think Tank Quickies (#200)

• Center for a New American Security (CNAS) announces formation of ISIS Study Group.
• CNAS announces new project on the future of ground forces.
• Canadian Ambassador to US Gary Doer named Co-Chair of Canada Institute Advisory Board at Wilson Center. 
• Wilson Center gets a new website in November.
• Amb. Ryan Crocker named Distinguished Fellow at Wilson Center.
• Wilson Center award honors Defense Secretary Ashton Carter.
• Meet the Wilson Center's Polar Initiative.
• AEI launches new app for iPad. 
• Kirsten Madison, formerly at the White House, State Department, DHS, and US Senate, joins AEI as Resident Fellow and Deputy Director of Foreign and Defense Policy Studies.
• AEI hires three for its Economic Policy Studies team: Eric Belasco, Benedic Ippolito, and Lawrence Mead.
• Brookings appoints Janice Eberly and James Stock as co-editors of the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity (BPEA).
• Brookings launches Brookings China Council to coincide with state visit of President Xi Jinping.
• Brookings announces the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Initiative on Innovation and Placemaking.  (Robert Bass is president of Keystone Group.)
• CFR hires two new adjunct senior fellows: Esther Brimmer (formerly at the State Dept.) and Gordon Goldstein (Managing Director at Silver Lake). 
• Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at CFR; Chris Christie to speak at CFR on Nov. 24.
• Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) appoints Tim Maurer for the think tanks new cyberpolicy initiative.
• CEIP and Chicago Council on Global Affairs launch task force on US policy toward Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia.
• PIIE appoints Pedro Nicolaci da Costa (previously with Reuters & WSJ) to help with social media.
• CSIS hires Jeff Rathke, a former Foreign Service officer, as Deputy Director and Senior Fellow of the Europe Program; also hires Lisa Sawyer Samp (formerly at DoD) for Int'l Security Program.
• CSIS names nine new members to its Board of Trustees, including Erskine Bowles, William Daley, Stanley Druckenmiller, Martin Edelman, Elizabeth Holmes, Ron Kirk, Leon Panetta, Bob Schieffer, and Frances Townshend.
• CSIS announces Marshall Program on Science and National Security.
• Cato Institute names Robert Gelfond, CEO/Founder of Macro Quantitative Strategies, to its Board.
• CAP launches national grassroots effort to raise awareness for nutrition assistance programs.
• Atlantic Council holds Energy & Economic Summit in Istanbul, Turkey Nov. 18-20.
• Atlantic Council, US Embassy Islamabad, and Meridian International Center announce 2015 Emerging Leaders of Pakistan (ELP) Fellows.
• Atlantic Council presented annual Global Citizen Awards on Oct. 1 to Colombia President Juan Manuel Santos, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi, and Yu Long; Henry Kissinger accepts Distinguished Service Award, IMF's Christine Lagarde presents award to Draghi.
• Atlantic Council and The Defense Entrepreneurs Forum (DEF) announce partnership.
• Columnist Reihan Salam and Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin join NAF's Board of Directors.
• Secretary of State John Kerry delivers Syria policy speech at USIP.
• USIP lights headquarters blue for UN anniversary.
• Henry Rowen, second president at RAND Corp., passes away.

Speaker Ryan and His Deep Think Tank Connections

For years Think Tank Watch has written about how Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) has been the darling of conservative think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and to the Heritage Foundation.  In fact, AEI's annual dinner in 2013 was solely meant to honor Rep. Ryan.

He is also close to scholars at the Hudson Institute and has had dinner with the head of American Action Forum.  He has also spoken at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) as well as the center-left think tank Brookings Institution.

Ryan has also spoken at state-level think tanks, including the Center of the American Experiment (in Minnesota).  And he has embraced other think tanks outside of the beltway, such as the Manhattan Institute, which was reportedly advising some of his staff.

His think tanking is so prolific that during the 2012 vice presidential debates, Ryan was described as "Think Tank Ryan."  Even David Hoppe, Ryan's new chief of staff, reportedly has connections with think tanks.

But Ryan's deep relationship with think tanks has not been all friendly.  And his relationship with the Heritage Foundation is actually quite nuanced.  For example, in 2013, Heritage Action, the lobbying arm of Heritage Foundation, came out against Ryan's budget plan.

As you may remember, former House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) was often attacked by Heritage, and the think tank may have even helped destroy his career in Congress.

So the big question going forward is will Heritage play naughty or nice with Ryan.  Heritage Action has recently said that it is time for "moving away from the US Chamber of Commerce's preferred agenda," and it will surely be watching Ryan closely.

Women Leadership Positions Rise at CFR & CNAS, Fall at CSIS

If you are a women looking to make a career out of think tanks, you may want to pick your think tank carefully.

Women have been increasing their ranks in leadership positions at some of the US's top think tanks, but others have seen a decline in top spots for women in recent years.

Micah Zenko and Amelia Mae Wolf of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) have outlined recent findings in a piece in Foreign Policy entitled "Leaning From Behind":

Data gathered from publicly available sources - on what we subjectively considered the top US think tanks working on foreign policy issues four years ago - reveals that women now comprise 24 percent of people working in policy-related positions and 33 percent of total leadership staff.  The prevalence of women in these nine think tanks has increased by less than 1 percent annually in the past four years.

For this analysis, "policy-related" positions were classified as leadership roles (directors, presidents, and fellows) within departments focused on foreign policy, and "total leadership staff" included senior positions in non-policy roles such as human resources, development, and communications, which play an essential role in developing and implementing think tank programs.

The authors go on to say, among other things, that foreign policy and national security communities are "missing out on a wealth of expertise that could provide alternative thinking and policy options" by not hiring enough women.

Also noted is the idea that women are better for preventing war and corruption, and help with the economic competitiveness of a country:

The inclusion of women is proven to have enormous benefits for national security and foreign policy. The International Peace Institute found that women’s participation in peace negotiations, whether holding seats at the negotiating table or as political leaders, benefits the longevity of a peace agreement, making it 20 percent more likely to last at least two years and 35 percent more likely to last 15. This is particularly relevant for the United States, which will have spent an estimated $4-6 trillion on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is engaged in a $9.9 million per-day open-ended air war against the Islamic State. Other studies have found that a higher number of women in senior government positions is correlated with lower levels of corruption and economic competitiveness of a country.

The authors call on senior administrators at think tanks to make it a priority to increase the percentage of female experts to 50 percent.

They cite the "women and foreign policy" programs at several think tanks as positive developments, and say that males are "empowered to influence change" by refusing to speak on all-male panels (something that FP Group CEO/Editor David Rothkopf has done), or responding to media/speaking requests with suggestions for alternative female speakers.

Based on the data that Think Tank Watch has reviewed, the Council on Foreign Relations is the first major foreign policy think tank to have at least 50% of its leadership roles given to women.

Interestingly, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was the only think tank in the study that had a decline in policy-related leadership positions given to women.  Overall leadership positions held by women at CSIS remained stagnant from 2011 to 2015.

The Stimson Center was the only think tank in the study that had a decline of women in leadership positions (overall) from 2011 to 2015.

A chart comparing women's representation at major foreign policy think tanks from 2011 vs. 2015 can be found here.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on women in think tanks.

Exxon Has Spent $30+ Million on Think Tanks?

Corporations are the glue that keep most large think tanks intact, as a whole spending hundreds of millions of dollars each year for think tank studies and access to scholars.  One specific example is ExxonMobil Corporation, which has reportedly spent tens of millions of dollars on think tanks over the past few decades.  Here is more from a Herald & Tribune op-ed:

...for decades thereafter, the company [Exxon] nevertheless spent $30 million on think tanks and researchers...

According to The Huffington Post, in 2014 alone Exxon spent $1.9 million on 15 think tanks, advocacy groups, and trade associations.  Here is a list from around 2005 of the various think tanks that Exxon was funding.  Think tanks on that list include Cato Institute, Heritage Foundation, Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Hoover Institution, and Hudson Institute.

Exxon's corporate website does not list the think tanks it currently funds but says that it "provides support to a variety of think tanks, trade associations and coalitions in order to promote informed dialogue and sound policy on matters pertinent to its interests."  Today, Exxon funds think tanks such as the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) and the Brookings Institution.  [Chevron is also a donor to those two think tanks.]

Other think tanks that have received Exxon money include: Resources for the Future (RFF), New America Foundation (NAF), and Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

In 2007, it was reported that Exxon had been funding the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI).  At that time, AEI was sending letters to scientists offering them up to $10,000 to critique findings in a climate report from the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

It is also important to remember that in 2009, Exxon head Rex Tillerson came to the Wilson Center in Washington, DC to announce for the first time that Exxon was supporting a carbon tax.

Here is more about big oil companies' funding of think tanks.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on the Bipartisan Policy Center's (BPC) connection to Exxon.

Exxon has also given large amounts to colleges and universities, often considered the largest competitors to think tanks.

In related news, a recent New York Times piece entitled "Emails Reveal Academic Ties In a Food War" outlines the large sums of money that Monsato has given to academics.  That piece does not mention Monsanto's funding of think tanks, but it is public knowledge that Monsato has donated to think tanks like the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and Hudson Institute.

Think Tank Quickies (#189)

• Miley Cyrus opened up VMA's with an "Instagram Think Tank" that helps her decide what to post.
• Hillary Clinton inquired about think tanker Steve Clemons of NAF.
• Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack visits CAP to address strengthening of child nutrition programs.
• The New Republic and CAP host policy forum on future of climate change with White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough.
• Bharath Gopalaswamy named Director of Atlantic Council's South Asia Center.
• Wilson Center on the future of 3D printing.
• CNAS Senior Fellow Ely Ratner named Deputy National Security Advisor to VP Joe Biden. 
• Loren DeJonge Schulman, former Senior Advisor to the National Security Advisor, named CNAS Leon E. Panetta Senior Fellow and Deputy Director of Studies.
• Amb. William Taylor named EVP at USIP.
• Libertarian think tank R Street study: US gov't agencies missed 1,400 of 2,684 regulatory deadlines.

Think Tank Quickies (#184)

• What are think tanks thinking about EU-China relations? (via European Parliamentary Research Service)
• Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and IMF chief Christine Lagarde speak at Brookings on July 8; DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson speaks at CSIS on July 8.
• Cato scholar blasts Atlantic Council for allowing Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to speak.
• Cato Institute on the miracle of air-conditioning.
• NBR scholar (and former CNAS scholar) Abraham Denmark named as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for East Asia.
• AEI President Arthur Brooks' new book Conservative Heart coming out July 14.
• Lauren Bohn: Male talkfest at think tanks isn't just anecdotal.
• CSIS pics of disputed islands used to attack China on environment.
• World Bank deletes section on China report.  Do think tanks also cave into the same pressure?

USG Paying Attention as Think Tanker Warns of WWIII with China

A 40-year-old Senior Fellow at the think tank New America Foundation (NAF) is causing a stir in the Defense Department and intelligence agencies with his predictions about World War III.  Here is more from The Wall Street Journal:

Peter Singer, one of Washington’s pre-eminent futurists, is walking the Pentagon halls with an ominous warning for America’s military leaders: World War III with China is coming.

In meeting after meeting with anyone who will listen, this modern-day soothsayer wearing a skinny tie says America’s most advanced fighter jets might be blown from the sky by their Chinese-made microchips and Chinese hackers easily could worm their way into the military’s secretive intelligence service, and the Chinese Army may one day occupy Hawaii.

The ideas might seem outlandish, but Pentagon officials are listening to the 40-year-old senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank.

In hours of briefings, Mr. Singer has outlined his grim vision for intelligence officials, Air Force officers and Navy commanders. What makes his scenarios more remarkable is that they are based on a work of fiction: Mr. Singer’s soon-to-be-released, 400-page techno thriller, “Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War.”

Pentagon officials typically don’t listen to the doom-and-gloom predictions of fiction writers. But Mr. Singer comes to the table with an unusual track record. He has written authoritative books on America’s reliance on private military contractors, cybersecurity and the Defense Department’s growing dependence on robots, drones and technology.

The Army, Navy and Air Force already have included two of his books on their official reading lists. And he often briefs military leaders on his research.

Here is a bio of Mr. Singer, who was the founding director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution (which Think Tank Watch calls a "Mini-CIA").  He was the youngest person named senior fellow in that think tanks 100 year history.

A copy of the book Ghost Fleet, co-written by August Cole, can be found here.  Mr. Cole is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Here is a Popular Science Q&A about Singer's new book and a possible future war with China.  Here is what Brookings scholar Michael O'Hanlon, a friend and former colleague of Singer, says about the new book.

In related think tank/war news, Michele Flournoy and Richard Fontaine of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) recently wrote a piece for the Washington Post entiteld "Go Big to Destroy the Islamic State."

Think Tank Quickies (#183)

• Atlantic Council pens new donor disclosure policy: $250 is the key number.
• How the world is changing think tanks, by Brad Lips.
• Think tanks move to fore on energy.
• CNAS is the only national security think tank to be co-led by a Democrat and a Republican.
• Even a junior analyst at a think tank can meet virtually anyone.
• Ben Wattenberg, AEI scholar and host of PBS series "Think Tank With Ben Wattenberg," dies.
• Think tanks are "overcrowded by people more concerned with official designations rather than serious policy research..."
• Heritage Foundation honors John Von Kannon with its highest honor: the Luce Award.
• Wang Chaoyong, founding Chairman and CEO of ChinaEquity Group, joins CEIP's Board of Trustees.
• Todd Harrison, formerly with CSBA, joins CSIS as Director of Defense Budget Analysis and Senior Fellow in the International Security Program.
• Robit Chopra, formerly with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, joins CAP as Senior Fellow.
• Nora Bensahel and David Barno named as Nonresident Senior Fellows at Atlantic Council.
• NAF scholars at NATO's CyCon conference; NAF cybersecurity fellows announced; NAF collaborates with community orgs to privacy and poverty in the US.
• USIP's newly-created PeaceTech Lab announces board of directors.
• RAND Corp. announces new Center of Excellence on Health System Performance.