Major US Think Tank Websites Blocked in China

Access to a number of US think tank websites is blocked in China, according to an analysis done by Think Tank Watch using the Comparitech database.

Think tanks that are blocked in China include: Brookings Institution, Wilson Center, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Cato Institute, and the Hudson Institute.

Ones that are accessible in China include the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Hoover Institution, Stimson Center, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Center for Global Development (CGD), and the German Marshall Fund (GMF).

US Vice President Mike Pence postponed a speech planned for June 24 at the Wilson Center (one of the think tanks blocked in China) that was reportedly going to focus on criticizing China's human rights record.  The speech had already been postponed from June 4, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

The Hudson Institute, another think tank blocked in China, has been a popular anti-China platform in the Trump Administration.  As Think Tank Watch has previously noted, renegade Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui met President Donald Trump's former strategist Stephen Bannon after a Hudson event.

The Center for Global Development was among the think tanks recently chided by China for spreading what it says are "false accusations" against its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), but one can still view CGD's website in China.

Although the US does not block any Chinese think tank websites, it has been blocking Chinese scholars from visiting the US over spying fears.

China has established a think tank presence in the US, helps fund a number of think tanks there, and has various other formal relations with US think tanks.

Minn. Think Tank Official Suspended Over Comments About Somali Refugees

Here is more from the Star Tribune:

Kim Crockett, vice president of a Minnesota think tank, has been placed on an unpaid 30-day disciplinary suspension for comments she made about Somali-Americans in a recent New York Times story examining the resistance to refugee resettlement in St. Cloud.

The article, published Thursday under the headline “ ‘These People Aren’t Coming From Norway’: Refugees in a Minnesota City Face a Backlash,” quoted several anti-immigration activists who are advocating for an increasingly explicit anti-Muslim agenda. Sources sounded off on their fears that the influx of Somali immigrants to the predominantly white region is fundamentally changing the culture.

Crockett, of the Center of the American Experiment, told the reporter that she plans to challenge the resettlement program in court.

On Thursday, the center issued a statement condemning Crockett’s controversial comments.

The Center of the American Experiment is a conservative think tank established in 1990.

Think Tank Quickies (#352)

• Canadian think tank Mowat Centre soon closing. 
• Ways the Economist uses to describe workers at think tanks.
• 21 directors and senior fellows at European think tanks call on Washington to reconsider its approach to JCPOA with Iran.
• Brendan Duke: "Greatest strength as a think tank staffer: I diligently print out every paper I should read.  Something to improve on: Actually reading those papers."
• Vox: In the summer of 2006, a conservative think tank held a discussion with government officials, researchers, and...the producers behind 24.
• Neera Agrawal of cryptocurrency policy think tank Coin Center: My tombstone will read "think tanks are not trade associations." 
• Researchers at think tank C4ADS have noticed a funny thing happens when Vladimir Putin gets close to a harbor: The GPS of ships moored there go haywire, placing them many miles away on the runways of nearby airports.
• Republicans' estimates that the Green New Deal would cost $93 trillion are based on a think tank study that doesn't endorse that total.
• There is an emergent sanctions-industrial complex - a network of government agencies, law firms, technology providers, and think tanks with a vested interest in the unceasing expansion of sanctions programs.
• Chinese, Russian think tanks establish joint Arctic Research Center.

New Poll: Less Than 4% of UK Public Can Name a Think Tank

Here is more from London-based communications consultancy We Are Flint, which conducted the survey in partnership with research agency Delineate:

New research shows less than 4% (3.74%) of the UK public can name a think tank. The same research revealed that just 60% of the public say they know what a think tank is, but cannot name one. The Adam Smith Institute (1.44%) is the only think tank that more than 1% of the population can name, followed by the Fabian Society (0.85%), and the Bow Group (0.50%).

In 2018, We Are Flint released a poll showing that only one in two Americans actually knows what a think tank is.  Think Tank Watch should note that both polls were conducted online, a method that some say cannot always be trusted.

Bernie Sanders Blasts Third Way Think Tank

Here is more from MarketWatch:

Bernie Sanders is blasting what he calls “the corporate wing of the Democratic Party,” as centrists are reportedly growing more comfortable with Elizabeth Warren and the Massachusetts senator leads her Vermont counterpart in at least one presidential poll.

Linking to a Politico story titled “Warren emerges as potential compromise nominee,” Sanders tweeted, “The cat is out of the bag. The corporate wing of the Democratic Party is publicly ‘anybody but Bernie.’” Sanders said his agenda including Medicare for All and breaking up big banks “is the real threat to the billionaire class.”

The Politico article quotes a co-founder of centrist think tank Third Way, who is critical of “socialist” narratives in the campaign. “We really like the idea of using government to rectify market failure. And that’s what [Warren’s] about,” said the group’s Matt Bennett. 

Here is what above-mentioned Politico story says about Third Day:

Third Way, which isn’t backing a candidate, famously torpedoed Warren in a widely read 2013 op-ed that exposed the party’s ideological fissures on entitlements. “Nothing would be more disastrous for Democrats” than to adhere to Warren’s brand of economic populism, wrote two of the think tank’s leaders in a piece that drew condemnation from progressives.

Today, however, Third Way is learning to live with Warren even as it embarks on a mission to ensure the Democratic nominee doesn’t stray too far to the left.

Time reported that officials from Third Way were among those at a two-day strategy session about the 2020 elections, debating how to keep Sanders from defining the Democratic Party.

Sanders has also been sparring with other think tanks recently, including the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy for America.

Could VP's Upcoming Wilson Center Speech Sink a US-China Deal?

Here is more from Bloomberg:

Vice President Mike Pence gave a speech last year that sounded a lot like a new Cold War with China and quickly became one of the most important on Sino-U.S. relations by an American official in recent years. Next Monday, June 24, he’s giving another at the Wilson Center, a talk originally planned for June 4, the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. There’s a risk that an overly hawkish tone just days before the G-20 could cause Beijing to recoil and jeopardize any hope of a substantive leaders’ meeting.

The speech referred to above was given by Pence in October 2018 at the Hudson Institute, a think tank that has become a major anti-China platform.

Update: The speech has been postponed again.

Think Tank Quickies (#351)

• Hunter Biden has served on the board of a number of think tanks.
• NATO accepting project proposals from think tanks.
• New America China scholar Samm Sacks declines invitation due to all-male panel; directory of 500 female China scholars.
• NYU event: Working in NGOs and think tanks with Nate Schenkkan of Freedom House. 
• Overheard at a think tank event: "What's your philosophy on where to sit at these events."
• Speed dating between students and European think tanks. 
• RAND Corp. ran 4,944 simulations on Pittsburgh's future to help plan for climate change. 
• Rep. Katie Hill (D-CA) attacks Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute.
• Dr. Lyall Swim: Can think tanks create the inevitable?
• Deutser Clarity Institute: "A think tank, idea accelerator, and learning lab."

Renegade Chinese Billionaire Waging Battle That Touches Pair of Think Tanks

Here is more from Politico:

A billionaire at the center of U.S.-China tensions is waging a mysterious legal battle against two D.C. conservatives over a private espionage deal gone bad. The fight touches on a pair of think tanks, a senator’s widow and the capital’s tight-knit group of China hardliners, adding a new chapter to an international saga that has divided the Trump administration and the president’s external allies.

It began when a firm tied to the billionaire, real estate magnate Guo Wengui [who goes by Miles Kwok in the US], allegedly hired a private intelligence firm to dig up dirt on Chinese nationals — including their bank records, porn habits and any illegitimate children — then sued, saying the firm failed to deliver.

In early 2018, the Guo-linked firm hired Strategic Vision, an obscure company led by Washington-area executive French Wallop, to dig up information on several targets, whom the suit does not name.

In addition to Wallop, J. Michael Waller acted as a representative of Strategic Vision, according to a letter the firm submitted to the court. Waller is a vice president at the far-right Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by Frank Gaffney, a national security activist known for his conspiratorial hostility to Islam. 

Guo was introduced to Strategic Vision by Lianchao Han, a dissident activist and visiting fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute.

As Think Tank Watch previously reported, President Donald Trump's former strategist Stephen Bannon met Guo Wengui after a Hudson Institute event was cancelled last year.

Trump Hotel to Host Climate-Denial Think Tank Conference

Here is more from ThinkProgress:

In late July, climate science deniers will descend upon the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. — located right across the street from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) — to attend the Heartland Institute’s annual climate conference. The theme this year is “Best Science, Winning Energy Policies.”

When Trump announced in June 2016 that the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate deal, representatives from longtime anti-climate action groups like Koch-funded think tanks the American Energy Alliance, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation were all present in the Rose Garden.

Many of these same think tanks will be attending Heartland‘s conference next month, where speakers will offer up policy ideas “to lead a post-alarmist world in climate realism” as well as discussing “the benefits of ending the Democrats’ war on fossil fuels.”

Heartland’s conference comes as the head of the group, former Republican Kansas Rep. Tim Huelskamp, abruptly stepped down last week, just two years after taking the position, while offering no explanation. The think tank has in recent years faced funding uncertainties, with even ExxonMobil no longer donating to the organization. As head of Heartland, Heulskamp focused on energy policy and promoting coal at the state level as opposed to vocal attacks on climate science as his predecessor Joseph Bast did.

The news of Huelskamp leaving his post comes shortly after another Koch-funded libertarian think tank, the Cato Institute, quietly announced it was disbanding its climate denial program, the Center for the Study of Science. A Cato spokesperson at the time, however, said this didn’t change the organization’s stance on human-caused climate change.

Heartland has been working for years to unravel environmental rules. The think tank has also played a major role in staffing various EPA posts within the Trump Administration.

New Trend: Deepfake Think Tank Scholars

As if the think tank industry didn't already have enough to worry about, now comes a new concern that is sending shivers down the spine of the scholarly world: foreign spies using AI-generated images and posing as think tankers to lure targets.

Here is more from the Associated Press:

Katie Jones sure seemed plugged into Washington’s political scene. The 30-something redhead boasted a job at a top think tank and a who’s-who network of pundits and experts, from the centrist Brookings Institution to the right-wing Heritage Foundation. She was connected to a deputy assistant secretary of state, a senior aide to a senator and the economist Paul Winfree, who is being considered for a seat on the Federal Reserve.

But Katie Jones doesn’t exist, The Associated Press has determined. Instead, the persona was part of a vast army of phantom profiles lurking on the professional networking site LinkedIn. And several experts contacted by the AP said Jones’ profile picture appeared to have been created by a computer program.

Experts who reviewed the Jones profile’s LinkedIn activity say it’s typical of espionage efforts on the professional networking site, whose role as a global Rolodex has made it a powerful magnet for spies.

The Jones profile was first flagged by Keir Giles, a Russia specialist with London’s Chatham House think tank. Giles was recently caught up in an entirely separate espionage operation targeting critics of the Russian antivirus firm Kaspersky Lab. So when he received an invitation from Katie Jones on LinkedIn he was suspicious.

She claimed to have been working for years as a “Russia and Eurasia fellow” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, but Giles said that, if that were true, “I ought to have heard of her.”

CSIS spokesman Andrew Schwartz told the AP that “no one named Katie Jones works for us.”

Here is a Think Tank Watch piece from 2015 about fake think tanks.  In November 2018, Think Tank Watch noted that hackers had been impersonating US State Department officials in order to attack think tanks.  We also reported on fake Chinese think tank accounts used for spying.  There have also been several instances of people impersonating think tank scholars online.

Here is a 2017 Think Tank Watch story about another fake think tank that had been uncovered.  Here is another 2017 piece about fake think tanks.

Also in 2017, Russians dumped real documents hacked from the Bradley Foundation (which funds a number of think tanks), and added a forged letter indicating that the foundation had made an illegal $150 million donation to the Clinton campaign.

Was the White House's internal think tank a fake think tank?

Other problems that think tanks recently have had to deal with include: a serious spearphishing campaign, Chinese hackers, 2020 presidential candidates plagiarizing their work, China blocking US think tank scholars from entering the country, Russian hackers, pressure over funding sources, the leaking of emails, being targeted by Iran, gender inequality problems, illegal think tanking, and deceptive information operations.

Here is a recent Brookings piece on AI and deepfakes.

On a lighter note, here is a parody video of think tankers from another "fake" think tank: The Institute for the Promotion of War.  However, we tend to prefer the work of the Center for Advanced Bullshit Studies.

Think Tank's Influential Media Unit Bleeding Money, Staff

Here is more from The Daily Beast:

ThinkProgress, the website that is a project of the Democratic Party’s primary think tank, is facing dire financial troubles and bleeding staff, according to primary-source documents viewed by The Daily Beast.

A budget document provided to ThinkProgress management and obtained by The Daily Beast showed that the website was expecting a roughly $3 million gulf between revenue and expenses for 2019. ThinkProgress has never been a revenue generator, and has often made up for its deficits through fundraising efforts and funds from its mothership entity, the Center for American Progress (CAP). But the current outlook is significantly worse than ever before.

According to the document, advertising revenue is projected to fall $350,000 short of what was budgeted this year, and online contributions are expected to fall short by nearly $180,000. The site is projected to have about $64,000 in grant revenue (money derived from donations to CAP and meant for coverage by ThinkProgress) in 2019. That’s roughly $60,000 short of what it had budgeted for the year and roughly $540,000 less than it received in 2018. 

In the face of these falling revenue streams, ThinkProgress has seen payroll drop by 12 percent from its peak level in 2019 and “salary growth” by 5 percent, according to the document. Among those leaving is the site’s managing editor, Tara Culp-Ressler, who announced her departure last week. 

The numbers paint a grim picture for one of the better-known, unapologetically progressive media platforms. And it has been exacerbated by what a source described as a failure of leadership at CAP to provide answers about “the short- and long-term future of the site.” ThinkProgress is editorially independent from CAP and the accompanying Center for American Progress Action Fund, but operates within its organizational umbrella.

ThinkProgress launched in 2005 and quickly made a name for itself as a liberal-minded blog and sharp critic of the George W. Bush administration. Along the way, it became a launching pad for prominent political and journalism careers. Its former editor in chief, Faiz Shakir, is Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) 2020 campaign manager.

Talking of Sen. Sanders, he has been none too happy with CAP, particularly in recent months.

As Think Tank Watch previously noted, ThinkProgress staff unionized back in 2015.

Think Tank Quickies (#350)

• New USIP report on extremism in fragile states says war on terror has cost US $5.9 trillion.
• Trump pulls plug on Fed pic Stephen Moore, a habitué of conservative think tanks.
• Silicon Valley-funded privacy think tanks fight in DC to unravel state-level consumer privacy protections. 
• Russian think tanks and foreign policy-making.
• 2019 ranking of free-market think tanks measured by social media impact.
• Conservative think tank Hamilton Flourishing launched to help nudge Chattanooga area public policy toward right.
• Bernie Sanders video: "Check out who funds the think tanks." 
• Max Blumenthal: US military attack on Venezuela mulled by top Trump advisors and Latin American officials at private meeting at think tank CSIS (attendees list included).
• The history of women at think tank Chatham House.
• NYU event: Working at NGOs and think tanks. 
• Conservative think tanks urge Republicans to oppose Sen. Lamar Alexander's "New Manhattan Project."

2020 Democrats Lifting Material from Think Tanks

Here is more from Politico:

Twenty-four hours after Joe Biden’s campaign was taken to task for lifting portions of a climate change plan without citation, it’s clear that the former vice president has plenty of company.

A sampling of policy proposals from Biden’s leading rivals suggests the lifting of direct text from academic papers, think tanks or policy institutes — and the cribbing of facts without attribution — is fairly widespread on 2020 campaign websites.

Politicians often rely on think tanks specializing in certain issues for facts and legislative ideas.

People plagiarizing from think tanks and think tanks plagiarizing from others is quite prevalent.  Years ago, CNN's Fareed Zakaria was accused of plagiarizing from think tanks.  Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was also accused of plagiarizing from various think tanks.

Even think tank CEOs have been accused of plagiarism.  Non-US think tanks have also been accused of plagiarism.

More Details on Papadopoulos's Connection to Think Tanks

Here is more from the Washington Post about George Papadopoulos, a former member of the foreign policy advisory panel to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign:

Papadopoulos was an agreeable young man who’d often worked alongside Hudson Institute fellow Seth Cropsey. But most offered no response. Cropsey ignored multiple emails and eventually passed me on to the Hudson Institute press office, which offered careful and uninteresting replies.

George [Papadopoulos]...had been quick to pull up articles he’d written with Cropsey (claiming to have done most or all of the writing) and a photo of himself and Cropsey in a meeting with the president of Cyprus, to prove that he had played a crucial role at the Hudson Institute. But I was still waiting to see emails backing up other claims about his career there.

The article also notes that Papadopoulos exchanged emails with Ivan Timofeev of the Russian International Affairs Council, a "prominent Moscow think tank."

Here is a link to the biography of Seth Cropsey, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for American Seapower at Hudson.

Did Papadopoulos lie about his think tank experience?

Cato Institute Closes Its Climate Shop

Here is more from E&E News:

The Cato Institute quietly shut down a program that for years sought to raise uncertainty about climate science, leaving the libertarian think tank co-founded by Charles Koch without an office dedicated to global warming.

The move came after Pat Michaels, a climate scientist who rejects mainstream researchers' concerns about rising temperatures, left Cato earlier this year amid disagreements with officials in the organization.

"They informed me that they didn't think their vision of a think tank was in the science business, and so I said, 'OK, bye,'" Michaels said in an interview yesterday. "There had been some controversy going around the building for some time, so things got to a situation where they didn't work out."

A spokeswoman said Cato's shuttering of the Center for the Study of Science does not represent a shift in the institute's position on human-caused climate change. But the think tank moved decisively to close down the science wing that was overseen by Michaels. Ryan Maue, a meteorologist and former adjunct scholar, also left the center.

Cato also is no longer affiliated with Richard Lindzen, an emeritus professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has long been critical of established climate science. Lindzen was a distinguished fellow at the think tank.

A week ago, Jerry Taylor, President and Co-founder of the think tank Niskanen Center who used to work at Cato, penned a piece entitled "What Changed My Mind About Climate Change?"

As Dr. Janne Korhonen recently pointed out, in the context of climate change, 92% of environmentally skeptical books published between 1972 and 2005 were linked to conservative think tanks.

Think Tank Quickies (#349)

• A $30,000+ prize for debut non-fiction proposals, open to think tankers.
• PhRMA spends millions on conservative think tanks.
• UK thinks tanks being tarnished by secretive right-wingers?
• New spokesman for Saudi embassy works the think tank circuit.
• British think tank that counters Russian information operations has been hacked. 
• Ilhan Tanir: "I wonder if this new awakening re FARA registration will ever reach to some of Washington's think tanks' lobbying by any other name."
• On China's investment in think tanks.
• Talking Galleries: "Think tank for [art] galleries."
• Pic: Food trucks visit think tanks.
• Peter Mendelsund turns a homage to "The Magic Mountain" into a clever metafictional send-up of artists' retreats and tech-industry think tanks.

Top 3 Conservative Think Tanks Collectively Larger than Combined Budget of CRS & CBO

Here is more from E.J. Fagan:

Congress is more polarized and has less capacity to process complex information than ever. These trends are related. As Congress cut the budgets of its own internal think tanks – CRS and CBO – it began to rely more heavily on  party-aligned think tanks. This change makes it more difficult for members and leadership to build consensus and solve policy problems for their constituents.

My work examines the congressional activities of the six largest (by expenditures) party-aligned think tanks. On the right, these include the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, and Cato Institute. On the left, they are the Center for American Progress, New America, and Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Collectively, these six institutions have grown to a massive size, while Congress’s internal think tanks, the CBO and CRS, are slowly shrinking. The below figure shows how rapidly these six think tanks have grown since 2001. The three conservative think tanks are collectively larger than the combined budget of the CBO and CRS. The three progressive think tanks, which began the 2000s as tiny blips on the screen, now spend over $100 million collectively.

As they have grown, these party-aligned think tanks have become more influential in Congressional debates. One way that I measure the changing influence of think tanks over time is to observe how frequently they testify in hearings. The figure below charts the number of witnesses from the six think tanks per hearing against the staff witnesses from the CBO, CRS, and OTA. The two trends are mirror images of each other. When Congress cut the budgets of its analytical organizations in the mid-90s, there was a subsequent explosion in think tank witnesses. While this explosion subsided after the 104^th Congress, a new equilibrium was established for much of the late-90s and early 2000s. Finally, the series accelerates again in the mid-2000s, as the analytical organization budgets suffered further cuts.

E.J. Fagan is a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin.

Think Tank Watch should note that the RAND Corporation by itself has a budget that is much larger than the CBO and CRS combined.

Democratic-Aligned Think Tank Knocks Bernie Sanders for Iran Vote

Here is more from The Intercept:

A mainstream, Democratic Party-aligned foreign policy think tank is knocking Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for voting against new sanctions on Iran in 2017 — though the think tank itself and many members of its board oppose new Iran sanctions.

Sanders has been an outspoken supporter of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and said at the time that he voted against the measure in order to preserve the deal. Sanctions, he argued, would have jeopardized the landmark agreement. But the sanctions were part of a package that also imposed restrictions on Russia and North Korea, which is why the think tank, Foreign Policy for America, supported the package.

Foreign Policy for America’s knock came in a score card that rated politicians on their votes in Congress. The group, also known as FP4A, released its new score card at the end of April, ranking members of Congress from the 115th session on a variety of foreign policy issues. The relatively new advocacy group gives Sanders a positive score in all but two of 13 categories — one of which was the bill that sanctioned Iran and Russia.

Among the members of the Foreign Policy for America’s boards are foreign policy experts who were instrumental in fighting to make the Iran deal happen. Some of those figures have expressed concerns over the choice to penalize Sanders for taking the position he did.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s chief of staff and a Foreign Policy for America advisory board member said the scoring of the vote that included the Iran sanctions, along with a few other disagreements, had caused him to reconsider his involvement with Foreign Policy for America.

Here is a link to FP4A.  Here is a link to the group's board of directors and advisory board.

The liberal think tank Center for American Progress (CAP) has also been tussling with Sanders.

Think Tank Quickies (#348)

• Reihan Salam to run Manhattan Institute.
• Matthew Sears proposal: "All think tanks should have a warning label at the top of their websites and attached to every article they publish, stating by whom they're funded.  Like cigarette warning labels..."
• Are India's think tanks promoting conflict with Pakistan?
• Think tank bearing McCain's name releases "fact sheet" rebutting Trump's criticisms.
• Hudson Institute was first major think tank to have a woman as its president, Gail Potter Neale.
• FT: EU think tanks strengthen their defenses after Russian attacks.
• In tweet, President Trump praises new book by Hoover Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson.
• Family put in Chinese concentration camp for speaking up at Hudson Institute?
• DC think tanks continue to push for US-Taiwan FTA.
• Turkish lawmakers visit DC's think tank land; Saudi foreign minister meets with think tankers.
• Pic: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace gives great gifts to its guest speakers.

Images Released by Think Tank Provide First Look at New Chinese Aircraft Carrier

Here is more from CNN:

New satellite images published by a US think tank may provide the world's first look at China's next aircraft carrier, as construction progresses on a mysterious large vessel in a shipyard outside Shanghai.

Significant new activity at the Jiangnan Shipyard was captured in satellite images from April, published by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

According to CSIS, they show a massive bow and main hull section of a large vessel under construction. At points, the hull section is as wide as 40 meters (131 feet). 

Experts said while it was difficult to be sure, the size and scale of the new vessel strongly suggested China's much-anticipated new aircraft carrier, referred to as Type 002.

Rumors that the Chinese military was constructing a third, more modern aircraft carrier have been circling for more than a year. It was only in November that state media Xinhua first hinted at a new vessel.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post about CSIS using satellite intelligence to track various Asian island disputes.

New Report: Government More Trusted Than Think Tanks

Here is more from Associations Now:

Even in an era when congressional staffers are hearing a lot of arguments about the issues of the day from all directions, more traditional advocacy voices are still finding room in the conversation.

That’s a key finding of “Surround Sound,” a new report from the Public Affairs Council in partnership with the research firm Morning Consult.

In results from an online survey of 173 congressional staffers and federal employees, 8 in 10 respondents stated that they trusted political information from trade associations, and nearly the same amount (79 percent) said they trusted think tanks. The report found that associations and think tanks were generally more trusted than individual businesses (59 percent), lobbyists (61 percent), and online sources unaffiliated with the media (55 percent).

However, associations and think tanks don’t top the chart of most trusted sources by staffers—those generally tend to be official government sources, such as the Government Accountability Office (90 percent), the Congressional Research Service (88 percent), and federal agencies (86 percent).

When asked to compare the effectiveness of different advocacy techniques, congressional staff rate personal visits to Washington, DC (83%) or district offices (81%), and think tank reports (81%) at the top of the list.

Think Tank Quickies (#347)

• Mayor Pete Buttigieg threat to conservative think tanks: "They've got their own institutions, they've got their own think tanks...and we're going to have to poke those bubbles."
• Job opportunity at the only trade think tank in Brussels (i.e., ECIPE).
• Flashback: Influence of Turkish money at US think tanks. 
• Spring pic: The story of the cherry tree in front of Brookings.
• Cato Institute hosts new art exhibition open to the public.
• Nancy Pelosi trying to recruit DC think tanks to undermine Medicare for All?
• Ola Salem and Hassan Hassan in FP: Arab regimes spend millions of dollars on think tanks in part to advance Islamophobia.
• Pic: Only recently did I discover that think tanks do not holding meetings in actual tanks.
• New film Blood Money deals with how Qatar funds think tanks to advance its agenda.
• Pic: When you bring a baby to a think tank...

Milken to Open Closest Think Tank to the White House

Think Tank Watch has spotted a notice from real estate firm Akridge which shows that a California-based think tank founded by Michael Milken will be opening a swanky outpost just a stone's throw from the White House.  In fact, it will be the closest think tank to the White House.

Here is more:

Located on the prominent corner of Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, across from the US Treasury Building and the White House, the Milken Museum and Conference Center will be the new home for the Milken Institute as well as the Center for the American Dream. The development is comprised of three historical addresses, including 1501 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, 1503-1505 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, and 730 Fifteenth Street, NW. All three of these buildings contribute to Washington, DC's Financial Historic District and Lafayette Square. The mixed-use development will offer a combination of traditional office space as well as a conference center and museum, located within the main halls of the historic bank buildings.

Here is more from CNN.

The Milken Institute, formed in 1991, is an economic think tank currently headquartered in Santa Monica, California.

At this year's Milken Institute Global Conference, more than 4,000 people from 60 countries attended, including three presidential hopefuls who gave speeches, Sesame Street's Elmo, and Ivanka Trump.  Twenty years ago, barely 1,000 people attended the gathering.

Quartz put together a quiz to help determine if your think tank event is a "Very Important Global Conference."

Atlantic Council Fetes at the Ritz

Here is more from Politico:

The Atlantic Council held its 2019 Distinguished Leadership Awards at the Ritz-Carlton on Tuesday night. The event honored NATO, whose award was received by Rose Gottemoeller from retired Gen. Jim Jones; Adrienne Arsht, whose award was presented by Alonzo Mourning; Christine Lagarde, whose award was presented by Ivanka Trump; and Fred Smith, whose award was presented by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

ALSO SPOTTED: Wolf Blitzer, Bret and Amy Baier, Colin and Alma Powell, Marillyn Hewson, Dina Powell and David McCormick, John F.W. Rogers (the incoming chairman of the board), Anthony Scaramucci, Steve Clemons, Niki Christoff, Mitch Landrieu, John Waldron, Nicole and Dave Nason, Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez and wife Lourdes, Sharon Rockefeller,Julie and Wynn Radford, Fred Kempe, Josh and Ali Rogin, Morgan Ortagus and Jonathan Weinberger, Stuart and Gwen Holiday, Franco Nuschese, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Wesley Clark, Anita McBride, Capricia Marshall, Sam Vinograd and many ambassadors.

Here is more about this year's Distinguished Leadership Awards, which were presented to NATO, philanthropist Adrienne Arsht, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde, and FedEx Chairman Frederick Smith.

Heritage Foundation Influences Trump Admin. on Health Policy

Here is more from Roll Call:

Close ties between the administration and a prominent conservative think tank correlate with several Trump administration health policy decisions, according to new information from a liberal government watchdog group shared exclusively with CQ Roll Call.

The 35-page Equity Forward report says that The Heritage Foundation’s influence plays a large role in decisions related to abortion, fetal tissue research, contraception and protections for same-sex couples.

Think tanks that support an administration are known to yield influence over policy decisions, but Equity Forward calls the ties with The Heritage Foundation “alarming” because the organization says Heritage is succeeding in securing policy decisions that contradict HHS’ intended mission.

A separate 2018 report by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program of the Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania found that The Heritage Foundation ranked as the think tank with the most significant impact on public policy and the top U.S. think tank to watch in 2019.

Here is a link to Equity Forward's new report and here is a press release about it.

Here is an Equity Forward link that takes you directly to Heritage Foundation's ties to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Think Tank CNI Taking Financial Hit From Mueller Probe

The Washington, DC-based think tank Center for the National Interest (CNI) and those connected to it have faced a significant financial blow stemming from the Mueller probe into Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election.  Here is more from Bloomberg:

Dimitri Simes’s name appears 134 times in the redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election. Born and educated in Moscow, Simes has been a fixture in Washington since the 1970s, brokering advice and authority for contacts in both capitals. Those relationships proved helpful to the nascent presidential campaign of Donald Trump, later drawing the scrutiny of Mueller’s team.

Mueller’s investigation resulted in a total of 34 indictments covering everyone from Russian hackers to Trump campaign officials, but not Simes or anyone else at his Washington think tank, the Center for the National Interest. And yet, as the probe unfolded, Simes and his staff incurred punishing legal bills during the hours they sat for interviews with the special counsel’s team. The think tank’s largest donor drastically cut his financial support earlier this year, according to four people familiar with the organization’s finances, and Simes himself dealt with unwanted public exposure. With no finding of wrongdoing to show for their travails, Simes and the center are nevertheless an object lesson in the unexpected costs of influence-peddling.

Simes has spent his career mostly behind the scenes, moving to the U.S. in 1973 and serving as an informal foreign policy adviser to President Richard Nixon. Nixon personally installed him at the helm of the Center for the National Interest when he founded it in 1994 as the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. 

The Center for the National Interest organized the event where Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner first met Henry Kissinger, and it also hosted Trump’s first foreign policy speech at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel. Furthermore, as the Mueller report says, Simes met Jared Kushner in August 2016 to offer dirt on the Clinton family’s relationship with Russia.

The last two years have been a drain on Simes’s think tank, which is down to about $1.2 million in assets, a person familiar with its finances says, from $5.3 million at the end of 2016, according to a tax filing. The Center for the National Interest ran up huge legal bills with its longtime attorneys David Rivkin and Lee Casey of BakerHostetler, say three people familiar with the costs; one of them says some monthly bills ran in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Simes’s think tank has found itself in a precarious financial position in part because its largest donor, a foundation overseen by Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former American International Group chief executive officer and former Center for the National Interest board chairman, has pulled much of its support. Last August the Daily Beast published a story connecting Greenberg to Maria Butina, once the darling of the pro-gun right, who has since pleaded guilty to federal charges of acting as an agent of the Russian government, in matters unrelated to the Mueller probe.

Charles Boyd, the think tank’s current chairman and a retired four-star general in the U.S. Air Force, expects that new interest from donors and increased revenue from its magazine, the National Interest, will help the organization bounce back. Jacob Heilbrunn, the magazine’s editor, says an investment in “the six figures” into the National Interest’s website and magazine has boosted traffic and advertising; monthly revenue is in excess of $250,000, while monthly page views hit 16.6 million in March, Heilbrunn says.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about CNI hosting Donald Trump for a foreign policy speech.  After that event, CNI fired one of its employees for questioning the think tank's ties to Trump.

Here is a link to an interview that Simes just had with Christiane Amanpour on the Russia probe and the think tank's ties to Russia.

Update: Here is a new Politico piece on Simes and his ties to Jared Kushner. And here is a piece by Washington Post's Josh Rogin entitled "Dimitri Simes Flew Too Close to Trump, and His Think Tank Got Burned."

Think Tanks Helping Shape China's Belt and Road Initiative

China continues to ramp up its support for and creation of think tanks.  Here is more from Xinhua:

Preparation is complete for a thematic-forum on think tank exchanges to be held during the Second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, the organizers said Tuesday.

The think tank forum will be held at the China National Convention Center in Beijing on Thursday.

The event, hosted by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, is organized by the China Center for International Economic Exchanges and the Xinhua Institute.

About 300 people will attend the thematic-forum, including former foreign politicians, representatives of international organizations, enterprises and financial institutions.

The forum will begin with an opening meeting and then be followed by two parallel sessions on think tanks and media, respectively.

The sessions will focus on four sub-topics: aligning development strategies and plans, building a fair, open and transparent system of international rules, promoting an inclusive world economy and building a community with a shared future for humanity.

Here is more about think tanks and the BRI.

In related news, the Chinese government has chided some think tanks, such as the US's Center for Global Development (CGD), for spreading what it says are "false accusations" about BRI.

Indeed, skepticism about BRI abounds in many Western think tanks.  For example, Amsterdam-based think tank European Foundation for South Asian Studies recently said that that BRI is not likely to work for Nepal.

The Beijing-based Pangoal Institution has just published a book on node countries' views of BRI.

South Korean lawyer Choi Jae Cheon has established his own think tank on BRI.

Update: The Belt and Road Studies Network, co-initiated by Xinhua Institute and 15 other think tanks, was inaugurated in Beijing.

Microsoft Helping to Secure Think Tanks, 2020 Elections

Microsoft has a new security service called Microsoft AccountGuard designed to help targeted customers, including think tanks, protect themselves from cybersecurity threats.

Here is more from Microsoft:

While Microsoft AccountGuard is new, it’s grounded in work we’ve done for years to protect democratic processes. This includes support for the Iowa caucuses in 2016, our role as a technology supplier to conventions for both major U.S. parties, and the work of our Washington, D.C.-based team to serve both political campaigns and U.S. government institutions. Based on these foundational experiences, we constructed Microsoft AccountGuard to account for the threats these organizations face, their unique resource constraints and the mix of technologies they often use.

Microsoft AccountGuard is open to all current candidates for federal, state and local office in the United States and their campaigns; the campaign organizations of all sitting members of Congress; national and state party committees; technology vendors who primarily serve campaigns and committees; and certain nonprofit organizations and nongovernmental organizations. Microsoft AccountGuard is offered free of charge. Organizations must be using Office 365 to register.

Microsoft AccountGuard will provide notification about cyberthreats, including attacks by known nation-state actors, in a unified way across both email systems run by organizations and the personal accounts of these organizations’ leaders and staff who opt in. Eligible organizations can invite staff and other associates to enroll in Microsoft AccountGuard, and notification will only occur with the consent of the account owner.

Microsoft is also expanding AccountGuard in Europe, citing similar threats to democracy:

We all saw hacking and disinformation attacks on the French presidential election in 2017, and European leaders have recently warned that attacks will continue across Europe in 2019. At Microsoft, we’ve seen recent activity targeting democratic institutions in Europe as part of the work our Threat Intelligence Center (MSTIC) and Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) carry out every day to protect all of our customers.

These attacks are not limited to campaigns themselves but often extend to think tanks and non-profit organizations working on topics related to democracy, electoral integrity, and public policy and that are often in contact with government officials. For example, Microsoft has recently detected attacks targeting employees of the German Council on Foreign Relations, The Aspen Institutes in Europe and The German Marshall Fund.

The service launched in August 2018, in preparation for the 2018 US midterm elections.  AccountGuard is now helping secure "the 2020 US general elections and broader political and think tank community," says Microsoft.

Over the past several years, Think Tank Watch has documented cyber attacks and cyber intrusions on scores of think tanks in the US, Europe, and elsewhere.

Think Tank Quickies (#346)

• Missing in action: The absence of women scholars on foreign policy panels (via Federiga Bindi and Mimosa Giamanco).
• Asia Pacific Initiative: What is a think tank? (written by Yoichi Funabashi)
• Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to lash out at Wikileaks at think tank event.
• The Onion: Father-in-law think tank issues comprehensive one-sentence solution to immigration, unemployment, crime problems.
• Chinese think tank warning: US, China "at greater risk of military incidents" in South China Sea.
• Hudson Institute to staff a committee in charge of implementing a key provision of First Step Act.
• Good advice for think tank events from Harvard: Just because you can speak up at an event, doesn't mean you should.
• John Holbein: Has anyone written about the replicability/reproducibility of research done by think tanks?
• Montenegro officials meet with DC think tanks, including CSIS and Atlantic Council.
• Should Congress get its own think tank to get smart?

Think Tanks Quietly Help Write Thousands of Laws Across US

Here is more from USA Today:

Each year, state lawmakers across the U.S. introduce thousands of bills dreamed up and written by corporations, industry groups and think tanks.

Disguised as the work of lawmakers, these so-called “model” bills get copied in one state Capitol after another, quietly advancing the agenda of the people who write them. 

A two-year investigation by USA TODAY, The Arizona Republic  and the Center for Public Integrity reveals for the first time the extent to which special interests have infiltrated state legislatures using model legislation.

USA TODAY and the Republic found at least 10,000 bills almost entirely copied from model legislation were introduced nationwide in the past eight years, and more than 2,100 of those bills were signed into law.

Think tanks also play a very significant role in helping write, analyze, and pass (or defeat) legislation at the federal level.