New Study Shows How Nuclear Industry Influences Think Tank Reports

A new study entitled "No Such Thing as a Free Donation? Research Funding and Conflicts of Interest in Nuclear Weapons Policy Analysis" found that the nuclear industry often influences the outcome of the reports they commission through donations to think tanks.

Here is more from the abstract:

Numerous scholars have in recent years concluded that the field of nuclear weapons policy analysis is plagued by widespread self-censorship, conformism, and enduring disconnects between accepted knowledge and available evidence. It has been hypothesized that this tendency is fostered in part by many analysts’ reliance on funding from donors with interests in the perpetuation of the existing nuclear order. In this article, we probe this hypothesis by investigating the financial links between foreign policy think tanks, on the one hand, and nuclear defence contractors and governments that espouse nuclear deterrence strategies, on the other. Relying on semi-structured interviews and a survey of the funding sources of 45 of the world’s top think tanks, we find, first, that effectively all think tanks in the sample accepted funding from nuclear vested interests and, second, that such ‘stakeholder funding’ has real effects on intellectual freedom. Given the widely-held view that democracy relies on intellectual independence, this finding calls for a serious debate about conflicts of interest in foreign policy analysis generally and nuclear policy analysis specifically.

 

The report was written by Kjølv Egeland and Benoît Pelopidas of the Center for International Studies (CERI) in Paris, and received funding through a grant from the European Research Council.

The study looked at 45 think tanks (US and non-US), including the Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, Center for American Progress (CAP), Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Heritage Foundation, Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute, RAND Corporation, Stimson Center, and Wilson Center.

Here are more thoughts from Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who notes that the authors offer a practical takeaway based on their research:  “Responsible scholars, journalists, and other members of the public should stop treating think tanks and university programs that accept large donations from vested interests as research entities and instead think of them as communications or public relations operations.”

Think Tank Quickies (#463)

• Think tank RUSI collaborated with Reuters and iStories to piece together the global supply trail of Russia's killer drones.
  
• Think tanks are mass-reviewing content on Twitter. 
• British defense think tank has revealed Russia's pre-invasion plan to Ukraine.
• Daily Caller: CIA Director's former think tank introduced congressional staffers to experts who worked for Chinese spy fronts.
• US intelligence warned for months that Russian hackers conduct "strategic espionage" against think tanks and other groups in 42 countries that back Ukraine.
  
• New paper: What Do Think Tanks Think? Proximity to Power and Foreign Policy Preferences.
  
• Flashback: In a 2017 study titled "Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World," RAND Corp. described a global tipping point: "The post-Cold War period is over."
• Which think tanks are being open about their funders? 
• Video: Paul Ryan on why legislators should work with think tanks to solve big picture issues.
  
• Gov. Glenn Youngkin enlists conservative think tanks to rewrite history curricula.
  
• Book Think Tanks by Paul Dickson was published in 1972 and has lots of history about RAND Corp., Hudson Institute, and lots of other think tanks.
  

New Think Tank War Game: US Will Defeat Chinese Invasion of Taiwan

A new wargame developed by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) showed that in most scenarios, the US and its allies would defeat an invasion by China of Taiwan.

Here is more from CSIS:

CSIS developed a wargame for a Chinese amphibious invasion of Taiwan and ran it 24 times. In most scenarios, the United States/Taiwan/Japan defeated a conventional amphibious invasion by China and maintained an autonomous Taiwan. However, this defense came at high cost. The United States and its allies lost dozens of ships, hundreds of aircraft, and tens of thousands of servicemembers. Taiwan saw its economy devastated. Further, the high losses damaged the U.S. global position for many years. China also lost heavily, and failure to occupy Taiwan might destabilize Chinese Communist Party rule. Victory is therefore not enough. The United States needs to strengthen deterrence immediately.

 

The wargame was funded by a grant from the Smith Richardson Foundation. 

As CNN reported, CSIS said this particular wargame was necessary because "previous government and private war simulations have been too narrow or too opaque to give the public and policymakers a true look at how conflict across the Taiwan Straight may play out."

CSIS's Mark Cancian, one of the three project leaders (along with his son Matthew Cancian of the US Naval War College and MIT's Eric Heginbotham), said there is no unclassified war game out there looking at the US-China conflict.  He added that of the games that are unclassified, they are typically only run once or twice.  [Tony Stark disagrees.]

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece on how wargaming at think tanks is picking up speed amid US-China tensions.

Update: Elbridge Colby, co-founder and principal of The Marathon Initiative and a former think tank scholar at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), called the wargame report "rigorous and sophisticated."  He said, however, that he has doubts about the report's baseline finding.

Think Tanks Descend on CES

Here is more from Politico:

The floor at CES this year isn’t just full of tech companies hawking their newest wares — it’s also packed with think-tankers bringing their own perspective to the convention’s ongoing conversation about how tech is shaping society, and vice versa.

The wonks aren’t just here to talk. They want to see what these new gadgets actually do. Policy experts and staffers on both sides of the aisle have a vested interest in getting up to speed on the kinds of consumer-facing gadgets on display here, the better to manage — and argue about — their potential impact on people’s lives.

Jordan Shapiro, an economic and data policy analyst at the center-left Progressive Policy Institute, described her eagerness to understand exactly what kind of data-harvesting capabilities are built into the next generation of tech, and what the costs and benefits are.

When it comes to tech, PPI occupies an interesting place in the think-tank firmament: A liberal shop, but one affiliated with the moderate New Democrat Coalition. Shapiro and her colleagues described to me, across a marble table in the food court of Vegas’ Venetian Resort, how they think industry, the left, and the right can potentially find a middle ground to push tech innovation forward while protecting the public interest.

 

This year's CES took place Jan. 5-8 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and included 3,200+ exhibitors from 173 countries, regions, and territories.

Classified Documents Found at Biden Think Tank

Here is more from CBS News:

Attorney General Merrick Garland has assigned the U.S. attorney in Chicago to review documents marked classified that were found at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, two sources with knowledge of the inquiry told CBS News. The roughly 10 documents are from President Biden's vice-presidential office at the center, the sources said. CBS News has learned the FBI is also involved in the U.S. attorney's inquiry.

The material was identified by personal attorneys for Mr. Biden on Nov. 2, just before the midterm elections, Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president confirmed. The documents were discovered when Mr. Biden's personal attorneys "were packing files housed in a locked closet to prepare to vacate office space at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C.," Sauber said in a statement to CBS News. The documents were contained in a folder that was in a box with other unclassified papers, the sources said. The sources revealed neither what the documents contain nor their level of classification. A source familiar with the matter told CBS News the documents did not contain nuclear secrets.

 

As noted by CBS, the Penn Biden Center is a think tank about a mile from the White House that is affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania and named for the sitting president. 

Biden kept an office at the think tank after he left the vice presidency in 2017 until shortly before he launched his 2020 presidential campaign in 2019.

Prominent Think Tank Journal Shutting Down

Here is more from Politico:

The National Interest, a prominent journal run by a right-leaning foreign policy think tank, is shutting down its print edition after running into severe financial problems, according to four current and former magazine staffers familiar with the matter.

The bimonthly magazine housed in the Center for the National Interest had a nearly four-decaderun as a leading national security product, publishing such seminal works as FRANCIS FUKUYAMA’s “End of History” essay.

But current editorial management was unwilling to incur debts to keep the print edition alive, according to one of the people, though the publication will continue for now as a website. Circulation for the hard copy was already down to a couple thousand subscribers, a drop from almost 10,000 in the 1990s, according to a current magazine staffer. The people were granted anonymity to candidly discuss internal matters at the magazine and think tank.

The think tank has long had financial issues, according to current and former staffers and a review of public documents.

According to tax filings, it operated at a loss of $1 million to $2 million in every year from 2016 to 2020, except in 2019, when it made $300,000 in profit.

Three current and former magazine staffers and another person familiar with the magazine and the center complained about [CNI President Dimitri] Simes’ focus on hosting a television show on Russian state-run TV.

Simes had further caused controversies for the center for espousing increasingly pro-Russian rhetoric, according to seven people familiar with the center.

 

The president of the think tank, Dimitri Simes, retired on Dec. 31.  Politico also notes that Dov Zakheim, a top Defense Department official in the second Bush administration, resigned from the think tank's board in May after Simes continued to visit Russia and appear on state TV after the invasion of Ukraine.

Now, CNI has only around five total staffers - four of whom are dedicated to the magazine's website.  Several years ago it had around 20 staffers.

Trump-Aligned Think Tank Helping Block McCarthy Speaker Bid?

Here is more from Yahoo:

Several Republican House members fighting to stop Rep. Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker of the House met Friday morning at the offices of the Conservative Partnership Institute, an organization run by Mark Meadows and Jim DeMint.

Meadows, a former Republican congressman from North Carolina, was chief of staff to former President Donald Trump and played a central role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He joined CPI as senior partner in January 2021, a few weeks after Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, on Jan. 6.

DeMint, a former Republican senator from South Carolina, launched CPI in 2017. Since Trump left office, in 2021, it has become a connective hub for a host of former Trump advisers, including Meadows, Trump budget chief Russ Vought and Trump adviser Stephen Miller.

Most of the Republican congressmen at CPI on Friday morning have been gathering there for months.  On Wednesday, DeMint was one of several Republican figures to sign a letter calling on other House Republicans to join the anti-McCarthy effort.

Vought, who is a close ally of Meadows, also signed the letter, as did Cleta Mitchell and Ginni Thomas. Mitchell is an attorney who was also deeply involved in Trump’s attempts to stay in power, and who now works at CPI as a senior legal fellow. Thomas, who corresponded with Meadows about efforts to overturn the 2020 election in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 riot, is the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

 

Here is a 2022 Think Tank Watch piece about Trump-aligned think tanks and think tank-like entities, including the Conservative Partnership Institute, gaining in power.

New Leader at One of China's Most Powerful Think Tanks

Here is more from the South China Morning Post:

Beijing has appointed historian Gao Xiang, a specialist on the Qing dynasty, to head the influential Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) think tank.

Gao, 59, replaces Shi Taifeng, whose short seven-month tenure ended with his appointment after the 20th party congress to lead the United Front Work Department.

Gao served under Shi’s predecessor – the veteran economist Xie Fuzhan who headed CASS from 2018 – as vice-president, before his promotion last year as the think tank’s deputy party secretary.

While a number of regional think tanks have emerged in China, CASS stands out for its role in shaping the ideology behind the party’s policy formulation. Its academics also keep close ties with the top echelons of the Chinese government.

 

Here is more on CASS from Wikipedia.

Think Tank Quickies (#462)

• Increasing number of Taiwanese and foreign think tanks signing MOUs to engage in collaborative research and policy dialogues. 
• Chinese and Saudi think tanks join hands in petroleum studies.
  
• A half dozen top climate programs are led by alumni of the World Resources Institute.  Why is that? 
• Almost all of Ron DeSantis' new committee members have worked with the Brownstone Institute, a think tank founded in 2021 to oppose pandemic restrictions.
  
• Yamini Aiyar: Why think tanks are critical to Indian policymaking.
  
• Atlantic Council hosted a welcome dinner for the US-Africa Leaders Summit.
  
• Brookings: Breaking silos between think tanks and youth groups for climate change in Africa.
• Future Minerals Forum (FMF) enlists think tanks to champion innovation and develop thought leadership.
• Michigan think tank gets 1st openly LGBTG+ chair.
  
• UK's Institute for Government releases new report on diversity and inclusion in the think tank sector.
  

Think Tank President to Become Australian Ambassador to US

Here is more from the Asia Society:

The government of Australia announced yesterday its nomination of Asia Society President and CEO Kevin Rudd as the country’s next Ambassador to the United States, commencing in March.

Asia Society Board of Trustees Co-Chairs Amb. Heng Chee Chan and John L. Thornton issued the following statement:

“Kevin Rudd has been a transformational leader as President and CEO of the Asia Society, leading the organization through critical moments for it and the world.

Since joining the organization 8 years ago, he has established the Asia Society Policy Institute as a premier research institution, expanded Asia Society to 15 locations globally, and broadened our mission to combating anti-Asian hate in the United States, and elsewhere.

 

In related news, Asia Society formally launched a new Center for China Analysis in October.

Think Tank Quickies (#461)

• RAND is leading a new multi-year Global Strategic Partnership with the UK's Ministry of Defense.
• Jobs in think tanks are attractive cover for spies in Belgium.
  
• Think tankers on whether to defend Taiwan. 
• Japanese Defense Ministry think tank says China intensifying disinformation, cyberattacks on Taiwan.
  
• Marjorie Taylor Greene on the Cato Institute.
• A potential model for US universities and think tanks in their interactions with China.
• Groundwork Collaborative: "Part strategic communications, part think tank, and part issue advocacy organization."
  
• Video: Paul Ryan on why legislators should work with think tanks to solve big problems.
  
• Pic: Think tankers participate in the baking challenge.
• Flashback: "When President-elect Donald Trump picked China critic Robert Lighthizer...as his chief trade negotiator, the Chinese Commerce Ministry called a senior economist at a government think tank and assigned him a task: To lead a study on the impact of a trade war."
  

Jason Grumet Stepping Down as Chief of Bipartisan Policy Center

Mr. Jason Grumet is stepping down as President and CEO of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) in January 2023 after being named as the new CEO of American Clean Power Association.

Grumet founded BPC in 2007.  In 2002, he founded and directed the National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP), the predecessor to BPC's current Energy Project.

The think tank's board of directors is heading up the search for the next CEO. During the transition, current COO Kelly Darnell will serve as Interim CEO. Grumet will remain on BPC’s Board of Directors.

Meet "Double Helix Methodology": China's New Approach to Think Tank Research

Here is more from a press release:

This fall, "Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences" (BCAS, in Chinese) journal discussed the status of Chinese think tanks and a new approach to think tank research known as double helix methodology in an exclusive interview with Professor Pan Jiaofeng, president of the Institutes of Science and Development, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASISD).

The CASISD president mentioned that the new approaches that have emerged in recent years, such as the double helix methodology that he and his team first proposed in 2020, have made it possible "to unravel think tank problems and for think tanks to better engage in scientification and advance towards disciplinization amidst the formation of think tank science and engineering."

Like a strand of DNA, the double helix methodological system put forth by Pan's team features two main interconnected components –an integrated model concerned with data, information, intelligence, and solutions (DIIS) and one covering mechanisms, impact, policy and solutions (MIPS). The model includes an internal process consisting of the interaction between DIIS and MIPS and an external process comprising decomposition, fusion and restoration.

The trailblazer stated that he and his team have participated in pilot construction of high-end Chinese think tanks that utilize double helix methodology and that they formulated more-in-depth problem-, evidence-, and science-oriented DIIS methodology in order to address think tank problems after summarizing the experience that was gained and abstracting essential standardized research processes.

Published in 2021, the English version of Pan's book "DIIS Theory and Methodology in Think Tanks" elaborates on the DIIS aspect of the framework, explaining that it aims to improve the scientificity, efficacy, and reliability of think tank research results, facilitate systematic theoretical analysis, and promote think tank development.

 

Here is a link to Pan's book, DIIS Theory and Methodology in Think Tanks.

North Korea Tricking Think Tankers Into Writing Research for Them

Here is more from Josh Smith of Reuters:

When Daniel DePetris, a U.S.-based foreign affairs analyst, received an email in October from the director of the 38 North think-tank commissioning an article, it seemed to be business as usual.

It wasn't.

The sender was actually a suspected North Korean spy seeking information, according to those involved and three cybersecurity researchers.

Instead of infecting his computer and stealing sensitive data, as hackers typically do, the sender appeared to be trying to elicit his thoughts on North Korean security issues by pretending to be 38 North director Jenny Town.

"I realized it wasn't legit once I contacted the person with follow up questions and found out there was, in fact, no request that was made, and that this person was also a target," DePetris told Reuters, referring to Town. "So I figured out pretty quickly this was a widespread campaign."

The email is part of a new and previously unreported campaign by a suspected North Korean hacking group, according to the cybersecurity experts, five targeted individuals and emails reviewed by Reuters.

 

The hackers reportedly offered Mr. DePetris $300 for reviewing a manuscript about North Korea's nuclear program.

The article notes that the hacking group, which has been dubbed Thallium or Kimsuky, among other names, typically has used spear-phishing emails that truck targets into giving up passwords or clicking links or attachments that load malware.  Now, however, the group is simply asking researchers to offer opinions or write reports.

Think Tank Quickies (#460)

• The American Growth Project by the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, a business policy think tank, says the center of gravity for US economic activity is moving away from the East Coast.
• Humanity's growing knowledge slowing great ideas from think tankers?  Also see this.
• Richard Nixon Foundation held its inaugural Grand Strategy Summit. 
• Aspen Institute announced the formation of a roughly 40-member Global Cybersecurity Group.
• Melanie Zaber on how the culture at RAND Corp. is different from academia and other think tanks.
• Did you know RAND has its own song?
  
• Chinese think tanks on US chip policy.
• Liang-chih Evans Chen, a researcher for the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, Taiwan's top military think tank, says that Xi Jinping's consolidation of power means he is more likely to "accomplish...the unification of Taiwan."
• George Mason professor Ed Maibach insists that although George Mason is home to the libertarian think tank Mercatus Center that's received generous funding from entities linked to Charles and David Koch, his work has never been subjected to ideological pressure from university colleagues or administrators.
• Video: Scholars at CIGS discuss US think tanks.

Dimitri Simes to Retire as President of Center for the National Interest

Mr. Dimitri Simes will retire as president of the Center for the National Interest (CFTNI) and publisher of The National Interest on Dec. 31, according to Politico.

The think tank hosted Donald Trump's first major foreign policy address, leading to one of CFTNI's scholars being fired for criticizing the decision in an op-ed article.

The Trump campaign's interactions with Mr. Simes and CFTNI became part of the 2017-2019 Special Counsel investigation.

The Mueller report ultimately found to evidence of wrongdoing by Simes or CFTNI, but the investigation reportedly hurt the think tank financially.

The think tank was established by former president Richard Nixon in 1994, as the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom.  The group changed its name to the Nixon Center in 1998.  It was renamed Center for the National Interest in 2011.

Simes annual salary is around $400,000 per year.  No successor has yet been named.

CAP President is Friends With New House Democratic Leader

Mr. Patrick Gaspard, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress (CAP), is a close ally of new House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), according to Punchbowl News, which notes that the two become close friends in New York and know each other from when Gaspard was a top official at the labor union 1199 SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

Last year, Rep. Jeffries spoke at a CAP event welcoming Jeffries as the think tank's new leader.

Earlier this year, CAP co-founder John Podesta was tapped to serve as Senior Advisor to President Biden for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation.

Can Back-Channel Diplomacy by Think Tanks Boost US-China Ties?

Think tanks and think tankers have been playing a quiet role in helping keep the US-China relationship afloat.  Here is more from the Wall Street Journal:

China is turning to an old friend in corporate America to bolster communications with the U.S., as President Xi Jinping tries to stabilize the bilateral relationship while gearing up for greater competition between the two powers.

A few days before Mr. Xi’s summit last week with President Biden, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Beijing dispatched a delegation of senior policy advisers and business executives to New York to meet with a U.S. counterpart group set up by insurance executive Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, one of the most successful American businessmen in China.

Xi approved the trip, organized by a think tank affiliated with China’s Foreign Ministry, right after a Communist Party conclave in October that extended his hold on power, the people said. 

The Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, the Foreign Ministry-affiliated think tank, was named as organizer of the group—whose members, according to the people, include Cui Tiankai, Beijing’s former top envoy to Washington, Chen Deming, ex-commerce minister, and Ning Jizhe, former vice minister at China’s top economic-planning agency.

 

As Think Tank Watch previously noted, the US group, formed in July 2022, consists of several US think tankers.

Heritage Working to Sink Same-Sex Marriage Bill

Here is more from Politico:

The Heritage Foundation will drop seven figures on a new ad campaign opposing legislation to codify same-sex and interracial marriage rights ahead of a vote on the bill when lawmakers return from the Thanksgiving recess next week.

— The legislation overcame its first procedural hurdle in the Senate last week with 12 Republicans joining all Democrats in support following an agreement to include protections for religious liberty that Heritage skewered as not going far enough. “Republican senators claiming the bill protects religious liberty are misleading the public,” Roger Severino, the think tank’s vice president of domestic policy, said in a statement pointing to Democratic leaders denying a vote on an amendment from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah).

— The last-minute effort to derail the bill includes putting $1 million behind a TV spot that will air    until next week on Fox News and on Thanksgiving weekend NFL and college football games in Iowa, Indiana, West Virginia and Wyoming — the home states of four Republican senators who voted to advance the bill last week — and another $300,000 in digital ads from Heritage Action, the organization’s lobbying arm.

 

Here is more on the ad campaign from Heritage's "The Daily Signal," and here is more from Fox News.

Think Tank Quickies (#459)

• Off-the-record, invitation-only talk by Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis leader James Bullard at Citigroup event similar to 2017 Stanley Fischer talk (when he was Fed's vice chair) where he gave a closed-door speech at Brookings that drew some outcry.
  
• The Pentagon is not happy about a Heritage Foundation report that rated the US military as weak. 
• Quincy Institute played a major role in drumming up support for a Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) letter calling for the Biden Administration to seek a diplomatic solution in Ukraine.
  
• Andrew Cohen to join the German Marshall Fund as its first-ever managing editor.
• Former US Ambassador to Russia John Sullivan is joining Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service as a distinguished fellow.
• Barre Seid is a major donor to Heartland Institute and Leonard Leo's dark money network.
  
• The Institute for Progress, a US think tank, is helping government agencies distribute grants more effectively. 
• Katie Porter (D-CA) accused Heritage Foundation witness Amy Swearer of perjury during House hearing on gun control.
  
• Washington Consensus is a term coined in 1989 by PIIE's John Williamson.
• Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS) under pressure to remove "dangerous" climate articles.
  

Think Tanks Bolstered FTX, But Funding Now Endangered

The now-collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX received lots of support from outside groups along the way, including think tanks.

Here is more from Bloomberg:

"No one saw this coming" has been a common refrain in the financial world since the swift disintegration of Sam Bankman-Fried's cryptocurrency empire. Nowhere is that sentiment more plain to see than in the letters sent to US regulators in support of FTX's application for a controversial plan that would have revolutionized trading of derivatives, a heavily regulated corner of Wall Street.

From Fidelity Investments to Fortress Investment Group, Susquehanna International Group and Virtu Financial, from faculty members at Georgetown, the University of Chicago, William & Mary and Stanford, from the Jones Day law firm and the Heritage Foundation think tank, hundreds of letters in support of FTX’s plan landed with the CFTC earlier this year.

 

In Oct. 2022, think tank Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) hosted FTX co-founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) for an event on the future of cryptocurrency.

Some think tanks have allied themselves with or received money from the FTX Foundation, and the collapse of FTX endangers SBF's philanthropic gifts, both through the FTX Foundation and through other non-profits.

SBF has been a proponent of the "effective altruism" movement which believes in prioritizing donations to projects that have the largest impact on the most number of people.

UAE Funding of Think Tanks Comes Under More Scrutiny Amid New US Intel Report

Here is more from the Washington Post:

U.S. intelligence officials have compiled a classified report detailing extensive efforts to manipulate the American political system by the United Arab Emirates, an influential, oil-rich nation in the Persian Gulf long considered a close and trusted partner.

The activities covered in the report, described to The Washington Post by three people who have read it, include illegal and legal attempts to steer U.S. foreign policy in ways favorable to the Arab autocracy. It reveals the UAE’s bid, spanning multiple U.S. administrations, to exploit the vulnerabilities in American governance, including its reliance on campaign contributions, susceptibility to powerful lobbying firms and lax enforcement of disclosure laws intended to guard against interference by foreign governments, these people said. 

The UAE has spent more than $154 million on lobbyists since 2016, according to Justice Department records. It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars more on donations to American universities and think tanks, many that produce policy papers with findings favorable to UAE interests.

 

The article notes that boosters of the UAE within US think tanks often call it "Little Sparta" for its "military prowess while sidestepping its human rights record and ironclad kinship to Saudi Arabia."

Here is a Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft report entitled "Gulf funded think tank turns pro-Saudi, UAE messaging up to 11."

Think Tank Quickies (#458)

• Daniel Bunn will be the next president and CEO of the Tax Foundation.
• Jon Huntsman has joined CNAS's board of directors.  He was previously the Atlantic Council's board chair.
• Politico: Spotted on an American Airlines flight from Palm Beach to DC: Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts in first class; Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam in coach.
• Quincy Institute event: Foreign funding and public trust in the think tank sector (and a summary).
  
• Only 15% of people trust think tanks?  (Most don't even know what a think tank is...)
  
• Warning: Someone is impersonating think tanker Michael McFaul.
  
• New book Spies and Lies details how covert influence operations by China reach into US think tanks and elsewhere.
  
• Todd Moss: "Think Tank" is the name of the orangutan house at the National Zoo. 
• Shit Nonprofits Say on how think tanks decide to take donor money.
  
• Pic: Scary costume for the DC think tanker.
  

Viktor Orban-funded Think Tank Aims to Shake Things Up

Here is more from Politico:

A think tank funded by illiberal Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is set to disrupt the Brussels chin-stroking scene when it launches this month — provoking a fierce backlash from detractors back home.

MCC Brussels — an arm of the Mathias Corvinus Collegium (MCC), a Budapest-based college that has controversially received billions of forints from Orbán’s government — plans to “provide an alternative” for Europe’s “polarized cultural landscape,” according to one of its founders.

The center — backed by Hungary’s right-wing, EU-confrontational government — will shake up a think tank ecosystem in Brussels currently dominated by largely homogeneous, pro-European thought.

 

The new think tank will be lead by British-Hungarian scholar Frank Furedi and German political scientist Werner Patzelt.

Think Tank Third Way Warns Democrats on Flaws

Here is more from Axios:

Third Way — a center-left think tank backed by some of the biggest names in Democratic politics — is sounding the alarm about deep-seated party flaws, based on its own new polling from Senate battlegrounds.

Driving the news: "If Democrats manage to hold on to the House and Senate, it will be in spite of the party brand, not because of it," Third Way writes in a memo synthesizing its conclusions, shared first with Axios.

• "Despite a roster of GOP candidates who are extreme by any standard, voters see Democrats as just as extreme, as well as far less concerned about the issues that most worry them."

Why it matters: Lifelong, respected Democrats are saying the quiet part out loud — that if Republicans have a huge night on Tuesday, as polls are blaring, Democrats must blame "much deeper" problems than simply the "historical trends" that beset the party in power.

 

Meanwhile, the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) is expanding and restructuring its Democracy Program to "strengthen the foundations that sustain representative democracy," according to Politico.

The program includes six initiatives and BPC will release reports and convene experts over the next two years in anticipation of the 2024 election season.

RAND Corporation Used Heavily by Intelligence Community

Daniel Golden's book Spy Schools highlights a few interesting anecdotes about how think tanks are often used by foreign and domestic intelligence service.

Golden, citing a former CIA operative, notes that every single day, intelligence services around the world work conferences, sponsor conferences, and look for ways to get people to conferences in order to help collect information and recruit spies.

The book says that the "graybeard" of "CIA concealment conferences" is the RAND Corporation.  The think tank holds a number of conferences each year, often under non-disclosure agreements with intelligence agencies, according to the book.

It also notes that Barbara Walter, a University of California, San Diego political scientist, gives unpaid presentations on her specialty, civil wars, at think tanks fronting for the CIA.

Dr. Walters' UCSD biography lists a number of policy briefings she has given, including at think tanks such as RAND, the Atlantic Council, and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Funders of RAND include the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).

Also, as Think Tank Watch has reported, think tanks, including RAND, abound with former spies.

Think Tank Quickies (#457)

• New Carnegie report: How we would know when China is preparing to invade Taiwan. 
• New think tank launched by Michael Wear: The Center for Christianity and Public Life.
• New launch: Asia Society France, to be chaired by Serge Dumont.
• New launch: Brussels Institute for Geopolitics, co-founded by Luuk van Middelaar, Hans Kribbe, and Sebastien Lumet. 
• Billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried speaks at Bipartisan Policy Center.
  
• Cryptocurrency think tank Coin Center filed a lawsuit challenging the US Treasury Department's sanctions against cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash.
• David Laufman: Retired US military officials working for foreign governments must be careful about any nexus to the US; if they are promoting interests of their benefactors to...think tanks they may have an obligation to register under FARA.
  
• Henry Rome, Eurasia Group's deputy head of research and a director covering macro politics and the Middle East, is now at senior fellow at WINEP covering Iran.
• Zachary Karabell, president of River Twice Capital and the founder of the Progress Network at New America, was named the Eurasia Group Foundation's new board chair.
  
• Lisa Curtis, senior fellow and director of the Indo-Pacific Security program at CNAS, has joined RadioFreeEurope/Radio Liberty's board of directors.
  

Think Tankers Stink at Predictions

Mr. Damien Ma, the co-founder and managing director of the Paulson Institute's in-house think tank MacroPolo, has an anecdote on how bad most think tankers really are at predicting geopolitical events.

Here's what he wrote in a recent piece for the new publication Semafor:

Don’t make predictions about Chinese politics. That’s the lesson from our think-tank’s month-long “fantasy football”-style competition to forecast the “Chinese election” before it concluded last weekend.

Of the more than 1,000 players who played — China specialists and casual observers — not a single person correctly predicted all seven members of the Chinese Communist Party’s new Politburo Standing Committee, the peak of political power in China.

So it turns out the political scientist Phil Tetlock’s longstanding insight holds: On average, expert predictions don’t outperform non-experts’ results.

But maybe it’s not just that expertise didn’t matter, and instead that expertise was neutralized by the paradigm shift that has taken place in China. Basically, expert or not, it was nearly impossible to win our game.

This wasn’t a normal Communist Party congress. The presumed norms that guided and bounded Chinese elite politics fell away. We put too much stock in assumptions about the Party’s commitment to a de facto retirement age, for example, when what counted most was proximity to Xi Jinping himself. Above all else, loyalty and trust were the determinative factors.

 

An example of a prediction that didn't age well: In 1996, Harry Rowen, who worked at the Hoover Institution, said China will become a democracy in 2015.

Here is one to watch for the future: China expert Oriana Skylar Mastro, a Center Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), is predicting a 100% chance China will use force against Taiwan in the next five years.

Here is a 2020 RAND Corporation post entitled "How Accurate Were Predictions About the Future?"  Among other things, it discusses RAND's so-called "Delphi Method" which attempts to make effective use of informed intuitive judgement in long-range forecasting.

Think Tank Fellow Being Sued by Former WSJ Reporter

Here is more from Politico:

Jay Solomon was abruptly fired from his job as the Wall Street Journal’s chief foreign correspondent in 2017 after the Associated Press reported on his alleged discussions of business deals with one of his key sources. It was one of the most high-profile examples of a prominent journalist being sacked for unethical behavior.

Now Solomon is suing, not over his firing or the unflattering news coverage that precipitated it — but over what he says was a multi-million-dollar criminal campaign by a foreign emirate’s American law firm that allegedly hired Indian mercenary hackers to turn up his correspondence.

The lawsuit, filed this month in federal court in Washington, makes for absolutely wild reading. It pulls back the curtain on the murky intersection of American media, international law firms, Persian Gulf politics and Beltway think tanks — and ought to discomfit anyone who thinks working in Washington protects them from hardball tactics that hold sway in other parts of the world.

The cast of characters named as co-defendants in the lawsuit is large, and includes the pair of former Dechert lawyers, private investigators in Israel and North Carolina, and a New York public affairs firm and its founder. It also includes Amir Handjani, who works at the New York firm but has been also a fellow at two Washington think tanks: the Atlantic Council, where he left the board in 2021, and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, where he remains a non-resident fellow. 

 

In March 2022, the Washington Free Beacon had a story entitled "Legal Docs Tie Quincy Institute's Amir Handjani to Spy Operation."  It published another story in July 2022 saying that a judge had ordered Handjani to turn over documents in an alleged hack-and-leak scheme.

Former RAND Scholar Involved in Senate Investigation Unearthing Origins of COVID-19

Here is more from Vanity Fair and ProPublica:

Toy Reid has always had a gift for languages — one that would carry him far from what he calls his “very blue-collar” roots in Greenville, South Carolina. In high school, Spanish came easily. At nearby Furman University, where he became the first person in his family to attend college, he studied Japanese. Then, “clueless but curious,” as he puts it, he channeled his fascination with the Dalai Lama into a master’s degree in East Asian philosophy and religion at Harvard. Along the way, he picked up Khmer, the national language of Cambodia, and achieved fluency in Chinese.

But it was his career as a China specialist for the Rand Corporation and as a political officer in East Asia for the U.S. State Department that taught him how to interpret a notoriously opaque language: the “party speak” practiced by Chinese Communist officials.

For 15 months, Reid loaned this unusual skill to a nine-person team dedicated to investigating the mystery of COVID-19’s origins. Commissioned by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., the team examined voluminous evidence, most of it open source but some classified, and weighed the major credible theories for how the novel coronavirus first made the leap to humans. An interim report, released on Thursday by the minority oversight staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP), concludes that the COVID-19 pandemic was “more likely than not, the result of a research-related incident.”

 

Reid's RAND page lists two reports that he co-authored with the think tank, one on the China-Taiwan dispute and another on domestic trends in the US, China, and Iran and implications for US Navy strategic planning.