Think Tank Quickies (#414)

• Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) citing Mother Jones: "A leaked tape has revealed the campaign to restrict voter access in states across the US is being coordinated by the Heritage Foundation and funded by secret money."
  
• Just launched: Palm Beach Freedom Institute, a 501(c)(3) which aims to cancel out cancel culture.
  
• Think tanks have stolen universities clothes.
• New USMCA monitoring, research, and engagement project at Brookings.
  
• EPI's ad looking for a new think tank president.
  
• President of CFR Richard Haass awarded South Korean state medal.
• Foreign policy fight over university vs. think tank funding in Australia.
• Think tanks can link Taiwan, India.
• Pic: The world's coolest think tank?
  
• South Korea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs agreed to work together with a government agency overseeing state-run think tanks to draw up a blueprint for future relations with China.
  

Group Behind SolarWinds Hack Now Targeting Think Tanks

Think tanks are huge targets for  hackers and they face relentless assaults on their data, personnel information, sources, and inner workings.

Here is the latest example from Reuters:

The group behind the SolarWinds cyber attack identified late last year is now targeting government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations, Microsoft Corp said on Thursday.

"This week we observed cyberattacks by the threat actor Nobelium targeting government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations", Microsoft said in a blog.

Nobelium, originating from Russia, is the same actor behind the attacks on SolarWinds customers in 2020, according to Microsoft.

"This wave of attacks targeted approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations", Microsoft said on Thursday.

 

Every major think tank in the US and many around the world have been hacked multiple times, with some facing near-daily hacking attempts.

US Senators Want Think Tanks to Come Up With China Strategy

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) have been offering various ideas on how the US can best compete with China, and they recently co-sponsored an amendment to a giant China-related bill Congress is working on that calls for think tanks to help with a US-China strategy.

Here is more on the amendment from a Romney press release: 

U.S. Grand Strategy with Respect to China.  Requires the President to develop and submit to Congress a grand strategy to address the new era of geostrategic and geoeconomic competition with China. Convenes an advisory board of outside experts from the private sector, academia, and think tanks to review the current strategy, including challenging its assumptions and approach, and make recommendations to the President for the strategy.

 

Romney has embraced think tanks for years, and when he ran for president in 2012, he selected advisors from think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), American Enterprise Institute (AEI), Brookings Institution, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

During that time, Romney suggested that he supports the US government funding think tanks.

The Week recently said that Romney has emerged as a "one-man think tank," citing all the different policy ideas he has been proposing.

Trump Acolytes Build Ecosystem of Think Tanks so Trumpism Lives On

 Here is more from Bloomberg:

Allies of Donald Trump have built an ecosystem of think tanks, fund-raising outfits and professional development organizations designed to push his populist agenda for years to come whether or not the former president ever seeks office again.

With Trump-like branding, a number of the groups are named after his America First philosophy and serve to challenge the conservative orthodoxy of groups like the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute whose ideas have guided generations of Republican politicians.

The aim is to develop the former president’s unorthodox policy preferences into a coherent program, ready-made for a new generation of politicians to adopt and carry out. No fewer than six new organizations so far are devoted to carrying on his policy legacy.

“There were fights that weren’t being fought,” said Russ Vought, Trump’s last director of the Office of Management and Budget. He started the Center for Renewing America, a think tank with a Capitol Hill office, and a companion grassroots advocacy organization, Citizens for Renewing America, about a week after leaving office in January. His policy shop has eight paid staffers, including Vought, but he wouldn’t release figures on its fundraising or finances.

 Stephen Miller, a former White House senior adviser and anti-immigration hardliner, is leading America First Legal, a nonprofit to preserve Trump’s policies on immigration and other issues. Jenna Ellis, who represented Trump and his campaign in some of its attempts to overturn last November’s election results, is chairwoman of the Election Integrity Alliance, which is focused on state voting laws. The group is part of the American Greatness Fund, a nonprofit set up by Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager.

And there’s the America Alliance, run by Michael Glassner, chief operating officer of Trump’s campaign, which is a new network of big donors who pledge to give at least $100,000 a year for candidates who support Trump’s agenda, and to his causes.

The biggest of the organizations is the America First Policy Institute, dedicated to advance what would have been Trump’s second-term agenda. The think tank has nearly 45 employees and a $20 million budget for its first year. It’s working out of an office building in Arlington, Va., with an eye toward moving to Washington. Its roster includes Pam Bondi, who defended Trump in his first impeachment trial, and former White House adviser Scott Turner.

 

As noted in the piece, it is unlikely that these groups are diverting money from more traditional conservative think tanks like Heritage, AEI and the Hudson Institute.  While former Trump officials have started their own think tanks and think tank-like entities, many have chosen to instead join the already-established traditional think tanks. 

Here is more about which think tanks former Trump officials have landed at.

Think Tank Quickies (#413)

• Since Jan. 1, 2020, Ely Ratner, DoD's new point man on China, has made $412,000 as EVP of CNAS.  [The president of CNAS made $408,230 in 2017.]
  
• On FARA and restoring trust in the think tank sector, via Ben Freeman and Eli Clifton.
• Bruegel is looking for a new director.
  
• Jared Kushner founds Abraham Accords Institute.  Others involved include Avi Berkowitz, Haim Saban, Yousef Al Otaiba, and Abdulla R. Al-Khalifa, and Gabi Ashkenazi.
• The ties that Brookings President John Allen has to Qatar. 
• RAND and Carnegie reports on responsible space behavior accepted for consideration by UN.
  
• "There's no such thing as a think tank emergency.  It is policy and it is papers.  Nobody dies." Christopher Ingraham: "I used to work at Brookings comms department and it was basically think tank emergency 75% of the time." 
• Online debate: Think tanks and the media.
  
• FP's Pacific Power Index: 50 people shaping the future of US-China relations; China Twitter: 100+ accounts you should follow (via SupChina).
• Pic: The various types of MENA think tank papers.
  

World's Largest Index of Think Tank Publications

The web-based application Overton says it is the world's largest searchable index of policy documents, guidelines, think tank publications, and working papers.

Here is more from the site:

[We] collect data from 182 countries and over a thousand sources worldwide with more being added all the time.

 We parse each document, finding references, people, and key concepts, and then link them to the relevant news stories, academic research, think tank output, and other policy.

Our products allow you to search these documents and see where your ideas, papers, reports, and staff are being cited and mentioned.

 

Here is more about Overton, which is based in London.  Annual subscription prices for think tanks and other non-university entities runs from $1,800 to $7,200, tiered by publication volume.

Think Tank Quickies (#412)

• Former Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) joins Center for American Progress (CAP) as a Distinguished Visiting Fellow, focusing on criminal justice, democracy reform, and racial equity and justice.
  
• "Our (think tank's) sole purpose will be to transparently and independently peer review the output of other think tanks, rate their output, and shame cranks." 
• Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) marred by tensions, turnover.
• Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association (AASA) Technology Council (ATC) launches new think tank groups.
• Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), a trustee of the German Marshall Fund (GMF), is joining the board of OpenAI.
  
• Williams Institute: "A sexual orientation and gender identity think tank at UCLA School of Law."
• David Rothkopf, a former member of the US Institute of Peace's (USIP) advisory board, has a Twitter bromance with Ron Klain. 
• Steven Simon, a senior research analyst at the Quincy Institute, lost his position as a paid consultant with the Middle East Institute after visiting Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in 2015.
  
• Reshoring Institute: "A manufacturing policy think tank."
• Institute for National Defense and Security Research: "A think tank co-founded by Taiwan's defense ministry."
  

Think Tankers Come Under Fire for Attending China Summit

Here is more from The Washington Free Beacon:

The Democratic majority leader of the California state senate and officials from some of the United States's top foreign policy think tanks will speak this week at a forum organized by a group with close ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

The China Public Diplomacy Association, a group founded by China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will host the 2021 China-U.S. Public Diplomacy Summit in Beijing on Friday. The association, which has received little attention in the West, is led by several officials at Communist Party front groups. Robert Hertzberg, the majority leader of the California Senate, is slated to speak on a panel at the summit, as are scholars from the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Wilson Center, the Asia Society, and other prominent U.S. think tanks.

The forum will be held in person at Renmin University in Beijing and streamed live on the internet. The itinerary does not say which American speakers will attend the event in person and which will attend virtually. 

 

When asked about the summit, China hawk Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) said that "every think tank...should realize that meetings like these are influence operations organized by the Chinese Communist Party intended to slowly undermine America."

CAP Chief Neera Tanden Lands at the White House

Center for American Progress (CAP) President and CEO Neera Tanden has finally found her way into the White House after her nomination to be the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was withdrawn in March.

She will now be a senior advisor to President Joe Biden, according to various media reports.

Here is more from the Associated Press on what she will be doing in her new role:

She will launch a review of the US Digital Service and begin planning for possible policy changes that could result from the forthcoming Supreme Court decision on GOP legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act. Tanden worked in former President Barack Obama’s administration as the act was designed and implemented.

 

The Washington Post notes that Tanden is "particularly close" to White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who played a "significant role" in her initial selection for the Cabinet.  He was also "instrumental" is helping Tanden land this new White House job, according to the Post.

Here is a statement from CAP Founder John Podesta on Tanden's appointment. 

Here is a Think Tank Watch list of think tankers who have gone into the Biden Administration.  Tanden is one of six think tank presidents who have been tapped for a White House post.

There is no official word yet as to who will replace Tanden at CAP.

How Bellingcat Was Embraced by the Atlantic Council

This is from the book "We Are Bellingcat" by Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative website specializing in open-source intelligence:

Maks Czuperski, a young staffer at the Atlantic Council, the influential Washington-based think tank, knew of my work on Syria and Russia, and asked me if Bellingcat would embark on a joint project with them.  This, I realized, could provide the boost that we wanted, showing the powerful figures who circulated around the Atlantic Council that we were more than online amateurs.

Our first collaboration was a major report in May 2015, "Hiding in Plain Sight: Putin's War in Ukraine," about Russia's direct military involvement in eastern Ukraine.  The work made waves, and soon I was traveling the globe explaining these findings and what exactly Bellingcat did.

Two other major Atlantic Council report followed: "Distract Deceive Destroy: Putin at War in Syria" and "Breaking Aleppo," about the Assad regime's devastation of the city.  Another consequence of my period as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council was our creation of the Digital Forensic Research Lab, today a leading incubator of open-source innovation, with its annual "Digital Sherlock" summit bringing together online sleuths from the around world.

 

Here is a link to the Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) and here is the site for DigitalSherlocks. 

The book also that that Andy Carvin, who is a senior fellow at the DRFL, got nightmares and panic attacks from the work he did and was eventually diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Think Tank Quickies (#411)

• Breakthrough Institute: Absolute decoupling of economic growth and emissions in 32 countries. 
• Think tank research shows domestic extremism on the rise in the US.
• Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga spoke at CSIS event during US visit.
  
• Attention think tank panelists: "No one, in the history of time, has EVER heard a talk and thought: 'That was fantastic. I wish it was longer.'"
  
• Asia Society President and CEO mistaken for an Uber driver.
• Fuels Institute: A think tank founded by National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) in 2013. 
• Which think tanks think about rural America? 
• Think tanks can get funding for US-Egypt-related projects via Public Diplomacy Small Grants Program, says US Embassy Cairo.
  
• Japan's regional think tanks.
  
• Meet the newest fake university (SRIIOTA), whose mascot is Carl the Soft Shell Crab.

The Swiss Billionaire Funding Democratic Think Tanks

Numerous billionaires, both Democrats and Republicans, fund numerous think tanks, a trend that has only been increasing over the years.

Here is the latest example from the New York Times:

He is not as well known as wealthy liberal patrons like George Soros or Tom Steyer. His political activism is channeled through a daisy chain of opaque organizations that mask the ultimate recipients of his money. But the Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss has quietly become one of the most important donors to left-leaning advocacy groups and an increasingly influential force among Democrats.

Newly obtained tax filings show that Mr. Wyss’s foundations donated $208 million from 2016 through early last year to three nonprofit funds that doled out money to a wide array of groups that backed progressive causes and helped Democrats in their efforts to win the White House and control of Congress last year.

Beneficiaries of his direct giving included prominent groups such as the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank where Mr. Wyss sits on the board.

 

The Times has previously reported that the Center for American Progress (CAP) and its sister organization have received more than $6.1 million from foundations linked to Wyss.

NYT also noted that John Podesta, the founder of CAP, has advised the Wyss Foundation, including on the hiring of The Hub Project's executive director, Arkadi Gerney, a former official at CAP.

Update: Here is a 2022 Real Clear Politics piece on on Wyss's "mega influence" on US politics, including his think tank involvement.

Heritage Foundation Halts Donations from Big Tech

 Here is more Lydia Moynihan of the New York Post:

The Heritage Foundation has stopped accepting donations from tech giants amid an escalating battle with Silicon Valley over censorship, The Post has learned.

The influential conservative think tank — which famously turned pro-Trump after initial skepticism of his presidential candidacy, brokering appointments of cabinet members including Mick Mulvaney, Jeff Sessions and Betsy DeVos — said it will join a group of more than 40 right-leaning research outfits refusing to accept money from Big Tech firms including Google, Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon, according to a memo obtained by The Post.

Last month, dozens of conservative think tanks including the Family Research Council, Media Research Center, Center for Renewing America, and Citizens United pledged to turn down donations from big tech. Other big right-leaning research nonprofits like American Enterprise Institute, Mercatus, Cato Institute, the Manhattan Institute, the Hoover Institution and the Rand Corporation haven’t announced positions on tech donations. 

 

The New York Post notes that in early 2019, Google dissolved an advisory board on artificial intelligence (AI) that Heritage's James had served on after it received a petition signed by 2,500 employees demanding her removal, calling her "vocally anti-trans, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-immigrant."  The move was blasted by James in a Washington Post op-ed.

The NY Post also notes that a few months later, Google's YouTube removed a video posted by Heritage, saying comments made about transgender issues were "hate speech."

Here are some other anecdotes from NY Post:

In 2019, Twitter temporarily banned a Heritage employee who tweeted he believed transgender women who are born male should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports competitions, classifying the tweet as hate speech. Heritage mediated the situation and the employee regained access to his account without deleting the tweet.

Earlier this year, Amazon removed a book on transgenderism from its site, “When Harry Became Sally,” written by former Heritage employee Ryan T. Anderson. In February, US Sens. Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Mike Lee, and Mike Braun wrote Amazon a letter demanding an explanation for removing the book from its platform.

 

As Think Tank Watch previously reported, the Heritage Foundation recently turned down six-figure donations from Google and Facebook, although it has already accepted seven-figure donations from those firms.

Is Quincy Institute Washington's "Weirdest" Think Tank?

Here are some excerpts from a Tablet piece by Armin Rosen, entitled "Washington's Weirdest Think Tank":

The [Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft] titular director and president is Andrew Bacevich, a historian, former U.S. Army colonel, and a widely respected if sometimes overwrought proponent of the idea that a military-industrial complex has hijacked American society. The IRS document identifies Trita Parsi, head of the National Iranian American Council until 2018, as another one of Quincy’s co-founders and as its executive vice president. The tax exemption application lists Parsi’s estimated compensation at $275,000 a year, compared with $50,000 for Bacevich—a fair indication of who is actually running Washington’s weirdest and most intriguing foreign policy shop.

Chas Freeman, a former U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia and one of the elder statesmen of the realist movement in American foreign policy, told me he was “part of the group consulted about [Quincy’s] formation,” though he has no affiliation with the institute. “I think the main organizer was Trita Parsi, and perhaps that was a product of his disappointment as head of NIAC,” Freeman recalled. “I think he probably thought: How can I play a role in trying to shake things loose a little bit, not particularly on Iran, but generally.”

 

There are lots of juicy anecdotes throughout the piece.  Think Tank Watch's favorite line: "[Is Quincy] a three-ring circus of governmental, academic, and think tank washouts, funded by two megalomaniacal billionaires and led by a man alleged to be a cheerleader for a hostile foreign government?"

Entities and people mentioned in the piece include: Lawrence Wilkerson, Charles Koch Institute, Open Society Foundations, George Soros, Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF), Stephen Heintz, J Street, Arms Control Association, Ploughshares Fund, International Crisis Group, Robert Malley, Thomas Pickering, Francis Najafi, Adam Weinstein, Suzanne DiMaggio, Joe Cirincione, Colin Kahl, Lora Lumpe, Stephen Metz, Max Abrahms, Samuel Moyn, Javad Zarif, Charles Doran, John Mearsheimer, Bob Ney, Eli Clifton, Stephen Wertheim, Lawrence Wilkerson, Joshua Landis, Ford Foundation, Giustra International Foundation, Stephen Walt, Ron Burkle, and many others.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about the founding of the Quincy Institute.

Think Tank Quickies (#410)

• How media outlets describe DC's tax think tanks.
• On the UAE's strong relationship with US think tanks. 
• Japan's only national think tank covering security, the National Institute for Defense Studies, makes predictions on the Quad.
  
• Jelena Brankovic thread: Why rankings, such as those for think tanks, are awful.
• ADBI discusses ways to boost Central Asia's think tanks.
  
• C. Lea Shea is "founder and chairman of the Center for the Study of Great Power Competition, formerly known as the Long War Institute on Counterterrorism and Counterinsurgency and, prior to that, as the New Globalization Initiative."
• Academics in Myanmar being rounded up and "disappeared."
  
• Former Brookings fellow Maati Monjib released from detention in Morocco.
  
• The National Pulse: China boasts control over Western think tanks. 
• "I would love to see a paper comparing the stock phrases used by think tanks in Brussels, London, and DC."

Brookings Not Ready to Voluntarily Recognize Union

Here is more from Brookings United, which is made up of nearly 200 non-supervisory workers at the Brookings Institution:

We are writing to share two updates. First, yesterday was the deadline that we gave Brookings for responding to our request for voluntary recognition. Unfortunately, Brookings senior management has informed us that they have not yet reached a decision, and will not be giving us an answer at this time.

We are disappointed in this answer, in particular because it does not respect the timeline that we had requested from management. This should be an easy decision for Brookings given that its own research demonstrates, time after time, the importance of unions.

While we hope that this isn’t the case here, slow-walking is a tactic that some employers use to dilute the strength and momentum of workers’ organizing efforts. In the event that Brookings does not want to recognize our union, we are likely to hear significantly more delays. Management at the Urban Institute, a similarly-minded organization whose union requested recognition on the same day as us, already signaled their intent to begin voluntary recognition last week.

We have requested that management give us an answer on their intent to voluntarily recognize our union by this Friday, April 30. We also wanted to share that support for our effort is widespread and growing within the Brookings community. Yesterday 45 scholars and senior staff members (and growing!) signed a public letter requesting that Brookings voluntarily recognize our union. 

 

Brookings employees formed a union on April 13, and here are some of the reasons given as to why a union was formed.  Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about the union push at major US think tanks. 

Update: On April 30, Brookings United said that the Brookings Institution has signaled its intent to begin voluntary recognition of the union.

Russians Pranking Washington Think Tanks?

This is from an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Atlantic Council scholars Melinda Haring and Damon Wilson:

Early this month, senior staff here at the Atlantic Council received an email claiming to come from Leonid Volkov, the chief of staff to imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Volkov is someone we know and respect, so we immediately opened the message. The email was well-written and sympathetic. It praised our work and requested an on-camera meeting with the top three executives at our organization, one of Washington’s leading think tanks.

But the message was fake. The people who sent it were trying to lure us into a potentially sensitive or even embarrassing online conversation. Spear-phishing attempts like this have been arriving more and more frequently in in-boxes at think tanks and nongovernmental organizations in Washington and elsewhere. Thankfully, we smelled a rat and contacted Volkov through other means to check whether he had sent the message. He had not. With that confirmed, we warned our colleagues in other organizations, some of whom had received the same note on the same day.

In March, the leaders of another Washington-based nongovernmental organization received a similarly personalized email with a request for an on-camera meeting. The set-up was similar: The message claimed to come from exiled Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya.

 

The two Atlantic Council scholars say they suspect Russia is behind this, but they aren't 100% sure.  They note that the Russian Prosecutor General's Office named the Atlantic Council an undesirable organization in 2019, adding that the think tank is often the target of cyberattacks "mostly designed to gain information about our staff, our work, and our engagements." 

They also note that back in 2014, a denial-of-service attack against Atlantic Council brought down its website as it was hosting then-Vice President Joe Biden for a major conference promoting a "whole and free" Europe.

Lobbying Firm Arranged Think Tank Visits for Ukraine

Here is more from the New York Times:

In the weeks before Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in April, his advisers quietly worked with a Washington lobbying firm, Signal Group, to arrange meetings in Washington with Trump administration officials, as well as congressional offices and think tanks that focus on Ukraine-United States relations.

Ms. Heather Conley, who is director of the Europe program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, was among the think tank officials who met with one Mr. Zelensky’s advisers in April in a meeting arranged by Signal and Mr. Marcus Cohen.

They discussed Mr. Zelensky’s anticorruption and economic overhaul plans, Ms. Conley said, adding, “Ukraine faces a fraught landscape in Washington — with or without a lobbyist.”

 

A number of think tanks are deeply involved in US-Ukraine affairs.  In 2019, a group of 10 think tanks held an event on US strategic interests in Ukraine that included CSIS, Atlantic Council, American Enterprise Institute (AEI), American Foreign Policy Council (AFPC), Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Heritage Foundation, Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), German Marshall Fund (GMF), and Jamestown Foundation.

Think Tank Quickies (#409)

• Lots of think tank anecdotes in Josh Rogin's new book Chaos Under Heaven. He notes that Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Ashley Tellis, who was considered for the US ambassador to India post, did not get that position because it was unearthed he wrote something critical of Trump.  And it is still unclear why CSIS's Victor Cha didn't get the Korea ambassadorial post.
• Flashback I: Kiron Skinner, a Hoover Institution researcher, took leave from the think tank to serve as the State Dept.'s director of policy planning, only to be forced out.
• Flashback II: In 2010 Michael Flynn co-wrote a piece with Matt Pottinger and Paul Batchelor on Afghanistan for CNAS; Mike Flynn was at USIP's "Passing the Baton 2017." 
• Flashback III: Center for Carbon Removal rebrands as Carbon180.
  
• The Daniel Morgan Graduate School of National Security (DMGS), a strategic ally of the Heritage Foundation, closed its doors on July 31, 2020.
• CCP think tanker on China's strategy to win global hegemony and put the US under CCP control. 
• Q&A with Joseph Nye on moving between academia and government, intel work and policymaking.
  
• How Clubhouse is like a DC think tank event.
  
• Ethical dilemmas of the China scholar.
  
• Slovenian think tank report upsets Bulgarians.
  

Thea Lee Becomes 5th Think Tank President to be Tapped by Biden

Ms. Thea Lee, the head of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), will become the fifth think tank president to be tapped by the Biden Administration.

In an April 22 statement, Lee, who became president of the union-friendly think tank in 2018, said that she has accepted a job in the Biden Administration and will be leaving EPI on May 7.

EPI's board of directors, led by Board Chairman Richard Trumka and the executive committee, will organize a national search for the next president.  In the meantime, John Schmitt will be the interim president of EPI.

Dr. Schmitt has been vice president of EPI since Jan. 1, 2018.  He started his career as an economist at the think tank from 1995 to 2001.  He later spent 10 years as a senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) and was research director at the Center for Equitable Growth.

There are now more than 100 think tankers in senior-level positions within the Biden Administration, according to Think Tank Watch's latest count.

Cryptocurrency Think Tanks Gaining Influence in Washington

While crypto-art is now funding think tanks, several entities that are being called cryptocurrency think tanks have have been garnering more attention recently.

One example is the Cryptor Foundation, which bills itself as the first crypto-related think tank and endowment fund formally based on bitcoin.

Swiss-based 2B4CH is often described as a cryptocurrency think tank, as is the Washington, DC-based Coin Center, which was launched in 2014.

Here is more from Bloomberg about Coin Center's recent activities: 

Coin Center, a Washington-based think tank and cryptocurrency advocacy group, since December has garnered more than $300,000 through a fundraising drive with mostly individual donors contributing small amounts of cryptocurrency. It also received $2 million from crypto-investment firm Grayscale Investments LLC and $1 million from Twitter-founder Jack Dorsey, whose other firm, Square Inc., recently made a $30 million investment in Bitcoin.

Coin Center executive director Jerry Brito said that, for now, his group is saving the money as a war chest in case it needs to fight a larger lobbying battle or file a lawsuit over the new regulations.

 

Here is more about Coin Center's Executive Director Jerry Brito.

There is also the Toronto-based Blockchain Research Institute (BRI), which does work on cryptocurrencies.

As the number of crypto-related think tanks increase, crypto-related lobbying activity is also increasing.

Think Tank Watch will be watching closely to see if think tanks start snapping up virtual real estate and creating their own virtual think tanks.

Think Tanker Blocked from Joining Biden Administration

More than 100 think tankers have landed in the Biden Administration, but a handful have been blocked either by the Senate confirmation process or the Biden team's own internal vetting.

Here is the latest example from Politico:

A Russia expert whose bid to join the Biden National Security Council sparked an outcry among prominent critics of the Kremlin is no longer under consideration for the role, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Matthew Rojansky, the director of the Wilson Center's Kennan Institute, was being considered for the position of Russia director on the NSC — an influential role that would make him a key touchpoint between the various Cabinet agencies seeking to drive a concerted response to Russia’s aggressive moves in Eastern Europe and beyond.

But several current and former senior officials warned the White House against hiring Rojansky, arguing that appointing him would signal a conciliatory U.S. policy toward Moscow, said the people, who requested anonymity to describe the internal deliberations.

Rojansky was initially recommended to the White House by former California congresswoman Jane Harman, who is the president emerita at the Wilson Center, where Rojanksy serves. Those individuals familiar with the matter said Harman’s recommendation was routed through the Office of the Vice President.

 

Here is a list of think tankers who have gone into the Biden Administration.

Think Tank Decoupling Heats Up as China Blocks CSIS Website

 Here is more from the South China Morning Post:

Beijing has blocked the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) website in China, after the Washington-based group released a piece criticising the country’s sanctions on a European think tank.

This latest page in deteriorating US-China relations comes as academic exchanges wither and the Communist Party steps up efforts to spread its world view well beyond its borders, scholars say.

“It’s ironic that this piece would generate that response from China, given that the whole point was to … reduce restrictions, which is what China’s been pushing for in arguing against decoupling,” said CSIS fellow Scott Kennedy, who co-wrote the critique.

According to China Firewall Test, a monitoring site, the conservative Heritage Foundation and libertarian Cato Institute websites are blocked, while the conservative American Enterprise Institute is not.

And centrist Brookings Institution and CSIS are blocked while the progressive Centre for American Progress is not.

AEI fellow Derek Scissors said he has had articles blocked that question Chinese economic statistics, something Premier Li Keqiang did in 2007 as then-Liaoning Communist Party head citing “man-made” numbers, according to WikiLeaks.

 

China sanctioned the Mercator Institute for China Studies (MERICS) on March 22, and in response, CSIS scholars released a statement denouncing the sanctions, a move that apparently led China to block CSIS's website.

China's move also comes as CSIS hosted Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga for an event at the think tank.

Here is a 2019 Think Tank Watch piece about the US think tanks that China blocks.

Think Tank Quickies (#408)

• CFR President Richard Haass: The New Concert of Powers. 
• Greatest-ever name for a think tank has been identified: Knowledge Center for Maneuvering in Shallow and Confined Water (link here).
  
• New think tank (Council on Geostrategy) explores challenges as "Global Britain" returns to the Indo-Pacific.
• ASPI, sycophancy, and the deepening corruption of Australia's strategic mindset, via Michael McKinley.
  
• "When I see all the 29+ year olds in think tanks with 'senior' titles to compensate lack of money for a real raise."
• Valdai Discussion Club: Think tanks and US foreign policy.
  
• Former French Ambassador to US Gerard Araud bashes US think tanks.
  
• Urban Institute report: Norms and narratives that shape US charitable and philanthropic giving. 
• LSE on the absurdity of university rankings.
  
• Pic: Outdoor chess at RAND Corp.
  

Karen Donfried Becomes 4th Think Tank President Tapped by Biden

Dr. Karen Donfried, the President of the Washington, DC-based think tank German Marshall Fund (GMF), has become the fourth think tank president to be nominated for a post in the Biden Administration.

On April 15, the White House announced its intention to nominate Donfried as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.

Before assuming the presidency of GMF in April 2014, Donfried was the Special Assistant to the President and and Senior Director for European Affairs at the National Security Council (NSC).  Prior to that she served as the National Intelligence Officer for Europe on the National Intelligence Council (NIC).

Who are the other three think tank heads who received a Biden nomination?  Heather Boushey, who was President and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, is now a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA).

Bill Burns, who was President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is now Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Neera Tanden, President of the Center for American Progress (CAP), was tapped to be Biden's Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) but her nomination was later pulled.

Here is a list from Think Tank Watch of think tankers who are now in the Biden Administration.  It also lists Trump Administration officials who have gone into think tank land.

Trump Alumni Launch "America First" Think Tank

 Here is more from Axios:

A constellation of Trump administration stars today will launch the America First Policy Institute, a 35-person nonprofit group with a first-year budget of $20 million and the mission of perpetuating former President Trump's populist policies.

Why it matters: Two top Trump alumni tell me AFPI is by far the largest pro-Trump outside group, besides Trump's own Florida-based machine.

In the coming months, the group plans to take a large office space near the U.S. Capitol as a symbol that it'll fight to be a muscular, well-heeled center of the future of conservatism.

• I'm told that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are informal advisers.

The president and CEO is Brooke Rollins, a Texan who was head of Trump's Domestic Policy Council.

The board chair is Linda McMahon, who was a member of Trump’s Cabinet as the administrator of the Small Business Administration, after winning fame as a pro-wrestling entrepreneur.

• The vice chair is Larry Kudlow, Trump's economic adviser, a longtime CNBC personality who's now a Fox Business host.

AFPI — now based in the Crystal City area of Arlington, Virginia — has been in the planning stages since December.

• The group will also have offices in Fort Worth, where Rollins remains based, Miami and New York. Rollins plans to move the group to Washington to be closer to the action.

The group includes 20 policy areas, many run by Trump alumni:

• Former Energy Secretary Rick Perry heads the Center for Energy Independence.
• National security will be co-chaired by John Ratcliffe, Trump's last director of national intelligence, and retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who was national security adviser to Vice President Pence.
• Jack Brewer, a former NFL player and advisory board member of Black Voices for Trump, heads the Center for Opportunity Now, focused on an "underserved community agenda."
• Paula White-Cain, a Trump spiritual adviser, will head a Center for American Values, focused on religious freedom and the Second Amendment.
• Former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi will head a law and justice center.
• Scott Turner will head the Center for Education Opportunity.

 

AFPI appears similar to the think tank-like entity that former Vice President Mike Pence just launched called Advancing American Freedom (AAF).

Union Push at Major US Think Tanks

Here is more from Politico:

Workers at two of the largest, most influential think tanks in Washington, D.C. are forming a union, adding to a growing trend in white-collar collective bargaining.

Staff at the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute on Tuesday asked their employers to grant them voluntary recognition — which doesn't require a secret ballot election — of their unions, which are affiliated with the Nonprofit Professional Employees Union, IFPTE Local 70.

The NPEU has successfully organized several other prominent think tanks in the D.C. area, including The Center for American Progress, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Economic Policy Institute, National Immigration Law Center, and the National Women’s Law Center, among others. 

The nearly 200 employees forming a union at Brookings say they want to improve diversity, retention, and paid family and parental leave, among other issues, NPEU says.

Similarly, The Urban Institute Employees’ Union, which would represent nearly 250 workers, says it’s looking to ensure that the think tank supports its diverse staff through “equitable pay, treatment, promotion processes, access to leadership positions, and mental health resources.”

 

Here is a past Think Tank Watch piece about unionization efforts at CBPP, and here is one about unionization efforts at CAP.  And here is one entitled "Think Tank Workers are Unionizing and Bosses Aren't Happy."

Here is a recent Think Tank Watch piece about the major union AFL-CIO starting its own think tank.

R Street Institue Suing Former Employee Over "Side Gig" Work

 Here is more from Law.com:

R Street Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based public policy organization, sued the former director of its criminal justice and civil liberties program Thursday in Virginia Eastern District Court over alleged misappropriation of trade secrets, interference with donor relationships and other breaches. The 73-page complaint, filed by Whiteford, Taylor & Preston, contends that attorney Arthur Rizer misused RSI resources and diverted opportunities away from the plaintiff for personal gain. Counsel have not yet appeared for the defendants. The case is 1:21-cv-00401, R Street Institute v. Rizer d/b/a Arrow Consulting, LLC et al.

 

The full lawsuit can be found here.  Among other things, R Street Institute (RSI), headquartered in Washington, DC, says that Mr. Rizer repeatedly diverted work from RSI to his own consulting firm and used RSI resources to perform that work, charging expenses related to that work to RSI.

It is extremely common for think tankers to have a side hustle, often taking on numerous consulting gigs and/or starting their own consulting firms to siphon off work from their own think tank.

Some think tanks have mandatory conflict of interest (COI) disclosure forms that their scholars have to fill out annually, but others do not.  Even scholars who are supposed to disclose COIs often fail to do so.

According to his LinkedIn page, Dr. Rizer was Director of Justice Policy and Senior Fellow at R Street Institute from Aug. 2016 to Jan. 2021.  He is now Vice President of Technology, Criminal Justice, and Civil Liberties at the Lincoln Network.

Think Tank Quickies (#407)

• Carnegie launches Africa Program; Zainab Usman will be the founding director.
  
• US military's "maximum pressure" in South China Sea "unprecedented," says Beijing think tank South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI).
• Big tech taps libertarian think tank lifeline in DC.
  
• Employ America: A left-learning think tank that advocates for the Fed to let the economy run hot.
• Author bashes CFR's Ray Takeyh for a critical review of his book, citing conflicts of interest.
• Jake Sullivan penned a piece by Jennifer Harris of the Roosevelt Institute in Feb. 2020 which outlines a strategy that some are calling "Sullivan's Law."
• AEI's Leon Aron: Could Putin launch another invasion? 
• How do I chat up an economist at a think tank event?
• Ryan Anderson, President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center: "Amazon won't let you read my book."
• Pic: A nice outdoor think tank.
  

CAP Has Stocked Biden Administration with Nearly 60 Policy Wonks

The Biden Administration has been hiring think tankers at an extremely rapid pace, with a number of high-level positions being filled by those from the Brookings Institution, Center for a New American Security (CNAS), Atlantic Council, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and many others.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has been one of the biggest sources of talent for the Biden Administration.  Here is ore from Business Insider:

A liberal think tank launched as a counterweight to President George W. Bush's administration is filling the ranks of the Biden administration. 

At least 56 alumni of the Center for American Progress are now working inside the White House and in agencies across the federal government, according to an Insider analysis of administration announcements and career networking sites.

They're not just any government jobs, either: CAP alumni fill some of the most important positions in Washington. Among them are President Joe Biden's new secretary of Veterans Affairs, the top White House economic policy advisor, and the chief of staff at the Pentagon. 

Even Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, served on the board of the think tank's political arm. And CAP's most visible member, President and CEO Neera Tanden, would be serving as White House budget director, but the administration pulled her nomination in the face of opposition from Senate Republicans.

 

Business Insider notes that of the 56 CAP alumni known to be serving in the Biden Administration, 18 of them were affiliated with the think tank until this year.  The others include former senior fellows, policy analysts, and a handful of former CAP interns.

CAP has a staff of around 300 people.

Here is Think Tank Watch's list of think tankers that have gone into the Biden Administration.