Think Tank Quickies (#456)

• New US intelligence report says the Kremlin spent $300 million since 2014 to try to influence several European countries using front companies and think tanks.
  
• Chinese think tank issues rare public disagreement with the ruling Community Party's severe "zero-COVID" policy.
• Iranian operatives have targeted members of the US-based think tank community through surveillance and cyber operations.
  
• Are think tanks ready for the age of AI?
• ChinaFile, a digital magazine published by the Asia Society, collected 100,000+ Chinese government bidding documents for surveillance technology and shared them exclusively with the New York Times.
  
• Progressive Jewish groups launch think tank (Emor) to counter spread of right-wing ideas.
  
• Nick Eftimiades of the Atlantic Council keeps a database on Chinese espionage cases.
• Carter Price, a mathematician at RAND Corp., is working on a budget model that will incorporate the latest social science research, as well as climate science, to inform long-term policy decisions.
• Rhiana Gunn-Wright, director of climate policy at the Roosevelt Institute, is an architect of the Green New Deal.
• Matt Duss, foreign policy adviser for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), is joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
  

RAND Corp. Exposes Fake RAND Report

Over the years, Think Tank Watch has documented numerous incidents where people or entities have impersonated think tanks and think tank scholars.

Now, RAND Corporation has uncovered a fake RAND report that has been circulating online.

Here is more from RAND:

A supposedly leaked RAND report about a bizarre U.S. conspiracy to “weaken Germany” is fake.

Genuine RAND research, analysis, and commentary on the war in Ukraine may be found at this page.

Given the potential origins of this fake document, we encourage you to explore this resource on the “firehose of falsehood” approach to propaganda and RAND's extensive research on “Truth Decay,” a phenomenon driven in part by the spread of disinformation.

 

SOFREP has much more on the fake report, which was apparently published in Swedish newspaper Nya Dagbladet.  SOFREP says that Russian agents likely created the fake report.

Think Tank Analyst Acquitted in Trial Over Trump Dossier

Here is more from Associated Press:

A jury on Tuesday acquitted a think tank analyst accused of lying to the FBI about his role in the creation of a discredited dossier about former President Donald Trump.

The case against Igor Danchenko was the third and possibly final case brought by Special Counsel John Durham as part of his probe into how the FBI conducted its own investigation into allegations of collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

Danchenko, by his own admission, was responsible for 80 percent of the raw intelligence in the dossier and half of the accompanying analysis, though trial testimony indicated that Danchenko was shocked and dismayed about how Steele presented the material and portrayed it as factual when Danchenko considered it more to be rumor and speculation.

 

Mr. Danchenko was a former Brookings Institution analyst.

New Legislation to Impact Republican-leaning Think Tanks More?

Legislation that is working its way through the US Congress, which is largely being pushed by Republicans, may impact conservative think tanks more than liberal ones.

Here is more from Politico:

For all the joy that conservative pols have taken at Brookings’ latest turn in the barrel, conversations with people around the industry reveal an irony: Any potential new wave of government-mandated disclosure rules, especially those that go beyond foreign money, would actually represent a bigger cultural change at right-wing organizations, some of which historically have tended to see donations as a form of free speech. Establishmentarian center-left outfits like Brookings already share significant pieces of that information — thanks in part, it should be noted, to previous funding imbroglios, and their reliance on corporate dollars. (The Heritage Foundation, by contrast, says less than two percent of its income comes from corporate sources.)

The last spate of transparency efforts, which followed a blockbuster set of New York Times reports in 2014 and 2016 about donor influence at think tanks, was embraced “way more on the left than the right,” one longtime conservative think tank figure tells me. (To be clear, this veteran of fundraising told me, that’s because it was centrist and liberal outfits that had been caught out.) While a visitor to Brookings’ website can today peruse annual reports that identify top donors, the American Enterprise Institute says it doesn’t provide that information as a matter of course.

 

Of course, the various proposals floating around Congress may never become law, and even if something passes, certain loopholes may be be included in any final package.

Think Tank Quickies (#455)

• Republican lawmaker calls on CIA director to address his strong ties to CCP while at helm of think tank.
  
• Johns Hopkins, a school attended by many think tankers, has a long history with student-spies. 
• Amazon's behind-the-scenes campaign against Canada's competition law reforms involves hardball tactics and spending on think tanks.
  
• Sentinel Action Fund, the new Heritage-linked super PAC, will spend $3.5 million on TV ads and $1.5 million on voter outreach to bolster Arizona GOP Senate nominee Blake Masters.
• Hal Harvey, CEO of the San Francisco-based think tank Energy Innovation, has written a new book, The Big Fix.
  
• Gordon Hempton: "Quiet is a think tank of the soul."
• Peter Kelley: "A think tank is an arrangement in which voluntary corporations, govt’s, or eccentric mega-rich give millions of dollars to support people who spend most of their time trying to get their names into print.”
• Thread: Coldplay lyrics as think tank report titles. 
• Pic: The death of the think tank meal is greatly exaggerated.
  
• Pic: Only at a think tank could registration be this complicated.
  

Richard Haass Stepping Down as President of CFR

After nearly 20 years at the helm of one of the most influential foreign policy think tanks, Richard Haass has decided to leave his post as president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

The New York Times broke the news this week.  Among other things, NYT notes that President Biden's national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, once interned for Mr. Haass's predecessor at the think tank, Leslie Gelb.

Some have already speculated that Sullivan could be in the running to be the next CFR president.

Haass, whose annually salary tops $1.7 million, is expected to depart in June and no replacement has yet been named.

US Threatened to Charge Cato Institute & Mercatus Employees with Treason

Here is more from The Dispatch:

In March 2020, a maritime shipping advisory panel offered a simple suggestion to the government: Charge all past and current members of two libertarian think tanks [Cato Institute and Mercatus Center] with treason.

It is certainly not the first time a bunch of libertarians angered members of a bureaucratic panel. But this backlash stemmed from criticism of the Jones Act, a century‐​old law that imposes requirements for shipping between American ports.

 

Cato scholars Colin Grabow and Scott Lincicome have more details here, and call the situation "deeply troubling."

It also appears that the Maritime Transportation System National Advisory Committee's (MTSNAC) International Shipping Subcommittee wanted the US president to inform the Heritage Foundation that he will personally disavow them if they continue to advocate against the Jones Act.

Where Young Conservative Think Tankers Meet in DC

Here is more from The Dispatch:

The Cicero Society is an institution you’ve probably never heard of if you’re not of a certain age and living in the District of Columbia. The society is a “parliamentary debate society committed to developing excellence, preserving the Western intellectual tradition, and forming young leaders,” and its intellectual nature has made it quite popular with young, politically active adults in D.C. Cicero hosts a debate once a month at the City Tavern Club—a private social club in Georgetown—for its members and anyone willing to shell out $25, with a strict business casual dress code, an open bar, and, as of late, a list of attendees that includes a real who’s-who of D.C.-based new right.

[Among those in attendance at a recent meeting at the Dumbarton House include] Saurabh Sharma, co-founder of American Moment. Sharma was joined by figures affiliated with The American Conservative, The American Mind, The American Compass, and a number of other populist right think tanks, publications, and advocacy groups whose founders were able to think of names that didn’t start with “The American.” Congressional staffers are a dime a dozen—possibly even cheaper and more numerous.

Another fixture in this world is a friend of Sharma’s and perhaps the most prominent public face of the young new right—the left-wing media’s go-to voice for insight into this crowd, Nate Hochman. (Hochman interned for The Dispatch in 2020.) Hochman describes the Cicero Society as “particularly decadent” and an “over-the-top, silver-spoon” club. He can be found at the meetings fairly regularly, and says he was planning on going to the spring cocktail party until a conflict arose.

Hochman is now a Claremont Institute fellow and an Intercollegiate Studies Institute fellow, the latter of which got him a yearlong spot at National Review starting last August.

 

Here is a link to Cicero Society's website.

Think Tank Quickies (#454)

• Jeromin Zettelmeyer has started as director of Bruegel, taking over from Guntram Wolff.
  
• Shayna Strom named interim president and CEO of the Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
• Tess McEnergy is the Project on Middle East Democracy's new executive director.
• Brigham McCown is now senior fellow and director of the Hudson Institute's Initiative on American Energy Security.  He's also chair and CEO of consulting firm Nouveau and most recently was CEO of Alyeska, the operator of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.
• Heritage Foundation lobbyist Tommy Binion joins OnMessage Public Strategies. 
• President Biden has nominated Roger Zakheim as a member of USIP.
• Emma Ashford is now a senior fellow at the Stimson Center.
  
• Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) headlines AEI's annual Constitution Day Lecture.
• Grover Norquist is looking to work with think tanks to build an argument that only Congress can relieve student debt.
  

China Wants Hudson Inst. to Stop Its YouTube Videos on China

Here is more from Politico:

The Chinese Embassy in Washington D.C. wants the Hudson Institute to stop distributing a series of short YouTube videos critical of the ruling Chinese Communist Party featuring former Secretary of State MIKE POMPEO. 

The videos “made groundless accusations against the Communist Party of China,” the embassy said in letter that Pompeo shared on Twitter on Tuesday.

“We have written to the Hudson Institute to express our concern and clarify the facts,” Chinese embassy spokesperson LIU PENGYU told China Watcher. Pompeo clearly enjoys the attention. “The CCP wants me to stop speaking the truth. Ain’t gonna happen,” Pompeo tweeted.

 

Hudson Institute is hosting the new videos at its new China Center, where Pompeo serves as chair of its advisory board.  Pompeo is also a distinguished fellow at Hudson.

China's Global Times has said that the China Center has "evil intentions" and was established to "collude with anti-China figures and concoct and disseminate anti-China rhetoric."

Sen. Warren Continues to Target Brookings Over Foreign Funding

Here is more from Politico:

Sen. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-Mass.) sent a letter to the Brookings Institution’s interim president, AMY LIU, to ask how the think tank ensures intellectual independence after it receives foreign funds.

“I remain concerned that these foreign governments — as well as the many private sector corporations and wealthy individuals that are listed as Brookings contributors — can use Brookings and other think tanks to covertly peddle their influence before Congress and the administration,” she wrote.

Warren’s interest in Brookings was piqued following news that the former president, retired Gen. JOHN ALLEN, was under investigation by the Justice Department for violating lobbying laws by advocating for Qatar — a charge he firmly denies. Warren first sent a letter to Brookings in July following that revelation.

 

The publication Mother Jones also notes that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is among those taking aim at Brookings. 

Meanwhile, The Washington Free Beacon notes that Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) and Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) are spearheading the Think Tank Transparency Act of 2022, which would force nonprofit groups that seek to influence public policy and Congress to publicly report all foreign funding, as well as contracts or agreements they strike with foreign entities.

More China Positions Needed at US Think Tanks to Help Prevent War?

In a blog post on Effective Altruism entitled "War Between the US and China: A case study for epistemic challenges around China-related catastrophic risk," Jordan Schneider and Pradyumna Prasad say that there should be more direct funding for early career China-related positions at think tanks in order to help prevent future war.

Here is more about what they have to say about the dearth of US-based China scholars:

There are maybe two dozen fellows at the most influential Mass Avenue think tanks, another two dozen at American staff colleges, perhaps 250 academics, and a few dozen other Americans employed in China-focused roles in the private sector. This number pales in comparison with other directly policy-relevant research fields like macroeconomics.

There are perhaps fifteen senior fellows and another two dozen research assistants in their 20s with at least passable Mandarin in the most influential Mass Avenue think tanks (Brookings, CSIS, CNAS, AEI, CAP…). Federally Funded Research and Development Organizations (FFRDCs) like RAND and the Institute for Defense Analyses perhaps employ fifty more, while American military universities employ perhaps another hundred China-focused researchers.

To ballpark the number of other global academics outside the PRC contributing to China-relevant research that feeds up into DC thinking, perhaps the total number is around 700. With an average salary of $100,000, that would add up to $70m spent per year on China-related studies. Keep in mind though that almost all of this spending is very poorly optimized for research that would feed into strategies to reduce catastrophic risk.

 

Among other things, they discuss why the Center for Security and Emerging Technologies (CSET) has some of the best China-related research around, and why philanthropists should try to emulate them as a "model framework to areas of particular neglected China-adjacent interest."

They also note that most recent "somewhat rigorous" projection of the economic impact of a US-China conflict was last published in 2016 by the RAND Corporation.

Think Tank Quickies (#453)

• Think tankers join letter telling the US to arm Ukraine. 
• Iranian operatives reportedly spying on members of US "think tank" UANI.
  
• RAND Corp.'s new CEO Jason Matheny is a "Apocaloptimist."
  
• Peer review is in trouble.
• CDG: How might think tanks make real things happen? Lessons from the creation of the DFC.
  
• Max Primorac will lead the Heritage Foundation's Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy.
  
• Eilish Zembilci is now a consultant policy analyst for the World Food Program USA and staying on with CSIS's global food security program. 
• US-based think tank appoints two Nigerian priests as research fellows.
• Nathan Iyer of the Rocky Mountain Institute worked with US lawmakers to help craft a package of supply chain incentives for the massive Inflation Reduction Act.
  
• The idea of diversified portfolios, a key insight of modern financial theory, was formalized by Harry Markowitz of the RAND Corp. in the early 1950s.
  

Congressional Candidate Started a Think Tank Arguing Against Women's Right to Vote

Here is more from CNN:

A Michigan candidate for the US House backed by former President Donald Trump once railed against giving women the right to vote, arguing that America has “suffered” since women’s suffrage.

John Gibbs, who defeated in the primary an incumbent Republican who had voted to impeach Trump, also made comments in the early 2000s praising an organization trying to repeal the 19th Amendment which also argued that women’s suffrage had made the United States into a “totalitarian state.”

As a student at Stanford University in the early 2000s, Gibbs founded a self-described “think tank” called the Society for the Critique of Feminism that argued women did not “posess (sic) the characteristics necessary to govern,” and said men were smarter than women because they are more likely to “think logically about broad and abstract ideas in order to deduce a suitable conclusion, without relying upon emotional reasoning.”

 

CNN notes that Gibbs requested the website for the think tank be removed from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine in 2016, but CNN apparently accessed the old website through a different web tool.

US: Russia Funneling Political Donations Worldwide Through Think Tanks

Here is more from the New York Times:

Russia has covertly given at least $300 million to political parties, officials and politicians in more than two dozen countries since 2014, and plans to transfer hundreds of millions more, with the goal of exerting political influence and swaying elections, according to a State Department summary of a recent U.S. intelligence review.

The Russians pay in cash, cryptocurrency, electronic funds transfers and lavish gifts, the document said. They move the money through a wide range of institutions to shield the origins of the financing, a practice called using cutouts. Those institutions include foundations, think tanks, organized crime groups, political consultancies, shell companies and Russian state-owned enterprises.

As of last year, the document said, a Russian business figure was trying to use pro-Russian think tanks in Europe to support far-right nationalist parties.

 

In related news, Russia sanctioned 25 US citizens, including think tank analysts.  One of those on the new list is Daniel Vajdich, a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council.  

Victoria Clement, a former Wilson Center scholar, was also sanctioned.

Biden Consulting with Think Tankers Amid Democracy Crisis

Think tank experts often provide advise to the US executive branch, but very few are actually called by the US president himself to provide direct advice.  

President Joe Biden, however, has been more receptive to outside voices, and he sometimes convenes leading think tank scholars to help guide his thinking and decisions.

Here is more from the Washington Post:

President Biden paused last week, during one of the busiest stretches of his presidency, for a nearly two-hour private history lesson from a group of academics who raised alarms about the dire condition of democracy at home and abroad.

The conversation during a ferocious lightning storm on Aug. 4 unfolded as a sort of Socratic dialogue between the commander in chief and a select group of scholars, who painted the current moment as among the most perilous in modern history for democratic governance, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a private meeting.

Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, briefed Biden with other experts before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and before the president’s 2021 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva.

McFaul was among a socially distanced group that met to discuss Ukraine in the East Room earlier this year, along with former diplomat Richard Haass, journalist Fareed Zakaria, analyst Ian Bremmer, former National Security Council adviser Fiona Hill and retired Adm. James G. Stavridis, a former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO.

 

Amb. McFaul is the Director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and is also a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Richard Haass in the President of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and Fiona Hill is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Stavridis once led the US Navy's premier operational think tank for innovation, Deep Blue.

Think Tank Quickies (#452)

• In new book, CFR President Richard Haass says US's biggest threat is from within.
• The Lilly Endowment backs think tanks lobbying against price controls on insulin.
  
• Pic: Regulation Journal, 1st published by AEI in 1977 and acquired by the Cato Institute in 1989, is still being sold in bookstores in the US.
• China's consul general in Belfast bashes ASPI and CSIS, saying they are "not really independent and nonpartisan as they claim."
• Trump alums Victoria Coates and Erin Walsh joining Heritage Foundation as senior fellow.
• Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is a fellow at the Sanders Institute.
• New report from Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) shows megaphilanthropy crowding out individual donations.
• SKDK founding partner Anita Dunn, now a senior advisor at the White House, did consulting work for the lobbying arm of the Center for American Progress (CAP).
  
• Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) launching a new research center.
• Asia Group and Observer Research launch "India Innovates" platform and roundtable series.

Think Tanks Advising Congress Funded by Weapons Industry

Here are the latest details from Stephen Semler, co-founder of the Security Policy Reform Institute (SPRI):

Think tanks are said to be free from the ugly forces that bias in-house policy planning—namely, all the lobbying and campaign cash that encourage members of Congress to make decisions based on parochial interests and not the public’s. The problem is that establishment think tanks are corrupted by the same monied interests members of Congress are. In this case, we’re talking about the arms industry.

Every think tank represented in a House Armed Services Committee hearing to provide expert testimony from January 1, 2020 through September 16, 2022 that disclosed its donors received funding from military contractors (the one that didn’t disclose its donors was the hawkish American Enterprise Institute).

 

As Ben Freeman of the Quincy Institute has pointed out, AEI has taken money from the military industry by way of its board chair, Daniel D'Aniello, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, which owns several defense contractors.

Is the Lobbying Arm of the Heritage Foundation Destroying the Think Tank?

The Dispatch has an important piece on the latest happenings at the Heritage Foundation:

With the Heritage Foundation’s 50th anniversary approaching, some former employees believe Dr. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation since December 2021, and other senior leaders have lost sight of the think tank’s original mission. Where it used to function as a haven for conservative intellectuals to shape the Republican Party’s agenda, many worry that the institution is attaching itself to a faction of the conservative movement that prioritizes partisanship over policy.

Interviews with more than a dozen current and former employees reveal restrictive workplace practices to keep scholars in line with positions favored by Heritage’s lobbying arm. With Heritage Action’s growing influence has come a wave of staff turnover from the rank-and-file to senior leadership. Fifty-one employees have departed the Heritage Foundation and 73 new employees have joined since January 1, a Heritage spokesperson confirmed. There are 275 staff members on the foundation’s payroll and 30 at Heritage Action as of Tuesday.

Several former employees cited Heritage’s departure from its foundational commitments—without the knowledge or consent of the scholars hired to translate them into policy positions—as their reason for leaving. Others pointed to one-on-one confrontations with the members of the leadership team over the organization’s ideological trajectory. 

Fights over who sets Heritage’s “one-voice policy”—which requires that all staff be publicly aligned on any given issue—have caused much of the friction.

 

Meanwhile, Josh Rogin, a columnist at the Washington Post has a new piece on the Heritage Foundation entitled "A Conservative Think Tank Turns Away From Reagan and Toward Trump."

Here is a response to Rogin's piece from Blaise Malley, an Associate Editor at The National Interest.

Update: Dan Drezner is now calling Heritage "the Newsweek of think tank."

Indian Think Tank Raided Over Taxes

Here is more from DNA:

[India's] Income Tax Department is conducting searches at the Delhi-based think-tank Centre of Policy Research. The think tank was once headed by academician Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a prominent critic of the BJP government.

Presently, its governing board is chaired by Meenakshi Gopinath, a political scientist who taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University and was the principal of Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi. The think tank states it is recognised as a 'not-for-profit society' by the Government of India, and contributions to it are 'tax exempt', according to CPR's website. 

 

The think tank is known to examine government policy with a critical eye.

Some in India's Congress have slammed the move, saying it was raided at the behest of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah.

Think Tank Quickies (#451)

• One-man think tank on global crime and intelligence, Lou Mizell, living in a basement.
• CSIS hosts president of Guyana.
• Quincy Institute slams Rep. Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan. 
• Lobbyist at BHFS partners with think tanks to create "echo chambers of support that reverberate back to key policymakers."
• Former Colombian President Ivan Duque Marquez joins Wilson Center as Distinguished Fellow.
  
• Barry Pavel, who has spent the last decade running the Brent Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council, has joined RAND Corp. as VP and director of the National Security Research Division.
• Michael O'Hanlon of Brookings: "Can China take Taiwan? Why No One Really Knows."
• Jaakko Kauko on think tanks and the Academies Act.
• Pic from Romina Boccia: Onboarding swag at the Cato Institute.
• "DC think tanks are attempting to assassinate me by writing increasingly stupid things about China that give me an aneurysm."

Lawsuit Accuses R Street of Pay Discrimination

Here is more from Politico:

A former staffer at the R Street Institute has sued the free-market think tank, claiming that she was paid less than men in the organization who held similar roles before her or who had less experience and was retaliated against and ultimately fired after raising pay equity concerns regarding herself and a direct report, according to court documents.

— According to a complaint filed in May in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, Lauren Rollins joined R Street Institute in 2017 and moved up the ranks in the think tank’s editorial department, eventually serving as associate vice president of research programs. Rollins alleges that even as she accepted promotions and took on more work as the result of departures from the organization which “effectively consolidated the duties of three former Executive Team positions onto” Rollins, she was still paid less than her predecessor in the role.

— In a response filed in July, R Street denied the vast majority of Rollins’ accusations and contended that its “employment decisions, at all relevant times, were based on legitimate non- discriminatory and non-retaliatory reasons and were consistent with applicable principles of law.” R Street is asking that Rollins’ suit be dismissed with prejudice and that the court enter judgment in R Street’s favor, along with attorneys’ fees and costs. Attorneys for neither Rollins nor R Street returned requests for comment.

 

Last year, R Street Institute sued an employee over side gig work.

CAP Founder John Podesta Will Oversee $370 Billion in Clean Energy Funds

Here is more from the White House:

Today, President Biden announced that John Podesta will serve as Senior Advisor to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation and Ali Zaidi will be promoted to Assistant to the President and National Climate Advisor. In his new role, Podesta will oversee implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act’s expansive clean energy and climate provisions and will chair the President’s National Climate Task Force in support of this effort. Zaidi will step into the role of National Climate Advisor and will be vice-chair of the National Climate Task Force. Gina McCarthy will depart the White House on September 16.

 

Mr. Podesta, founder and chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for American Progress (CAP), will reportedly step down from the board immediately.

Podesta had just bought a home in San Diego where he had hoped to retire before Ron Klain, President Biden's chief of staff, called to offer the new position.

New Report: Hackers Linked to China Targeting Think Tanks

Here is more from MIT Technology Review:

A hacking group linked to China has spent the last three years targeting human rights organizations, think tanks, news media, and agencies of multiple foreign governments, according to a revealing new report from the cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. 

The report, shared exclusively with MIT Technology Review, offers new clues about how private contractors and front companies operating with relatively few resources can run long-standing hacking operations and succeed against high-value targets with crude but effective tactics.

The hackers, known as RedAlpha, have taken aim at organizations including Amnesty International, the International Federation for Human Rights, Radio Free Asia, the Mercator Institute for China Studies, and other think tanks and government and humanitarian groups around the world. The hackers’ impact remains unclear, but judging from the sheer length of the campaign, analysts expect that the digital espionage has, broadly speaking, seen success. 

 

The report notes that RedAlpha has regularly registered domain names imitating think tanks such as MERICS as well as multiple Taiwanese think tanks.  "Of particular note, the registration of at least 16 domains spoofing MERICS from early to mid-2021 coincided with the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) imposing sanctions on the Berlin-based think tank in March 2021," it says.

RedAlpha is one of the numerous hacking groups that has been targeting think tanks for years.

Think Tank Quickies (#450)

• Alison Markovitz is the new COO of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
• Former national security adviser Robert O'Brien is now a distinguished senior fellow at the Pepperdine School of Public Policy. 
• NYT columnist Tom Friedman hosted delegation from Chinese think tank Center for China and Globalization. Asia Society also hosted them.
  
• RUSI has identified at least 15 financial intelligence information-sharing initiatives globally.
• China Daily: Think tanks should play a bigger role in global exchanges.
• Thread on Pottinger/Flynn report in 2009 on war in Afghanistan that was published by CNAS.
• Abraham Denmark, senior vice president of programs at the Wilson Center, is joining the Pentagon as senior adviser on AUKUS.
• Fox: Database reveals Department of Education ties to liberal think tanks. 
• Is Rockbridge Network, a band of secretive donors aligned with Peter Thiel, donating to think tanks?
• Pics: The world's most beautiful bookshops (no think tank bookshops on list...).

Will Think Tanks Soon Have to Register as Foreign Agents?

With a number of major US think tanks receiving money from foreign governments, there has been an ongoing debate about whether they should have to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

Ben Freeman, a Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, has the latest on where things may be headed:

Late Friday the Department of Justice’s Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) Unit issued guidance indicating that think tanks and non-profits doing work at the behest of a foreign government likely have an obligation to register under FARA.

In a new Advisory Opinion — the FARA Unit’s public, though heavily redacted, responses when organizations ask if they should register or not — the Chief of the FARA Unit argues that the unnamed organization in question should register under FARA as its work for foreign principals included outreach to policymakers in the defense community, facilitating “meetings and new partnerships in the United States, particularly with U.S. government officials,” and has agreed to prepare a study that would “foster bilateral exchange and cooperation between” a foreign government and the United States. 

If the FARA Unit is, in fact, viewing papers published at the behest of foreign governments as grounds for FARA registration, think tanks should most definitely take notice. 

 

Just like FARA advisory opinions from earlier this year, the newest advisory opinion still leaves some uncertainty as to whether certain think tanks should be registering under FARA.

Law firms note, however, that many interactions that think tanks have with foreign entities could potentially trigger FARA scrutiny. 

On Aug. 16, several US senators, including Senate Judiciary Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA), sent a letter asking the US Department of Justice (DOJ) to detail steps being taken to ensure that the Brookings Institution and other think tanks tied to foreign entities comply with FARA.

The letter, which requests a response from the DOJ by Aug. 29, comes on the heels of a DOJ investigation into former Brookings President John Allen, who resigned from his position earlier this year amid an FBI foreign lobbying probe.

Meanwhile, a group of House lawmakers recently introduced a bill, the Fighting Foreign Influence Act (H.R. 8106), which would impose a range of new disclosure requirements on think tanks.

Update: Rep. Jack Bergman (R-MI) tweeted that the American people "deserve to know" who is influencing US policy and said he is working on legislation to bring "greater transparency to how think tanks funded by foreign money impact the US legislative process.

CIA Director Employed Undisclosed CCP Members While Running Carnegie

Here is more from The Daily Caller:

Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns formerly headed an influential D.C. think tank while it employed undisclosed Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members as well as individuals with Chinese government ties, the Daily Caller News Foundation has found.

During Burns’ tenure as president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace from February 2015 to November 2021, the think tank employed at least 20 policy experts whom the DCNF has identified as CCP members. These CCP members worked at both Carnegie’s Washington, D.C., headquarters and Carnegie-Tsinghua — the Beijing center Burns’ predecessor, Jessica Mathews, launched in 2010 in cooperation with Tsinghua University.

Yet, expert profiles on Carnegie’s website don’t disclose these individuals’ ties to the CCP. The DCNF only discovered their communist ties after analyzing hundreds of Chinese-language, Communist Party branch records and personnel profiles from more than a dozen CCP-linked organizations.

 

The Daily Caller reminds us that during his Senate confirmation for the CIA post, Burns came under fire for Carnegie's ties to the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

Here is a list of CCP members and individuals with Chinese government ties Carnegie has employed.

Meanwhile, The Washington Free Beacon has a piece entitled "Biden Admin Taps China Apologist for Foggy Bottom Post," which notes that Quincy Institute scholar Jessica Lee is joining the US State Department.

Wargaming at Think Tanks Picks Up Speed Amid US-China Tensions

Think tanks have been holding war games for years, but the number and variety of war games has recently exploded, with several influential think tanks focusing their efforts on a possible US-China war.

Here is one example from a new Bloomberg piece:

As China waged extensive military exercises off of Taiwan last week, a group of American defense experts in Washington was focused on their own simulation of an eventual — but for now entirely hypothetical — US-China war over the island.

The unofficial what-if game is being conducted on the fifth floor of an office building not far from the White House, and it posits a US military response to a Chinese invasion in 2026. Even though the participants bring an American perspective, they are finding that a US-Taiwan victory, if there is one, could come at a huge cost.

“The results are showing that under most — though not all — scenarios, Taiwan can repel an invasion,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where the war games are being held. “However, the cost will be very high to the Taiwanese infrastructure and economy and to US forces in the Pacific.”

In sessions that will run through September, retired US generals and Navy officers and former Pentagon officials hunch like chess players over tabletops along with analysts from the CSIS think tank. They move forces depicted as blue and red boxes and small wooden squares over maps of the Western Pacific and Taiwan. The results will be released to the public in December.

In 18 of the 22 rounds of the game played to this point, Chinese missiles sink a large part of the US and Japanese surface fleet and destroy “hundreds of aircraft on the ground,” according to Cancian, a former White House defense budget analyst and retired US Marine. 

 

Here is a Wall Street Journal description of the wargame, which includes pictures of some participants.  [Benjamin Norton describes it as "a bunch of neoconservative hawks...sitting around drinking coffee and playing board games to plan how they can wage war on China and colonize Taiwan."]

Through its Executive Education courses the think tank offers, CSIS will be holding a course entitled "Wargaming: Constructing Simulations and Competitive Strategy Exercises" from September 26-28.  Tuition for the three-day course is $3,500.

Among those teaching the course will be Dr. Benjamin Jensen, Senior Fellow for Future War, Gaming and Strategy in the International Security Program at CSIS.  Dr. Jensen is also a professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps University School of Advanced Warfighting, and has helped develop wargames for places such as the US Army, DARPA, and NATO.

Relatedly, CSIS's ChinaPower program recently launched a page to track China's activities in the "Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis."

In a recent wargame run by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) simulating a 2027 invasion of Taiwan by China, neither side achieved air superiority and both sides took heavy losses.  [Parts of the wargame were aired on MSNBC.]

Recent wargames at other think tanks, including the RAND Corporation, have shown the US "losing" to China.  RAND has conducted tabletop wargames with policymakers since the 1950s.  RAND has worked with various government agencies on wargames, including the US Air Force's Warfighting Integration Capability (AFWIC) office.

Here is a new RAND report that breaks down China's gray zone tactics, and here is another one on the implications of a coercive quarantine on Taiwan by China.  Here is another recent RAND report on determining the military capabilities most needed to counter China and Russia.  And here is the think tank's assessment of US and Chinese industrial bases in quantum technology.

In a piece on software that helps militaries predict the outcomes of conflicts, The Economist recently noted that RAND is working to develop a model to help forecast the will to fight.  Equations developed by RAND have already been included in a few Defense Department combat simulators, including OneSAF and IWARS.

Polygon notes that RAND's wargame history led to a series of educational games.

It has also been reported that think tanks and universities in Japan and the US have been conducting wargames more frequently on a Taiwan contingency.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on the variety of war games taking place at think tanks. 

Update: Here is a thread from Christopher Dougherty of CNAS, who took part in the CSIS wargames, describing his experience.

Here is a pic from Sebastian Bae, a research analyst at CNA, showing some wargaming at CSIS that took place in July.  He ran his wargame "Littoral Commander" with the think tank's International Security Program's (ISP) Wargaming Working Group.

Think Tank Quickies (#449)

• Atlantic Council delegation visits Taiwan; led by former US Defense Secretary Mark Esper.
  
• Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center, passed away.
• Jordan Schneider's career advice for China scholars: "If everything broke right for you over the past two decades, you today might be sitting in a brand name Mass Ave think tank making 150-250k as a senior fellow, with, if you’re lucky, some consulting work on the side."
• Jake Eberts spreadsheet on think tank internship pay.
  
• Center for Security Policy: New Muslim Brotherhood-linked think tank (Center for Global Policy, or CGP, and now called Newlines Institute) tries to launder credentials, fails.
• Twitter thread on two Chinese think tanks that launched a new report on AUKUS. 
• Todd Moss: All sizable US think tanks have an Africa program or at least policy experts to cover the continent.  Why not Center for American (CAP)?
• Former Trump National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien is now the chairman of the board at the Richard Nixon Foundation.
• Dimitri Simes, president and CEO of the Center for National Interest, hosted Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov and former US envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad for lunch at Cafe Milano in Georgetown.
  
• India Think Tank Forum: Aug. 3-4 in New Delhi.
  

The Think Tanker Who "Weaponized" Critical Race Theory

Here is more from The Economist:

It’s like a bomb went off,” says Christopher Rufo. Mr Rufo himself helped light the fuse. After George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, discussions about racism spread throughout schools, he says. Mr Rufo labelled those discussions “critical race theory” (crt). Controversy around crt has continued to grow—recently expanding beyond race to matters of sex and gender. 

With the help of Mr Rufo, now a director of an “initiative” on crt at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think-tank, critical race theory, once an obscure academic topic, became a prominent Republican issue in a matter of weeks.

The Manhattan Institute now supplies a guide for parents fighting against “woke schooling”, and the Goldwater Institute, another conservative think-tank, provides model legislation. 

 

Here is a 2021 New Yorker piece on Rufo entitled "How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory."

The New York Times says that Rufo appears on Fox News so often that he converted a room in his house to a television studio with professional lighting, an uplink to Fox in New York, and an "On Air" light in his hallway to help prevent disturbances from his wife and children when broadcasting.

NYT notes that Rufo, 37, lives near Seattle and is a former documentary filmmaker.  Besides his think tank work he has a newsletter with 2,500 paid subscribers and runs a nonprofit entity to support his work, which he said had received $500,000+ in donations since late 2021.

Here is a recent piece on how the Manhattan Institute has emerged as a haven for "canceled" scholars.