FBI Searched Mike Pence's Think Tank

The FBI searched the the offices of a think tank affiliated with former Vice President Mike Pence but did not find any classified documents. 

Here is more from the Wall Street Journal:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Friday searched the office of a think tank affiliated with former Vice President Mike Pence and found no materials with classified markings, a Pence adviser said.

The search at the Washington office of the think tank, Advancing American Freedom, lasted several hours and came a week after the FBI discovered a sensitive document at the former vice president's Indiana home. Last month, lawyers for Mr. Pence discovered classified documents at his Indiana home and turned them over to the National Archives, saying they had been “inadvertently boxed and transported” to his residence.  

While Friday’s search yielded no new documents bearing classified markings, the FBI did remove a binder containing three documents that had previously been redacted, Pence adviser Devin O’Malley said.

 

The FBI searched President Biden's think tank last year and small a small number of classified material.

Think Tank PPI Sets up "New Ukraine Project" from Kyiv

Here is more from the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI):

Russia’s illegal invasion and brutal occupation of Ukraine will soon enter its second year. The Progressive Policy Institute is marking the occasion by launching a New Ukraine Project to report on the war, its impact on everyday life in Ukraine, and its wider implications for peace and international security.

Directing the project from Kyiv is Tamar Jacoby, a prominent journalist, author, and thought leader widely respected for her work on immigration, the struggles of working class Americans, and public school reform. In addition to her dispatches from the front lines of the conflict, her work will focus on the social, economic, and political reconstruction of Ukraine, as it seeks to take its place in Europe’s free and democratic community.

 

This is the third major international project for PPI, with PPI Brussels established in 2018, and the Project on Center-Left Renewal based in the UK, established in Jan. 2023. 

Earlier this month, the McCain Institute launched the Ukraine Business Alliance, which will bring people together from government and the business community to strategize public-private partnerships to support Ukraine.

MAGA Building Its Own "Think Tank Row"

Allies of former President Donald Trump have been quietly scooping up real estate on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC to house a number of entities linked to the think tank Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI).

Whether you call it "Patriot's Row," "MAGA Row," "Maga Mall," or "Think Tank Row East," CPI and related entities will continue to be an influential force in helping support the Freedom Caucus in the US Congress.

Here is more from Grid:

Months before Republicans took back the House last fall, high-profile MAGA activists were preparing a power move: dropping tens of millions of dollars on a real-estate-buying spree to create “an expansive campus of buildings” in the heart of the nation’s capital and to operate an exclusive, luxe retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where right-wing activists and lawmakers can hunt wildlife, play tennis and devise ways to “save this country from the leftist onslaught.”

Though former president Donald Trump’s own political future is in doubt, the Conservative Partnership Institute, whose leaders include ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump elections lawyer Cleta Mitchell and former Tea Party senator Jim DeMint, is pursuing an aggressive expansion. The group appears to be quietly buying up properties, often in off-market transactions, Grid has found — apparently using a network of anonymous shell companies registered in Delaware to conduct the purchases.

In all, Grid traced nine D.C. properties purchased in the past 14 months by seven LLCs sporting bland monikers like Clear Plains, Hudson and Newpoint. A CPI executive is listed on paperwork for the entities, and the locations of most of the property purchases correspond with CPI’s “Patriot’s Row” plans. CPI bought Camp Rydin, which comprises 2,200 acres near Cambridge, Maryland, for over $7 million, apparently using the entity “Federal Investors, LLC,” the purchaser listed on state property records.

 

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about CPI's buying spree in DC.

Update: Here is a Washington Post piece on MAGA Row.  It notes, among other things, that Jim DeMint is getting a compensation package from CPI of $542,000, and Meadows is getting $559,000.

Heritage Foundation Gets $25 Million Gift

The Heritage Foundation has just received a $25 million gift from the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation, one of the largest gifts in the think tank's 50-year history.  It will be doled out in $5 million increments from 2023-2027.

Heritage said that the gift will go towards the think tank's long-term policy goals, including "countering the threat of communist China, holding Big Tech accountable, and others that support Heritage's mission to formulate and promote public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."

Here is more from Heritage on the background of the gift:

Shelby Cullom Davis and Kathryn Wasserman Davis, prominent American investors and philanthropists, became Heritage donors in 1979. Shelby served on the Board of Trustees from 1979-1992, including many years as chairman. Kathryn then served as an honorary trustee from 1994-2013.

The Davis family legacy continues through their daughter Diana Davis Spencer, who has devoted her life to cementing America’s founding principles in our country’s institutions as an activist, journalist, and philanthropic leader.

DDSF is now led by Abby Spencer Moffat, who currently serves as a Heritage trustee.

 

Earlier this month. the Brookings Institution received a $25 million grant, the largest in the think tank's 100+ year history.

Pair of Think Tankers Rise in the Biden Administration

Two long-time think tankers have been tapped for new top positions within the Biden Administration.  Here is more from the New York Times:

President Biden has selected Lael Brainard, the vice chair of the Federal Reserve, to direct the National Economic Council, according to people familiar with the decision.

He is also expected to tap Jared Bernstein, a longtime member of his inner circle dating back to Mr. Biden’s tenure as vice president, to be the next chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Mr. Bernstein is currently a member of the council.

[Bernstein] has spent most of his career not in academia, but in Washington think tanks, with a longtime focus on economic inequality and on policies meant to lift wages and living standards for American workers.

He worked 16 years at the liberal, pro-labor Economic Policy Institute before Mr. Biden hired him to be the chief economist for the vice president when Mr. Biden and President Barack Obama took office in 2009. In announcing his departure, E.P.I. officials called Mr. Bernstein “a tireless advocate for middle- and low-income families and for greater equity in the U.S. economy.”

 

Brainard was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution from 2001 to 2009.  Her husband, Kurt Campbell, co-founded the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and has been affiliated with a number of other think tanks.

Meanwhile, former Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) has joined the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) as a distinguished visiting fellow for public policy.

Think Tank Quickies (#465)

• Raymond Struyk has coined the term new right think tanks (NRTT).
• US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen speaks at CSIS.
• Zachary Keck predicts that think tanks will begin merging into media outlets via Substack newsletters to increase funding.
• Cost to build RAND Corp.'s headquarters in Santa Monica, CA in 2004: $100 million.
  
• Masayoshi Son is the founder and chairperson of the think tank Renewable Energy Institute (REI).
  
• Michael Pillsbury has joined the Heritage Foundation as a senior fellow for China Strategy, where he'll work with the new House Select Committee on China and contribute to the think tank's 2025 Presidential Transition Project.  He previously spent at years at the Hudson Institute.
  
• Sarah Ladislaw, Managing Director of the Rocky Mountain Institute and former scholar at CSIS, is joining the NSC as special assistant to the president and the senior director for climate change and energy.
• Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts and Alliance Defending Freedom CEO Kristen Waggoner hosted a welcome event for new members of the 118th Congress at the Capitol Hill Club.
  
• Working at ThinkProgress, a liberal think tank blog, brought Matt Yglesias "closer to rising Democratic Party leaders."
• On Jan. 13, a week after the US insurrection, the Ed Uihlein Family Foundation donated $500,000 to the Center for Security Policy, whose founder and chairman Frank Gaffney has downplayed the events of Jan. 6.  It also gave $50,000 to the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation.
   

New Think Tank Lands in Guam

Here is more from Pacific Daily News:

A new Guam-based think tank led by former congressman Robert Underwood has partnered with the University of Guam’s Richard Flores Taitano Micronesian Area Research Center to promote independent research on geopolitical developments in Micronesia and the Pacific.

On its website, Pacific Center for Island Security calls itself an “action-oriented research institute” that “aims to ensure that islands and islanders themselves have a voice amongst the cacophony that is geopolitical posturing.”

Led by Underwood, who serves as board chairman, the organization’s advisory council includes former presidents of island nations and a Pacific Islands Studies professor at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa.

 

Think Tank Watch believes that the Pacific Center for Island Security (PCIS) is the only Guam-based think tank currently in existence.

According to the final University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings, published in 2021, the Maldives has 6 think tanks, Fiji has 4 think tanks, Papua New Guinea has 2, and Samoa and Vanuatu each have 1.

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) Marrying a Think Tanker

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD) is now engaged to Elaine Kamarck, a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies and Founding Director of the Center for Effective Public Management at the Brookings Institution.

They are reportedly planning to get married later this year.  The two have apparently known each other for many years and the pair recently reconnected.

Here is Kamarck's Brookings biography, which, among other things, notes that she was one of the founders of the New Democrat movement that helped elect Bill Clinton president.

Hunter Biden Wanted Office at Father's Think Tank

Here is more from The Washington Free Beacon:

Hunter Biden tried to secure an office at his father Joe Biden's think tank, where the president kept classified documents, emails from the first son's abandoned laptop show.

Joe Biden's talent agent, Craig Gering, emailed Hunter Biden in April 2016 to discuss the vice president's plans for the following year, including the establishment of the Penn Biden Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. Gering wrote that the university's D.C. office "will be expanded to house a DC office for VP Biden (and Mike, Hunter, and Steve?)," an apparent reference to future Penn Biden Center officials Michael Carpenter and Steve Ricchetti.

Hunter Biden said he hoped the plan would come to fruition.

"That's the way I would like it to see it shake out," he said in an April 25, 2016, response to Gering. "BUT please keep this very confidential between us because nothing has been set in stone."

 

Meanwhile, the Free Beacon is reporting that China, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Turkey have donated millions of dollars into the University of Delaware since the school launched the Biden Institute, President Biden's domestic policy think tank that is led by his sister, Valerie Biden Owens.

The Biden Institute has employed some of Biden's top aides and political allies.

Brookings Scores Largest Grant in Think Tank's 100+ Year History

Here is more from a Brookings press release:

The Brookings Institution announced today that the Center for Universal Education (CUE) in the Global Economy and Development program has received a $24 million grant, the largest in Brookings’s history, from the LEGO Foundation for a period of four years to support CUE’s strategic vision focused on holistic education, locally-defined priorities, and deep collaboration with partners.

 

The grant, which is so big that it is even larger than the entire annual budget of dozens of think tanks in Washington, DC, was awarded on CUE's 20-year anniversary.  Here is more about the grant and CUE's 10-year vision.

McCain Institute Launching Ukraine Business Alliance

Here is more from the think tank:

The McCain Institute at Arizona State University today hosted the Prosecutor General of Ukraine Andriy Kostin and the Ambassador-At-Large for Global Criminal Justice at the U.S. Department of State Beth Van Schaack for a meeting of the McCain Institute’s newly formed Ukraine Business Alliance.

The McCain Institute’s Ukraine Business Alliance convenes executives from American technology and defense companies (including Palantir Technologies, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services), senior U.S. and Ukrainian government and military leaders, and foreign policy experts to strategize innovative public-private partnerships to support Ukraine.

 

The McCain Institute says that the Ukraine Business Alliance will meet meet regularly throughout the year to help support Ukraine's war effort and reconstruction.  The think tank will also conduct periodic fact-finding missions.

Here is a picture from the meeting.

Donors to the McCain Institute include many who can benefit from the efforts of the Ukraine Business Alliance, including BP, Chevron, Cisco Systems, DHL, FedEx Corp., Hilton, Microsoft Corp., Raytheon, SpaceX, and Verizon.

Former Congressman Calls for Think Tank Transparency

Former Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) just penned a piece for Newsweek calling for greater think tank transparency when it comes to foreign influence.  Here are some excerpts:

There is currently no way for members of Congress to discern which think tanks are funded by foreign governments—making think tanks effective vehicles for foreign funders to shape U.S. policy right under our noses. There exists a widespread belief that think tanks are exempt from FARA disclosure requirements. While that belief is mistaken, FARA is unlikely to be an effective tool to promote transparency around think tank funding.

To tackle this pressing issue, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Jack Bergman (R-Mich.) have introduced legislation to require a greater degree of transparency around the foreign funding of think tanks and other public policy-focused nonprofit entities, so that the public and government officials can know about any foreign influence behind research or policy recommendations. The Think Tank Transparency Act would mandate that nonprofits engaged in influencing U.S. policy or public opinion promptly disclose all funds that they receive from foreign entities, as well as all contracts and agreements they enter into with foreign entities. Those nonprofits would have to disclose their funding and contracts to the Department of Justice—which will make such disclosures available for immediate public inspection—within 90 days.

 

Among other things, Zeldin notes that since 2020, the Stimson Center has actively lobbied against the Homeland and Cyber Threat Act (H.R. 1607), legislation to help those who are victims of foreign hacking activity. 

Zeldin says that the think tank has had "an unusually close working relationship" with Qatar in recent years.  "It received at least $600,000 from Qatar in 2019, and the Qataris appear to be the sole funder of the Stimson Center's "Just Security 2020" program, which works on issues related to cyberattacks.

Former Brookings President Won't Face Charges

With all the news about the FBI searching President Joe Biden's think tank, one may have forgotten that former Brookings Institution president John Allen was under FBI investigation after being accused on secretly lobbying for the government of Qatar.

Here are the latest developments from the New York Times:

The Justice Department has informed John R. Allen, a retired four-star Marine general, that federal prosecutors have closed an investigation into whether he secretly lobbied for the government of Qatar and that no criminal charges will be brought against him in the case, according to a statement by General Allen’s lawyer.

The investigation of General Allen became public in June, when an F.B.I. agent’s application to search his electronic communications was unsealed, possibly by accident. Days after the revelations, General Allen resigned as president of the Brookings Institution, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.

 

It wasn't immediately clear if Allen will return to Brookings, which had already been facing years of reputational damage from its funding sources.

FBI Searched Biden's Think Tank

If you didn't know about the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, you probably do now.  Here is the latest from the New York Times:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation searched a think tank founded by President Biden in mid-November after his aides discovered a small cache of classified documents there earlier that month, according to two people familiar with the situation.

It is not clear if the previously undisclosed search, which was done with the cooperation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers after the first batch was discovered, turned up any additional files dating from Mr. Biden’s eight years as vice president.

The F.B.I. search of the think tank, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, was reported earlier by CBS News.

 

Meanwhile, Associated Press has a piece highlighting how the classified documents probe has pushed Biden's think tank into the spotlight.  And here is a similar piece from the Wall Street Journal.

Here is a piece from The Pennsylvania Daily Star entitled "Most Politicians' Think Tanks Heavy on Research Output, in Contrast to Penn Biden Center."

The Heritage Foundation's The Daily Signal has a piece entitled "Special Counsel Should Expand Probe to Penn Biden Center's China Ties."

The Washington Free Beacon has a piece entitled "Biden Think Tank That Housed Classified Docs Also Hosted Event That Pushed Greater Engagement With China."

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece on House Republicans demanding information from Biden's think tank.

Here is a Newsweek fact-check piece asking "Is Penn Biden Center 'China-funded' as Donald Trump Claims?"

The Daily Pennsylvanian is reporting that the House Committee on Foreign Affairs sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken requesting information about his role at Biden's think tank.

Can Think Tanks Save TikTok?

TikTok is hoping that meetings with influential DC groups and officials, including think tanks, will help prevent it from being banned in the US.  Here is more from the New York Times:

Last week, TikTok’s chief executive, Shou Zi Chew, met with several influential think tanks and public interest groups in Washington, sharing details on how his company plans to prevent data on American users from ever leaving the United States. And the company’s lobbyists swarmed the offices of lawmakers who have introduced bills to ban the app, telling them that TikTok can be trusted to protect the information.

In a 24-hour visit to Washington last week, Mr. Chew held four back-to-back 90-minute meetings with think tanks like New America, academics and public interest groups such as Public Knowledge. In the company’s temporary WeWork suites near Capitol Hill, Mr. Chew and Mr. Andersen outlined the promises in Project Texas in a presentation with graphics on how the data is stored in Oracle’s cloud and TikTok’s appointment of a content moderation board and auditors.

 

Think Tank Watch is pretty sure that TikTok did not meet with the Heritage Foundation, which recently tweeted: "This is your daily reminder to delete TikTok."

Scholars at the think tank have also written several anti-TikTok pieces, including one here and here.

Taiwan's TPP Establishes New Think Tank

Here is more from the Taipei Times:

Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) established the affiliated Taiwan New Homeland Think Tank Association, as well as an internal policy think tank to establish policy suggestions on foreign, defense and internal administration affairs.

Former Taiwan Solidarity Union chairman Shu Chin-chiang, who was expelled over a 2014 visit to China, was tapped as CEO of the New Homeland association.

The think tank is to present a “third force” in Taiwanese politics during the election by consolidating views from different parties and experts, Shu said.

The proposals put forward by the think tank are to reflect major national policies and issues of concern to the people, he said.

[TPP Chairman] Ko Wen-je is to serve as chairman of the New Homeland think tank, with TPP Legislator Jang Chyi-lu and former party secretary-general Hsieh Li-kung serving as vice chairmen.

The think tank includes many former heads of departments under the Taipei City Government and members of other political parties, Hsieh said.

 

The Taipei Times also notes that Ko will be visiting the US this spring and will make stops at several US think tanks, among other places.

Think Tank Quickies (#464)

• Shayna Strom to become new president and CEO of Washington Center for Equitable Growth.
  
• IISS is searching for a new Director-General and Chief Executive, and has placed full-page ads in the Economist for the post. 
• Can ChatGPT replace think tanks?
  
• The law firm of Torres Trade Law has a new piece entitled "Think Tanks May Need to Rethink FARA Registration."
  
• Prime Policy Group will work to recruit "influencers in the US, such as Christian Protestant denominations" and 'key' think tanks to press lawmakers on North Korean issues."
• The late journalist Blake Hounshell worked at the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies, an Egyptian think tank founded by Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a critic of Hosni Mubarak's regime.
• Katharine Stevens starts a new think tank, the Center on Child and Family Policy (CCFP).
• The Vandenberg Coalition, which consists of numerous think tankers and has been described as an "influential coterie of defense hawks," calls on probe of Covid origins.
• Former Heritage Foundation intern explains why some think tanks have "blood on their hands."
  
• Heritage Foundation wants you to delete TikTok.
  

Trump-Aligned Think Tank Buying Up DC Office Space

Here is more from Axios:

An influential conservative nonprofit led by former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows is buying up millions of dollars worth of office space on Capitol Hill, records show.

Why it matters: The Conservative Partnership Institute is the backbone of a policy and advocacy apparatus aligned with hard-right legislators such as Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.).

Driving the news: CPI completed its most recent purchase early this month: $11.35 million for new space on Pennsylvania Avenue, adjacent to both the Capitol and CPI's headquarters on Independence Avenue, D.C. property records show.

• That followed multiple purchases last year on Pennsylvania Avenue and ones on nearby 3rd Street SE and C Street SE, each made in the name of a different LLC.
• Also last year, CPI paid more than $7 million for a 14,000-square-foot lodge on more than 2,000 acres near the Maryland shore, according to property records.

The big picture: Led by Meadows and ex-Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), CPI has incubated or financially supported a number of allied organizations.

Between the lines: CPI leases some of its office space to the House Freedom Caucus' political arms — the House Freedom Fund and House Freedom Action, Federal Election Commission records show.

• Staffers for HFC members and other conservative legislators routinely travel to CPI's Maryland property, where the group hosts training sessions on topics ranging from communications to congressional procedure to investigative tactics.

 

CPI was founded in 2017 and its budget went up from $7.1 million in 2020 to $45 million in 2021, according to Axios. 

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch piece about how CPI worked to block Rep. Kevin McCarthy's speaker bid.

House Republicans Demand Information From Biden's Think Tank

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) is seeking information about who had access to the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement's Washington, DC office, according to a new Punchbowl News report.  Rep. Comer also wants information on the think tank's sources of funding.

Classified documents where recently discovered at President Biden's former office at the think tank, which is named after President Joe Biden.

Rep. Comer is requesting a list of all Penn Biden Center employees, the names of everyone with keycard access to the think tank, a visitor log of anyone who met with Biden, and "all documents and communications related to the security at the Penn Biden Center," according to Punchbowl.  In a letter, Comer said he wants the information by Feb. 1.

Comer also wants information on documents related to donations from China to the University of Pennsylvania and/or the Penn Biden Center from Jan. 20, 2017 to the present and all Chinese donor information over the same period of time.  He also wants to know how the Penn Biden Center solicited donations.  The University of Pennsylvania runs the Penn Biden Center.

The Penn Biden Center launched in 2017 along with the University of Pennsylvania hiring Biden as a largely ceremonial professor.  Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl had both worked at the Penn Biden Center.

Blinken says he has no knowledge of classified documents taken to the think tank.

Former Penn President Amy Gutmann, who was nominated by Biden as US Ambassador to Germany in 2021, was the one who brought Biden to Penn.

Fox News is reporting that Chinese donors have funneled millions of dollars into the University of Pennsylvania during Biden's presidency.

Atlantic Council Caught Promoting Its Own Foreign Donors on World Stage Without Disclosures

The influential think tank Atlantic Council has been called out yet again for promoting its donors without proper conflict of interest disclosures.

Here is more from Politico:

WHOOPS: “The Atlantic Council's chief executive officer, Fred Kempe, this month lavished praise on the ‘resource-rich, renewables-generating’ United Arab Emirates in a Jan. 14 op-ed for CNBC praising the oil-rich Gulf nation's ‘utopian’ plan to fight climate change,” The Washington Free Beacon’s Chuck Ross writes. “What he failed to mention were the Middle Eastern monarchy's sizable donations—which have in some years topped $1 million—to the Atlantic Council.”

— “In the piece, Kempe celebrated the United Nations' decision to hold its annual climate change summit in Abu Dhabi and praised the UAE’s selection of Sultan Ahmed Al-Jaber, an Emirati government minister and the head of the state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, to oversee the global summit.”

— “After the Washington Free Beacon contacted the Atlantic Council for comment, CNBC attached a lengthy editor's note to the article noting that ‘the obvious conflict of interest’ was ‘not disclosed’ and that the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company is a major sponsor of the Atlantic Council's annual energy conference.”

— “The UAE embassy in 2021 gave more than $1 million to the Atlantic Council, while the UAE's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation gave between $100,000 and $250,000, according to donor records.” A spokesperson for the think tank called the omission an oversight, telling the Free Beacon it “regret[s] that proper disclosures were not made.”

 

Mr. Kempe is also scheduled to be on a World Economic Forum (WEF) panel about "how great" Saudi Arabia is, and Quincy Institute scholar Ben Freeman says that it should be disclosed at the panel that Kempe's think tank gets $1+ million every year from the UAE (a Saudi ally) and six-figure checks every year from defense contractors that have made billions of dollars selling arms to Saudi Arabia.

In 2021, Jonathan Guyer wrote a piece about a Saudi expert at Atlantic Council (Kirsten Fontenrose) who "hid" the foreign funding of the think tank when testifying before Congress.  He noted that Atlantic Council has received millions of dollars from Saudi Arabia's biggest boosters.

Here is more about Atlantic Council's recent conflict of interest problems from Eli Clifton.

WEF: "The Think Tank World's FIFA"

As the World Economic Forum (WEF), often described as a think tank-like entity, takes place in Davos, Switzerland, Politico has come out with a new piece on the race to succeed the current chairman, Klaus Schwab.  Here is a brief excerpt:

For 52 years the World Economic Forum has been synonymous with its founder and executive chair Klaus Schwab, whose humble manner belies what many who know him describe as great ambition and boundless energy, even into his mid-80s. 

Schwab has grown WEF’s $6,000 startup capital in 1971 into a $390 million a year business, turning a once sleepy organization into the think tank world’s FIFA.

Schwab turns 85 in March, and it’s an open question whether he will pass the torch at all. Rupert Murdoch hasn’t. Warren Buffet hasn’t. In an era of active aging, why should Schwab?

 

A number of names were mentioned as possible successors in the article, including Christine Lagarde, Marc Benioff, Peter Maurer, Tony Blair, and Borge Brende.

Update: The Guardian is now reporting that a "mutiny" has erupted among WEF staffers over the role of Klaus Schwab, who is sometimes referred to as "Mr. Davos."

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.