Generating Policy Ideas for American Renewal

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Generating Policy Ideas for American Renewal

In the face of America’s challenges, Hoover Institution scholars generate evidence-based solutions—on debt, China, the rise of generative AI, and more—while convening leading experts on global security, economics, and other issues.

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Understanding the dynamics of the US race with China on AI development has been a major focus of Amy Zegart’s recent research.

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Supercharging American Innovation

The Stanford Emerging Technology Review (SETR) released its second annual report in February 2025, exploring the policy implications of frontier technologies that are reshaping economies across the world. A university-wide initiative, SETR convenes Hoover’s existing science fellows—including experts in AI, robotics, synthetic biology, and new space frontiers—with Stanford engineering faculty. Joining this effort is the Technology Policy Accelerator, which works to increase American technological competitiveness in key areas such as space, biotechnology, and defense. Scholars affiliated with both efforts are using a whole host of outreach efforts—from research publications to new podcasts, in-person briefings, and policy discussion events—to illustrate to America’s policymakers the significance of how emerging technologies are reshaping our world.

A robot at a launch event for the Technology Policy Accelerator.  

Patrick Beaudouin.

Winning the AI Race

I’m in the ‘run hard and fast’ category and be a little bit light on regulations while we understand what’s happening here.

Condoleezza Rice

The Hoover Institution is part of an all-of-Stanford effort to realize the gains brought on by transformative AI technology for the benefit of all Americans and the free world. To that end, Hoover has been working to develop a markets-oriented framework to guide the rise of the technology and ensure the US dominates its use. But this effort is not without difficulties, as China is in hot pursuit of global dominance in this field. Hoover scholars are also working on initiatives to prepare for the negative consequences of bad actors acquiring advanced AI capabilities and using them to cause immense harm.

Hoover Director Condoleezza Rice speaks at an event for The Digitalist Papers, where speakers offered possibilities about AI's future impact on American governance, on September 24, 2024.

Patrick Beaudouin.

Maintaining America’s Competitive Edge over China

Hoover scholars are working to guide America's response to an increasingly ambitious and aggressive China.

China’s intensifying aggression against the US and its allies has recently taken new forms. Beyond military buildups and bellicose rhetoric, Hoover scholars have noticed subtle changes in the Chinese Communist Party’s posture concerning bilateral trade and cooperation on science and tech. The US, China, and the World program started two major initiatives in response, one aimed at giving US academics guidance about collaboration with Chinese researchers and the other evaluating the nature of the US-China relationship as a whole.

The NSF Secure Analytics Program is generating a range of insights and guidance to help US scholars avoid manipulation by external actors when conducting joint research with scholars in unfriendly countries. Meanwhile, the new China Considered podcast hosted by Senior Fellow Elizabeth Economy explores the ideas, events, and forces shaping China’s future and its global relationships, offering high-level expertise, clear-eyed analysis, and valuable insights to demystify China’s evolving dynamics.

Elizabeth Economy is among the world’s foremost authorities on US competition with China.

Watch all the latest episodes of  China Considered

H.R. McMaster is a leading voice urging Americans to understand the risks threatening US interests worldwide.

Watch or listen to The Hand Behind Unmanned, a limited-series podcast on America's arsenal of unmanned weapons.

Confronting the Axis

s a strengthening axis of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea seek to threaten American interests around the globe, a large group within the Hoover fellowship has sought to develop policies to stem this rising tide. These fellows are working to boost American and allied power across all fields of geopolitical competition, from cybersecurity to AI, conventional arms production, and economic statecraft. Along the way, they are cultivating ties with like-minded partners who can help resist the axis. In the latest academic year at Hoover, scholars published new reports on how to make America’s supply chains more resilient in the face of competition from axis members and brought a number of national security professionals and diplomats from like-minded democratic nations to Hoover to discuss shared priorities.

Revitalizing American Institutions

Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions was founded to address the crisis of trust and confidence in America’s democratic institutions.

Now in its third year, Hoover’s Center for Revitalizing American Institutions continues its work to reverse declining trust and confidence in America’s democratic institutions. In 2025 it launched near-simultaneous efforts to reinvigorate America’s civic culture, assess and evaluate the significance of the 2024 presidential election results, remind Americans of the trustworthiness of their electoral system, and offer solutions to make Congress more collaborative and amicable. Major efforts in 2024–25 included hosting the iCivics Civic Learning Week National Forum and developing a new webinar series to address public distrust of a range of US institutions.

Hoover Institution Director Condoleezza Rice speaks with Utah Governor Spencer Cox about the role leaders play in helping young people learn the skills of responsible democratic citizenship in a keynote discussion at the iCivics Civic Learning Week National Forum in March 2025.

Patrick Beaudouin

Chester E. Finn Jr. leads an effort at Hoover to improve civic understanding.

Access a list of civics and citizenship resources from Hoover

Brandice Canes-Wrone coauthored a report on congressional reforms.

Read the Revitalizing the House report

Healing What Ails Congress

In a bid to reverse the decline in public trust of Congress, along with the slowing pace at which it passes legislation, Center for Revitalizing American Institutions scholars combined forces with former House representatives, staffers, and other academics to produce Revitalizing the House: Bipartisan Recommendations on Rules and Process. Recommendations in this report would make Congress more collegial, flexible, and able to serve the needs of the public. The report shows that the legislative output of Congress has been falling for decades and points to a number of congressional barriers to cross-partisan, deliberative debate.

Hoover’s Prosperity Program

How did America become the most prosperous nation on earth? It certainly wasn’t an accident. To answer this question and ensure the underpinnings of America’s prosperity remain in the future, scholars Stephen Haber, Amit Seru, Dan Kessler, Peter Blair Henry, Ross Levine, and Paola Sapienza formed the Foundations of Economic Prosperity research program in 2025. Their research thus far has focused on how AI may improve US economic growth, the benefits of immigration, and solidifying US banking regulation. The group also explores emerging trends in the realm of corporate governance, from who makes up corporate boards to how executives use resources and data to make decisions.

There’s broad agreement that Americans want a future characterized by prosperity and human dignity, but there is not broad agreement about the policies, institutions, and laws that will get us there.

Stephen HabeR

Learn about the Prosperity Program

H.R. 1, 119th Congress (2025–2026)

Learn about our Healthcare Policy Working Group

Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies

In a bid to give more Americans greater flexibility in taking care of their own healthcare expenses, Hoover fellows associated with the Healthcare Policy Working Group developed two measures that were successfully included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. These two measures will give more than one million Affordable Care Act enrollees the chance to utilize health spending accounts (HSAs) for the first time and will allow HSA holders to use their funds to pay for primary-care service fees. The Healthcare Policy Working Group also developed a range of additional recommendations this academic year, with the aim of helping the federal government and states manage Medicaid costs, streamline drug evaluation and approvals, and place greater emphasis on market-based solutions.

Responding to the brewing crisis brought on by decades of federal overspending, Senior Fellow Joshua D. Rauh launched the Fiscal Policy Initiative in 2025, working to offer responsible solutions that will restore fiscal credibility and ensure American prosperity for generations to come.

Lanhee J. Chen developed concrete measures to broaden and improve healthcare access for the American people.

Joshua D. Rauh leads Hoover’s Fiscal Policy Initiative, which offers a road map for US tax policy, spending, and economic growth.

Reforming K–12 Education

Scholars focused on K–12 education at Hoover are working to reverse troubling trends observed across American school districts over the past several years. For example, Eric Hanushek is documenting the marked decline in test scores dating back to before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and formulating remedies that will reverse the descent. Thomas Dee is tracking the rise in chronic absenteeism among pupils brought about by prolonged school closures between 2020 and 2022. Reversing these trends will take out-of-the-box thinking from US education policymakers. In response, Hoover has established the Education Futures Council, whose initial report, Ours to Solve, Once—and for All, offers a new way to think about how to organize and incentivize US schools and school districts.

Eric Hanushek and Thomas Dee are working to document the impact of post-COVID learning loss and falling school attendance across the nation.

adapted from Education Futures Council/Hoover Institution

Read Ours to Solve, Once—and for All

Revitalizing History

Drawing Lessons from Past Military Conflicts

Strategika, put out by Hoover’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group, showcases the scholarship of a stable of academics inside and outside the Hoover Institution, working to apply lessons learned in past military conflicts to policy decisions for future ones. Now in its 12th year of publication, the 100th issue of the journal went live in August 2025. It examined the status of the study of military history in the 21st century. Across those dozen years, issues have entertained a variety of aspects of US and world military history, from the US-Iran relationship to the future of artillery and the current state of US combat medical capability.

Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson leads Hoover’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group.

A poster used to illustrate an issue of Strategika.

Hoover Institution Library & Archives/Poster Collection

Read the 100th issue of Strategika

Frank Dikötter, chair professor of humanities at the University of Hong Kong, joined the Hoover Institution as the Milias Senior Fellow in March 2025.

Meet our fellows

The Fellowship

With the generous support of Hoover Institution donors, we were able to expand the fellowship in 2025. New scholars include Frank Dikötter, members of the enviropreneur fellowship, and the inaugural National Civics Fellows, affiliated with the Center for Revitalizing American Institutions. The Hoover fellowship continues to generate compelling research and ideas that advance freedom.

Watch Denise Elson, associate director of institutional programming, discuss the impact of Hoover’s fellowship programs.

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