Understanding the Effects of Technology on Economics and Governance

“Google is a platform by which adversaries do all sorts of bad things. So, you can't opt out of geopolitics if you're a company, and that's especially true for tech platforms. They don't, and I often joke that government agencies want technological capabilities from the Valley that they don't have. And Silicon Valley companies have responsibilities that they don't want. And so, each side is grappling with these really difficult challenges about how to be responsible for national security.”

—Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow Amy Zegart on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson, March 31, 2022

“We must bear in mind that the United States should seek to maintain its edge in innovation not just to compete with China and others. Technology also offers benefits to our economy and society that the country can ill-afford to miss. For instance, there is great opportunity to harness the promise of technology to address some of our most pressing problems of inequality in education and health care. And needless to say, the connectivity that we have all experienced during the COVID pandemic reminds us that new ways of working, new ways of learning, and more productive ways of doing both can be significantly enhanced by technology.”

—George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics John B. Taylor and Morris Arnold and Nona Jean Cox Senior Fellow Amy Zegart in a paper for Hoover’s  Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group, March 29, 2021

“Synthesis in the oldest form of the word in Greek is about composition and putting together. And so synthetic biology in a way represents a new perspective with respect to living systems. How do we think about relating to them as we put and piece them together… As much as the technology is absolutely essential, what will make it work is everything else — the culture, the politics, the economics, the anthropology, the structure of the narrative, the security strategy, and so on."

—Senior Fellow Drew Endy, "Synthetic Biology for Democracy," Technology, Economics, and Governance Working Group, August 18, 2022.