Today, Hoover’s Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative releases a new report on securing biology in an age of new threats; Victor Davis Hanson examines the historical forces behind the rise and decline of the post-WWII international system; and Eugene Volokh testifies before members of the United States Senate on the use of government authority to persuade or pressure individuals or other private actors.
Bio-Strategies and Leadership
“Biosecurity Really: A Strategy for Victory,” a landmark report calling for urgent action to secure biology now and in perpetuity, was released today by the Bio-Strategies and Leadership Initiative of the Hoover Institution. The report warns that biosecurity risks are increasing. Emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and other trends are making biological threats more numerous, frequent, and consequential. The authors outline how emerging biotechnology must itself be used to secure biology, akin to how software is required to secure software. “Advancing and securing biotechnology innovation is essential for securing biology,” stated Senior Fellow Drew Endy, lead author and science fellow at the Hoover Institution. Added Distinguished Visiting Fellow Mike Kuiken, “Biosecurity requires US leadership in emerging biotechnology. Leadership means innovation. We must advance the field to secure it.” The publication of “Biosecurity Really” was also covered in Axios Vitals. Read more here.
Freedom Frequency
At Hoover’s new Substack publication Freedom Frequency, Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson traces the establishment of—and current challenges facing—the American-led post–World War II international economic and political system. In the postwar period, Hanson writes, “The cautious American taxpayer at first was willing, for both magnanimous and self-interested reasons, to foot the bill for world custodianship and—in the new Cold War—contain Soviet expansionism. By lifting up Europe and Asia, the United States would gain markets for its postwar economic juggernaut.” But in time, after cascading challenges from Vietnam to 9/11 through the long war in Afghanistan, and as the global order weakened, “statesmen were confused over what ought to replace the alliances, commitments, and international agencies of the past eighty years.” This remains a challenge, as “there is still no definitive answer about the extent of America’s proper current and future role, both in the Western world and the international community.” Read more here.
Law & Policy
This morning, Senior Fellow Eugene Volokh testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, in a hearing titled, “Shut Your App: How Uncle Sam Jawboned Big Tech into Silencing Americans.” As Volokh notes in his written testimony, “‘To jawbone’ has been defined as ‘to attempt to persuade or pressure by the force of one’s position of authority,’ especially when done by the government.” Volokh reviews several examples of jawboning, ranging from pressure applied by New York State against banks doing business with the National Rifle Association to a letter sent by the Cook County, IL, sheriff to Visa and Mastercard requesting they cease processing transactions on a website used for advertising illegal services. Volokh’s testimony also considers possible congressional legislative actions that could help “draw lines that courts might be reluctant to draw,” including requiring “transparency around federal agency communication with private entities on issues that may affect American speech.” Read more here.
Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
In a working paper published at the National Bureau of Economic Research, Senior Fellow John H. Cochrane examines the relationship between monetary and federal fiscal policy in recent years. Cochrane argues that inflation surged in 2021–23 from a classic fiscal shock: money and debt that financed huge spending, without a plan for repayment. Neither money nor supply shocks offer a coherent alternative explanation. Inflation eased, with no recession, once the fiscal shock was over. Higher interest rates could have brought inflation down earlier, Cochrane writes, but could not have stopped it. Going forward, higher interest rates will raise debt service costs, and thus perversely raise inflation unless fiscal policy can tighten. The paper concludes that high debt and structural deficits also mean that the US may lose the fiscal space to borrow in the next crisis. Read more here.
Politics, Institutions, and Public Opinion
In a new paper, Senior Fellow Andrew B. Hall and coauthor Anna Sun define and measure a previously unstudied channel by which companies react to, and attempt to shape, politics: internal policy teams. The authors used the text of more than 100,000 job listings to classify the roles of roughly 100 million workers, identifying more than 250,000 individuals working in policy roles in the US. Hall and Sun estimate that policy teams are—very roughly—13 times larger in size than lobbying teams, on average, and are increasing in size relative to lobbyists and other corporate positions over the last two decades. The authors find that policy teams and lobbyists appear to be complements; both across firms and within, increases in lobbying predict increases in policy team size. Taken together, the paper’s findings show that corporations invest far more in politics than previously recognized. Read more here.
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