Scholars from the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute are collaborating to promote transparency in redistricting. In January 2010, an advisory board of experts and representatives of good government groups was convened in order to articulate principles for transparent redistricting and to identify barriers to the public and communities who wish to create redistricting plans. This document summarizes the principles for transparency in redistricting that were identified during that meeting.

Benefits of a Transparent, Participative Redistricting Process

The drawing of electoral districts is among the most easily manipulated and least transparent systems in democratic governance. All too often, redistricting authorities maintain their monopoly by imposing high barriers to transparency and public participation. Increasing transparency and public participation can be a powerful counterbalance by providing the public with information similar to that which is typically only available to official decision makers, which can lead to different outcomes and better representation.

Increasing transparency can empower the public to shape the representation for their communities, promote public commentary and discussion about redistricting, inform legislators and redistricting authorities which district configurations their constituents and the public support, and educate the public about the electoral process.  

Fostering public participation can enable the public to identify their neighborhoods and communities, promote the creation of alternative maps, and facilitate an exploration of a wide range of representational possibilities. The existence of publicly-drawn maps can provide a measuring stick against which an official plan can be compared, and promote the creation of a “market” for plans that support political fairness and community representational goals.

Transparency Principles

All redistricting plans should include sufficient information so the public can verify, reproduce, and evaluate a plan. Transparency thus requires that:

• Redistricting plans must be available in non-proprietary formats.
• Redistricting plans must be available in a format allowing them to be easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• The criteria used as a basis for creating plans and individual districts must be clearly documented.

Creating and evaluating redistricting plans and community boundaries requires access to demographic, geographic, community, and electoral data. Transparency thus requires that:

• All data necessary to create legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries must be publicly available, under a license allowing reuse of these data for non-commercial purposes.
• All data must be accompanied by clear documentation stating the original source, the chain of ownership (provenance), and all modifications made to it.

Software systems used to generate or analyze redistricting plans can be complex, impossible to reproduce, or impossible to correctly understand without documentation. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software used to automatically create or improve redistricting plans must be either open-source or provide documentation sufficient for the public to replicate the results using independent software.
• Software used to generate reports that analyze redistricting plans must be accompanied by documentation of data, methods, and procedures sufficient for the reports to be verified by the public.

Services offered to the public to create or evaluate redistricting plans and community boundaries are often opaque and subject to misinterpretation unless adequately documented. Transparency thus requires that:

• Software necessary to replicate the creation or analysis of redistricting plans and community boundaries produced by the service must be publicly available.
• The service must provide the public with the ability to make available all published redistricting plans and community boundaries in non-proprietary formats that are easily read and analyzed with commonly-used geographic information software.
• Services must provide documentation of any organizations providing significant contributions to their operation.

Promoting Public Participation

New technologies provide opportunities to broaden public participation in the redistricting process. These technologies should aim to realize the potential benefits described and be consistent with the articulated transparency principles.

Redistricting is a legally and technically complex process. District creation and analysis software can encourage broad participation by: being widely accessible and easy to use; providing mapping and evaluating tools that help the public to create legal redistricting plans, as well as maps identifying local communities; be accompanied by training materials to assist the public to successfully create and evaluate legal redistricting plans and define community boundaries; have publication capabilities that allow the public to examine maps in situations where there is no access to the software; and promoting social networking and allow the public to compare, exchange and comment on both official and community-produced maps.

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Official Endorsement from Organizations – Americans for Redistricting Reform, Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, Campaign Legal Center, Center for Governmental Studies, Center for Voting and Democracy, Common Cause, Demos, and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Attending board members – Nancy Bekavac, Director, Scientists and Engineers for America; Derek Cressman, Western Regional Director of State Operations, Common Cause; Anthony Fairfax, President, Census Channel; Representative Mike Fortner (R), Illinois General Assembly; Karin Mac Donald, Director, Statewide Database, Berkeley Law, University of California, Berkeley; Leah Rush, Executive Director, Midwest Democracy Network; Mary Wilson, President, League of Women Voters.

Editors – Micah Altman, Harvard University and the Brookings Institution; Thomas E. Mann, Brookings Institution; Michael P. McDonald, George Mason University and the Brookings Institution; Norman J. Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute.

This project is funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation to the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute.

       

Every 10 years — unfortunately, sometimes more frequently — legislative district lines are redrawn to balance population for demographic changes revealed by the census. What goes on is much more than a simple technical adjustment of boundaries, with ramifications that largely escape public notice.

Politicians often use redistricting as an opportunity to cut unfavorable constituents and potential challengers out of their districts. Barack Obama, for example, learned the rough and tumble of redistricting politics when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) carved Obama's Chicago home out of Rush's congressional district after losing a 2000 primary challenge to Obama, then a state senator.

Incumbents can also use redistricting to move favorable constituents into their districts. Obama himself used the state legislative redistricting to extend his predominantly African American district north into a wealthy area of Illinois known as the Gold Coast. This new constituency allowed Obama to hone an effective biracial campaigning style that served him well when he ran for the U.S. Senate and the presidency.

Critically, these decisions are made with little or no public input or accountability. While Arizona and California are among the few states that give the public a chance to see and participate in how the boundaries are set, by using open redistricting commissions, most states gerrymander legislative lines behind closed doors. Figures from both major parties tilt the electoral playing field so much that one party is essentially assured of winning a given district, controlling the state legislature or winning the most seats in the state's congressional delegation. In other words, the democratic process is subverted. In this system, politicians select voters rather than voters electing politicians.

A 2006 Pew survey found that 70 percent of registered voters had no opinion about congressional redistricting. Among the few that expressed an opinion, some mistook the question to be about school districts rather than congressional districts.

For many reasons it has been hard to fault the public. An immense amount of population data must be sifted and then assembled, much like a giant jigsaw puzzle, to ensure that districts satisfy complex federal requirements relating to equal population and the Voting Rights Act, and varying state requirements that may include compactness and respect for existing political boundaries or communities. And access to these data and the software necessary to assemble and analyze them have long been out of public reach.

In the previous round of redistricting, according to a 2002 survey of authorities we conducted with our colleague Karin Mac Donald, most states did not provide any tools, facilities, dedicated assistance or software to support the public in developing redistricting plans. Many states failed to provide even minimal transparency by making data available, providing information about their plans online or accepting publicly submitted plans. Many redistricting authorities have not made firm plans to support transparency or public participation in the current round of redistricting.

In the coming year, however, technological advancements will enable anyone with a Web browser and an interest in how he or she is represented to draw district maps of his or her community and state that meet the same requirements as official submissions. Under the direction of scholars at the Brookings Institution and the American Enterprise Institute, and with consultation from an array of experts in redistricting issues, we have developed a set of principles for transparency and public participation. These principles have been endorsed by an array of stakeholders, including Common Cause and the League of Women Voters of the United States.

Americans will be able to participate directly in their democracy by offering plans to be compared with the politician-drawn maps. The public and even the courts will no longer have to accept that whatever is devised by politicians in the backroom.

The Wizard of Oz appeared powerful because he hid behind a curtain -- until it was pulled back. The time has come to pull back the curtain on redistricting. A good place to start is by passing Rep. John Tanner's Redistricting Transparency Act, which has 38 co-sponsors from both parties. If Congress will not act, state governments can follow the lead of the few states that provide for meaningful transparency and public participation. Failure to provide for transparency and public participation should be recognized for what it is: an obviously self-serving act, placing the interests of politicians above the public interest.

       

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As the recent primary in Delaware attests, this year's midterm elections continue to offer unexpected twists and raise large questions. Will the Republicans take over the House and possibly the Senate? Or has the Republican wave ebbed? What role will President Obama play in rallying seemingly dispirited Democrats -- and what effect will reaction to the sluggish economy play in rallying Republicans? Is the Tea Party more an asset or a liability to the G.O.P.'s hopes? What effect will the inevitably narrowed partisan majorities have in the last two year's of Obama's first term? And how will contests for governorships and state legislatures around the nation affect redistricting and the shape of politics to come?

On October 4, a panel of Brookings Governance Studies scholars, moderated by Senior Fellow E.J. Dionne, Jr., attempted to answer these questions. Senior Fellow Thomas Mann provided an overview. Senior Fellow Sarah Binder discussed congressional dynamics under shrunken majorities or divided government. Senior Fellow William Galston offered his views on the administration’s policy prospects during the 112th Congress. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald addressed electoral reapportionment and redistricting around the country.

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• Partisan Gridlock post-Elections?
• GOP Influence over Redistricting, Reapportionment
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The drawing of legislative district boundaries is among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democratic governance. All too often, formal redistricting authorities maintain their control by imposing high barriers to transparency and to public participation in the process. Reform advocates believe that opening that process to the public could lead to different outcomes and better representation.

On January 20, Brookings hosted a briefing to review how redistricting in the 50 states will unfold in the months ahead and present a number of state-based initiatives designed to increase transparency and public participation in redistricting. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellows Micah Altman and Michael McDonald unveiled open source mapping software which enables users to create and submit their own plans, based on current census and historical election data, to redistricting authorities and to disseminate them widely. Such alternative public maps could offer viable input to the formal redistricting process.

After each presentation, participants took audience questions.

Learn more about Michael McDonald's Public Mapping Project »

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• Injecting Transparency into Redistricting
• GOP Could Re-Draw 145 Districts
• Towards a New Political Culture
• Coalitions Pushing for Greater Transparency
• The Public Mapping Project

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• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting
• Toward Public Participation in Redistricting

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• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Tim Storey's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download Clare Dyer's Presentation (.pdf)
• Download the Redistricting Authority in the States Factsheet (.pdf)
• Download Micah Altman's and Michael McDonald's Report (.pdf)
• Download the District Builder Summary (.pdf)

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Now that the 2010 Census is concluded, states will begin the process of reapportionment—re-drawing voting district lines to account for population shifts. Nonresident Senior Fellow Michael McDonald says redistricting has been fraught with controversy and corruption since the nation’s early days, when the first “gerrymandered” district was drawn. Two states—Arizona and California—have instituted redistricting commissions intended to insulate the process from political shenanigans, but politicians everywhere will continue to work the system to gain electoral advantage and the best chance of re-election for themselves and their parties.

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Full video archive of this event is also available via C-SPAN here.

The drawing of legislative district boundaries is arguably among the most self-interested and least transparent systems in American democracy. Every ten years redistricting authorities, usually state legislatures, redraw congressional and legislative lines in accordance with Census reapportionment and population shifts within states. Most state redistricting authorities are in the midst of their redistricting process, while others have already finished redrawing their state and congressional boundaries. A number of initiatives—from public mapping competitions to independent shadow commissions—have been launched to open up the process to the public during this round of redrawing district lines.

On July 18, Brookings hosted a panel of experts to review the results coming in from the states and discuss how the rest of the process is likely to unfold. Panelists focused on evidence of partisan or bipartisan gerrymandering, the outcome of transparency and public mapping initiatives, and minority redistricting.

After the panel discussion, participants took audience questions.

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Editors Note: This post is an extended version of a previous post.

Cozzens, Susan and Dhanaraj Thakur (Eds). 2014. Innovation and Inequality: Emerging technologies in an unequal world. Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar.

Historically, the debate on innovation has focused on the determinants of the pace of innovation—on the premise that innovation is the driver of long-term economic growth. Analysts and policymakers have taken less interest on how innovation-based growth affects income distribution. Less attention even has received the question of how innovation affects other forms of inequality such as economic opportunity, social mobility, access to education, healthcare, and legal representation, or inequalities in exposure to insalubrious environments, be these physical (through exposure to polluted air, water, food or harmful work conditions) or social (neighborhoods ridden with violence and crime). The relation between innovation, equal political representation and the right for people to have a say in the collective decisions that affect their lives can also be added to the list of neglect.

But neglect has not been universal. A small but growing group of analysts have been working for at least three decades to produce a more careful picture of the relationship between innovation and the economy. A distinguished vanguard of this group has recently published a collection of case studies that illuminates our understanding of innovation and inequality—which is the title of the book. The book is edited by Susan Cozzens and Dhanaraj Thakur. Cozzens is a professor in the School of Public Policy and Vice Provost of Academic Affairs at Georgia Tech. She has studied innovation and inequality long before inequality was a hot topic and led the group that collaborated on this book. Thakur is a faculty member of the school College of Public Service and Urban Affairs at Tennessee State University (while writing the book he taught at the University of West Indies in Jamaica). He is an original and sensible voice in the study of social dimensions of communication technologies.

We’d like to highlight here three aspects of the book: the research design, the empirical focus, and the conceptual framework developed from the case studies in the book.

Edited volumes are all too often a collection of disparate papers, but not in this case. This book is patently the product of a research design that probes the evolution of a set of technologies across a wide variety of national settings and, at the same time, it examines the different reactions to new technologies within specific countries. The second part of the book devotes five chapters to study five emerging technologies—recombinant insulin, genetically modified corn, mobile phones, open-source software, and tissue culture—observing the contrasts and similarities of their evolution in different national environments. In turn, part three considers the experience of eight countries, four of high income—Canada, Germany, Malta, and the U.S.—and four of medium or low income—Argentina, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Mozambique. The stories in part three tell how these countries assimilated these diverse technologies into to their economies and policy environments.

The second aspect to highlight is the deliberate choice of elements for empirical focus. First, the object of inquiry is not all of technology but a discreet set of emerging technologies gaining a specificity that would otherwise be negated if they were to handle the unwieldy concept of “technology” broadly construed. At the same time, this choice reveals the policy orientation of the book because these new entrants have just started to shape the socio-technical spaces they inhabit while the spaces of older technologies have likely ossified. Second, the study offers ample variance in terms of jurisdictions under study, i.e. countries of all income levels; a decision that makes at the same time theory construction more difficult and the test of general premises more robust.[i] We can add that the book avoids sweeping generalizations. Third, they focus on technological projects and their champions, a choice that increases the rigor of the empirical analysis. This choice, naturally, narrows the space of generality but the lessons are more precise and the conjectures are presented with according modesty. The combination of a solid design and clear empirical focus allow the reader to obtain a sense of general insight from the cases taken together that could not be derived from any individual case standing alone.

Economic and technology historians have tackled the effects of technological advancement, from the steam engine to the Internet, but those lessons are not easily applicable to the present because emerging technologies intimate at a different kind of reconfiguration of economic and social structures. It is still too early to know the long-term effects of new technologies like genetically modified crops or mobile phone cash-transfers, but this book does a good job providing useful concepts that begin to form an analytical framework. In addition, the mix of country case studies subverts the disciplinary separation between the economics of innovation (devoted mostly to high-income countries) and development studies (interested in middle and low income economies). As a consequence of these selections, the reader can draw lessons that are likely to apply to technologies and countries other than the ones discussed in this book.

The third aspect we would like to underscore in this review is the conceptual framework. Cozzens, Thakur and their colleagues have done a service to anyone interested in pursuing the empirical and theoretical analysis of innovation and inequality.

For these authors, income distribution is only one part of the puzzle. They observe that inequalities are also part of social, ethnic, and gender cleavages in society. Frances Stewart, from Oxford University, introduced the notion of horizontal inequalities or inequalities at the social group level (for instance, across ethnic groups or genders). She developed the concept to contrast vertical inequalities or inequalities operating at the individual level (such as household income or wealth). The authors of this book borrow Stewart’s concept and pay attention to horizontal inequalities in the technologies they examine and observe that new technologies enter marketplaces that are already configured under historical forms of exclusion. A dramatic example is the lack of access to recombinant insulin in the U.S., because it is expensive and minorities are less likely to have health insurance (see Table 3.1 in p. 80).[ii] Another example is how innovation opens opportunities for entrepreneurs but closes them for women in cultures that systematically exclude women from entrepreneurial activities.

Another key concept is that of complementary assets. A poignant example is the failure of recombinant insulin to reach poor patients in Mozambique who are sent home with old medicine even though insulin is subsidized by the government. The reason why doctors deny the poor the new treatment is that they don’t have the literacy and household resources (e.g. a refrigerator, a clock) necessary to preserve the shots, inject themselves periodically, and read sugar blood levels. Technologies aimed at fighting poverty require complementary assets to be already in place and in the absence of them, they fail to mitigate suffering and ultimately ameliorate inequality. Another illustration of the importance of complementary assets is given by the case of Open Source Software. This technology has a nominal price of zero; however, only individuals who have computers and the time, disposition, and resources to learn how to use open source operative systems benefit. Likewise, companies without the internal resources to adapt open software will not adopt it and remain economically tied to proprietary software.

These observations lead to two critical concepts elaborated in the book: distributional boundaries and the inequalities across technological transitions. Distributional boundaries refer to the reach of the benefits of new technologies, boundaries that could be geographic (as in urban/suburban or center/periphery) or across social cleavages or incomes levels. Standard models of technological diffusion assume the entire population will gradually adopt a new technology, but in reality the authors observe several factors intervene in limiting the scope of diffusion to certain groups. The most insidious factors are monopolies that exercise sufficient control over markets to levy high prices. In these markets, the price becomes an exclusionary barrier to diffusion. This is quite evident in the case of mobile phones (see table 5.1, p. 128) where monopolies (or oligopolies) have market power to create and maintain a distributional boundary between post-pay and high-quality for middle and high income clients and pre-pay and low-quality for poor customers. This boundary renders pre-pay plans doubly regressive because the per-minute rates are higher than post-pay and phone expenses represent a far larger percentage in poor people’s income. Another example of exclusion happens in GMOs because in some countries subsistence farmers cannot afford the prices for engineering seeds; a disadvantage that compounds to their cost and health problems as they have to use more and stronger pesticides.

A technological transition, as used here, is an inflection point in the adoption of a technology that re-shapes its distributional boundaries. When smart phones were introduced, a new market for second-hand or hand-down phones was created in Maputo; people who could not access the top technology get stuck with a sub-par system. By looking at tissue culture they find that “whether it provides benefits to small farmers as well as large ones depends crucially on public interventions in the lower-income countries in our study” (p. 190). In fact, farmers in Costa Rica enjoy much better protections compare to those in Jamaica and Mozambique because the governmental program created to support banana tissue culture was designed and implemented as an extension program aimed at disseminating know-how among small-farmers and not exclusively to large multinational-owned farms. When introducing the same technology, because of this different policy environment, the distributional boundaries were made much more extensive in Costa Rica.

This is a book devoted to present the complexity of the innovation-inequality link. The authors are generous in their descriptions, punctilious in the analysis of their case studies, and cautious and measured in their conclusions. Readers who seek an overarching theory of inequality, a simple story, or a test of causality, are bound to be disappointed. But those readers may find the highest reward from carefully reading all the case studies presented in this book, not only because of the edifying richness of the detail herein but also because they will be invited to rethink the proper way to understand and address the problem of inequality.[iii]
 

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Policies and initiatives to promote U.S. manufacturing would be well advised to take a value chain perspective of this economic sector. Currently, our economic statistics do not include pre-production services to manufacturing such as research and development or design or post-production services such as repair and maintenance or sales. Yet, manufacturing firms invest heavily in these services because they are crucial to the success of their business. 

In a new paper, Kate Whitefoot and Walter Valdivia offer a fresh insight into the sector’s labor composition and trends by examining employment in manufacturing from a value chain perspective. While the manufacturing sector shed millions of jobs in the 2002-2010 period—a period that included the Great Recession—employment in upstream services expanded 26 percent for market analysis, 13 percent for research and development, and 23 percent for design and technical services. Average wages for these services increased over 10 percent in that period. Going forward, this pattern is likely to be repeated. Technical occupations, particularly in upstream segments are expected to have the largest increases in employment and wages.

In light of the findings, the authors offer the following recommendations: 

• Federal manufacturing policy: Expand PCAST’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership recommendations—specifically, for developing a national system of certifications for production skills and establishing a national apprenticeship program for skilled trades in manufacturing—to include jobs outside the factory such as those in research and development, design and technical services, and market analysis.
• Higher education: Institutions of higher education should consider some adjustment to their curriculum with a long view of the coming changes to high-skill occupations, particularly with respect to problem identification and the management of uncertainty in highly automated work environments. In addition, universities and colleges should disseminate information among prospect and current students about occupations where the largest gains of employment and higher wage premiums are expected. 
• Improve national statistics: Supplement the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) with data that permits tracking the entire value chain, including the development of a demand-based classification system. This initiative could benefit from adding survey questions to replicate the data collection of countries with a Value Added Tax—without introducing the tax, that is—allowing in this manner a more accurate estimation of the value added by each participant in a production network.

Whitefoot and Valdivia stress that any collective efforts aimed at invigorating manufacturing must seize the opportunities throughout the entire value chain including upstream and downstream services to production.

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An academic-industrial partnership published last January in the prestigious journal Nature the results of the development of antibiotic teixobactin. The reported work is still at an early preclinical stage but it is nevertheless good news. Over the last decades the introduction of new antibiotics has slowed down nearly to a halt and over the same period we have seen a dangerous increase in antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Such is the magnitude of the problem that it has attracted the attention of the U.S. government. Accepting several recommendations presented by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) in their comprehensive report, the Obama Administration issued last September an Executive Order establishing an interagency Task Force for combating antibiotic resistant bacteria and directing the Secretary of Human and Health Services (HHS) to establish an Advisory Council on this matter. More recently the White House issued a strategic plan to tackle this problem.

Etiology of antibiotic resistance

Infectious diseases have been a major cause of morbidity and mortality from time immemorial. The early discovery of sulfa drugs in the 1930s and then antibiotics in the 1940s significantly aided the fight against these scourges. Following World War II society experienced extraordinary gains in life expectancy and overall quality of life. During that period, marked by optimism, many people presumed victory over infectious diseases. However, overuse of antibiotics and a slowdown of innovation, allowed bacteria to develop resistance at such a pace that some experts now speak of a post-antibiotic era.

The problem is manifold: overuse of antibiotics, slow innovation, and bacterial evolution.

The overuse of antibiotics in both humans and livestock also facilitated the emergence of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Responsibility falls to health care providers who prescribed antibiotics liberally and patients who did not complete their prescribed dosages. Acknowledging this problem, the medical community has been training physicians to avoid pressures to prescribe antibiotics for children (and their parents) with infections that are likely to be viral in origin. Educational efforts are also underway to encourage patients to complete their full course of every prescribed antibiotic and not to halt treatment when symptoms ease. The excessive use of antibiotics in food-producing animals is perhaps less manageable because it affects the bottom line of farm operations. For instance, the FDA reported that even though famers were aware of the risks, antibiotics use in feedstock increased by 16 percent from 2009 to 2012.

The development of antibiotics—perhaps a more adequate term would be anti-bacterial agents—indirectly contributed to the problem by being incremental and by nearly stalling two decades ago. Many revolutionary innovations in antibiotics were introduced in a first period of development that started in the 1940s and lasted about two decades. Building upon scaffolds and mechanisms discovered theretofore, a second period of incremental development followed over three decades, through to 1990s, with roughly three new antibiotics introduced every year. High competition and little differentiations rendered antibiotics less and less profitable and over a third period covering the last 20 years pharmaceutical companies have cut development of new antibiotics down to a trickle.

The misguided overuse and misuse of antibiotics together with the economics of antibiotic innovation compounded the problem taking place in nature: bacteria evolves and adapts rapidly.

Current policy initiatives

The PCAST report recommended federal leadership and investment to combat antibiotic-resistant bacteria in three areas: improving surveillance, increasing the longevity of current antibiotics through moderated usage, and picking up the pace of development of new antibiotics and other effective interventions.

To implement this strategy PCAST suggested an oversight structure that includes a Director for National Antibiotic Resistance Policy, an interagency Task Force for Combating Antibiotic Resistance Bacteria, and an Advisory Council to be established by the HHS Secretary. PCAST also recommended increasing federal support from $450 million to $900 million for core activities such as surveillance infrastructure and development of transformative diagnostics and treatments. In addition, it proposed $800 million in funding for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority to support public-private partnerships for antibiotics development.

The Obama administration took up many of these recommendations and directed their implementation with the aforementioned Executive Order. More recently, it announced a National Strategy for Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria to implement the recommendations of the PCAST report. The national strategy has five pillars: First, slow the emergence and spread of resistant bacteria by decreasing the abusive usage of antibiotics in health care as well as in farm animals; second, establish national surveillance efforts that build surveillance capability across human and animal environments; third, advance development and usage of rapid and innovative diagnostics to provide more accurate care delivery and data collection; forth, seek to accelerate the invention process for new antibiotics, other therapeutics and vaccines across all stages, including basic and applied research and development; finally, emphasize the importance of international collaboration and endorse the World Health Organization Action Plan to address antimicrobial resistance.

University-Industry partnerships

Therefore, an important cause of our antibiotic woes seems to be driven by economic logic. On one hand, pharmaceutical companies have by and large abandoned investment in antibiotic development; competition and high substitutability have led to low prices and in their financial calculation, pharmaceutical companies cannot justify new developmental efforts. On the other hand, farmers have found the use of antibiotics highly profitable and thus have no financial incentives to halt their use.

There is nevertheless a mirror explanation of a political character.

The federal government allocates about $30 billion for research in medicine and health through the National Institutes of Health. The government does not seek to crowd out private research investment; rather, the goal is to fund research the private sector would not conduct because the financial return of that research is too uncertain. Economic theory prescribes government intervention to address this kind of market failure. However, it is also government policy to privatize patents to discoveries made with public monies in order to facilitate their transfer from public to private organizations. An unanticipated risk of this policy is the rebalancing of the public research portfolio to accommodate the growing demand for the kind of research that feeds into attractive market niches. The risk is that the more aligned public research and private demand become, the less research attention will be directed to medical needs without great market prospects. The development of new antibiotics seems to be just that kind of neglected medical public need. If antibiotics are unattractive to pharmaceutical companies, antibiotic development should be a research priority for the NIH. We know that it is unlikely that Congress will increase public spending for antibiotic R&D in the proportion suggested by PCAST, but the NIH could step in and rebalance its own portfolio to increase antibiotic research. Either increasing NIH funding for antibiotics or NIH rebalancing its own portfolio, are political decisions that are sure to meet organized resistance even stronger than antibiotic resistance.

The second mirror explanation is that farmers have a well-organized lobby. It is no surprise that the Executive Order gingerly walks over recommendations for the farming sector and avoid any hint at an outright ban of antibiotics use, lest the administration is perceived as heavy-handed. Considering the huge magnitude of the problem, a political solution is warranted. Farmers’ cooperation in addressing this national problem will have to be traded for subsidies and other extra-market incentives that compensate for loss revenues or higher costs. The administration will do well to work out the politics with farmer associations first before they organize in strong opposition to any measure to curb antibiotic use in feedstock.

Addressing this challenge adequately will thus require working out solutions to the economic and political dimensions of this problem. Public-private partnerships, including university-industry collaboration, could prove to be a useful mechanism to balance the two dimensions of the equation. The development of teixobactin mentioned above is a good example of this prescription as it resulted from collaboration between the university of Bonn Germany, Northeastern University, and Novobiotic Pharmaceutical, a start-up in Cambridge Mass.

If the NIH cannot secure an increase in research funding for antibiotics development and cannot rebalance substantially its portfolio, it can at least encourage Cooperative Research and Development Agreements as well as university start-ups devoted to develop new antibiotics. In order to promote public-private and university-industry partnerships, policy coordination is advised. The nascent enterprises will be assisted greatly if the government can help them raise capital connecting them to venture funding networks or implementing a loan guarantees programs specific to antibiotics.  It can also allow for an expedited FDA approval which would lessen the regulatory burden. Likewise, farmers may be convinced to discontinue the risky practice if innovation in animal husbandry can effectively replace antibiotic use. Public-private partnerships, particularly through university extension programs, could provide an adequate framework to test alternative methods, scale them up, and subsidize the transition to new sustainable practices that are not financially painful to farmers.

Yikun Chi contributed to this post

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Technical change is advancing at a breakneck speed while the institutions that govern innovative activity slog forward trying to keep pace. The lag has created a need for reform in the governance of innovation. Reformers who focus primarily on the social benefits of innovation propose to unmoor the innovative forces of the market. Conversely, those who deal mostly with innovation’s social costs wish to constrain it by introducing regulations in advance of technological developments. In this paper, Walter Valdivia and David Guston argue for a different approach to reform the governance of innovation that they call "Responsible Innovation" because it seeks to imbue in the actors of the innovation system a more robust sense of individual and collective responsibility.

Responsible innovation appreciates the power of free markets in organizing innovation and realizing social expectations but is self-conscious about the social costs that markets do not internalize. At the same time, the actions it recommends do not seek to slow down innovation because they do not constrain the set of options for researchers and businesses, they expand it. Responsible innovation is not a doctrine of regulation and much less an instantiation of the precautionary principle. Innovation and society can evolve down several paths and the path forward is to some extent open to collective choice. The aim of a responsible governance of innovation is to make that choice more consonant with democratic principles.

Valdivia and Guston illustrate how responsible innovation can be implemented with three practical initiatives: 

1. Industry: Incorporating values and motivations to innovation decisions that go beyond the profit motive could help industry take on a long-view of those decisions and better manage its own costs associated with liability and regulation, while reducing the social cost of negative externalities. Consequently, responsible innovation should be an integral part of corporate social responsibility, considering that the latter has already become part of the language of business, from the classroom to the board room, and that is effectively shaping, in some quarters, corporate policies and decisions.
2. Universities and National Laboratories: Centers for Responsible Innovation, fashioned after the institutional reform of Internal Review Boards to protect human subjects in research and the Offices of Technology Transfer created to commercialize academic research, could organize existing responsible innovation efforts at university and laboratory campuses. These Centers would formalize the consideration of impacts of research proposals on legal and regulatory frameworks, economic opportunity and inequality, sustainable development and the environment, as well as ethical questions beyond the integrity of research subjects.
3. Federal Government: Federal policy should improve its protections and support of scientific research while providing mechanisms of public accountability for research funding agencies and their contractors. Demanding a return on investment for every research grant is a misguided approach that devalues research and undermines trust between Congress and the scientific community. At the same time, scientific institutions and their advocates should improve public engagement and demonstrate their willingness and ability to be responsive to societal concerns and expectations about the public research agenda. Second, if scientific research is a public good, by definition, markets are not effective commercializing it. New mechanisms to develop practical applications from federal research with little market appeal should be introduced to counterbalance the emphasis the current technology transfer system places on research ready for the market. Third, federal innovation policy needs to be better coordinated with other federal policy, including tax, industrial, and trade policy as well as regulatory regimes. It should also improve coordination with initiatives at the local and state level to improve the outcomes of innovation for each region, state, and metro area.

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The fiscal budget has become a casualty of political polarization and even functions that had enjoyed bipartisan support, like research and development (R&D), are becoming divisive issues on Capitol Hill. As a result, federal R&D is likely to grow pegged to inflation or worse, decline.

With the size of the pie fixed or shrinking, requests for R&D funding increases will trigger an inter-agency zero-sum game that will play out as pointless comparisons of agencies’ merit, or worse, as a contest to attract the favor of Congress or the White House. This insidious politics will be made even more so by the growing tendency of equating public accountability with the measurement of performance. Political polarization, tight budgets, and pressure for quantifiable results threaten to undermine the sustainability of public R&D. The situation begs the question: What can federal agencies do to deal with the changing politics of federal R&D?

In a new paper, Walter D. Valdivia and Benjamin Y. Clark apply punctuated equilibrium theory to examine the last four decades of federal R&D, both at the aggregate and the agency level. Valdivia and Clark observe a general upward trend driven by gradual increases. In turn, budget leaps or punctuations are few and far in between and do no appear to have lasting effects. As the politics of R&D are stirred up, federal departments and agencies are sure to find that proposing punctuations is becoming more costly and risky. Consequently, agencies will be well advised in securing stable growth in their R&D budgets in the long run rather than pushing for short term budget leaps.

While appropriations history would suggest the stability of R&D spending resulted from the character of the budget politics, in the future, stability will need the stewardship of R&D champions who work to institutionalize gradualism, this time, in spite of the politics.

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• Download the paper

       

Universities cash handsome awards on infringement cases

Last month, a jury found Apple Inc. guilty of infringing a patent of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and ordered the tech giant to pay $234 million. The university scored a big financial victory, but this hardly meant any gain for the good name of the university.

The plaintiffs argued successfully in court that Apple infringed their 1998 patent on a predictor circuit that greatly improved the efficiency of microchips used in the popular iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. Apple first responded by challenging the validity of the patent, but the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the university. Apple plans to appeal, but the appellate court is not likely to reverse the lower court’s decision.

This is not the first time this university has asserted its patents rights (UW sued Intel in 2008 for this exact same patent and reportedly settled for $110 million). Nor is this the first time universities in general have taken infringers to court. Prominent cases in recent memory include Boston University, which sued several companies for infringement of a patent for blue light-emitting diodes and settled out of court with most of them, and Carnegie Mellon, who was awarded $237 million by the federal appellate court on its infringement suit against Marvell, a semiconductor company, for its use of an enhanced detector of data in hard drives called Kavcic detectors.

Means not always aligned with aims in patent law

When university inventions emerge from federal research grants, universities can also sue the infringers, but in those cases they would be testing the accepted interpretations of current patent law.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 extended patent law and gave small-business and universities the right to take title to patents from federal grants—later it was amended to extend the right to all federal grantees regardless of size. The ostensible aim of this act is to “to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development.” Under the law, a condition for universities to keep their exclusive rights on those patents is that they or their licensees take “effective steps to achieve practical application” of those patents. Bayh-Dole was not designed to create a new source of revenue for universities. If companies are effectively using university technologies, Bayh-Dole’s purpose is served without need of the patents.

To understand this point, consider a counterfactual: What if the text of Bayh-Dole had been originally composed to grant a conditional right to patents for federal research grantees? The condition could be stated like this: “This policy seeks to promote the commercialization of federally funded research and to this end it will use the patent system. Grantees may take title to patents if and only if other mechanisms for disseminating and developing those inventions into useful applications prove unsuccessful.” Under this imagined text, the universities could still take title to patents on their inventions if they or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were not aware that the technologies were being used in manufactures.

But no court would find their infringement claim meritorious if the accused companies could demonstrate that, absent of willful infringement, they had in fact used the technologies covered by university patents in their commercial products. In this case, other mechanisms for disseminating and developing the technologies would have proven successful indeed. The reality that Bayh-Dole did not mandate such a contingent assignation of rights creates a contradiction between its aims and the means chosen to advance those aims for the subset of patents that were already in use by industry.

I should clarify that the predictor circuit, the blue-light diode, and the Kavcic detectors are not in that subset of patents. But even in they were, there is no indication that the University of Wisconsin-Madison would have exercised its patent rights with any less vigor just because the original research was funded by public funds. Today, it is fully expected from universities to aggressively assert their patent rights regardless of the source of funding for the original research.

You can have an answer for every question and still lose the debate

It is this litigious attitude that puts off many observers. While the law may very well allow universities to be litigious, universities could still refuse to exercise their rights under circumstances in which those rights are not easily reconciled with the public mission of the university.

Universities administrators, tech transfer personnel, and particularly the legal teams winning infringement cases have legitimate reasons to wonder why universities are publicly scorned. After all, they are acting within the law and simply protecting their patent rights; they are doing what any rational person would do. They may be really surprised when critics accuse universities of becoming allies of patent trolls, or of aiding and abetting their actions. Such accusations are unwarranted. Trolls are truants; the universities are venerable institutions. Patent trolls would exploit the ambiguities of patent law and the burdens of due process to their own benefit and to the detriment of truly productive businesses and persons. In stark contrast, universities are long established partners of democracy, respected beyond ideological divides for their abundant contributions to society.

The critics may not be fully considering the intricacies of patent law. Or they may forget that universities are in need of additional revenue—higher education has not seen public financial support increase in recent years, with federal grants roughly stagnated and state funding falling drastically in some states. Critics may also ignore that revenues collected from licensing of patents, favorable court rulings, and out-of-court settlements, are to a large extent (usually two thirds of the total) plugged back into the research enterprise.

University attorneys may have an answer for every point that critics raise, but the overall concern of critics should not be dismissed outright. Given that many if not most university patents can be traced back to research funded by tax dollars, there is a legitimate reason for observers to expect universities to manage their patents with a degree of restraint. There is also a legitimate reason for public disappointment when universities do not seem to endeavor to balance the tensions between their rights and duties.

Substantive steps to improve the universities’ public image

Universities can become more responsive to public expectations about their character not only by promoting their good work, but also by taking substantive steps to correct misperceptions.

First, when universities discover a case of proven infringement, they should take companies to court as a measure of last resort. If a particular company refuses to negotiate in good faith and an infringement case ends up in court, the universities should be prepared to demonstrate to the court of public opinion that they have tried, with sufficient insistence and time, to negotiate a license and even made concessions in pricing the license. In the case of the predictor circuit patent, it seems that the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to license the technology and Apple refused, but the university would be in a much better position if it could demonstrate that the licensing deals offered to Apple would have turned to be far less expensive for the tech company.

Second, universities would be well advised not to join any efforts to lobby Congress for stronger patent protection. At least two reasons substantiate this suggestion. First, as a matter of principle, the dogmatic belief that without patents there is no innovation is wrong. Second, as a matter of material interest, universities as a group do not have a financial interest in patenting. It’s worth elaborating these points a bit more.

Neither historians nor social science researchers have settled the question about the net effects of patents on innovation. While there is evidence of social benefits from patent-based innovation, there is also evidence of social costs associated with patent-monopolies, and even more evidence of momentous innovations that required no patents. What’s more, the net social benefit varies across industries and over time. Research shows economic areas in which patents do spur innovation and economic sectors where it actually hinders them. This research explains, for instance, why some computer and Internet giants lobby Congress in the opposite direction to the biotech and big pharma industries. Rigorous industrial surveys of the 1980s and 1990s found that companies in most economic sectors did not use patents as their primary tool to protect their R&D investments.

Yet patenting has increased rapidly over the past four decades. This increase includes industries that once were uninterested in patents. Economic analyses have shown that this new patenting is a business strategy against patent litigation. Companies are building patent portfolios as a defensive strategy, not because they are innovating more. The university’s public position on patent policy should acknowledge that the debate on the impact of patents on innovation is not settled and that this impact cannot be observed in the aggregate, but must be considered in the context of each specific economic sector, industry, or even market. From this vantage point, universities could then turn up or down the intensity with which they negotiate licenses and pursue compensation for infringement. Universities would better assert their commitment to their public mission if they compute on a case by case basis the balance between social benefits and costs for each of its controversial patents.

As to the material interest in patents, it is understandable that some patent attorneys or the biotech lobby publicly espouse the dogma of patents, that there is no innovation without patents. After all, their livelihood depends on it. However, research universities as a group do not have any significant financial interest in stronger patent protection. As I have shown in a previous Brookings paper, the vast majority of research universities earn very little from their patent portfolios and about 87% of tech transfer offices operate in the red. Universities as a group receive so little income from licensing and asserting their patents relative to the generous federal support (below 3%), that if the federal government were to declare that grant reviewers should give a preference to universities that do not patent, all research universities would stop the practice at once. It is true that a few universities (like the University of Wisconsin-Madison) raise significant revenue from their patent portfolio, and they will continue to do so regardless of public protestations. But the majority of universities do not have a material interest in patenting.

Time to get it right on anti-troll legislation

Last year, the House of Representative passed legislation closing loopholes and introducing disincentives for patent trolls. Just as mirror legislation was about to be considered in the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew it from the Judiciary Committee. It was reported that Sen. Harry Reid forced the hand of Mr. Leahy to kill the bill in committee. In the public sphere, the shrewd lobbying efforts to derail the bill were perceived to be pro-troll interests. The lobbying came from pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, patent attorneys, and, to the surprise of everyone, universities.  Little wonder that critics overreacted and suggested universities were in partnership with trolls: even if they were wrong, these accusations stung.

University associations took that position out of a sincere belief in the dogma of patents and out of fear that the proposed anti-troll legislation limited their ability to sue patent infringers. However, their convictions stand on shaky ground and their material interests are not those of the vast majority of universities.

A reversal of that position is not only possible, but would be timely. When anti-troll legislation is again introduced in Congress, universities should distance themselves from efforts to protect the policy status quo that so benefits patent trolls. It is not altogether improbable that Congress sees fit to exempt universities from some of the requirements that the law would impose. University associations could show Congress the merit of such exemptions in consideration of the universities’ constant and significant contributions to states, regions, and the nation. However, no such concessions could ever be expected if the universities continue to place themselves in the company of those who profit from patent management.

No asset is more valuable for universities than their prestige. It is the ample recognition of their value in society that guarantees tax dollars will continue to flow into universities. While acting legally to protect their patent rights, universities are nevertheless toying with their own legitimacy. Let those universities that stand to gain from litigation act in their self-interest, but do not let them speak for all universities. When university associations advocate for stronger patent protection, they do the majority of universities a disservice. These associations should better represent the interests of all their members by advocating a more neutral position about patent reform, by publicly praising universities’ restraint on patent litigation, and by promoting a culture and readiness in technology transfer offices to appraise each patent not by its market value but by its social value. At the same time, the majority of universities that obtain neither private nor social benefits from patenting should press their political representatives to adopt a more balanced approach to policy advocacy, lest they squander the reputation of the entire university system.

       

This post originally appeared on the Center for Technology Innovation’s TechTank blog.

Universities cash handsome awards on infringement cases

This October, a jury found Apple Inc. guilty of infringing a patent of the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) and ordered the tech giant to pay $234 million. The university scored a big financial victory, but this hardly meant any gain for the good name of the university.

The plaintiffs argued successfully in court that Apple infringed their 1998 patent on a predictor circuit that greatly improved the efficiency of microchips used in the popular iPhone 5s, 6, and 6 Plus. Apple first responded by challenging the validity of the patent, but the US Patent and Trademark Office ruled in favor of the university. Apple plans to appeal, but the appellate court is not likely to reverse the lower court’s decision.

This is not the first time this university has asserted its patents rights (UW sued Intel in 2008 for this exact same patent and reportedly settled for $110 million). Nor is this the first time universities in general have taken infringers to court. Prominent cases in recent memory include Boston University, which sued several companies for infringement of a patent for blue light-emitting diodes and settled out of court with most of them, and Carnegie Mellon, who was awarded $237 million by the federal appellate court on its infringement suit against Marvell, a semiconductor company, for its use of an enhanced detector of data in hard drives called Kavcic detectors.

Means not always aligned with aims in patent law

When university patented inventions emerge from federal research grants, infringement suits test the accepted interpretations of current patent law.

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 extended patent law and gave small-business and universities the right to take title to patents from federal research grants—later it was amended to extend the right to all federal grantees regardless of size. The ostensible aim of this act is to “to promote the utilization of inventions arising from federally supported research or development.” Under the law, a condition for universities (or any other government research performers) to keep their exclusive rights on those patents is that they or their licensees take “effective steps to achieve practical application” of those patents. Bayh-Dole was not designed to create a new source of revenue for universities. If companies are effectively using university technologies, Bayh-Dole’s purpose is served without need of patents.

To understand this point, consider a counterfactual: What if the text of Bayh-Dole had been originally composed to grant a conditional right to patents for federal research grantees? The condition could be stated like this: “This policy seeks to promote the commercialization of federally funded research and to this end it will use the patent system. Grantees may take title to patents if and only if other mechanisms for disseminating and developing those inventions into useful applications prove unsuccessful.” Under this imagined text, the universities could still take title to patents on their inventions if they or the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office were not aware that the technologies were being used in manufactures.

But no court would find their infringement claim meritorious if the accused companies could demonstrate that, absent of willful infringement, they had in fact used the technologies covered by university patents in their commercial products. In this case, other mechanisms for disseminating and developing the technologies would have proven successful indeed. The reality that Bayh-Dole did not mandate such a contingent assignation of rights creates a contradiction between its aims and the means chosen to advance those aims for the subset of patents that were already in use by industry.

I should remark that UW’s predictor circuit resulted from grants from NSF and DARPA and there is no indication that the university exercised its patent rights with any less vigor just because the original research was funded by public funds. In fact, it is fully expected from universities to aggressively assert their patent rights regardless of the source of funding for the original research.

You can have an answer for every question and still lose the debate

It is this litigious attitude that puts off many observers. While the law may very well allow universities to be litigious, universities could still refuse to exercise their rights under circumstances in which those rights are not easily reconciled with the public mission of the university.

Universities administrators, tech transfer personnel, and particularly the legal teams winning infringement cases have legitimate reasons to wonder why universities are publicly scorned. After all, they are acting within the law and simply protecting their patent rights; they are doing what any rational person would do. They may be really surprised when critics accuse universities of becoming allies of patent trolls, or of aiding and abetting their actions. Such accusations are unwarranted. Trolls are truants; the universities are venerable institutions. Patent trolls would exploit the ambiguities of patent law and the burdens of due process to their own benefit and to the detriment of truly productive businesses and persons. In stark contrast, universities are long established partners of democracy, respected beyond ideological divides for their abundant contributions to society.

The critics may not be fully considering the intricacies of patent law. Or they may forget that universities are in need of additional revenue—higher education has not seen public financial support increase in recent years, with federal grants roughly stagnated and state funding falling drastically in some states. Critics may also ignore that revenues collected from licensing of patents, favorable court rulings, and out-of-court settlements, are to a large extent (usually two thirds of the total) plugged back into the research enterprise.

University attorneys may have an answer for every point that critics raise, but the overall concern of critics should not be dismissed outright. Given that many if not most university patents can be traced back to research funded by tax dollars, there is a legitimate reason for observers to expect universities to manage their patents with a degree of restraint. There is also a legitimate reason for public disappointment when universities do not seem to endeavor to balance the tensions between their rights and duties.

Substantive steps to improve the universities’ public image

Universities can become more responsive to public expectations about their character not only by promoting their good work, but also by taking substantive steps to correct misperceptions.

First, when universities discover a case of proven infringement, they should take companies to court as a measure of last resort. If a particular company refuses to negotiate in good faith and an infringement case ends up in court, the universities should be prepared to demonstrate to the court of public opinion that they have tried, with sufficient insistence and time, to negotiate a license and even made concessions in pricing the license. In the case of the predictor circuit patent, it seems that the University of Wisconsin-Madison tried to license the technology and Apple refused, but the university would be in a much better position if it could demonstrate that the licensing deals offered to Apple would have turned to be far less expensive for the tech company.

Second, universities would be well advised not to join any efforts to lobby Congress for stronger patent protection. At least two reasons substantiate this suggestion. First, as a matter of principle, the dogmatic belief that without patents there is no innovation is wrong. Second, as a matter of material interest, universities as a group do not have a financial interest in patenting. It’s worth elaborating these points a bit more.

Neither historians nor social science researchers have settled the question about the net effects of patents on innovation. While there is evidence of social benefits from patent-based innovation, there is also evidence of social costs associated with patent-monopolies, and even more evidence of momentous innovations that required no patents. What’s more, the net social benefit varies across industries and over time. Research shows economic areas in which patents do spur innovation and economic sectors where it actually hinders them. This research explains, for instance, why some computer and Internet giants lobby Congress in the opposite direction to the biotech and big pharma industries. Rigorous industrial surveys of the 1980s and 1990s found that companies in most economic sectors did not use patents as their primary tool to protect their R&D investments.

Yet patenting has increased rapidly over the past four decades. This increase includes industries that once were uninterested in patents. Economic analyses have shown that this new patenting is a business strategy against patent litigation. Companies are building patent portfolios as a defensive strategy, not because they are innovating more. The university’s public position on patent policy should acknowledge that the debate on the impact of patents on innovation is not settled and that this impact cannot be observed in the aggregate, but must be considered in the context of each specific economic sector, industry, or even market. From this vantage point, universities could then turn up or down the intensity with which they negotiate licenses and pursue compensation for infringement. Universities would better assert their commitment to their public mission if they compute on a case by case basis the balance between social benefits and costs for each of its controversial patents.

As to the material interest in patents, it is understandable that some patent attorneys or the biotech lobby publicly espouse the dogma of patents, that there is no innovation without patents. After all, their livelihood depends on it. However, research universities as a group do not have any significant financial interest in stronger patent protection. As I have shown in a previous Brookings paper, the vast majority of research universities earn very little from their patent portfolios and about 87% of tech transfer offices operate in the red. Universities as a group receive so little income from licensing and asserting their patents relative to the generous federal support (below 3%), that if the federal government were to declare that grant reviewers should give a preference to universities that do not patent, all research universities would stop the practice at once. It is true that a few universities (like the University of Wisconsin-Madison) raise significant revenue from their patent portfolio, and they will continue to do so regardless of public protestations. But the majority of universities do not have a material interest in patenting.

Time to get it right on anti-troll legislation

Last year, the House of Representative passed legislation closing loopholes and introducing disincentives for patent trolls. Just as mirror legislation was about to be considered in the Senate, Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew it from the Judiciary Committee. It was reported that Sen. Harry Reid forced the hand of Mr. Leahy to kill the bill in committee. In the public sphere, the shrewd lobbying efforts to derail the bill were perceived to be pro-troll interests. The lobbying came from pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies, patent attorneys, and, to the surprise of everyone, universities.  Little wonder that critics overreacted and suggested universities were in partnership with trolls: even if they were wrong, these accusations stung.

University associations took that position out of a sincere belief in the dogma of patents and out of fear that the proposed anti-troll legislation limited the universities’ ability to sue patent infringers. However, their convictions stand on shaky ground and only a few universities sue for infringement. In taking that policy position, university associations are representing neither the interests nor the beliefs of the vast majority of universities.

A reversal of that position is not only possible, but would be timely. When anti-troll legislation is again introduced in Congress, universities should distance themselves from efforts to protect the policy status quo that so benefits patent trolls. It is not altogether improbable that Congress sees fit to exempt universities from some of the requirements that the law would impose. University associations could show Congress the merit of such exemptions in consideration of the universities’ constant and significant contributions to states, regions, and the nation. However, no such concessions could ever be expected if the universities continue to place themselves in the company of those who profit from patent management.

No asset is more valuable for universities than their prestige. It is the ample recognition of their value in society that guarantees tax dollars will continue to flow into universities. While acting legally to protect their patent rights, universities are nevertheless toying with their own legitimacy. Let those universities that stand to gain from litigation act in their self-interest, but do not let them speak for all universities. When university associations advocate for stronger patent protection, they do the majority of universities a disservice. These associations should better represent the interests of all their members by advocating a more neutral position about patent reform, by publicly praising universities’ restraint on patent litigation, and by promoting a culture and readiness in technology transfer offices to appraise each patent not by its market value but by its social value. At the same time, the majority of universities that obtain neither private nor social benefits from patenting should press their political representatives to adopt a more balanced approach to policy advocacy, lest they squander the reputation of the entire university system.

Editor's Note: The post was corrected to state that UW’s predictor circuit did originate from federally funded research.

       

The promise of geoengineering is placing average global temperature under human control, and is thus considered a powerful instrument for the international community to deal with global warming. While great energy has been devoted to learning more about the natural systems that it would affect, questions of political nature have received far less consideration. Taking as a given that regional effects will be asymmetric, the nations of the world will only give their consent to deploying this technology if they can be given assurances of a fair compensation mechanism, something like an insurance policy. The question of compensation reveals that the politics of geoengineering are far more difficult than the technical aspects.

What is Geoengineering?

In June 1991, Mount Pinatubo exploded, throwing a massive amount of volcanic sulfate aerosols into the high skies. The resulting cloud dispersed over weeks throughout the planet and cooled its temperature on average 0.5° Celsius over the next two years. If this kind of natural phenomenon could be replicated and controlled, the possibility of engineering the Earth’s climate is then within reach.

Spraying aerosols in the stratosphere is one method of solar radiation management (SRM), a class of climate engineering that focuses on increasing the albedo, i.e. reflectivity, of the planet’s atmosphere. Other SRM methods include brightening clouds by increasing their content of sea salt. A second class of geo-engineering efforts focuses on carbon removal from the atmosphere and includes carbon sequestration (burying it deep underground) and increasing land or marine vegetation. Of all these methods, SRM is appealing for its effectiveness and low costs; a recent study put the cost at about $5 to $8 billion per year.¹

Not only is SRM relatively inexpensive, but we already have the technological pieces that assembled properly would inject the skies with particles that reflect sunlight back into space. For instance, a fleet of modified Boeing 747s could deliver the necessary payload. Advocates of geoengineering are not too concerned about developing the technology to effect SRM, but about its likely consequences, not only in terms of slowing global warming but the effects on regional weather. And there lies the difficult question for geoengineering: the effects of SRM are likely to be unequally distributed across nations.

Here is one example of these asymmetries: Julia Pongratz and colleagues at the department of Global Ecology of the Carnegie Institution for Science estimated a net increase in yields of wheat, corn, and rice from SRM modified weather. However, the study also found a redistributive effect with equatorial countries experiencing lower yields.² We can then expect that equatorial countries will demand fair compensation to sign on the deployment of SRM, which leads to two problems: how to calculate compensation, and how to agree on a compensation mechanism.

The calculus of compensation

What should be the basis for fair compensation? One view of fairness could be that, every year, all economic gains derived from SRM are pooled together and distributed evenly among the regions or countries that experience economic losses.

If the system pools gains from SRM and distributes them in proportion to losses, questions about the balance will only be asked in years in which gains and losses are about the same. But if losses are far greater than the gains; then this would be a form of insurance that cannot underwrite some of the incidents it intends to cover. People will not buy such an insurance policy; which is to say, some countries will not authorize SRM deployment. In the reverse, if the pool has a large balance left after paying out compensations, then winners of SRM will demand lower compensation taxes.

Further complicating the problem is the question of how to separate gains or losses that can be attributed to SRM from regional weather fluctuations. Separating the SRM effect could easily become an intractable problem because regional weather patterns are themselves affected by SRM.  For instance, any year that El Niño is particularly strong, the uncertainty about the net effect of SRM will increase exponentially because it could affect the severity of the oceanic oscillation itself. Science can reduce uncertainty but only to a certain degree, because the better we understand nature, the more we understand the contingency of natural systems. We can expect better explanations of natural phenomena from science, but it would be unfair to ask science to reduce greater understanding to a hard figure that we can plug into our compensation equation.

Still, greater complexity arises when separating SRM effects from policy effects at the local and regional level. Some countries will surely organize better than others to manage this change, and preparation will be a factor in determining the magnitude of gains or losses. Inherent to the problem of estimating gains and losses from SRM is the inescapable subjective element of assessing preparation. 

The politics of compensation

Advocates of geoengineering tell us that their advocacy is not about deploying SRM; rather, it is about better understanding the scientific facts before we even consider deployment. It’s tempting to believe that the accumulating science on SRM effects would be helpful. But when we consider the factors I just described above, it is quite possible that more science will also crystalize the uncertainty about exact amounts of compensation. The calculus of gain or loss, or the difference between the reality and a counterfactual of what regions and countries will experience requires certainty, but science only yields irreducible uncertainty about nature.

The epistemic problems with estimating compensation are only to be compounded by the political contestation of those numbers. Even within the scientific community, different climate models will yield different results, and since economic compensation is derived from those models’ output, we can expect a serious contestation of the objectivity of the science of SRM impact estimation. Who should formulate the equation? Who should feed the numbers into it? A sure way to alienate scientists from the peoples of the world is to ask them to assert their cognitive authority over this calculus. 

What’s more, other parts of the compensation equation related to regional efforts to deal with SRM effect are inherently subjective. We should not forget the politics of asserting compensation commensurate to preparation effort; countries that experience low losses may also want compensation for their efforts preparing and coping with natural disasters.

Not only would a compensation equation be a sham, it would be unmanageable. Its legitimacy would always be in question. The calculus of compensation may seem a way to circumvent the impasses of politics and define fairness mathematically. Ironically, it is shot through with subjectivity; is truly a political exercise.

Can we do without compensation?

Technological innovations are similar to legislative acts, observed Langdon Winner.³ Technical choices of the earliest stage in technical design quickly “become strongly fixed in material equipment, economic investment, and social habit, [and] the original flexibility vanishes for all practical purposes once the initial commitments are made.” For that reason, he insisted, "the same careful attention one would give to the rules, roles, and relationships of politics must also be given to such things as the building of highways, the creation of television networks, and the tailoring of seeming insignificant features on new machines."

If technological change can be thought of as legislative change, we must consider how such a momentous technology as SRM can be deployed in a manner consonant with our democratic values. Engineering the planet’s weather is nothing short of passing an amendment to Planet Earth’s Constitution. One pesky clause in that constitutional amendment is a fair compensation scheme. It seems so small a clause in comparison to the extent of the intervention, the governance of deployment and consequences, and the international commitments to be made as a condition for deployment (such as emissions mitigation and adaptation to climate change). But in the short consideration afforded here, we get a glimpse of the intractable political problem of setting up a compensation scheme. And yet, if the clause were not approved by a majority of nations, a fair compensation scheme has little hope to be consonant with democratic aspirations.

---

¹McClellan, Justin, David W Keith, Jay Apt. 2012. Cost analysis of stratospheric albedo modification delivery systems. Environmental Research Letters 7(3): 1-8.

²Pongratz, Julia, D. B. Lobell, L. Cao, K. Caldeira. 2012. Nature Climate Change 2, 101–105.

³Winner, Langdon. 1980. Do artifacts have politics? Daedalus (109) 1: 121-136.

       

       

       

       

       

As President Obama prepares to give the final State of the Union address of his presidency tonight, he’s promised to stay away from the technocrat’s laundry list of to-do’s. Instead, he’s expected to deliver a speech that will remind his fellow citizens of their ability to “come together as one American family.” It’s going to be a tough sell, especially when the citizens are terrified of outsiders and suspicious of one another.

Most of the fear and paranoia revolves around the Islamic State group. Although the group poses far less of a threat to the United States than to our allies and friends in Europe and the Middle East, it is the sum of all fears in the minds of many Americans—an immigrant, terrorist, cyber, WMD, genocidal threat rolled into one. Its name alone can be invoked to indict Obama’s national security and immigration policies—substantive criticisms are unnecessary.

[T]he Islamic State group...is the sum of all fears in the minds of many Americans.

Most of those fears are overblown, but the president will want to tackle them each of them in his speech if he intends to calm fears and bring people together. He’ll explain why taking in refugees is not just living up to American values but also smart counterterrorism. He’ll showcase evidence that the military campaign against the Islamic State in the Middle East is bearing fruit. He’ll reassure Americans that the Islamic State can’t plant a skilled operative into this country and remind them that the best way to stop the unskilled lone wolf shooters inspired by the Islamic State is to close gun loop holes and monitor their behavior online before they act. He’ll demonstrate his commitment to blunting Islamic State recruitment, touting changes to how the government counters the Islamic State’s appeal online and in America’s big cities.

All of that is well and good, but it’s a bureaucrat’s (or think tanker’s) effort at reassuring the public. To truly succeed in mitigating America’s fears and bringing citizens together, our country’s leader has to acknowledge that their fears are real and explain what our enemies hope to gain by engendering them. While Americans’ fears may be overblown, they won’t be deflated by technocratic hot air.

      

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The Center for 21st Century Security Intelligence seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium

On March 1, the seventh annual military and federal fellow research symposium featured the independent research produced by members of the military services and federal agencies who are currently serving at think-tanks and universities across the nation. Organized by the fellows themselves, the symposium provides a platform for building greater awareness of the cutting-edge work that America’s military and governmental leaders are producing on key national security policy issues.

With presidential primary season well underway, it’s clear that whoever emerges in November 2016 as the next commander-in-chief will have their hands full with a number of foreign policy and national security choices. This year’s panels explored these developing issues and their prospects for resolution after the final votes have been counted. During their keynote conversation, the Honorable Michèle Flournoy discussed her assessment of the strategic threat environment with General John Allen, USMC (Ret.), who also provided opening remarks on strategic leadership and the importance of military and other federal fellowship experiences.

 

Video

• Opening remarks and The future of the All-Volunteer Force
• The next generation of terrorism
• Harnessing technology in the future force
• Keynote discussion: Assessing the strategic environment
• To intervene, or not to intervene?

Audio

• Beyond 2016: Security challenges and opportunities for the next administration

       

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On June 13, Brookings launched a new public opinion survey focusing on American attitudes toward refugees from the Middle East and from Syria in particular.

With violence in the Middle East and the associated refugee crisis continuing unabated, these issues remain prominent in Washington policy debates. It is therefore increasingly important for U.S. policymakers, political candidates, and voters to understand the American public’s attitudes toward the conflicts in the Middle East and the refugees fleeing those crises.

On June 13, Brookings launched a new public opinion survey focusing on American attitudes toward refugees from the Middle East and from Syria in particular. Conducted by Nonresident Senior Fellow Shibley Telhami, the poll looks at a range of questions, from whether Americans feel the United States has a moral obligation to take in refugees to whether these refugees pose a threat to national security. The national poll takes into account an expanded set of demographic variables and includes an over-sized sample of millennials.  

Telhami was joined in discussion by POLITICO Magazine and Boston Globe contributor Indira Lakshmanan. William McCants, senior fellow and director of the Project on U.S. Relations with the Islamic World at Brookings, provided introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

This event launched the Brookings Refugees Forum, which will take place on June 14 and 15.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #RefugeeCrisis.

Video

• American attitudes on refugees from the Middle East - Part 1
• American attitudes on refugees from the Middle East - Part 2

Audio

• American attitudes on refugees from the Middle East

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160613_telhami_poll_presentation
• 20160613_american_opinion_refugees_transcript

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

       

Editors’ Note: Trump’s explanation of the economics of America’s security alliances misses several core realities, argues Michael O’Hanlon. The benefits of certain alliances can be debated—but they hardly constitute the wholesale drain on American coffers that he has made them out to be. This article was originally published on The National Interest.

In his April 27 foreign-policy speech in Washington, Donald Trump leveled a number of critiques at U.S. allies around the world. He began to flesh out his now-familiar critiques of how America’s many allies and security partners—which number about sixty around the world—fail to do their fair share for the common defense.

It is only fair to acknowledge that some of Trump’s arguments about military burden sharing have merit. Most notably, America dramatically outspends most allies on its armed forces. Of course, the United States has the largest economy of any Western ally and thus, rather naturally, the largest defense budget by far. But relative to GDP, its contributions are still disproportionate. The United States spends about 3 percent of gross domestic product on its military. NATO allies are pledged to devote 2 percent of GDP each to their armed forces, but the alliance average is less than 1.4 percent. Only the UK, France, Poland, Greece, and Estonia are near or above 2 percent. Germany is at just 1.1 percent of GDP; Italy and the Netherlands and Turkey check in at 1.2 percent; Belgium and Canada do not even reach 1.0 percent. Yes, some of these countries contribute impressively—more than the United States does, relative to national economic strength—in areas such as development assistance and refugee receptivity, but Trump still has a fair point on this basic and important measure of military preparedness.

On balance, however, Trump’s explanation of the economics of America’s security alliances misses several core realities. The benefits of certain alliances can be debated—but they hardly constitute the wholesale drain on American coffers that he has made them out to be.

Trump’s explanation of the economics of America’s security alliances misses several core realities.

First and foremost, counting the United States as well, the broad coalition of U.S.-led Western alliances accounts for some two-thirds of world GDP and two-thirds of global military spending. This situation is exceedingly advantageous to America. Never before in history has such a powerful strategic block of countries been created, especially in the absence of a clear central threat. Of course, America’s allies do not always do as it would wish. But today’s situation is far better than having two or more rivalrous groups of strong countries jostling for position with each other, and potentially engaging in arms races or open conflict.

In terms of military burden sharing per se, other major alliances and security partnerships do a bit better than NATO, on average. In East Asia, South Korea devotes roughly 2.5 percent of GDP to its military. Taiwan and Australia are close to 2 percent. Japan is at 1.0 percent of GDP—but Washington has favored this level for decades itself, out of worry that higher spending could cause counterreactions among East Asian states fearing (rightly or wrongly) a return to Japanese militarism. In the Middle East, most of America’s security partners spend well over 5 percent of GDP on their militaries—for example, 6 percent for Israel, and more than 12 percent each for Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

The United States does not squander huge sums of money basing troops on the territories of its wealthy allies. The United States may spend $10 billion a year at most basing forces in key industrial or Western states—Japan, Korea and Australia in the Pacific region; Germany, Italy, and the UK in particular in Europe. That is only 2 percent of the defense budget. And of that $10 billion, half or more is paid by the host nations themselves. (The situation is different in places like Afghanistan, where specific crises or conflicts have led to more recent deployments of U.S. firepower, and where foreign basing is in fact quite expensive.)

Foreign basing of American forces can often save the United States money.

Foreign basing of American forces can often save the United States money. For example, homeporting an aircraft carrier battle group in Japan obviates the need to have perhaps three more carrier battle groups in the U.S. Navy’s overall fleet (at an investment cost approaching $50 billion) to sustain the same level of presence in the broader western Pacific region. U.S. airfields in Germany facilitate deployments to the Middle East and Afghanistan; the alternative to such bases could well be a need for huge additional numbers of refueling aircraft.

Returning to the original argument: Trump is indeed right that the United States spends a great deal of its large defense budget to defend allies abroad. It is tough to attribute specific amounts to each region, because America’s military forces are flexible. Most are based in the United States in peacetime; most can swing east or west in times of need. But in broad terms, it is not unreasonable to divide up America’s $600 billion defense budget today into roughly four major categories: central defense needs (such as research and development, homeland security, global intelligence assets and operations), forces for Europe, forces for the Asia-Pacific and forces for the broader Middle East. This logic should not be taken too literally, but one could apportion roughly $100 billion to $200 billion for each of these four main purposes of U.S. military power.

In theory, Trump could propose eliminating the forces and defense expenditures that America devotes to any of these key strategic regions where local allies do not wind up doing their fair share, as he has insisted they must. With such a bold stroke, for example, one could imagine pulling the United States out of NATO and reducing the $600 billion annual defense budget to something less than $500 billion. However, Trump says that America’s military should be built up regardless of what happens with these various key alliances, arguing that spending on the nation’s armed forces is one of the most appealing possible investments the country could make. I tend to agree with that latter point—but it contradicts the earlier proposal to scale back U.S. defense spending for any region that shirks its own duties.

The verdict is simple: Trump raises a couple of valid specific critiques about alliance burden sharing in the world today. But he gets several specific points wrong, and misses the big picture: on balance, America’s alliances help this country to undergird a global security system that has dramatically reduced the prevalence of interstate war in modern times, while currently costing the country only 3 percent of its gross domestic product. To paraphrase Trump himself, this is a very good investment—and one that the U.S. global system of alliances and bases does much to make possible.

      

Editors’ Note: Since President François Hollande’s 2012 election, France has launched an Asia-wide initiative in an attempt to halt declining trade figures and improve its overall leverage with the region, write Philippe Le Corre and Michael O’Hanlon. This piece originally appeared on The National Interest.

On April 26, France’s defense shipbuilding company DCNS secured a victory in winning, against Japan and Germany, a long-awaited $40 billion Australian submarine deal. It may not come as a surprise to anyone who has been following France’s growing interest in the Asia-Pacific for the past five years. Since President François Hollande’s 2012 election, the country has launched an Asia-wide initiative in an attempt to halt declining trade figures and improve its overall leverage with the region.

Visiting New Caledonia last weekend, Prime Minister Manuel Valls immediately decided on the spot to fly to Australia to celebrate the submarine news. Having been at odds in the 1990s over France’s decision to test its nuclear weapon capacities on an isolated Pacific island, Paris and Canberra have begun a close partnership over the last decade, culminating in the decision by Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, in power since September 2015.

Unlike its Japanese competitor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI), DCNS promised to build the submarine main parts on Australian soil, creating 2,900 jobs in the Adelaide area. The French also secured support from U.S. defense contractors Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, one of which will eventually build the twelve shortfin Barracuda submarines’ combat systems. Meanwhile, this unexpected victory, in light of the close strategic relationship between Australia and Japan, has shed light on France’s sustained ambitions in the Asia-Pacific region. Thanks to its overseas territories of New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, French Polynesia and Clipperton Island, France has the world’s second-largest maritime domain. It is also part of QUAD, the Quadrilateral Defence Coordination Group that also includes the United States, Australia and New Zealand, and which coordinates security efforts in the Pacific, particularly in the maritime domain, by supporting island states to robustly and sustainably manage their natural resources, including fisheries.

France is also attempting to correct an excessive focus on China by developing new ties with India, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asian countries, which have all received a number of French ministerial visits. France’s overseas territories also include a presence in the southern part of the Indian Ocean, with the islands of Mayotte, Réunion and the Scattered Islands, and French Southern and Antarctic Territories, as well as the northwest region of the Indian Ocean through its permanent military presence in the United Arab Emirates and Djibouti. Altogether these presences encompass one million French citizens. This sets France apart from its fellow EU member states regarding defense and security in the Asia-Pacific, particularly as France is a top supplier of military equipment to several Asian countries including Singapore, Malaysia, India and Australia. Between 2008 and 2012, Asian nations accounted for 28 percent of French defense equipment sales, versus 12 percent during 1998–2002. (More broadly, 70 percent of European containerized merchandise trade transits through the Indian Ocean.)

Despite its unique position, France is also supportive of a joint European Union policy toward the region, especially when it comes to developments in the South China Sea. Last March, with support from Paris, Berlin, London and other members, Federica Mogherini, the EU’s High representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, issued a statement criticizing China’s actions:

“The EU is committed to maintaining a legal order for the seas and oceans based upon the principles of international law, as reflected notably in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). This includes the maintenance of maritime safety, security, and cooperation, freedom of navigation and overflight. While not taking a position on claims to land territory and maritime space in the South China Sea, the EU urges all claimants to resolve disputes through peaceful means, to clarify the basis of their claims, and to pursue them in accordance with international law including UNCLOS and its arbitration procedures.”

This does not mean that France is neglecting its “global partnership” with China. In 2014, the two countries celebrated fifty years of diplomatic relations; both governments conduct annual bilateral dialogues on international and security issues. But as a key EU state, a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a significant contributor to the Asia-Pacific’s security, France has launched a multidimensional Asia policy.

All of this should be seen as welcome news by Washington. While there would have been advantages to any of the three worthy bids, a greater French role in the Asia-Pacific should be beneficial. At this crucial historical moment in China's rise and the region's broader blossoming, the United States needs a strong and engaged European partnership to encourage Beijing in the right direction and push back together when that does not occur. Acting in concert with some of the world's other major democracies can add further legitimacy to America's actions to uphold the international order in the Asia-Pacific. To be sure, Japan, South Korea and Australia are key U.S. partners here and will remain so. But each also has its own limitations (and in Japan's case, a great deal of historical baggage in dealing with China).

European states are already heavily involved in economic interactions with China. The submarine decision will help ensure a broader European role that includes a hard-headed perspective on security trends as well.

      

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A conversation with Senator John McCain

On May 19, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings (21CSI) hosted Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) to address major reforms to the organization of the Department of Defense, the defense acquisition system, and the military health system included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, which is planned for consideration by the Senate as soon as next week.

Given his role as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain also addressed ongoing budget challenges for the Department of Defense and the military and his views on what needs to be done. Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow and co-director of 21CSI, moderated the discussion.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #FY17NDAA

Video

• Introduction by Martin Indyk, and remarks by Sen. John McCain
• Discussion between Sen. John McCain and Michael O'Hanlon

Audio

• New demands on the military and the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160519_mccain_defense_transcript

      

Editors’ Note: One week after this post was originally published, President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines said that the United States must take action in the South China Sea if China takes steps towards reclaiming the Scarborough Shoal. Michael O’Hanlon updated this post on May 23 with a brief response, below. The original post appears in full after the break.

Predictably, some experts—as well as now the Philippines' leader, President Benigno Aquino—are arguing that the United States should militarily prevent China from seizing the Scarborough Shoal, a disputed but basically worthless land formation in the open waters between the Philippines and China. The formation is admittedly three times closer to the Philippines than to China, but it is not important—and it is definitely not worth fighting China over. Loose talk of red lines and of the supposed need for the United States to "take military action" makes the problem sound far too antiseptic and easily manageable. In fact, any direct use of military power that resulted in the deaths of Chinese (or American) military personnel would raise serious dangers of escalation. 

The United States does need to ensure access to the sea lanes of the South China Sea. And it should help protect the populated areas of any allied country, including the Philippines. It should not recognize Chinese territorial or economic claims to areas surrounding disputed (or reclaimed) land formations, even if China occupies some of these islets and other features. And it should consider proportionate responses in the economic realm to any Chinese aggression over the Scarborough Shoal, as well as the possibility of expanded and permanent U.S. military presence in the area. But it should not shoot at Chinese ships, planes, or troops over this issue. It's just not worth it, and we have more appropriate and measured options for response if needed.

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[Original post, from May 12]

President-elect Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, known for his Trump-like rhetoric and supra-legal methods of reducing crime while mayor of Davao City on the island of Mindanao, is already causing consternation in many parts of the world. His previous tolerance for vigilantes as a crime-fighting tool, for example, is cause for concern.

But in other cases, we should relax and keep an open mind. For example, while The Washington Post editorial page has lamented that he appears willing to do a deal with Beijing—accepting Chinese investment in the Philippines while allowing China to enforce its claims to the uninhabited Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea—that particular outcome may actually be good for the United States. 

Provocateurs in Beijing

Let’s situate the Scarborough Shoal issue in broader context. In recent days, the United States sailed a major Navy vessel, the William P. Lawrence, within 12 miles of the Fiery Cross Reef, a land formation in the Spratly Islands of the South China Sea that China has transformed into a 700-acre artificial island. China objected strenuously. Meanwhile, everyone awaits the ruling of an international arbitration panel, expected later this spring, on whether China or the Philippines (or neither) is the rightful claimant to the Scarborough Shoal.

To be sure, the broad problem starts in Beijing; The Washington Post is not wrong on that basic point. Incredulously, invoking fishing histories from many centuries ago, China claims not only most of the shoals and sand bars and small islands of the South China Sea, and not only the surrounding fisheries and seabed resources, but the water itself. Its so-called nine-dash line, which encompasses almost all of the South China Sea—including areas much closer to the Philippines and Indonesia and other key countries than to China’s own territory—can be interpreted as a claim to sovereign ownership. Fears that it will declare an associated air defense identification zone further complicate the picture.

Map of the South China Sea locating China's nine-dash line claim on the South China Sea, and the Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Note: The Spratleys, Parcels, and other islands in the South China Sea are disputed to various degrees by different parties. Photo credit: Reuters.

America’s aims are far less disruptive to the status quo. But of course, for America, the region is also much further away. In Chinese eyes, we already have our Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico—not to mention our extensive east and west seacoasts and other maritime domains. By contrast, China is largely hemmed in by land on three sides and Japan together with the U.S. Navy on the fourth. For Washington to deny China even a modest version of its own special waters strikes many in Beijing as haughty and hegemonic. 

America’s aims are far less disruptive to the status quo.

Choosing our historical analogies wisely

Of course, the United States is making no claims of its own in the region. Nor is Washington trying to dictate outcomes on all disputes. Washington does not take a position on who owns the land features of the South China Sea. Nor does it oppose any plan for joint exploitation of the area’s resources that regional states can agree on. Nor can the United States, or any other country, be expected to let China restrict naval and commercial shipping maneuvers through this region, through which at least one-third of the world’s commerce traverses. Nor should Washington abandon treaty allies—most notably in this case, the Philippines—if they come under fire from Chinese warships (as has happened before). And in fairness to Filipinos, the Scarborough Shoal is much closer to their country than to China, by a distance factor of more than three to one.

Yet there is a problem in Washington’s thinking, too. Given the way rising powers have behaved throughout history, it is unrealistic to think that China wouldn’t seek to translate its greater economic and military strength into some type of strategic benefit. Yet Washington expects China to stop building artificial islands, to abstain from deploying military assets to the region, and to accept adjudication of disputes over territory by an international panel.

... it is unrealistic to think that China wouldn’t seek to translate its greater economic and military strength into some type of strategic benefit.

Many Americans would view any bending of the rules in Beijing’s favor as appeasement and thus an invitation to further imperialistic behavior by China. We have learned the lessons of World War II and the Cold War very well. 

But it is also important to bear in mind the lessons of World War I, when great powers competed over relatively minor issues and wound up in a terrible conflict. Just as Germany had been largely shut out of the colonialism competition prior to 1914, making its leaders anxious to right what they saw as historical wrongs in advancing their own interests once they had the capacity, it is possible that China will refuse to accept the status quo going forward. By this alternative reading of history, our job should be to persuade China to be content with very minor adjustments to the existing global order—and to remind Chinese that they have benefited greatly from that order—rather than to oppose each and every small act of Chinese assertiveness as if it portended the first of many dominoes to fall. The good news in this case is that China is not challenging existing state borders, threatening established population centers, or using lethal force as a default instrument of state power. Its behavior is worrying, to be sure—but not particularly surprising, and by the standards of history, relatively benign to date.

Walk the line

With this perspective in mind, the United States should continue to insist on freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, and sail its ships wherever it wants, including within 12 miles of reclaimed islands. It should punish China for any future, limited use of military violence against a country like the Philippines by shoring up alliances, increasing forward U.S. military deployments, and imposing economic sanctions in concert with allies. But it should not itself use lethal force to directly respond to most small possible Chinese provocations or to evict People’s Liberation Army forces from disputed islands and shoals. It should tolerate some modest degree of expanded Chinese military presence in the area. And it should encourage regional friends to accept deals on joint economic exploitation of the region’s resources in which China would in effect be first among equals—though of course the exact meaning of that phrase would require careful delineation. 

Its behavior is worrying, to be sure—but not particularly surprising, and by the standards of history, relatively benign to date.

Duterte’s willingness to do a deal with China would seem to fit with these criteria, without surrounding any substantial claims to Beijing, and without suggesting any weakening in its ties to the United States either. The Philippines shouldn’t concede meaningful economic resources in the waters and seabeds surrounding the Scarborough Shoal. But ownership and control of the land features themselves are a minor matter about which Manila might well usefully compromise.

The United States and China are likely to be jostling for position in the South China Sea for years. That is probably inevitable. It is also tolerable, if we keep our cool while also maintaining our resolve—and if we patiently look for an ultimate compromise on the issues that currently divide America and its regional friends from Beijing. Ironically, the strongman from Mindanao may help us along with this process.

      

Note: FBI Director James Comey recommended this week that no criminal charges be pressed against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton for her use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. And Attorney General Loretta Lynch has formally closed the Department of Justice’s investigation. But congressional Republicans—who called Comey to testify before the House Oversight committee yesterday—insist that Clinton’s conduct jeopardized U.S. national security.

As I wrote back in February, when it was revealed that 22 of the emails in question were deemed too classified to be made public: “Hillary's emails (even if they were released) could not do anything more than confirm or repudiate what has already been widely investigated.” I called for distinguishing mistakes from crimes and argued that Clinton’s use of a private email server never put America’s security at risk. 

Due to the renewed relevance of that post, it is re-posted below.

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What to make of the recent report that 22 emails from Hillary Clinton's private server, written while she was secretary of state during the first Obama term, contain such highly classified material that they cannot be released to the public? Republicans have seized on the latest news to argue that Hillary Clinton was careless or even reckless in her treatment of national secrets. They’ve thereby challenged her credentials and judgment as she pursues the presidency.

Clinton has acknowledged some mistakes in the use of a personal email account and server when she led the State Department, but her campaign has dismissed the latest news as evidence of a U.S. government classification system run amok that often slaps a top secret label on even the most innocuous of information. 

With the emails at issue now classified, it’s hard to understand the basis for this dispute very well. Who are we to believe? Most people are probably falling back on their preconceived views about Hillary, but it would be nice to find a more objective way to assess the latest news—especially as primary voting season begins.

A hypothetical

I can't be sure what's going on here either. But there have been reports that some of the sensitive emails might have involved the use of drones in certain parts of the world where the U.S. government has chosen not to announce or publicize its use of that technology. 

Let's explore that, on the hunch that it may be what's behind the latest brouhaha. For years, there has been a great deal of media coverage of how unmanned aerial systems, including armed ones, have been used in the broader war on terror. If there ever were any real secrets here, they have been very badly kept. Certainly, Hillary's emails (even if they were released) could not do anything more than confirm or repudiate what has already been widely investigated, in this country and around the world. It seems quite unlikely that she was so careless as to describe any technical aspects of those drones or to otherwise risk the leakage of information that was truly still secret (in the sense that word is normally used in the English language, rather than the way the U.S. government employs it when making classification determinations).

Hillary's emails (even if they were released) could not do anything more than confirm or repudiate what has already been widely investigated.

Imagine a situation in which the United States government wished to use force as part of a broader military operation that Congress had already approved in broad contours, going back to the 2001 Authorization on the Use of Military Force that followed the 9/11 attack. But the employment of force in a particular place was seen as politically sensitive—less so in the United States, where Congress had already authorized the conflict, but in a foreign country, where the government at issue was not willing or able to publicly support America's use of military force on its territory. This could be a situation where the foreign government in question actually had few qualms about the U.S. action, but did still not wish to be associated with them—in fact, it may have wanted the license to complain about them publicly, both to its own public and other nations. It wanted, in other words, to have its cake and eat it too.

In this situation, whether the U.S. decision to accept such constraints on its action was wise or not, it would not be allowable for an American public official to discuss the policy. The actual use of armed force would occur through covert elements of the U.S. government, and under domestic laws governing such activities. 

We would have twisted ourselves into knots to avoid displeasing a foreign government that otherwise might make a huge stink about our using American military power on its territory—and might even retaliate against us in some way if the information were publicly confirmed. Everyone in that country, the United States, and other places would have a strong suspicion of what we were actually doing, but there would be no official confirmation. It's not exactly plausible deniability. Call it implausible deniability, in fact.

In such a situation, as a top official in the United States, Hillary Clinton would perhaps have been an architect of the policy (or have inherited it from a previous presidency). Either way, she would be expected to abide by it, and treat the information as highly sensitive. If she did not do so, that was indeed a mistake on her part.

Distinguishing mistakes from crimes

But if this thought experiment bears any resemblance to what actually is behind those 22 emails, one more thing should also be clear—no major national secret was at risk of getting out because of Secretary Clinton's misjudgment. Her email practice was potentially a mistake, but no high crime, and America's security was never put at risk.

Of course, it's still up to voters to decide how to weigh this potential issue in the panoply of so many others that influence their choices for president. Even if I’m right in my guess about what's going on here, I don’t claim to be in a position to answer that question for anyone.

       

The terrible attack in Nice on July 14—Bastille Day—saddened us all. For a country that has done so much historically to promote democracy and human rights at home and abroad, France is paying a terrible and unfair price, even more than most countries. My colleagues Will McCants and Chris Meserole have carefully documented the toll that France, and certain other Francophone countries like Belgium, have suffered in recent years from global terrorism. It is heart wrenching.

From what we know so far, the attack was carried out by a deeply distraught, potentially deranged, and in any case extremely brutal local man from Nice of Tunisian descent and French nationality. Marital problems, the recent loss of his job, and a general sense of personal unhappiness seem to have contributed to the state of mind that led him to commit this heinous atrocity. Perhaps we will soon learn that ISIS, directly or indirectly, inspired the attack in one way or another as well. My colleague Dan Byman has already tapped into his deep expertise about terrorism to remind us that ISIS had in fact encouraged ramming attacks with vehicles before, even if the actual manifestation of such tactics in this case was mostly new. 

This attack will again raise the question: Why France? On this point, I do have a somewhat different take than some of my colleagues. The argument that France has partly brought these tragedies upon itself—perhaps because of its policies of secularism and in particular its limitations on when and where women can wear the veil in France—strikes me as unpersuasive. Its logical policy implications are also potentially disturbing, because if interpreted wrongly, it could lead to a debate on whether France should modify such policies so as to make itself less vulnerable to terrorism. That outcome, even if unintended, could dance very close to the line of encouraging appeasement of heinous acts of violence with policy changes that run counter to much of what French culture and society would otherwise favor. So I feel the need to push back.

Here are some of the arguments, as I see them, against blaming French culture or policy for this recent string of horrible attacks including the Charlie Hebdo massacre, the November 2015 mass shootings in Paris, and the Nice tragedy (as well as recent attacks in Belgium):

• Starting with the simplest point, we still do not know much about the perpetrator of the Nice killings. From what we do surmise so far, personal problems appear to be largely at the root of the violence—different from, but not entirely unlike, the case with the Orlando shooter, Omar Mateen.
• We need to be careful about drawing implications from a small number of major attacks. Since 2000, there have also been major attacks in the Western world by extremist jihadis or takfiris in New York, Washington, Spain, London, San Bernardino, Orlando, and Russia. None of these are Francophone. Even Belgium is itself a mixed country, linguistically and culturally.
• Partly for reasons of geography, as well as history, France does face a larger problem than some other European countries of individuals leaving its country to go to Syria or Iraq to fight for ISIS, and then returning. But it is hardly unique in the scale of this problem.
• Continental Europe has a specific additional problem that is not as widely shared in the United Kingdom or the United States: Its criminal networks largely overlap with its extremist and/or terrorist networks. This point may be irrelevant to the Nice attack, but more widely, extremists in France or Belgium can make use of illicit channels for moving people, money, and weapons that are less available to would-be jihadis in places like the U.K. (where the criminal networks have more of a Caribbean and sub-Saharan African character, meaning they overlap less with extremist networks).
• Of course, the greatest numbers of terrorist attacks by Muslim extremists occur in the broader Muslim world, with Muslims as the primary victims—from Iraq and Syria to Libya and Yemen and Somalia to South Asia. French domestic policies have no bearing on these, of course.

There is no doubt that good work by counterterrorism and intelligence forces is crucial to preventing future attacks. France has done well in this regard—though it surely can do better, and it is surely trying to get better. There is also no doubt that promoting social cohesion in a broad sense is a worthy goal. But I would hesitate, personally, to attribute any apparent trend line in major attacks in the West to a particular policy of a country like France—especially when the latter is in fact doing much to seek to build bridges, as a matter of national policy, with Muslims at home and abroad. 

There is much more to do in promoting social cohesion, to be sure, even here in America (though our own problems probably center more on race than on religion at the moment). But the Nice attacker almost assuredly didn’t attack because his estranged wife couldn’t wear a veil in the manner and/or places she wanted. At a moment like this in particular, I disagree with insinuations to the contrary.

       

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Barack Obama’s presidency has witnessed widespread change throughout Africa. His four trips there, spanning seven countries, reflect his belief in the continent’s potential and importance. African countries face many challenges that span issues of trade, investment, and development, as well as security and stability. With President Obama’s second term coming to an end, it is important to begin to reflect on his legacy and how his administration has helped frame the future of Africa.

On July 19, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings hosted a discussion on Africa policy. Matthew Carotenuto, professor at St. Lawrence University and author of “Obama and Kenya: Contested Histories and the Politics of Belonging” (Ohio University Press, 2016) discussed his research in the region. He was joined by Sarah Margon, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch. Brookings Senior Fellow Michael O'Hanlon partook in and moderated the discussion.

Video

• President Obama’s role in African security and development

Audio

• President Obama’s role in African security and development

Transcript

• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20160719_us_africa_transcript