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3232670	有图 <p> <p> <p>In Kadugli, a small town in Sudan’s South Kordofan state, peace work isn’t happening in meeting halls; it’s happening under a tree. That’s where a few local women gather every week, notebooks in hand, sitting in sun-faded plastic chairs. These are mother-to-mother support group sessions. There’s no press, no programme name, just a quiet effort to solve problems before they escalate.</p><p>A few weeks ago, a revenge killing shook the town. Emotions were high, and people were scared that more violence was coming. The women stepped in, moving between homes, talking with families, doing what they could to calm things down. No title or funding, just care. And it worked.</p><p>Across Sudan, national ceasefires are announced often, sometimes every few weeks. But they rarely hold. Since April 2023, the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has displaced millions. Ceasefires might be agreed on in theory, but they don’t impact the people trying to survive day by day. In these gaps, women are stepping in.</p>When peace agreements fall short<p>In regions like Darfur, the Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains, violence hasn’t stopped. Markets have been destroyed. Families have scattered. Children have been pulled out of school. And yet, even here, peace work is happening, it just doesn’t look like what we’re used to seeing.</p><p>In one town, a few women created a simple food-sharing group. The idea was to reduce hunger-driven theft and keep the peace between neighbours. In another, women started mediating between displaced families and host communities. They weren’t trained professionals, but they knew that tension can grow quietly and escalate fast. These aren’t large interventions. But they’re working.</p>Culture as a compass<p>Many of these women aren’t inventing new methods; they’re returning to what’s always existed. In Sudanese culture, women have often played a central role in reconciliation. Older women recall how meals, music, and even silence were once used to repair broken trust between families or ethnic groups.</p><img src="https://peaceinsight.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/20217025036_fa2810a860_c.width-800.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>During Ramadan in a town in Blue Nile State, a group of women organised joint iftar meals. These were shared between communities that hadn’t spoken since the violence began. Sitting down to break fast together reminded people of what they still shared. It didn’t solve everything, but it shifted something. Sometimes peace starts like that, quietly, with food and presence.</p><p>This works because it’s local, rooted in the communities and their traditions. These women aren’t outsiders; they’re neighbours. They’ve lost people too. They’ve fled, come back, and stayed. That garners trust, and that trust is the foundation for everything else.</p><p>Their work is also quick and practical. In places where services have collapsed, women are the ones running informal schools, helping kids find safe places to sleep, and figuring out ways to get medicine to the sick.</p><p>A 2024 report by an INGO active in Sudan found that women’s informal peace groups were more effective at preventing revenge violence than formal authorities, mainly because they were already on the ground and moved faster.</p>Where real support matters<p>Despite everything they’re doing, many of these women aren’t included in formal peace talks. Funding rarely reaches them. Organising community meetings can be risky in areas controlled by armed groups, putting them at heightened risk. Burnout is common. And yet, they keep going.</p><p>As one community organiser in Omdurman said during a local peacebuilding forum:</p><p> “We’re not asking to be included in a document. We’re already doing the work.” </p><p>If international actors want to help, it starts with listening. These women don’t need to be replaced or professionalised; they need safety, space, and some backing to keep doing what they’re already doing well.</p><img src="https://peaceinsight.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/4968089946_4459f8645d_c.width-800.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>Supporting this kind of work doesn’t require reinventing the wheel. It requires trust. It means asking: What are women already doing? What would help them do it better? Often, the answer isn’t much. Sometimes it’s just funding for safe transport, childcare, or a protected space to gather.</p><p>There’s no single answer to Sudan’s crisis, and no illusion that women’s efforts alone can end a war this complex. But what’s happening in these local spaces - under trees, in homes, during shared meals - is real. It’s happening quietly and without waiting for permission.</p><p>Too often, international peace efforts focus on the spectacle: summits, statements, high-level signatures. But these women are showing that peace isn’t only a political project, it’s a social one. It’s about protecting relationships, keeping kids in school, helping neighbours eat, and finding small ways to prevent tomorrow’s fight.</p><p>As the war drags on, and ceasefires continue to break, the women holding communities together need to be seen: not as symbols, but as strategists. They are doing the hard, daily work of keeping peace alive, even when the systems around them have failed.</p><p>If we want to understand what peace in Sudan looks like, we should start by listening to the women already building it.</p> </p> <p> <p> <img src="https://peaceinsight.s3.amazonaws.com/media/images/Me.2e16d0ba.fill-70x70.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer"> <p> <p> Louisa Eunice Louisa Eunice is a writer and peace researcher focused on African-led solutions to conflict. Her work centres local voices and underreported grassroots initiatives. She has written for The Continent, African Arguments, and other regional platforms. </p> Read more from Louisa Eunice </p> </p> </p> <p> <p> <p> Locations <p> Sudan </p> <p> Themes <p> Culture, media and advocacy Women, Peace and Security </p> <p> <p>Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views or position of Peace Direct.</p> </p> </p> </p> When ceasefires fail: How Sudanese women are quietly sustaining peace — Peace Insight	查看 6664	无国界和平建设者	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 20:35:38	word
3232669	无图 MACUA condemns assault of executive director at ministerial dinner <p> <time>10 July 2025</time> - Mining Affected Communities United in Action </p> <p>Mining Affected Communities United in Action condemns the treatment of Advice Office executive director at a ministerial stakeholder engagement dinner</p> <p>Mining Affected Communities United in Action (MACUA) strongly condemns the assault and intimidation of Mr. Christopher Rutledge, Executive Director of the MACUA-WAMUA Advice Office (MWAO), which occurred during the Post-Budget Vote Stakeholder Engagement Dinner hosted by the Minister of Mineral and Petroleum Resources, Mr. Gwede Mantashe, and Deputy Minister Ms. Phumzile Mgcina on the evening of 2 July 2025 in Cape Town.</p><p>Mr. Rutledge, who attended the dinner on invitation from the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources (DMPR), was physically assaulted and verbally threatened by one of the guests present at the event. In addition to being assaulted, Mr. Rutledge’s personal property was damaged during the incident.</p><p>As a result of this appalling attack, Mr. Rutledge has laid formal charges of assault, intimidation, and malicious damage to property at the relevant South African Police Service (SAPS) station. We call on law enforcement authorities to ensure a swift and thorough investigation, and that justice is served without fear or favour.</p><p>This violent act is not an isolated incident but a clear and disturbing expression of a broader, systemic pattern: the silencing of community voices. Whether through the structural violence of poverty, environmental destruction, and political exclusion, or through outright physical violence, mining-affected communities are consistently denied their constitutional rights to dignity, expression, and participation.</p><p>The assault underscores the depth of hostility that greets those who dare to speak uncomfortable truths to power. Mr. Rutledge’s symbolic act of delivering a bag of crumbs to the Minister, representing the meagre benefits communities receive while political elites and mining interests feast on our country’s mineral wealth, was met not with engagement, but with aggression. This shameful incident exposes how thin the veneer of dialogue truly is when community demands challenge the comfort of those in power.</p><p>It is this same disregard for the dignity and safety of community activists that underpins our central claim: that the government, the Minerals Council South Africa, and their political enablers are not interested in addressing the deep injustice and exploitation that defines the mining sector. Instead of listening to the voices of those who live with poisoned water, destroyed land, broken promises, and institutional abandonment, they choose to suppress and silence.</p><p>MACUA demands:</p>Immediate investigation and prosecution of the perpetrator(s) involved in the assault.A public apology from the Minister and the Department for allowing an environment in which such violence could occur.Institutional protection for community representatives and activists who engage in state-sponsored events.A recommitment by Parliament and the DMPR to uphold the constitutional centrality of human rights, dignity, and public participation.<p>We reaffirm that no amount of violence or intimidation will deter us from demanding justice, equity, and accountability. The future of this country belongs to its people — not to the bullies in expensive suits or their political patrons.</p><p>For media enquiries, please contact:</p><p>Tholakele Thabane: Tholakele.Thabane@macua.org.za</p> ShareTweet 2025 - MACUA condemns assault of executive director at ministerial dinner - Wits University	查看 3631	金山大学应用法律研究中心	2025-07-10 09:17:00 2025-08-05 21:17:54	word
3232668	无图 Public Interest Law Gathering call for proposals <p> <time>10 July 2025</time> - PILG organisers </p> <p>This year"s Public Interest Law Gathering is set to take place at Wits University on 22 and 23 October</p> <p>The Public Interest Law Gathering (PILG) will take place at Wits University in Johannesburg on 22 and 23 October 2025. The theme for PILG will be “Unfinished Freedom: Interrogating the leaps between Legal promises and Lived realities”.</p><p>PILG is a highly anticipated forum that brings together people from across South Africa and beyond who are concerned about cutting-edge developments in human rights and social justice. PILG provides a space for attendees to discuss, debate, reflect and exchange skills, knowledge, ideas, and strategies on approaches and interventions in public interest advocacy and litigation.</p><p>PILG promotes collaboration and networking within the public interest law, social justice and human rights communities with the goal of improving and enhancing access to justice and the quality of services and interventions provided to marginalised, vulnerable individuals and communities.</p><p>Participants include public interest legal practitioners, advice office workers and paralegals, community organisers and social movement activists, law students, legal academics, lawyers from the private sector and civil servants.</p><p>The organisers of PILG 2025 invite proposals for presentations, whether as stand-alone presentations or entire panels. A proposal should include:</p>The name, organisation/affiliation and contact details for the proposed presenter;A short description of the proposed presentation or panel and why it is important;The names of any other proposed panelists, and whether they have already agreed to participate.<p>Please submit your proposals by email to pilgathering@gmail.com by 31 July 2025 addressed to the PILG Planning Committee.</p> ShareTweet 2025 - Public Interest Law Gathering call for proposals - Wits University	查看 1934	金山大学应用法律研究中心	2025-07-10 09:46:00 2025-08-05 21:17:54	word
3232667	有图 <p> <p> <p> Salk News </p> </p> <p> <p> <p> <p></p> </p> <time>July 9, 2025</time> From injury to agony: Scientists discover brain pathway that turns pain into suffering <p>Salk scientists uncover a key neural circuit in mice that gives pain its emotional punch, opening new doors for treating fibromyalgia, migraine, and PTSD</p> <time>July 9, 2025</time> <p>LA JOLLA—Pain isn’t just a physical sensation—it also carries emotional weight. That distress, anguish, and anxiety can turn a fleeting injury into long-term suffering.</p><p>Researchers at the Salk Institute have now identified a brain circuit that gives physical pain its emotional tone, revealing a new potential target for treating chronic and affective pain conditions such as fibromyalgia, migraine, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).</p><p>Published on July 9, 2025, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study identifies a group of neurons in a central brain area called the thalamus that appears to mediate the emotional or affective side of pain in mice. This new pathway challenges the textbook understanding of how pain is processed in the brain and body.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250709-pr-han-authors-458x305.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">From left: Sukjae Kang and Sung Han</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>“For decades, the prevailing view was that the brain processes sensory and emotional aspects of pain through separate pathways,” says senior author Sung Han, associate professor and holder of the Pioneer Fund Developmental Chair at Salk. “But there’s been debate about whether the sensory pain pathway might also contribute to the emotional side of pain. Our study provides strong evidence that a branch of the sensory pain pathway directly mediates the affective experience of pain.”</p><p>The physical sensation of pain is what allows you to immediately detect it, assess its intensity, and identify its source. The affective part of pain is what makes it so unpleasant. This emotional discomfort motivates you to take action and helps you learn to associate negative feelings with the situation so you can avoid it in the future.</p><p>This is a critical distinction. Most people start to perceive pain at the same stimulus intensities, meaning we all process the sensory side of pain fairly similarly. In comparison, our ability to tolerate pain varies greatly. How much we suffer or feel threatened by pain is determined by our affective processing, and if that becomes too sensitive or lasts too long, it can result in a pain disorder. This makes it important to understand which parts of the brain control these different dimensions of pain.</p><p>Sensory pain was thought to be mediated by the spinothalamic tract, a pathway that sends pain signals from the spinal cord to the thalamus, which then relays them to sensory processing areas across the brain.</p><p>Affective pain was generally thought to be mediated by a second pathway called the spinoparabrachial tract, which sends pain information from the spinal cord into the brainstem.</p><p>However, previous studies using older research methods have suggested the circuitry of pain may be more complex. This long-standing debate inspired Han and his team to revisit the question with modern research tools.</p><p>Using advanced techniques to manipulate the activity of specific brain cells, the researchers discovered a new spinothalamic pathway in mice. In this circuit, pain signals are sent from the spinal cord into a different part of the thalamus, which has connections to the amygdala, the brain’s emotional processing center. This particular group of neurons in the thalamus can be identified by their expression of CGRP (calcitonin gene-related peptide), a neuropeptide originally discovered in Professor Ronald Evans’ lab at Salk.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250709-pr-han-microscopy-458x344.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">CGRP-expressing neurons (green) in the parvocellular subparafascicular nucleus (SPFp) of the thalamus.</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>When the researchers “turned off” (genetically silenced) these CGRP neurons, the mice still reacted to mild pain stimuli, such as heat or pressure, indicating their sensory processing was intact. However, they didn’t seem to associate lasting negative feelings with these situations, failing to show any learned fear or avoidance behaviors in future trials. On the other hand, when these same neurons were “turned on” (optogenetically activated), the mice showed clear signs of distress and learned to avoid that area, even when no pain stimuli had been used.</p><p>“Pain processing is not just about nerves detecting pain; it’s about the brain deciding how much that pain matters,” says first author Sukjae Kang, a senior research associate in Han’s lab. “Understanding the biology behind these two distinct processes will help us find treatments for the kinds of pain that don’t respond to traditional drugs.”</p><p>Many chronic pain conditions—such as fibromyalgia and migraine—involve long, intense, unpleasant experiences of pain, often without a clear physical source or injury. Some patients also report extreme sensitivity to ordinary stimuli like light, sound, or touch, which others would not perceive as painful.</p><p>Han says overactivation of the CGRP spinothalamic pathway may contribute to these conditions by making the brain misinterpret or overreact to sensory inputs. In fact, transcriptomic analysis of the CGRP neurons showed that they express many of the genes associated with migraine and other pain disorders.</p><p>Notably, several CGRP blockers are already being used to treat migraines. This study may help explain why these medications work and could inspire new nonaddictive treatments for affective pain disorders.</p><p>Han also sees potential relevance for psychiatric conditions that involve heightened threat perception, such as PTSD. Growing evidence from his lab suggests that the CGRP affective pain pathway acts as part of the brain’s broader alarm system, detecting and responding to not only pain but a wide range of unpleasant sensations. Quieting this pathway with CGRP blockers could offer a new approach to easing fear, avoidance, and hypervigilance in trauma-related disorders.</p><p>Importantly, the relationship between the CGRP pathway and the psychological pain associated with social experiences like grief, loneliness, and heartbreak remains unclear and requires further study.</p><p>“Our discovery of the CGRP affective pain pathway gives us a molecular and circuit-level explanation for the difference between detecting physical pain and suffering from it,” says Han. “We’re excited to continue exploring this pathway and enabling future therapies that can reduce this suffering.”</p><p>Other authors include Shijia Liu, Jong-Hyun Kim, Dong-Il Kim, Tae Gyu Oh, Jiahang Peng, Mao Ye, Kuo-Fen Lee, Ronald M. Evans, and Martyn Goulding of Salk.</p><p>The work was supported by the National Institutes of Mental Health (BRAINS grant 1R01MH116203) and the Simons Foundation (Bridge to Independence award SFARI #388708).</p> <p>DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2505889122</p> </p> </p> </p> From injury to agony: Scientists discover brain pathway that turns pain into suffering - Salk Institute for Biological Studies	查看 7666	索尔克生物研究所	2025-07-10 06:21:47 2025-08-05 21:17:25	word
3232666	有图 <p> <p> <p> Salk News </p> </p> <p> <p> <p> <p></p> </p> <time>July 17, 2025</time> Salk Institute appoints Marie Carter-Dubois as Chief Financial Officer <time>July 17, 2025</time> <p>LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute announced today the appointment of Marie Carter-Dubois to serve as Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO), effective September 1, 2025.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250717-pr-Marie-Carter-Dubois-300x383.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">Marie Carter-Dubois</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: UC San Diego<p>Carter-Dubois joins Salk from UC San Diego, where she served as Associate Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration and Chief Financial Officer for Academic Affairs. In that role, she directed financial and administrative strategy for a $1.7 billion academic enterprise encompassing eight colleges, eight schools, the university’s libraries, and the financial aid department, among other units. Previously, she held senior financial and operational roles at the University of Washington School of Medicine, UC Davis, Stanford University, and UC San Francisco.</p><p>“Marie brings a rare combination of deep financial expertise, strategic insight, and a collaborative leadership style that aligns with our mission and values,” says Salk President Gerald Joyce. “Her experience in guiding major academic institutions through transformative change makes her exceptionally well-suited to help lead us into our next chapter of scientific achievement.”</p><p>As Salk’s CFO, Carter-Dubois will lead all aspects of the Institute’s financial operations, including accounting, grants administration, procurement, budgeting, financial planning and analysis, and investment management. She will serve as a key member of Salk’s Executive Leadership Team, advising them and the Board of Trustees on long-range financial strategy and ensuring the fiscal sustainability of the Institute’s scientific mission.</p><p>“I am honored to join the Salk Institute, where scientific excellence and public impact go hand in hand,” Carter-Dubois says. “As CFO, I’m committed to ensuring the Institute’s long-term fiscal health so that our researchers and teams can continue to push the boundaries of discovery.”</p><p>Carter-Dubois received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Quebec and an MBA from École des Hautes Études Commerciales Paris. She also completed a master’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in international management from the École Supérieure de Commerce de Paris and the Cartier Institute for Luxury Brand Management. She earned a master’s degree and completed PhD coursework in corporate strategy at the University of Paris (Sorbonne).</p> </p> </p> </p> Salk Institute appoints Marie Carter-Dubois as Chief Financial Officer - Salk Institute for Biological Studies	查看 3076	索尔克生物研究所	2025-07-18 00:07:27 2025-08-05 21:17:25	word
3232665	有图 <p> <p> <p> Salk News </p> </p> <p> <p> <p> <p></p> </p> <time>July 24, 2025</time> Salk Professor Diana Hargreaves earns V Foundation award for pancreatic cancer research <time>July 24, 2025</time> <p>LA JOLLA—Salk Institute Professor Diana Hargreaves was named a 2025 All-Star Translational Award Program grantee by the V Foundation for Cancer Research. The award comes as a recognition of Hargreaves’ exceptional success with her previous V Foundation grant in 2016, which aimed to identify better drug targets for cancers with mutations in a multi-protein complex called SWI/SNF that regulates DNA structure and stability. She and her collaborator, Gregory Botta, an associate professor at UC San Diego Moores Cancer Center, will receive $1 million to advance her new project to improve immunotherapy—a treatment that utilizes the body’s own immune cells to fight cancer—in patients with pancreatic cancer.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250723-pr-Hargreaves-458x305.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">Diana Hargreaves</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>“Diana is a true innovator in the field of cancer research, and this second award from the V Foundation is a testament to her continued scientific excellence,” says Salk President Gerald Joyce. “We enthusiastically support her efforts to translate the fundamental discoveries she has made regarding immune checkpoint blockade to the treatment of pancreatic cancer, which thus far has been challenging to address with immunotherapy.”</p><p>The V Foundation was founded by ESPN and national basketball champion and coach Jim Valvano to fund “game-changing” cancer research grants in North America. The foundation’s competitive selection process identifies scientists like Hargreaves who are using cutting-edge approaches to tackle cancer in innovative ways.</p><p>V Foundation All-Star awards reinvest in previous grant recipients. Hargreaves’ first V Foundation project in 2016 aimed to find new strategies for treating epithelial ovarian cancers with mutations in ARID1A, a protein in the SWI/SNF complex. Her new project, titled “Preclinical and Clinical Studies of Immune Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy in SWI/SNF Altered or Inhibited Pancreatic Cancer,” explores the role of this same protein complex in pancreatic cancer.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250723-pr-Botta-458x305.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">Gregory Botta</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: UC San Diego<p>Pancreatic cancer is set to become the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States by 2030. Due to its high mortality rate—roughly 90% of patients—the need to develop effective therapies for pancreatic cancer is urgent. Immunotherapies such as immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized cancer care for other cancer types but have been generally ineffective in the pancreas—except, notably, in patients with SWI/SNF mutations, for whom Botta found that immunotherapy is far more effective.</p><p>Already, Hargreaves’ discoveries have revealed that ARID1A mutations make immunotherapy more effective for people with difficult-to-treat cancers. Hargreaves will now investigate whether the immunotherapy-boosting effect of mutated ARID1A extends to SWI/SNF mutations more generally, as well as test whether SWI/SNF-blocking drugs could improve clinical outcomes for the 85-90% of patients with unmutated SWI/SNF tumors. In parallel, Botta will run an investigator-initiated trial of combination immunotherapy and chemotherapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer patients with SWI/SNF mutations. Collectively, these studies could help define biomarkers for immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer and boost patient survival.</p><p>These studies build upon a collaborative grant awarded to Botta and Hargreaves through Curebound. Hargreaves was named the American Cancer Society’s Early-Career Researcher of the Year in 2024 and aPew-Stewart Scholar for Cancer Researchin 2019. She is also a leader in Salk’s new Neuroimmunology Initiative.</p> </p> </p> </p> Salk Professor Diana Hargreaves earns V Foundation award for pancreatic cancer research - Salk Institute for Biological Studies	查看 4427	索尔克生物研究所	2025-07-25 00:25:41 2025-08-05 21:17:25	word
3232664	有图 <p> <p> <p> Salk News </p> </p> <p> <p> <p> <p></p> </p> <time>July 29, 2025</time> How does the immune system prepare for breastfeeding? <p>Salk researchers find immune cells travel from the gut to the mammary gland to support lactation</p> <time>July 29, 2025</time> <p>LA JOLLA—Of the 3.6 million babies born in the United States each year, around 80 percent begin breastfeeding in their first month of life. Breastfeeding has known benefits for both mother and child, reducing maternal risk of breast and ovarian cancers, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure, while simultaneously supporting the baby’s nutrition and immune system. But because pregnancy and lactation have been historically understudied, we still don’t understand the science behind many of these benefits.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250729-pr-ramanan-microscopy-458x290.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">Virgin (left) and lactating (right) mouse mammary gland imaging shows the dramatic structural changes that occur to facilitate milk production, including cell proliferation and the formation of milk ducts.</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>Salk Institute immunologists are changing that—starting with a map of immune cell migration before and during lactation. Using both animal research and human milk and tissue samples, the researchers discovered that immune cells called T cells are abundant in the mammary glands during pregnancy and breastfeeding, with some relocating from the gut. These cells likely support both maternal and infant health.</p><p>The findings, published in Nature Immunology on July 29, 2025, may help explain the advantages of breastfeeding, prompt new solutions for mothers unable to breastfeed, and inform dietary decisions that enhance breast milk production and quality.</p><p>“By investigating how immune cells change during pregnancy and lactation, we were able to find lots of exciting things—notably, that there’s a significant increase in immune cells in mammary tissue during lactation, and the increase in immune cells requires microbes,” says Assistant Professor Deepshika Ramanan, senior author of the study.</p><p>What we know: Babies get gut bacteria and antibodies from mother’s milk</p><p>Most breastfeeding studies focus on the relationship between milk content and infant health. These studies, including previous work by Ramanan, have shown that babies receive important gut bacteria and antibodies from their mother through the breast milk, which lays a critical foundation for their developing immune system. Still, much less is known about the changes to the mother’s body during this time.</p><p>Some features of the mammary gland immune landscape can be inferred from milk content research. For example, the presence of antibodies in breast milk means that antibody-producing immune cells called B cells must be present. But few have looked directly at immune cell activity within the mammary gland itself.</p><p>What’s new: Mom’s gut microbes boost immune cells in mammary glands</p><p>“What’s really exciting is that we didn’t just find more T cells in mammary glands, we found that some of these T cells were actually coming from the gut,” says first author Abigail Jaquish, a graduate student researcher in Ramanan’s lab. “We think they are likely supporting mammary tissue in the same way they typically support intestinal tissue.”</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/250729-pr-ramanan-author-3-458x361.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">From left: Abigail Jaquish and Deepshika Ramanan.</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>The researchers began their study by looking at mouse mammary gland tissues at various stages pre- to post-lactation. By comparing these samples, they discovered that three different types of T cells were growing in number: CD4+, CD8αα+, and CD8αβ+ T cells.</p><p>This was curious to the team, because these T cell subtypes are members of a special immune cell class called intraepithelial lymphocytes. Intraepithelial lymphocytes live in mucosal tissues—soft tissues like the intestines or lungs that are exposed to substances from the outside world. Because these tissues are more vulnerable, intraepithelial lymphocytes act as “resident” immune cells, stationed on-site and ready for action.</p><p>The researchers noticed these CD4+, CD8αα+, and CD8αβ+ T cells were lining the mammary epithelium the same way they would line the epithelium of other mucosal tissues. What’s more, these T cell subtypes bore gut-resident surface protein fingerprints—pointing to T cell migration between the intestines and mammary glands. Together, these changes were facilitating a mammary gland transition from non-mucosal to mucosal tissue in preparation for lactation, where it would become exposed to the outside environment, including microbes from the mother’s skin and the infant’s mouth.</p><p>But was this also happening in humans? An investigation into databases of human breast tissue and milk samples from the Human Milk Institute at UC San Diego revealed yes—human equivalents of these intraepithelial lymphocytes showed the same trends.</p><p>The team returned to the mouse model with one final question: Are these mammary gland T cells impacted by microbes the same way they would be in the gut? They compared the mammary glands of mice living in normal and germ-free environments and found that all three T cells subtypes were expressed far more in mice exposed to microbes. This finding suggests that maternal microbes modulate the number of T cells created during lactation, which in turn could impact the strength of the mammary gland immune barrier.</p><p>Altogether, T cell production ramped up with the help of microbes, T cells relocated from the gut to mammary glands, and the mammary glands switched from non-mucosal to mucosal tissues.</p><p>Looking ahead: What affects this gut-breast immune axis, and thus influences our health for generations?</p><p>“We now know so much more about how the maternal immune system is changing during this critical time,” says Ramanan, “and we can now use this information to start exploring the direct effects of these immune cells on both maternal and infant health.”</p><p>The researchers hypothesize that hormones influence these many changes, and that the overall goal is protecting the mother from the outside world and related infection. But how they influence lactogenesis, milk quality, and maternal and baby health is the next case to crack.</p><p>“There’s so much more research to be done in this area—we’re just getting started,” adds Jaquish. “If we’re seeing a connection between the gut and the mammary gland, what other interactions might be happening in the body? And what else could be impacting the milk that we’re passing on to our offspring?”</p><p>Understanding maternal immune cell changes during pregnancy and lactation can impact generations, as mother to child immune and microbiome transfers occur again and again. The insights may also lead to solutions for mothers who cannot breastfeed, either with therapies that help support natural milk production or with more sophisticated formulas that provide some of the same immune support. As the connection between the gut and mammary gland becomes clearer, scientists could one day suggest diets to promote mammary and maternal health, as well as optimize milk quality.</p><p>Other authors include Eleni Phung and Isabelle Bursulaya of Salk; Xutong Gong, Silvia Galvan-Pena, Ian Magill, Diane Mathis, and Christophe Benoist of Harvard Medical School; Pilar Baldominos, Eleonara Marina, and Judith Agudo of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute; Kerri Bertrand and Christina Chambers of UC San Diego; Andrés R. Muñoz-Rojas of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and ImmgenT consortium members.</p><p>The work was supported by the Damon Runyon Dale F. Frey Award, UC San Diego PiBS T32, National Institutes of Health (RO1-AI150686, R24-072073, NCI CCSG P30 CA014195, NIA San Diego Nathan Shock Center P30 AG068635, NCI CCSG: P30 CA01495, S10 OD023689, S10 OD034268), Chapman Foundation, and Helmsley Charitable Trust.</p> <p>DOI: 10.1038/s41590-025-02218-3</p> </p> </p> </p> How does the immune system prepare for breastfeeding? - Salk Institute for Biological Studies	查看 8606	索尔克生物研究所	2025-07-30 01:30:39 2025-08-05 21:17:25	word
3232663	有图 <p> <p> <p> Salk News </p> </p> <p> <p> <p> <p></p> </p> <time>July 31, 2025</time> New AI tool illuminates “dark side” of the human genome <p>Salk Institute researchers launch ShortStop, a machine learning framework that explores overlooked DNA regions in search of microproteins that may play roles in disease</p> <time>July 31, 2025</time> <p>LA JOLLA—Proteins sustain life as we know it, serving many important structural and functional roles throughout the body. But these large molecules have cast a long shadow over a smaller subclass of proteins called microproteins. Microproteins have been lost in the 99% of DNA disregarded as “noncoding”—hiding in vast, dark stretches of unexplored genetic code. But despite being small and elusive, their impact may be just as big as larger proteins.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/250731-pr-saghatelian-author-458x343.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">Brendan Miller (left) and Alan Saghatelian (right) stand in their lab, while ShortStop runs on the desktop beside them.</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>Salk Institute scientists are now exploring the mysterious dark side of the genome in search of microproteins. With their new tool ShortStop, researchers can probe genetic databases and identify DNA stretches in the genome that likely code for microproteins. Importantly, ShortStop also predicts which microproteins are most likely to be biologically relevant, saving time and money in the search for microproteins involved in health and disease.</p><p>ShortStop shines a new light on existing datasets, spotlighting microproteins formerly impossible to find. In fact, the Salk team has already used the tool to analyze a lung cancer dataset to find 210 entirely new microprotein candidates—with one standout validated microprotein—that may make good therapeutic targets in the future.</p><p>The findings were published in BMC Methods on July 31, 2025.</p><p>“Most of the proteins in our body are well known, but recent discoveries suggest we’ve been missing thousands of small, hidden proteins—called microproteins—coded by overlooked regions of our genome,” says senior author Alan Saghatelian, professor and holder of the Dr. Frederik Paulsen Chair at Salk. “For a long time, scientists only really studied the regions of DNA that coded for large proteins and dismissed the rest as ‘junk DNA,’ but we’re now learning that these other regions are actually very important, and the microproteins they produce could play critical roles in regulating health and disease.”</p><p>More about microproteins</p><p>It is difficult to detect and catalog microproteins, owing mostly to their size. Compared to standard proteins that can range from hundreds to thousands of amino acids long, microproteins typically contain fewer than 150 amino acids, making them harder to detect using standard protein analysis methods. Therefore, instead of searching for the microproteins themselves, scientists search large, publicly available datasets for the DNA sequences that make them.</p><p>Scientists have now learned that certain stretches of DNA called small open reading frames (smORFs) can contain the instructions for making microproteins. Current experimental methods have already cataloged thousands of smORFs, but these tools remain time-consuming and expensive. Furthermore, their inability to separate potentially functional microproteins from nonfunctional microproteins has stalled their discovery and characterization.</p><p>How ShortStop works</p><p>Not all smORFs translate to biologically meaningful microproteins. Existing methods can’t discriminate between functional and nonfunctional microprotein-generating smORFs. This means that scientists must independently test each microprotein to determine whether it is functional or not.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/250731-pr-saghatelian-microscopy-458x421.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">Cells express a novel ShortStop-predicted microprotein (green), with cell nuclei stained blue. The pattern suggests microproteins are localized either in endosomes, which are organelles responsible for sorting and transporting cellular cargo, or in lysosomes, which are organelles that collect and remove cellular waste.</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>ShortStop radically alters this workflow, optimizing smORF discovery by sorting microproteins into functional and nonfunctional categories. The key to ShortStop’s two-class sorting is how it’s trained as a machine learning system. Its training relies on a negative control dataset of computer-generated random smORFs. ShortStop compares found smORFs against these decoys to quickly decide whether a new smORF is likely to be functional or nonfunctional.</p><p>ShortStop cannot definitively say whether a smORF will code for a biologically relevant microprotein, but this two-class system narrows down the experimental pool immensely. Now researchers can spend less time manually sorting through datasets and failing at the bench.</p><p>When the researchers applied ShortStop to a previously published smORF dataset, they identified 8% as likely functional microproteins, prioritizing them for targeted follow-up. This accelerates microprotein characterization by filtering out sequences unlikely to have biological relevance. ShortStop could also identify microproteins that were overlooked by other methods, including one that was validated by being detected in human cells and tissues.</p><p>“What makes ShortStop especially powerful is that it works with common data types, like RNA sequencing datasets, which many labs already use,” says first author Brendan Miller, a postdoctoral researcher in Saghatelian’s lab. “This means we can now search for microproteins across healthy and diseased tissues at scale, which will reveal new insights into human biology and unlock new paths for diagnosing and treating diseases, such as cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.”</p><p>ShortStop spots microprotein associated with lung cancer</p><p>The researchers have already used ShortStop to identify a microprotein that was upregulated in lung cancer tumors. They analyzed genetic data from human lung tumors and adjacent normal tissue to create a list of potential functional smORFs. Among the smORFs ShortStop found, one stood out—it was expressed more in tumor tissue than normal tissue, suggesting it may serve as a biomarker or functional microprotein for lung cancer.</p><p>The identification of this lung cancer-related microprotein demonstrates the value of ShortStop and machine learning to prioritize candidates for future research and therapeutic development.</p><p>“There’s so much data that already exists that we can now process with ShortStop to find novel microproteins associated with health and disease, stretching from Alzheimer’s to obesity and beyond,” says Saghatelian. “My team is really good at making methods, and with data from other Salk faculty, we can integrate these methods and accelerate the science.”</p><p>Other authors include Eduardo Vieira de Souza, Victor Pai, Joan Vaughan, Calvin Lau, and Jolene Diedrich of Salk, as well as Hosung Kim of UC Los Angeles.</p><p>The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (P30CA014195, R01GM102491) and Clayton Medical Research Foundation.</p> <p>DOI: 10.1186/s44330-025-00037-4</p> </p> </p> </p> New AI tool illuminates “dark side” of the human genome - Salk Institute for Biological Studies	查看 7792	索尔克生物研究所	2025-08-01 07:04:05 2025-08-05 21:17:25	word
3232662	有图 <p> <p> <p> Salk News </p> </p> <p> <p> <p> <p></p> </p> <time>August 1, 2025</time> Salk Institute and La Mer launch unique fellowship to advance healthy aging research <time>August 1, 2025</time> <p>LA JOLLA—The Salk Institute announces a landmark partnership with luxury skincare brand La Mer. Through the new La Mer Fellowship in Healthy Aging, the company will fund athree-year postdoctoral position focused on foundational research on human aging at the molecular level.</p><img src="https://www.salk.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/250801-pr-la-mer-chadda-458x305.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer">Ankita Chadda</p><p>Click here for a high-resolution image.</p><p>Credit: Salk Institute<p>The inaugural fellowship has been awarded toAnkita Chadda, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Salk Assistant ProfessorAgnieszka Kendrick. Kendrick’s team studies cellular transport—the system of microscopic highways and specialized protein vehicles that move nearly everything inside a cell. This system is indispensable to cellular function and survival. With La Mer’s support, Chadda will use cutting-edge technologies to explore how aging disrupts cellular transport in neurons. This work may reveal new strategies to prevent or reverse transport-related neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.</p><p>“At the Salk Institute, we are driven by the pursuit of fundamental discoveries that improve human health,” says Gerald Joyce, president of the Salk Institute. “We are deeply grateful to La Mer for supporting this mission by funding research into aging at a molecular level and empowering the next generation of scientists. Through this unique partnership, we can apply our scientific expertise to explore new frontiers in healthy aging.”</p><p>Postdoctoral trainees like Chadda are essential to biomedical science. These trainees have recently earned a PhD, MD, or both. With a faculty mentor, they assist in or lead their own research projects as they take steps toward establishing their careers as independent investigators. Postdoctoral researchers and their work are typically funded by federal or private grants or fellowships, making the new La Mer-funded fellowship a unique approach to empowering the next generation of scientific leaders.</p><p>“La Mer has always believed in the power of bioenergetics to enhance skin’s natural renewal,” saysSandra Main, global brand president of La Mer. “Our partnership with the Salk Institute reflects our deep commitment to advancing the science of cellular energy, ensuring that our innovations continue to push the boundaries of aging science. As a brand founded by a true visionary, we are privileged to honor our legacy by partnering with an innovative, world-class institute, with some of the most globally renowned scientists.”</p><p>Together, Salk and La Mer will explore the intersection of molecular biology and energy metabolism to better understand how the aging process can be slowed—or even reversed. The insights from Chadda’s research may inform future innovations in both medicine and skincare.</p><p>About La Mer:</p><p>La Mer is a brand that represents hope, healing, and one man’s deep respect for the power of the living sea. It all began over 50 years ago when Dr. Max Huber, a physicist, embarked on a healing quest after a lab accident. Twelve years and 6,000 experiments later, Miracle Broth™—the legendary elixir—was born. Since joining The Estée Lauder Companies in 1995, La Mer has become the most coveted skin care brand in the world.</p> </p> </p> </p> Salk Institute and La Mer launch unique fellowship to advance healthy aging research - Salk Institute for Biological Studies	查看 3845	索尔克生物研究所	2025-08-01 23:03:33 2025-08-05 21:17:25	word
3232661	无图 <p>Regulating how AI is used—not how it"s built—is the only way to protect innovation and give small startups a fair shot. Rob and Jackie sit down with Matt Perault, Head of Artificial Intelligence Policy at Andreessen Horowitz, to discuss the significant burden regulatory frameworks can place on smaller tech companies and the critical role of government in AI regulation.</p>MentionedEzra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance, (Simon and Schuster, March 2025).Robert D. Atkinson and Meghan Ostertag, “Congress Should Fully Fund NSF’s TIP Directorate to Make America More Competitive Versus China,” (ITIF, June 2025).Robert D. Atkinson, “2025 Bromley Memorial Lecture: US Science Policy at a Crossroads,” (ITIF, March 2025).RelatedMatt Perault, “A Policy Blueprint for US Investment in AI Talent and Infrastructure,” (Andreessen Horowitz, Marc 2025).Auto-Transcript<p>Rob Atkinson: Welcome to Innovation Files. I"m Rob Atkinson, founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: And I"m Jackie Whisman. I head development at ITIF, which I"m proud to say is the world"s top-ranked think tank for science and technology policy.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: And this podcast is about all sorts of different technology issues and their relationship to policy. So, if you"re into this stuff, be sure to subscribe and rate us.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: Our guest is Matt Perault, Head of Artificial Intelligence Policy at Andreessen Horowitz. He oversees the firm"s policy strategy on AI and helps portfolio companies navigate the AI policy landscape. Matt recently released new policy proposals on behalf of the firm that outline how broad AI disclosure mandates impact small startups. That"s mostly what we"re going to talk about today, but I think we"re going to expand it a bit so that we get a better understanding of your work. Thanks for being here, Matt.</p><p>Matt Perault: Thanks for having me on.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: If you live under a rock and you don"t know what Andreessen Horowitz is, it"s one of the leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms, really doing amazing work. They support startups, but also think about startup policy, which I think distinguishes them from a lot of other VC firms that kind of have their head focused only on the Valley. I really enjoy reading Mark Andreessen"s prolific posts and other social media; very insightful. And Matt, really glad to have you here.</p><p>Matt Perault: Thanks so much. It"s a good place to start. The focus for us really is on figuring out a policy agenda for "little tech". As you described, some people see a mismatch between our firm being large and the companies in our portfolio, and how we describe our work. We are a large venture capital firm. So, I think there are people who say, "How can this large firm be a voice for little tech?" From our perspective, the challenge in terms of the political economy of little tech is that there aren"t that many voices who support small startups. You guys obviously do, and there are others out there. Engine is a wonderful organization. Obviously, Y Combinator does this work too. But there aren"t that many voices for little tech firms.</p><p>So, what we see repeatedly, I think, are policy frameworks designed to regulate various different parts of the tech ecosystem, including AI, in ways that we think are disproportionately harmful for little tech. Sometimes they advantage large tech companies. Sometimes they disadvantage them, but disadvantage them less than they would disadvantage smaller companies. Our goal as a firm is to try to ensure that there"s a level playing field so that small companies, which are already going to struggle to compete with larger tech platforms, are able to compete as effectively as they possibly can.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: It"s such an important issue because smaller firms don"t have the money, they don"t have the time; they"re just trying to meet payroll and do their work. They really don"t have the time or resources to come to Washington to advocate. We see that certainly in other countries where they"ve put in place these policy regimes that purportedly are to rein in large tech, but they end up with so much collateral damage. We see that in Europe, where recent studies from good, objective, independent European academics have shown how harmful some of these policies have been to startups. That kind of gets lost a lot of times in the dialogue.</p><p>Matt Perault: I think that"s exactly right. I assume you"re referring primarily to the work that"s been done around privacy regulation and GDPR?</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Yep.</p><p>Matt Perault: I heard a presentation a couple of weeks ago from a competition law scholar who said there are many studies showing that as a result of GDPR in Europe, there"s been a decrease in VC investment and a decrease in startup formation. The way that he framed it is there"s literally no study on the other side that has suggested that GDPR has actually led to more VC investment in Europe and more startup formation.</p><p>Europe has kept going with other laws that we would expect—and who knows if this will be right or not—but we would expect would have similar impacts on market concentration, like the Digital Services Act, which is focused on content moderation. And certainly, I think the EU AI Act that we"re concerned about in terms of the impact that it would have in Europe, but also concerned about the way that model might get adopted into various different regimes in the United States at the federal level.</p><p>You said in your last comment, talking about the ability of startups to fly to Washington D.C., but as we know, policy isn"t just made in Washington D.C. It"s made in 50 state capitals. In our experience, founders struggle to have the time to do that, and then to ensure that they can advocate effectively for their interests. They certainly struggle to travel to 50 state capitals and try to ensure that state regulation isn"t making it harder for them to compete.</p><p>Actually, I think that"s been one of the most interesting and also most challenging components of my job so far. Figuring out how to be as effective a resource as I possibly can be to the little tech companies in our portfolio. There are several reasons that are quite challenging. The main one is that I"m the head of AI policy. Most of the firms that we work with might not have a head of policy, let alone someone who"s focused just on AI regulation. Some of them don"t have general counsel; many of them don"t.</p><p>So, the companies that so far I"ve ended up doing the most direct work with are the companies that have more built-out teams. So, they have someone who"s closer to and equivalent to me. I think that makes structural sense, but I"m not sure it makes sense from a long-term policy perspective. Companies that are really small, that might not have general counsel, might not have a head of policy. It"s conceivable that they"re going to be impacted by whatever regulatory environment is created for AI. But not only do they not have a voice in the policy conversation, it"s even challenging to figure out how to staff a call with one of their investors. I think that just structurally makes it really challenging and puts them at a significant disadvantage in ensuring that the regulatory regime that we get in an area like AI is one that"s workable for them.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Absolutely.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: One thing that you proposed recently is a policy framework that starts with the principle: "regulate use, not development," which really resonates with us. Can you unpack why that distinction is so important, especially for the smaller tech companies and the broader tech ecosystem?</p><p>Matt Perault: Let me start with the second part of that—regulating development. I think, I have not done this, I don"t know if you guys have, but looked at all the different AI proposals and classified them based on whether they regulate use or development. My guess is that 80 plus percent regulate development, maybe higher than that, 90 plus percent. And development-focused regulations are regulations that impose various different requirements on the development process.</p><p>I was going to say "burdens," and I don"t want to necessarily use a term that sort of suggests that it"s necessarily negative, but from our perspective, if you"re introducing requirements on the development process, you are burdening it. It essentially functions as a tax on AI development itself.</p><p>And if AI development were problematic in most or all cases, then we might want that; we might want to tax the math and science of the creation and building of AI. But AI development is not necessarily problematic. And actually, I think if you were just at a very high level saying, "Is it the policy agenda of 50 state governments to have more innovative, more aggressive AI development or not?" I think most policymakers would say, "We want more". But the concern, I think, is "we want more of this, but we do want to address harmful use cases".</p><p>There are cases where AI could be used in a harmful way. The odd thing about focusing a policy agenda on regulating development is it doesn"t really target harmful use. So, I think the idea of regulating development is: people are building this technology, as they build it, there will be harmful things that come from it. And so, as a result, what we can do is make it harder to develop the technology in ways that might be problematic and therefore will cause less harm, and it"s conceivable that would be the case. But as I"m describing, you don"t just dampen the harmful development, you dampen the beneficial development as well.</p><p>So, I think the question is, is there a way to target harmful use without getting in the way of the productive development that we would want to see? From our standpoint, that is a tool and a perspective that"s available to policymakers. And that means focusing on enforcement of existing law where AI would be used in a harmful way. The former chair of the FTC made the point that we agree with: that there"s not an exception to existing law for AI. So, if a person or a company uses AI in a way that violates consumer protection law, that would be a violation of consumer protection law. The same goes for civil rights law. The same goes for antitrust law. The same goes for criminal law. And I think importantly, there"s federal criminal law, but the bulk of criminal laws are at the state level.</p><p>So states, I think, have an important role to play in regulating harmful use as well. From our perspective, the primary initial thrust for lawmakers should be focusing on ensuring that existing law can be enforced against harmful uses. I think we actually want to make sure that enforcement agencies at the state and federal level are well-equipped to do that enforcement. And that means having the personnel that they need, it means having the financial resources that they need. I think importantly, it means having the technical understanding that they need in order to enforce existing law.</p><p>Of course, it"s conceivable also that existing law wouldn"t be sufficient, and if existing law is not sufficient, then we think it"s important for policymakers to think about how to address marginal risk that"s created by AI, but focusing the new law on harmful uses that are related to AI. So to the extent AI is a contributor to problems in deepfakes or fraud or other kinds of harmful activity, punish those harmful uses. Don"t make it harder to develop the underlying technology.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: You mentioned they regulate development, and a lot of proposals want to do that, and in a lot of ways it"s just bizarre. Can you imagine NHTSA at DOT regulating how cars are made and they say, "We"re sorry. You can"t use arc welding; you have to use gas welding"?</p><p>Matt Perault: Right.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: No, what they say is, "The joint has to be this strong". You don"t worry about how the metal is put together. And the reason for that is because, A: the government can never know enough about that. And B: maybe there"s a third way of doing welding that"s even better. And AI to me is such a dynamic field. Every day it changes. So, I don"t see how the government could ever figure out the right way to do development.</p><p>Matt Perault: I think it"s challenging. And again, initially I thought of that as a way to just leave space for development. That"s what I thought the primary thrust of that direction of travel would be. But the more that I thought about it, the more I thought it"s not just about leaving space for development. It"s also that if you"re serious about harmful use of AI, you wouldn"t regulate development. Regulating development, I think, is problematic from our perspective for two reasons. One, it makes it harder for little tech companies to build AI tools. And the second is it"s not the most efficient, direct, helpful, and likely to be a successful mechanism for protecting consumers.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Yeah, it"d be like saying we"re going to regulate traffic safety by regulating welding rather than having speed limits.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: That"s right. I was just going to ask on that point, like, what are the most critical things the government needs to get right when it comes to federal AI policy?</p><p>Matt Perault: So, I think the primary focus for the federal government needs to be making clear that there"s not an exception to existing law for AI. And then I think it"s important to ensure that federal and also state enforcers have the resources they need to make that real, to ensure that you can enforce existing law when it comes to harmful uses related to AI. Then there are, I think, a lot of structural things that the government can do to help make it easier for little tech companies to compete.</p><p>And the position of our firm is not that little tech companies deserve a special handout. The perspective is instead, let"s try to not make it more difficult for them to compete in an area where I think competition is already really challenging. Even in a world where there"s a level playing field, AI is an industry with high barriers to entry. You have significant data needs, you have significant talent needs. You need the engineers in order to build the AI tools; you need access to computers and energy in order to build an AI model. And so that on its own is challenging.</p><p>There are other things I think the government can do, that kind of help to level the playing field a little bit there. So, we suggest, for instance, the creation of a national AI competitiveness institute that would provide access to data and access to compute resources for researchers and government entities, and also potentially for startups.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: This is very much tuned to our thinking. We"ve actually been writing about AI policy for over a decade. And from the very beginning, we said, "Don"t regulate inside the engine, regulate how it"s used". If you want it to be used in a certain way, then that"s how the law should state it. And then related to that also is the role of government to be an enabler. That"s one of our big criticisms of the Europeans, is they see this as a Gulliver"s thing. You"ve got to tie this monster down as opposed to your point, that there are already existing laws out there. If you want to use AI to give somebody a loan, and it has a bias against a protected class—</p><p>Matt Perault: Yep.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: —you are going to get prosecuted. The law says you can"t do that. You can"t do it personally. You can"t do it with a spreadsheet. You can"t do it with AI. The $64,000 question as we speak today, which is June 25th: Congress is debating in the Big Beautiful Bill a 10-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. And some people love it. Some people hate it. The motivation for it is particularly for small companies, but also for us. I think of us, having to comply with 50 different privacy rules as a not very big think tank. So there the spirit is to say, "Wait a minute, let"s not have 50 different rules for a startup to comply with". What are your thoughts on that?</p><p>Matt Perault: We wrote a piece a couple of months ago thinking through how to think about the federal role and state role in AI governance. I think sometimes when people talk about preemption, that can sound—and sometimes people actually literally say—that it basically means the federal government should act and states should not, and that"s not the way that we think about it.</p><p>We think that it"s important for states and the federal government to each play the role that the Constitution assigns to them in AI governance. And in general, I think that means the federal government should play a role in governing the national AI market. That"s core to Congress"s competency, to regulate interstate commerce. But that doesn"t mean states should do nothing.</p><p>I think it"s important that states actually police harmful conduct within their borders. There are some areas where it"s clear that states have primary competency. And so that"s for things like state criminal law, which is the overwhelming majority of the body of criminal laws at the state level. And it"s important that if AI is used in ways that violate state criminal law, that people are held to account. I think that"s important not just in those kind of individual use cases, but it"s important for the overall long-term health of the technology.</p><p>One thing that I didn"t know coming into a venture capital firm is how long-term our interests are. Our funds have a 10-year life cycle, which means we"re aiming for this industry to be successful over a long period of time. It doesn"t work from our point of view if there"s some sort of short-term boom and then people start to be really scared of the technology, they experience a lot of harms associated with it, it"s not a good user experience, and then the market crashes. That"s not going to work in terms of our fund performance.</p><p>I think states being active in terms of policing harmful conduct within their jurisdictions is important. But as you"re describing for a small think tank, it"s certainly true for most tech companies, but particularly the smaller ones, trying to navigate a 50-state patchwork is really challenging. Sometimes people think about it as an abstraction. It"s not an abstraction in AI. There are over a thousand bills introduced, I think, in this set of state sessions. There are a significant number of them that have been modeled on the EU model for governing AI in some form. There are things that are closer to the EU model, things that are further away from it, but that include a lot of the elements.</p><p>That model requires, I think, a pretty significant investment of compliance resources. You have to do things like make determinations about whether you"re engaged in high-consequential decision-making, whether the model that you"re developing poses an unreasonable risk of critical harm. You have to make these kinds of assessments, and then in many of the bills that have been introduced, engage in a fairly robust compliance process. </p><p>So, you have to do impact assessments. Sometimes you need a third-party body to help you with the impact assessments, to engage an auditing function to ensure that you"ve done your impact assessments correctly. That"s burdensome for little tech, and it"s disproportionately burdensome for little tech.</p><p>If that was allowed to continue, that would make these markets more concentrated and it would make it harder for little tech to compete. I think that"s clearly a problem. I think it"s great that Congress is taking some action to address that. There are many different ways to do it. And the main misperception of the moratorium is that it actually does include a fairly broad exception, and the exception is for AI laws at the state level that are generally applicable.</p><p>That would mean, for instance, if there is a violation of an unfair and deceptive trade practices law at the state level where AI was used as part of that violation, an attorney general could enforce that law against a perpetrator. And I think that is a really important exception that brings this model a little bit closer to the way that we outlined it in the piece about the roles of the state government and federal governments.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: On that kind of same topic, government procurement is also a huge topic here, especially for the smaller tech companies trying to break in. What changes do you think would make it easier for government to access the best systems and also level the playing field for companies of all sizes?</p><p>Matt Perault: We"ve talked a little bit about that in response to the White House"s call for comments on a national AI action plan. The basic idea, I think, is making sure that little tech companies are able to compete alongside larger, more established players in the procurement process. Primarily around streamlining the process so that companies that can devote fewer resources to the kind of administrative bureaucratic overhead that would be needed in order to compete in the procurement process, are able to actually compete.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Matt, my son did a Silicon Valley startup, not funded by you guys, I have to say. It was another firm. Began with the letters KP. And he had a great time. He was doing computer software stuff, and it was just fantastic experience, and he ended up deciding he wanted to get his PhD. So he applied for and received an NSF fellowship to do machine learning. One of the problems now is that, again, I don"t say this in a partisan way, but because of the funding cuts at NSF, they"ve cut their PhD fellowships, I believe, in half.</p><p>This is hard stuff and it"s still early, and we need people, we need PhDs to be able to do this. So, I"m just curious, how do you see that? I mean, we certainly rely on and should on foreign talent, but there"s this backlash against that. What are your thoughts on that, and particularly how it relates to startups? Maybe their attraction is, "Hey, we"re more flexible, we"re more innovative, you"ve got a little more freedom, and maybe you"ve got options". But they just certainly can"t pay as much initially on average as say, a larger company can.</p><p>Matt Perault: I think it"s an important question to examine, and it"s something that we"ve been concerned about as well. I thought it was encouraging that the NSF put out a request for comments related to AI research and development. So, what would be the right way for the NSF to think about a research agenda for AI? And we submitted comments in that process, and we haven"t yet seen what the NSF is going to develop in response to it. But I"m hopeful that they will be responsive to some of the concerns that you"re expressing now. And I think there are a whole bunch of components of it.</p><p>Obviously, ensuring that there"s sufficient talent is important. We suggest ensuring that there is opportunity for research and development really at the frontier, focused on foundational and disruptive AI research. There"s been lots of discussions about open-source tools and the role that open-source tools can play in innovation and competition. We think it"s important that researchers can focus on that.</p><p>There"s also a lot of stuff on AI governance that"s interesting as a potential research agenda. I was actually frustrated in my academic work. I was previously at UNC and before that at Duke. It felt to me like there were relatively few academics doing empirical research on various different governance regimes and trying to evaluate their effectiveness. Like we talked earlier about GDPR. It would just be so helpful if there were more and more studies really looking in a detailed way about GDPR"s impact in Europe. And my hope would be there would be similar ones for other governance regimes and tech policy in Europe too, like the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act, so that we can learn some things about how those different regimes play out in practice.</p><p>Hopefully that would mean the next time they"re implemented, they"ll be implemented more effectively, or that Europe would consider shifts to those regimes if they learn things about how they could be implemented better. And so, I think NSF could play a role in funding that kind of research. And then there were two other components of our comments as well. One was focused on the use of AI in government itself, which I think is really important, figuring out how to use AI in a way that creates government efficiencies.</p><p>And in particular, I think enables the government to deliver services more effectively to people. And then the final thing is thinking about improvements in research design. I recently read, as I think many people have, Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson"s book Abundance, and there"s a really interesting chapter there just thinking about not just research on its own terms, but research on research. How do we think about a research agenda that"s likely to be more effective? And how do we apply research methods to the process of research itself so that government funding results in stronger research yields, more effective research yields? And I think it would be helpful if NSF was focused on that as well.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Yeah, NSF has a program that they put in place, but also Congress in the CHIPS and Science Act called TIP—Technology Innovation Partnerships. We actually have a report coming out on it, and it"s a good program that tries to do some of that.</p><p>Just a quick comment before we wrap up. I was talking to a colleague of mine who"s head of a CS department in the US, and one of the things he was lamenting was the salaries are so high now and the supply is limited. A lot of faculty end up looking to, as perhaps you have done, looking to the private sector. His point was we need to have longer-term commitments to AI research centers for faculty. So they"ll know for five years you"re going to get a good amount of money, you"re going to be able to train your PhD students. And I think that"s something we should be thinking of. And you can speak to this, Matt, a lot of academics want to stay in academia because the work is so interesting, but if the funding is so insecure, et cetera, et cetera.</p><p>Matt Perault: Yeah, I have mixed feelings about this. Part of what you"re describing feels to me like the kinds of things that you and I worry about when we think about antitrust law, generally, about incumbents and complacency. I"m not sure that guaranteed locked-in funding, independent of performance and essentially shielding institutions from competition, is a positive thing.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: Sorry, I was arguing you would have to go through a competition to win this. So for five years, or three years or four years, you would be able to have a program and then it would be rebid.</p><p>Matt Perault: I guess there are different mechanisms for it. My experience in academia suggested that there are really important, meaningful reforms that need to happen in academia to create stronger incentives to produce research that is oriented around real-world impacts, and specifically more focused on how to create good tech policy.</p><p>I just think there is actually a relatively small amount of academic research that"s focused on that question. And traditionally there"s been a trade-off for people pursuing academic careers where they know the salaries are not going to be competitive with the private sector, but they"re going to have a significant amount of freedom to do research and writing and thinking. People self-select based in part on whether that trade-off seems appealing to them. That still seems generally right.</p><p>When you go into an organization, you are operating on behalf of the organization and there"s a decrease in freedom that happens as a result of that. And I think researchers who really want to pursue completely independent research—there"s some of that certainly that happens at tech companies, but primarily that"s going to happen in academia.</p><p>I think that still continues to be the primary incentive. If there are ways to spur more interesting, dynamic research, and part of that is providing some protection to academics who engage in it, that makes sense to me, but I"m wary that the current conversation about academic reforms is somewhat more focused on protecting a prior business model.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: A hundred percent. That"s something we"ve been pushing. I just actually gave an Alan Bromley Memorial Science Policy Lecture, which said exactly that. Matt, we are out of time. This is great. We could do this for another 30 minutes, and as we were talking about earlier, we could do a podcast just on biking.</p><p>Matt Perault: I am looking forward to that one.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: This is great. Thank you for being with us.</p><p>Matt Perault: Thanks a lot.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: And that’s it for this week. If you liked it, please be sure to rate us and subscribe. Feel free to email show ideas or questions to [emailprotected]. You can find the show notes and sign up for our weekly email newsletter on our website itif.org. And follow us on X, Facebook, and LinkedIn @ITIFdc.</p><p>Rob Atkinson: We have more episodes and great guests lined up and we hope you"ll continue to tune in.</p><p>Jackie Whisman: Talk to you soon.</p> Podcast: The Case for Smarter AI Regulation, With Matt Perault \| ITIF	查看 29610	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232660	无图 <p>The temptation to impose digital services taxes (DSTs) on America’s Big Tech giants is proving hard for governments all around the world to resist. At a time of tight national budgets, there’s cash to be grabbed. DSTs are often politically popular as many citizens believe that tech companies (and America) should be punished for various real and imagined sins. There’s also understandable envy at Big Tech’s wealth and scale. Most recently, DSTs have become a useful bargaining chip in high-stakes trade negotiations.</p><p>But from a legal perspective, these motivations are largely irrelevant. Instead, policymakers must justify why they should be allowed to tax the major digital companies very differently from the leading firms in other industries. This challenge explains why so much of the DST debate has centered around obscure and abstract notions of a company’s “physical presence” and whether the company’s users “create value.”</p><p>International trade law has long stipulated that companies can only be taxed in countries where they have a physical presence and where value is created. Digital businesses don’t necessarily need a physical presence in every country, but they clearly have a strong virtual one in most. Legally, that’s a plausible stretch, but DST defenders must also argue that, while digital companies don’t create new value in many countries in which they operate, their users do. This claim takes us into much murkier and academic territory.</p><p>Theorists have been debating the nature of economic value for centuries without a clear consensus, and the nature of user-created value seems to be similarly in the eye of the beholder. There are at least three relevant forms:</p>Activity. Just about every consumer activity can lead to some form of value creation. When you buy a car, a washing machine, or groceries, you can easily create value for others in the form of transportation, clean clothes, or nice meals. Social media content, messaging services, and blogs can be seen in a similar creating-value-for-others light.Skills. Companies have long sought to leverage the knowledge and skills of their users, which is why many firms support user groups, brand ambassadors, product evangelists, and other forms of customer interaction and feedback. Digital users create similar value whenever they upload an instructional video to YouTube, edit a Wikipedia page, post a product review, or become an influencer in some other way.Data. While DST supporters like to stress the value of the user data digital service providers accumulate, just about every modern company seeks to leverage its user data to profile, target, and serve its customers. Whether this data comes from transactions, surveys, focus groups, analytics, algorithms, machine learning, or the Internet of Things, it’s not unique to digital service firms.<p>DST proponents argue that while digital and non-digital companies both leverage user-created value, it’s significantly greater in the former. But this is more a difference in degree than in kind. More importantly, does anyone really believe that this abstract debate compellingly explains why tech companies should be taxed radically differently than other sectors? It’s obvious that DST supporters are making the user-value argument much more out of necessity than conviction. No matter how flimsy, it provides legal cover for policymakers to do what they want.</p><p>That’s why it’s important for opponents of such unprecedented cash grabs to argue more coherently and effectively against the logic of digital uniqueness. Since digital is not unique, there’s no logical reason why the United States couldn’t impose an “Analogue Production Tax” (APT) on European companies that sell in the United States but don’t produce here. Perhaps we should start with a 5 percent tax on all Porsche profits in America since their profits are not currently taxed by the U.S. Treasury but user value is certainly added in the United States.</p><p>Thankfully, President Trump called out this DST nonsense when he cancelled trade talks with Canada unless they got rid of their DST plans. Canadian Prime Minister Carney did the smart thing and repealed it. Now the president should do the same with the rest of America’s trading partners.</p> The Tortured Logic of Digital Services Taxes \| ITIF	查看 4290	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232659	无图 <p>Canada’s innovation system has a structural problem. And it needs a structural solution: an institution designed to make the system deliver, not just add to it.</p><p>More than 50 countries have built dedicated innovation agencies to convert research into economic strength. Canada has not. Instead, we have 134 federal innovation programs. Each is layered on the last to patch failures without addressing the system’s design flaws.</p><p>What Canada needs is a new federal institution that makes the system more than the sum of its parts: a Canadian Innovation and Industrial Transformation Agency. It would act as mission control for innovation by coordinating strategy across departments, linking support from research to commercialization, and building the industrial capabilities Canada needs to compete on more than just natural resources.</p><p>This isn’t a new realization. The 2011 Jenkins Panel recommended the establishment of a Canadian Industrial Research and Innovation Council to rationalize and deliver federal business innovation programs. We’re overdue to finish the job, but this time with a mandate and machinery built for today’s geopolitical and economic realities.</p><p>The case for institutional reform is in the data. Canada’s R&D intensity and comparative advanced industry output have lagged for years. We consistently struggle to move technologies from lab to market at scale.</p><p>One root cause is an outdated policy architecture: a linear model that funds university research and then calls it a day, assuming innovation will magically emerge fully formed at the end. But real innovation systems don’t move in straight lines. They loop, link, and compound. Without institutions to manage that feedback and carry technologies through deployment, progress stalls.</p><p>For decades, we’ve treated innovation as a policy file, not a system. We’ve staffed it with generalists and managed it through siloed programs and compliance. The result isn’t progress, it’s paperwork. No agency is mandated to steer strategy across departments, sequence support, or commercialize. Programs operate in isolation. Firms graduate from the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) with nowhere to go. The Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF) moves slowly and isn’t built to coordinate across sectors. The Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentive acts more like a grant than a credit, rewarding firms for staying in their lane and punishing them if they scale.</p><p>These programs matter, but they operate in isolation—stranding firms, fragmenting funding, and stalling technological advancements. The system is built to avoid picking winners and, therefore, cannot build them.</p><p>If any department were meant to coordinate the system, it would be Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED). But ISED governs programs, not systems. Like all departments, it was built for policy, not delivery. That’s not a failure of leadership. It’s a failure of design.</p><p>Departments can’t coordinate what they don’t control. What’s missing isn’t intent. It’s institutional machinery. Canada needs a system operator: an agency with the authority, mandate, and talent to move technologies from research to deployment at scale.</p><p>Faced with this gap, recent debates floated two institutional fixes: a DARPA-style tech funder (CARPA) and the Canadian Innovation Corporation (CIC). CARPA would place high-risk bets on early-stage technologies with missions. CIC would streamline program delivery and improve client service. Unfortunately, both were shelved. What’s needed is a combination of the two proposals—an institution that takes responsibility for the system itself. That’s why we need a Canadian Innovation and Industrial Transformation Agency with the authority to coordinate strategy, steer delivery, and close the structural gaps that hold back deployment.</p><p>The institution wouldn’t run every program, but it would govern the pipeline, link disconnected efforts, and ensure innovation support moves with speed, sequence, and sector focus by:</p>Running strategic intelligence for the system: Build a live picture of Canada’s industrial position by tracking where capacity exists, where scale-up stalls, and where rivals are advancing. Produce sector roadmaps that identify technological choke points, regulatory bottlenecks, and policy tools pulling in opposite directions. Use this intelligence to steer action across government, anchor decisions in real-world trajectories, and provide a shared baseline.Coordinating delivery across the pipeline: Structure innovation support as a true pipeline, not a program catalogue. Align mandates, budget cycles, and delivery timelines across departments to ensure that public research, commercialization funding, permitting, and procurement reinforce one another. Identify duplicated effort and gaps. Rewire the system to move in sequence, not in parallel.Operating at market speed, with technical depth: Build a delivery team of engineers, scientists, commercialization veterans, and procurement professionals, not just policy generalists. Run competitive calls, manage contracting, and make deployment decisions on commercial timelines rather than quarterly planning cycles. Use a separate pay band and flexible hiring authority to attract and retain staff with sector fluency and operational credibility.Building commercialization muscle where it’s missing: Invest in testbeds, demonstration sites, and early procurement pathways to de-risk adoption of emerging technologies. Prioritize sectors where private capital is scarce or timelines are long, such as biomanufacturing, agri-tech, and quantum. Close the capital gap by giving technologies a place to prove and scale.Laying the foundation for navigable service delivery: Create a single point of entry and a structured path through R&D, demonstration, and scale-up support so firms don’t have to start from scratch with every application or interpret siloed eligibility criteria. This agency wouldn’t replace all programs, but it would serve as the coordinating centre of gravity so firms can access the right support at the right time, without hiring consultants to decode the system.<p>It must be a Crown corporation. Not a secretariat or special office. Only a Crown can operate outside standard government HR, IT, and procurement constraints while maintaining strategic accountability to Ministers. That accountability can be enforced through mandate letters, corporate plans, and quarterly reporting. Anything less would leave the agency trapped inside a system built for policy, not delivery. Its internal structure would combine strategic intelligence, sector-specific delivery teams, a central coordination unit, and dedicated staff for demonstration, procurement, and regulation.</p><p>While civilian in focus, the agency would directly support Canada’s dual-use technology objectives across AI, biomanufacturing, and quantum. That makes it a natural contributor to Canada’s new 5 percent NATO commitments. The work must be structured to qualify under NATO’s R&D accounting rules, but the agency itself should remain outside the Department of National Defence to preserve a civilian industrial focus. This will require close coordination with Defence and co-reporting arrangements, ensuring accountability for national security priorities without importing military delivery culture.</p><p>The agency’s launch should include the full transfer of existing delivery tools: the National Research Council’s Industrial Research Assistance Program (IRAP) and its 350 staff; the Strategic Innovation Fund (SIF); Innovation Solutions Canada (ISC); the Department of National Defence’s Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program; and design and appeals functions related to the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax credit. Additional funding would be required for DARPA-style missions, technology demonstration programming, and agency operations. The $200 million annually earmarked in Budget 2022 for the Canadian Innovation Corporation (CIC) is a floor, not a ceiling.</p><p>This isn’t a new idea. Canada has launched strategic industrial tools before, including the Defence Industry Productivity Program (DIPP), Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC), the Strategic Aerospace and Defence Initiative (SADI), and IRAP itself, which is now 75 years old. The institutional memory exists. What’s missing is the machinery to coordinate, scale, and deliver across the system.</p><p>Other countries have figured this out. Finland’s Business Finland combines innovation funding with export promotion and investment targeting. The UK’s Innovate UK connects challenge-based R&D with industry-led development. Japan’s NEDO manages both early-stage tech bets and large-scale demonstrations.</p><p>It’s reasonable to ask: If countries like Finland or the UK succeed with agencies like Business Finland or Innovate UK, why does Canada need this mission control agency?</p><p>Because those agencies operate in stronger systems. Their success reflects not just internal design but the coherence of the surrounding policy environment—something Canada lacks. Here, departments operate in silos. Procurement doesn’t talk to permitting. Research funding isn’t sequenced with deployment or export strategy. It is a failure of coordination. And it is why, despite spending billions, we continue to underperform. A CIC-style agency would improve delivery, but it wouldn’t fix the fragmented architecture. This agency would.</p><p>It would take responsibility for the core system functions that currently fall through the cracks, such as publishing sector-level capacity maps, coordinating permitting timelines across jurisdictions, sequencing capital support through IRAP, SIF, regional development agencies, and more, and ensuring that technologies developed with public R&D dollars actually reach procurement and export markets.</p><p>This isn’t a call for endless new funding. It’s a call to rewire how we support innovation, and to back that system with a stable, long-term revenue base. One option: a grand bargain that accelerates permitting in exchange for a modest resource levy, using resource revenues to help build the institutions of Canada’s future.</p><p>Some will say this would step on the toes of departments. Yes, it would. That’s the point.</p><p>Departments control key innovation levers like procurement, training, regulation, and infrastructure, but they aren’t built to align them toward industrial goals. The result is policy beige. This national agency would be structured to advise, align, and coordinate—not override. But it would need clear authority to set direction, manage shared files, and publish performance data across the portfolio. It would be a delivery institution, not a policy shop. ISED would remain the federal government’s lead on innovation policy and economic development strategy, while this agency would focus on its role of execution and coordination.</p><p>This isn’t about replacing programs. It’s about governing them coherently, strategically, and at speed. Canada doesn’t need more pilots. It needs a national operator to move technologies from lab to market and transform innovation into industrial strength.</p><p>We’ve layered delivery band-aids on a system that never had a working circulatory system to begin with. It’s time to stop duct-taping holes and start building architecture.</p> Canada Doesn’t Have an Innovation System: It Has 134 Programs \| ITIF	查看 11594	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232658	无图 <p>The U.S. Supreme Court"s recent decision inFree Speech Coalition v. Paxton—in which the court upheld Texas"s age verification requirements for adult websites—marks a pivotal moment in online content regulation. The Court has opened the floodgates for state-level age-verification legislation not just for adult websites, but for any online service. Congress should act swiftly to both protect children’s safety online and prevent a fragmented regulatory landscape that burdens online services and users alike.</p><p>The best solution is for Congress to pass legislation requiring a standardized “trustworthy child flag” system. When first creating a new user account, such as during device setup, parents could opt to designate an account as belonging to a child. These accounts would transmit a “flag” that signals to apps and websites that a user is underage. Congress could then also require those that serve age-restricted content to check for this signal for their users, allowing them to restrict underage users from age-inappropriate content automatically. Because the setting is tied to the account, not the device, it would carry over when a child logs in on a new phone, tablet, or computer. To ensure consistency and reduce compliance costs, Congress should also preempt state child age verification laws and replace them with this unified, privacy-respecting approach.</p><p>In Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton (2025), the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that states may require websites with a significant portion of adult content to verify users’ age to prevent minors from accessing such content. The case challenged Texas HB 1181, which requires age verification for websites with more than one-third of their content deemed "harmful to minors," and the Court"s decision upheld the state"s authority to implement such requirements despite First Amendment challenges from adult entertainment industry groups.</p><p>Many states will likely take this decision as a green light to continue introducing age verification bills aimed at protecting minors from harm. Over 40 states and Washington, DC have introduced or passed laws requiring some form of age verification to access online services. While these laws are well-intentioned, they are also deeply flawed.</p><p>There are several approaches that states are taking to implement age verification. Some states require each individual online service to verify that their users are over a certain age. Texas and Utah have implemented one of the most stringent approaches. The law requires users to submit a copy of their government-issued identification to the operator of the online service before they can gain access, a limitation for adults who do not have a government ID. Nine states are currently considering this approach, and Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Congressman John James (R-MI) have introduced a similar bill at the federal level. Other states, like Maryland and California, have adopted age-appropriate design codes, which establish standards that online services must follow to make their services safe for children. With these types of bills, online services may also have to collect and retain information from users’ government-issued IDs.</p><p>Some states require app stores to handle age verification. These policies require app store providers to obtain verifiable parental consent before allowing a minor to download, purchase, or use certain apps. Users would only need to verify their age once per app store. This approachis less burdensomefor users since they only have to verify their age once at the app store, rather than with each service. It also better protects privacy than requiring separate age verification for each online service because a user’s data is confined to one app store (or stores) rather than multiple platforms, when designed correctly. However, it does not address age verification for websites, a considerable gap. It would be more effective to require age verification, when necessary, at the device level, requiring users to verify their age once with their device’s operating system when creating an account.</p><p>While many of these laws, like Texas HB 1181, target adult websites, some, like Florida and Arkansas, target social media platforms, including those that do not contain a significant portion of adult content or that restrict youth from viewing such content. These laws are based on the premise that social media is harmful to children. Although most social media platforms already forbid children under 13 from creating accounts, some lawmakers believe that the age should be higher or that children should not have access to social media at all. While the Supreme Court’s ruling in Paxton determined that age verification for adult websites is constitutional, there is a much stronger free speech argument against age verification for social media.</p><p>Ultimately, the Supreme Court’s decision establishes a precedent that age checks are indeed on the way for many users, at least for adult websites. Rather than allow each state to set its own method for age verification, the best solution for protecting children online and for allowing adults to continue to access adult content is for Congress to require a device-level national child flag system. Rather than using ID checks, this opt-in process gives users, children, and parents alike control over their online experiences and creates a national age verification standard, rather than a fragmented state landscape.</p> Supreme Court Ruling Sparks Age Checks—Here’s a Smarter Fix \| ITIF	查看 5515	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232657	无图 <p>As the Trump administration races against the clock to negotiate trade deals before reciprocal tariffs snap back into place, reports suggest these agreements will be narrower in scope than originally envisioned. This reality demands strategic prioritization. The administration should focus on what matters most for America’s economic and national security future: defending our technology industry from foreign attacks.</p><p>With limited bandwidth for negotiations, we can no longer afford to treat all trade sectors equally. The United States should not pursue trade negotiations that undermine its technological advantage. Every hour spent negotiating agricultural quotas while foreign governments systematically attack our technology companies through “non-tariff attacks” is an hour lost. As Xi Jinping himself identifies technology as “the main battleground of the global playing field,” we must align our priorities accordingly.</p>The New Weapon: Non-Tariff Attacks on American Tech<p>While traditional trade negotiations focus on tariffs and market access, a more insidious threat has emerged. Foreign governments have weaponized domestic regulations to systematically target American tech companies through three sophisticated tactics:</p>They design regulations with surgical precision to capture U.S. firms while exempting domestic competitors. The EU’s Digital Markets Act “gatekeeper” criteria predictably ensnared five American companies while initially sparing European rivals. India’s data protection laws single out U.S. firms as “data fiduciaries.” Turkey’s revenue thresholds magically capture American companies while protecting local players.These measures extract massive resources from American innovation. EU fines against U.S. tech firms totaled $6.7 billion in 2024 alone—one-fifth of the EU’s entire tariff revenue base. France collected over $2 billion in digital services taxes since its inception. Each billion extracted is capital lost to American innovation.They hide behind legitimate policy goals while pursuing strategic objectives. As Andreas Schwab, the EU’s own rapporteur for the Digital Markets Act, admitted: “Let’s go down the line—one, two, three, four, five... But let’s not start with number 7 to include a European gatekeeper just to please Biden.” This isn’t about fair competition; it’s about targeting American success.<p>These attacks directly benefit China. When foreign regulations force U.S. firms to exit markets or share technology, Chinese competitors fill the vacuum. While Europe extracted $6.7 billion from U.S. tech companies last year, China deployed 969 million 5G subscriptions and raced ahead in quantum computing and AI. The January 2025 emergence of DeepSeek, which achieved breakthrough AI performance at a fraction of U.S. costs, illustrates what happens when resources are diverted from innovation to fighting discriminatory regulations.</p>The Strategic Choice<p>With the 90-day reciprocal tariff deadline creating urgency and negotiating bandwidth at a premium, the Trump administration faces a strategic choice: Continue haggling over commodity exports while our technology leadership erodes, or recognize that some battles matter more than others.</p><p>A bipartisan coalition of policy experts recently urged the administration, in a letter to Treasury Secretary Bessent, Commerce Secretary Lutnick, USTR Greer, and Senior Counselor Navarro, to prioritize these non-tariff attacks in trade negotiations, citing over 100 examples of discriminatory policies targeting U.S. tech companies worldwide.</p><p>Canada’s swift repeal of its digital services tax after Trump threatened trade action demonstrates what’s possible when priorities are clear. But much more remains.</p><p>Some might argue these aren’t traditional trade issues. That’s precisely why they matter. Economic competition has evolved. In an era where algorithms matter more than agricultural exports and data flows determine power more than commodity shipments, protecting technology leadership is the paramount trade priority. R&D-intensive tech sectors drive both radical breakthroughs and incremental innovations that cascade throughout the economy. Moreover, advanced technologies increasingly serve dual purposes—powering both commercial applications and defense capabilities. In the strategic competition with China, control over foundational technologies such as AI, quantum computing, and semiconductors will determine not only economic prosperity but also military advantage and global influence for decades to come.</p><p>As the coalition letter makes clear: “Non-tariff attacks on U.S. technology leadership through undue or disproportionate measures represent one of the most significant trade challenges of our time.”</p><p>Every negotiating hour matters. Every trade-off counts. In the competition for technological supremacy that will determine economic and military power for decades, we cannot afford to bring yesterday’s priorities to tomorrow’s fight. The Trump administration must put defending American tech at the very top of the trade agenda. The U.S. national security and long-term economic competitiveness depends on getting this priority right.</p> Time for Strategic Clarity on the US Trade Agenda \| ITIF	查看 5221	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232656	无图 <p>Countries are adopting a more protectionist stance since the U.S. government announced “Liberation Day” tariffs. At the same time, free trade negotiations are increasing, perhaps marking a new trade policy paradox: many countries are protecting their domestic industries from the uncertainty of U.S. trade policy, while simultaneously negotiating free trade agreements (FTAs) with other nations—free trade protectionism. This could evolve into a new global trade order, lacking enforceable generally agreed-upon rules and a bypassed American economy.</p><p>The Global Trade and Innovation Policy Alliance (GTIPA), a network of nearly 60 think tanks from all continents and income groups, ranging from Bangladesh to Germany, released a report analyzing how countries are adapting their trade and economic policies. The report reveals common patterns in how economies respond to tariffs: ironically, with both openness and protectionism.</p><p>More countries in the Global South, particularly members of the Belt and Road Initiative, such as Bangladesh, Brazil, Pakistan, and South Africa, are turning closer to China. Chinese investments make that easier. Many U.S. allies are also abandoning the United States, seeking to cut their own deals with China with most concerned that U.S. tariffs against China will unleash a flood of cheap, subsidized Chinese goods into their markets.</p><p>Policymakers generally prefer to negotiate with the United States rather than retaliating with their own tariffs. Even so, some countries are working to reduce their dependency on U.S. trade and broaden their export market alternatives. The Australian government, for example, launched an expansive policy to boost domestic manufacturing, diversify its supply chain, and accumulate strategic reserves of critical minerals. Meanwhile, Australia is also increasing its engagement with members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the European Union (EU), India, and the UK.</p><p>Canada is expanding its West Coast pipeline capacity, enabling oil exporters to bypass the U.S. market. Germany is pressing Brussels to finalize the long-stalled agreement between the EU and Mercosur (a group of South American economies) and to ease requirements in trade negotiations with India and Indonesia. Mexico is leveraging its membership in the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and a modernized EU agreement to boost market access beyond North America.</p><p>Free trade protectionism is also occurring in economies that are often out of Washington"s immediate attention. Brazil, a founding member of the BRICS, has revived its “neo-industrialization” program, linking new tax credits to local-content rules in the automotive, agricultural, and telecommunications sectors, while also accelerating efforts to secure the long-pending EU-Mercosur agreement and exploring trade talks with Canada. North Macedonia has provided zero-interest loans for its textile and wine sectors and is relying on the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA), the Open Balkan initiative, and the Berlin Process to foster intra-regional trade. Pakistan is openly adopting an import substitution approach and offering tariff-rebate schemes to firms that commit to local sourcing, but is also courting partners in ASEAN, Central Asia, China, and the Middle East to move toward regional integration.</p><p>Given that the United States is the largest and most important player in the global trading system, the shock from President Trumps trade policies are expected to have large and cascading effects. U.S. tariffs are leading to targeted protectionism; nations are pulling back from American markets and seeking new trade partners. This emerging model—free trade among allies, but protectionism toward the United States—may be a preview of the next global trade order: fragmented alliances, bypassed U.S. markets, and a sidelined World Trade Organization.</p> Free Trade Protectionism: U.S. Tariffs Are Creating a New Trade Policy Paradox \| ITIF	查看 3980	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232655	有图 <p>U.S. antitrust policy has long assaulted and undercut American firms trying to compete in tough global markets. “Trustbusters” have historically shown no interest in whether U.S. firms can succeed internationally. Instead, their focus has been singular: fragment markets to drive down prices for consumers, regardless of the broader consequences.</p><p>No other non-Anglo economy would dare attack its own national champions the way American antitrust enforcers do. Just look at the aggressive lawsuits and investigations targeting the few remaining U.S. global tech leaders—Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.</p><p>And if the absurdity of these “anti-monopoly” zealots isn’t already obvious, consider this: our trading adversaries, like the EU, are lobbing antitrust ordnance at U.S. tech companies to give their own companies the upper hand.</p><p>There’s no better cautionary tale of self-sabotage than how the U.S. government single-handedly decimated American leadership in the copier business. Specifically, what it did to Xerox.</p><p></p><p>America invented the copier business. Through Xerox, it led the world in innovation, created tens of thousands of high-paying jobs, and ran a trade surplus in copiers. Xerox’s dominance was so complete that its brand name became a verb. That, as it turns out, was its fatal mistake.</p><p>Nothing draws the antitrust hounds like the scent of success. And so the government pounced, bringing down its prey and effectively ceding global leadership to Japan. Mission accomplished?</p><p>Xerox’s rise was classic American entrepreneurship. Once a start-up, it built its dominance with innovation and intellectual property—more than 2,000 patents—and modest profits. In 1970, Xerox PARC launched in Silicon Valley, which went on to develop many foundational technologies of the personal computing era (things we now take for granted). In 1968, its profit margin was just 11.1 percent, lower than the average U.S. corporate profit rate of 11.5 percent.</p><p>But none of that mattered. A gradual rise, modest profits, and no evidence of predatory behavior didn’t deter the trustbusters. In 1972, the Federal Trade Commission filed a suit against Xerox, accusing the firm of monopolizing the copier market. Three years later, Xerox settled the case by signing a consent decree. It was less a negotiation than a shakedown, similar to when a local store owner complies with the Mafia’s demand to turn over 10 percent of revenue for “protection.”</p><p>As former Boston Consulting Group consultants Mark Blaxill and Ralph Eckardt wrote: “Practically speaking, they [the FTC] forced Xerox to license their patents to the world.” As the key remedy, the company was forced to license any three of its patents for free, the next three for a maximum royalty of 1.5 percent, and the remainder of its portfolio for nothing. Even worse, Xerox was required to provide its Japanese competitors with written “know-how,” including detailed drawings, blueprints, and technical specifications for existing and future machines. An estimated 1,700 patents were handed over.</p>American antitrust enforcers targeting their own national tech champions<img src="https://cdn.sanity.io/images/03hnmfyj/production/d666aafa81afcfe3c0dd9c14854ee4d9d91490d2-455x416.png" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>The FTC’s Bureau of Competition chief at the time openly said he would be “dissatisfied if Xerox’s market share isn’t significantly diminished in several years.” He got his wish. Within four years of the consent decree, Xerox’s U.S. market share collapsed from around 95 percent to less than 14 percent. Japanese competitors, such as Canon, Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic, Konica, and Minolta, gained most of that ground. They must have thought they’d died and gone to heaven, or wondered how Americans could be so stupid.</p><p>Only in the United States would the destruction of a world-leading company be celebrated as a policy success. Talk about insanity.</p><p>Some argue the case boosted innovation. Maybe, but not in the United States. A recent working paper found that while U.S. antitrust action against Xerox did promote innovation, the gains accrued almost entirely among Japanese firms.</p><p>If your standard is consumer welfare, then sure, the Xerox case was a win. However, if your standard is national tech competitiveness and job creation, it was a disastrous mistake.</p><p>So, were the FTC enforcers just incompetent? Clearly not. But they were captured by a uniquely Anglo-American ideological affliction—one that says:</p>The government’s role is to enforce a “level playing field” by eliminating market power.No industry is more important than another.International competitiveness is a myth; countries don’t compete, only firms do.The only thing that matters is short-term consumer welfare through lower prices.<p>With this worldview, of course it makes sense to fire antitrust shells at any company that succeeds, regardless of its strategic importance to the nation.</p><p>To make matters worse, U.S. enforcers have long been happy to play into the hands of jealous rivals. That Yelp convinced regulators in both the U.S. and EU to target and weaken Google wasn’t seen as rent-seeking or even problematic. Instead, it was framed—indeed, celebrated—as consumer advocacy. As Lenin supposedly said, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them.” In this case, American firms are happy to turn their government against one another, even if it weakens the entire nation, so long as consumers claim some marginal, short-term benefits.</p><p>While these past assaults were destructive, at least the countries that benefited from our ideological naïveté were largely allies, like Japan. But today, the winner is Beijing. And that’s a whole different ball game.</p><p>The new left-right, neo-Brandeisian anti-corporate coalition has created a regime that threatens not just U.S. companies but the future of American technological leadership. This antitrust alliance risks jeopardizing the future of the republic in the service of an outdated, narrow, and short-sighted ideology.</p><p>If we keep this trend up, Chinese tech firms will dominate U.S. markets, while our own firms shrink and stop investing in innovation. But hey, at least we can say that consumers will have more choices. Oh joy.</p> US Antitrust as an Anti-Competitiveness Weapon \| ITIF	查看 6353	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232654	无图 <p>In its push for digital sovereignty, the European Commission is reportedly planning to replace Microsoft Azure with the French cloud provider OVHcloud or another European alternative. But this move, while politically symbolic, would be costly. Far from enhancing security, this migration would sacrifice sound procurement and EU legal obligations in service of a hollow vision of digital nationalism. It burdens taxpayers, ignores practical realities, and risks delivering inferior outcomes. Instead of prioritizing symbolic gestures, the EU should rely on objective, measurable metrics to deliver best-in-class public services using best-in-class digital solutions.</p><p>The Commission’s move is not justified by any genuine security concerns. Every cloud service provider operating within the EU—regardless of its nationality—must already comply with identical data protection standards under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The GDPR also includes specific restrictions on international data transfers and comprehensive safeguards for personal data processing, making the nationality of the cloud provider irrelevant to data security.</p><p>Moreover, the Commission has no legitimate grievance against Microsoft’s cloud offerings. The company established its EU Data Boundary project specifically to enable European customers to store and process data exclusively within the EU. Microsoft’s “Defending Your Data” programme includes legally binding commitments to challenge government requests for customer data, whilst the recently launched European Security Program provides additional governmental assurances. The company has invested billions in European data centre capacity operated by European personnel and partnered with local providers, including Germany’s Delos.</p><p>Furthermore, the EU’s commitments under the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Government Procurement require transparent, merit-based supplier selection rather than discriminatory practices based on corporate nationality. By limiting consideration to European alternatives—OVHcloud, Germany’s IONOS, France’s Scaleway, and Italy’s Aruba—whilst dismissing American providers, the Commission appears to use digital sovereignty as a pretext for protectionist procurement that violates its international trade obligations as well as its own public procurement principles.</p><p>The Commission’s current Microsoft Azure arrangement delivers precisely what European institutions need: proven reliability, comprehensive security, and global-scale infrastructure at competitive prices. Microsoft’s global market share advantage over OVHcloud reflects genuine technical strengths and economies of scale that directly benefit European taxpayers through lower costs and better service. Abandoning this successful partnership in favour of less mature or scalable alternatives could prove unnecessarily costly and disruptive.</p><p>Some three-quarters of large-scale cloud migrations exceed initial budgets, with just over ten percent of migration projects stretching for three quarters or longer beyond their planned timelines. Why fix what isn’t broken? The Commission already enjoys enterprise-grade cloud services that comply with all European data protection requirements whilst delivering global connectivity and cutting-edge capabilities.</p><p>Before rushing to a European alternative, the Commission should consider previous failed attempts at European digital sovereignty. The EU’s social media sovereignty experiment provides one such cautionary tale. In April 2022, the European Data Protection Supervisor launched EU Voice and EU Video, European-operated alternatives to Twitter and YouTube using the open-source software Mastodon and PeerTube, in an effort to promote European digital sovereignty. Despite the EDPS declaring the pilot “successful in delivering alternative, privacy-friendly and user-focused social media platforms,” both platforms closed in May 2024 when no institution would assume operational responsibility.</p><p>The project attracted 40 institutional accounts but failed to achieve sustainable adoption—Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager never used her EU Voice account during the entire two-year pilot. The experiment’s failure shows that replacing digital services with European options is not as simple as policymakers suggest. The European Commission continues operating its own separate Mastodon instance, but most EU institutions maintain dual-platform strategies rather than abandoning American platforms entirely.</p><p>EU policymakers should also note that digital sovereignty is not a one-way street—if the EU discriminates against foreign providers, it risks retaliation. Should every other country’s government agencies abandon European solutions like SAP? Picking trade fights with America over cloud security concerns that existing regulations already address seems particularly ill-timed, with the EU seeking a trade deal with the United States in the next month, where failure to reach an agreement could potentially trigger retaliatory measures.</p><p>European institutions require reliable, cost-effective technology solutions that enable public service delivery. The European Commission should stick to objective metrics such as data security, regulatory compliance, cost effectiveness, and operational reliability, to dictate procurement decision making, which invariably involves maintaining partnerships with leading global providers to deliver superior outcomes.</p> Brussels Risks Prioritising Symbolism Over Substance in Cloud Procurement \| ITIF	查看 5527	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232653	无图 <p>Canada is not on the map. Literally. According to the 2024 Global Innovation Index, Canada has zero entries among the world’s top 50 science and technology clusters. Toronto comes in at number 54, while Vancouver and Montréal remain unmentioned. These are not fringe cities; they are the anchors of Canada’s innovation economy.</p><p>But none of them crack the global top 50. That’s not just a data point. It reflects a deeper problem: Canada has not built a single tech or science cluster with enough scale, concentration, and visibility to matter globally. This is a structural failure that demands a BHAG (big, hairy, audacious goal) to fix it. Canada should identify and support one technology cluster that can break into the top 50.</p><p>We argue that the only way to do this is to concentrate resources in one place. And we believe the best candidate for elevation is Waterloo. To make that happen, the federal and Ontario governments should collaborate. They can start by expanding research funding for the University of Waterloo. But most importantly, they should create an incentive: Tech start-ups based in Waterloo and firms relocating R&D and innovation production from outside Canada to the region will pay no tax for a decade.</p><p>Waterloo is not Canada’s biggest tech hub, but it is the best shot at scale. It ranks as North America’s top small tech talent market for the fourth consecutive year, has added over 9,000 tech jobs since 2018, and boasts a higher concentration of tech workers than Toronto. It hosts Canada’s top engineering school, a robust start-up infrastructure, and a track record of globally relevant firms. The foundation is there. What’s missing is the national policy weight to push it over the top.</p><p>Trying to elevate Toronto or Montréal risks spreading investment too thin. Both cities have strong tech sectors, but they’re large and fragmented, with many institutions and priorities competing for attention. Major new incentives to really boost these locations would require significant resources that Canada does not have.</p><p>The federal government already funds regional innovation through the Global Innovation Clusters program. But its model—five sectoral clusters across multiple provinces—prioritizes balance over scale. Despite the name, the program has not produced clusters in the economic sense: concentrated, self-reinforcing ecosystems of firms, talent, and capital.</p><p>Real clusters are more than proximity. They are dense, place-based systems of innovation and production. They require co-location of firms, active labor mobility, embedded R&D institutions, shared infrastructure, supply chain interdependencies, and a culture of iterative learning between firms and universities. Canada’s current model funds valuable networks, and while it should be continued, it does not build concentration. If everything is a cluster, nothing is.</p><p>Canada’s broader innovation model reinforces this pattern. Programs are designed to distribute support broadly, not build concentrated strength. And that’s fine. But an additional and different approach is needed. Clusters offer a way out, not by narrowing participation, but by concentrating capital, talent, and ambition in one place, allowing a sector to build a self-reinforcing gravitational pull.</p><p>Designating Waterloo as a tech and computing cluster would be the first step toward the kind of concentrated approach Canada’s current model lacks. As part of a suite of measures, tech start-ups based in the region should be tax-free for ten years. So should firms outside Canada that relocate meaningful R&D and innovation production.</p><p>On its own, a tax exemption will not build a cluster. But it will signal that one is being built. The University of Waterloo should also receive more funding for research and commercialization. Together, these are early incentives while longer-term institutions and infrastructure take shape. This is not about picking winners. It is about backing the conditions that allow winners to emerge at scale, enabling them to compete globally.</p><p>The evidence for this approach is strong:</p>In Clusters from the Inside and Out, Wolfe and Gertler show that real clusters emerge when local institutions, civic leadership, and global linkages reinforce one another.In Do Clusters Make a Difference?, Spencer et al. use Canadian data to demonstrate that clustered regions outperform on income, employment, and innovation.In Clusters, Convergence, and Economic Performance, Delgado, Porter, and Stern show globally that strong clusters drive spillovers, increased patenting, and the emergence of entirely new industries.<p>Additionally, the benefits of clustering are not confined exclusively to the cluster itself. As a strong hub grows, adjacent regions benefit through talent spillovers, supply chain linkages, knowledge transfer, and increased market access. Clusters also anchor strategic sectors, embed key capabilities within domestic institutions, and reduce brain drain by offering high-quality work at home. They make it more likely that Canadian inventions are commercialized domestically, that Canadian IP stays in Canadian hands, and that Canadian workers gain skills that compound within the national economy.</p><p>This is not a leap of faith. It is a long-overdue application of what the world’s best-performing economies already know: If you want productivity, you have to build around scale and specialization. You need to create literal, physical zones where excellence is rewarded and where innovation does not have to beg for relevance.</p><p>Waterloo does not need a blueprint. It needs a decision. A deliberate policy choice to concentrate growth, reward ambition, and give Canada a place that can compete on a global scale.</p> Building Canada’s Tech Cluster in Waterloo \| ITIF	查看 5819	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232652	无图 <p>One of the more amusing things about Washington is how hard many people work to discover, and then loudly and proudly repeat, the prevailing political and economic groupthink. For several decades, anyone who wanted to be somebody dutifully praised the so-called Washington Consensus: markets good, governments bad.</p><p>Now that the Washington Consensus is out of fashion, many have scrambled to latch onto a new orthodoxy to signal their allegiance to. Nature abhors a vacuum, and D.C. abhors real intellectual debate. So a new techno-economic dogma has taken hold: “Okay, maybe we need some government involvement in the economy, but under no circumstances should we emulate China.”</p><p>This caution is now obligatory. A recent industrial policy playbook feels the need to clarify, “We don’t want to imitate Beijing’s playbook.” Bloomberg ran an article titled “China Is the Wrong Model for the US Economy.” One free-market scholar wrote that the United States should definitely not copy China. And Rhodium Group warned that a “headlong embrace of [Chinese] statism would be immiserating for many nations.”</p><p>The consensus has settled around a convenient middle ground: It’s okay for the government to dabble in tech policy, but under no circumstances should it implement a full-blown industrial policy of the kind China uses—that must be off the table.</p><p>Like all policy shibboleths, this is rarely questioned.</p><p>Well, it’s time to not only question it, but to reject it outright. The reality is that if the United States doesn’t become more like China, it will lose the battle for advanced technology leadership.</p><p>And before anyone starts hyperventilating and asking, “Are you saying we should become a dictatorship?!”—relax and keep reading.</p><p></p><p>Being more like China doesn’t mean suppressing civil liberties or locking up dissidents. It means four main things:</p><p>1. Investing in the Future</p><p>China invests more societal resources in innovation and long-term growth. ITIF estimates that China now spends more on R&D than the United States in nominal terms and considerably more when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP). China also devotes a significantly higher proportion of its GDP to overall investment. The United States, by contrast, specializes in consumption. Even if China misallocates some of its funds, it is still likely to end up with more effective investments than the United States. In other words, China is out-investing the U.S. and that matters.</p><p>2. Targeting Strategic Sectors</p><p>China identifies and backs key sectors that provide national leverage. Unlike the United States, Beijing doesn’t believe that potato chips are the same as microchips or that all manufacturing is created equal. It treats a wide range of advanced industries as essential to its future global power—and it supports these sectors unapologetically. To the extent that the United States does this at all, it’s either an isolated intervention (such as the CHIPS Act) or filtered through social objectives (like the IRA’s climate focus), rather than being grounded in a comprehensive national competitiveness strategy.</p><p>3. Subsidizing Industry, Because That’s How You Win</p><p>China aggressively subsidizes companies in advanced, strategic industries. That’s a big reason why Chinese firms are steadily gaining global market share in everything from EVs to solar panels to telecom equipment. We can whine about “unfair” subsidies all we want, but unless the United States offers its own support—tailored, accountable, and strategic—American firms will keep losing. Take displays. How is a U.S. display company supposed to compete with a Chinese display rival whose capital costs are fully paid for by the government? The answer is simple: it can’t.</p><p>4. Building a National Techno-Economic Strategy</p><p>At a recent ITIF-hosted Chatham House Rule roundtable on industrial policy, one skeptic of industrial policy laid out three reasons why we shouldn’t “become like China.”</p>Even if we try, we can’t replicate China. No kidding! Of course we can’t. They have a different system and way more money. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t mount our own best effort.China wastes massive amounts of money. Sure! Of course they do. But waste isn’t inevitable. The United States can implement what works and adjust what doesn’t, eventually designing a more disciplined and effective approach to industrial strategy.China is still catching up while we’re innovating. Wrong! Of course, I can understand why U.S. leaders want to believe that. As ITIF recently found, China is not just catching up—it’s innovating at the frontier. Meanwhile, the United States now faces the difficult task of reclaiming some industrial ground lost over the last two decades.<p>I hate that I even have to say this, but fine—here it goes. No, the United States shouldn’t copy everything China does. Democracy is good. Rule of law is good. Intellectual property rights are good. The list goes on.</p><p>Copying some does not mean copying all. However, the fact is that we’re not emulating many aspects of China’s model that we should be.</p><p>For example, the United States:</p>Is not making winning the techno-economic war a top national priority.Is not developing sophisticated, coordinated advanced industrial strategies.Is not investing enough—directly or via the tax code—in foundational and emerging technologies.Is not supporting domestic firms as they fight for global market leadership.Is not applying the innovation principle when crafting regulation.Is not reining in anti-corporate antitrust attacks on our national champions.<p>Let’s be honest, those of us pushing for a serious industrial strategy are fighting an uphill battle. And it’s not clear if we “emulators” will prevail. We’re squeezed between the new Washington Consensus that reflexively opposes industrial policy and a left-right coalition that either distrusts government or hates big business.</p><p>Still, there’s precedent. In the 1980s and early ’90s, U.S. firms worked closely with the Reagan administration, the first Bush administration, and Congress to advocate for a strong techno-competitiveness agenda to counter Japan’s rise. Today, with Chinese state capitalism threatening to wipe out entire sectors, a similar awakening may occur. We’ll have to wait and see.</p><p>If the elites prevail and U.S. leaders continue to reject the best elements of China’s innovation and industry policy system, there may be only one hope left: to convince Beijing to emulate America’s playbook—especially in areas such as the growing animus toward large corporations, the financialization of the economy, the overproduction of lawyers, and, of course, the dominance of neoclassical economics. Maybe then (and just maybe) we’d stand a chance of winning.</p> Yes, We Do Want to Be Like China \| ITIF	查看 6863	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232651	无图 <p>When TikTok briefly went dark in the U.S. following the passage of a new law mandating its sale to a U.S. entity in early 2025, it incidentally proved that Meta faces strong competition in the social media space. Specifically, the blackout proves that the Personal Social Networking Services (PSNS) market devised by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is too narrow and excludes ardent rivals to Meta’s platforms, particularly TikTok. This evidence, which Judge James Boasberg recently ruled the FTC cannot exclude, puts another dent in the FTC’s antitrust case against the tech firm, which claims that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp over ten years ago were anticompetitive and harmed users.</p><p>Establishing monopoly power is an essential aspect of any monopolization case tried under Section 2 of the Sherman Act, as this case is. One way to prove monopoly power involves defining a relevant market. From an economic perspective, the relevant market would include all effective substitutes for the product being produced by the defendant firm. Economists establish the existence of substitutes by looking at cross-price elasticities.</p><p>Cross-price elasticities measure how the consumption of other products changes in response to a change in the price of a specific good. For example, if the price of butter increases, we may see a significant increase in the consumption of margarine. However, precisely making this calculation often requires consumption data that are not always available. In digital markets (like social media), quantifying elasticities can be even trickier since these services sometimes carry prices of zero.</p><p>The TikTok blackout thus provides important evidence of substitutability between Meta and other platforms. It amounts to a “natural experiment” that shows which apps TikTok users switch to when the cost of using TikTok rises. To analyze this, economists use a “difference-in-differences” (DiD) approach, which in this case takes U.S. users as a treatment group and a control group ideally similar in every way to the U.S. users except for the TikTok ban. The analysis examines the rate of switching for each group before and after the ban, then calculates the difference between these two rates to illustrate the effect the ban had on U.S. users switching to other apps.</p><p>Working within this framework, Meta’s expert economists found that, during the U.S. TikTok outage, many users switched to competing platforms, including Meta, which suggests the FTC’s PSNS market is too narrow. These findings are backed by another research paper, which made clear that “[b]ased on survey data, if TikTok were banned, users would largely spend more time on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram.” This study also exploited the U.S. TikTok outage and employed a DiD approach to demonstrate that advertisers largely switched to Meta during the shutdown—exactly as predicted.</p><p>The FTC’s experts provided several arguments against using the TikTok blackouts as evidence of substitution. One argument referenced the “cellophane” fallacy, so named for the product at issue in the antitrust case where it was expounded. This fallacy occurs when economists measure substitution away from a product that already has a monopoly price rather than a competitive price. However, the FTC established no competitive benchmark in the case that could be used to prove that the cellophane fallacy is relevant here. In fact, the products in question are offered to consumers at no cost.</p><p>Indeed, reasonable substitution between the platforms was confirmed by one of Meta’s expert economists, John List, at trial. List conducted a modified “synthetic control” version of the DiD method to find the same result with respect to the TikTok blackout that began in India in 2020, when the platform was banned in that country. List explained that the ban led to a significant increase in engagement with Meta’s products in India. Here, the cellophane fallacy argument is mitigated by the fact that, in addition to rivals in the U.S., Meta faces competition in India from local apps, such as ShareChat.</p><p>Another FTC argument relates to asymmetric substitution. TikTok users switching to Meta doesn’t mean that the reverse would be true if Meta experienced the blackout instead. Nonetheless, saying that the TikTok blackout doesn’t conclusively prove that TikTok is a substitute for Meta doesn’t prove that it is not a substitute for Meta either. Indeed, it is generally true that if Y is a substitute for X, then X is a substitute for Y.</p><p>Another study conducted by List for the trial expressly highlighted substitution from Meta to TikTok through a field experiment. In the experiment, users were paid an hourly rate to allow the researchers to track their app usage on their devices. A treatment group was then paid extra not to use Facebook, Instagram, or WhatsApp. When these users switched to other apps, it was more likely to be TikTok or YouTube than the services that were included in the FTC’s PSNS market: Snapchat and MeWe.</p><p>This study is also relevant to another argument: The ban is akin to imposing a prohibitively high price on the service. Better evidence of substitution would come from smaller increases in the cost of using it. This is known as the “SSNIP” test, which measures user switching when a “small but significant increase in price” is imposed on a product or service. However, the field experiment did raise prices incrementally by increasing the reward for not using Meta’s apps.</p><p>Both the TikTok bans and the field experiment point to the same conclusion: TikTok, YouTube, and Meta’s apps are seen by users as close substitutes and should have been included in the relevant market devised by the FTC. Moreover—as Meta has argued in its motion for summary judgment—Meta and TikTok have substantially similar features, indicating they are close and symmetrical substitutes.</p><p>In delineating the relevant market, the use of economics can help prevent market “gerrymandering,” where plaintiffs construct the market in a way that bolsters their claim that the defendant has monopoly power. The TikTok blackouts and studies conducted by Meta’s economic experts suggest that the PSNS market defined by the FTC does not capture the actual competition faced by Meta in what is likely a broad attention market that includes non-digital goods. This significantly undermines the FTC’s theory that Meta has monopoly power and points to a likely victory for Meta in this case.</p> Economic Experiments Weaken the FTC’s Case Against Meta \| ITIF	查看 6552	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232650	无图 <p>Congress’ decision to reject a federal moratorium on state-level AI regulation is a missed opportunity. Without a pause, the United States continues to face a patchwork of state laws that confuses consumers, burdens businesses, and slows innovation. A moratorium would have given Congress time to build a coherent national framework and avoid unnecessary regulatory fragmentation.</p><p>Several state-level AI bills introduced in 2025 highlight the consequences of this disjointed approach. These proposals are meant to address concerns about bias, accountability, and transparency, but lawmakers often do not see eye-to-eye on these issues. For example, left-leaning policymakers generally want AI bias measures to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, while right-leaning ones are more concerned about reducing ideological bias. Moreover, the bills are frequently overbroad, ambiguous, and extraterritorial in scope. Instead of targeted oversight, they impose sweeping mandates that can burden developers, particularly those operating across state lines. The result is a confusing web of regulations that creates legal uncertainty, drives up costs, and stifles innovation.</p><p>These problems are evident in New York’s Responsible AI Safety and Education (RAISE) Act (A 6453A), which targets frontier AI models. The law requires developers of these advanced models to maintain detailed documentation, conduct third-party audits, and report incidents within 72 hours. Violations incur civil penalties up to $10 million. Like most of the state bills, RAISE would apply to any AI system used in the state, meaning that out-of-state and even international developers would be subject to the law. The Act’s expansive enforcement and extraterritorial scope could impose duplicative rules on AI developers, such as requiring them to conduct additional state-specific audits and safety reporting.</p><p>Illinois’ High Impact AI Governance Principles and Disclosure Act (H 3529) mandates transparency measures on companies that deploy high-impact AI systems. Businesses with 10 or more employees must publish annual (or updated) reports detailing how their systems align with five governance principles: safety, transparency, accountability, fairness, and contestability. These reports must also explain technical details about system design, data sources, risk mitigation strategies, and impact assessments—presented in both plain language for the public and more detailed versions for specialists. However, the law provides little clarity on how developers should interpret or operationalize these principles. In the absence of clear standards, businesses must navigate compliance on their own, increasing legal and administrative burden. The result is a sweeping disclosure regime that overregulates without offering the specificity developers need.</p><p>California’s SB 420 further underscores the risks of regulatory fragmentation. The bill requires any developer or deployer of a high-risk automated decision system (ADS)—which includes those using AI, as well as those using less advanced data analytics or statistical models—to conduct detailed impact assessments before releasing their systems to the public. These assessments must document intended uses, potential risks of discrimination or harm, and mitigation strategies. While designed to prevent harmful and discriminatory outcomes, the bill’s broad definition of “high-risk” and extensive pre-deployment requirements create significant hurdles and costs. Like the New York and Illinois proposals, SB 420’s wide scope risks influencing compliance strategies at the national scale, in the absence of federal standards.</p><p>Together, these laws reflect a troubling trend: the emergence of expansive and inconsistent AI laws with national consequences. The issue isn’t with regulating AI, but that many state laws vary widely in substance, scope, and coherence, making them difficult to scale to the national level. A startup hoping to launch a new AI product must now adhere to dozens of state frameworks, each with its own definitions, requirements, and penalties. Large corporations may manage the added complexity, but smaller firms often cannot, and even the large ones may find themselves building out large legal teams instead of investing more in engineering, potentially facing contradictory rules. This limits competition and slows innovation, ultimately imposing greater barriers to responsible AI development.</p><p>The state-by-state regulatory framework is also a direct threat to America’s ability to compete globally. China, for example, regulates AI at the national level through centralized standards issued by central-level organizations like the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC). The CAC’s 2025 Measures for Labeling AI-Generated Content apply uniformly to all providers, offering a single, predictable compliance framework. While China’s approach is more top-down, it gives companies a clear rulebook, unlike the U.S., where developers face a growing list of state-specific rules.</p><p>A federal moratorium on state-level AI laws would have helped avoid this outcome. Congress could have used the moratorium to consult stakeholders, evaluate the benefits and risks of various regulatory approaches, and design a national framework that protects consumers without unnecessarily restricting innovation. Instead, developers are left to navigate a confusing legal environment, which may slow the rollout of beneficial technologies—particularly in sectors such as healthcare and government services, where responsible deployment of AI could generate significant public benefit.</p><p>Looking ahead, Congress should still consider a federal moratorium on state AI laws—particularly those that impact other states—for as long as politically feasible. States like California and Massachusetts do not want Texas or Wyoming shaping their AI rules—and vice versa. The ultimate goal is not to block AI regulation, but to effectively coordinate it at the federal level. The United States needs a unified approach to AI governance that fosters innovation and establishes regulatory clarity across state lines.</p> Without a Federal Moratorium, US AI Policy Will Fragment Further \| ITIF	查看 6195	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232649	有图 <p>Europe was once the epicenter of global innovation, giving birth to the Industrial Revolution and shaping the trajectory of the modern economy. However, over the last few decades, it has lost its edge. In the global race for technological leadership, the United States and China have seized the lead in many emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing. While the reasons are multifaceted, Europe’s ambiguity toward new technology—and its embrace of the precautionary principle—plays a key role.</p><p>Despite being home to some of the world’s best engineers, universities, and research institutions, Europe has failed to retain top talent and technology companies compared to the United States and China. For instance, DeepMind, one of the world’s earliest AI labs, was founded in the United Kingdom in 2010. However, it was acquired by Google in 2014 after struggling to secure funding from more risk-averse European venture capitalists. Today, DeepMind underpins Google’s AI leadership and stands alongside the sector’s American frontrunners, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI.</p><p>Similarly, China is emerging as a formidable AI powerhouse, with platforms such as DeepSeek and Alibaba’s Qwen models performing on par with their American counterparts. Although promising European AI companies exist, such as France’s Mistral and Hugging Face, they remain few and suffer from a lack of venture funding compared to their American rivals.</p><p>Europe’s preference for secure, low-risk investments over bold bets on disruptive innovation has led to a shallower venture capital market. More risk-tolerant investors in the United States are pouring billions into AI development, while Europe has yet to produce a single trillion-dollar tech company. In fact, all seven of the world’s trillion-dollar tech firms are American, but Europe can claim only 28 businesses with valuations over $100 billion.</p><p>According to the 2024 State of European Tech report, European firms raised $426 billion over the past decade, roughly $800 billion less than U.S. firms during the same period. (See figure 1.) In China, government guidance funds have successfully facilitated public-private partnerships in venture capital-like investments, raising $700 billion as of 2021. Meanwhile, European pension funds, which manage around $9 trillion in assets, allocate just 0.018 percent to venture capital—more than 100 times less than the 1.9 percent invested by American pension funds. (See figure 2.) This lack of early-stage investment has impeded Europe’s ability to scale its start-ups into global competitors.</p><p>Figure 1: Private technology funding for Europe and the United States in the last decade</p><p><img src="https://itif-publications-production.s3.amazonaws.com/BO2qXPW4p9VANOrbxpwSm3MX_files/image001.png" rel="noopener noreferrer"></p><p>Figure 2: Pension fund allocation towards venture capital</p><p><img src="https://itif-publications-production.s3.amazonaws.com/BO2qXPW4p9VANOrbxpwSm3MX_files/image002.png" rel="noopener noreferrer"></p><p>Europe’s R&D spending is also lagging. According to the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, the United States invested nearly $900 billion—equivalent to 3.59 percent of GDP—into research and development in 2022. That same year, China, where development costs are significantly lower, allocated $450 billion (2.56 percent of GDP) toward R&D. The EU, by contrast, invested just over $400 billion in 2023, or 2.22 percent of GDP, according to Eurostat—roughly half the U.S. investment in both relative and absolute terms. While nominally similar to China’s total, Europe’s higher research costs diminish the impact of its spending. This chronic underinvestment has left Europe struggling to keep pace in high-tech industries and has weakened its ability to foster homegrown innovation.</p><p>Simultaneously, an adversarial relationship has emerged between the European Union government and the tech sector. While stringent regulations—such as the Digital Market Act, Digital Services Act, Artificial Intelligence Act, Cyber Resilience Act, and General Data Protection Regulation—are aimed at protecting consumers and European businesses, they prioritize control and oversight at the expense of flexibility. The result is a significant compliance burden that can stifle innovation. The AI Act, adopted in 2024, is the world’s first major legal framework for artificial intelligence. It classifies AI systems by risk level and imposes strict requirements on those deemed high-risk, including facial recognition and health technologies. For small start-ups, such onerous rules can be nearly impossible to navigate, deterring novel technologies from even getting off the ground and pushing cutting-edge R&D outside the EU.</p><p>By contrast, the United States and China offer far more supportive environments for innovation. U.S. initiatives, such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act—and Chinese programs like Made in China 2025 and the Torch Program—are fueling progress by collectively allocating trillions toward emerging technologies. In China, designated “green zones” promote start-up growth by drastically reducing bureaucratic barriers, offering tax incentives and subsidized office space, and providing streamlined access to state-backed venture capital. These zones serve as high-tech incubators, standing in stark contrast to the fragmented, regulation-heavy environment that European start-ups face. Additionally, the EU’s patchwork of 27 different national regulatory systems creates a maze of complex legal, tax, and financial reporting requirements, hindering scalability and cross-border investment.</p><p>The results for Europe have been troubling. Since 2008, EU GDP has grown only marginally—from $16.4 trillion to $18.6 trillion in 2023, according to the World Bank. Over the same period, U.S. GDP nearly doubled, from $14.9 trillion to $27.9 trillion, while China’s GDP ballooned from $4.6 trillion to $17.8 trillion.</p><p>Europe’s innovation drag should serve as a stark warning. While the Draghi Report was a wake-up call for European policymakers, it’s unclear whether it was loud enough to disrupt them from their slumber.</p><p>It should also serve as a cautionary lesson for the United States that technological leadership is a position that must be actively defended. While the U.S. currently enjoys a strong innovation ecosystem, China is rapidly closing the gap with a coherent industrial policy and massive state support. To remain competitive and safeguard the slowing innovation pipeline, the federal government must continue investing in long-term science R&D, supporting robust public-private partnerships, and fostering dynamic start-up ecosystems by expanding programs like the CHIPS and Science Act while reducing barriers for emerging tech companies.</p><p>The United States should also avoid looking eastward to Europe for regulatory inspiration. It must remain vigilant about the consequences of regulatory overreach and legal fragmentation—especially as states begin to chart independent paths on AI, data privacy, and digital markets. For example, the California Privacy Rights Act imposes stricter data protection standards than other states. At the same time, New York’s Algorithmic Accountability Act and Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act differ significantly from the more limited federal guidelines. Though these laws aim to address legitimate concerns, they risk creating a compliance minefield that could undermine entrepreneurship and innovation. That’s why Congress should maintain the ten-year moratorium on state-level AI regulation. And, as ITIF has written, Congress should enact much broader federal preemption of state digital rules that undercut interstate digital commerce.</p><p>American policymakers must likewise resist the urge to constrain the tech sector under the guise of consumer protection or antitrust. Doing so risks burdening firms and pushing talent and investment overseas. A cohesive national strategy is vital to sustaining an innovative economy. The EU’s decline illustrates how overregulation and fragmented markets can stifle innovation.</p><p>Protecting America’s position at the forefront of technological progress will require sustained investment, coordinated national policy, and a willingness to prioritize long-term technological strength over short-term political gain. Without this focus, the United States risks ceding its competitive edge to a more strategically aligned global rival.</p> Europe’s Innovation Lethargy Should Be a Lesson of What Not to Do, Even for a Leading US \| ITIF	查看 8682	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232648	无图 <p>Since the end of World War II there has been a strong, bipartisan consensus in the United States that basic research, funded largely by the U.S. government, lays the foundation for scientific progress that drives economic growth. It is, indeed, the goose that lays golden eggs. Republicans and Democrats quibbled about details, but shared a general, broad consensus in support of this proposition. The return on investment has been dramatic.</p><p>But abrupt policy reversals and dramatic budget cuts to broad swaths of government functions by the present administration, most particularly to the principal scientific agencies—the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy—have canceled, or stalled, thousands of ongoing grants and put the future of the U.S. research enterprise in doubt. Even though multiple, sometimes conflicting court decisions have ruled the cuts and layoffs illegal, the consequent chaos and confusion has disrupted lives and livelihoods of the essential agents of the research enterprise. Competitor nations have jumped to attract researchers from the U.S. to relocate to their countries, and many are doing so while many more continue to contemplate the opportunities.</p><p>The multiple negative impacts of these policy shifts have been widely noted. But amid the ongoing political tumult and policy upheaval it is worthwhile to review some of the continuing scientific fruits recently reported thanks to the longstanding bipartisan support for basic research in the life sciences. Here are a handful:</p><p>▪ May 15, 2025—the world’s first personalized CRISPR therapy given to baby with genetic disease: A baby with a rare genetic disease that kills at least half of those afflicted has been cured by scientists in Philadelphia using gene editing. The method developed could be applied to thousands of other genetic disease afflicting millions of patients.</p><p>▪ May 5, 2025—researchers delete proteins in wheat that are harmful to people with celiac disease: About one in every hundred people round the world have celiac disease, in which an abnormal immune system response to the presence of certain proteins in bread wheat can trigger a host of negative health impacts. Scientists deleted one of the major wheat proteins (using gamma radiation induced deletions, but which could be replicated with CRISPR like gene editing as well) in a move that could reduce the potential of wheat to trigger celiac disease.</p><p>▪ February 24, 2025—CRISPR transforms ordinary fat cells into cancer killing machines: Scientists have used CRISPR gene editing to turn fat cells into cancer-fighting machines that out compete tumor cells for nutrients, thus disrupting their growth. This novel approach could help overcome weaknesses in current cancer treatment regimes.</p><p>▪ May 4, 2025—India unveils world’s first genome-edited rice: Indian scientists have used gene editing to improve two local rice varieties to better resist salt and drought, with anticipated yield gains of 25 to 30 percent. The approach taken falls outside the scope of Indian regulations aimed at genetically engineered crops, thus decreasing the time to bring the new varieties to market, which is expected in 4 to 5 years.</p><p>▪ April 30, 2025—FDA okays a genus gene edit to breed PRRS-resistant pigs: Porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is a major problem for swine production globally, negatively impacting herd health, increasing antibiotic use, production costs, and constricting supply. The Pig Improvement Company (PIC, a subsidiary of UK based Genus, plc) recently received FDA approval to bring swine with gene edited resistance to PRRS to market, a development that should have considerable positive global impacts.</p><p>▪ July 1, 2025—a genetically engineered chestnut tree, grown in Syracuse, moves one step closer to release: In the nineteenth century, the American chestnut made up one of every four trees in the eastern deciduous forests of the United States, its nuts providing food for myriad creatures and driving a significant sector of the rural economy. A fungal disease introduced from Europe in 1904 killed all but a few scattered remnants. A genetically engineered variety that researchers at Syracuse University have improved to resist the fungus is now in the final stages of regulatory approval by USDA, the last substantial hurdle that must be cleared before restoration efforts can go large scale.</p><p>▪ May 26, 2025—India’s first gene-edited sheep is born: Indian researchers used gene editing to tweak a gene that controls muscle mass. The intervention promises to increase meat yields by 30 percent or more.</p><p>▪ June 3, 2025—malaria eradication is now seen as within reach: With support from the Gates Foundation, Target Malaria scientists have devised a method of producing sterile female mosquitoes. Produced in quantity and released into local populations, these have the potential to help eradicate targeted populations of the world’s most dangerous (to humans) animal. This holds great promise for efforts at eliminating malaria.</p><p>▪ May 14, 2025—science weaponizes our immune system to target aggressive brain tumors: Researchers have harnessed the tools of modern biotechnology to develop new, multipronged therapies that show promise in tackling fearsome, deadly, difficult to treat cancers like the glioblastoma that killed former President Biden’s son, Beau.</p><p>At the same time valuable fruits such as these are ripening, the unprecedented power of the new biological tools developed through basic research continues to improve. While CRISPR has delivered previously unimagined power to research and development teams around the world, new discoveries and refinements continue to arrive.</p><p>Overcoming the technical obstacles of converting such insights to practical tools and products is difficult, but as the record shows, it can be done. In many cases, however, the primary barrier now impeding the path of such innovative solutions to the market is excessive regulation, which is everywhere around the world in need of correction.</p><p>The most egregiously counterproductive and indefensible regulatory policies hampering biotechnological innovations over the last four decades have been in Europe, as we have noted previously. But there are signs of progress. The EU is thrashing its way toward a revamping of regulations widely admitted to be ill-considered, and a UK parliamentary committee has “greenlit gene edited plants.” But the situation in the United States is unsettled on several levels.</p><p>Although the last three administrations have mandated updates and improvements to reduce unjustified regulatory burdens on biotech innovations, only small steps have been taken where large ones are required, and the present administrative turmoil threatens to impede improvements. A recent court case overturned existing regulations, producing uncertainty and confusion that nevertheless opens some doors. The tools to fix this are in hand, and a wide basis of political support remains intact. Specific roadmaps have been provided, by ourselves and others. There are few things this administration could do that would have a more beneficial long-term impact on the ability of American innovators to deliver solutions to urgent problems. It’s time to save the golden goose.</p> Sustaining the Goose That Lays Golden Eggs: How to Continue Miraculous Biotech Advances \| ITIF	查看 7411	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232647	有图 <p>Even with the Trump administration pushing to rebuild U.S. manufacturing—or perhaps because it is—there remains considerable intellectual resistance to the idea that anything is wrong with the sector or that serious action is needed to reverse its decline.</p><p>One argument holds that concern over manufacturing is simply backward thinking. CNN’s Fareed Zakaria reflects this view when he dismisses manufacturing as an “image of the past,” suggesting that the most advanced countries have small manufacturing sectors. Ah, thanks for clearing that up.</p><p>But the narrative has shifted. Increasingly, it’s not that manufacturing is unimportant, but rather that it’s doing just fine. Healthy, even! Ipso facto: no need to intervene.</p><p>They imply it’s obvious: “Can’t you see? The manufacturing job losses are all due to automation.” Come on, get with it. As Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell puts it: “U.S. factories still make things, but those things are increasingly produced by robots.”</p><p>Hmm. Then maybe we need better robots, because U.S. manufacturing productivity has been in absolute decline for more than a decade.</p><p>Then there’s the Progressive Policy Institute, confidently asserting in an op-ed that “the U.S. still has a healthy manufacturing sector—in 2023, it was the world’s second largest after China.”</p><p>Of course it was—the United States has the world’s largest economy. Would we only acknowledge a problem if manufacturing output fell 40 percent and dropped below Japan’s, the third-largest manufacturing economy in the world?</p><p></p><p>In reality, things look far worse. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), from 2005 to 2013, the inflation-adjusted value-added contribution of manufacturing to U.S. GDP was just 66 percent of what it would have been had the sector maintained its 2005 share of the economy. And that modest growth was highly concentrated: Just 4 industries drove it, while the remaining 15 either declined outright or grew at less than half the expected rate.</p><p>But wait, there’s more. Thanks to Moore’s Law, the BEA vastly overstates output growth in computers and electronics. Remove that sector, and manufacturing’s contribution to GDP growth is just 26 percent of what would otherwise be expected.</p><p>So why the widespread denial about U.S. manufacturing’s difficulties?</p><p>Some of it is just laziness. Too many people can’t be bothered to dig into the BEA numbers. Top-line stats make it look like the sector is growing. Never mind adjusting for inflation, GDP share, or distorted growth in computers and semiconductors. Zoom out to a 65-year trend line, and the last decade’s decline barely registers.</p><p>But laziness alone doesn’t explain it. There are plenty of quasi-complicated economic issues where analysts do dig deep into the details. So why not this one?</p><p>There are two core reasons for manufacturing decline denialism:</p>Fear of protectionismBlind faith in market forces<p>The first is that admitting there’s a problem risks opening the door to protectionism, something Washington Consensus types fear more than not being invited to Davos. Leaving aside the debate about the merits of tariffs, ignoring a structural economic problem out of fear of how it might influence policy is intellectually irresponsible. The job of analysts and even pundits is to report reality, not hide or manipulate perceptions to steer policy outcomes.</p>Markets might not always get it right—we need policy?!<img src="https://cdn.sanity.io/images/03hnmfyj/production/50466edaf56a59c19ae5f200807560a8e4e222c7-195x259.jpg" rel="noopener noreferrer"><p>Besides, how well did two decades of manufacturing decline denial work out? We got Trump’s tariffs anyway, despite all the op-eds insisting everything was fine. Ironically, we likely wouldn"t have gotten the tariffs at all if the United States had embraced a robust national manufacturing strategy 25 years ago. But that was never going to happen, because policymakers were relentlessly told that anyone worried manufacturing was in trouble was either a protectionist or a fool.</p><p>The second and more serious reason for denial is ideological. Acknowledging that manufacturing has faltered calls into question the bedrock of the Washington Consensus: that market forces naturally yield the optimal economic structure. Oh no. The horror.</p><p>It’s time to move past the pearl-clutching and accept the hard truth. The structure of the economy does not automatically evolve in the national interest. That does not mean socialism. It doesn’t mean Soviet-style planning. And it doesn’t mean the government picking narrow winners.</p><p>But it does mean recognizing that the United States needs a robust advanced production system—and that achieving it requires serious, sustained industrial and innovation policy.</p><p>So to the deniers: The facts are in. Reality hurts. But it’s time to face it.</p> What’s Going on With All the Manufacturing Decline Deniers? \| ITIF	查看 4953	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word
3232646	无图 <p>WASHINGTON—Following the announcement that the U.S. government will allow Nvidia to resume sales of its H20 chip to the Chinese market, the Center for Data Innovation released the following statement from Director Daniel Castro:</p>“The decision to allow Nvidia to resume sales of its H20 chip to China is a welcome course correction. Nvidia designed this chip specifically to comply with U.S. export controls. Blocking its sale despite that compliance sent the wrong signal to both U.S. companies and global markets.Restricting U.S. chip exports not only undermines the competitiveness of leading American firms—it also risks ceding market share to foreign rivals like Huawei. That weakens the innovation engine that drives U.S. leadership in AI and semiconductors.More broadly, overly rigid export controls push Chinese AI firms to adopt alternatives outside the U.S. ecosystem, eroding America’s long-term influence in shaping global AI standards and practices.The Trump administration should stay focused on policies that preserve U.S. national security while also ensuring American companies can compete in global markets and continue reinvesting in the R&D that keeps the United States at the forefront of AI innovation.”<p>Contact: Nicole Hinojosa, [emailprotected]</p> Allowing Nvidia’s H20 Sales to China Strengthens U.S. AI Leadership, Says Center for Data Innovation \| ITIF	查看 1283	信息技术与创新基金	2025-01-01 00:00:00 2025-08-05 21:04:14	word

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