Tech Schizophrenia: Who Makes US Policy?

When the infant Internet took its first steps, the Clinton administration articulated a clear set of policies promoting a light touch role for government and a clear path for private sector leadership and innovation. The 1996 Telecommunications Act included the crucial “Section 230” providing liability protection. What was a nascent industry only a few decades earlier grew by 2021 to account for more than 10% of the US GDP. 

Today, no clear US tech policy exists. A large reason is policymaking confusion.

As digital has eclipsed the energy, railroad, and manufacturing giants of the 20^th century, the early policy choices – growth and innovation – need updating to fend off criminals and bad actors. New workstreams have roped in law enforcement, defense, and consumer protection authorities. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the Office of the National Cyber Director have been created. Even the Departments of Energy and Healthcare have launched their own cyber workstreams.

It’s a mess. Roles overlap, agency missions conflict, and rotating political appointees create a duplicative, complex, and unwieldy tech policy apparatus. The confusion renders the US unable to develop and implement a coherent and strategic tech policy, unable to confront Brussels’s regulatory ambitions, and unable to counter the threat from tech adversaries such as China.

The White House could have knocked heads together and ensured that coherent policies emerged. It has not. In particular, the staff of the National Security and National Economic Councils have clashed. One focuses on security, the other on innovation.

While interagency meetings in the early 2000s might include a handful of agencies, tech interagency meetings by 2024 include a dozen or more offices. Often, the US takes positions in international negotiations before many agencies are even made aware of what is happening, if at all.

This siloed tech policymaking first became visible in 2011 during negotiations on how to build trust on the Internet. US economic agencies worked with friends and allies on a set of Internet policymaking principles at the Paris based club for democracies, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). 

At the exact same time, the US law enforcement and defense apparatus, unaware of the economic agency work, worked on a go it alone US International Strategy for Cyberspace. The two processes overlapped. Ultimately, they were wrangled together to be complementary, though full of contradictions.

A more recent – and destructive – example occurred last year when US Trade Representative Katherine Tai overturned three decades of US tech related trade policy. The shift away from the free flow of information and the open Internet collided with the State Department’s continued promotion of these principles in its International Cyberspace and Digital Strategy. 

Another example concerns the recently approved United Nations’ Cybercrime Convention. US law enforcement officials led negotiations. US officials working on free expression issues joined with like-minded European colleagues in the Freedom Online Coalition to raise human rights concerns. By the time the White House organized a process to consider all positions, negotiations were too far along for any meaningful shift in position. The US signed onto a cybercrime treaty that legitimizes censorship.

How can we fix this mess?

An ambitious solution, one to have lasting impact, would be to take all the relevant groups and merge them into a single Department of Technology. This would eliminate duplicative functions, rationalize government resources, and implement a coherent tech policy approach. 

A more modest idea would be to repurpose the existing Office of Science and Technology Policy, and model it after the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the structure set up to deal with intelligences failures of September 11. This new Office for Tech Policy should enjoy convening power equivalent to National Security staff. 

Congressional action will be required to make the change permanent. Although silos would remain, the rationalization could help resolve them at a low staff level, reduce wasteful interagency battles, and position the US to work with allies and tackle adversaries.

Either approach requires Washington to acknowledge the current tech policy dysfunction. The new Trump administration should take action.

Fiona M. Alexander is a Non-resident Senior Fellow with the Tech Policy Program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). For close to 20 years, Fiona served at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) in the US Department of Commerce where she was Associate Administrator for International Affairs. In this role, she was the principal official responsible for the US government’s analysis, development, and execution of international Internet, cyber, and communications policy.

Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.

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