Fighting for the Future

Harnessing Innovation for a Brighter Tomorrow

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With the help of our members, Heritage strengthened the free world’s defense against the Chinese Communist Party, fought Big Tech’s attacks on free speech, and envisioned a future workforce that can weather challenges like COVID-19.

Leading on Tech Issues

Heritage launched the Center for Technology Policy in May 2020. Its mission is to provide the conservative, first principles-based leadership that has, until now, been missing on tech-related issues.

The center’s launch alone marks a victory. With its new center, Heritage became a prime source for guidance on tech policy for lawmakers, administration officials, corporate leaders, and the public.

Specifically, it established a platform from which Heritage can better combat online censorship.

Case in point: YouTube, which is owned by Google, censored a video produced by The Daily Signal. On our public platforms and in a private meeting with YouTube’s CEO, we made our position abundantly clear:

We will not tolerate censorship and will stand side by side with conservatives to oppose it.

We will not tolerate censorship and will stand side by side with conservatives to oppose it.

In its first year, the Center for Technology Policy also shaped U.S. policy on various cybersecurity challenges, including fifth-generation (5G) networks, facial recognition, artificial intelligence, foreign-made drones, individual privacy, cyberwarfare, and biotechnologies.

Reforming Section 230: The Center for Technology Policy published guidance on reforming Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. The act protects online content providers from liability, but it is in serious need of more specific language, as it has been used in bad faith by certain internet companies to silence conservative users.

Britain and Huawei: The U.K. revoked its agreement to give Chinese telecommunications company Huawei access to its 5G network. The move came after consistent urging from Heritage experts, given that Huawei is used by the Chinese government to collect data on foreign citizens.

Exposing Chinese Spyware in Drones: We publicly exposed the fact that 80 percent of the drones sold in the U.S. are produced by a Chinese company and are embedded with spyware that collects sensitive data on the user and on the physical infrastructure of the areas in which they’re flown. The drone then sends this information to the Chinese government.

Google and Apple Contact Tracing: Heritage published a report detailing eight standards and commitments that industry and government should adopt to make COVID-19 contact tracing effective without violating privacy. Google and Apple adopted several of those recommendations.

A Serious Response to China

Tech policy is just one way Heritage combated the multipronged threat of the Chinese Communist Party in 2020. At the beginning of the year, we produced an influential report, “Assessing Beijing’s Power: A Blueprint for the U.S. Response to China Over the Next Decades.” The Trump administration acted on 32 of its 59 recommendations.

For example, the U.S. ramped up freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait and increased partner maritime capacity—a cornerstone of the Department of Defense’s approach.

After a delay of nearly 15 years, the U.S. made the final arrangements for the sale of 66 advanced F-16s to Taiwan in August.

The U.S. also insisted on the same level of access to China that China has to the United States (virtually unlimited).

The U.S. remained in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and began working with Japan and the European Union on reforming the WTO.

Via the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, the U.S. blocked untrusted foreign companies—such as Chinese companies with a history of producing “harmware” or software with known vulnerabilities—from U.S. investments.

The U.S. issued sanctions against human rights abusers, including the Chinese government.

The China Transparency Project

In 2020, we also launched our China Transparency Project. This is a collaboration between Heritage and several universities and research organizations to compile and share data on the Chinese Communist Party. We began aggregating and analyzing these data, creating a hub for world-class open-source information that can and will be used by the entire policy community. You can find the project at heritage.org/china-transparency-project.

Taiwan

We are especially proud of our work to strengthen the U.S.-Taiwan relationship. The Trump administration displayed the best policy toward Taiwan in 40 years. Not only did the administration orchestrate two long-overdue Cabinet-level visits to Taiwan in 2020 (the highest-ranking officials to visit since 1979), it also announced $5 billion in arms sales to Taiwan.

Taking a cue from Heritage, the administration and Congress also supported Taiwan’s participation in international organizations—something we believe the Biden administration is likely to continue.

Rebuilding Our Military

Another way Heritage positioned the U.S. to counter China was by inspiring proposals in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act. In 2020, both the Senate and the House armed services committees substantially adopted our recommendations in their versions of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

For example, Congress:

• Increased the number of F-35s to be procured in 2021.
• Established an Indo-Pacific Deterrence Initiative to respond to the challenges posed by China.
• Began streamlining how the Department of Defense formally submits reports to Congress.
• Supported the continued presence of American troops in South Korea.

The Future of Work

We quickly recognized that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause major shifts in how work is done and what kinds of work would be possible. We saw a chance for innovation. The left saw a chance for socialism.

As California Gov. Gavin Newsom put it, “There is opportunity for reimagining a progressive era as it pertains to capitalism. We see this as an opportunity to reshape the way we do business and how we govern.”

Not on our watch. We made a series of recommendations for the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to adapt quickly to the new and evolving economy in ways that would benefit workers and strengthen the underlying economic system.

In 2020, we began our new Future of Work Initiative. This is a data-driven effort to show lawmakers, administration officials, and the public at large that creating good jobs doesn’t require more government intervention. It requires cutting existing rules, reforming the tax code, and getting government spending under control. The effort includes sophisticated modeling by Heritage’s Center for Data Analysis.

As part of this initiative, we continued to applaud the role of alternative work, such as contracting, freelancing, and gig work. And we helped secure rulemaking changes to increase workers’ freedoms and opportunities to be their own bosses.

Heritage scholars were in contact with and provided advice to staff members at the Department of Labor as they wrote and finalized a rule clarifying the definition of “independent contractor” under the Fair Labor Standards Act.

The Republican Study Committee’s “American Worker Task Force” report included dozens of Heritage recommendations, including the adoption of Heritage Social Security Disability Insurance program reform proposals, nearly verbatim, as well as Heritage education, labor, and welfare proposals.

In 2021, look for a new Heritage book examining 10 areas critical to the future of work, including government barriers to work.