We need policy created at speed of technology
Last year supposedly was the year that Washington and Silicon Valley crashed into each other. But so far the valley has crashed more into Washington than the other way around. The discussion about the so-called Washington-Silicon Valley divide has focused on how the valley has failed to adequately control the effects of its technology — to prevent data breaches, protect user privacy, ensure the integrity of our elections, and the like — and on what Washington should do to right that wrong.
No one is focused on the relationship’s other dimension: what is missing in Washington, D.C., and whether Silicon Valley can add anything to the conversation.
Silicon Valley and Washington can do more together than debate the effects of technologies on our lives. They can work together to reform the process of policy innovation itself: by incubating policy ideas.
Washington has struggled mightily to keep pace with the rate of technological change. The federal government shutdown has left our digital defenses woefully undermanned. Congressional inaction has left many outdated laws such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to govern technology policy. And the elimination of top government positions — the top White House cybersecurity official chief among them — has made progress in these areas more difficult. Silicon Valley has had the flexibility to manage on its own for so long precisely because Washington has done so little.
One reason for the Beltway’s stagnancy may well be the policymaking process itself.
Within Washington, experienced policy practitioners in government, in universities and in think tanks are recruited to write books and lengthy white papers, which generally are shared only after years of research once the core ideas are solidified. It is rare that policy outsiders, such as technical experts, are consulted in this process. It is even rarer for these scholars to develop practical outputs that a policymaker could immediately use, or even make decisionmakers aware of their progress. It is no wonder that generations of policy ideas look very similar to their predecessors.
In contrast, in Silicon Valley, neither ideas nor entrepreneurs are expected to come fully baked. Startup founders join technology incubators, such as Y Combinator or 500 Startups, based on the quality of their ideas, not their resume. They are given training to enable their development, and are encouraged to try things that others haven’t tried before. And they are given the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a decisionmaker — in this case, prospective funders — at the end of their residence.
A “policy incubator” should be populated with fellows who have limited policy experience, but a nugget of an idea about how to make change. They should be given skills-based training about policymaking, encouraged to collaborate with each other and experienced practitioners to refine new ideas, and given the opportunity to share those ideas with real decisionmakers as they exit the program.
Importantly, the incubator should develop both new substantive ideas — on content moderation, or attribution of cyberattacks — and new mechanisms for implementing those ideas. For too long the default assumption has been that legislation or regulation are the only policy levers worth pulling. But there are many other ways to make a difference: through standards bodies, tool kits, public-private partnerships and, yes, even computer applications.
Experimenting with the mechanism for making change should be as much a part of the process as defining what change needs to happen.
Will Silicon Valley be interested in participating? If 2018 taught us anything, then it is that Silicon Valley wants to solve important problems. As Hoover Institution fellows Amy Zegart and Kevin Childs make clear, engineers want to see their work as contributing to the social good. Why not harness that energy in new and productive ways?
Having effective tech policy will ensure that the U.S. economy continues to thrive, allowing us to embrace new innovations and technologies while also giving consumers the confidence to use these tools safely and securely. Moreover, given that these are global companies and global questions, absent our leadership the answers will come from other countries.
Silicon Valley and Washington urgently need to show that they can productively work together. Cooperating to incubate new policy ideas would be an important first step in the right direction.