Autore: Marco Emanuele

The rate of turnover among senior-level executive branch staff can have a serious impact on the day-to-day performance of the White House—and shape the very nature of a presidency. As Brookings did for Donald Trump, the Institution is now monitoring staffing changes among the upper echelons of President Biden’s administration.

Below, we offer two sets of resources to help measure and contextualize this turnover. The first set of resources, immediately below, tracks turnover among senior-ranking advisers in the executive office of the president (which does not include Cabinet secretaries); the second set of resources tracks turnover in the Cabinet.

Tracking turnover in the Biden administration (brookings.edu)

Are the tech platforms—Facebook, Apple, Amazon, and Google—that play such a central role in our everyday lives too big and powerful? Do they adequately protect our personal data? Do they use their power unfairly to restrict rivals and extend their reach into other markets? These questions are being debated within society, at the antitrust agencies, in the courts, and in Congress. Many argue that we need to use our current antitrust laws or enact new legislation to break up these firms, limit their ability to make new acquisitions, and more carefully scrutinize how they deal with those who rely on their platforms to advertise or sell.

Protecting national security, cybersecurity, and privacy while ensuring competition (brookings.edu)

The recently signed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) makes the largest federal investment into universal broadband access in history. In doing so, Congress largely bypassed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)—the federal agency historically charged with assuring universal access to broadband—and instead gave that responsibility to the states, with the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) providing oversight.

Steps the Commerce Department should take to achieve the infrastructure bill’s broadband goals (brookings.edu)

Just as the surveillance tool Pegasus powered the Israeli hacking company NSO Group to dizzying commercial success, so too would it ultimately cause its downfall. For years, NSO claimed Pegasus was provided only to “authorized governments” in the fight against “terror and crime.” Unrivaled in its ability to break into and surveil Android and iPhone devices, Pegasus gave NSO’s clients the ability to spy on the smartphones of targets, providing a periscope with which to view the most intimate details of their lives. But thanks to years of reporting and research by Amnesty International, Citizen Lab, and a global consortium known as the Pegasus Project, we know that this spyware was also used to break into the phones of politicians, journalists, and civil rights activists around the world. In the aftermath of the Pegasus Project revelations last summer, NSO appears to be on the verge of collapse. Thanks to U.S. sanctions, NSO’s ability to operate has been severely restricted and the company that once pioneered the use of digital hacking tools has become a byword for unbridled espionage.

Lessons for policymakers from the NSO Group saga (brookings.edu)

In 2022, U.S. development cooperation will undergo a peer review by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD (OECD-DAC), the standard-bearer of development cooperation that includes many of the largest providers of foreign assistance. Much has happened in U.S. political and policy circles since the last U.S. peer review, published in 2016. The peer review team, led by France and Norway, will examine U.S. aid in light of best development practices and global commitments, providing a valuable opportunity for the U.S. government and its stakeholders to take stock and inform a strategic rethink of how the U.S. can maximize its global investments and better advance its development goals and mission.

Upcoming DAC peer review is an opportunity to advance US development goals (brookings.edu)