Two Think Minimum

Neil Chilson is a Senior Research Fellow for technology and innovation at the Charles Koch Institute. Prior to joining CKI, Chilson was the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) chief technologist where he focused on the economics of privacy and established the FTC’s Blockchain Working Group, among other things. Prior to his appointment, Chilson was an adviser to then-Acting FTC Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen. In both roles he advised Chairman Ohlhausen and worked with commission staff on nearly every major technology-related case, report, workshop, and proceeding. Chilson is a regular contributor to multiple news outlets, including the Washington Post, USA Today, Seattle Times, and Morning Consult. Chilson holds a law degree and a master’s degree in computer science. In the interest of full disclosure, we should let listeners know that we receive funding from CKI.

Joe Lonsdale is a graduate of Stanford, a co-founder of Palantir, and many other companies, and a founding partner at 8VC, a technology investment firm. He also plays leading roles in companies and nonprofits aimed at improving government efficiency, including OpenGov and Esper. He’s also a public intellectual and philanthropist.

Jason Furman, Professor of the Practice of Economics at Harvard University and former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Joshua Wright, University Professor at Scalia Law School at George Mason University, executive director of the Global Antitrust Institute, and former Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, participated in a lively debate moderated by TPI’s Thomas Lenard on Monday, October 26, 2020. The debate topic was: “Be it resolved: We need a new regulatory regime for digital platforms,” with Professor Furman arguing for the resolution and Professor Wright arguing against. The professors debated the merits of adopting a new regulatory regime for large digital platforms such as Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Over the last two years, at least four major reports from leading government and academic institutions have recommended proposals for further regulation, some including a new regulatory agency. Perhaps the most prominent of those reports was produced last year by the UK’s Digital Competition Expert Panel chaired by Professor Furman. The basic theme running through all these reports is that aggressive antitrust enforcement is not sufficient to constrain the market power of large digital platforms, and that we therefore need new regulations to supplement antitrust.

Jamie Susskind is the Vice President of Policy and Regulatory Affairs for the Consumer Technology Association. In that role, she coordinates CTA’s advocacy strategy and represents the association before Federal agencies and the Administration for policies to encourage the growth of innovative consumer technologies. Susskind oversees a portfolio of regulatory issues, including cybersecurity, the Internet of Things, content moderation, equipment authorizations and standard setting, consumer protection, spectrum, and broadband and infrastructure deployment.

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine “Hero of the Environment” and the Founder and President of Environmental Progress. He's been a climate and environmental activist for over 30 years. He's helped save nuclear reactors around the world, and I'll leave it for him to explain why when we talk. And he's a leading environmental journalist and has written many books on the environment and given several Ted talks.

Dr. Nancy Potok served as the Chief Statistician of the United States until January of this year, 2020. She has over 30 years of leadership experience in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. Nancy also served as a commissioner on the US Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking, where I had the privilege of making her acquaintance. She's also a contributing editor to the Harvard Data Science Review, and you can see her bio online.

Christian Catalini is Chief Economist of the Libra Association, on leave from MIT, and a Faculty Research Fellow at NBER. Dante Disparte is vice chairman and Head of Policy and Communications at the Libra Association, and currently serves as an appointee on the FEMA National Advisory Counsel. Matthew Davie is the Chief Strategy Officer at Kiva, a non-profit organization dedicated to financial inclusion for the world's most vulnerable populations, where he oversees corporate strategy, emerging tech development, and policy and regulatory engagements. He is also a board member of the Libra Association.

Felipe Hoffa, developer advocate, and software engineer at Google. Felipe is originally from Chile and is now based in San Francisco and around the world. If you're involved in big data and data science, you may recognize him as a familiar name and face answering thousands of developer questions on stack overflow and Reddit, which are read by millions of programmers. For Google, he also records tutorial videos on YouTube, gives conference talks on big data, and writes blog posts on the latest developments in cloud tools. Phillipe is a leading voice on Google's cloud computing products.

Michael Beckerman currently serves as Vice President and head of US public policy at TikTok, a position he has held since March. He previously was the founding President and CEO of the Internet Association, a Washington, DC based trade association, representing global internet companies. Prior to that, he served for 12 years in increasingly responsible staff positions on Capitol Hill, ending as the Deputy Staff Director and Chief Policy Advisor to the Chairman of the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which oversees America's internet policies. Michael is also active in the DC angel investing community where he's invested in several startups. This interview with Michael Beckerman was recorded on Monday, July 27th. A lot has changed for TikTok since, with the President’s threat to ban the app if TikTok doesn’t divest it’s US opererations from it’s parent company before September 15th. The contents of the interview are still release and so we’re bringing it to you now on August 5th.

Jay Bhattacharya is a professor of medicine at Stanford University. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economics Research, a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and at the Stanford Freeman Spogli Institute. He holds courtesy appointments as professor in economics and in health research and policy. He directs the Stanford Center on the Demography of Health and Aging. Dr. Bhattacharya’s research focuses on the economics of healthcare around the world with a particular emphasis on the health and wellbeing of vulnerable populations. His peer reviewed research has been published in economic, statistics, legal, medical, public health, and health policy journals. He holds an MD and PhD in economics from Stanford University.