Think of it as a right-wing LinkedIn. This so-called Project 2025 — part of a $22 million presidential transition operation at a scale never attempted before in conservative politics — is being led by the Heritage Foundation, a group that has been staffing Republican administrations since the Reagan era.

Heritage usually compiles its own personnel lists, and spends far less doing so. But for this election, after conservatives and Mr. Trump himself decried what they viewed as terrible staffing decisions made during his administration, more than 50 conservative groups have temporarily set aside rivalries to team up with Heritage on the project, set to start Friday.

They have already identified several thousand potential recruits and have set a goal of having up to 20,000 potential administration officials in their database by the end of 2024, according to Kevin Roberts, the president of Heritage. Heritage has contracted the technology company Oracle to build a secure personnel database,Dr. Roberts said.

The key people involved with the Heritage-led database served in the former president’s administration. They include James Bacon, a Trump loyalist who worked in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel under one of Mr. Trump’s most trusted aides, John McEntee. In the final year of the Trump administration, Mr. Bacon helped Mr. McEntee overhaul the government’s hiring process. They developed a questionnaire to vet government employees’ loyalty to Mr. Trump and his “America First” agenda.

The newspaper says that the Heritage Foundation and its partners have already briefed former President Donald Trump as well as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other potential 2024 Republican presidential candidates on their efforts.

It also notes that the Dennis Kirk, a former Trump Administration lawyer who was involved with the adoption of "Schedule F," a plan that would give the president the power to terminate and replace as many as 50,000 career government officials who served in roles that influenced federal policies, is now employed at Heritage and working on Project 2025.

Here is more from Government Executive.

Update: Mr. John McEntee, who was director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office in the Trump Administration, has joined the Heritage Foundation's 2025 Presidential Transition Project as a senior adviser.

---

Tuesday, June 27, 2023

Heritage Report Forces Publishing Giant to Fear Bud Light-style Disaster

Here is more from the New York Post:

The world’s largest education publisher, Pearson, started a clumsy purge of its digital footprint after a Heritage Foundation report exposed its obeisance to the ideas animating critical race theory.

Pearson, like so many other corporate behemoths, rushed all-in on “equity” in 2021, with new editorial guidelines vowing to make woke concepts like “intersectionality” and “colonial discourse” part of everything it does.

Thursday, Heritage researcher Jonathan Butcher let the larger world know about it. His report drew some media scrutiny — and poof!

The guidelines vanished from the web along with videos promoting the same ideas, and the company’s chief flack went into full-bore denial, insisting, “Critical race theory is not included in Pearson K-12 materials for public schools or in any materials for government contracts.”

Here is more from The Daily Signal.

---

Thursday, June 22, 2023

Dems Meet at Think Tank to Fight No Labels 2024 Bid

Here is more from the Washington Post:

Top Democratic strategists, including current advisers to President Biden and former U.S. senators, met last week with former Republicans who oppose Donald Trump at the offices of a downtown D.C. think tank.

Their mission: to figure out how to best subvert a potential third-party presidential bid by the group No Labels, an effort they all agreed risked undermining Biden’s reelection campaign and reelecting former president Donald Trump to the White House.

Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for Third Way, which hosted the event, declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of the proceedings.

Among those in attendance were former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, a former Third Way board membe

---

Wednesday, June 21, 2023

India Targets Think Tank Critical of Coal

Here is more from the Washington Post:

An independent think tank. A law firm. An environmental group.

On Sept. 7, Indian tax authorities simultaneously raided three seemingly unrelated nonprofit organizations without issuing a public statement, confounding many in Indian academia and politics. But one little-known thread connected the three groups: Each was seen by the government to be a critic of Gautam Adani, one of India’s richest men and a political ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

At the Center for Policy Research (CPR), widely considered India's top independent think tank, more than a dozen officials and armed police officers confiscated computers and phones and sealed the building, locking some employees inside their rooms, according to three people who were present.

In the ensuing months, documents showed, investigators pored through the nonprofits’ emails and phone records and laid out a lengthy array of allegations. The government cited the allegations as the basis for administrative actions that seemed designed to cripple the nonprofits, Indian and international activists and scholars say.

CPR was accused of improperly obstructing Adani’s Hasdeo mine by “giving directions” to protest leaders, the think tank’s correspondence with investigators shows. Authorities alleged that researchers affiliated with the think tank were using U.S. funding for litigation — something that is outlawed in India.

The Washington Post notes that earlier this year Indian authorities froze the foreign-currency bank accounts of CPR. Citing seven current and former CPR employees, the Post notes that the think tank, starved of funding, is likely to sharply downsize or shut down completely. CPR had 200 employees at its peak.

Here is a letter from concerned international faculty and researchers about what has been happening at CPR.

---

Monday, June 19, 2023

Republicans Target Think Tanks Who Study Disinformation

Here is more from the New York Times:

On Capitol Hill and in the courts, Republican lawmakers and activists are mounting a sweeping legal campaign against universities, think tanks and private companies that study the spread of disinformation, accusing them of colluding with the government to suppress conservative speech online.

Targets include Stanford, Clemson and New York Universities and the University of Washington; the Atlantic Council, the German Marshall Fund and the National Conference on Citizenship, all nonpartisan, nongovernmental organizations in Washington; the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco; and Graphika, a company that researches disinformation online.

The group behind the class action, America First Legal, named as defendants two researchers at the Stanford Internet Observatory, Alex Stamos and Renée DiResta; a professor at the University of Washington, Kate Starbird; an executive of Graphika, Camille François; and the senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, Graham Brookie.

Here is the biography of Graham Brookie.

---

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Mike Needham Leaving Capitol Hill to Launch a New Think Tank

Mr. Mike Needham, Sen. Marco Rubio's (R-FL) chief of staff, is leaving Capitol Hill to launch a new think tank called America 2100.

The think tank's aim is to "begin the work of codifying and institutionalizing the ideas Rubio helped pioneer, from China to industrial policy," reported Politico. The new think tank reportedly has Rubio's blessing.

Before joining Rubio's office in 2018, Needham was CEO of Heritage Action for America, the sister lobbying arm of the think tank Heritage Foundation.

Needham formerly worked on former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign in 2008, and spent three years as the chief of staff and director at the Heritage Foundation.

Mr. Elbridge Colby, Co-founder and Principal of the think tank The Marathon Initiative, said that America 2100 is "is sure to be a critical and desperately needed voice in confronting the *actual* problems the country faces with credible solutions...not those of 15 years ago."

---

monday, June 12, 2023}:

Dozens With Nuclear Weapons Interests Funding Think Tanks

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has just published a new report entitled "Wasted: 2022 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending," which notes that nuclear weapon-producing companies, nuclear-armed governments, and those in nuclear alliances spent $21-36 million in 2022 funding ten of the most prominent think tanks researching and writing about nuclear weapons in nuclear-armed states.

Here is the ICAN list showing think tank funding from companies, governments, and alliances that produce and support nuclear weapons:

Atlantic Council: $4,180,000 - $7,419,974
Brookings Institution: $2,460,000 - $4,794,984
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace: $2,020,000 - $4,499,986
Chatham House: No amount publicly available
Center for a New American Security (CNAS): $2,710,001 - $4,729,975
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS): $2,590,000 - $3,829,987
Hudson Institute: $375,000 - $469,999
Observer Research Foundation:$888,106
Royal United Services Institute (RUSI): $2,488,409 - $5,431,512
Stimson Center: $3,296,369

Of those amounts, $5 million - $9 million is from companies, and $16 - $27 million is from governments. The report outlines the numerous governments and firms that give to these think tanks.

ICAS says that throughout 2022, nuclear weapon-producing companies and countries in nuclear alliances did their best to sell deterrence by funding think tanks and lobbyists.

"Board members at nuclear weapons producing companies played an integral role in keeping the money flowing to weapons of mass destruction - sitting on boards of banks that lend to them and major think tanks researching and writing about nuclear weapons," says ICAS.

In related news, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its annual assessment of of the state of armaments, disarmament, and international security.

---

Monday, June 5, 2023

Bush Alum Margaret Spellings Named CEO of Bipartisan Policy Center

Here is more from a Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) press release:

Today, the Bipartisan Policy Center announced former U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings will join the organization as its new CEO. As a veteran leader who has forged strong relationships on both sides of the aisle, she has decades of experience finding common-sense solutions to improve the lives of American families.

As CEO, she will guide the organization’s strategic direction and priorities, promote BPC’s policy recommendations, and be the chief steward of BPC’s bipartisan ethos and mission to help policymakers work across party lines to craft bipartisan solutions. “In a unanimous vote, the BPC Board of Directors approved the appointment of Margaret Spellings as our next CEO,” said Kelly Darnell, interim CEO of BPC.

Spellings most recently served as President and CEO of Texas 2036, a Dallas, Texas-based think tank founded in 2018 by Dallas attorney Tom Luce. That think tanks' name is based on the year of Texas's bicentennial.

---

Thursday, June 1, 2023

China Mining US Think Tanks for Military Intelligence

Here is more from the New York Times:

China’s intelligence agencies are investing deeply in open-source intelligence to learn more about the capabilities of the American military in the Pacific and beyond, according to a new report.

The analysis, by the threat intelligence company Recorded Future, details efforts by China’s government and companies to collect publicly available data from the Pentagon, think tanks and private firms — information Beijing’s military can use to help plan for a potential conflict with the United States.

The report details some of the work one prominent Chinese open-source intelligence company has done to analyze publicly available insights from the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon’s in-house think tank.

The Recorded Future report includes a table from a 2019 study by China's Army Service Academy showing likely People's Liberation Army (PLA) open-source intelligence (OSINT) collection targets. The list includes the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Carnegie Europe Center, and Japan Institute of International Affairs (JIIA).

The report also notes that China is using its own "think tanks" to collect OSINT. For example, it says that the Beijing Lanhai Changqing Information Science and Technology Co., Ltd. is a new self-described think tank that provides research support to military clients. The entity claims to be "committed to becoming China's most influential military-civil fusion innovation think tank."

A similar entity is the Beijing Yuanwang Think Tank Science and Technology Consulting Co., Ltd., a privately owned PLA OSINT research services provider.

In related think tank news, China's new ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, has been having meetings with influential US think tanks. He met, for example, with Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) President Richard Haass.

Meanwhile, Chinese Embassy spokespersonLiu Pengyu said that think tanks play a "unique role" in US-China understanding.

---

Thursday, May 25, 2023

How China has Infiltrated US Think Tanks

Here are some think tank-related excerpts from the book Spies and Lies by Alex Joske, the youngest-ever analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute(ASPI):

America's think tanks have long been of interest to Chinese intelligence agencies. Numerous spies from both the Ministry of State Security (MSS) and People's Liberation Army (PLA) have held posts as visiting scholars in DC think tanks with varying degrees of transparency and awareness about their backgrounds. Even before the MSS was created, Chinese intelligence analysts were compiling open-source studies of influential think tanks in the Reagan era.

To many scholars and policymakers, the think tank China Reform Forum brings to mind dreams of change and liberalism to China. Led by Zheng Bijian, the think tank touted unmatched access to China's leadership, superior pedigree through its affiliation with the Party's highest training academy, and a track record of policy influence. It was cocaine for China watchers from Washington to Tokyo and Paris, manufactured in Beijing by the MSS.

Other think tanks envied the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace'sunusual connections to Beijing. After several years of collaboration with China Reform Forum, Carnegie could now reveal it had inked a deal to deepen that partnership and set up Carnegie's first Beijing office within the premises of China Reform Forum. It was the first American think tank with a permanent presence in Beijing. Carnegie thought it was expanding its influence within China, blind to the fact that it was taking part in an MSS influence operation.

The Carnegie Endowment was far from the only American think tank that unwittingly wrapped itself up in the MSS's influence operations. Two China representatives for the Asia Society were named as members of China Reform Forum's council. Washington, DC's Center for Strategic and International Studies was often a host for visiting China Reform Forum delegations, as was the Brookings Institution.

MSS quickly homed in on RAND Corporation as a priority for influence and espionage operations. It surely helped that RAND is headquartered in California, the state with the most mature MSS networks. Through China Reform Forum, RAND also had some of the strongest and longest-running ties to the MSS of any American institution. RAND continued to help China Reform Forum access the United States even after it was warned that the group was a MSS front.

Like every other major American foreign policy institution, Brookings had already been engaging with China Reform Forum, hosting Zheng Bijian and the MSS as they tested out the "peaceful rise" theory on its target audience. Brookings chairman John L. Thornton unwittingly fell into the sights of an MSS influence operation.

Nicolas Berggruen's Berggruen Institute helps connect the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy (CIIDS) to global elites and is key to its success.

China Institute of Strategy and Management (CISM) started its existence as the internal think tank of the PLA's Academy of Military Science (AMS).

The China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR) was originally established to give Chinese intelligence a channel for engaging internationally, and it actively helps the rest of the MSS target and recruit foreigners. It holds dialogues and conferences with think tanks like the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).

Maurice Greenberg was a leading donor to American foreign policy think tanks and once threatened to pull funding from the Heritage Foundation after one of its analysts wrote a paper calling for tougher policies on China.

Here is a list that Think Tank Watch compiled of former Intelligence Community (IC) officials that now work at think tanks.

One of the most interesting facts from the book: Windsurfing was invented by one of RAND Corp.'s engineers.

---

Friday, May 26, 2023

Republican Think Tanks Gearing Up for 2024

Here is more from FP:

The [Mike] Pence-backed nonprofit Advancing American Freedom released a legislative agenda that calls for canceling Chinese treasury bill holdings as COVID-19 restitution to the families of victims, accelerating the U.S. nuclear program, and advocating more tree trade, a genuinely lonely position on both sides of the aisle these days.

[The Heritage Foundation's] Project 2025 has launched an online questionnaire, asking would-be conservative wonks in a Republican to explain their political philosophy, who influenced it, and asking them a series of questions, including whether the United Nations should have authority over sovereign countries, and whether the U.S. president "should be able to advance his/her agenda through the bureaucracy without hinderance [sic] from unelected federal officials."

Another conservative think tank to watch for potential 2024 GOP administration picks is the Hudson Institute, which seems to have effectively struck a balance between the MAGA and the more traditional wings of the Republican party with its own cast of conservative foreign policy heavyweights.

Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on the Heritage Foundation's plans to staff a Republican administration in 2024.

---

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

Leaked Docs Show Lockheed Martin CEO About to Join CFR Board

Here is more from the Eli Clifton, a senior advisor at the Quincy Institute and Investigative-Journalist-at-Large at Responsible Statecraft:

Members of the Council on Foreign Relations are currently voting on a slate of ten board candidates put forth by the “Nominating and Governance Committee.” That slate includes what is arguably the world’s largest arms dealer, the chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, James Taiclet, according to a document circulated to CFR members and obtained by Responsible Statecraft.

The board of directors of CFR, a New York-based think tank that focuses on U.S. foreign policy and international relations, isn’t a stranger to embracing the weapons industry. CFR’s chairman is David Rubenstein, a co-founder and co-chairman of the private equity firm and defense-industry-focused Carlyle Group, and the board currently includes Raytheon board member Meghan L. O’Sullivan, and Frances Townsend, a director at Lenoardo Systems, a Virginia based weapons systems company. (CFR’s biography of Townsend omits any mention of her role at the weapons firm but Leonardo Systems lists her CFR board membership in her biography on their website.)

A list of CFR's current board members can be found here.

---