Science, Technology, and Public Policy

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

Anne Boustead suggests four questions that Senator Wyden should ask following Director Coats' argument that quantifying the collection of U.S. person communications under Section 702 would exhaust agency resources and threaten privacy rights.

Cyber Security Project Director Michael Sulmeyer and Project Affiliate Charley Snyder analyze the purported draft of President Trump's first executive order covering cybersecurity issues, leaked to the Washington Post and released on Friday, January 27, 2017.

Cyber Security Project Director Michael Sulmeyer and Project Affiliate Amy Chang discuss their observations on China's Approach to cyber after a recent visit to Beijing. Sulmeyer and Chang were part of a small group of American academics and goernment representatives to meet with Chinese counterparts about contemporary issues in cybersecurity.

Expert elicitations are now frequently used to characterize uncertain future technology outcomes. However, their usefulness is limited, in part because: estimates across studies are not easily comparable; choices in survey design and expert selection may bias results; and overconfidence is a persistent problem. The authors provide quantitative evidence of how these choices affect experts' estimates.

This document contains March 2016 updates to our database on U.S. government investments in energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3) through the Department of Energy. The database, in Microsoft Excel format, tracks DOE appropriations from FY 1978–2016 and the 2017 budget request and includes funding for ERD3 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It also includes several charts.