Focus Areas & Projects

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Tech, Law & Security Program

Focus Areas

TLS tackles the challenges that arise when technology, law, and security intersect.

By technology, we mean not only the transformative technologies in use today, but also emerging and shifting technologies such as artificial intelligence and quantum computing.
By law, we mean the legal, regulatory, and policy frameworks that impact how public and private actors respond to technology-driven threats and opportunities, including the ways legal and regulatory structures address risks to privacy, security, free speech, and democratic institutions.
By security, we mean security along three overlapping dimensions: the security of our nation; the security of individuals; and the security of democratic systems and the international rules-based order.

We will dig deep into concrete issues through projects led by team members with directly relevant experience and expertise. Across all of our projects, TLS will work closely with the private and public sectors to develop and build support for innovative, practical solutions. Our projects will include a cross-cutting focus on emerging tech and AI, the protection of fundamental rights, and international engagement.

Projects will initially fall within the following 3 interrelated focus areas: Content Regulation in the Digital Age,��Cyber & Information Conflict ��Ի��Privacy, Transparency, & Security.

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Content Regulation in the Digital Age

In the U.S. and around the world, governments are stepping up efforts to regulate harmful content online, such as hate speech, fake news, and terrorist propaganda—and enlisting private actors in these efforts. Alongside public and private sector partners, TLS will push for innovative and technologically sophisticated solutions that account for the roles of the different players in the Internet ecosystem and seek to mitigate harmful content and behavior while also preserving free speech and other fundamental rights.

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Cyber & Information Conflict

Nation-states are engaging in a range of increasingly aggressive and destabilizing cyber operations targeting data, attacking critical infrastructure, and seeking to undermine domestic and international order. TLS will develop and build support for novel legal and policy responses to malicious foreign cyber activities and influence campaigns, while also ensuring that democratic institutions, fundamental rights, and states’ interests are accounted for and protected.

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Privacy, Transparency, & Security

New technologies have created a tidal wave of data that can both deliver important societal benefits and pose significant risks to privacy. TLS will push for legal and policy structures to ensure lawful and responsible access to data domestically and across borders, by both the public and private sector, in ways that protect and promote both security and privacy.

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Understanding and Demystifying the Fight Against Child Sexual Exploitation The goal of this project is to break the logjam and refocus the debate in a way that accommodates the multiple, competing interests. It acknowledges, yet sidesteps, the ongoing debate about whether and to what extent the move to default encryption is a net positive or net negative. Rather, it takes the shift as a given reality—and seeks to identify cooperative approaches to combating on-line child sexual exploitation that account for that reality.

National Security and AI Over the coming year, this project will produce and prioritize budget and acquisition actions and guidance, create a risk-assessment framework, and recommend congressional oversight options that will support the Intelligence Community in taking full advantage of artificial intelligence and other new technologies for the benefit of the nation.�� As necessary, we will consider questions related to leadership, talent, bureaucracy, culture, private sector engagement, and ethics, among other topics.?????

Privacy Across Borders This project will bring together U.S. and European experts and practitioners from the government, the private sector, and civil society to develop practical, actionable recommendations for ensuring the viability of transatlantic data flows in light of the Schrems II decision by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU).

Addressing Harmful Content Online What speech should be permitted, flagged, or taken down? Should these companies be held to account for their decisions? Is Facebook's new Oversight Board the answer? Join us for a discussion on the role of these powerful gatekeepers in regulating political speech in our democracy.

Free Speech Project The Free Speech Project is a collaborative effort between TLS and Slate Future Tense examining the many ongoing debates about free speech (and its boundaries) in a series of live events and articles published on Slate over the course of the year.

TLS Student Fellows Program The TLS Program works on cutting edge issues at the intersection of technology, law, and security, to shape policy and educate and train future leaders in the field.

Cyber 9/12 Strategy Competition The Cyber 9/12 Challenge is designed to educate the next generation of foreign policy and global security leaders in the dynamics of cyber statecraft.

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Chinese-Owned Technology Platforms Operating in the United States The report sets forth a framework for understanding the various threats posed by Chinese-owned technology platforms operating in the United States (e.g. TikTok), and for assessing the various costs and benefits of proposed responses to these threats.

Power, Policing and Tech The Technology, Law & Security (TLS) Program, in partnership with the Criminal Justice Practice & Policy Institute (CJPPI) at the ��ֱ�� University Washington College of Law (WCL) and the Journal of National Security Law and Policy (JNSLP) at Georgetown University, is pleased to announce our joint Power, Policing and Tech project.

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