Matters of Policy & Politics

Matters Of Policy & Politics: Michael Boskin: Defense Budgeting for a Safer World | Bill Whalen | Hoover Institution

Add to an already uncertain world: America’s uncertain ability to adequately budget for its national and global security needs – those needs more apparent given the US’s current involvement in two “hot” wars, plus “Cold War 2.0" with China. Michael Boskin, the Hoover Institution’s Wohlford Family Senior Fellow and former chair of the White House’s Council of Economic Advisors, discusses Defense Budgeting for a Safer World – a new Hoover Institution press release he co-edited that features nearly three dozen defense and national security experts (many of them, Hoover fellows) outlining better ways to deliver “more bang for the buck” and recruit and retain needed personnel.

Matters Of Policy & Politics: California Update: Bills That Lived or Died; Single-Payer Healthcare’s Resuscitation | Bill Whalen, Lee Ohanian, and Jonathan Movroydis | Hoover Institution

In Sacramento, the State Capitol’s annual bill-signing season ends, with California governor Gavin Newsom deciding the fate of hundreds of pieces of legislation. Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s “California on Your Mind” web channel, joins Hoover senior product manager Jonathan Movroydis to discuss the latest in the Golden State, including the governor’s use of the process to enhance his national image, his allergic reaction to a bill legalizing “magic mushrooms,” plus his re-embrace of the progressive dream of single-payer healthcare.

Silicon Triangle: Mary Kay Magistad on the Future of US-China Competition | Hoover Institution

Read "Scenarios for Future US-China Competition" here: https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/SiliconTriangle_Chapter1_230828.pdf

Mary Kay Magistad and Kharis Templeman discuss four potential futures for US-China relations. These scenarios depend on whether the global economy becomes more integrated or bifurcated, and whether the US or China leads in semiconductor technology. They also cover key findings and policy recommendations around supply chain security, US-China competition, and Taiwan's future.

To learn more, go to https://www.hoover.org/silicon-triangle

Mary Kay Magistad is deputy director of the Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations. She is an award-winning journalist who lived and reported in Asia for more than two decades, including in China for NPR and PRI/BBC’s The World, and in Southeast Asia for NPR and the Washington Post.

Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and program manager of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific.

Silicon Triangle: The United States, Taiwan, China, and Global Semiconductor Security is a product of the Working Group on Semiconductors and the Security of the United States and Taiwan, a joint project of the Hoover Institution and the Asia Society Center on U.S.-China Relations.

Matters Of Policy & Politics: Ukraine and Russia: Empires, Genocide and a “Greatest Generation” | Bill Whalen and Norman Naimark | Hoover Institution

The Russia-Ukraine war is less about resources and more about empire, history, and two nations’ self-conceptions. Or so contends Norman Naimark, a Hoover Institution senior fellow and Stanford University history professor, who discusses how past and present cruelties involving the two combatants – common heritage, absorption, suppression and genocide, Vladimir Putin’s mindset, and the Ukrainian people’s resilience – factor into the past 19 months of fighting.

Matters Of Policy & Politics: Inflation, Disinflation, and Spending: When Fiscal and Monetary Worlds Collide | Bill Whalen and Mickey Levy | Hoover Institution

The good news: inflation isn’t what it was a year ago. The bad news: Americans still pay more for shelter, food, and energy – and may hold lawmakers accountable for the high costs in the next election. Mickey Levy, a Hoover Institution visiting scholar and senior economist at Berenberg Capital Markets, discusses the root causes of higher inflation, a more recent phase of “disinflation,” the Federal Reserve clinging to the notion of “transitory” higher prices, plus the consequences (and questionable wisdom) of the federal government engaging in economic stimuli.

Silicon Triangle: Glenn Tiffert on Why China Struggles to Produce Advanced Semiconductors | Hoover Institution

China's challenges in developing its semiconductor industry despite massive government subsidies. Tiffert explains that factors like lack of talent, economic inefficiencies, corruption, and reliance on foreign firms have hampered China's progress, but US export controls could unintentionally help China become self-sufficient over the long term. He explains the Silicon Triangle report's recommendation of "friend-shoring" semiconductor production to trusted allies rather than trying to onshore it all to the US.

Silicon Triangle: Matt Turpin On Mitigating China’s Nonmarket Behavior In Semiconductors | Hoover Institution

Matt Turpin discusses the intensifying competition between the US and China over dominance in the semiconductor industry. He discusses the strategies and policies the US is employing, such as export controls and domestic investment incentives, to try to maintain leadership in advanced semiconductors while limiting China's progress.

Matters Of Policy & Politics: California Update: “Lee Was Wrong”, Jerry Is Right? | Bill Whalen, Lee Ohanian, and Jonathan Movroydis | Hoover Institution

As Sacramento’s bill-signing season commences, Republican infighting is coming to Southern California, and does “Cincinnatus” need to return to office? Hoover senior fellow Lee Ohanian and distinguished policy fellow Bill Whalen, both contributors to Hoover’s “California on Your Mind” web channel, join Hoover senior product manager Jonathan Movroydis to discuss the latest in the Golden State, including pending “first-in-the-nation” laws, a fast-food backroom deal, Ronald Reagan’s lessons in governing California, what Lee Ohanian’s discovered in five years of analyzing California policy, plus former governor Jerry Brown – aka, Cincinnatus – awaiting “sensible people to rise to the occasion.”

Silicon Triangle: H.-S. Philip Wong on the Implications of Technology Trends in the Semiconductor Industry | Hoover Institution

To read "Implications of Technology Trends in the Semiconductor Industry" by H.-S. Philip Wong and Jim Plummer, click the following link:
https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/SiliconTriangle_Chapter2_230828.pdf

To learn more, go to https://www.hoover.org/silicon-triangle

H.-S. Philip Wong discusses the semiconductor supply chain, explaining the difference between chip design vs manufacturing and leading edge vs legacy chips. Wong notes the semiconductor field requires global collaboration on research to advance and is optimistic about future innovation post "Moore's Law" as societal needs will drive new breakthroughs.

Kharis Templeman is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and program manager of the Hoover Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific.

H.-S. Philip Wong is a professor of electrical engineering and the Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell professor in the Stanford University School of Engineering, where he is the founding faculty director of its SystemX Alliance and director of the Stanford Nanofabrication Facility. From 2018 to 2020 he was vice president for corporate research at TSMC, where he remains as chief scientist in an advisory role.

Matters of Policy & Politics: Road to the White House: Is This The “Yogi Berra Election?” | Bill Whalen, David Brady, and Douglas Rivers | Hoover Institution

Does a repeat of the last presidential election take America into uncharted waters (an octogenarian incumbent vs. a predecessor on trial), or is it proof of Yogi Berra’s “déjà vu all over again” – as in 2016?

Will a small sliver of independent voters decide the fates of a controversy-plagued Donald Trump and a Democratic opponent with his own set of problems? David Brady and Douglas Rivers, Hoover Institution senior fellows and Stanford University political scientists, discuss President Biden’s and former President Trump’s poll numbers, the economy’s role in the election, plus how “independent” are non-aligned voters?