Lessons - The Truth About Think Tanks | Eli Clifton - Senior Advisor & Investigative Journalist

In this Lessons episode, uncover the complex world of think tanks and their outsize influence on policy making. Learn how funding shapes foreign policy debate by conflicts of interest often go undisclosed, and the role investigative journalism plays in uncovering the hidden forces behind the scenes. If you can, just describe what a think tank is where people don't quite understand that concept because people may not have ever experienced this before or really understood around this world. So one interesting thing about think tanks that people always assume as first of all that there is a definition and that there is such a legal thing as a think tank. There is no such thing as the legal entity of a think tank. But a lot of research institutions in Washington DC and elsewhere usually in capitals around the world are independent entities that conduct policy research. And to be clear, the audience, the intended audience for this research is really generally not the general public. It's policy makers. And that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. I work at a think tank now. I will defend that. But it's not academic research. You're doing it because you're trying to cram up a policy solutions for policy makers to implement. So it's a way that one tries to inject ideas and policies into the policy making process. Okay, no, that makes sense. Okay, so sorry, I didn't interrupt your story. I just want to understand what that was. And yeah, the more I started looking at it, and I was reporting on foreign policy, and I could very clearly see that a number of institutions in Washington DC, where I was, had a very outsized influence in the foreign policy debate. They seemed to be generating a lot of the analysis and policy proposals, and would then appear before Congress as witnesses that were clearly being implemented as policy. And I started to report more and more on who was funding these entities and who was trying to shape the foreign policy debate. And I think the thing that I always come back to with the foreign policy debate is that people think of it as very exotic, that foreign policy is maybe above normal politics in some ways. You know, politics ends at the water red just nothing very complex. And the more I looked at it, the more I was realizing, you know, it's not that it's not different than any other contested policy space, at least in American politics and probably in contested politics anywhere in the world. You know, there's interests, there's private interests, there's public interest, there's foreign interests, and they're all competing. The only difference is that we don't talk about it. We don't talk about it the same way. We pretend that this is somehow just a very fair and pure competition of ideas that everybody wants the same outcome. And if you walked into a room where you had people, let's say abortion or same-sex marriage or environmental protection of people who are on opposite ends of the debate and said, hey guys, I assume you all want the same outcome. They would laugh at you. Of course, yeah, we wouldn't be as ingenuous place to start the discussion, right? You guys want different outcomes? That's okay. That's right. Yeah, exactly, but that's how that's how it works. So I guess the whole point is, you know, you hope that the policy decisions that are implemented are done by somebody that represents you and represents your country and you feel that they're, you know, they've reached a level in their attitude that they can make those smart decisions. And you, I think everybody understands that there's going to be money that are funding up opposing ideas constantly. You just hope that there's enough money funding both sides and then you come to an educated idea after the data and the facts. And I think part of that is to, you know, and again, in other policy spaces, I think we talk about it very openly that there's dark money, there's influences, people want different outcomes. We have a pretty good conversation about that. In foreign policy, I don't think that we do. And I think it's really, you know, it's harmful to the United States and probably to other countries as well that we aren't having, you know, a more honest conversation about the fact that this is a debate that has people who want different outcomes. And some of those interests are, you know, serving a very narrow group of people or even other countries. And, you know, that's okay, but we should at least be having a conversation about it. And that's what that's sort of prompted your career path. That's why you started to focus on some of these, so some of these foreign policy focus think tanks. So you have on both sides, people putting money into try and what are they trying to solve for like obviously foreign policy is immense and massive. So there must be some topics that are probably more prevalent than others. Or is it just there's a think tank for literally every conversation, every different problem that's being trying to solve the U.S. wants to have a hand in at least influencing some way? Well, you know, I think the diversity of think tanks and of ideas inside the beltway for, you know, to narrow the scope a little bit is a far more limited than most people would think. And this kind of goes back to mayor area of interest in my area for reporting that, you know, there really is something called the so-called blob, which is what Benjamin Rhodes referred to as the, you know, sort of the foreign policy establishment. Excuse me, it's politicians. It's, but a lot of people who are these analysts that think tanks. And they sort of police what are the acceptable policy lines to take? What are the acceptable objectives that we're trying to pursue? And the more closely I look at it, the more I've seen and I've written about this extensively, there's also kind of the same set of funders throughout, you know, the weapons companies are major funders of think tanks that work on foreign policy. So are a small set of foreign countries, the United Arab Emirates, Taiwan, Norway, Japan are some of the big foreign funders of think tanks. And they don't just fund one think tank. They don't just fund progressive or liberal think tanks and conservative think tank. They'll want to fund across the spectrum. And I don't think it's that big of a coincidence then that you don't see an enormous array of policy ideas coming out. Little lone policies that may question the US relationship with, let's say, auditocratic countries like the United Arab Emirates or quest series questioning of the size of the defense budget or about whether we need certain weapon systems that are incredibly expensive. Those are the types of conversations that it seems like the conversation around that is very constrained. Interesting. So it's it's almost like if you have certain entities that fund both sides, then then you're never going to have a discussion around a certain policy that could actually negatively impact that entity. But you're going to have you seemingly and on seemingly like a perceived unbiased view or unbiased donations towards think tanks because it seems like well, we're for funding progressive, liberal and conservative and Republican ideas. So how can you say that we've ever been biased? Exactly. Because they're funding both sides of that. I love wrapping my head around this because this isn't that new to me. So I'm like completely amazed. Interesting quality here that, you know, is, you know, in journalism or in academia, there's kind of some rudimentary concepts of a conflict of interest avoidance. Yeah. But your common sense stuff like, you know, let's say one of your funders may stand to benefit from the work that you're doing or the argument you're making. You would proactively disclose that and academic journals talk about doing it. Journal newspapers talk about this. It doesn't mean you can't publish it. It doesn't mean you can't make that argument. That's not what it doesn't even mean. There's anything corrupt going on. It just means that to protect yourself, you proactively say, hey, you know, there's this financial link over here. And that's usually considered very positive, but also a common sense thing. It basically doesn't exist in Washington. And I've looked very closely at it and sort of in the foreign policy realm, you know, regularly you'll see think tanks publishing materials that are beneficial to let's say one of their foreign government funders that's urging closer relations between the United States and that country. It doesn't mean it's a bad argument. It doesn't mean it's wrong. But there is something deeply flawed with a, you know, a set of standards that seem to say that you don't need to disclose a potential conflict of interest like that. And that obviously extends in a major way to the weapons companies that are funding a lot of the foreign policy research in Washington. And candidly, like I'm just thinking through like the reason why this would be, why you protect yourself is because if this ever came to light, then obviously your argument or your policy is discredited immediately. But you're saying the issue is that there's not enough conversation. So this stuff doesn't really come exactly exactly. You're a couple steps ahead of me there. Yeah, because the conversation's in there. The scrutiny isn't there. And as a result, some simple standards that, excuse me, that are really, really rudimentary and that people get their heads around in academia or in journalism just don't exist. They get thrown out the window. You know, I asked a major think tank without naming names here. I have a couple times asked them because I've seen them doing things that are beneficial to their funders. And I've said, do you guys have a conflict of interest policy? They said, yeah, absolutely. And I said, well, can I see it? Yeah, yeah, sure. We'll send it over. And they send it over. And it's a really good in-depth policy dictating how to avoid conflicts of interest between outside work and work being done for the think tank by employees of the think tank. But it never crossed their minds that there could be a potential conflict of interest between the funders of the think tank and the work that they're producing. I mean, it's kind of amazing that they were several steps ahead and they hadn't even thought about a more rudimentary role. So this is, this is your passion. That's what you got. And so when you start to, when you start to go into this world, where do you decide to spend your time? What, what drives you to look at one thing versus another? And also, how do you emerge yourself in this world so that you can investigate on something that seems to be just, that seems to have no discussion around it? Well, I think that that's, that's a large part of it. And having frankly, a lot of people who, who, who help flag these things to me, you know, and say, hey, there's something interesting going on here. Because I don't, I don't pretend to be an expert, let's say on, you know, the, the debate over the how or if there should be an end to the Korean war. But, you know, people have, have, have assisted me in being like, hey, there's something going on here. There seems to be, you know, a flood of money, um, that is pushing, you know, in a certain direction. And no one's talking about it. And I am amazed by how often that happens. You know, normally if there was, you know, a massive sort of dark money for lack of a better term, campaign towards, uh, a contested policy issue, there would be, uh, you know, some questions and other investigative journalists would, would dig into it. And I think in foreign policy, um, again, it's sort of seen as a, a elite. It's seen as also maybe not something that it's expected that, that every day people are supposed to be paying attention to or engaged with. And I think just a lot more flies under the radar for lack of a better term. And as an investigative journalist, I, I did the, the crudest way of putting it, but I think it is also true is that it is a very target rich environment. Because there's not that many people covering it with a high degree of scrutiny. And as a result, people are acting in incredibly brazen ways. Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one.