RTP's Fourth Branch Podcast

As small businesses across the country grapple with the current and potential impacts associated with COVID-19, the National Federation of Independent Business continues to track the latest developments from healthcare officials, congress and the administration. Please join us to hear about how the organization is supporting small businesses during this time, and which government policies are positively and negatively affecting business operations today and down the road. Featuring: - Karen Harned, Executive Director, National Federation of Independent Business Small Business Legal CenterVisit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

While most agree cybersecurity is a vital part of modern national security and see cyber-attacks as an evolving and dangerous threat, the question of how best to utilize the resources of the United States to protect the nation against cyber-attacks is far more contested.Many in the cybersecurity space see the path forward as including more public-private partnerships since private companies are often more directly impacted by cybercrime than the federal government and can be more dynamic in their responses.However, given the criticism of these partnerships in the past, are they truly the best way to protect the public? In this time of quarantine, American society has become more dependent on internet technology, so examining how our nation protects itself and its companies digitally has never been more important.Are public-private partnerships the best way to fight cybercrime? If not, can the government alone protect the nation from cybercrime? If these partnerships are the way of the future, how could they be improved? This episode will discuss these important questions and more.Featuring:- Dmitri Alperovitch, Co-Founder & Former CTO, CrowdStrike- Jamil Jaffer, Adjunct Professor, NSI Founder, and Director, National Security Law & Policy Program, Antonin Scalia Law SchoolVisit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

Journalists and academics seem convinced that artificial intelligence is often biased against women and racial minorities. If Washington’s new facial recognition law is a guide, legislators see the same problem. But is it true? It’s not hard to find patterns in AI decisions that have a disparate impact on protected groups. Is this bias? And if so, whose?Do we assume the worst about decisions with a disparate impact – applying a kind of misanthropomorphism to the machine – or can we objectively analyze the factors behind the decisions? If bias boils down to not producing proportionate results for each protected class, is the only remedy to impose a “proportionate result” constraint on AI processing – essentially imposing racial, ethnic, and gender quotas on every corner of life that is touched by AI?Featuring:- Stewart Baker, Partner, Steptoe & Johnson LLP- Curt Levey, President, Committee for Justice- Nicholas Weaver, Researcher, International Computer Science Institute and Lecturer, UC BerkeleyVisit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

In October of 2019, President Trump issued an executive order that imposed a series of restrictions and requirements on Federal agencies, and even included a requirement that agencies publish their guidance on the internet. The purpose of the executive order was to promote transparency and democratic fairness in the administrative law process. This has led to a renewed debate over what the relationship should be between the executive branch and the administrative state, and has also led to some disagreement over whether the executive order represented any meaningful change from the status quo.Featuring: - Hon. Steven Bradbury, General Counsel (and performing the functions and duties of Deputy Secretary), U.S. Department of Transportation- John Walke, Director, Clean Air Project, Climate & Clean Air Program, Natural Resources Defense Council- Prof. Adam White, Assistant Professor and Executive Director, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason UniversityVisit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

How can data privacy enforcement provide clarity for businesses while protecting the public from harm? What might be the best enforcement options available to the FTC and state attorneys general going forward? Jennifer Huddleston and Ian Adams discuss.Featuring:- Ian Adams, Executive Director, International Center for Law & Economics- Jennifer Huddleston, Director of Technology and Innovation Policy, American Action ForumVisit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

In 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a rule entitled “Strengthening Transparency in Regulatory Science.” The proposal garnered over 9,000 unique public comments. On March 18, 2020, EPA published a supplemental notice of proposed rulemaking that, among other things, states that the EPA would be required to make public important information underlying both significant regulatory actions and influential scientific information disseminated by the Agency. Why is this EPA effort to promote transparency important? Why is it controversial? This episode will discuss and evaluate the proposed rule in light of the March 2020 supplementary notice.Featuring: - Dr. Richard B. Belzer, Associate Fellow, R Street Institute- Prof. Adam White, Assistant Professor and Executive Director, The C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School- [Moderator] Daren Bakst, Senior Research Fellow, The Heritage FoundationVisit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

As countries, states, and locales have worked to get a handle on the spread of the COVID19 pandemic, one solution that appears to have been effective is thorough contact-tracing. In this episode, Jennifer Huddleston and Brent Skorup discuss how contact-tracing might work here, what privacy concerns it might involve, and what it means for data privacy going forward.Featuring:- Jennifer Huddleston, Director of Technology & Innovation Policy, American Action Forum- Brent Skorup, Senior Research Fellow, Mercatus Center, George Mason UniversityVisit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.

On September 4, 2019, the Federal Trade Commission announced sweeping regulatory changes to the operation of YouTube, one of the internet’s most popular websites. YouTube has 2 billion monthly active users and features content from more than 50 million individual creators, most of whom are small businesses or individuals. Many of the creators affected earn money using YouTube and stand to lose, in aggregate, hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars from these regulatory changes. Some will need to restructure their business model. The changes also subject content creators to increased risk of prosecution and stiff fines. Yet these significant regulatory changes were never put before a legislature; none of the content creators or users of the website were privy to the rationale or design of the regulation; and there was no public process for comment. Instead, the new regulation was confidentially negotiated between YouTube and FTC staff and put into place by a court.FTC settlements have long been praised by those who value the “soft law” benefits of such an approach: flexibility to deal with case-by-case specific problems, particularly in fast-changing industries; reduced need to establish one-size-fits-all industry-wide rules; efficient resolution of cases; the ability to shape future behavior through a kind of common law. Such settlements have also long been criticized by those who emphasize the difference between them and hard law: a creation of regulatory ambiguity; lack of process that considers the interests of the full range of stakeholders; a “rulemaking” environment with a power differential between the negotiating parties; and an agency ability to accumulate incremental changes to the law that in total can be quite significant.This episode explores FTC settlements and consent decrees, including the YouTube case and what it means for FTC enforcement going forward. It will take place as part of the Federalist Society's Executive Branch Review Week.Featuring:- Jessica Rich, Distinguished Fellow, Institute for Technology Law & Policy, Georgetown Law- Sean Royall, Partner, Kirkland & Ellis LLP- Gerard Stegmaier, Partner, Reed Smith LLP- [Moderator] Neil Chilson, Senior Research Fellow for Technology and Innovation, Charles Koch Institute Visit our website – www.RegProject.org – to learn more, view all of our content, and connect with us on social media.