Perspectives on US Tech Policy After November

The 2024 US federal elections offer a distinct set of choices for voters, particularly in the race for the White House. But the presidential election is not the only race that will define the makeup of government after November; control of the House and Senate are up in the air, and several states will choose a Governor and elect new legislators.

Technology is not a motivating issue in most of these elections. Yet after the ballots are counted, the outcomes will certainly alter the future of tech policy in the US and beyond.

In August and September, Tech Policy Press collected a range of perspectives on priorities and possibilities for US tech policy after November. This report relies on more than two dozen interviews with tech policy experts, and secondary research. It collects speculation on how the November elections and other contextual factors will affect a variety of tech policy issues. And it comes with some caveats:

• It is not intended to be comprehensive or to represent every possible viewpoint or concern (nor to endorse any). Rather, it represents a snapshot of perspectives;
• It does not deeply consider questions at the state level; and
• It does not attempt to grapple with all of the myriad ways the courts and litigation will affect tech policy in the months and years ahead.

Rather, this report aims to provide a basis for the reader to debate and discuss potential post-election scenarios, and to arrive at their own conclusions about the potential trajectory of US tech policy issues after November.

1. A global context, a shifting zeitgeist

While the outcome of the presidential contest and the balance of power in Congress will play a major role in defining that trajectory, it is not the outcome of elections alone that will set the terms of the debate. A range of factors—from longer-term geopolitical trends to the corroded dynamics of Congress, from the influence of Silicon Valley corporations and elites to the politics of the culture wars, and from the changing sentiments of Americans about tech and its role in their lives to pressures and conflicts with competing foreign powers—will interact with and in some cases drive the agendas of the politicians and their parties, no matter who wins.

Global decline in democracy, rise of authoritarianism, soaring inequality

The 2024 US elections may represent a turning point for the country, but they take place in a broader geopolitical and economic context that has a set of durable features. One is the global decline of democracy and the rise of authoritarianism. As measured by organizations such as Freedom House, the V-Dem Institute, and the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), the number of nations and people under authoritarian or illiberal rule has increased for more than a decade. The rise of authoritarianism is often aided and abetted by technology, including in the US, which the EIU rates as a “flawed democracy.”

Alongside the decline in democracy, the global economy continues to disproportionately reward corporations and the wealthy. “Since 2020, five billion people have become poorer, while the world’s five richest men have more than doubled their fortunes—at a rate of $14 million per hour,” according to a report by Oxfam, a global organization that fights to end poverty. Income and wealth inequality are on the rise around in the US and elsewhere around the globe as corporate profits have soared. At the end of 2023, the US Federal Reserve reported that the “top 1% accounted for 30% of the nation’s wealth at the end of the fourth quarter, while the top 10% accounted for 67% of all wealth.

In the US, rising populism, polarization, and culture war politics

It’s little wonder that the US, like other nations, is experiencing rising populist attitudes along with high affective polarization. These phenomena are asymmetrical across the left and right, with the populist right more firmly in command of the Republican party. For instance, former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the White House has promised retribution against his political enemies, mass deportations of immigrants, the pursuit of protectionist policies, and the centralization of power over the administrative state. Trump appears to enjoy the support of what Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program calls an “antidemocratic faction of the right” that has achieved “a nearly complete takeover of the Republican Party,” according to a 2023 paper.

The experts we spoke to for this report note that the stew of cultural and political forces at play in the US has scrambled some of the country’s traditional politics, where Republicans were once typically regarded as reliably pro-business and Democrats pro-regulation. Combined with the dynamics of the so-called “culture war,” it is sometimes difficult to gauge where political motivations may align.

Underneath the surface, the “politics” of American tech policy are likely more polarized than ever before, according to interviewees. That’s certainly a change from recent decades, when technology policy generally saw “a lot of bipartisan agreement,” according to Adam Thierer, senior fellow for the tech and innovation team at the R Street Institute. But now we see the culture wars dominating many tech policy discussions—perhaps most prominently with regard to social media and child online safety issues, but also increasingly with AI.

“The politics of technology have changed, and in a strange way,” said Thierer. While there’s still an interesting “nonpartisan element,” it’s now what he calls an ‘ends justify the means’ approach to technology regulation. “In a sense, AI has entered the culture wars, and we're seeing both parties talk about how they fear AI from their own particular perspectives, violating their values, their institutions, their organizations.”

Expect continued legislative gridlock

In this environment, few experts expect the polarization and legislative deadlock that has come to define Congress to change, no matter the outcome in November. “Even if the House flips and the Senate flips, the margins are likely to be tight enough so that it probably is not going to make a big difference,” noted Chamber of Progress founder and CEO Adam Kovacevich, who added that “there won't be a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate anyway.”

Measures of congressional polarization suggest a stark scenario where legislative productivity will continue to be stuck in a decades-long decline. But some of those we spoke to held out hope there were outlier issues that might break the impasse. “I continue to think that this next Congress is the most likely time that we will actually see some sort of regulation go through at the federal level,” said Katie Harbath, CEO of Anchor Change. “Maybe child online safety, maybe it's a big tech package, I’m not sure, but I do think the conditions are going to be the most ripe for that happening in this next Congress.”

One notable phenomenon is that the current environment often results in “strange bedfellows” on tech policy issues, where politicians appear to align on a common goal but for different reasons—see Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on the idea of a digital regulator or Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) on antitrust regulation, or Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on child online safety. While these pairs may publicly claim to have shared aims, their motivations are typically quite different and their alliances often fail to produce results.

The “techlash” will likely persist, but partisan intensity may change

According to a number of the experts we spoke with, the backlash against tech firms and their role in politics and culture is likely to persist long beyond November, but the outcome of the election may determine its volume and the relative intensity of concerns among those who lean left and those who lean right. A (perhaps simplistic) account of the partisan split goes something like this: Democrats are upset at the tech firms for failing to police various harms, including racism and other bigotries and forms of oppression and discrimination. Republicans are upset at the tech platforms for what they often erroneously regard as “censorship,” or the moderation of speech and conduct on social media platforms that violates platform policies.

If Vice President Kamala Harris is elected President, some of our interviewees speculate that Democrats might relax their criticisms of social media platforms, as the level of concern over past political upsets and events like the January 6 attack on the US Capitol may diminish. But a victory for Harris might also throw fuel on the fire of concerns on the right that the public discourse is rigged against them. Even if former President Donald Trump wins, or Republicans retain or take leadership of the House or Senate, the right may well see it as an opportunity to exact punishment on tech firms in the form of targeted regulatory scrutiny or congressional investigations.

Either way, public concern over artificial intelligence and declining trust in tech firms appears to be one thing on which Americans agree.

• “If the election were held today and Harris won, the techlash dies down a bit.” -Katie Harbath, Anchor Change
• “I think a lot changed after Trump was deplatformed from Twitter, and there's been a four year vendetta by the MAGA movement to try to sort of get back at Big Tech.” -Adam Thierer, R Street Institute
• “I think on the left, there's a lot of blame on tech and social media still for Trump winning in 2016. And so if Biden won in 2020 and Harris wins in 2024, does tech get forgiven, and they say, maybe it wasn't all social media’s fault?” -Daniel Castro, vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
• “I don't think there will be a waning of the techlash under Harris. I think that if anything, there could simply be a reorienting around AI and the focus that the Biden administration had on the AI Bill of Rights. We will likely see Democratic leadership within the White House attempting to advance executive action Biden initiated around the AI Bill of Rights.” -Nora Benavidez, Senior Counsel and Director of Digital Justice and Civil Rights at Free Press

Which side of Silicon Valley gets what it wants?

Another significant factor at play is the competing bets that Silicon Valley leaders are taking on the two candidates. For instance, new reporting from the Wall Street Journal and Reuters indicate that billionaire Elon Musk invested millions of dollars into conservative causes over the past two years, and his endorsement and direct support for the Trump campaign is substantial. Other Silicon Valley figures, such as David Sacks, Marc Andreessen, and Ben Horowitz, pitched in with Trump. (Horowitz, however, u-turned on Trump this month, and is now promising to support Harris.)

But Silicon Valley is not a monolith; other wealthy benefactors clearly prefer Harris. Venture capitalists including Vinod Khosla and Mark Cuban joined a group known as “VCs for Kamala,” and the Vice President’s long history as a California Attorney General and golden state Senator comes with deep ties to Silicon Valley elites like Laurene Powell Jobs and Reid Hoffman. (Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg claims to be above the fray, but his recent entreaty to Republican House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan, R-OH, adulatory statement about Trump following a July assassination attempt, and reports that he has been in touch with Trump but has not contacted Harris call his claims to neutrality into question.)

• “And I just think to the extent that Harris is somebody that a lot of people in tech know, they have relationships with her going back to her days as California senator, they at least know they're going to get a hearing and that they could get a meeting.” -Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress
• “Whatever Harris did when she was a Senator from California, one thing we have to remember, she was representing the people in Silicon Valley.” -Barry Lynn, Executive Director of the Open Markets Institute
• “Yes, [Harris] comes from Silicon Valley. No, I don't think that means she's just going to be doing whatever they want as part of it. But I also think she's going to be able to learn some stuff from the Biden administration's approach, and maybe try to thread [the needle] a little bit, not go as far as Biden.” -Katie Harbath, Anchor Change
• “I get the impression that it's not that Silicon Valley is to the right, but there's just some very loud voices and influential voices that have taken to the right. Marc Andreessen, obviously Elon Musk, Peter Thiel has always been on the right, that’s nothing new. But it is significant when you have the richest man in the world representing that side and the richest man in the world who happens to own one of the biggest social media companies.” -Matt Mittelsteadt, Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University
• “Silicon Valley is still a very Democratic place. And so I think there is a big chunk of people who maybe were going to sit it out [before Biden stepped aside] or quietly sort of buddy up to Trump, who now I think are retreating back home to where they wanted to be.” -Neil Chilson, Head of AI Policy at the Abundance Institute

Related Reading

• Kamala Harris’ Views On Tech Policy, As Told By Her Senate Record
• What the Democratic and Republican Parties Say About Tech Policy
• Silicon Valley Leaders Cast Their Lot With Donald Trump

2. Content moderation and platform liability questions

The battle over “censorship”

Given that the political landscape in the US remains deeply polarized, debates around free speech and what actions, if any, the platforms should take to moderate content will likely continue. The battle over content moderation and cries of “censorship” from the right may well intensify no matter what the outcome of the election is; but despite the frothy politics, the experts we spoke to suggest the Supreme Court has largely decided the matter.

“I feel like some of the animus against the social media platforms, as you know, censorship is a little bit in the rear mirror,” according to Neil Chilson, while Adam Kovacevich noted that “it's pretty clear that the Supreme Court is not going to tolerate efforts to constrain content moderation.”

Still others suggested that a Trump loss might hurt the standing of MAGA standard bearers, including Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee who has led various investigations into claims of censorship regarding the content moderation decisions of the social media platforms. But if Trump wins, Rep. Jordan may be elevated; either way, he is reportedly angling for leadership among the Republicans in the House. The efforts of Rep. Jordan and his allies, including Elon Musk, to attack perceived enemies under the banner of opposing “censorship” will likely persist into 2025 and beyond.

• “There’s a lot of concerns about Trump talking about jailing people like [Meta CEO Mark] Zuckerberg and some of that censorship stuff. So I think a big concern is over whether they will continue to go after researchers and others. Will that take the form of looking at people's National Science Foundation grants, their nonprofit status? Will he use the arm of the federal government to try to continue to intimidate people? “ -Katie Harbath, Anchor Change
• “I think it's worth flagging that there may be resources deployed by a hostile administration against the civil society groups that seek to advocate in this space. And so I think there needs to be attention paid to sort of the exposures that groups may face unfairly, and some targeting of groups that are disagreeing with the administration.” -Laura MacCleery, Senior Policy Director, UnidosUS

Related Reading: Protecting Researchers from Harassment is Critical to Preserve Academic Freedom

Section 230 and liability questions

The outcome of the 2024 election may significantly affect efforts to reform the intermediary liability protections afforded by Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Republicans are particularly keen to reform Section 230 as part of a bid to hold tech firms accountable. “The issue that probably gets dialed up against the industry the most in Trump's scenario is all of the speech issues, Section 230, content moderation, just because that was what happened in the past,” said Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich.

R Street’s Adam Thierer pointed out that there’s an appetite “for broadening the mission of the FCC to include issues that weren’t traditionally under its purview,” including Section 230 reform. Indeed, in Project 2025, an expansive set of policy proposals prepared by the Heritage Foundation with input from individuals in Trump’s orbit, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner Brendan Carr says that the agency should work with Congress to make legislative changes such that “Internet companies no longer have carte blanche to censor protected speech while maintaining their Section 230 protections.”

While some of the experts we spoke with caution against viewing Project 2025 as a definitive guide for a future Trump administration, the document nevertheless suggests the FCC should “issue an order that interprets Section 230 in a way that eliminates the expansive, non-textual immunities that courts have read into the statute” with the goal to “limit the number of cases in which a platform can censor with the benefit of Section 230’s protections.”

Others note that Section 230 reform is a priority for some Republicans and Democrats for other reasons. For instance, Section 230 reform came up multiple times during a Senate Judiciary hearing in January focused on kids’ safety. Issue One’s Legislative Manager for Technology Reform, Jamie Neikrie, pointed out that the bipartisan interest in reconsidering the extent of the liability protections afforded by the measure suggests a “first glimmer that maybe some of the Overton window was shifting here when it came to [Section] 230,” while Nasser Eledroos, global fellow at the Atlantic Institute, said Section 230 reform will be “top of mind to a lot of folks,” regardless of the election outcome.

More broadly, liability issues in tech will likely be tested by attempts to enforce state laws. “We've seen the state attorneys general getting far more mobilized on tech issues and actually leaning into those prosecutions as a badge of pride,” noted Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology.

3. AI regulation and other emerging technologies

Whither the Biden AI Executive Order

Partisan division will also shape the future of artificial intelligence policy. Generally speaking, interviewees largely believe that a President Harris would provide continuity to President Biden’s AI agenda, whereas a Trump administration would roll it back.

In October 2022, the Biden White House released a Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, which identified five principles to guide the design and use of AI. A year later, President Biden issued a sweeping AI Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence. The Republican Party vows to “repeal Joe Biden's dangerous Executive Order that hinders AI Innovation,” instead supporting AI development that’s “rooted in free speech and human flourishing” rather than “radical leftwing ideas.”

Multiple experts we spoke to said that a repeal could be disastrous for the future of AI. Biden’s AI executive order has “moved the ball forward in fundamental and substantial ways,” said David Brody, director of the Digital Justice Initiative at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “Not to say that everything's better now, but there's a clear route forward on how to use the federal government as a force of good in ensuring that technology benefits everyone in an equitable way.”

There are many ways a shift in AI policy could affect federal agencies. For instance, the fate of the AI Safety Institute, which is housed within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and only became fully operational earlier this year, is “somewhat unclear under a Trump administration,” according to Janet Haven, executive director of Data and Society.

From a personnel perspective, Trump could scrap the executive order but keep elements of it, such as the chief AI officer role that the order installed in the various federal agencies, according to Adam Conner, vice president for technology policy at the Center for American Progress. “I think executive orders only matter to the point where they are enforced by the executive,” said Conner. (Editor’s note: since the time of our interview, Conner announced he’s taking a temporary leave of absence from CAP to join the Kamala Harris campaign in Pennsylvania.)

But what policies Trump would replace Biden's AI executive order with, or even the approach he would take more generally, is largely up in the air. “I don’t think we would see a real deep interest in having the administration or agencies have AI guardrails or AI transparency,” according to K.J. Bagchi, vice president of the Center for Civil Rights and Technology at the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

R Street’s Adam Thierer believes some new AI guardrails under Trump are possible, but thinks Congress, rather than the agencies, would lead on any new AI-related enactments. Thierer also turned to Trump’s record for ideas, including the executive order he issued right before leaving office on promoting trustworthy AI, which “talked a lot about cost benefit analysis, about utilizing alternative means of governing artificial intelligence, examining burdens.” Or, Trump might try to find a balance that allows for more AI innovation, said Anchor Change's Katie Harbath, who believes it would likely be couched within a national security angle, specifically in the race to beat China.

Vice President Harris has played a central role in developing, designing, and executing Biden’s AI executive order, something the Mercatus Center’s Matt Mittelsteadt says is no coincidence. “She was the person in the room because she's obviously the person with this Silicon Valley rolodex,” he said. (Harris was born and raised in the Bay Area, returned to San Francisco for Law School, kicked off her career as a prosecutor in Alameda County, and served as California’s Attorney General form 2011 to 2017 before winning election to the US Senate.) It’s reasonable then to expect “a continuation, if not expansion of, the executive order efforts” under Harris, according to the Leadership Conference’s K.J. Bagchi.

Continuity can look like many things, though. Several interviewees Tech Policy Press spoke with believe a Harris administration would take a less “hostile” approach to regulating AI than Biden did. Some laid out a policy vision of what they think is possible under a Harris presidency.

• “The timelines built on the executive order, sure, they're being met. But if you scrutinize them in more detail in the executive order and you look at the OMB guidance, you can tell it's a lot of focusing on coordination and ensuring that there's more foundation being developed. I think if we're continuing that on, you can actually start seeing some potential policies around, what does procurement look like for agencies? What kind of testing are they doing if they're using AI tools? What does transparency look like for an agency?” -K.J. Bagchi, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Ultimately, whichever way the election swings will “incredibly affect the trajectory of AI and the ability for companies to continue to build these models,” according to Anchor Change’s Harbath.

Legislating artificial intelligence policy and governance

Several interviewees told Tech Policy Press that it seems unlikely that Congress will pass any AI legislation this session, and some are doubtful that the next Congress will have the ability or political will. “Right now, both parties internally seem very divided. There doesn't seem to be any sort of consensus being formed on what an AI regulatory bill might look like in a grand form,” said the Mercatus Center’s Mittelsteadt. “Everybody seems to have their own little hobby horses here.”

In the meantime, states are crafting their own model AI legislation with varying degrees of success. In April, Connecticut came close to passing S.B.2, which would have made it the first state to govern private-sector AI systems’ development and deployment. Colorado passed its landmark AI Act the following month, making it the first comprehensive framework to govern high-risk AI systems. But in late September, Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the California Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act (S.B.1047) after a contentious battle between Silicon Valley figures, advocates, and the California legislature. (The bill passed the Senate and the Assembly with overwhelming majorities. It would have required developers to create safety and security protocols before training an AI model, including implementing the capability to enact a full shutdown.)

Not every expert Tech Policy Press spoke with was supportive of states taking the lead on AI. And the mere existence of a “patchwork” of state AI laws has several interviewees Tech Policy Press spoke to concerned.

• “If everybody's going to all of a sudden be an AI regulator, that's going to be really interesting. I'm not sure how that kind of a patchwork of patchworks will work.” -Adam Thierer, R Street Institute
• It seems like [AI legislation] is going to be one state at a time, like the data security stuff was. And that's a long, painful battle and pretty expensive. So I don't know exactly how it's gonna turn out, except it's just ground warfare.” -Neil Chilson, Abundance Institute

For others, the absence of a federal standard isn’t inherently bad.

• “I haven’t quite seen the same dynamics that are in Congress in the States. Maybe it's because the legislators are less married to certain ways of thinking about AI, it's kind of new to them and so they're willing to kind of think about new issues and bend towards certain things. In the states we've absolutely seen bipartisanship.” -Matt Mittelsteadt, Mercatus Center

The future of AI governance debates

Regardless of who’s in the White House or the balance of power in Congress, the future of tech policy will be foregrounded in AI governance, and ultimately define the next iteration of the internet, according to Prem Trivedi, policy director at New America’s Open Technology Institute.

• “The big tech companies that have dominated Web 2.0, what will their role be now in shaping the future of AI software development and where it touches people’s experiences? What's that going to look like? And, in [New America’s] view, a robust, open model ecosystem alongside proprietary models gives us the best chance of not replicating the mistakes and the centralization of Web 2.0 in this new emerging era.” -Prem Trivedi, New America

Artificial intelligence may also bring with it a “paradigmatic shift” in the way society embraces or rejects technology, according to R Street’s Adam Thierer.

Yet other AI-related issues may still become more prominent in the next four years, regardless of who is the next President. Labor concerns over AI are growing, and unions and other constituencies are likely to weigh more aggressively into tech policy debates. Concerns over the effects of AI systems in education, the impact of generative AI on digital media, and questions around the soaring energy consumption of AI technologies and the resulting environmental impact may rise to the fore. It’s predicted that by the end of the decade, AI will drive a 160% increase in power demand, driven by consumption in data centers. As governments and citizens compete for increasingly scarce resources, tech companies can expect to be at the political center of a worsening climate crisis.

• “How do we think about the environmental impacts of these systems from a very grounded human perspective, rather than from 10,000 feet in the air or alongside? I don't think it's an either or, but I think it's really, really important that as we're building out this argument about the environmental impacts of these systems, that we are grounding it in the displacement and the human experience of competing for scarce resources against these expanding data centers.” -Janet Haven, Data and Society
• “The reality is setting in, and [AI is] going to do some things really well but it also might do some terrible things really well, like collapse the epistemic reliability of the internet, and lead to crap content everywhere. It might destroy creator economies before it gets around to helping the rest of us by being good enough to do that. I think there's a real sense now, that sort of the worst parts of it might come first. And what do we do about that as policy? Do we just sort of hit the brakes? And then what do we do about the environmental costs, which are water, energy?” -Laura MacCleery, UnidosUS

Related Reading: Researchers Assess Origins of Public Concerns About AI in the 2024 US Elections

Quantum computing

Another set of tech issues that may seem further out on the horizon that will inevitably come into clearer focus concern quantum computing. It’s split on whether a Trump or Harris presidency would be better for the so-called ‘race’ to win the international competition on quantum computing. During the first and potentially only Harris-Trump presidential debate, Harris said she wants to “win the race on AI and quantum computing,” particularly in competition with China. And during her time as Senator, Harris sponsored the Quantum Computing Research Act of 2018 (S.2998), which would have required the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy to establish a “Defense Quantum Information Consortium.”

Trump also has a record of supporting quantum initiatives. At the end of his term, in October 2020, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) announced the launch of Quantum.gov, an official hub for the National Quantum Coordination Office, and a Quantum Frontiers Report that identified areas for continued quantum information science (QIS) research. Although Trump has distanced himself from the document, Project 2025 called for a narrowing of Biden’s priorities for the Industries of the Future (IOTF) to “ensure consistency” with Trump’s prior administration, which prioritized AI, QIS, 5G, and more. One thing seems certain: quantum policy will become increasingly relevant, regardless of who’s in the Oval Office next.

• “[Quantum computing] is something that I would very much imagine the Trump camp, if they were to take the White House, would build on. I can't imagine they would roll any of this back. Fighting China's very much the core of what they're campaigning on, or at least a piece of the core. And so I think that that would be one area in which [the candidates] share things though I would say that the Trump camp would probably have a bigger impact.” -Matt Mittelsteadt, Mercatus Center
• “Another area that's interesting to watch is quantum computing, and then post-quantum encryption standards. So NIST put out a recent set of encryption tools and standards designed to withstand quantum attacks. And so there's a geopolitical dimension to this, there's a quantum race that's taking place alongside an AI race, and that will intersect with it.” -Prem Trivedi, New America

Cryptocurrency

The outcome of the November election could determine the overall trajectory of the crypto industry. The Republican Party promised to end Democrats' "unlawful and un-American crypto crackdown" in its 2024 party platform, leading many experts to believe that a Trump administration will loosen crypto regulations during a second term. Trump could accomplish much of this through executive action alone, and it appears that Silicon Valley is hedging its bets accordingly. “There's a core group of Silicon Valley people, most of whom are engaged one way or another in cryptocurrency, who have very publicly made their politics go towards Mr. Trump,” said Cindy Cohn, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Harris had been mostly silent on crypto until late September when she told donors at a fundraising event in New York City that her administration would “encourage innovative technologies like AI and digital assets while protecting consumer investors” and establish “regulatory clarity” for these sectors. However, were she to keep Gary Gensler at the helm of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Harris might try to publicly embrace this vision while passing the hard fights off to regulators. (Gensler is a Biden appointee who has aggressively gone after the cryptocurrency market, which he has previously described as “rife with fraud, scams, bankruptcies and money laundering.” Trump pledged to fire Gensler on his first day back in office in order to “make Bitcoin great again.”)

• “I think that crypto regulation at the SEC will probably get more industry-friendly under Trump.” -Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress

4. Geopolitics, trade, and national security

Internet freedom, diplomacy and trade issues

As global competition for technological dominance intensifies, concerns about maintaining the nation’s innovative edge will influence either a Harris or Trump administration’s stance on tech policy. Several interviewees agreed that US tech policy is increasingly a geopolitical issue, particularly in its race to beat China. Harris used her presidential acceptance speech to underline her focus on the geopolitical stakes of tech competition. “That she wants to maintain US supremacy and tech innovation development should surprise nobody,” said Prem Trivedi of New America.

While Trump has campaigned on gaining dominance over China, his approach appears to be in stark contrast with Harris. Although his campaign has not released a detailed tax policy, Trump has promised to impose a 20% universal tariff on all imports, with an additional tariff of at least 60% on all Chinese imports. The major Silicon Valley players backing Trump may not be factoring this into their political calculus.

• “Export controls traditionally are this physical thing but suddenly, we're starting to inch into this control of non-physical goods, control of information. And once you start doing that, if you look at existing statutes, you can easily start imagining how these things could maybe be constructed, or at least an argument could be made, that maybe you can put a tariff on the export of API calls or something.” -Matt Mittelsteadt, Mercatus Center

Although tariffs have a nice “nationalist punch,” Mittelsteadt said, a highly integrated global economy with tariffs that high could drive the cost of doing business “through the roof” and suddenly “a lot of the money sloshing around Silicon Valley might dry up.”

China isn’t the only global actor the US will have to engage with on tech and competition policy. “There's a real desire by the Middle East Gulf countries to get into this space. They have plenty of land, they have plenty of energy, and they'll let people build giant data centers,” said the Abundance Institute’s Neil Chilson. “If the US doesn't give them a way to do that, then China certainly will.”

There’s also the potential for Trump to reverse the Biden administration’s efforts to work with European allies on free trade and data transfer agreements, including the recent Data Privacy Framework. “One of the big questions is, will the efforts of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC), the UK working closely with the US on tech partnerships, continue? Or will it be more of a kind of go it alone,” said ITIF’s Daniel Castro.

If Harris wins, expect the cordial relationship with European regulators to continue. But if Trump wins, expect a different tone.

• “It's not going to be hard to tell the story that Europe is passing all these laws that explicitly target US companies. And right behind them are companies that don't quite fit that category and they're all Chinese. Right? And they're coming into Europe to fill in that gap. At some point, a Trump administration might look at that and say hey, why is Europe aligning with China on all this stuff and kicking US companies out?” -Neil Chilson, Abundance Institute

The outcome of the 2024 election could also have significant implications for the country’s commitment to a free and open internet. The US has long played a role in advocating for an open internet, most notably in resisting authoritarian efforts to fragment the global internet or create infrastructure that limits connectivity and free expression. The Biden administration led a joint statement by over 60 nations known as the “Declaration for the Future of the Internet.” A Harris administration is expected to maintain such efforts, but a Trump administration may have less interest in such diplomatic efforts and pursue a more nationalistic approach.

• “I think the original premise of the internet, I feel like that was a big tentpole for the Biden presidency… We cannot really have a very fragmented internet landscape that actually allows authoritarian governments to do whatever they want to do. So I think that's where the US played. Obviously, we could argue [the Biden administration] could have played a much more important role, a more sort of leading role, but I do think they played a role that is not insignificant.” -Sabhanaz Rashid Diya, Founder and Executive Director of the Tech Global Institute

National security and defense

Both political parties increasingly regard technology policy, especially AI, as core to the country’s national security concerns. For instance, the Biden AI Executive Order can be read primarily as a security document, and indeed, the order utilizes the war-time emergency powers of the Defense Production Act, which some regard as an example of executive overreach. While less substantial (and less ambitious), Trump’s 2019 executive order on AI also centered national security alongside American competitiveness, and his second administration would likely regard AI through a similar lens, especially given the emphasis of the Republican platform and documents such as Project 2025.

There are downsides to the securitization of the AI conversation, according to New America’s Prem Trivedi. “I think in the AI context, what we've run into is the vagueness problem of everything has become a security or a safety issue,” said Trivedi.

In parallel with the development of AI, growing energy and materials demands from the technology sector are increasingly regarded as a national security priority. Many expect substantial differences in how the two parties choose to deal with meeting those demands.

5. Privacy, data governance, and surveillance

Chances for a comprehensive privacy law

In April 2024, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) unveiled the bipartisan American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), draft legislation that would establish a national consumer data privacy standard. The following month, it advanced out of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce by voice vote. Then, the full committee markup for APRA was canceled just four minutes before the meeting’s planned start after fierce opposition from both Republican leadership and civil society groups, albeit for different reasons.

The current congressional session is Chair McMorris Rodgers’ last, and one open question remains whether her retirement will also bring the fight for stronger data privacy protections in the House to a close for now.

• “It's a big deal to have Cathy McMorris Rodgers leaving.” -Alexandra Reeve Givens, Center for Democracy and Technology
• “It starts with the loss of Cathy McMorris Rodgers and what that means for a number of things, chief among them privacy legislation, an issue where there's broad interest in having a comprehensive privacy law, and this Congress didn't even get as close as we did the last time with [the American Data Privacy and Protection Act fight]. In fact, they put out a weaker bill that had less support. So depending on who gets the gavel, there's room to restart those conversations and try to get it right this time, and that is important for all aspects of tech policy.” -Chris Lewis, President and CEO at Public Knowledge

Even if the House could successfully pass a comprehensive privacy law this Congress, which many interviewees deemed unlikely, a Senate companion bill would face its own set of challenges. Although Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) helped draft the American Privacy Rights Act alongside Rep. McMorris Rodgers, the committee markup she teased for July never happened. (The Senate Commerce Committee did, however, hold a hearing on AI and privacy in July, where APRA was mentioned a number of times.)

And if a Democratic senator who chairs the committee can’t advance APRA, a new, more hostile Republican chairperson may be its death knell. Were the Senate to flip in favor of Republicans, Ranking Member Ted Cruz (R-TX) would likely be considered for the chairmanship. Following APRA’s introduction, Sen. Cruz railed against APRA’s private right of action provision and its granting the FTC broad authority to enforce violations of the bill, saying he could not “support any data privacy bill” that “gives unprecedented power to the FTC to become referees of internet speech and DEI compliance.” Later, at the July committee hearing on privacy and AI, Sen. Cruz doubled down, saying that “APRA is not the solution.” Although he said he supports Congress setting a nationwide data privacy standard, he believes APRA, as currently constructed, is “more about federal regulatory control of the internet than personal privacy.”

• “I think [a Cruz chairmanship] will either lead to one of two outcomes. One, on the privacy front, either just a hostileness or an unwillingness to move forward anything that looks like comprehensive federal privacy at all. Or two, to advance a bill that I think we feel just doesn't meet the mark.” -Prem Trivedi, New America
• “It doesn't seem like [federal privacy legislation] is a priority. I think the question will be, if there's a new Senate leader, what that might look like, but it's clear, it hasn't gotten the push it needed. And in particular, there hasn't been the push to resolve these issues around the state preemption, around private right of action, that would actually get companies on board.” -Daniel Castro, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation

States’ roles in privacy regulation

In the absence of a national privacy standard, states have taken it upon themselves to pass their own privacy laws. The trend will continue no matter who wins the Presidency, especially if Congress remains divided, with, for example, a Senate controlled by Republicans and a House controlled by Democrats. Several experts expect privacy, consumer, kids, or other groups to go to more Democrat-led states to get comprehensive privacy legislation or more specific protections for children or reproductive health data, particularly if Trump wins.

The downside of the state-led approach is that it has created a “patchwork” of state laws, with different standards set across multiple jurisdictions that industry says complicate compliance, while privacy advocates express concerns that the approach fails to protect all of the public. However, some experts said it was a mistake to conceptualize state and federal privacy lawmaking as separate from one another. Some interviewees believe that privacy’s shift into the states may, at some point, create enough momentum for Congress to get federal legislation over the finish line.

• “Will we see states drift further apart and the patchwork grow more complex before Congress finally acts? That's an open question that will have to be decided by whoever succeeds in the leadership role in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, as well as on the Senate side.” -Alexandra Reeve Givens, Center for Democracy and Technology
• “Even with the American Privacy Rights Act, there was still room for states to do things outside of the parameters of those laws. It's not like any particular federal proposal is going to create a comprehensive enough federal approach that there wouldn't be work that states could do on the issues that aren't covered by the federal law. So I think it's going to continue to be a live ball in the states and that would be true with either administration.” -Laura MacCleery, UnidosUS

Surveillance and FISA reform

The outcome of the 2024 election could have implications for federal policies on surveillance, especially regarding reforms to FISA Section 702. But here, there may be less of a difference no matter the outcome, at least when it comes to the overall trend toward more government surveillance. “Whoever's in the presidency tends to be in favor of muscular mass spying,” according to EFF’s Cindy Cohn. “And then they get upset about it when they're not the ones in the presidency. And so we've seen this go back and forth, and it really has more to do with who's in the office of the executive, whether one side of the aisle is opposed or in favor of cutting back on NSA spying and reining in the NSA.”

While a bipartisan alliance has emerged on certain issues, such as the necessity of legislation like the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act that would limit the purchase of personal data from data brokers by law enforcement, that alliance may never succeed in convincing the executive branch to limit what tools are available to it. But there is a general concern that a second Trump presidency would see a much more aggressive expansion of state surveillance under the guise of national defense, with little consideration for the impact on civil rights. A second Trump administration could halt the progress of the current FTC rulemaking on commercial surveillance. And while both parties promise enhanced security and surveillance at the border, only one party is promising the mass deportation of illegal (and in some cases, potentially legal) immigrants.

“Not knowing how much to read into Project 2025, the feeling is that there would be a lot of probably defense investments, with China as the reason to do a bunch of investments being pushed by the Republican leadership, and not a lot of guardrails in terms of how the technology might be deployed across sectors, whether it's health or financial services or education or what have you,” said UnidosUS’ Laura MacCleery. “So not much attention to actually thinking about the limitations of the tools and the way that they might create unfairness for groups of people or lead to over-surveillance or threaten democracy or all of the risks that we know about.”

Another area of concern around surveillance is the fight to protect civil rights, particularly under a Trump administration. “I’m very concerned about how a Trump administration might weaponize federal government data sets to harm people, use them to identify people for deportation, to engage in persecution of political opponents or dissidents,” said David Brody, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

Those concerns are particularly acute when it comes to reproductive health. A number of interstate shield laws were enacted in various states to protect abortion providers, patients, and others from civil or criminal consequences stemming from abortion and reproductive health care provided to out-of-state residents. Several of these prohibit the disclosure of confidential health data by providers, particularly from states seeking access to the data, to enforce anti-abortion laws on residents traveling for care. Some interviewees suggested that there may be efforts by the federal government under Trump to push tech companies not to comply with those laws. A Republican-led government might consider a national law to obviate those laws or make them impermissible, potentially scaling back rules enacted during the Biden administration to also shield medical records from out-of-state investigations.

6. Markets, competition, and antitrust

Future of the Federal Trade Commission

Since being appointed as Chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by President Biden in January 2021, Lina Khan has attempted to remake the agency, leading an “antitrust revolution” meant to rein in Big Tech–with varying degrees of success. After Trump selected Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate in July, there was speculation whether Khan would stay on under Trump as Chair over comments Sen. Vance made on her aggressive antitrust approach. “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job,” Sen. Vance said in a major departure from most of his Republican colleagues.

But others dismissed this as nonsensical, especially given Trump’s seeming motivations, which are hardly pure populist. “The Trumpies would never keep [Lina Khan] as chair,” according to Open Markets Institute Executive Director Barry Lynn, who gave Khan her first job in the antitrust field.

The Chamber of Progress' Adam Kovacevich more or less agreed. “I think Trump likes having his perceived political enemies punished in some way and I think that was a driver for his support of antitrust cases against those [Big Tech] firms to begin with at the end of his term,” he told Tech Policy Press. Ultimately, a “return to normal” is more likely if Trump is elected, but it will depend on personnel, according to the Abundance Institute’s Neil Chilson, who threw out commissioners Andrew Ferguson and Melissa Holyoak as potential Trump FTC Chair picks.

It’s not clear whether Harris would keep Khan as chair either. But David Brody thinks the agency’s current trajectory would remain more or less the same under a Democratic administration. “It's an independent agency, but I would expect there wouldn't be discontinuity in the way that there would be with a Trump administration,” he said.

A major question hanging over federal regulators is the impact of the Loper Bright decision, and whether it will stymie the government’s ability to craft and execute effective regulations. After the US Supreme Court struck down the Chevron deference, agencies such as the FTC will be under increased pressure, and lawmakers will have to likely get more specific.

“The decisions around repealing Chevron are very concerning to us. How are we going to have regulatory power that keeps up with the pace of innovation without Chevron?” asked Public Knowledge’s Chris Lewis. “Congress has proven that it can do some things through legislation, but it cannot keep up with the pace of innovation, and the repeal of Chevron threatens the ability for them to utilize agencies to keep up with innovation, and that's a real concern.”

“The perception that there is intended to be an unraveling of the power of the administrative state through both actions that a Trump administration might take, through the fallout from the Chevron decision, and through undoing the [AI] executive order, through things like this apparent commission that Elon Musk may chair on government efficiency,” said Data and Society’s Janet Haven. “All of those things point to the idea of destabilizing and unraveling a lot of the governance work that has happened within the executive branch under a Trump administration.”

Outside the US, much of the world looks on with disappointment at the inability of the US to rein in its tech monopolies, according to the Tech Global Institute’s Sabhanaz Rashid Diya. “I think people are less concerned whether it's a Democrat or Republican, whether it's Trump or Harris,” said Diya. “I think the question is, can the US as a country really show up for the world the way it needs to, and whether a different presidency… if it even makes a difference?”

Future of Antitrust Enforcement

There are substantial questions over how the election outcome will affect the trajectory of antitrust enforcement, including cases being pursued by the FTC and ongoing cases led by the DOJ. For instance, the FTC has antitrust cases open against Facebook, for illegally maintaining a monopoly in social networking, and Amazon, for exclusionary conduct to maintain a monopoly in online retail. The DOJ has cases open against Google, one for anti-competitive practices to monopolize search and another for monopolizing digital advertising; RealPage, for enabling price-fixing; and Apple, for anti-competitive and exclusionary conduct in the smartphone market.

These efforts could be blunted in a second Trump administration if both agencies take a less aggressive stance in the context of a broader deregulatory push. But it’s not clear how things will play out. For example, Trump might try to weaponize the Department of Justice, eliminating its independence within the executive branch, and then use it as a mechanism for pursuing his own vendettas, including targeting companies he disfavors.

Yet, some aspects of antitrust enforcement might remain the same under either administration, despite the different ideological motivations of the parties.

• I actually don't think it matters much at all for antitrust, because antitrust litigation, you now have five, six cases from the DOJ and the FTC against the big tech companies, neither Trump nor Harris is going to withdraw those cases. Those cases are going to continue to go to trial. I don't think even a settlement is very likely because I don't think Trump is as interested in them.” -Adam Kovacevich, Chamber of Progress
• “If Trump wins, what happens to some of these antitrust and FTC cases that are in court? Certainly the Google case that the Department of Justice just won was filed originally under Trump and Bill Barr, and so will some of those things be impacted I think is an open question. I don't think it is obvious that it'll go one way or the other.” -Adam Conner, Center for American Progress

7. Connectivity

Broadband access remains an important tech policy issue, given the persistent digital divide among low-income households and rural communities. As New America’s Prem Trivedi notes, “people tend to forget that digital divide is a real thing in the United States, and not sort of an international phenomenon only.” One key program that helped to close the digital divide in the US was the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), which provided monthly subsidies for 23 million households to connect to the internet. Congress created the ACP as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, appropriating $14.2 billion over a five-year period.

However, the uptake of the subsidies was higher than expected. Despite a concerted effort by civil rights and public interest organizations to get Congress to both extend additional funding to the program and make it permanent, the program ran out of money earlier this year. The prospects for reviving it remain uncertain.

The ACP has not been a major issue during the presidential campaign, though it is likely that a Harris Administration would support Congress's reauthorization. However, potential changes in the Senate may have more of an impact, particularly if Republicans reclaim leadership of the Senate and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) takes over as Chairman of the Commerce Committee. Several interviewees expressed that the ACP would face a tougher path forward with Republicans in charge, particularly given Sen. Cruz’s opposition to the program.

In contrast, there was a bit more optimism concerning efforts to maintain funding for high-speed broadband in unserved and underserved rural areas through programs like the Universal Service Fund USF), no matter who is in control of congress. Interviewees were optimistic that a future President Harris would also be helpful on the issue. “I have particularly high hopes for a Harris-Walz administration because Tim Walz presided over giving out $50 million in broadband funding as [a] governor,” noted Prem Trivedi.

But the prospects for the issue under a Trump-Vance administration are less clear. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights’ K.J. Bagchi did note that Senator Vance has at the least supported legislation focused on rural connectivity. “If we're thinking optimistically,” Bagchi said, “there's room there to think about what expanding broadband access could look like.” Others were concerned about Trump’s support for a takeover of independent agencies like the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), which oversees the USF. “I think that's problematic for having consensus built for long-term solutions like Universal Service Fund,” said Public Knowledge’s Chris Lewis.

Independent of the election, the USF program is facing a bigger problem in the courts. A controversial decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit Court ruled in July that the current funding mechanism for the USF is unconstitutional, though for now, the court paused its enforcement of the decision. Net Neutrality also remains in its own sort of legal limbo due to the Supreme Court overturning ‘Chevron,’ meaning the courts will no longer defer to the FCC’s judgment to interpret whether current laws enable it to regulate internet access.The agency reinstated Net Neutrality rules in April 2024 after the Republican majority during the Trump Administration had overturned the rules that were put in place during the second term of the Obama Administration. But the new rules were immediately challenged by the telecom industry. In August 2024, a federal appeals court blocked the new rules from going into effect.

The Chairman of the FCC appointed by President Trump during his first term was Ajit Pai, a former lobbyist for the telecom industry. It is possible that Trump would again appoint a chairman and commissioners that would seek to undo net neutrality rules, regardless of the outcome of the legal challenge. A Harris presidency would more likely result in the agency keeping the rules in place if the courts upheld them. If the courts finally rule that the FCC does not have the legislative authority to regulate internet access, including applying net neutrality rules, then advocates will have to go to Congress to enact the policy into law.

• Congress failed to update the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), not because there's broad opposition to the ACP. There's some opposition, a minority of members don't like the program, but there's broad bipartisan support for it but they can't decide and agree on how to structure it.” -Chris Lewis, Public Knowledge
• “I think broadband infrastructure and network neutrality, there's a pretty marked difference between the Republican approach and the Democratic approach, and we certainly know that when Mr. Trump was in office the last time, he undid a bunch of stuff that had been done by the Democratic administration. There's no reason to think that that dynamic will shift.” -Cindy Cohn, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Conclusion

As the 2024 US elections approach, the outcomes will likely have a dramatic impact on many aspects of policy and the direction of the country. Despite technology not being a significant campaign issue for either party, it will increasingly animate and interact with much of the country’s political discourse and dynamics going forward. Growing polarization, the rise of far-right populism, and distrust of democratic institutions are being shaped by technology and will, in turn, affect the future of tech policy. This report highlights this crucial dynamic–that tech policy is now entangled with the culture wars and other political divisions, inhibiting bipartisanship and legislative progress.

While most of the experts we interviewed predict that a Harris administration would largely maintain the US on its current course for tech policy and regulation, whereas a Trump administration could depart not just from Biden but past Republican administrations, there remains a great deal of uncertainty. Ultimately, the direction of US tech policy will depend on a combination of electoral outcomes, both in the race for the presidency and control of Congress; the growing political and lobbying influence of the tech companies and silicon valley; and broader global trends around issues such as national security and competitiveness. And even in an era of legislative gridlock, there is at least the possibility for targeted reforms, such as child online safety, to make progress through cross-party efforts, despite significant political and policy differences.

However, as the events leading up to the 2024 election have demonstrated, the political environment is becoming more unpredictable and turbulent. Based on his recent statements, Trump may choose to dispute the result of the election if it is not favorable to him, which could escalate political tensions and deepen division. Such a situation could threaten the functioning of US democracy. As in the period following the 2020 election, social media and other technologies are likely to play a central role in facilitating efforts to dispute the election, making the tech policy discussion that much more partisan and zero-sum going forward.

Related Reading: Assessing Platform Preparedness for the 2024 US Election

Read other analysis and perspectives about the 2024 US elections at Tech Policy Press.

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An earlier version of this report said that Connecticut’s S.B.2 passed in April. Although it came close to passing, it stalled in the House after the governor expressed opposition to the bill. We regret the error.