Telecommunications & Internet

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Featured Commentary
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Fellows
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Featured Commentary

Podcasts

GoodFellows: Big Three Summit

October 15, 2021 interview with John H. Cochrane, Niall Ferguson, H.R. McMaster, Bill Whalen

via Fellow Talks

Videos

China, Big Tech, And Cyber Defense: The World According To Zegart

July 14, 2021 interview with Amy Zegart

via Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson

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Videos

Big Tech And Free Speech

John Yoo unpacks the laws surrounding free speech and censorship on popular internet platforms and warns of the dangers that accompany internet regulations.

November 2, 2021 By John Yoo

via PolicyEd

Event

The Facebook Oversight Board: Process, Decisions And Reactions | Policy Seminar with Michael McConnell

June 16, 2021

Articles

Twitter, The EU, And Self-Regulation Of Disinformation

January 19, 2023 By John Villasenor

via Brookings

Fellows in this Policy Area

Jack Goldsmith

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

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Jack Goldsmith

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Jack Goldsmith was a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution. Goldsmith is the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Law at Harvard University. From 2003 to 2004, he served as the assistant attorney general, Office of Legal Counsel; from 2002 to 2003 he served as the special counsel to the general counsel of the Department of Defense. Goldsmith also taught at the University of Chicago Law School from 1997 to 2002 and at the University of Virginia Law School from 1994 to 1997. In his academic work, Goldsmith has written widely on issues related to national security law, presidential power, international law, and Internet regulation. His books include Power and Constraint: The Accountable Presidency after 9/11 (2012), The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment inside the Bush Administration (2009), Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World (with Tim Wu) (2006), and The Limits of International Law (with Eric Posner) (2005). He blogs on national security matters at the Lawfare blog,and on issues of labor law and policy at the On Labor blog. Goldsmith is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He holds a JD from Yale Law School, a BA and an MA from Oxford University, and a BA from Washington & Lee University. He clerked for Supreme Court justice Anthony M. Kennedy, Court of Appeals judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, and Judge George Aldrich on the Iran-US Claims Tribunal.

John Villasenor

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

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John Villasenor

Senior Fellow (adjunct)

John Villasenor was a senior fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution and is also on the faculty at UCLA, where he is a professor of electrical engineering, public policy, law, and management. Villasenor’s work considers the technology, policy, and legal issues arising from key technology trends, including the growth of artificial intelligence and the increasing complexity and interdependence of today’s networks and systems. He has published in the Atlantic, Billboard, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Fast Company, Forbes, the Huffington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Scientific American, Slate, the Washington Post, and many academic journals. He has also provided congressional testimony on multiple occasions on topics including privacy and intellectual property law. Before joining the faculty at UCLA, Villasenor was with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he developed methods of imaging the earth from space. He holds a BS from the University of Virginia and an MS and PhD from Stanford University. Villasenor is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and an affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford.

Niall Ferguson

Milbank Family Senior Fellow

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Niall Ferguson

Milbank Family Senior Fellow

Niall Ferguson, MA, DPhil, FRSE, is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a senior faculty fellow of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. He is the author of sixteen books, including The Pity of War, The House of Rothschild, Empire, Civilization and Kissinger, 1923-1968: The Idealist, which won the Council on Foreign Relations Arthur Ross Prize. He is an award-making filmmaker, too, having won an international Emmy for his PBS series The Ascent of Money. His 2018 book, The Square and the Tower, was a New York Times bestseller and also adapted for television by PBS as Niall Ferguson’s Networld. In 2020 he joined Bloomberg Opinion as a columnist. In addition, he is the founder and managing director of Greenmantle LLC, a New York-based advisory firm, a co-founder of Ualá, a Latin American financial technology company, and a trustee of the New York Historical Society, the London-based Centre for Policy Studies, and the newly founded University of Austin. His latest book, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe, was published in 2021 by Penguin and was shortlisted for the Lionel Gelber Prize.

Richard A. Epstein

Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct)

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Richard A. Epstein

Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct)

Richard A. Epstein, the Peter and Kirsten Bedford Senior Fellow (adjunct) at the Hoover Institution, is the Laurence A. Tisch Professor of Law, New York University Law School, and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago. In 2011, Epstein was a recipient of the Bradley Prize for outstanding achievement. In 2005, the College of William & Mary School of Law awarded him the Brigham-Kanner Property Rights Prize. Epstein researches and writes in a broad range of constitutional, economic, historical, and philosophical subjects. He has taught administrative law, antitrust law, communications law, constitutional law, corporation criminal law, employment discrimination law, environmental law, food and drug law, health law, labor law, Roman law, real estate development and finance, and individual and corporate taxation. He edited the Journal of Legal Studies (1981–91) and the Journal of Law and Economics (1991–2001). Epstein’s most recent publication is The Classical Liberal Constitution: The Uncertain Quest for Limited Government (2014). Other books include Design for Liberty: Private Property, Public Administration, and the Rule of Law (2011); The Case against the Employee Free Choice Act (Hoover Institution Press, 2009); Supreme Neglect: How to Revive the Constitutional Protection for Private Property (2008); How the Progressives Rewrote the Constitution (2006); Overdose (2006); and Free Markets under Siege: Cartels, Politics, and Social Welfare (Hoover Institution Press, 2005). He received a BA degree in philosophy summa cum laude from Columbia in 1964; a BA degree in law with first-class honors from Oxford University in 1966; and an LLB degree cum laude, from the Yale Law School in 1968. Upon graduation he joined the faculty at the University of Southern California, where he taught until 1972. In 1972, he visited the University of Chicago and became a regular member of the faculty the following year. He has been a senior fellow at the MacLean Center for Clinical Medical Ethics since 1984 and was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985. He has been a Hoover fellow since 2000.