How Will Technology Shape, and Be Shaped By, Policy Choices in the Coming Decades?

The RAND Corporation Technology Futures Policy Summit convened a group of 15 top thinkers from industry, academia, and government to think broadly about how emerging technologies in the coming decade could change the balance of policymaking and decisionmaking between national governments and other actors, such as large technology companies.

The summit was originally motivated by Ian Bremmer's article "The Technopolar Moment." Bremmer argues that technology companies and their most influential leaders ("techno-utopians") are gaining power and influence at the expense of governments and could take a leading role in defining policy in some areas in the future. Because the Bremmer article that motivated this summit focuses primarily on information and related technologies and leaders of those companies, RAND invited participants primarily from those and related fields.

The purpose of the summit was to consider questions about how the power of states, private companies, and highly influential technology leaders will change in the coming years and help frame a public policy research agenda for the United States, with an emphasis on the national and homeland security implications of these trends.