Big Ideas and Big Money: Think Tank Funding in America

Abstract

This brief provides a detailed analysis of a first-of-its-kind, publicly available repository of U.S. think tank funding — www.thinktankfundingtracker.org. The repository tracks funding from foreign governments, the U.S. government, and Pentagon contractors to the top 50 think tanks in the United States over the past five years. It serves as a vital research guide for anyone wishing to learn more about the funding sources of prominent U.S. think tanks.  The repository gives a five-point transparency score to each of the top 50 think tanks in the U.S., a scale created by the authors based on five binary questions. Based on this criteria, nine of the top 50 think tanks (18 percent) are fully transparent, while 23 think tanks (46 percent) are partially transparent. Most concerning, the remaining 18 think tanks (36 percent) are "dark money" think tanks, entirely opaque in their funding without revealing donors.In the past five years, foreign governments and foreign government-owned entities donated more than $110 million to the top 50 think tanks in the United States. The most generous donor countries were the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and Qatar, which contributed$16.7 million, $15.5 million, and$9.1 million to U.S. think tanks, respectively. The Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, and German Marshall Fund received the most money from foreign governments since 2019: $20.8 million,$17.1 million, and $16.1 million, respectively. In that same period, the top 100 defense companies have contributed more than$34.7 million to the top 50 think tanks. The top donors include Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Mitsubishi, which provided $5.6 million,$2.6 million, and $2.1 million, respectively, to the tracked think tanks between 2019 and 2023. The Atlantic Council, Center for a New American Security, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies were the top recipients of Pentagon contractor money:$10.2 million, $6.6 million, and$4.1 million, respectively.The U.S. government has directly given at least $1.49 billion to American think tanks since 2019. However, the vast majority of this funding —$1.4 billion — goes to the Rand Corporation, which works directly for the U.S. government.While think tanks exist to produce independent analysis, the prevalence of special interest funding raises questions of intellectual freedom, self-censorship, and perspective filtering. This is compounded by instances in which individual researchers simultaneously hold positions at a think tank and a given foreign government or corporation, a clear potential conflict of interest.  Moving forward, this brief contains a set of recommendations for various actors:For media: Adopt a professional standard to report any conflicts of interest with sources discussing U.S. foreign policy. For Congress: Pass legislation requiring all nonprofit organizations that seek to influence public policy to publicly disclose all of their corporate, U.S. government, and foreign government donors above $10,000, and improve the conflict of interest disclosure requirements for congressional witnesses.For the Department of Justice: Provide clearer guidelines surrounding what think tanks not registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act can do on behalf of their foreign donors.For think tanks: End pay-to-play research and proactively move toward identifying conflicts of interest