By: Jason Hyde
Introduction
As time goes on, we’re seeing more and more reliance on technology, and it’s leaving some people, including our government, struggling to keep up with the fast-paced changes. Time and time again members of Congress have shown their lack of knowledge about essential tech topics. Ranging from how the internet works to specific bills about technology that serve no real purpose. Around a year ago, some U.S. senators proposed a bill seeking to ban app stores from supporting transactions in China’s digital yuan. According to the lawmakers, the Chinese government will use the digital yuan to “control and spy on anyone who uses it.” They also called the use of it a “major financial and surveillance risk.” The big problem is that there is no reason to use “digital yuan” to buy an app when you could just use U.S. dollars, no one will ever do this. On top of that, there is no support for this currency, the U.S. dollar is the only currency that is supported when purchasing here. This useless piece of legislation shows the lack of tech literacy among U.S. lawmakers.
Is there a solution?
Yes, and there was a solution in the past. In 1972 the U.S. established the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). The goal of the OTA was to educate and brief both the House and the Senate on complex technical issues. The OTA was a bipartisan office, governed by 12 members of Congress. It had a staff of 143 people and only cost the federal government $22 million a year. In 1995 the government dissolved the office, citing it as “wasteful”. They said that government officials were more than capable enough to understand and govern fairly on modern technology. Of course, this was not true in 1995 and has worsened in 2023. Without an office like this, the problem will only continue to get worse. They have already tried to go after encryption and so many important things in tech, the question now is: What’s next?
Conclusion
Recent years have witnessed many misguided decisions by our tech-illiterate lawmakers. These mistakes range from contemplating the banning of TikTok to restricting the use of digital yuan. While banning TikTok might be debatable given its extensive data tracking, the questions posed during interviews with the company’s representatives were very misguided. Fortunately, most of these nonsensical bills that potentially harm technology users haven’t passed, but the continuation of this trend is worrying. How many bad bills can be proposed until one is successfully written into law? I don’t know. I think we should bring back the OTA, or some equivalent so our lawmakers can be educated in the rapidly evolving technological world
https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-ceo-face-tough-questions-support-us-ban-grows-2023-03-23/
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