Congress needs to get its nerd on

Bring back the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment

Mitch McConnell.
(Image credit: Illustrated | zrfphoto/iStock, Voyagerix/iStock, NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images, NATALIIA OMELCHENKO/iStock, Screenshot/Amazon)

When Google's Sundar Pichai becomes the latest Silicon Valley boss to testify before Congress — the state funeral for former President George H. W. Bush bumped his scheduled appearance to probably next week — a wide array of issues will be discussed, from corporate power to political bias. And almost certainly there will be several cringe-worthy comments from tech-challenged politicians. Recall Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's Washington visit in April and the inability of his congressional questioners to grasp the basics of the company's business model.

All in all, then, perhaps not much progress since the late Sen. Ted Stevens infamously described the internet as a "series of tubes." And the knowledge gap is probably going to worsen as Congress is confronted by a host of emerging technologies playing an ever bigger role in our lives. Just imagine how some future hearing about genetic editing is going to go as a research scientist struggles to explain why CRISPR won't soon give America an army of Captain America-like super soldiers. "Actually, senator, Steve Rogers was injected with a super-serum and then exposed to special radiation called 'vita-rays' that … oh, forget it."

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James Pethokoukis

James Pethokoukis is the DeWitt Wallace Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute where he runs the AEIdeas blog. He has also written for The New York Times, National Review, Commentary, The Weekly Standard, and other places.