Science and Technology Issues in the 117th Congress

"The federal government supports scientific and technological advancement directly by funding and performing research and development, and indirectly by creating and maintaining policies that encourage private sector efforts. Additionally, the federal government regulates many aspects of S&T activities. This report briefly outlines a key set of science and technology policy issues that may come before the 117thCongress.

Many of these issues carry over from previous Congresses, and represent areas of continuing Member interest.Examples include policies on taxation, trade, intellectual property, commercialization of basic scientific research and other overarching issues that affect scientific and technological progress. Other issues may represent new or rapidly evolving areas affected by the threats of pandemic diseases, climate change, and malicious cyber activities, among others. Examples covered in this report include infectious disease modeling and forecasting, digital contact tracing and digital exposure notification, hydrogen pipelines, and expansion of emerging information and communications technologies such as 5G.

These and other S&T-related issues that may come before the 117thCongress are grouped into 10 categories.
 Overarching S&T Policy Issues,
 Agriculture,
 Biotechnology and Biomedical Research and Development,
 Climate Change and Water,
 Defense,
 Energy,
 Homeland Security,
 Information Technology,
 Physical and Material Sciences, and
 Space.

Each of these categories includes concise analysis of multiple policy issues. The material presented in this report should be viewed as illustrative rather than comprehensive. Each section identifies CRS reports, when available, and the appropriate CRS experts to contact for further information and analysis.."
 Science and Technology