The Lexington Institute is a public-policy think tank headquartered in Arlington, Virginia that focuses mainly on security-related issues, including defense spending, military technology, economic competitiveness, energy policy and logistics. It is organized under Section 501 of the Internal Revenue Code, which means it is a tax-exempt, non-profit foundation that does not engage in lobbying. The Institute's main sources of funding are corporations, other foundations, and individual donors.
History and philosophy
The Lexington Institute was founded in 1998 by former James Courter, former congressional aide Merrick Carey, and former Georgetown University professor Loren Thompson. As of July 2018, they are respectively the chairman, chief executive officer and chief operating officer of the Institute. The institute's political philosophy is center-right, peace through strength, defense of U.S. economic interests, energy independence, and market-driven solutions to social needs. Although the organization's mission statement does not describe it as "conservative" or "libertarian," it opposes tax increases, the creation of entitlements, and federal intervention in the daily lives of citizens.
Defense policy
The Lexington Institute has been called the "defense industry's pay-to-play ad agency", since it receives funding from military contractors and issues a stream of reports, usually favorable, about the performance and status of weapons programs. However, institute staffers are frequently critical of particular weapons or policies, assailing the Navy's next-generation destroyer, the Army's future troop carrier, a proposed joint replacement for the Humvee light tactical vehicle and most of the acquisition reform measures proposed during the Obama Administration. Media citations frequently note that Lexington staffers have ties to military contractors. Thompson stated, "I'm not going to work on a project unless somebody, somewhere, is willing to pay. This is a business. My bottom line is that if what I write and say is true, it doesn't really matter what my motives are." Lexington analyst Loren Thompson has said that "the United States cannot continue to spend, especially on defense, the way it has been over the past decade." He has also called for a shift in American defense spending towards items such as the Littoral Combat Ship and the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II that can be exported to allies.
Politics
The Institute also covers purely political topics. For example, Thompson wrote that most of the candidates in the 2012 U.S. Republican presidential primary were "unsuited to high office".
Energy
The Lexington Institute’s energy efforts focus on improving the resiliency and reliability of the U.S. electricity grid. Constance Douris, Vice President of the Lexington Institute, manages the energy portfolio and regularly writes about this subject in her Forbes column. Most recently, Douris has published articles about how electric vehicles impact the electric grid. She has spoken about this on CBS Radio and RealClearEnergy has featured her work. Douris also gave a speech on cybersecurity of the grid at EnergySec's Distribution Security Forum in March 2018. The Institute hosted a "Cybersecurity of the Electric Grid" Capitol Hill Forum on June 8, 2018. Lexington analyzed California’s decision to provide a financial reward when utilities adopt distributed energy resources. A white paper titled "California Aims To Incentivize Utilities To Adopt Third-Party Energy Resources" written by Douris was released in March 2017. Articles about distributed sources have been published in Forbes and other media outlets. With the aim of identifying a reasonable balance between access to and privacy of data generated from the smart grid, Lexington hosted a Capitol Hill event titled "Securing Smart Grid Data" in May 2017. Lexington published "Balancing Smart Grid Data and Consumer Privacy" in July 2017. Lexington has also published articles on how to balance privacy and smart grid data access. To improve the cybersecurity of the electric grid, the think tank released "Cyber Threat Data Sharing Needs Refinement" in August 2017. Past articles written on this topic were published by Forbes and The National Interest. In 2014, a Lexington white paper was published, "Keeping the Lights On: How Electricity Policy Must Keep Up With Technology." A 2013 Lexington report, "Ensuring the Resilience of the U.S. Electric Grid," argued for strategies to minimize the impact of disruptions to the power grid.
