The Foundation for American Innovation is a center-right technology-policy think tank led by president and CEO Zach Graves. It began as the Lincoln Network, a Bay Area libertarian-leaning advocacy group founded to connect Silicon Valley technologists with conservative governance, and rebranded as FAI as it professionalized into a Washington research-and-policy organization. Its self-described mission is to "bridge the divide" between the technology industry and government, with work spanning emerging-technology policy, defense modernization, energy, and government capacity. (Source: influencewatch.org; thefai.org)
Overview and positioning
FAI is described as one of the institutional homes of the "tech right" — the policy current that combines skepticism of broad-brush technology regulation with hawkishness on China and support for state capacity in defense and energy. Inc. profiled it as a once-"obscure Bay Area libertarian advocacy group" now "shaping the tech-right" and influencing federal energy policy (Source: inc.com). The Inc. profile attributes to FAI reach into the current administration's technology-policy appointments and the Republican congressional staff network.
FAI's broader portfolio is light-touch on model regulation, hawkish on China, and supportive of buildout in energy and compute, aligning with the administration-aligned side of the debates on AI Federalism and AI Industry Lobbying — The 2025-2026 Political Offensive.
Activities
On June 3, 2026, FAI co-organized the ScreenDNA Open Letter with the Institute for Progress, with Graves named as FAI's organizing principal. The letter calls on Congress to make screening of synthetic DNA/RNA orders and synthesis equipment mandatory, with recordkeeping for traceability. The screening ask is framed as a narrow physical-chokepoint control that does not depend on any particular view of AI risk. The letter places a deregulatory-leaning think tank in the position of organizing for a mandate. See AI Biosecurity.
Relationships
- supports: An Open Letter in Support of Mandatory Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening and Recordkeeping (June 2026) (co-organizer), AI Biosecurity (mandatory-screening policy lane)
- related: Institute for Progress (IFP) (ScreenDNA co-organizer; the abundance-progressive counterpart in the coalition), Effective Accelerationism (e/acc) (adjacent but distinct current on the tech right), AI Industry Lobbying — The 2025-2026 Political Offensive
Sources
2 supporting sources (InfluenceWatch; Inc. profile) plus FAI's own site and the ScreenDNA ingest. Created by the 2026-06-05 gap scan: flagged in the 2026-06-04 lint report as a missing entity (ScreenDNA co-organizer with no page) and carried on the 2026-06-04 gap-scan deferred backlog. FAI primary documents on the federalism and lobbying threads have not yet been ingested.