Mark MacCarthy

Mark MacCarthy is a nonresident senior fellow in Governance Studies program’s Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings. He is also adjunct professor at Georgetown University in the graduate school’s Communication, Culture, & Technology Program and in the Philosophy Department. He teaches courses in the governance of emerging technology, AI ethics, privacy, competition policy for tech and the ethics of speech. He is also a nonresident senior fellow in the Institute for Technology Law and Policy at Georgetown Law.

He is the author of Regulating Digital Industries: How Public Oversight Can Encourage Competition, Protect Privacy, and Ensure Free Speech (Brookings, 2023). He conducts research and publishes scholarly articles on privacy, competition policy, AI ethics and policy, algorithmic fairness, regulation of emerging technologies, platform responsibility, and content moderation. His regular commentaries on technology policy, privacy, AI regulation, content moderation and competition policy in tech appear in Forbes, Brookings TechTank, Lawfare, Project Syndicate, the Washington Post, the Center for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), and the Hill.

He has extensive public policy experience in Washington D.C. He served as a professional staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Committee on Energy and Commerce, where he handled telecommunications, broadcasting and cable issues, and as a regulatory analyst at the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He was in charge of the Washington office for Capital Cities/ABC, served as senior vice president for Visa, Inc. and ran the public policy division of the Software & Information Industry Association.

MacCarthy holds a B.A. from Fordham University, an M.A. in economics from Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Indiana University.