# Atlas Network The **Atlas Network** (originally the Atlas Economic Research Foundation) is a U.S.-headquartered 501(c)(3) that serves as the **global coordinating infrastructure for free-market, libertarian, and classical-liberal think tanks**. Founded in 1981 by British poultry entrepreneur Antony Fisher, Atlas today supports roughly **500+ partner organizations across 100+ countries** with training, fundraising, programming, and inter-network coordination. Atlas is the operational realization of the **Hayekian war-of-position strategy** designed by the [[Mont Pelerin Society]] in 1947 — the deliberate construction of a transnational network of free-market intellectual centers capable of shifting the "common sense" of political economy over multi-generational timescales (see [[Antonio Gramsci]] for the underlying theoretical framework). ## Founding and the Antony Fisher Story Antony Fisher (1915–1988) was a British WWII fighter pilot who became wealthy through industrial chicken farming after the war. Reading Hayek's *Road to Serfdom* (1944) shaped him politically; meeting Hayek in person at the LSE in 1945 set him on the institutional-builder path. Hayek's advice — recounted in numerous Atlas hagiographies — was that the way to shift the political climate was not direct activism but the creation of **research institutes that would generate the intellectual climate within which future politicians would operate**. Fisher founded the **Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA)** in London in 1955, which became one of the most influential think tanks in postwar Britain — supplying much of the intellectual material that later became Thatcherism. After IEA's success, Fisher set out to replicate the model: he helped found the **Manhattan Institute** (1977), the **Pacific Research Institute** (1979), and the **Fraser Institute** (1974, Canada). The Atlas Economic Research Foundation (1981) was the institutionalization of this replication project — a meta-organization whose specific purpose is to **build more think tanks**. ## How Atlas Operates Atlas does not primarily produce its own research. Its core functions are: - **Discovery and incubation** — finding entrepreneurs in country X who could build a free-market think tank, then providing startup grants, training, and curriculum - **Training programs** — annual Atlas Liberty Forum, the Think Tank MBA (a multi-week intensive on think-tank operations), regional academies - **Coordination** — connecting partner organizations on shared research agendas, joint campaigns, personnel exchanges - **Fundraising bridge** — connecting U.S. and Western donors to overseas partners - **Annual awards** — the Templeton Freedom Award and other prizes that confer prestige within the network Roughly 500+ partner organizations are recognized by Atlas — including, in the U.S., the [[Cato Institute]], [[Heritage Foundation]], [[Mercatus Center]], [[Reason Foundation]], [[Manhattan Institute]], [[State Policy Network]] affiliates, and dozens of state-level [[School Choice]] and free-market shops; in Latin America, organizations like Instituto Liberdade (Brazil) and Caminos de la Libertad (Mexico); in Europe, IEA (UK), [[Adam Smith]] Institute (UK), Hayek Foundation (Slovakia), and others; in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, similar partner formations. ## Funding Atlas is funded by the standard right-libertarian foundation universe: - [[Bradley Foundation]] - [[John M. Olin Foundation]] (historically) - [[Sarah Scaife Foundation]] - [[DonorsTrust]] - Templeton Foundation (the religious-liberty/classical-liberal donor) - [[Koch Network]] foundations - Corporate donors (tobacco, fossil fuels, finance historically prominent) Critics — including [[Capital Research Center]]'s left-side counterparts, *DeSmog*, and various academic studies — have documented Atlas's role as a **dark-money intermediary**: U.S. donor money flows to Atlas, which then funds overseas partner organizations, which can then advocate in their home jurisdictions without the U.S. donor footprint being legible. Tobacco-industry funding to Atlas in the 1990s–2000s for anti-regulation advocacy in Latin America and Europe is among the better-documented examples. ## KB Significance Atlas is the **global-scale answer** to the question the KB asks about think-tank coordination: how does the conservative/libertarian movement maintain alignment across hundreds of organizations and decades of activity? The answer is partially Atlas — a meta-institution explicitly designed to be the connective tissue between the [[Mont Pelerin Society]] intellectual layer, the [[Koch Network]] donor layer, and the working policy shops in every developed-country jurisdiction. Three particularly important KB connections: 1. **The MPS → Atlas → partner-tank pipeline.** Atlas is the principal **replication engine** for the Hayekian institution-building strategy ([[Mont Pelerin Society]]). The 500+ partner tanks are, in an organizational-genealogy sense, grandchildren of MPS. 2. **The Gramscian war of position.** Atlas is the closest real-world analogue to what [[Antonio Gramsci]] theorized in *[[Prison Notebooks]]*: a deliberate, multi-generational, transnational project to capture the institutions of civil society and shift the cultural baseline of political economy. 3. **The international-laundering problem.** Atlas is the principal mechanism by which U.S.-sourced donor money becomes policy advocacy in jurisdictions where the U.S. donor footprint would be politically problematic (Latin America in the 1990s–2000s, Eastern Europe in the 2010s–2020s, parts of Africa today). ## See Also - [[Mont Pelerin Society]] — intellectual root node Atlas was built to replicate - [[Antonio Gramsci]] — theoretical framework for understanding what Atlas does - [[Koch Network]] — major donor ecosystem - [[Bradley Foundation]] — major funder - [[Heritage Foundation]] — U.S. partner / peer - [[Cato Institute]] — U.S. partner / peer - [[Acton Institute]] — U.S. partner - [[Reason Foundation]] — U.S. partner - [[State Policy Network]] — U.S. domestic analogue of Atlas's coordinating function - [[Think Tank Ecosystem]] — broader ecosystem hub