IFP Update: March 2026
đ° Media
Financial Times, Politico, and NBC News quoted Alec Stapp, Saif Khan, and Tim Fist discussing the Pentagonâs designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk, arguing the move will discourage AI companies from working with the federal government.
In City Journal, Jeremy Neufeld and Connor OâBrien write about the new DOL proposed rule for H-1B prevailing wages, arguing the administration should adopt âExperience Benchmarkingâ to end the practice of employers using foreign workers to undercut American labor.
Reuters quoted Saif Khan on proposed new AI chip export rules, saying it âcould help the US government address chip diversion to China.â
USA Today cited Jeremy Neufeldâs estimates of birth tourism and birthright citizenship ahead of a major Supreme Court case.
The Hoover Institution published a piece by Amy Nice examining whether H-1B workers actually displace American workers. IFPâs immigration research is also cited in a separate Hoover analysis of H-1B wage gaps.
Chemistry World quoted Connor OâBrien on the impact of Florida and Texas H-1B hiring bans on university science departments.
The Joint Economic Committee invited Jeremy Neufeld to testify on labor inflows, competitiveness, and supporting an aging population.
American Compass cited Jeremy Neufeld and Santi Ruiz in a policy brief on fixing the H-1B visa program, drawing on IFPâs analysis of how the current fee and lottery system fail to prioritize the highest-skilled workers.
ICEF Monitor cited research by Jeremy Neufeld and Amy Nice on the 36% drop in US student visa issuances and the long-term consequences for the STEM workforce if OPT restrictions move forward.
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Events
On April 6 from 5:30â8pm, IFP and Roots for Progress Institute are co-hosting a happy hour. Register here.
âïž Policy reports
A Prescription for Fixing the Prevailing Wage System Connor OâBrien, Jeremy Neufeld, and Amy Nice analyze DOLâs proposed overhaul of prevailing wages for H-1B and employment-based green card programs. They argue that, more often than not, DOLâs preferred âBlind Benchmarkingâ proposal would fail to compare foreign worker pay to what similarly qualified Americans earn. They make the case for DOLâs alternative method, âExperience Benchmarking,â which has 100% accuracy.
When Do More AI Chips for China Mean Fewer for the United States? Georgia Adamson and Tim Fist demonstrate how NVIDIA H200 production for China would divert chips from US customers. Because H200s and Blackwells compete for the same memory and packaging capacity, production for China would come at the direct expense of US buyers and allies in the current 100% supply-constrained environment.
Fast and Secure Grid Interconnection for American AI Leadership Ben Schifman responds to FERCâs proposed rules for how large loads like AI data centers connect to the grid, arguing FERC should standardize the process and unlock dormant capacity, but condition expedited access on robust security standards.
Americaâs AI Exports Program Georgia Adamson, Tim Fist, and Sam Winter-Levy offer recommendations for the Trump administrationâs AI Exports Program. They propose prioritizing US-operated cloud services, tailoring export packages to different market sizes, and focusing on emerging markets where American presence is contested.
đïž Statecraft by Santi Ruiz
How the National Security Strategy Gets Made. Nadia Schadlow, former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy and lead architect of the 2017 National Security Strategy, discusses the coalition-building behind these documents, the competing power nodes across agencies, and why time is an underappreciated element of strategy.
Ten Thoughts on Government Data. Violet Buxton-Walsh reflects on lessons from building IFPâs OPT Observatory with DHS data: government datasets are collected for narrow administrative purposes, leading to gaps and idiosyncrasies that require unusual combinations of legal, policy, and technical expertise to navigate.
đïž Construction Physics by Brian Potter
The Elusive Cost Savings of the Prefabricated Home examines why factory-built housing has consistently failed to deliver dramatic cost reductions. Despite nearly a century of attempts, savings tend to land in the 10â20% range at best. The answer: prefabricators often end up emphasizing speed or quality rather than cost.
A History of Operation Breakthrough tells the story of HUDâs ambitious 1969 program to industrialize American homebuilding. Modeled after Apollo, Breakthrough funded 22 prefabricated building systems across nine sites. Then conventional homebuilders doubled output on their own, and most Breakthrough systems were soon out of production.
The Age of the Amplifier traces how AT&Tâs quest to boost telephone signals produced a string of transformative inventions: the vacuum tube, the negative feedback amplifier, the transistor, and the laser. Each was built to solve a narrow telephony problem but eventually reshaped entire industries.
đ Factory Settings by Mike Schmidt, Todd Fisher, and Sara Meyers
Did the CHIPS Act Trigger the Manufacturing Construction Boom? Skanda Amarnath examines whether the historic surge in manufacturing construction was driven by CHIPS or already underway. A regional analysis suggests it was policy-driven and sector-specific: four census divisions account for 88% of the national increase since 2019, concentrated where CHIPS-funded semiconductor projects are located.
What Does World War II Teach Us About Industrial Policy Today? Mike Schmidt revisits Destructive Creation to argue that supply-side public investment has always been Americaâs playbook for industrial mobilization, but shows that todayâs more complex, globalized threat environment demands new demand-side thinking alongside it.
A Rare Ode to Redundant Meetings. Sara Meyers explains how the CHIPS Program Office managed dozens of deals in parallel by building overlapping âthroughput meetings,â each scoped to a specific slice of the pipeline. The redundancy sounds inefficient, but the pipeline was moving too fast for any single meeting to carry the current state of reality, making these meetings instrumental in closing deals.
đŹ Macroscience by Andrew Gerard
How Close Are We to Connecting Our Brains to the Matrix? Dan Turner-Evans surveys the state of the art in whole-brain emulation, pushing back on recent hype. The field has made extraordinary advances in mapping cell types and neural connectivity, but meaningful whole-brain emulation will require patient, sustained effort, rather than a single breakthrough.
Virtue Metascience. Tim Hwang and Ian Banks argue that metascience should care not just about whether science produces useful outcomes, but whether it cultivates a virtuous scientific practice. The distinction parallels consequentialist versus virtue ethics and offers another measure by which to prioritize reforms.
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