Institute for Progress — Feb 2022 Update

Hello!

Hard to believe we launched the Institute for Progress just one month ago — we’ve been really busy! Here are some of the things we’ve been up to: 

✍️ Published Work

• ICYMI Caleb Watney and Alec Stapp wrote a launch essay about what IFP is doing and why we think it matters

• Caleb co-authored a piece with Ishan Sharma, Dan Correa, and Tony Mills calling for a science lottery pilot program (see draft legislative text here)

• Jeremy Neufeld wrote an essay laying out IFP’s general perspective on how U.S. immigration can better promote progress

• Nikki Teran explained why Emergency Use Authorization is being extremely underleveraged by the FDA

• Jeremy assembled a coalition of immigration groups to send a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas regarding improvements to the International Entrepreneur Parole program

  • Bloomberg Law covered the release of the coalition letter

• Nikki submitted comments to the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on the discussion draft of the PREVENT Pandemics Act

• Jeremy wrote up an analysis of the Biden administration’s new guidance to encourage STEM immigration

📰 Media

• Ezra Klein talked to Alec for this op-ed in The New York Times on the Biden’s administration’s agenda for supply-side liberalism

  • “Alec Stapp, co-founder of the Institute for Progress, had a formulation here that I liked. ‘This isn’t about government controlling the means of production,” he told me. “It’s about government controlling the ends of production. Deciding what we are producing toward, what we are building for.’”

• Kelsey Piper interviewed Caleb about progress studies in an article for Vox

  • “When progress isn’t prioritized, it doesn’t happen. And prioritizing progress is not at all the same thing as vaguely thinking it would be nice. That’s one reason why Caleb Watney helped found the new DC think tank Institute for Progress, which is focused on translating ideas from progress studies and related intellectual movements into a format that policymakers can use to actually solve problems. Progress studies, Watney told me, ‘is a more focused and dedicated look at the question of why and how progress happens, and how can we encourage a new set of institutions to increase the pace of progress today.’”

• Jerusalem Demsas spoke with Nikki for her Vox piece on FDA risk assessment

  • “According to Institute for Progress senior biosecurity fellow Nikki Teran, the US ‘requires antigen tests to be 80 percent as sensitive as the gold standard RT-PCR tests.’ That means, in theory, that an antigen test in the US “needs to be over 30,000 times more sensitive” than in the UK, where Teran notes there are more than 150 different rapid antigen tests available (and for complicated reasons, 30,000 times more sensitive in a clinical trial does not actually mean 30,000 times better in real life).”

🎤 Interviews

• Noah Smith interviewed Caleb and Alec for his newsletter

• Adam Ozimek and Matt Clancy interviewed Caleb and Alec on Econ Twitter Water Cooler

• Caleb went on the Razib Khan’s podcast (audio)

• Alec went on Will Jarvis’ podcast

🎓 Senior Fellows

• Brian Potter wrote about how construction costs affect housing prices

• Matt Clancy wrote about “patent stocks” and technological inertia

• Brian looked at how concrete affects the environment

• Matt explained why he decided to partner with the Institute for Progress

• Brian also wrote a piece for our friends at Works in Progress about why skyscrapers are so… short

👀 Progress Is Possible in DC (what we’re watching)

• The America COMPETES Act was passed by the House of Representatives (the sister legislation of USICA in the Senate)

  • Reps Manning, Peters, Krishnamoorthi and Ross put forward an amendment that expanded the scope of the green card cap exemption to include not only Ph.D. STEM students but also STEM master’s graduates working in critical industries

  • Expanding the scope to cover master’s graduates is essential for rebuilding America’s semiconductor industry and it will hopefully remain in the final bill that comes out of the conference process between the House and the Senate

    • A recent report by TSMC showed that the Taiwanese company’s workforce is composed of 4% Ph.D.s and 47% masters

• Senators Patty Murray and Richard Burr released a discussion draft for the bipartisan Prepare for and Respond to Existing Viruses, Emerging New Threats, and Pandemics Act (PREVENT Pandemics Act)

  • See Nikki’s Twitter thread here

⏩ Progress Studies Policy Accelerator (co-hosted with the Day One Project at the Federation of American Scientists)

• Willy Chertman wrote about advance market commitments and innovation prizes for pandemic preparedness

• Emily Ryan wrote about how to reduce recidivism through employment and innovation

• Ben Reinhardt wrote about why we should fund organizations, not projects

• Eli Dourado and Joanne Peng wrote about how we can cure Alzheimer’s by investing in aging research

• Tina Huang wrote about why the government needs to create an AI testbed

• Alec Resnick and Shaunalynn Duffy wrote about why we need a public system of national laboratory schools

• John Myers wrote about a better approach to zoning regulation

• Divyansh Kaushik wrote about the potential for traineeship grants to improve mentorship for graduate students

• Arika Virapongse wrote about how we can broaden the knowledge economy via independent scholarship