Institute for Progress (IFP) — January/February 2023 Update
Hello!
We hope you’re enjoying this wintry season as much as we are at IFP. A brief note: we rolled out a new microsite to visualize America’s massive visa backlog. Check it out here: visalimbo.org.
Without further ado, on to the updates:
✍️ Published Work
Biosecurity Fellow Juan Cambeiro assessed the chances that the H5N1 virus could be worse than COVID, and called for increased controls on mink farms to prevent future pandemics
“A reasonable forecast that H5N1 causes a pandemic as bad as or worse than COVID beginning in the next year is ~4%, which means the expected cost in terms of potential harms to the U.S. is at least $640 billion”
Biosecurity Fellow Adin Richards’s white paper on AgARDA highlights how the new program could accelerate American agricultural innovation
“U.S. farm output and productivity growth is slowing. From the 1960s through the early 1980s, U.S. agricultural output grew at an average annual rate of 2.45%. This fell to 1.35% for the 1980s and 1990s, and has averaged just 0.69% since 2000.”
Bridget Williams and Rowan Kane identified policy tools to reduce the risk of engineered viruses as synthetic biology becomes cheaper
“The U.S. is a global leader in synthetic biology, accounting for roughly 40% of the global market. This puts the U.S. in a powerful position to set industry standards, setting the bar for typical practice, such that companies failing to meet standards can be found liable for negligence.”
Endless Frontier Fellow Arielle D’Souza argued that cutting the Chemical Biological Defense Program (CBDP) would be penny-wise and pound-foolish
“Congress’ latest spending bill calls for a $126 million reduction in CBDP appropriations, despite DoD requesting an increase in multi-year funding to expand and modernize its biodefense capabilities”
Arielle also explained how to reuse the Operation Warp Speed model for other government programs
🎤 Interviews & Events
Director of Science Policy Heidi Williams joined a panel at the American Enterprise Institute discussing metascience as a policy solution to flagging productivity growth
📰 Media
Jeremy’s work was referenced by Bloomberg Law in two pieces about the problem with renewing visas abroad:
“Renewing visas in the US would offer more certainty that workers could leave the country without significant interruptions to employment that have disrupted deadlines and work duties at some companies. The option also saves workers financial burdens and puts the US on par with competitors for foreign talent like Canada and the United Kingdom, the Institute for Progress wrote last year.”
“‘The State Department has made concrete progress in reducing interview wait times, but ‘we’re still not approaching where we were before Covid,’ said Jeremy Neufeld, senior immigration fellow at the Institute for Progress. Adopting objective target times for completing visa interviews—as the Obama administration did in a 2012 executive order—could create the urgency needed to push wait times down, he said.”
National Defense Magazine also quoted Jeremy in a piece highlighting how immigration reforms can help counter China:
“‘We see that there’s a huge labor crunch,’ said Jeremy Neufeld… ‘Something like 80 percent of firms within the defense industrial base are reporting having a hard time filling job vacancies as it is.’ And the shortage is more pronounced for sectors like semiconductors where much of the expertise is outside the United States, he added.”
Canadian television channel CTV picked up Juan’s report on H5N1:
“Current known human infections have only been the result of direct contact with infected birds, according to a report by the D.C.-based think tank Institute for Progress.”
Quartz interviewed co-founder Alec Stapp on the risks of President Biden’s “Buy American” mandate:
“The president’s strategy, however, is divorced from economic reality, according to Alec Stapp… ‘The economics are very clear that when you force infrastructure developers to use only American-made products, their costs are significantly higher,’ Stapp said. ‘It can vary by project, but they can often be multiples more expensive.’”
Heidi spoke with The New York Times about the economics of drug trials:
“Heidi Williams… said there was a huge need for change in the industry. Yet, she said, there’s also a long history of failed technology companies that promise to make money by cutting costs from the health care system. ‘The problems are often more complicated than we realize, and the easy way to save money didn’t really work,’ Ms. Williams said.”
Heidi was also interviewed by Nature about “golden tickets” for NSF grant reviewers:
“Heidi Williams, an economist at Stanford University in California who specializes in science policy, says that blinding proposals could exacerbate disparities in science. She notes, for instance, that experienced academics might write better grant proposals than do early-career colleagues, and that blinding the reviewing process means researchers from marginalized groups can’t be given extra support.”
🏗️ Construction Physics by IFP Senior Infrastructure Fellow Brian Potter
👋 Tweet for the Road
