Institute for Progress (IFP) — September 2024 Update
Some big announcements this month:
With the Economic Innovation Group, we co-hosted the second inaugural #EconTwitterIRL Conference, featuring interviews with Paul Krugman and Ben Jones, a performance from Light Sweet Crude, and the Econ Twitter trivia competition. Thanks to Adam Ozimek for providing the space in Lancaster, PA.
On October 8th, Co-Founder Caleb Watney will join a panel to discuss “The Return of Federal Research and Development? Perspectives on Science and Innovation Policy.” Arati Prabhakar, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, will keynote the event in a talk with Chip War author Chris Miller. RSVP here!
✍️ Written Work
Immigration Fellow Lindsay Milliken and Senior Immigration Fellow Jeremy Neufeld analyzed the responses to the Department of Labor’s request for information about ways to modernize Schedule A.
And the high-skilled immigration team put together a repository of resource materials about underutilized immigration pathways for high-skilled STEM professionals and the government policies governing such pathways.
🔭 Macroscience, by Senior Technology Fellow Tim Hwang
Macroscience kicked off a major new series called “Metascience 101.” It’s a nine-episode set of interviews that doubles as a crash course in the debates, issues, and ideas driving the modern metascience movement. A star-studded group investigates why building a genuine “science of science” matters, and how research in metascience is translating into real-world policy changes.
Vox’s Dylan Matthews sits down with Director of Science Policy Heidi Williams and Caleb Watney to set the scene. They talk about the current state of science in America, what metascience aims to achieve, and what experimentation in metascience is revealing.
Episode 2: Is Science Slowing Down?
Open Philanthropy CEO Alexander Berger interviews economist Matt Clancy and Stripe CEO Patrick Collison to talk about whether science itself is slowing down, one of the key motivating concerns in metascience. They look at the challenges of measuring scientific progress, the reasons why progress might be slowing down, and what we might be able to do about it.
Episode 3: The Scientific Production Function
Vox’s Kelsey Piper interviews Convergent Research CEO Adam Marblestone and Non-Resident Senior Fellow Paul Niehaus on the inputs to scientific production. They talk through the funding ecosystem, labor force, the culture of scientific labs, and the search for important questions.
🏛️ Statecraft, by Senior Editor Santi Ruiz
Statecraft kicked off a new miniseries on British governance with a conversation with James Phillips, who served as Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s science and technology adviser.
“Always be willing to resign. Don't go into one of these roles and think you have to stay there for the whole duration, because you will become risk-averse. Our view was that we were in there to get certain things accomplished. If it became impossible, we were perfectly willing to just go back into science.”
In the second installment, Santi spoke to career diplomat Jonathan Luff about his involvement in Britain’s bid for the 2018 World Cup, and about the legacy of Cameron-era foreign policy.
“I saw no wrongdoing and I'm not going to accuse anybody of that, but we watched on for the next five or six years as ExCom member after ExCom member was arrested, went to prison, was thrown out of FIFA, or banned for life from football. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, there's a decent chance it's a duck.”
And Statecraft had Dr. Arun Seraphin on to discuss his recent role on a blue ribbon commission investigating the problems with the defense procurement system.
“When the executive branch produces its budget request, delivered around the State of the Union, it is culturally programmed to defend the request exactly as it was printed. The problem is that the Pentagon's budget is immense. It takes multiple years to build it. Some of those decisions were made well before changes in technology, threats, or requirements in places like Ukraine or Israel popped up.”
🏗️ Construction Physics, by Senior Infrastructure Fellow Brian Potter
Brian investigated why the American shipbuilding industry is so weak.
“Commercial shipbuilding in the U.S. is virtually nonexistent: in 2022, the U.S. had just five large oceangoing commercial ships on order, compared to China’s 1,794 and South Korea’s 734. The U.S. Navy estimates that China’s shipbuilding capacity is 232 times our own. It costs twice as much to four times as much to build a ship in the U.S. as it does elsewhere.”
Modern fiber optics are a marvel made possible by a long chain of scientific innovation, explains Brian.
“Not only did these individual capabilities all need to be created, but they needed to reach a certain level of performance to be practical. Glass fibers have existed for millennia, but it wasn’t until the glass was sufficiently clear and free of impurities that it became possible to use it as a long-distance transmission medium. Similarly, early sources of coherent light were completely impractical to actually use in a communications system. Progress in fiber optics was as much due to resolving various practical problems as it was to breakthrough discoveries like the laser.”
Brian drilled down into a niche part of the shipbuilding industry: why don’t we build icebreakers here?
“The U.S. has allowed its icebreaking capabilities to wither. The Coast Guard has handled all U.S. icebreaking since 1966, and estimates that it needs 8-9 polar icebreakers (4-5 heavy and 4-5 medium) to fulfill its needs. But it currently has only two: the heavy icebreaker Polar Star, and the medium icebreaker Healy. The U.S. hasn’t built a heavy icebreaker since 1976. In fact, no existing U.S. shipyard has built a heavy polar icebreaker since before 1970.”
📰 Media
Epoch cited Brian’s work on transmission in a new post, “Can AI Scaling Continue Through 2030?”
“Mapping America’s Biosurveillance,” a resource created by Biotechnology Fellow Arielle D’Souza and Fellow Janika Schmitt, was cited by the White House and in testimony to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
Four separate pieces of IFP work were cited in a new CNAS report on “AI and the Evolution of Biological National Security Risks.”
AEI’s James Pethokoukis referenced an NBER paper on the Operation Warp Speed model by Alec, Arielle, Non-Resident Senior Fellow Chris Snyder, and Dartmouth Professor Kendall Hoyt.