Published by Santi Ruiz
Statecraft is an interview series about how policy actually gets made. www.statecraft.pub
Listen on Apple PodcastsToday, my guest is writer, thinker, and friend Dan Wang . He was on Statecraft a year ago, but this time, we're talking about a scholar who has shaped both of our thinking: the late great James C. Scott , author of (among many other classics) Seeing Like a State . We discuss: * How Scott’s fieldwork helped him understand peasant life and state capacity * How mountains impede state power, in Southeast Asia and the USA * How peasants and civil servants resist authority * The advantages of tubers over rice * Dan’s guiding principles for a career in an era of large language models For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Today we have a special repeat guest, Scott Kupor , Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). The OPM is the people function in the federal government — the department that sets the rules for the various HR departments in other agencies. Director Kupor was on Statecraft six months ago , and is now a little more seasoned in the federal government. We discuss: * How veterans’ preference works in federal hiring * Who gets fired first when an agency conducts a Reduction In Force (RIF) * Proposed changes to prioritize performance during RIFs * Kupor’s progress in recruiting early career and tech talent to government The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
On today’s episode, we’re continuing a conversation about presidential power that we broached a couple of weeks ago on Statecraft in an essay called, “ What Trump Can Learn From Nixon .” It was about the attempts, in Richard Nixon ‘s one and a half presidential terms, to build what observers called the “administrative presidency” — the presidency that actually fully controlled the administrative state. My guests today have thought very deeply about presidential attempts to control the administrative state. William Howell and Terry Moe are co-authors of a book called, Trajectory of Power: The Rise of the Strongman Presidency . They’re both political scientists. Terry is a professor of political science at Stanford , and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution . Will is the Dean of the School of Government and Policy at Johns Hopkins University . We discuss: * Why most federal employees in the 1800s were mailmen, and what changed * How presidents have tried to control the administrative state * Whether Republicans have used presidential power to rein in agencies they object to * Whether the Supreme Court has been a firewall against Trump For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
In the last six months, we’ve been covering big strategic documents published by the executive branch. We’ve interviewed Dean Ball , the principal author of the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan . We’ve also spoken with Judd Devermont , who authored the Biden administration’s Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa . We’re continuing the trend today, but at a higher strategic register. I’m joined by Nadia Schadlow , the former Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy in the first Trump administration and lead architect of the 2017 National Security Strategy . Currently, Nadia is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute where she focuses on strategy, national security, and industrial policy. We discuss: * The process of drafting the National Security Strategy * The differences between the 2017 and 2025 strategies * Why time is an underappreciated element of strategy * What to read to understand Russia better For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Government data often underpins policy debates. Nevertheless, those who work with it will know how uniquely frustrating it can be. Relative to the private sector, government systems collect data in idiosyncratic ways. They prioritize continuity and legality over ease-of-use, in anticipation of a narrow set of users. As a result, these datasets can feel impenetrable. In October 2024, I was trying to understand how international students enter the US workforce: where they move for work, how many of them use programs like Optional Practical Training, and whether they stay in the US after graduating. So, I opened up a dataset from the Department of Homeland Security’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS). Today this data is available on the OPT Observatory ; it’s the most granular public resource available to answer these questions. But it took me over a year to produce. The process of getting there taught me as much about government data as it did anything else. For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Jeremy Singer is the President of College Board , which he has led for over a decade. In that role, he oversees the SAT, AP, and other core elements of the U.S. college access ecosystem, and he’s previously had leadership roles at Kaplan and McGraw Hill Education . Why is Jeremy on Statecraft today? After the failed redesign of FAFSA in 2023, he spent six months at the Department of Education helping to ensure the 2024 launch was successful. The revised application form meant 1.7 million students were eligible for maximum Pell Grants in the 2025-26 application cycle. We discuss: * Why attempts to simplify FAFSA went so badly wrong * The problems caused by precise drafting in Congress * How Singer got FAFSA back on track * What politicians and GAO don’t understand about developing software The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Baillee Brown is Head of Government and External Affairs at Inclusive Abundance , which works to help members of Congress get more interested in abundance-policy areas, principally housing, energy, science, innovation, and good governance. She worked on Capitol Hill for 10 years, for Congressman Scott Peters from San Diego. She began as scheduler, moved to the legislative team, and was most recently his chief of staff in the DC office . For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
James Anderson leads the Government Innovation Program at Bloomberg Philanthropies , the umbrella for the charitable giving of billionaire and former three-term New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg . He was Mayor Bloomberg’s communications director, leading on the design of NYC Service and on public engagement for a number of Bloomberg reforms. James has paid more attention than almost anyone to how cities work, and how they learn from each other. But is the Bloomberg model for making cities better “technocratic”? What can it do, and what can’t it do? And should mayors be “innovative”? Or are the best practices, at the end of the day, pretty straightforward? We get into these questions and more. Read this conversation transcript at www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Today’s guest is Greg Berman, and we talk about nonprofits — Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGOs. Greg’s got a new book out called The Nonprofit Crisis: Leadership Through the Culture Wars , which I enjoyed. I asked him to explain his diagnosis of the nonprofit sector. What’s happened to nonprofits this century? What’s happened to how people perceive nonprofits? And are “NGOs the bad guys”? As critics from both ends of the political spectrum will argue. Greg was part of the founding team responsible for creating the Center for Justice Innovation , serving as Director from 2002 to 2020, and helping to guide it from a start-up to an org with an annual budget of more than $80 million. Alongside that, he: * Has written multiple books, mostly on reducing mass incarceration, including Trial and Error in Criminal Justice Reform and Good Courts: The Case for Problem-Solving Justice . * Has been at the center of left-liberal attempts to do criminal justice reform, especially in New York City, over the past two decades. * Was on the Board of Correction for Mayor Michael Bloomberg , and the public safety transition team for Mayor Bill de Blasio and Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance . * Is the co-editor of a publication called Vital City , which I enjoy — it’s one part New York journalism, one part policy journal. * Is the Distinguished Fellow of Practice at the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation , investigating various topics related to violence. Thanks to Charles Lehman, Sean Sullivan, Oliver Traldi, Park MacDougald, Rafa Mangual, Ari Schulman, and many others for their contributions to my thinking on this piece. We discuss: * Why nonprofits matter to government service delivery * Critiques of nonprofits from the left, the right, and both sides * How the Center for Justice Innovation reduced incarceration, and why funding that work got harder * What nonprofits should do to regain public trust The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
When I got this episode on the calendar a month ago, my vision was, “Let’s get three of the smartest, most thoughtful liberals I can find on the topic of economic statecraft, and we’ll do a full assessment of the first year of Trump’s second term.” The idea was to take each of the domains — tariffs and the trade war, export controls, industrial policy — and do two things: get an accurate picture of what’s actually happened, and hear how Biden admin insiders and Democratic thinkers see them. Where are there continuities between administrations? Where have their expectations been overturned? And what lessons are they incorporating into their own worldviews? Then, in a totally novel example of economic statecraft, we grabbed Maduro and seized Venezuelan oil; we had to discuss that too. As a result, we’re doing a lot in this episode, and we leave some important questions out: the legal challenges to the current tariff regime, for example. But I think readers will come away from this episode with a clear view of the old and new tools of US policy in the realm of economic statecraft. Our guests Daleep Singh is an economist who served in two separate periods in the Biden Administration as Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economics. Peter Harrell served as Senior Director for International Economics at the White House, jointly appointed to the National Security Council and the National Economic Council . My colleague, Arnab Datta is Director of Policy Implementation at IFP. He’s also the Managing Director of Policy Implementation at Employ America . We cover a lot of ground in this episode. Here’s our table of contents: We discuss * What is economic statecraft? * Venezuela * China and tariffs * Trade deals * Industrial policy * Lessons learned The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Mike Lauer is the former Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health . A cardiologist and researcher, he joined the NIH’s National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in 2007 as the Director of the Division of Prevention and Population Science. From 2015, he oversaw the NIH’s $32 billion funding program for external research. Since leaving NIH in 2025, he has become an outspoken advocate for fundamental reform in how the federal government supports biomedical research. We discuss: * Why the NIH used to fund 60% of grant applications — and now funds just 10% * How “soft money” forces researchers to fund their own salaries * How distributing lots of small grants wastes everyone’s time * How block grants could fund more breakthrough science * Why researchers don’t get their first independent award until their mid-40s The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Today we’re joined by Scott Kupor , Director of the Office of Personnel Management . I think of it as the federal HR department — he makes a compelling case that it’s really the government’s talent management organization. Scott manages talent for an organization of 2+ million people with a $7 trillion budget. We discuss: * How DOGE cut federal headcount — and what comes next? * Why agencies rehired employees they had just laid off * How few federal employees get fired for poor performance * What OPM can do without congressional help For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
CHIPS, the Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors Act , is another. It spurred a massive investment boom in semiconductors on American soil, led by the CHIPS Program Office (CPO) at the Department of Commerce . The CPO had to decide how to allocate $39 billion in manufacturing incentives—and then negotiate the details with some of the world's biggest companies. Today, I’m lucky to have on three of the founding members of the CHIPS Program Office team: * Mike Schmidt , the inaugural Director, * Todd Fisher , the Chief Investment Officer, and * Sara Meyers , Chief of Staff and Chief Operating Officer. Mike, Todd, and Sara have a clear sense of what went right for them, what went wrong, and what they’d do differently the next time. In a new project for IFP called Factory Settings , they describe what they learned. The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
If you’re a scientist, and you apply for federal research funding, you’ll ask for a specific dollar amount. Let’s say you’re asking for a million-dollar grant. Your grant covers the direct costs, things like the salaries of the researchers that you’re paying. If you get that grant, your university might get an extra $500,000. That money is called “indirect costs,” but think of it as overhead: that money goes to lab space, to shared equipment, and so on. This is the system we’ve used to fund American research infrastructure for more than 60 years. But earlier this year, the Trump administration proposed capping these payments at just 15% of direct costs, way lower than current indirect cost rates. There are legal questions about whether the admin can do that. But if it does, it would force universities to fundamentally rethink how they do science. The indirect costs system is pretty opaque from the outside. Is the admin right to try and slash these indirect costs? Where does all that money go? And if we want to change how we fund research overhead, what are the alternatives? How do you design a research system to incentivize the research you actually wanna see in the world? I’m joined today by Pierre Azoulay from MIT Sloan and Dan Gross from Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Together with Bhaven Sampat at Johns Hopkins, they conducted the first comprehensive empirical study of how indirect costs actually work. Earlier this year, I worked with them to write up that study as a more accessible policy brief for IFP . They’ve assembled data on over 350 research institutions, and they found some striking results. While negotiated rates often exceed 50-60%, universities actually receive much less, due to built-in caps and exclusions. Moreover, the institutions that would be hit hardest by proposed cuts are those whose research most often leads to new drugs and commercial breakthroughs. Thanks to Katerina Barton, Harry Fletcher-Wood, and Inder Lohla for their help with this episode, to Matt Esche and Caleb Watney for their work on the graphs, and to Beez for her help translating this topic to a general audience. For a printable PDF of this interview, click here: Let’s say I’m a researcher at a university and I apply for a federal grant. I’m looking at cancer cells in mice. It will cost me $1 million to do that research — to pay grad students, to buy mice and test tubes. I apply for a grant from the National Institutes of Health , or NIH. Where do indirect costs come in? Dan Gross: Research generally incurs two categories of costs, much as business operations do. * Direct or variable costs are typically project-specific; they include salaries and consumable supplies. * Indirect or fixed costs are not as easily assigned to any particular project. [ They include ] things like lab space, data and computing resources, biosecurity, keeping the lights on and the buildings cooled and heated — even complying with the regulatory requirements the federal government imposes on researchers. They are the overhead costs of doing research. Pierre Azoulay: You will use those grad students, mice, and test tubes, the direct costs. But you’re also using the lab space. You may be using a shared facility where the mice are kept and fed. Pieces of large equipment are shared by many other people to conduct experiments. So those are fixed costs from the standpoint of your research project. Dan: Indirect Cost Recovery (ICR) is how the federal government has been paying for the fixed cost of research for the past 60 years. This has been done by paying universities institution-specific fixed percentages on top of the direct cost of the research. That’s the indirect cost rate. That rate is negotiated by institutions, typically every two to four years, supported by several hundred pages of documentation around its incurred costs over the recent funding cycle. The idea is to compensate federally funded researchers for the investments, infrastructure, and overhead expenses related to the research they perform for the government. Without that funding, universities would have to pay those costs out of pocket and, frankly, many would not be interested or able to do the science the government is funding them to do. Imagine I’m doing my mouse cancer science at MIT, Pierre’s parent institution. Some time in the last four years, MIT had this negotiation with the National Institutes of Health to figure out what the MIT reimbursable rate is. But as a researcher, I don’t have to worry about what indirect costs are reimbursable. I’m all mouse research, all day. Dan: These rates are as much of a mystery to the researchers as it is to the public. When I was junior faculty, I applied for an external grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) — you can look up awards folks have won in the award search portal . It doesn’t break down indirect and direct cost shares of each grant. You see the total and say, “Wow, this person got $300,000.” Then you go to write your own grant and realize you can only budget about 60% of what you thought, because the rest goes to overhead. It comes as a bit of a shock the first time you apply for grant funding. What goes into the overhead rates? Most researchers and institutions don’t have clear visibility into that. The process is so complicated that it’s hard even for those who are experts to keep track of all the pieces. Pierre: As an individual researcher applying for a project, you think about the direct costs of your research projects. You’re not thinking about the indirect rate. When the research administration of your institution sends the application, it’s going to apply the right rates. So I’ve got this $1 million experiment I want to run on mouse cancer. If I get the grant, the total is $1.5 million. The university takes that .5 million for the indirect costs: the building, the massive microscope we bought last year, and a tiny bit for the janitor. Then I get my $1 million. Is that right? Dan: Duke University has a 61% indirect cost rate. If I propose a grant to the NSF for $100,000 of direct costs — it might be for data, OpenAI API credits, research staff salaries — I would need to budget an extra $61,000 on top for ICR, bringing the total grant to $161,000. My impression is that most federal support for research happens through project-specific grants. It’s not these massive institutional block grants. Is that right? Pierre: By and large, there aren’t infrastructure grants in the science funding system. There are other things, such as center grants that fund groups of investigators. Sometimes those can get pretty large — the NIH grant for a major cancer center like Dana-Farber could be tens of millions of dollars per year. Dan: In the past, US science funding agencies did provide more funding for infrastructure and the instrumentation that you need to perform research through block grants. In the 1960s, the NSF and the Department of Defense were kicking up major programs to establish new data collection efforts — observatories, radio astronomy, or the Deep Sea Drilling project the NSF ran, collecting core samples from the ocean floor around the world. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) — back then the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) — was investing in nuclear test detection to monitor adherence to nuclear test ban treaties . Some of these were satellite observation methods for atmospheric testing. Some were seismic measurement methods for underground testing. ARPA supported the installation of a network of seismic monitors around the world. Those monitors are responsible for validating tectonic plate theory. Over the next decade, their readings mapped the tectonic plates of the earth. That large-scale investment in research infrastructure is not as common in the US research policy enterprise today. That’s fascinating. I learned last year how modern that validation of tectonic plate theory was. Until well into my grandparents’ lifetime, we didn’t know if tectonic plates existed. Dan: Santi, when were you born? 1997. Dan: So I’m a good decade older than you — I was born in 1985. When we were learning tectonic plate theory in the 1990s, it seemed like something everybody had always known. It turns out that it had only been known for maybe 25 years. So there’s this idea of federal funding for science as these massive pieces of infrastructure, like the Hubble Telescope . But although projects like that do happen, the median dollar the Feds spend on science today is for an individual grant, not installing seismic monitors all over the globe. Dan: You applied for a grant to fund a specific project, whose contours you’ve outlined in advance, and we provided the funding to execute that project. Pierre: You want to do some observations at the observatory in Chile , and you are going to need to buy a plane ticket — not first class, not business class, very much economy. Let’s move to current events. In February of this year, the NIH announce d it was capping indirect cost reimbursement at 15% on all grants. What’s the administration’s argument here? Pierre: The argument is there are cases where foundations only charge 15% overhead rate on grants — and universities acquiesce to such low rates — and the federal government is entitled to some sort of “most-favored nation” clause where no one pays less in overhead than they pay. That’s the argument in this half-a-page notice. It’s not much more elaborate than that. The idea is, the Gates Foundation says, “We will give you a grant to do health research and we’re only going to pay 15% indirect costs.” Some universities say, “Thank you. We’ll do that.” So clearly the universities don’t need the extra indirect cost reimbursement? Pierre: I think so. Dan: Whether you can extrapolate from that to federal research funding is a different question, let alone if federal research was funding less research and including even less overhead. Would foundations make up some of the difference, or even continue funding as much research, if the resources provided by the federal government were lower? Those are open questions. Foundations complement federal funding, as opposed to substitute for it, and may be less interested in funding research if it’s less productive. What are some reasons that argument might be misguided? Pierre: First, universities don’t always say, “Yes” [ to a researcher wishing to accept a grant ]. At MIT, getting a grant means getting special authorization from the provost. That special authorization is not always forthcoming. The provost has a special fund, presumably funded out of the endowment, that under certain conditions they will dip into to make up for the missing overhead. So you’ve got some research that, for whatever reason, the federal government won’t fund, and the Gates Foundation is only willing to fund it at this low rate, and the university has budgeted a little bit extra for those grants that it still wants. Pierre: That’s my understanding. I know that if you’re going to get a grant, you’re going to have to sit in many meetings and cajole any number of administrators, and you don’t always get your way. Second, it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison [ between federal and foundation grants ] because there are ways to budget an item as a direct cost in a foundation grant that the government would consider an indirect cost. So you might budget some fractional access to a facility… Like the mouse microscope I have to use? Pierre: Yes, or some sort of Cryo-EM machine. You end up getting more overhead through the back door. The more fundamental way in which that approach is misguided is that the government wants its infrastructure — that it has contributed to through [ past ] indirect costs — to be leveraged by other funders. It’s already there, it’s been paid for, it’s sitting idle, and we can get more bang for our buck if we get those additional funders to piggyback on that investment. Dan: That [ other funders ] might not be interested in funding otherwise. Why wouldn’t they be interested in funding it otherwise? What shouldn’t the federal government say, “We’re going to pay less. If it’s important research, somebody else will pay for it.” Dan: We’re talking about an economies-of-scale problem. These are fixed costs. The more they’re utilized, the more the costs get spread over individual research projects. For the past several decades, the federal government has funded an order of magnitude more university research than private firms or foundations. If you look at NSF survey data , 55% of university R&D is federally funded; 6% is funded by foundations. That is an order of magnitude difference. The federal government has the scale to support and extract value for whatever its goals are for American science. We haven’t even started to get into the administrative costs of research. That is part of the public and political discomfort with indirect-cost recovery. The idea that this is money that’s going to fund university bloat. I should lay my cards on the table here for readers. There are a ton of problems with the American scientific enterprise as it currently exists. But when you look at studies from a wide range of folks , it’s obvious that R&D in American universities is hugely valuable. Federal R&D dollars more than pay for themselves. I want to leave room for all critiques of the scientific ecosystem, of the universities, of individual research ideas. But at this 30,000-foot level, federal R&D dollars are well spent. Dan: The evidence may suggest that, but that’s not where the political and public dialogue around science policy is. Again, I’m going to bring in a long arc here. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was, “We’re in a race with the Soviet Union. If we want to win this race, we’re going to have to take some risky bets.” And the US did. It was more flexible with its investments in university and industrial science, especially related to defense aims. But over time, with the waning of these political pressures and with new budgetary pressures, the tenor shifted from, “Let’s take chances” to “Let’s make science and other parts of government more accountable.” The undercurrent of Indirect Cost Recovery policy debates has more of this accountability framing. This comes up in this comparison to foundation rates: “Is the government overpaying?” Clearly universities are willing to accept less from foundations. It comes up in this perception that ICR is funding administrative growth that may not be productive or socially efficient. Accountability seems to be a priority in the current day. Where are we right now [August 2025] on that 15% cap on indirect costs? Dan: Recent changes first kicked off on February 7th, when NIH posted its supplemental guidance , that introduced a policy that the direct cost rates that it paid on its grants would be 15% to institutions of higher education. That policy was then adopted by the NSF, the DOD, and the Department of Energy. All of these have gotten held up in court by litigation from universities . Things are stuck in legal limbo. Congress has presented its point of view that, “At least for now, I’d like to keep things as they are.” But this has been an object of controversy long before the current administration even took office in January. I don’t think it’s going away. Pierre: If I had to guess, the proposal as it first took shape is not what is going to end up being adopted. But the idea that overhead rates are an object of controversy — are too high, and need to be reformed — is going to stay relevant. Dan: Partly that’s because it’s a complicated issue. Partly there’s not a real benchmark of what an appropriate Indirect Cost Recovery policy should be. Any way you try to fund the cost of research, you’re going to run into trade-offs. Those are complicated. ICR does draw criticism. People think it’s bloated or lacks transparency. We would agree some of these critiques are well-founded. Yet it’s also important to remember that ICR pays for facilities and administration. It doesn’t just fund administrative costs, which is what people usually associate it with. The share of ICR that goes to administrative costs is legally capped at 26% of direct costs. That cap has been in place since 1991. Many universities have been at that cap for many years — you can see this in public records. So the idea that indirect costs are going up over time, and that that’s because of bloat at US universities, has to be incorrect, because the administrative rate has been capped for three decades. Many of those costs are incurred in service of complying with regulations that govern research, including the cost of administering ICR to begin with. Compiling great proposals every two to four years and a new round of negotiations — all of that takes resources. Those are among the things that indirect cost funding reimburses. Even then, universities appear to under-recover their true indirect costs of federally-sponsored research. We have examples from specific universities which have reported detailed numbers. That under-recovery means less incentive to invest in infrastructure, less capacity for innovation, fewer clinical trials. So there’s a case to be made that indirect cost funding is too low. Pierre: The bottom line is we don’t know if there is under- or over-recovery of indirect costs. There’s an incentive for university administrators to claim there’s under-recovery. So I take that with a huge grain of salt. Dan: It’s ambiguous what a best policy would look like, but this is all to say that, first, public understanding of this complex issue is sometimes a bit murky. Second, a path forward has to embrace the trade-offs that any particular approach to ICR presents. From reading your paper, I got a much better sense that a ton of the administrative bloat of the modern university is responding to federal regulations on research. The average researcher reports spending almost half of their time on paperwork. Some of that is a consequence of the research or grant process; some is regulatory compliance. The other thing, which I want to hear more on, is that research tools seem to be becoming more expensive and complex. So the microscope I’m using today is an order of magnitude more expensive than the microscope I was using in 1950. And you’ve got to recoup those costs somehow. Pierre: Everything costs more than it used to. Research is subject to Baumol’s cost disease . There are areas where there’s been productivity gains — software has had an impact. The stakes are high because, if we get this wrong, we’re telling researchers that they should bias the type of research they’re going to pursue and training that they’re going to undergo, with an eye to what is cheaper. If we reduce the overhead rate, we should expect research that has less fixed cost and more variable costs to gain in favor — and research that is more scale-intensive to lose favor. There’s no reason for a benevolent social planner to find that a good development. The government should be neutral with respect to the cost structure of research activities. We don’t know in advance what’s going to be more productive. Wouldn’t a critic respond, “We’re going to fund a little bit of indirect costs, but we’re not going to subsidize stuff that takes huge amounts of overhead. If universities want to build that fancy new telescope because it’s valuable, they’ll do it.” Why is that wrong when it comes to science funding? Pierre: There’s a grain of truth to it. Dan: With what resources though? Who’s incentivized to invest in this infrastructure? There’s not a paid market for science. Universities can generate some licensing fees from patents that result from science. But those are meager revenue streams, realistically. There are reasons to believe that commercial firms are under-incentivized to invest in basic scientific research. Prior to 1940, the scientific enterprise was dramat
The full transcript for this conversation and many others can be found at www.statecraft.pub . Today we’re joined by David Schleicher . David is Professor of Property and Urban Law at Yale Law School, and an expert in local government law, land use, finance, and urban development. I found David’s book, In a Bad State: Responding to State and Local Budget Crises , a fascinating and readable primer on municipal debt: what it is, how it grows, and how cities can face up to it. Municipal pension funding may not sound like the most fascinating topic. I hope this conversation illustrates two things. First, how our pension systems work matters to all of us — whether or not we are enrolled in a municipal pension. Second, these questions go to the heart of how our cities are run, why they fail, and how they can be improved. We discuss: * Why are so many municipal pension funds in debt? * Why New York City went bankrupt and Chicago didn’t * Moral hazard in municipal credit * The practice of "universal log rolls" * How the federal government should respond to local bankruptcies This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Today we’re joined by Judd Devermont , one of the most experienced Africa policy hands in Washington. He spent 16 years as an intelligence analyst, serving in both the Obama and Biden administrations. Most recently, he was Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. He authored the Biden administration’s Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa . Since leaving government in early 2024, he writes a newsletter called Post Strategy , reflecting on what works and what doesn’t in US policy toward Africa. We discuss * What “care and feeding” means in diplomacy * What went wrong with the relationships with Niger * The problem with envoys * Whether the NSC has been neutered under Trump * Why most intelligence analysis doesn’t cut it anymore The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
You can find the full transcript of this conversation at www.statecraft.pub . The likely next mayor of New York City is Zohran Mamdani, if polling is anywhere close to being correct. Much of the conversation has revolved around the day-to-day administration of City Hall. If Mamdani wins, does he have what it takes to run the city’s government? Today’s guest is still active in NYC political life, and it was clear I would not get an answer to that particular question. Instead, I took this opportunity to investigate how City Hall actually runs, and how the past three mayors have structured their administrations. But if you read between the lines, you can treat this conversation as a guide about what has worked in New York’s governance over the last 20 years, and the likely stumbling blocks for an ambitious new administration. Maria Torres-Springer moved to New York City a week before 9/11, and spent most of the following 20 years in city government — first as a top appointee in the Bloomberg administration, then in several high-powered roles under Bill de Blasio, and eventually as second-in-command for Eric Adams. Her most recent role was as first deputy mayor : functionally the Chief Operating Officer of New York City. Torres-Springer resigned in February 2025 (she was not implicated in the overlapping Eric Adams corruption scandals). To put it lightly, Torres-Springer has fans. In November 2024, City & State New York wrote a cover story titled, “The Vibe at City Hall is Thank God for Maria Torres-Springer.” It quotes political figures from the far left, center left, and right, calling Torres-Springer “a phenomenal leader,” “a very classy, charismatic, knowledgeable individual,” and, “a serial overachiever in a good way.” When Adams appointed her as first deputy mayor, he said, “She has the ability of landing the plane.” Torres-Springer is widely described as one of the most effective political operators in New York City, and she’s been linked in media stories as a potential official in the next mayoral administration (although she recently took a role as President of the Revson Foundation, a NYC-based philanthropic organization). She’s maybe the best possible guest to talk about steering City Hall. Given constraints on what Torres-Springer could discuss, I wanted to get into two big topics. One is process . What does it take to run City Hall? How have different mayors done it differently? The other is outcomes . Torres-Springer was one of the champions of City of Yes , the Adams-backed initiative to build 500,000 new housing units in the city over the next 10 years. I wanted to better understand City of Yes, what she’s most excited about, what didn’t make the cut, and how it all came together politically. We discuss: * What it takes to succeed working for three very different mayors * How Bloomberg, de Blasio, and Adams governed differently * How to work effectively under constant pressure * The political coalitions that made City of Yes possible * Why it takes over a year to turn over a NYCHA apartment * How to fix the plumbing of government * What the next mayor should prioritize to keep New York thriving Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood, Eamonn Ives, and Katerina Barton for their judicious audio and transcript edits for length and clarity. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
This episode was originally recorded on October 18th at the Progress Conference in Berkeley. Because of the federal shutdown, Director Kratsios called in virtually. Michael Kratsios is Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy , and the president’s top science and technology advisor. In the first Trump administration, Kratsios was US Chief Technology Officer, and later acting Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, where he championed emerging tech like AI, quantum, and autonomous systems in defense. Given constraints in the topics Kratsios could speak on, my questions focused on understanding the administration’s AI and science policy. We talked about the recent AI Action Plan : what AI can do for America and the world, and how the administration plans to ensure US leadership. We discuss the administration’s vision for gold standard science, and whether the structures we use to fund science need to change. We also touched on how the second Trump administration differs from the first, and Kratsios’s take on AI safety. Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood and Katerina Barton for their light edits for length and clarity in the transcript and audio, respectively, and for a tight turnaround. The White House has not yet cleared the full video for publication, but we’ll share it here if it is cleared. The full transcript for this conversation and many others is available at www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Today we’re talking about housing. The ROAD to Housing Act passed the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee 24-0 in late July. Last week — despite the shutdown — it cleared the Senate. It’s a package of 27 pieces of legislation to boost housing supply, improve affordability, reduce regulatory roadblocks, and reduce homelessness. When you zoom out a bit, what’s happened here is pretty surprising. The chair of the committee, Republican Tim Scott, and the Ranking Member, Elizabeth Warren, a Democrat, co-sponsored the bill. The bill is the committee’s first bipartisan housing markup in over a decade. Passing through committee unanimously doesn’t happen often for serious bills of this sort. I wanted to understand how this bill happened, and came to have a serious shot at passing. And I also wanted to get a better sense of what’s actually in the bill, and why it matters for housing. If you’re like me, most of the debates you hear about housing policy focus on zoning, which is a local issue — very little federal say. So what are all these pieces of legislation? Do they matter? Joining me is an unorthodox trio: * Will Poff-Webster was legislative counsel for Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii. He’s our inside guy today: he worked on the bill within the Senate. And today, he covers housing policy here at IFP. * Alex Armlovich is Senior Housing Policy Analyst at the Niskanen Center . He has been working on housing issues for a long time, and his fingerprints are on parts of this bill package. He’s my advocate from the outside. * Brian Potter is Senior Infrastructure Fellow at IFP and author of Construction Physics , which I very much enjoy editing. If I can make one newsletter recommendation to you besides Statecraft , it’s Construction Physics . He has a background in private-sector home building. And has written about several of the proposals in this package. Table of contents: * What’s the federal role in housing policy? * What’s in the bill? * Regulatory reform * Technical assistance plus incentives * Funding and financing reform * A brief sidebar on manufactured home chassis * Will the bill matter? * How did the bill happen, politically speaking? * The policy wonk success story Thank you to Harry Fletcher-Wood and Katerina Barton for their judicious transcript and audio edits. For the full transcript of this conversation, go to www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub
Today, we’re joined by Bobby Fijan . He’s a co-founder of the American Housing Corporation, a startup building housing for families in cities. A burning question motivates his work: How do you make cities places where families can live and thrive? He has a new report out with the Institute of Family Studies looking at what families really want from their apartments. This is a pretty self-indulgent episode for me. I live in Brooklyn with my wife and two-year-old, and we’re expecting our second kid. We want to stay in the city — it’s where our life and community are, and where we’ve put down roots. But the classic route for people like us is to move out to the suburbs once the family grows. I hoped talking to Bobby would help me avoid that fate. Bobby argues that the best ideas for family-friendly housing aren’t new. Pre-war apartments in American cities look a lot like what he’s advocating for. We’ve done this before, and we could do it again. We discuss: * How the financial crisis fuelled a boom in studio apartments * Why did apartments get so much smaller after 2008? * Why are most two-bedroom apartments designed for roommates? * What do families actually want in a floor plan, and why don’t developers build it? * Whether upzoning can help Thanks to Harry Fletcher-Wood and Katerina Barton for their judicious transcript and audio edits. The full transcript to this conversation and many others is available at www.statecraft.pub . This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.statecraft.pub