Statecraft

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...

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 s...

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 b...

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 t...

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 help...

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 recent...

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...

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...

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 o...

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 a...

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 rehir...

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 h...

 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: tha...

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...

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 ear...

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, a...

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 ac...

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 prett...

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...

Today, I’m joined by Anup Malani . He’s a professor of law at the University of Chicago, currently on leave, serving as the first Chief Economist at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services . This means he oversees economic analysis for the agency managing $2 trillion in annual healthcare spending — 23% of the entire federal budget. CMS runs Medicare for 70 million elderly Americans, Medicaid...

This episode was originally recorded on September 4th at the Abundance Conference in DC. " Zach Liscow , my guest today, is a professor of law at Yale Law School. In 2022-2023, he was the Chief Economist at the Office of Management and Budget . He's also now my colleague at IFP , as a non-resident senior fellow. I have a bit of a problem today, which is that while Zach may not be a national househ...

The full transcript for this conversation is at www.statecraft.pub . When I started this podcast a couple years ago, the idea was more constrained than it is today. We wanted to do exit interviews with civil servants, who were newly free to speak about their experiences and their learnings. The project has expanded: we talk to political scientists, economists, DC wonks, elected officials and peopl...

Today I'm talking to Dan Wang . He has a great new book, Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future . Dan spent the better part of the last decade in China and published a yearly letter summarizing his thoughts, explorations, and eating. Breakneck is like those letters: it goes all over the place, as does our conversation. Topics include: * America's overabundance of lawyers * Whether our rul...

Today I'm talking to economic historian Judge Glock , Director of Research at the Manhattan Institute . Judge works on a lot of topics: if you enjoy this episode, I'd encourage you to read some of his work on housing markets and the Environmental Protection Agency . But I cornered him today to talk about civil service reform. Since the 1990s, over 20 red and blue states have made radical changes t...

Today we're joined by Dr. Rob Johnston . He's an anthropologist, an intelligence community veteran, and author of the cult classic Analytic Culture in the US Intelligence Community , a book so influential that it's required reading at DARPA. But first and foremost, Johnston is an ethnographer. His focus in that book is on how analysts actually produce intelligence analysis. Johnston answers a lot...