America's techno-industrial master plan

Santi Ruiz is a policy researcher at the Institute for Progress and host of the Statecraft newsletter and podcast. He's one of the editors of the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook, a comprehensive strategy document produced by three American think tanks to help the US compete with China's manufacturing dominance. The playbook outlines concrete policy proposals across frontier science, energy abundance, and national security—from creating special compute zones to reforming naval shipbuilding and accelerating geothermal development.

The Society for Technological Advancement (SoTA) is organising a hackathon on 31st May and 1st June focused on geoengineering and weather control. Click here to find out more.

Episode outline

• How China's 230x shipbuilding advantage over America represents an existential threat to Western naval power
• The X-Labs proposal to fund cutting-edge research institutions outside traditional universities using flexible block grants
• Special compute zones that would fast-track energy infrastructure for AI development in exchange for security commitments
• Why America's Loans Programs Office has funded every nuclear plant built this century and shouldn't be dismantled by DOGE
• How regulatory carve-outs for geothermal energy could unlock abundant clean power using proven oil and gas drilling techniques
• The critical minerals challenge where China could crash markets to destroy American mining operations
• Why American naval shipbuilding fails because design is outsourced instead of done in-house like it used to be
• Whether Britain should be America's lapdog or develop independent techno-industrial capacity focused on European threats
• How elite consensus matters more than popular mobilisation for implementing transformative policy changes
• The difference between financialisation that enables productive investment versus financialisation that replaces it

Mentioned in this episode:

The Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook: How to Kickstart America's Techno‑Industrial Renaissance

Statecraft on Substack

Why FORGE Works by Tom Ough for IFP