Is America still the world’s leading technological and industrial power? This is the daring and haunting question some of the most brilliant minds in technology and industrial policy recently addressed in a thick volume called The Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook. 

Compiling contributions from American Compass, the Institute for Progress, the Foundation for American Innovation, and the New American Industrial Association Foundation, this extensive text lists policy proposals anchored in the belief that if we prolong the mantra “invent here, make there”, a lurking decline will decidedly knock the U.S. off its pedestal. 

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These researchers focused on three areas: industrial, national security, and frontier innovation. With AI, these three considerations are tightly intertwined inasmuch as technology has become the cornerstone of industrial and innovation might. The playbook proposed by these researchers has the merit to remind policymakers that without a manufacturing base, this three-pronged approach would be heedless.

At the inception of the text, the authors dramatize the stakes by asserting that America is wholly unprepared for wartime production needs, as it would take at the current pace nearly eight years to replenish our weapons inventory. These manufacturing problems are further exacerbated by failing electrical and energy infrastructure nationwide. From the citizenry’s perspective, technology, like other pursuits, should support economic growth, national security, and community flourishing. 

But the thread throughout all contributions is really the utter importance of asymmetrical technologies in warfare. For offensive and defensive advantage, building and securing stateside (or, at the minimum, with allies) supply chains is a prerequisite. The Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook arrives at a moment when artificial intelligence diffusion is outpacing the political process that must govern it. Rather than offering another manifesto, the editors assemble a terse list of mechanisms Congress and the new administration could adopt tomorrow. I have been particularly interested in certain proposals that I would like to see implemented.

Caleb Watney, for instance, proposes that the White House launch twenty “X-Labs” by 2026, moonshot projects funded at $10-50 million annually through reprogrammed National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and Department of Energy lines. The novelty is not the funding amount, but the structure: X-Labs would be free-standing, mission-driven research organizations awarded seven-year block grants, renewed only for the top 70% of performers. To accommodate different risk profiles, he introduces a four-tier “X-Series” (X01–X04), ranging from breakthrough discovery institutes to lightweight planning grants.

Tim Fist treats compute capacity as the 2020s equivalent of wartime shipbuilding. Training a single frontier model may soon require 5-gigawatt clusters — the load of two modern nuclear plants. The proposal, therefore, designates Special Compute Zones on federal land, bundles expedited National Environmental Policy Act exclusions, and leverages the Defense Production Act to move transformers, gas turbines, and small nuclear reactors to the front of the queue.

Dean Ball, previously from Mercatus Center and recently appointed at the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy as a Senior Policy Advisor for AI, delivers the industrial-power corollary: without secure inputs, none of the above matters. The United States is 100% import-dependent for fifteen critical minerals. China supplies 95% of its rare-earth feedstock — a vulnerability already weaponized via export controls. Ball recommends a two-pronged strategy.

First, is financing capacity with the Defense Production Act. Title III grants, loans, or purchase commitments would bankroll new mining and refining ventures, explicitly including frontier exploration technologies such as hyperspectral-satellite prospecting.

Second, a strategic minerals reserve, modelled on the petroleum reserve, should be created to stabilize price signals and guarantee demand during ramp-up.

WHAT SHOULD IMMIGRATION REFORM LOOK LIKE?

Additional legislative asks could include NEPA reform for mining permits and expanded eligibility for DPA support to friendly jurisdictions such as Greenland.

The playbook sidesteps the stark divide between unchecked free-market optimism and rigid industrial planning. It champions a flexible approach, termed “modular state capacity,” where the federal government strategically wields its financial resources, land, and legal authority. This intervention targets areas where markets undervalue critical risks or falter in coordination, with each action tied to clear performance benchmarks. This is probably the ideal road map for a Congress still divided on how to reassert the U.S. AI advantage over the rest of the world.

Sebastien Laye is an economist and AI entrepreneur.