Operation Warp Speed: A new model for industrial policy

https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2021/05/inside-operation-warp-speed-a-new-model-for-industrial-policy/

by gok • 4 years ago

151 159 4 years ago

tomohawk3• 4 years ago

In April 2020, Kadlec and Marks wrote a proposal for HHS secretary Alex Azar, who in turn took it to Jared Kushner and others in the White House, who were enthusiastic. President Trump supported it and signed off on it. Azar brought in the DoD as well. (The bureaucratic history of OWS, like everything to do with it, is complex and contested.) Azar, Kushner, and others then made two hiring decisions that were crucial to Warp Speed’s success, recruiting Moncief Slaoui, a pharma executive, and Gustave F. Perna, a general, as its leaders. Slaoui, OWS’s chief adviser, had been chairman of global vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and brought pharma knowledge. General Perna, OWS’s chief operating officer, had overseen the global supply chains for the U.S. Army and brought logistical expertise.

It's really not possible to overstate what an accomplishment this was. To stand up an organization like this outside of the normal departments and to give it the political backing it needed. And the accomplishment of not only getting multiple vaccines ready in record time, but also solving the distribution logistics problems in parallel.

NicoJuicy20• 4 years ago

Wait, getting multiple vaccines ready but none were from the US.

The most used one is a partnership from Pfizer and was created by Biontech. The vaccine was practically ready on day 2 of COVID due to mRNA. Pfizer even declined Warp speed funding ( but pre-orders were accepted in December during phase 3 trials)

So I'm not sure why Warp speed is considered a success?

manuelabeledo• 4 years ago

Wait, getting multiple vaccines ready but none were from the US.

Wasn't the Moderna vaccine developed entirely in the US?

tomohawk3• 4 years ago

ready on day 2

That's like some person in SV saying they had a great idea.

Who cares?

The level of execution in operation warp to get this past the FDA processes was enormous. The industrial mobilzation to create refrigeration units and transportation, and get all of the logistics alligned in a few months. That is the stuff of legend.

yzmtf20082• 4 years ago

Wait, getting multiple vaccines ready but none were from the US.

See sibling comment on Moderna.

The vaccine was practically ready on day 2 of COVID due to mRNA

No. "ready" as in we can produce a vile in a lab? Sure. Ready as in tested in the general population, mass production facilities, distribution networks? Absolutely not.

So I'm not sure why Warp speed is considered a success?

Producing a vaccine is about the easiest part of warp speed. Having the supply chain needed to vaccinate the whole population in such a brief time? That's the success. Also, it's literally the entire point of TFA.

vlovich1232• 4 years ago

mRNA was an accomplishment to be sure. It’s a necessary but not sufficient condition. If you look at the stories for the rollout, the logistics challenge posed by mRNA vaccines were quite substantial, particularly refrigeration but also supply chain logistics in general were complicated. Warp Speed definitely was run competently by all accounts.

Spooky232• 4 years ago

Nooo. There was a ton of logistics. The military was a key part of the last mile distribution initially and for some time.

Trump is a loathsome character, but OWS was a well executed initiative.

EGreg2• 4 years ago

What I want to know is, what happened to all that “warp” speed since then? We had been waiting for delta vaccine and whatever else, for over a year. They can surely churn them out quick with mRNA (they even did it for HIV!) but they don’t.

The profit motive happened. With government and media carrying water for these vaccine manufacturers, and forcing everyone to get an outdated vaccine, why would they cannibalize their own profits? It’s like if everyone were told you must install Windows 98 to get on the Internet or do any sort of work, why would Microsoft want to release Windows NT?

Meanwhile, you can see how the US Army with no profit motive has outdone them and created a vaccine for ALL the variants:

https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2021/12/us-army-create...

This just goes to show that government and industry often work together and market failures often result, while institutions with no profit motive can overtake them (Wikipedia, NGinX, Linux, Wordpress, WebKit and many others overtook their capitalist counterparts.)

rsynnott3• 4 years ago

Moderna was American and accepted US funding, so it wasn’t a total loss. Though the article certainly overstates it a bit.

Pfizer/BioNTech and AZ were significant beneficiaries of state funding outside of the US, tho.

blibble• 4 years ago

yes, the entire article is singing the praise of the necessity of darpa and OWS

when biontech and pfizer succeeded without any of it

refurb5• 4 years ago

3 of the 4 of the key vaccines were manufactured by US companies - Pfizer, Moderna and J&J.

You realize a part of Warp Speed was the coordination of manufacturers and the FDA?

So while Pfizer accepted no funding, it benefited from the streamlined regulatory process.

HWR_147• 4 years ago

Pfizer accepted preorders in June before phase 3 in the amount of $2 billion. They declined warp speed funding for the research, not the manufacture.

brian_cunnie• 4 years ago

It's really not possible to overstate what an accomplishment this was

For some of us, it's a challenge to disentangle the achievements from the politics (e.g. "I hate Trump, so I refuse to believe his administration did anything of note"). But the world isn't a comforting black & white; instead, it's nuanced shades of gray.

Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them.

tomohawk3• 4 years ago

Exactly.

This could easily have become the next boondogle, akin to Solyndra.

The fact that it didn't, and achieved such a good result is a rarity.

KerrAvon• 4 years ago

For some of us, the actual challenge is that all of Trump’s people lie at the drop of a hat. He hires for loyalty, not competence, and that means lying whenever necessary for his ego, and that means you’re talking to people who have no shame. How can we trust that any of this happened the way that they say it did? Isn’t this just amother puff piece to pump Jared and the other incompetent losers in Trumpworld up?

Since they were also spectacularly incompetent at getting jabs into arms — Biden had to pick up the pieces on distribution — why do they deserve the benefit of the doubt?

xg15• 4 years ago

But the world isn't a comforting black & white; instead, it's nuanced shades of gray.

And that sentence is a comfortable cliche that invites one to stop thinking about the matter any further.

Often, if you have a "shades of gray" situation, I think it's more interesting to examine the seeming contradictions and try to find out where exactly your intuition went wrong. In this case, how did a chaotic organisation like the Trump administration, headed by someone with a history of scam and fraud, manage to pull this off?

...or you could just say "world is complicated" and be done with it.

tootie6• 4 years ago

I think it's a very easily defensible belief that the Trump admin did an absolutely terrible job at nearly every turn when it came to the covid response. In the case of Operation Warp Speed they were brought a fully-baked idea and approved it. That was a good call. They also undercut medical experts, pushed unproven and dangerous treatment ideas, downplayed the danger even when they knew better and killed Herman Cain.

wolverine87612• 4 years ago

For some of us, it's a challenge to disentangle the achievements from the politics

Who are you attributing this to? It's a cheap way to delegitimize people who disagree by making general derogatory statements about nobody in particular.

Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them.

If that's what happened.

SideburnsOfDoom2• 4 years ago

Let's applaud the achievements that saved lives, regardless of the administration that promulgated them.

While I wholeheartedly applaud this amazing achievement of technology, I think that it's an open question as to if this was a political "noteworthy achievement" that differentiates the previous US administration from any other past, future or hypothetical alternate administration.

i.e. Yes, they signed off on "operation warp-speed", but who wouldn't? Isn't this the bare minimum, easy decision that any administration would affirm? It's throwing money at big private company, and that is how the US government under any administration likes to tackle big problems, rather than than the messy details and "big-government" stigma of co-ordinating a response in house?

In normal times, there is the potential for reputational damage from a Solyndra-style failure, but this was clearly not normal times.

magicalist• 4 years ago

but also solving the distribution logistics problems in parallel.

Quick to forget the huge distribution bottleneck that happened in December 2020 and the issues with depending on Walgreens and CVS as distribution points.

I do enjoy that the article takes essentially no last mile plan and blames it the CDC and on a letter from state health groups saying "hey, wtf is the plan here" because it apparently had woke concerns. Meanwhile at the federal level "OWS was not faultless" and that's all we get.

A lot of amazing things happened to get the vaccines out so quickly, but this hagiography reads like a characteristic of American propaganda.

bluGill3• 4 years ago

It is easy in hindsight to point out mistakes. However despite imperfections they still did an amazing job.

tootie6• 4 years ago

Planet Money did a great breakdown of the whole thing. They put a lot more credit on Kadlec himself and implied the Slaoui and Perna were just sort of there to make sales pitches. I think it also can't be understated that none of the bureaucratic victories would be possible if the science wasn't so advanced. Moderna had their vaccine in hand and ready for trials in a matter of weeks.

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1053003777

Also, notable that Russia and China delivered vaccines even faster by not bothering with so much testing. They took a much bigger risk in their approach, but the vaccines they produced turned out to be nearly as effective as those coming from US/UK/Germany

refurb5• 4 years ago

The Russian and China vaccines were NOT as effective. And the Russian vaccines had lot to lot variability that was pretty worrisome.

thrwaway11212• 4 years ago

I'm a software engineer and I've done similar Operation Warp speeds in the past.

Mandates from executives to ship something now. Disable the test suite because we don't have time to look at the tests. Skip QA, release directly to prod and see what happens.

It always works very well in the IT industry, it's not wonder pharma wants to adopt the same proven approach.

funcDropShadow• 4 years ago

They did not skip QA. The EMA (the European FDA equivalent) did not reduce the formal requirements for Covid vaccines compared to other vaccines. None of the Covid vaccines have an emergency use authorization in the EU. They all went through the regular process. That process was made more parallel and more incremental. And it was obviously executed with the highest priority possible. Those ideas are indeed used in the IT world, but they are successful ideas, and they are much older than the IT world. By incremental I mean, the rolling review used for the trials. I.e. the pharma companies would deliver regularly preliminary versions of the final report on the trial. Thereby, a lot of questions about the report can be asked and answered earlier than in a traditional review process after the trial has finished.

joe_the_user• 4 years ago

It's really not possible to overstate what an accomplishment this was. To stand up an organization like this outside of the normal departments and to give it the political backing it needed.

If that's true, it's also a testament to how ossified bureaucratic boundaries have become.

It's like; America, 1969, "we put a man on the moon!". American, 2021, "we put a man into a position of authority outside of ordinary bureaucratic channels!". Maybe that's an achieve indeed but the context give one pause.

GuB-42• 4 years ago

To be fair, I think it is an achievement on the scale of putting a man on the moon.

Putting a man on the moon is a great technical achievement, but really, the reason people remember it so much is that it is a pissing contest that the US won. But being able to be productive against bureaucracy is maybe the greatest achievement for a big country. And I am sure that's also what made Apollo successful.

Operation Warp Speed probably won't feature in the history books, it is not as symbolic as a moon landing, it just made vaccines available a bit sooner. I don't think it really changed the course of history, but the time savings have saved thousands of lives, maybe millions, shortened lockdowns, allowed schools to open, etc... It is just statistics, but there are some statistics I am happy not to be part of.

bluGill3• 4 years ago

There is a good reason for complex bureaucracy. Nobody likes the time it takes and other bad points, but it exists to ensure things are done right so people don't die as we make the same mistake again. Often we have too much and so it prevents good and useful things, but there is a reason and all talk of eliminating it needs to be about the tradeoffs

tzs• 4 years ago

It's really not possible to overstate what an accomplishment this was. To stand up an organization like this outside of the normal departments and to give it the political backing it needed. And the accomplishment of not only getting multiple vaccines ready in record time, but also solving the distribution logistics problems in parallel.

It was indeed quite an accomplishment.

What was unexpected and ironic is what came afterwards, where opponents of the administration quickly got vaccinated in large numbers and supporters of the administration did not. There are some interesting graphs here [1].

Lately Trump was been pretty vocal about telling his supporters to get vaccinated, and even that doesn't seem to be changing many minds.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/12/05/1059828...

chihuahua• 4 years ago

To me, that is the strangest twist in this whole story: that Trump gets boo-ed by his supporters when he advises them to get vaccinated. They blindly accept everything he says, except for this one thing, which happens to be reasonable.

wolverine87612• 4 years ago

Where does all this narrative come from? It is a complete revision of what I remember from the time.

outside of the normal departments

Why is it superior to do it outside 'normal departments'? The CDC is the leading organization in the world for dealing with disease outbreaks and has handled them worldwide. The administration-appointed leadership didn't do well, and then was undermined by political appointees and the White House, who interfered with decisions and communication, in part to prevent any bad news or anything that contradicted Trump's misinformation.

My understanding from the time was that Kushner was a disaster - in part due to being someone with no experience getting a tryout in a generational crisis - and that they created the outside organization to funnel funds to their friends, many of whom got contracts and were completely incompetent. As I understand it, what we got was despite Trump administration, not because of them.

Edit: Also, part of Trump's solution was to pressure and outspend others to acquire vaccines from European companies, in a horrible zero-sum struggle.

To stand up an organization like this outside of the normal departments and to give it the political backing it needed.

That's easy to do. What is hard is making it effective.

distribution logistics problems

Distribution was a disaster. Remember in January 2021 the Trump administration was promising a large supply of vaccines that didn't actually exist, and in fact nobody knew how many vaccines we had.

Despite nine months or more of time to prepare, no national vaccine tracking infrastructure was ready. Individual counties were trying to develop and deploy their own, of course with terrible results.

Also, Trump was denying distribution to states whose governors didn't praise him - he actually blackmailed California's governor (and others), requiring them to publicly praise him in order to receive vaccines.

These are just the things I remember off the top of my head.

HWR_147• 4 years ago

The "outside the process" was worse than you remember. Kushner got an bunch of MBA recent grads in a room to coordinate getting supplies. But they had no clue what they were doing. One CEO wrote about he spent about a month trying to get a federally guaranteed order so the bank would loan him the cash to run his mask factory on three shifts. Or maybe the details of that are fuzzy in my head and slightly off. But he eventually wrote into the Washington Post about trying to get the government to take his damn masks and, because there was an extra bureaucratic group running things, it was impossible to find the person who could say yes.

And it was even worse than denying states gear unless their governor kissed Trumps ring. He actively encouraged a bidding war. Oh, and then he tried to confiscate PPE the states bought so he could redistribute it to political ally's states. It lead to ridiculously news stories about how state troopers in NY and MD were hiding trucks of PPE from the dead.

tpmx• 4 years ago

I agree with the other commenters that Operation Warp Speed was a pretty spectacular success. I just happened to focus on something specific - I really didn't mean for this comment to be some kind of anti-thesis to Operation Warp Speed. I very naively thought people were just upvoting something historically interesting. Seriously, does everything have to be political? :(

...

The painting at the top of the article (https://americanaffairsjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/0...) shows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner jabbing a child with a vaccine.

Edward Jenner, FRS FRCPE (17 May 1749 – 26 January 1823) was a British physician and scientist who pioneered the concept of vaccines including creating the smallpox vaccine, the world's first ever vaccine. The terms vaccine and vaccination are derived from Variolae vaccinae ('smallpox of the cow'), the term devised by Jenner to denote cowpox. [...]

In the West, Jenner is often called "the father of immunology", and his work is said to have "saved more lives than the work of any other human".

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Jenner#Invention_of_the... is a really interesting read.)

jonstewart4• 4 years ago

American Affairs Journal is a relatively new magazine, and has leaned heavily to promoting America First protectionism and Trumpism — its editor eventually wrote that he regretted voting for Trump.

I think the subject of the article is interesting and I’m looking forward to reading more about OWS in the years ahead. However, I think the true point of the article is to put this understanding of OWS on the political framework of the article’s many unsupported assertion. So, please read critically.

FooBarBizBazz• 4 years ago

You're absolutely right, so I was pleased to find a fairly low-political-content article, with little mention of Trump, adequate credit to Biden, and, mostly, a focus on the civil servants and government bureaucrats we rarely hear about -- who are arguably parts of the "Deep State" that Trump ran against, in fact -- and who the article lauds.

And if

its editor eventually wrote that he regretted voting for Trump.

then at least he's seen the light, right?

The overall impression I get is that this particular author wants industrial policy, dammit, and he doesn't care if it's a Biden or a Trump who gives it to him -- or whether it's a "small government" Republican or a neoliberal Democrat who's getting in the way.

Arguably Biden has taken some of these lessons (he may be the perfect Democrat for this), and has been attempting to enact them with Build Back Better (admittedly with some sops to the "progressives"). Which -- if "Trumpist" means "the principled stance of American Affairs" and not "the buffoon pandering to white grievance" -- would paradoxically make Biden more Trumpist than the Republicans and "moderates" who are now blocking his efforts.

So how about I not call it "Trumpist" to begin with, given that Trump himself probably doesn't have many principles at all. It's simply: "Onshoring, Reindustrialization, and Industrial Policy". Or, "Make America Competitive with Germany and South Korea", you could say.

The author's closing theme is also in direct contradiction of some talking points we've seen from Republicans recently. They've been talking about "government incompetence". Yet here, this article speaks of OWS as a display of competence. So if this guy is a Republican, I don't think he's a Republican who's "on message".

The magazine does have its own ideological slant. But honestly, as it's begun to pivot away from Trump, it's not such a bad slant.

kunai2• 4 years ago

The overall impression I get is that this particular author wants industrial policy, dammit, and he doesn't care if it's a Biden or a Trump who gives it to him -- or whether it's a "small government" Republican or a neoliberal Democrat who's getting in the way.

I thought much the same, and I lean further lefty than most on this forum. It was a great read.

jonstewart4• 4 years ago

The magazine does have its own ideological slant.

Yes, that’s why I commented—it is easy to nerd out on long pieces like this, but the magazine that hosts it does not have a neutral and/or nerd POV (nerds aren’t necessarily neutral, but are perfectly willing to write long explainers out of sheer enthusiasm).

There’s fine information to be had here, and interesting points to debate about industrial policy writ large. But the magazine’s an organized intellectual undertaking intended to influence, and so close reading and critical thinking are warranted.

kunai2• 4 years ago

There are a lot of publications I disagree with politically but still find value in them so long as they argue in good faith. Strong Towns and the work of Charles Marohn is one good example of this, he leans conservative but a lot of his work is apolitical and focused on city design and solving the housing crisis, which has value regardless of what affiliation you have.

This article is similar. Free trade is a good thing, but right now we're seeing an influx of foreign firms and capture of key industries and supply chain stops by foreign authorities. Rebuilding a strong American private and public sector and re-diversifying our economy by not having it based solely on the service part is a fairly noble goal, and I do agree with the author that OWS is a massive success story that offers some elucidating details that could help rebuild our infrastructure and lead to more effective public-private partnerships.

jonstewart4• 4 years ago

I concur that it’s absolutely fine to read articles in magazines outside of one’s own narrow political spectrum. For folks on HN encountering this publication for the first time, it’s also useful to know some context.

wolverine87612• 4 years ago

right now we're seeing an influx of foreign firms and capture of key industries and supply chain stops by foreign authorities

Who is capturing what? What data is there supporting it? People have been raising such alarms for generations (and usually the 'key industries' alarm is from a vested old guard trying to prevent economic change, and the industries were 'key' in the past).

Barrin922• 4 years ago

the magazine I think is pretty important because it serves an empty part of the US intellectual space, which is promoting an industrial / activist state attitude towards economics on the political right.

rather than being Trumpist if anything the point is to move people on the right away from unproductive culture war issues towards economics, at times they have straight up Marxist economic analysis on their site and manage to talk about it in a way that doesn't scare away Conservatives.

American Affairs is if anything guilty of the opposite of what you seem to imply. It's not trying to sell Trumpism by talking about OWS, it's trying to sell industrial policy to a conservative readership.

jonstewart4• 4 years ago

I mean, try to find an article about American Affairs Journal that doesn’t mention Trumpism. We can argue semantics back-and-forth, but there’s a population association in place nevertheless.

specialist2• 4 years ago

American Affairs Journal ... has leaned heavily to promoting America First protectionism and Trumpism...

I don't have a dog in this fight, but this doesn't sound right. As newly minted socialist-libertarian (anarchist), I don't spend a lot of time parsing intellectual conservative notions, either movement conservative or otherwise.

In his own words:

https://www.vox.com/21528267/the-ezra-klein-show-trumpism-do...

At the time, I more or less agreed with u/Metacatalepsy's hot take:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ezraklein/comments/jfzujb/new_episo...

So, please read critically.

Again, I don't think this is fair.

OC contrasts DARPA with Operation Warp Speed. Like how programs and contracts are managed differently, in an effort to "right size" their respective efforts.

It's like the difference between angel and later stage investors. DARPA's remit is to try a bunch of crazy ideas, see what happens. OWS's mission was to rush promising ideas to market.

Being a huge fan of the book Diffusion of Innovations, the basis for pop-biz books like Crossing the Chasm, the need for Operation Warp Speed strategy is both obvious and necessary.

arcticbull2• 4 years ago

Warp Speed was good and whatnot but the first vaccine, the "Pfizer" one was developed by BioNTech, a Germany company, funded by the German government. Pfizer supported the development by handling clinical trials, logistics and manufacturing - and didn't take any Warp Speed money. IMO it felt more like a co-branding arrangement.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said that the company decided against taking direct Warp Speed funding for the development of the vaccine out of a desire "to liberate our scientists [from] any bureaucracy that comes with having to give reports and agree how we are going to spend the money in parallel or together". [1]

Interesting anecoda.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Warp_Speed

stjohnswarts• 4 years ago

Sure but this is about the USA government getting more involved in industry and they did that with Moderna and OWS. We already know that the German government (and Western European governments in general) are better at that than our government but at least we might have a chance to catch up.

xvilka• 4 years ago

German government (and Western European governments in general) are better at that than our government

Debatable, Germany is notorious[1] for its bureaucracy still.

[1] https://m.dw.com/en/germans-and-bureaucracy/a-16446787

Barrin922• 4 years ago

I'm German and thanks for the compliment but I think you can give the US government, or particular agencies some credit as well.

The German government, public research sector and so forth work really well with industry and the Mittelstand, but our digital infrastructure is well.. not great. France is much stronger in the aeronautic/space sector which I always find a little bit embarrassing, and I'd be surprised if you see a German governmental institution produce something as relatively modest as Ghidra.

While US/UK intelligence seems to attract quite a lot of talent over here it's generally considered a pretty bottom of the barrel career path.

femiagbabiaka2• 4 years ago

To be fair the Moderna vaccine has been shown to have the highest efficacy,[1] but not by much. Definitely data that should be incorporated into the next run, especially considering that the red tape doesn’t seem to have lowered vaccine hesitancy in the U.S.

[1] https://www.mayoclinic.org/coronavirus-covid-19/vaccine/comp...

fennecfoxen• 4 years ago

The point of OWS wasn't to fund the vaccine that was going to have the best effects. The point was to fund production of N different vaccines before the efficacy results came in, so one would be ready if it was efficacious, because the potential time saved was worth the extra expense even if the backup vaccine failed. If it was the best that is pure coincidence.

wolverine87612• 4 years ago

That could be pure luck.

sampo2• 4 years ago

To be fair the Moderna vaccine has been shown to have the highest efficacy

Pfizer-BioNTech: 30µg doses, 21 days apart.

Moderna: 100µg doses, 28 days apart.

It seems probable that Moderna has higher efficacy because the dose is larger, or because the doses are given with a longer time interval, or both. And not that the Moderna vaccine is any kind of biochemically superior.

If you were to give Pfizer-BioNTech in 100µg doses, 28 days apart, maybe it would be just as effective as Moderna?

HWR_147• 4 years ago

Pfizer took $2 billion in Warp Speed money. They declined the initial research funds from the US government, instead taking like $440 million from the German government.

The $2 billion was part of the manufacturing half of Warp Speed.

NicoJuicy20• 4 years ago

No.

A $2 billion contract for 600 million doses of a vaccine if they got it through FDA are orders, not funding.

They didn't receive the money in advance either.

ISL• 4 years ago

I'd hesitate to presume that what worked for Warp Speed would work in a non-crisis situation.

With our early-pandemic PPE-relief efforts, we had endless advantages that most projects don't have: almost-unlimited supply of high-skill and high-motivation labor, almost-unlimited support from any tech-partner we contacted with free service credits, almost-unlimited demand from "customers", and a sense of mission that was as strong as I've ever encountered.

Warp Speed must have been similar -- "If we don't make this work on the first try, hundreds of thousands of people will die. If we don't make it work quickly, hundreds of thousands of people will die. The Federal Government will give us anything we need. Let's do this right."

That's real different from bog-standard decadal industrial policy.

echelon2• 4 years ago

we had endless advantages that most projects don't have: almost-unlimited supply of high-skill and high-motivation labor, almost-unlimited support from any tech-partner we contacted with free service credits, almost-unlimited demand from "customers", and a sense of mission that was as strong as I've ever encountered.

You know what would create an even greater sense of urgency? For the US government to offer fifty years of tax free profits to companies and entrepreneurs that industrialize in the US. Subsidize the factories, bring in immigrants to help. Let companies repatriate international profits for free to further assist.

I've brought this up on HN before, but have been cautioned this might run afoul of the WTO. The more I think about it, though, would it really? And as net importers, do we care?

pjc50• 4 years ago

Bezos doesn't need another hundred billion tax free dollars.

ben_w• 4 years ago

Free money “solves” the exact one problem that American industry doesn’t have, and likely nothing else.

roenxi• 4 years ago

It isn't so much that it runs afoul of the WTO (if the States are serious about they just ignore the UN) as that it is bad policy. Picking on China as the major competitor... the reasons China has gained an industrial advantage over the US is because:

1. Lots of industrial activity is illegal/extremely risky in the US. If you want to open a steelworks, for example, it seems reasonable to guess that the US will be much more hostile to the business on environmental grounds than China would.

2. US labour conditions are extremely generous compared to China. Median wage in the US is something like 5-6x times China and the gap was larger when the investment decisions were being made.

Neither of those will be solved by tax breaks. General tax breaks may well spur good results, but the real killer of industry is those two factors. The US already has a much better general business climate than China legally (eg, people can be confident that they own their business without risks like corruption or nationalisation taking it off them).

justin66• 4 years ago

US government to offer fifty years of tax free profits

Not even Communist states attempt to plan spending fifty years ahead of time.

jimmont• 4 years ago

Nonsense. Government and related policy and procedure has a wide range of successful outcomes in non-crisis situations. If the circumstances provide clarity of focus toward a desirable outcome and the gamble is won, and that's obvious to everyone generally, that doesn't mean anything per-se about government, policy or the mix. Including the general populace, hesitations and presumptions included.

specialist2• 4 years ago

The exciting part of OWS is "expediting". The mandate and power to just get things done. What HBR might call a "policy tiger team".

We currently have multiple crises that would benefit tremendously from the OWS strategy.

Rebuilding our electrical grid for one. It has to be done. Every rational person knows this and agrees. And yet we. just. can't. budge.

More than capital (investment), we need some bulldozers to push thru all the jurisdictional bullshit. Make us some omelets.

The challenges of building transmission in the US, and how to overcome them, with Liza Reed

https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-the-challenges-of-buil...

How Are We Going to Build All That Clean Energy Infrastructure?

https://www.niskanencenter.org/report-how-are-we-going-to-bu...

There are perhaps dozens, maybe 100s, of such sticky wicket policy traps which would benefit from some Operation Warp Speed style mojo.

mola• 4 years ago

This reads like private industry propoganda for free money from the government without any strings attached. Amazing deal....

kick_in_the_dor• 4 years ago

Serious question: did you actually read the article, or are you basing this comment of the headline alone?

NicoJuicy20• 4 years ago

Had some discussions here and i might conclude with the following:

It's important to note, that the first authorized vaccine ( BionTech/Pfizer) was not funded by operation warp speed and they explicitely denied it to avoid political interference.

Pfizer did a flawless execution ( they were chosen by BionTech because of their experience), simultaneous clinical trials ( funded by governements) and faster approval by governements made the BIGGEST difference from multiple years for a vaccine to just one year. Doing that process almost flawlessly by Pfizer is not an easy task!

The Cold Storage pipeline was already mentioned since 1976 and many countries outside of the US had a very good execution. The logistical issues were also ( not coinsidence) not "rich countries" unfortunately. Ebola paved the way for a lot of regulatory changes too as a lot of bottlenecks were discovered before Covid.

Also the reduced requirement from -60° to -20° made it easier to hook into the existing cold chain pipeline ( but not without hurdles ofc, but the tech was already available - https://www.unicef.org/supply/stories/historic-push-provide-... )

The US started to deliver vaccines 2 months faster ( Europe didn't do premium pricing, did more in cooperation which made it slower ( > 25 countries!) and didn't waver pharma responsibilities. They also bought more Astra Zenica which wasn't the right bet).

My POV of Operation WarpSpeed: buy all possible vaccines at premium pricing and then distribute it like the others, while leaving last-mile delivery to the states themselves is really just picking the easy work and letting others do the hard work.

Long-term: As it's the governments "initiative", they should have promoted the vaccines more and made more information available. Other countries greatly overtook the US by vaccination rates by now and the "total package" should be compared.

It's not the start that counts, it's the finish that matters.

TLDR: I don't know where Operation WarpSpeed made any proven difference that couldn't be done by buying all possible vaccines.

NicoJuicy20• 4 years ago

Additional data to support my perception.

Israel was quicker in rollout/receiving vaccines, because they also paid more than the US: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-03-04/pfizer-pf...

( And were willing to share countrywide data)

Operation Warp Speed: A new model for industrial policy

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