Loading summary
Transcript45 lines
- [00:01]
A
Hey, listener, want to do big things? Well, today we're going to record a guide of sorts. Joining me today, Remco Zwetzlute, co founder of the Horizon Institute for Public Service, as well as Kumar Garg of Renaissance philanthropies. Welcome to ChinaTalk, everyone. Kumar, what is Renfil?
- [00:22]
B
We help donors bet big on science and technology.
- [00:24]
A
And Remco Horizon.
- [00:26]
C
Horizon builds pipelines into public service for people working on emerging tech.
- [00:31]
A
Umar, what do you want to tell the kids?
- [00:33]
B
There's a Tyler Cowan line about raising people's ambitions, which I think I love. But I think the practical thing, that when I have career advice for people, it's just that people are very narrow in what they think career paths look like. So they say, hey, I was looking around and I saw these jobs being listed. Which one do you think I should apply for? And then I say to them, I have never applied for a job that I have actually worked at. Like, I am this far along, and I have invented some version of every job. I, like, got a fellowship by going to the government and saying, if you gave me this fellowship, I could sit here. Do you want to hire me? You know, I, like, took something where I was working for somebody and then converted into a job. I've started organizations, so there's many ways that one can actually work out there in the world. So that's, I think, one part, the second part is what you actually want to work on. I think people worry. There's all this talk around the burden of knowledge, like, how do you get to the frontier? And that has not been my experience. My experience is you can get obsessed with a very technical topic, and pretty soon after talking to all the people and trying to figure out why that topic is stuck or what's not getting worked on, actually be on the edge where lots of people who are the experts on that topic are like, you know, that person's really onto something. We should be doing more of that. So your ability to go from not knowing something to the edge is actually quite a lot. And then the real magic is actually, do you actually want to devote part of your career to then working on that and actually trying to make progress? And that. That, I think, takes time. Like, how do you actually figure out how to get something in the National Defense Authorization Act? Or how do you convince, you know, how do you figure out how do you get good at raising money around your ideas? All these things take time. But I think the can you do big things? Is actually, I think, a lot more possible than People realize like, how much
- [02:38]
A
latent capacity for big thing doing is there out there. Both from a, like the world, the world needs things, perspective as well as, like, there's talent that just hasn't had their kind of like horizons raised.
- [02:53]
B
I generally think we're always talent blocked, I think, like. But we're bottlenecked on talent, on basically everything. And the reason is not that, yeah, the reason is not that we have an infinite set of problems. It's just that one of the ways I have conversations with donors is somebody might say, let's do a white space analysis. Where's the white space? And by that what they mean is there's some space where everybody's working and then there's another place where no one is working. But the sad joke of it is it's all white space. You get into these problems and as you dig in, there's like, you very quickly figure out that there's a bunch of stuff that is quite important that is not getting worked on. So one recent example I often tell people is in the past five years there's been a huge increase in the number of people that now realize lead pollution is a really big deal. Maybe a quarter to a third of global learning rates between rich countries and poor countries can be explained by the fact that we have huge amounts of lead pollution. When I started talking about this to people, you know, maybe like five, seven years ago, like, it would be like, I would get kind of a nodding head like, yeah, like pollution's a problem. But then I would say like, oh, well, how much money is getting spent on this, like really big problem? And they would say, oh, I can think of this thing and others. And then eventually people looked into it and globally there was $10 million being spent on lead remediation. And I asked, how many people do you think work on lead remediation globally, full time? And they were like, well, maybe 100. And we're talking about something that might have trillion dollars plus of lifetime outcomes plus. And so we, we, I think, underestimate how many really important things don't have enough talented people working on them. You know, the lead Elimination project, when they first, you know, came to parthenay for their idea, they said, you know, and I could tell they were onto something because they were like, this is what we did. We flew to a country, we bought lead on the market, we then put out paper and we put the paint on it and let it dry. And then we took a sample and then we took it to the authority, we tested the sample for lead. And then we took it to the regulatory authorities and said, did you know the paint is being sold with lead in it? And the authorities were shocked. The paint suppliers were shocked. And in like multiple countries, that alone caused them to change the law. So they were getting like off like a plane flight and buying paint changes in like whether lead was being sold in the public market. Like in, you know, this happened in 2023, you know. So just like a week ago, I'm like trying to buy fishing supplies for my son. I go to the store, the tackle shop. I cannot find any weights that are not lead weights. And I'm like, oh, I'm going to have to order these on Amazon. Like, even today you cannot. If, if you fish find weights that are non leaded in most places in the United States of America, they're like, well, they're just heavier and they're more useful. And I'm like, do I really want my kid using lead weights on fish that they, that he's going to catch? Like, I just think, like, we have blind spots everywhere. And so that means, like, there's lots of interesting stuff to be done. You just have to be a nerd about it and figure it out.
- [06:30]
C
There's a funny story related to this, which is for the Policy Entrepreneurship Network conference, which is a community that Kumar, along with Parth, who you mentioned, organizes. There was a bag, you know, swag as part of the conference. The bag had lead in. Says on the label. If you look at it, there's a, you know, there could be small residual amounts of lead in this bag.
- [06:50]
B
Embarrassing. That's embarrassing. Kumar.
- [06:54]
A
Kumar. How else do people get stuck or get blocked or. Let's get another story out of you.
- [07:00]
B
I think another way people get stuck is just, you know, who your peers are. So I remember having a college friend who called me up. I was like, working in policy. I was working in the White House. And he's like, oh, that's all very impressive. But like, how much do you get paid? Because, you know, he works in finance. And I was like, oh, like I'm on a fellowship salary. Like, I'm like clearing 40k. But like, I'm getting to do all this incredible work as a fellow in the government. And he's like, but why? Like, if the work is important, why don't they pay you? I don't understand. And it just had like, it did not compute to him that, you know. And then eventually I moved off the fellowship to like a government salary. But it's still not comparative. And the Thing that jumped out to me was he was surrounded by a peer group where, like, that's how you kept score. And I find that, like, one of the important things if you're gonna do, like, interesting, ambitious things is, like, you have to have people around you that, like, value the striving, even when along the way, like, you know, it's like, you haven't gotten the win. You're like, I've been working on this, and we've tried four times to get it into, you know, this legislative thing, but it hasn't worked. And they're like. So we used to call this, like, what's your water on stone? What's like, a thing that you've been working on for many years, but, like, you haven't made. It looks like you are not making progress. And I still get emails from people which is like, I accomplished my water on stone. Like, finally the crazy person that was in my way, you know, died or left government, and finally we're going to get the win. And it's like, they email me because they know that I appreciate how sometimes these things take time. And so one of the biggest. One of the big things I always tell people is whatever you want to do, if you're not surrounding yourself with at least other people who value that work, they don't have to be everybody, but at least some. It's, like, very hard to do it because, you know, we need. So part of the reason for the Policy Entrepreneurship Network is like, we celebrate nerds that are like, I've been obsessively working on how to make the organ donation system work. And, like, here are the 17 different ways we are trying to, like, reform OPOs. And here are the 14 ways the lobbyists killed us and then we made a comeback and we found the right person in the government that we got this rule changed, and all the back and forth of, like, the Erin Brockovich of it all. And it's, like, awesome. And, like, you know, that person's also like, I can't get anyone to get this work funded. It's crazy. But, like, the ROI on their effort is so high. So I do think, like, the work requires stamina and engagement. And so one of the big things you have to remember is to, like, surround yourself with people who can, like, feel the win and feel the work alongside you. And so people just sometimes make the mistake of being like, you know, like, not at least finding some peers to do it with.
- [10:15]
A
Remco, why don't you introduce the Horizon Fellowship? And I'm curious Sort of what have been the, I don't know, indicators of, like, success, impact, failure from a sort of selection, personality, mindset, whatever factor. And how that's changed how you thought about filling your slots over the years.
- [10:36]
C
Totally. So, yeah. The Horizon Institute for Public Service broadly exists to build government capacity in emerging tech. We focus on AI first and foremost and then also have biotech and some other areas. And we run several programs to try to build that capacity, all of which are meant to sort of create communities of people who both understand the technology deeply and want to work in careers of public service and think about policy problems deeply. The fellowship is our first and still the biggest program that we run, which places people in government for up to two years or in think tanks in a placement focused on emerging tech issues. So very similar to the way Kumar mentioned getting into government. These fellowships are a pretty common model. We were the first one to focus on sort of AI and emerging tech specifically. And it's pretty interdisciplinary. So we have machine learning PhDs and deep technical experts, but these are very interdisciplinary problems. So we also have lawyers and other people who bring expertise relevant to the field. And I think we really try to select for public service motivation and ambition, trying to take, I think AI and other fields are going to have very widespread and sort of big impacts. And we need people in government who understand the technology and are thinking deeply about where it might go and what it's doing today, and then try to, by their lights, do something that's good for the public and work for the offices that they work for. And so I think one thing that's really required is this combination of ambition on the one hand and humility on the other hand, which I think is also a thing that many people in the policy entrepreneurship network that Kumar talked about have, which is, you know, we need to do big things and there's many, you know, big wins we can try to pursue. At the same time, you're working with people who think pretty differently from you. You're working on behalf of often elected representatives who set the direction. And, you know, that's sort of what we should aim for in a democratic society. And so your role as a staffer or as a fellow in the first instance is not to necessarily like, you know, have the world be the way that you want it to be, even if you might pick an office to work for that has a mission that you really care about. And so I think selecting for that combination of ambition and humility is a thing we've iterated on over the years.
- [13:13]
B
One thing that I felt working in government was I worked in a science office, and there was actually no good correlation between how good of a scientist you were and how good you were at being good at policymaking. And part of the reason is just, you know, you can actually get pretty far kind of like being dictatorial in science. Like, okay, I've run this lab, I've got this system, and I've got this thing. But a lot of, like, being successful in government is sense making. Like, why is this person not going to go along with this idea? Like, what, what are their incentives? What's their blocker? Like, why do they want to show up? And so you have to have that extra sense of perception that you're able to build over time. And how do you bring people along? So one of the things I think is really smart about the fellowship model and what you guys are doing is that some of this is just easier. I often find that two months after somebody has started a fellowship, they sound totally different about the questions they're asking me than when I talk to them, like, in the summer before they go in. Because just like, once you're in there, you're like, oh, nobody knows anything, but I have to create this document in two hours. And when I say, oh, but, like, and then, like, the document comes out of somebody very important's mouth as, like, what they think. So, like, that two hours of work really matters. So suddenly you start to realize how compressed people's time and attention are. You start to realize how much you have to figure out why people may or may not be into an idea. You have to understand how things actually get to the finish line. So I just find that if you're a researcher and you spend a year in these kind of policymaking roles, you'll become a totally different researcher on the kinds of questions you'll do if you go back to academia, anyone else. So if you can pull it off, immersion is very powerful because you understand much more intuitively the incentives of these systems.
- [15:22]
A
So how does that kind of track onto the humility versus ambition axis?
- [15:29]
B
I think it gets at the thing Remco was saying, which is, I think you have to be kind of obsessed with winning. Like, hey, I think this is really important, and I really want it to happen. Because a lot of times people in government have. They can fall into this idea of, like, I own this portfolio, and I don't like the. I have a portfolio. My portfolio is these countries. My portfolio is global health. But, like, a portfolio just is like, a fancy way of saying, like, this is the range of topics that whatever seat I'm in has equities in. I think it's better to have goals like, I want to move from here to here. And so I think being ambitious on things you want to move is important. I think the cut is that pull that work off. You have to actually be a student of the system. Like, so I. One of the big things that I used to do is I used to. When, like an executive order came out or we got this, you know, the budget came out, I would go ask people, hey, how did this idea make it into the budget? And they would say, well, there's this budget examiner with an omb, and they're the ones who write the first draft, blah, blah, blah. So I would say, okay, let me go get coffee with the budget examiner. And that budget examiner would say, a very interesting fact to me, which is, I start in the spring on building out what is going to be in the initial budget that I will send to the agency. And I'm like, oh, you're starting now? And they were like, yes. Are there any questions you would like me to ask the agency? And I would say, oh, so, but, like, understanding that the budget process starts like the day after or even before the president's budget came out for the next year, like, that is not an obvious thing, because you might think that the budget happens in November when it goes up to the president's desk. So I think curiosity, and then putting that curiosity to work is very important.
- [17:30]
C
I think the focus on results and sort of outcomes in the world is a big thing that distinguishes, I think, some people in policy and government from others. There was a guy we were advising with Horizon who is a sort of tech entrepreneur who was interested in making the jump into kind of public service and policy work. And we were like, great. Someone with your background has a lot of relevant skill sets. You should absolutely consider doing this. You could add a ton of value. And sent him a couple of the Renfill writings on policy entrepreneurship as, like, you know, you have this mindset and this is a thing you can deploy. And he was like, why is this a concept? You know, he was like, this is just the way of doing things. You have an outcome that you want in the world, and then you work backward to what's needed from it. And, you know, you can call that policy entrepreneurship, but, like, that's just the way that you do business. It doesn't need this, like, terminology or specialness that people are attaching to it. And three months he did make the jump to D.C. and three months after, he's like, oh, I get it. I'm in so many meetings here in D.C. or I talk to people and they have a portfolio or they have some things they're working on or care about, but they don't have an outcome in mind. They don't have a way that they are actively trying to change the world or thing that they want to be different from the way it is today. And they're not sort of working backward from that to, like, what's needed for that. And I do think that's just, yeah, fundamentally kind of a different mindset. And I think a lot of people maybe on the outside don't realize that it's, you know, especially the folks who have that mindset don't realize that it's kind of a choice or it's like a thing. That's not true across the board.
- [19:11]
A
It's that word entrepreneurship, right? If you're in a market economy and your business is not doing novel or different or differentiated things, you will lose market share, make less money, have to fire people, and eventually have to shut down.
- [19:27]
B
Right?
- [19:28]
A
And there is a whole, like, universe of media, books, I don't know, podcasts, what have you that talk you through, like, the different ways in which you can try to sort of grow a business or make more money or what have you. And as you were saying, Kumar, in, like, academia, think tank, dumb, staffer, dumb. There's not a P and L. Right. There's not a way to keep the score in the way that your college, I mean, frenemy or whatever could look at his bonus at the end of the year and say, okay, I did a good job because I did this many deals, and my portfolio company is, like, had this sort of a year. So. But. But it's an interesting thing, right? Because, like, you think that most people go into government or policy because they, like, want to make a difference, but, like, it seems really not hard to go from, like, making a difference to treading water just because of, I don't know, the way. The way the system is set up and the fact that, you know, these are these giant organizations and, you know, it's not just, like, one CEO able to call the shots.
- [20:44]
B
I used to play this game with my team was. I was like, can you actually tell me? I used to name all the White House offices, and I used to say, tell me what they do and what is winning for them, right? And like, most of the time, people, you know, you show up from a With a research background, I'm like, what do you think the Office of Presidential Correspondence does? Like, they write, like, millions of Americans write letters to the president, and they write responses back, and they pick out every day a set of letters that the president reads. They consider the job really important. And sometimes policy comes out of that. So, like, what I was like, what do you think speechwriting does? What do you think the advance team does? What do you think the Office of Public Engagement does? And the interesting thing was, what do you think Comms does? And the interesting thing is, each of them are their own little tribe that have their own kind of internal logic and KPIs. So, for example, the Office of Public Engagement, they do something called a fly in, right? So 60 mayors from around the country are flown in, you know, to come to the White House, and they, like, interact with White House aides, right? I used to. I would ask the Office of Public Engagement, what it. Like, what's your goal with this fly in? And they're like, the goal is the fly in. Like, we're bringing these mayors to the White House. That's the goal. So then I was. Then I would be like, the policy entrepreneur. I would say, well, can I pitch them on things? Like, there's a bunch of important mayors that are gonna be here, and they're like, you know, we need people to talk to them. We need them to have a good day at the White House. So I would then get the list of who's coming and then set up, like, what. All we're gonna pitch them on, on things we were working on or, like, CEOs are coming in through the building. So it made for a good pairing because their KPI was just. Did people, important people who want to have a relationship with the president. So when we later on call them for something, have a good time, you know, did they have a successful visit? Same thing with, like, speechwriting. You know, One of the things I learned from Tom was Tom would say, speechwriting does not want you to edit their words because that's their job. That's the words. But what do they want from us policy nerds? They want the factoid. What's like, the amazing fact that you can stick into the speech that, like, sells the point. So I would then create a list of, like, amazing factoids, and they would. Speechwriting would be like, you got any more of those? So, like, State of the Union would come around. I would get an email from the speechwriting team. Hey, you're always good with those factoids. You got any Interesting ones that we could like. And they were like, why is speechwriting reaching out to you at the State of the Union? I was like, oh, they like the factoids, right? Because for them, that's like a thing they cannot immediately pull. Make sure it's vetted. You know, I'm the policy person. And then with comms, what I would do is, you know, the comms team would think, like, what's the visual? So I would be the crazy person who'd walk into the meeting with the comms team, where before I would show them the policy idea, I would show them the photo. I'd be like, the President is going to stand in front of this massive wind turbine. And they're like, whatever it is, that's a good idea. Let's do that. So everybody has their own structure. I'm sure the social media team and others have their own. So different players in the system have different. And so you, as the person who's trying to get policy work done, like some change in the world, you have to think about how you get those other teams to kind of be into what you're trying to advance versus oh, they're going to nerd out with you on why we should change the organ procurement system or why we should try to change the way some energy policy is done.
- [24:32]
C
I think one interesting tension when we teach fellows or generally talk about people coming to D.C. and whether they're a good fit for it is different. People need to hear almost the opposite thing. Some people are so attached to a certain outcome and think it's so obvious and think that when you get into a room with someone and just explain your idea and why it's important, they're going to get on board. As Kumar was saying, you kind of have to spend time understanding their incentives and worldviews and bring them along. And to that person, you really have to be like, man, you've got the ambition, right? But you got to kind of learn how the system works and maybe be a little patient, be a little bit more humble about maybe things you don't yet know about how things work. And you might want to iterate on your idea and compromise. And other people have the exact opposite. They come in and they're like, I want to be a public servant. You know, like, I'm here to sort of do good. Like. And other people might tell me what that is. Like, I expect to come into the office and be assigned a thing, and my job is to do that. And then often they come into a space and they're like, oh, there's actually not really a clear agenda here. And you can spend two years in D.C. just responding to incoming and doing a thing here and a thing there. And at the end of it, maybe you have contributed, but you haven't really changed anything in the world. And for that person, I think you have to push much more on what is the thing you want to be different two years from now. What does success look like for you? Where if you look back on your experience, two years, five years, however long you want to make that time horizon and you should think hard about that. But it's like two different, you know, two people who might be drawn to policy or public service, but they need to hear kind of almost the exact opposite message in terms of, you know, what they'll need to do and think about once they get to D.C. but
- [26:24]
B
I think, I mean one, one other dynamic that at least I noticed is there are a bunch of jobs that are firefighting jobs inside the government. Because, you know, it's just like a lot, you know, like you can be in a national security role and you're the person who's like, this thing happened in the world in the middle of the night and I have to get up to speed on it so everyone else can be briefed on it. Right. And I often think that the more proximate you are, especially the more proximate you are to the President, the more the things of the day just dominate your incoming. So either you have to get really good at thinking about goal development prior to be in a role, you know, so you can actually still drive on it. And part of it is like, I, one of the things I would always get the question when I was working in the science office is like, why not, you know, you're doing well, why not move to the National Economic Council, National Security Council or another one of the White House offices and be like in a more premier spot that gets more daily interaction with the President. And I always used to tell people that that's a double edged sword. The people who get daily interaction with the President are often getting handed like, oh, we're about to have a strike and the airports might close. Like your job is to go make sure that doesn't happen today. Well, like you might have other goals for that day, but like that's not your goal anymore for the day. And so a lot of, so I think you have to. The people who are able to be more proximate while still being able to retain some degree of agency I think is underrated and so that's the role of the policy entrepreneur outside government, but also to realize that some of the principals that you are staffing really don't have. They're getting to their passion project to fix the agency. They're expending 1% of their time on that. Even though if you had interviewed them before they were taking the job, you know, they would have said that's their, that's their main thing. So I think understanding how much firefighting happens and how you, you know, ideally you can put that to work because you can advance your ideas and put them in well formed things. But it is a big part of like what to avoid.
- [28:42]
A
I remember having this fantasy. This is how embarrassing I am. This is what my fantasy was. I of like in 19, like I'll. I think this was like Jeremy Pollock or something just like got assigned the Iraq brief in like 1999 or something. And I was just thinking, you know, it would be really nice if I just showed up at the CIA and they're just like, all right, Jordan, Bulgarian tanks, like you're going to be the Bulgarian tank guy. And then the whole world kind of falls away and you can just focus on your one thing and you'll get really good at your one thing. And it's kind of like you're doing a PhD and you're just like sort of focused on that and you can own it and then maybe it'll blow up and be the most important thing in the world, but at least you'll just like be the master of your domain. And there's, there's, you know, there are people for whom that works. But you don't stumble upon the lead, the lead poisoning. That's like getting half of the planet dumber than it should be without having the ability and the mindset to do more of the explore as opposed to just the exploit. And I think that's like, it's a hard thing, especially when you're young and what you're reading are history books about secretaries of state and national security advisors and presidents and generals because no one's, I mean there aren't like movies and there's not just like a, like a cultural universe for like someone who's going to like find this nice thing and, and sort of fix it for everyone or do some, you know, policy entrepreneurship, dirty work which actually is like 100x impact and by the way, the sort of like value over replacement, like whoever else would have been in that job doing the Bulgarian tanks probably could have done, you know, either a better job. As me or like 90% as good a job as me. But there's so much like impact alpha
- [30:51]
B
in
- [30:53]
A
finding which topic is going to be your hobby horse. Even if you do end up being in one of those more sort of like firefighting, reactionary. Oh, the senator needs to learn about this thing.
- [31:03]
C
Like
- [31:06]
A
picking your. Learning how to pick your spots and then picking them, I think is important. I don't know Remco or Kumar.
- [31:15]
B
Well, I think the important part about how just taxed senior people are and how much the jobs can feel of like firefighting is just that, you know, Tim Geithner had this great line where he would ask his team before a meeting started, like, is this a we care meeting or is this a we decide meeting? And by that what he meant was like, there's like things in government where you're like, nobody has a good answer, but like, you do the meeting just to sort of show that you're like on it. Like, you assemble and you're like, you know, we're like thinking about this and then there's like actual decisions like, are we going to spend the money on this or this? Are we going to partner or are we not going to partner? And like a decent amount of some of the meetings are like, we care. It's just signaling engagement. And one of your jobs is to actually be able to tell the difference because they look the same is to say, is this a we decide process or is this a we care process? And so being able to discern which of those things are in addition to the firefighting, I think the value then of being able to do the work, do the exploratory work, do the explore, exploit and go out there and find those ideas, whether you're an outside policy entrepreneur, whether you're the young fellow in the office that can do the work and mature the idea and then hand it to the right person, it's just very high. And you know, it's why people say, like, why is DC run with all these 20 somethings? And why did like, you know, the chief of staff, it's like, wait a minute, they're like 30. Like, how does that happen? Well, actually like, the reason is just that like you just, there's a huge amount of leveling up that you have the opportunity to do. If you can actually use those roles to go find those things and do them. It also means like you can build a network of those people on the outside that when you now only have a fraction share of time, you can call and say, I might be able to push on this. But I need you to, like, without much context, do all the thinking and send me a document.
- [33:38]
C
I think there's. Yeah, there's a lot of. At least there's a certain type of person, especially folks coming from academia or other roles where they think like, man, I really want to work in policy and public service. I want to contribute, but I need to understand my area just a little bit better before I make the jump. Right. This is sometimes a blocker for people where it's like, you know, I need to know the full answer to what I think should happen with China policy before I go and try to get a job where my task is to say what China policy should be for the U.S. government. And I think people often don't realize one, that it's very hard to study that question from the outside. I think, as Kumar was saying earlier, you sort of need to be in the system sometimes to even know what the relevant research and what the relevant questions are. And second, I think there's a, you know, I'm a PhD dropout, sort of former political scientist, but I still love my two by twos. And one of my favorite two by twos is on one axis there's unconscious versus conscious, and on the other axis there is incompetence versus competence. And most people start out when they think about an issue in an unconsciously incompetent quadrant. So it's like the top left quadrant. And then your first part of the learning journey is you become consciously incompetent and then you become consciously competent. And your learning journey culminates by being unconsciously competent. And people, I think, really neglect the importance of being consciously incompetent. Like a lot of experts, I think, like you, you will not know all the different things you need to know to like, have the solution for AI policy, for example, right? Like, it's just too complicated. And if you're not in D.C. yet, you just also don't know all the ways in which you even need to think about that in the first place. But you can know enough about AI to very quickly know what are the knowledge gaps I need to fill in order to say something about open source AI models versus closed source AI models, for example, or what China is doing in AI. And one of my colleagues who was a fellow on the Hill previously had a nice saying, which is, your job is not to be the expert. Your job is to mobilize expertise. Like, that is your job as a staffer. And to do that well, you need to be sort of Consciously incompetent, be humble enough to know where your gaps are and then be sort of entrepreneurial enough to know how to fill them. Sometimes on two hours notice, sometimes on two days notice. But I think that's like a really neglected skill set. But I think it really lowers the bar for where someone needs to be in order to make a contribution in D.C. and so someone who I think wants to sort of be the world's expert on Bulgarian tanks, for example, might be like, I just need to read that extra book before I can really conclude something or like jump into this field and make a policy contribution. And I'm just like, lower your standards. You probably already can contribute so much more than you think just by being kind of aware of the gaps. And yeah, leaning in early.
- [36:49]
B
One question I have when I think about this is Jordan, you've talked about posting to policy, that pipeline, which is, I definitely think how ideas now make it into policymakers heads and happen is changing. It's an interesting question around how does it intersect with. The way to learn is you got to be in there and learn all the internal mechanisms of government. Like that system was certainly not as present when I first showed up in government in 2009. Right? Like it's become way more present. And I think one of the things that it shows is like we still live in a real deficit of clean ideas. You know, clean, clean. So like I always used to say to people, we're sitting around trying to come up with State of the Union ideas. And I would be like, why don't I have a book from each think tank that says here's everything we wrote in the last year formulated as a State of the Union idea. Here's the sentence the President would say, here's like what the logic model of what the policy proposal would be. And here's a link to all the appendices so that you could make it bigger or smaller. And here's the phone numbers of the experts you would call. And instead I'm like, I'm like hunting around being like, has anyone written on this and is there a paper? But I'm like, the President gives this speech every year and like the fact sheets already exist. And so part of it I think is like kind of understanding the clarity of like what is a good idea and answering the questions of like, here's what needs to happen, here's why it needs to happen, here's the button. So whether it's like you can eliminate the double staircase and it won't and it will actually allow More construction. And that's a policy change. Like a state or a city could actually pass if they care about more housing. So I do wonder if both the policy entrepreneurship on the people going in and serving, but then also just reminding everybody, just there's a lot of documents that get created in policy and not that many ideas.
- [39:14]
C
Jordan, I'm curious to ask you for your. You've sort of, you know, you have an early career guide on policy. Like, and you're a big fan of the posting to policy pipeline. Like for, for people who haven't sort of heard of that. Like, what's your favorite example of someone sort of going from quote unquote posting to policy?
- [39:33]
A
So we've talked a lot in this show about kind of like the staffer path where you have to subordinate a lot of what your work to what the principal is, whether that's an elected representative or an assistant secretary or what have you. And there's obviously a lot of power, you know, a lot of power and influence that you can do from that. But there is like an aspect of it which turns into kind of office space where you are not wholly yourself. You are like a vessel for someone else's ideas, ambitions. You are constrained by their pressure, the pressures that they're under. And I think for some people there's something very both intimidating but also liberating and empowering to be forced to put onto paper or a substack draft if that may be of like, what is the change that you actually want to see in the world? Remco, earlier you talked about the folks who showed up applying to your program saying, you know, I just like kind of want to be a public servant, I want to work on the NSC is something I've heard from a ton of like very highly educated 20 year olds. And that's a failure state.
- [40:48]
B
Right.
- [40:49]
A
But it's very hard to look at a piece of paper, fill it up with 2,000 words of your thoughts and not get to something past I want to be a public servant or I want to work on the nsc. And I think that just that act of self reflection which comes through the writing process I think is really important. Now there's a whole second part of this of to what extent is writing in public important to get things done in the world? But I think the introspection that goes along with the writing process is almost the, almost the right place to start. And why I think this having, having this sort of writing that you're only doing for yourself is important in this world.
- [41:33]
B
Kumar Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that one of the interesting things, one of the interesting trends that I've just sort of seen is like the. The doer, like the individual doer just getting a lot more traction in a bunch of different formats. So in media, I think you would sort of think about this as the individual writer. Right. So it used to be that the way you were important as a writer is who you wrote for. You know, I write for Time magazine. I work for this. And the idea of the individual writer just having their own brand and their own voice and their own analysis from Ben Thompson on became much more of a thing. I think at Renaissance, we try to think about as like the fund leader, the person who's leading the fund. Like, you don't need to go work for a foundation and be a program officer. You can lead a fund and raise the capital and deploy the work. I think similarly, I think the idea of like, you know, people have this phrase of like a public intellectual, but there's like a. It kind of had this imprecision because a public intellectual was like, well, they write books and they're an expert and they write essays and sometimes they write an op ed in the New York Times and they're an authority. But I think that too, as an idea is getting more democratized where, you know, you can start obsessing about a topic and writing about it consistently and cleanly. Other people who are experts on that topic and say, hey, this is actually pretty good. There's a lot here and can start to validate it. And then you can get encouraged to then say, you know, some of this, you should keep working on this. This is actually a really interesting insight and you should build it out. And then that can open up other career paths, including terms of service in government, the opportunity to affect. And I think that writing has an agenda setting quality if you want it to, and you're just starting to see that democratization happen. The piece that I would just sort of push on is one of my favorite conversations to have with folks who have just become really excellent writers is what is the role they want to have in taking their insights and converting them into insights that policymakers can use. Because, you know, so I. I said this to Nico at Asimov. I was like, you've got a bunch of interesting stuff. And I think some of these ideas would be really interesting if you or someone else then said, here's the way NIH should be operationalizing some of these insights and how they do their grantmaking. That doesn't necessarily have to be Nico's job. But I do think there's a big role that the writer can have and then influencing, taking those ideas and operationalizing them. So they might want to do that themselves. But they could also do that by just being aware that there's this opportunity that they could have.
- [44:37]
C
I think one of my favorite examples of this is Thomas Hochman. For anyone listening who's interested in energy policy, you may have read his stuff, but he's at the foundation for American Innovation and wrote a great substack about one year in policy. Like, what has he learned? And I think part of it is, you know, the public writing is a big piece of it and he did a very impressive job building his profile. And then there's also the follow on work from there of like, you know, the public writing is almost lead generation. It gets you into a meeting, it gets you like the outreach or folks interested and then you need to do a bunch of follow on work. And that follow on work often ends up not being public and gets more into the traditional quote unquote policy entrepreneur method. But I totally agree that it democratizes, yeah, this kind of work. And I think it's super exciting and people who feel naturally drawn to sort of the posting to policy work should absolutely lean into it.
- [45:35]
B
You know, that second part I think is super important. I think some people get so wedded to like the public Persona side of it that they don't then want to take the the hit and like do the secret congress work of like all the things where policymakers call you up and ask you for ideas that you may give them input on, but then you don't get to talk about it. And I think some people are like, well, of course some of these have to be conversations that are just not the kinds of things that you will then immediately write about. Otherwise those policymakers won't call you. And so I do think people leave some alpha on the floor when they're like, everything has to be brand enhancing. And so ideally you can do it in a way that allows your ideas to travel, but then you're smart enough to then realize to really get the idea to the finish point, you're going to have to have different ways of interacting with decision makers. Well, I guess one question I have for Remco is you guys have been putting out a bunch of these guides on like, how do people navigate and everything else. And I often get like, lots of like somebody referred to me on, oh, this person is thinking about philanthropy or policy and they're Very technical. They're very smart. They should figure this out. Do you have, like, a. What's like your. You know, you built a startup, you know a lot about a particular topic in a technical area, but you're curious about, like, larger systems, level knobs you want to turn. Do you, like, what would be on your, like, list of things they should check out or all that stuff? Because certainly I get on the phone with them, but if. What would be sort of the resources you'd want to direct them to?
- [47:31]
C
Yeah, totally. I think. Yeah. For us, we created this website called emergingtechpolicy.org for people interested in emerging tech policy. So anyone listening who's interested in that field highly recommend it. I think it was, for us, a starting place because we kept finding ourselves repeating the same things in conversation. And it was a little bit of. I think Jordan would say the same thing. If you find yourself repeating something three or five times in conversation, write it down and put it on the Internet. You can just reach so many more people with the ideas that way. And the people who get connected to us, naturally, are probably not a representative sample of everyone who should be in D.C. and in policy conversations. So emergingtechpolicy.org got created for that, and that has a bunch of guides on if you're new to policy, what's a think tank? What is it like to work in Congress? What are different federal agencies doing on AI? And so I think if you're new and you're not sure which type of institution or which type of job is good for me, which I think a lot of people face that question of, I want to have an impact. I think government's important. But, you know, I love reading and writing, or I love, like, this kind of work. I don't totally know where I would plug in because I don't understand D.C. enough. I think that's a great starting point. But then I think, like, very soon after that, you know, you want to be, like, meeting peers and sort of chatting with people who are similar to you and who have made the jump into policy or who are thinking about some of the same problem. So I think start with reading, but then very soon after, come to D.C. for a weekend visit. We have a guide on there. If you want to do federal policy, there's many other domains in which you can do policy. State level, city level, also super important. But suppose you want to do federal policy and you want to come to D.C. how can you make the most of a weekend trip if you have the resources to. To do that and then we host a bunch of events so people can monitor. Our website for like a weekend workshop is one of the types of formats we offer. So you don't have to feel ready for a fellowship or apply for a fellowship, but you can come and check it out briefly because I think this human element of seeing other people who are like you in this world. We try to get some fancy speakers for the workshop. But often the most important people to talk to are the people who are just one or two years ahead of you in the journey. And they can be the most useful because senior people often have cursive knowledge about, you know, this is sort of the unconsciously competent part of the quadrant I was talking about. Like they don't remember what it was like to be in your shoes and might give you advice that's no longer actionable or no longer relevant. Whereas people who are just a year or two ahead are often the best kind of mentors and people who can guide you. And so, you know, we try to serve as many people as possible. People can sign up for career advice on our website. We get so many more applications than we know what to process. So we can't sort of do the one on one calls with everyone. But there are these kind of events type things that you can go to that are a little bit more scalable and would highly recommend. There's also a list of fellowships other than the Horizon fellowship that we have on the website if people want to want to go through programs. So I think we have, you know, hopefully at some point soon Jordan will have a China focused workshop. In particular we have AI National Security workshops, we have bio workshops. So you know, folks will hopefully who are listening to this, who have those different interest areas. We'll find something that suits them.
- [50:53]
A
Amazing. I don't know, Kumar. What do you want to shout out besides taking leg out of the planet? What should people give their billions to or be working on next? Maybe that's not to close on. You close on whatever you want to close.
- [51:09]
B
I mean, I think that technical people who are trying to figure out what to do the most impact on just can benefit a lot from just seeing what Renaissance, philanthropy. We're putting out lots of interesting different ways to have impact. We're building programs all the time. I would click around and read but US Convergent Research, Horizon. There's a bunch of new organizations that have appeared in the past five to 10 years that are just pushing on the how do you take technical expertise and use it? The agenda set on really important outcomes So I would like read around and be like, I think it's both inspiring, but what all these organizations would tell you is like, we need more help. Like come, come, come reach out and like raise your hand and like, you know, either help build a program or help, you know, support one. And so yeah, that's what I would sort of suggest, which is like we can, we can coach you up on how to talk to the money side. Like that's not the, you know, that's just a stepladder. But I think using your passion and ambition and technical depth against these hard problems that are not just what's the next startup can be a really powerful way to contribute.
- [52:24]
C
Yeah, I'd say if readers or listeners, sorry, take, if listeners take one thing away from the conversation. I hope it's the message Kumar had earlier about this is just fundamentally talent constrained work. I could not name you a problem where I do not think like part of the solution is many, many more people should work on it. And there's lots of complicated how questions of depending on your personality and personal constraints, how do you work on those problems. But I can guarantee you that for someone who's trying to do good and thinks about science and technology and China related topics, there's so, so much impact you can have. And I hope people who are in jobs that don't feel like they're aligned with their ultimate mission in life think pretty strongly about how they can make the pivot in the next couple of years because there's a lot changing in the world and there's just so much need.
- [53:13]
A
All right, Remco Kumar, thanks so much for coming. On Chinatown,
- [53:23]
D
The tackle shop only had one kind of weight Let my sweet baby led on the bait Sleep, little one sleep Count all the metals that into you seep One is for iron and two is for zinc Three my sweet baby makes it harder to think A quarter of learning a quarter of mind A quarter of everything poor kids can find Is lead in the paint and is lead in the pipe and lead on the hands of the people who write One day you'll ask me my darling, my son why nobody fixed it when it could be done and I'll have no answer well, one or two men the guy flew to Lagos with paint and a pen and tested the samples and showed them and then the law got rewritten A hundred amen Sleep, little one, sleep Count all the metals that into you see one is for iron and two is for single Three, my sweet baby don't think, don't think.