Reindustrialization is the word du jour in American policymaking circles. The hope is that a reinvigorated manufacturing base will bring back middle-class jobs and ensure our strategic autonomy in what looks like a tough century ahead. It’s a towering task, and it will take many strategic decisions to undo the last several decades of deindustrialization.One person who has made it his mission to fix America is Charles Yang. He most recently served in the Biden administration at the Department of Energy, and spun off with the change of admins to start a new think tank called the Center for Industrial Strategy. He’s not just focused on research and publishing, but also building a network of likeminded souls who have the skills needed to bring industrial tech discussions into Washington. Through the Knudsen Fellowship, he is constructing cohorts of sophisticated and fervent believers that America can manufacture the future once again.With host Danny Crichton, the two discuss Charles’s transition from government service into Silicon Valley, the persistent cultural divide between engineering and politics, how to balance being a generalist versus a specialist, what think tanks really do, and how experiential tools like Riskgaming can change the policy discourse.
