The Biden/Harris place-based, national security-focused, industrial innovation strategy has delivered tens of thousands of jobs, the vast majority to red states.

It’s also accelerating America’s climate resilience;

The nation’s place-based industrial strategies and related private investments are both helping regions damaged by deindustrialization and assisting the nation’s ongoing transition toward a net-zero economy.  

As Brad DeLong points out, this administration has overcome

the only convincing argument against activist industrial policy in the 1980s (and the only one ever since) was that post-1970s America lacked the state capacity to undertake it.

The Biden/Harris ability to attract and retain world-class talent is a main reason why America’s new industrial strategy has worked. Largely led by Secretary Raimondo, the Department of Commerce has been re-invented as America’s innovation engine. As the HBS Case Study on the CHIPS act details,

The way they actually set up their whole shop at CHIPs, the whole office in a way is some risk mitigation effort in terms of bringing in super talented people who had experienced both the national security industry and the semiconductor industry and from the world of finance so they could actually evaluate these things in a sophisticated way. You got the evaluation process as a risk mitigator. You've got talent as a risk mitigator. You got all oversight from other entities as risk mitigation.

All this stops if Trump II happens. Trump I was managerial chaos; Trump II will be worse, filled with sycophants and supplicants whose jobs will be to root out science and world-class talent. Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz observes

"Donald Trump has no interest in creating a more just, robust, and sustainable economy. Instead, … It is a recipe for making the US economy weaker, less competitive, and less equal.” … "In Harris, the US has someone who would be thoughtful and pragmatic in weighing the trade-offs and devising balanced solutions. In Trump, we have an impulsive narcissist who thrives on chaos and rejects scientific expertise."

So .. for America’s national security, and for red-state job prospects, let’s root for Harris/Walz.

The first move to build on the great national security industrial and innovation strategy in place — is to fully fund the CHIPS and Science Act, and any remaining industrial strategy funds that were authorized — but not fully appropriated. Accelerating permitting, as Governor Walz knows, is also mission-critical. Here are three other areas of opportunity:

1. Reviving downtowns. America can’t afford a return to the 1970s-era empty, white-flight downtowns. The Commercial Real Estate market for central business district office buildings is a well-documented, slow-moving train wreck. Cities need help to move to the modern 15 minute modality. Cities like Denver are trying to accelerate office-residential conversions, with the help of great experts like Gensler — but most are attempting this with nominal dollars

   Calgary developers and building owners receive $75 per square foot in public incentives to help finance their adaptive reuse construction projects, according to McMullen. And thus far in Denver, developers and property owners have no clear path toward public funds.

Transit also needs support — no major transit system is back to even 75% of its pre-COVID volumes.

A Federal matching program, and competitive innovation grants like the $20 billion housing innovation fund announced by Harris/Walz but focused on conversions, transit, mixed-use development, and bike-and-walkability — are timely.

2. Tomorrow’s workforce today.

   The data is more clear than ever that the four year college experience is not and should not be the primary pathway for folks to affordably land family-sustaining career jobs, and to upskill through their lifetimes as our world of constant technological change demands. Nationally, we’re doing an abysmal job preparing folks for in-demand, family-sustaining, middle skills (i.e. < batchelor’s degree required) jobs;

   Nationwide, the credential supply for these positions is only predicted to meet half of projected annual job demand in 2032. That comes out to an annual projected shortage of at least 250,000 credentials.

   Colorado is no exception; Only three of Colorado’s 25 four-year institutions delivered median earnings for grads ten years out that even met this test:

   high-paying middle-skills jobs are those that require an associate degree or credential, but not a bachelor’s degree, and in which more than half of early-career workers earn at least $53,000 per year.

   

   As I’ve written before, we should have a national strategy to center community colleges as the place-based partners for lifelong, employer-connected, skills-based learning. They have the scale, infrastructure, and ability to move that can affect change at pace and scale. New intermediaries are wonderful — and too scattered and small to affect system chanage at the pace we need. Traditional higher ed institutions - with few exceptions (WGU, SNHU, Northeastern) are sclerotic.

   There are fast ways forward - -NVIDIA’s recent commitment to AI-enable all California community college students is a great step. Let’s do this nationally, immediately.

3. Family Offices as catalytic investors in America’s national security innovation strategy.

   “Family offices are about to surpass hedge funds, with $5.4 trillion in assets by 2030”

   I’d like to see a concerted national effort to energize this source of funds as critical and leverageable catalytic capital to kick-start the Harris/Walz innovation agenda around the country. This is already happening — Colorado-based family offices provided the seed capital for our TechHubs effort, which led to Colorado’s Elevate Quantum effort winning $42 million in Federal tech hub funding — one of only 12 in the country. They’ve also been essential to this year’s DenAI Summit, the first city-based initiative around AI for Social Good that is central to Mayor Johnston’s efforts to re-vibe Denver. The families behind these funds care terrifically about the places they call home (well, homes in many cases) and can move quickly and flexibly to provide the first-in capital critical to calayzing many of these initiatives. Harris/Walz can put a call out to America’s patriotic families to be the first-in funding to insure the nationa’s long-term competitiveness. They’ll respond.

How do you feel the Harris/Walz administration can best build out America’s place-based national security industrial strategy?