Trumps Operation Warp Speed: A Triumph That Will Now Go Forward As Permanent Industry Policy

Operation Warp Speed was a triumph of public health policy. But it was also a triumph and validation of industrial policy. OWS demonstrates the strength of the U.S. developmental state, despite forty years of ideological assault.https://t.co/EZZrBkiAcW

— American Affairs (@AmericanAffrs) May 21, 2021

 Operation Warp Speed¹ (OWS) was launched on May 15, 2020. A partnership between the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Defense (DoD), other agencies, and the private sector, its goal was to “accelerate the testing, supply, development, and distribution of safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diag­nostics to counter Covid-19.” As a result of OWS, millions of lives were saved from the pandemic.

Operation Warp Speed was a triumph of public health policy. But it was also a triumph and validation of industrial policy. OWS shows what the U.S. government can still accomplish when it comes to tackling a seemingly unsolvable technological challenge. It demonstrates the strength of the U.S. developmental state, despite forty years of ideological assault.

OWS offers insights into what is required to rebuild American production of key medical products and other industrial capabilities more generally. Investing in only basic scientific research, the tra­ditional strategy of the United States, is not sufficient. Instead, reindustrialization requires sustained demand²—as provided by Warp Speed’s guaranteed contracts. To avoid stagnation, it should involve competition among firms as well—which in OWS took the form of a race for FDA approval of vaccines.

But OWS can also be understood as a specifically American oper­ational success story, a government structure that can be used to implement industrial strategy more broadly. OWS is a working mod­el of how different government agencies, and the private sector, can cooperate to quickly solve a technological challenge. It illustrates best practices in program design, as well as in government contracting.

Though OWS was created to accelerate the development, manufacturing, and distribution of vaccines, this same institutional model could be used for other technological and manufacturing challenges facing the United States. Conventional fiscal or monetary policy is no longer working effectively to foster domestic productivity growth or to prevent deindustrialization. OWS‑type interventions offer an entirely new set of economic poli­cies that could be a blueprint for industrial strategy going forward. OWS shows how the United States can reimagine and leapfrog existing manufacturing paradigms to dom­inate the technologies of the future. The model offers new ways to bolster economic security and ultimately national security as well.

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