Alec Stapp
@AlecStapp
Co-founder @IFP, an innovation policy think tank
This is the biggest risk we face right now:
The zero-sum trap: the more people believe that wealth, status, and well-being are zero-sum, the more they back policies that make the world zero-sum. marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolu…
60% of the American companies on Fortune's list of top AI innovators have an immigrant founder. The world’s top talent overwhelmingly wants to come to US. This is a incredible advantage. American leadership in AI depends on allowing, even encouraging, high-skilled immigration.
Zero-sum thinking generates negative-sum reality.
This is the biggest risk we face right now:
This is one of my guiding beliefs: it's not a zero sum game. From energy to housing - there's no reason we can't have more and make the world better for everyone.
This is the biggest risk we face right now:
Meta pays hundreds of millions for top tech talent while we shut down the high-skilled immigration pathways and research institutions which create them
1. Wind and solar both keep me up at night, but for opposite reasons. Solar works and is winning the global race, Britain simply sits too far north to benefit. Britain is betting on wind instead, yet wind lacks the very traits that makes solar work.
It is a major policy failure that the US cannot accommodate top AI conferences due to visa issues.
The People's Republic of China first began to build ships for export in 1975. By 2010, it had become the largest shipbuilder in the world, a title it still holds today. This week on Construction Physics, I look at the history of Chinese shipbuilding. construction-physics.com/p/how-china-be…
This one is burned into my brain
Twitter was launched 19 years ago. What is your favorite tweet ever?
Political abuse of NEPA is extremely bad. By refusing to "finish" an environmental review the government can effectively cancel any project on a political whim. This creates a massive tail-risk that project sponsors have to price in. x.com/SiegelScribe/s…
SCOOP: Trump taking new steps to block wind and solar projects, undisclosed memo says. Interior Sec Doug Burgum will have to sign off on any permits on federal lands. Stems from recent EO targeting tax credit phaseouts in megabill. w @zcolman subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/0…
re: tariff inflation discourse, it's worth mentioning again that if tariffs *don't* raise prices, then there's no way they "incentivize" domestic production The mechanism by which they're supposed to re-shore industry is by increasing prices for imported goods and reducing trade
Not good. It was bad when the last admin did this with oil and gas and it’s still bad for this admin to do this with wind and solar. There are lots of ways to encourage certain sources’ deployment. Sitting on disfavored sources’ permits is among the worst.
SCOOP: Trump taking new steps to block wind and solar projects, undisclosed memo says. Interior Sec Doug Burgum will have to sign off on any permits on federal lands. Stems from recent EO targeting tax credit phaseouts in megabill. w @zcolman subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2025/0…