Jennifer Pahlka: belief

Transcript context

…You use the defense example. If we think about what has worked, it seems to me that outsourcing nonbureaucratic activity to, say, Palantir, Anduril has been very cost-effective, probably militarily effective. We’ll see. Also, Christopher Kirchhoff’s unit has worked pretty well. So, why don’t we do more of that? Just take government agencies and sidestep them. Create a new NIH, call it something else, figure it will be good for 10 or 20 years, and then we’ll need to start all over again. In the meantime, we cut the budget of the current NIH, say, in half and create a new agency like a DARPA for health, which we have a version of already. Why not just keep on doing that? Create new things and destroy parts of old ones. That does happen. That’s what we call the bureaucratic rigidity cycle. We haven’t, I think, been disciplined enough about dismantling the old when we create the new. I experienced that myself helping start USDS, the United States Digital Service. It’s creating something new, but it still — and I think, even up until inauguration day — just had far less power than the existing infrastructures, CIOs of agencies, the procurement frameworks. That stuff has a life of its own and a power of its own. If you are creating these skunk works to disrupt the old stuff, it has to actually disrupt the old stuff. You can’t just add. If you’re just adding new layers on the face — Yes, so start with the cuts. What’s something right now you’d be willing to cut half of it? Not knowing what will be added. No package deals. You’ve just got to hope and pray for the best.…

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