The Current Ontological and Political Challenges of Implementing a WWII R&D Mobilization Model for Clean Energy

The WWII R&D mobilization model is a good starting point for current clean energy challenges, but the ontological and political challenges that academic-governmental relations are fraught with make that uniquely challenging in the modern policy landscape.

One of the first main challenges is the breakdown between government and academia. There has been a substantial divide built up between the two in the United States, which makes the type of innovation support that is one of the 3 key structures explained by Gross & Sampat much more challenging to encourage (Gross & Sampat, 2023). This can largely be credited to two specific challenges, one of a political perspective and one that is more ontological. 

Politically, there has been a substantial discreditation of higher education institutions because of their inherently left-leaning environments, which have historically been symptomatic of institutions that are devoted to critical thinking and peer review. Essentially, with an increasing far-right presence in the United States, universities have become, in the far-right view, a bastion for “leftist” thought and practice. This is very visible in the current landscape of weaponized federal defunding of universities that don’t adhere to its strict reformist guidelines. Instead, the push for innovation has been shifted to industry and government contractors. This leads to dangerous opportunities for the monopolization of industry spaces through government support, in the name of encouraging innovation. By bringing innovation out of dedicated research institutions and into the hands of primarily profit-driven institutions, there will be very little incentive to innovate in key technologies that aren’t directly profitable in the short-term (e.g., high upfront costs).

Looking a little deeper into this gap between government and academia brings up ontological differences. In the 1990s, academia started shifting toward postmodern thinking, which is portrayed to/believed by many as a discreditation of “objective” scientific truth. This ontological difference between “realism”, so to speak, and postmodernism has become the main driver of substantial ideological differences between policymakers and academics. This is especially present in the field of political science, and is very visible in relations between academia and policy spaces, with both looking down their noses at each other. In my opinion, the point of academia is to explore the most detailed nuances in not just the science of a technology, but of how it is used and presented in the world. Policy spaces often need less nuanced, more definitive statements of “fact” that may, in fact, oversimplify complicated issues.

This all ties in to McBride because US industrial policy has been positioned towards competing with and recreating the vast supply chains that China has consistently dominated. McBride argues that the United States needs to focus on innovation in underexplored sectors and “Leapfrog Opportunities”, which requires substantial investment and an approach that isn’t directly possible through solely market-driven “invisible hand” economics (McBride, 2024). One different opinion that McBride brings up that nicely augments the WWII mobilization model is bringing science diplomacy to the table and supporting foreign laboratories and universities. This is very in line with the globalized economy that the United States has become in the last 30-40 years.

There are several ways to challenge this. One major challenge is the very concept of ontological nuance in innovation and science. In my opinion, innovation in a void doesn’t exist. The application of a technology is what should be used to evaluate its new role. However, many believe that science stands alone, and they would apply that logic to discredit the majority of my theory. Another way to discredit this view is to look at it from a protectionist lens, which would discredit any argument that relies upon globalization, which McBride (and I) are advocating for.