A Statecraft Table of Contents

And nice PDFs!

Jan 27, 2026

An overview of most Statecraft posts, organized by topics (this is a rough guide, as many posts touch on multiple topics).1 This ToC was last updated on February 13th, 2026.

I’ve added a pdf to each post with tidy print formatting, for those of you who like to read in analog formats.

Governance and state capacity

What’s Wrong with Nonprofits? | PDF
99.8% of Federal Employees Get Good Performance Reviews. Why? | PDF
Why We Don’t Build Apartments for Families | PDF
How to Bring Down Healthcare Costs | PDF
Trump’s H-1B Changes Will Backfire | PDF
How to Write the AI Action Plan | PDF
Leninist Technocracy with Grand Opera Characteristics | PDF
Four Ways to Fix Government HR | PDF
How to Be a Good Intelligence Analyst | PDF
Governance Lessons from the Constitutional Convention | PDF
What Can We Learn from Estonia? | PDF
How to Run a $5 Trillion Payment System | PDF
How to Fix a Department’s Funding Tools | PDF
There Are Too Many Judicial Injunctions | PDF
Three Principles for Running a White House Office | PDF
How to Beat Megafires | PDF
Why the Two Parties Operate Differently | PDF
How to Budget for the SEC | PDF
How to Win an Election Against the Communists | PDF
Did the Courts Just Nuke Environmental Review? | PDF
How Bureaucracy Is Breaking Government | PDF
How OIRA Works | PDF
How to Build State Capacity | PDF
How to Invest Federal Funds Like a VC | PDF
How to Actually Implement a Policy | PDF
How to Hide the Manhattan Project | PDF
How to Stop Losing 17,500 Kidneys | PDF
How to Find Your Mate | PDF
How to Make Government Less like the DMV | PDF
How to Make Immigration Regulations | PDF
How to Reform High-Skilled Immigration | PDF
How to Procure Advanced Military Tech | PDF
How to Salvage the VA | PDF

Congress

Is the Senate Fixing Housing Policy? | PDF
How to Modernize Congress | PDF
How to Investigate the Federal Government | PDF
How to Assess the Future’s Technologies | PDF
How to Forecast the American Budget | PDF
How to Teach Congress to Do Its Job | PDF
How to Pass the CHIPS and Science Act | PDF

Presidential power

What President Trump Should Do | PDF
How to Defend Presidential Authority | PDF
How to Hide the President’s Condition | PDF
How to Present Decisions to POTUS | PDF

State and local governance

How to Rewire City Hall | PDF
Should the Feds Bail Out Chicago? | PDF
How to Run New York City | PDF
How to Fix Risk Assessment in Child Welfare | PDF
How to Beat Crime in New York City | PDF

Economics and industrial policy

One Year of Trump’s Economic Statecraft | PDF
Did the CHIPS “Everything Bagel”...Work? | PDF
What Is America’s Infrastructure Cost Problem? | PDF
How to Run the Treasury Department | PDF
Launching the Techno-Industrial Policy Playbook | PDF
Does Anyone in Government Care About Productivity Growth? | PDF
How to Report Inflation to the President | PDF
How to Calm Oil Markets | PDF
How to Shape a Market | PDF
How to Wrangle the President’s Economists | PDF
How to Allocate $52 Billion in CHIPS Funding | PDF

Transit

How Cheaply Could We Build High-Speed Rail? | PDF
How to Save DC’s Metro | PDF
How the Federal Transit Administration Works | PDF
How to Salvage a Transit Project | PDF

DOGE

How to Build the ‘90s DOGE | PDF
Highlights from the Comments on “50 Thoughts on DOGE” | PDF
50 Thoughts on DOGE | PDF
What to Expect From DOGE | PDF
More (Brief) Thoughts on DOGE | PDF

Science and research policy

What’s Wrong with NIH Grants? | PDF
How to Save Science Funding | PDF
How to Predict the Future | PDF
How to Salvage a Nuclear Waste Facility | PDF
How to Speedrun a New Drug Application | PDF
How to Buy Stuff Like DARPA Does | PDF
How to Replicate Operation Warp Speed | PDF
How to Use Challenge Prizes | PDF
How to Run Good DARPA Programs | PDF
How to Treat Schizophrenia | PDF

Foreign affairs

Diplomacy

How to Track Santa | PDF
How Diplomacy Works in Africa | PDF
How to Fix Foreign Aid | PDF
How to Ban Biological Weapons | PDF
How to Reverse a Coup | PDF
How to Save Twenty Million Lives | PDF

Defense

How to Build a Flying Ebola Hospital | PDF
How to Produce a Kamikaze Drone | PDF
How to Rebuild the Arsenal of Democracy | PDF
How to Prep Hospitals for a Shooting War | PDF
How to Fix Defense Procurement | PDF

Russia

Order of Operations in a Regime Change | PDF
How to Run a Private Military Company | PDF
How to Stage a Coup | PDF
How to Catch a Lab Leak | PDF
How To Secure Weapons-Grade Uranium | PDF

Iraq & Afghanistan

Lessons from Iraq and Afghanistan | PDF
How to Fix the State Department | PDF
How to Recruit Iraqi Weapons Scientists | PDF
How to Run a CIA Base in Afghanistan | PDF
How the Government Loses a Road | PDF

Britain

How UK Biobank Was Built | PDF
What Can the Brits Teach Us About State Capacity? | PDF
How to Make a World Cup Bid | PDF
How to Build the British ARPA | PDF

Other

Roundups

About

I’m cribbing this idea from my colleague Brian Potter, who writes Construction Physics.

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