Statecraft in 2026
Also: we're hiring!
This newsletter is less polished than most Statecraft installments, which I hope you’ll forgive. I’m writing this after recording three episodes over the past three days; usually, I record one a week. The reason I’m stockpiling episodes is that I’ll be on paternity leave toward the end of February,1 and my goal is for Statecraft publication to continue uninterrupted for the duration of that period. Hence the cram, and the lack of polish on this installment.
Below are a couple notes about Statecraft in 2026: What we’ve done so far, and what I’m hoping to tackle.
I’m hiring!
Specifically, I’m looking for an editor to join my editorial team at IFP (the tremendously effective and exciting think tank at which I work). You can find more details in the job description here and in a short Twitter thread I created about the role here. The TL;DR is that we need someone who loves the written word. This person needs to be able to inhabit a role that is sometimes adversarial (authors and editors disagree sometimes!) and still be not just pleasant but a joy to work with. And this person needs sharp instincts about how to reach a wide range of audiences, from the general public to issue-area experts to a specific person in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Note that this role will not primarily touch Statecraft; it’s mainly about supporting the core IFP team.
The deadline is EOD Monday, January 19th. That’s next Monday — act fast. We’re offering a $3,000 referral bounty if we hire the person you refer (if you’re encouraging someone to apply, just have them mention your name in the application).2
The Statecraft state of play
The last time I did one of these yearly roundups, we’d just crossed the 10k subscriber mark.
A bit more than a year later, we’ve more than doubled that number: we’re currently a few hundred subscribers shy of 30k. We’ve managed to put out 109 episodes, more or less keeping our one-a-week cadence. Also, without giving away details, Statecraft was read at a pretty high level this year. Our readership in Congress grew substantially, as well as our readership in the executive branch.
And this newsletter’s real-world impact was substantial this year.
Some goals for this year
We’re going to keep doing individual interviews: that’s the bread and butter. I have a list of ~400 people I’d like to talk to at some point, and it keeps growing. There are just so many people who have expertise to provide, who have a valuable lens on how the state actually works mechanically, who can tell interesting stories, and who have not told them yet. There’d be enough there for 10 Statecrafts, and that’s leaving aside the household names or guests who have had more media exposure. But we’re also planning to experiment with a few things.
One is to trial some episodes that take a little longer to put together, and require a little more investigative and production work to create. Individual interviews can be valuable reporting, and they can reveal new facts about the world, but they’re not the ideal mode for digging up a full story. For that, we need multiple voices and longer lead times. Some of these episodes are going to be about stories that have perhaps not been as carefully or as intensely covered as I think they should be.
Another experiment is video, which we’re going to take a stab at this year. More to come on that front in the summer.
Last thing for now: If you’re reading this, thank you for your support over the past two and a half years. It is so much fun to produce this project, I feel very lucky for the opportunity, and I have that opportunity because you read and listen to this series and are constantly pushing me to get better.
So please, if you’re not already telling your friends about Statecraft, let me know what to improve about Statecraft to make it worth telling your friends about.
Our second, thanks for asking!
Referral bounties are a hiring tool I first saw at IFP, and I can’t recommend them highly enough. They’re a small fraction of the overall cost of hiring a candidate, and in my experience using them substantially improves the quality of the talent pool for a role.