Recently, we caught sight of a new think tank, called the Center for Industrial Strategy. Now, you now knew think tanks always interest us, and everything industry and manufacturing is very hot these days.

And then we found they had done something very interesting: digitized and published all the speeches and memos of Admiral Hyman Rickover, "also known as the Father of the Nuclear Navy," who "built the first nuclear-powered submarine and the first civilian nuclear power reactor."

That is an unconventional thing for a think tank to focus on. And you know we like unconventional.

So we had to learn more, and we got in touch with Charles Yang, who is the founder and President of the Center for Industrial Strategy. Our interview follows, lightly edited for clarity.

PolicySphere: Why don't you start by telling us about yourself and your background?

Charles Yang, Center for Industrial Strategy: I studied engineering in school and worked on AI for science at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, then joined an AI hardware startup in the San Francisco Bay area. I was interested in industrial policy, so I joined the Department of Energy two and a half years ago and helped start up our new manufacturing and energy supply chain office. I helped deploy over $10 billion for manufacturing and critical minerals and worked on tax credits for critical minerals as well. I left the Department of Energy five or six months ago. When I left, what I felt was really missing in the ecosystem was someone working on industrial policy exclusively. A lot of people talk about it at some intersection or with a particular angle, but I didn't feel like there was anyone specifically focused on how do we actually make this work—industrializing the US and building US industrial power. I felt like if there's no one else doing it, might as well be me. That's why I started the Center for Industrial Strategy. We're building a bipartisan coalition around policies that support US industrial power.

PolicySphere: You must have been asked this a million times, but why does the world need a new think tank?

Charles Yang: (Laughter.) If you had told me a year ago that I would be starting a think tank, I think I would have said that's really cringe and really stupid. But what brought me around to it was that I'm a big believer in state capacity and having support from government, which is why I went into government. I think I did a lot while I was there, but I'm only one person and can only do so much. So how do you build a movement around something? You could be a political appointee—you can do a lot from that angle, but that becomes very partisan and you're only there for 4 to 8 years. Another way is to run for office, and there's a lot to be said for that as a way to build a movement, but for a number of reasons I decided I didn't want to run for office. That left think tanks.

I think of think tanks as vessels for different movements. Each think tank represents a particular ideology, set of people, and particular framing on issues. I didn't see anyone that was specifically focused on this, despite many people talking about it for five years now. Everyone's saying it, but when you look at them, it turns out they don't care about it at all. It was a means to an end, a convenient talking point to do other things. But a lot of people actually don't care about it at all. When I looked at the landscape, I didn't feel like there was anyone specifically focused on this. There are traditional institutions organized around traditional policy areas, but no one has reorganized themselves to look at industrial policy seriously.

The other layer is that policy advocacy communication has changed. There's Twitter. Very few think tanks are updated on that. I take inspiration from groups like Foundation for American Innovation, who have some of the best talent and communications. There are very few think tanks like that, so there's still space for innovation and new ways of doing things in the policy arena today.

PolicySphere: Is there a unifying theme to your work beyond "industry is good"? Is there a guiding philosophy to how you view industrial strategy and industrial policy?

Charles Yang: There's recognition that industrial capacity and industrial competitiveness is key to national security and global power. Many people say that now, but who has really fundamentally reorganized themselves and how they think about policy around that truth? Not many people have.

That is essentially the project. We started in three areas, Critical Minerals, Great Industrialists, and Economic Development, because they are where we have early traction and where we feel like we have something new to add to the conversation.

On economic development, everyone thinks of industrial policy as a federal policy arena, which it is, but we need to get the states and localities involved as well. They play an important role in making this work, and no one is paying attention to that.

The industrialists is probably even more underrated. If you want to do this, who's actually doing the thing? You need smart people with industry experience working in government. How do you make that happen? How do you inspire people to do that? That has gotten a lot of traction and interest because no one is addressing that question.

PolicySphere: What's next for you?

Charles Yang: We're going to be doing a lot more on the industrialists in the fall, building out a talent pipeline for that area. We've done thought leadership work, but we're going to start building out a talent pipeline to actually get people into government with that kind of background. We're also expanding our energy and critical minerals work. We'll be doing work on hydropower, which has been a really underrated source of baseload generation.

PolicySphere: Now, about your approach. Some think tanks just do research, and publish it, and if policymakers pick it up, that's their business. Others are all about impact. How do you see yourselves?

Charles Yang: If all we do is get Twitter clout, I will have wasted my time. There are plenty of people who have Twitter clout who talk about industrialization but aren't doing anything. We're vertically integrated—you both need to be good at Twitter and actually need to do the thing. There are people on Twitter, some people who do the thing, but few who do both. You need some element of both these days. I was on the Hill yesterday. We are engaging with Hill offices. I was at the Commerce Department doing a private roundtable on castings the week before that. We have administration contacts, and the benefit is people are excited about this topic. They see there's demand for it and recognize there's not a lot of supply. The report is never the only work product—it's just the most visible. The report is a forcing function to get people to do roundtables, to talk to people. We threw a rave for nuclear energy at a club in D.C. two months ago. We're doing a fellowship in the fall. We do reports, but we're also going to have videos. We're doing all kinds of different plays. Half of this stuff would be totally incoherent to a traditional think tank—you want to throw a rave? You want to tweet more? That's part of why I wanted to start my own thing.