Day One 2025

As people become less able to distinguish between what is real and what is fake, it has become easier than ever to be misled by synthetic content, whether by accident or with malicious intent. This makes advancing alternative countermeasures, such as technical solutions, more vital than ever before. 

The next administration should establish a Participatory Technology Assessment unit to ensure federal S&T decisions benefit society.

With a collaborative, cross-agency lens and a commitment to engaging jobseekers where they live, the government can enhance its ability to attract talent while underscoring to Americans that the federal government is not a distant authority but rather a stakeholder in their communities that offers credible opportunities to serve.

AI is transforming how children learn and live, and policymakers, industry, and educators owe it to the next generation to set in place a responsible policy that embraces this new technology while at the same time ensuring all children’s well-being, privacy, and safety is respected.

A peer support option should be integrated into the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline so that 988 service users can choose to connect with specialists based on a shared lived experience.

Given the rapid pace of AI advancement, a proactive effort triumphs over a reactive one. To protect consumers, workers, and the economy more broadly, it is imperative that the FTC and DOJ adapt their enforcement strategies to meet the complexities of the AI era.

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, which caused over $200 billion in global economic losses in 2023, is disrupting global supply chains and exacerbating migration pressures, particularly for the U.S. Investing in climate resilience abroad offers a significant opportunity for U.S. businesses in technology, engineering, and infrastructure, while also supporting job creation at home.

By leveraging its substantial purchasing power responsibly, the government can encourage high-quality, inclusive AI solutions that address diverse citizen needs while setting a strong precedent for innovation and accountability.

A new initiative targeting service investment to build resilience in low-capacity communities would help build capacity at the local level, train a new generation of service-oriented professionals, and ensure that federal funding gets to the communities that need it most.

The next administration should establish a national, federally-funded initiative to develop a robust and diverse pipeline of STEM talent.

The federal government should expand the FDA’s priority review voucher program and provide market exclusivity advantages to encourage the development of medications for addiction.

Declining U.S. manufacturing has sharply curtailed a key path to the middle class for those with high school educations or less, thereby exacerbating income inequality nationwide. The United States can address many of these problems through concerted efforts in advanced manufacturing.

The research community lacks strategies to incentivize collaboration on high-quality data acquisition and sharing. The government should fund collaborative roadmapping, certification, collection, and sharing of large, high-quality datasets in life science.

The potential of new nuclear power plants to meet energy demand, increase energy security, and revitalize local economies depends on new regulatory and operational approaches at the NRC.

In anticipation of future known and unknown health security threats, including new pandemics, biothreats, and climate-related health emergencies, our answers need to be much faster, cheaper, and less disruptive to other operations.

To unlock the full potential of artificial intelligence within the Department of Health and Human Services, an AI Corps should be established, embedding specialized AI experts within each of the department’s 10 agencies.

Investing in interventions behind the walls is not just a matter of improving conditions for incarcerated individuals—it is a public safety and economic imperative. By reducing recidivism through education and family contact, we can improve reentry outcomes and save billions in taxpayer dollars.

The U.S. government should establish a public-private National Exposome Project (NEP) to generate benchmark human exposure levels for the ~80,000 chemicals to which Americans are regularly exposed.

To respond and maintain U.S. global leadership, USAID should transition to heavily favor a Fixed-Price model to enhance the United States’ ability to compete globally and deliver impact at scale.

State, local, tribal, and territorial governments along with Critical Infrastructure Owners face escalating cyber threats but struggle with limited cybersecurity staff and complex technology management.

As cyber threats grow more complex and sophisticated, the nation’s ability to defend itself depends on developing a robust, adaptable, and highly skilled cybersecurity workforce.

For the United States to continue to be a competitive global power in technology and innovation, we need a workforce that understands how to use, apply, and develop new innovations using AI and Data Science.

Employee ownership is a powerful solution that preserves local business ownership, protects supply chains, creates quality jobs, and grows the household balance sheets of American workers and their families.

Congress should create a new Science and Technology Hub within the Government Accountability Office to support an understaffed and overwhelmed Congress in addressing pressing science and technology policy questions.

Federally financed debt can help fill critical funding gaps and complement ongoing federal grants, contracts, reimbursement, and regulatory policies and catalyze private-sector investment in innovation.

The Department of Education must provide guidance for education decision-makers to evaluate AI solutions during procurement, to support EdTech developers to mitigate bias in their applications, and to develop new fairness methods.

The challenges facing our country require a robust pipeline of talented and representative rising leaders across federal agencies. The Presidential Management Fellows program has historically been a leading source of such talent. 

In the nascent yet exponentially expanding world of AI in medical imaging, a well-defined standards and metrology framework is required to establish robust imaging datasets for true precision medicine, thereby improving patient outcomes and reducing spiraling healthcare costs.

The incoming presidential administration of 2025 should champion a policy position calling for strengthening of the connection between K-12 schools and community workplaces.

With tensions and aggressive rhetoric on the rise, the next administration needs to prioritize and reaffirm the necessity of regular communication with China on military and nuclear weapons issues to reduce the risk of misunderstandings.