Moonshots

The Architecture of Competence to Launch Them

Godspeed John Glenn. Small steps, giant leaps. Images from Hubble and the Webb Telescopes. Artemis orbiting the far side of the moon. Vivid and timeless reminders that, even in these divided times, we are capable of hard things.

Tranquility Base isn’t the only place American greatness was displayed for the world. Americans built the Hoover Dam, split the atom, and developed the polio vaccine. The smartphone or laptop you’re reading this on originated in the minds, garages, and labs scattered across Silicon Valley.

Hard things are possible if we point ourselves in the right direction and have the collective resolve to do them. The muscle memory is there. We saw it with Operation Warp Speed during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Over the next several months I’m going to explore six potential 21st century moonshots along with the architecture of competence that makes them possible. It is not an exhaustive list nor is it meant to be representative of every problem facing the country.

Collectively, they require ambition, will, and consensus. They also require measurement of return on investment. Every new dollar of federal spending should return a multiple of the outlay while improving lives for all Americans.

The eight-piece series introduces an architecture of organizational competence that can have lasting impact on our people and our country. It is not a wish list. It is a blueprint to rebuild the architecture of competence that makes moonshots possible. The architecture improves decision making under pressure and is designed to allow leaders to establish and communicate intent, synthesize information, measure results on established timelines, double down on what is working, and kill what is not. This architecture works in government, in businesses, and in organizations both large and small.

The first five moonshots are not inherently aspirational. They are foundational. Maslow starts with shelter, safety, food, and health. A nation that fails there forfeits the right to ask its citizens to dream. You can’t layer the transformational and aspirational on a cracked foundation.

The sixth is foundational in a different way. Without it none of the others are possible.

Moonshot 1. Education.

How do we change education to prepare our kids for a world where their coworkers will include AI agents? How do we teach them to think and co-create alongside AI in an epoch where the collective knowledge of humanity accompanies them in their pocket everywhere they go?

To equip them for the future, we must move beyond rote memorization of facts. We must teach the critical thinking, technical, and scientific skills that make the other moonshots possible.

In a world of deepfakes and algorithmic bias, the most important technical skill we can teach our kids is the scientific method. It is the only tool we have to distinguish between a breakthrough and a con, a hallucination and truths grounded in data. If our leadership is blind or ignorant to the difference, and refuses to interrogate the facts, we aren’t just losing our edge; we are losing our legitimacy.

Moonshot 2. Housing.

I travel the country nearly every week and the poverty is devastating. People sleeping on the walkway leading to the Spokane Falls, near the statue of General Pershing and Pancho Villa in El Paso, and on the streets of Santa Barbara and Santa Monica.

More people are working remotely. Young people are rejecting the office and the commute. How can we reimagine millions of square feet of underutilized work spaces to quickly get people off the streets and into homes? How can we create affordable housing that provides dignity and an onramp to health and employment?

Moonshot 3. Healthcare.

Why is access to healthcare tied to employment? Why is the accident of health insurance provided as an incentive to Rosie the Riveter during World War II still the design of the system today? Employer based private health insurance stifles economic growth, inhibits job mobility, introduces profit margin, and limits access. How many potential great entrepreneurs stayed in their middle management jobs because they needed healthcare coverage for a child with a disability or a spouse with a chronic illness?

We can keep the best of the system we have today while figuring out how to expand coverage and shift the cost curve by investing in outcome based care rather than fee for service.

Moonshot 4. Public Transportation.

We can travel from London to Paris by train in a few hours. Northeast Regional service from New York to Boston covers nearly the same distance and takes double the time. Why haven’t we connected Houston, San Antonio, and Austin on a high-speed rail? Destroying the highway gridlock choking the region unlocks productivity, cleans the air, and makes our cities more livable.

The country that built the transcontinental railroad, invented the airplane, and popularized the automobile can figure out that Uber isn’t the most efficient way to get road warriors from midtown to LaGuardia on a rainy Thursday night when the United Nations is in session and the Rangers are at home.

Moonshot 5. Entitlements.

Social Security and Medicare are teetering on the brink of insolvency. Democrats know it. Republicans know it. Maybe it’s time we did something about it. The fastest growing age group in the country is over 90. The Social Security system designed for life expectancy of the 1930s is ill equipped for the life expectancy of the 2030s. We need to keep the promises to workers within 15 years of retirement while reimagining what it looks like for younger workers.

Hiding from the problem for fear of touching the third rail doesn’t make the problem go away.

It sets the stage for a future crisis where the price of political inertia is far greater than the cost of fiscally and morally responsible governance.

Moonshot 6: Fiscal Responsibility.

Last week the Treasury Department announced that our national debt surpassed the gross domestic product. This came to light as the administration asked for $1.5 trillion on defense. Annual interest expense on the debt now exceeds $1 trillion. Decades of profligate, unprioritized, and irresponsible spending limit our ability to launch the other five moonshots.

Fiscal responsibility isn’t just about the size of the government. Fiscal responsibility is about accountability and stewardship of tax dollars.

In 1941, Senator Harry Truman didn’t wait for a report from a bipartisan commission on war spending. He got in his car, drove to the defense plants, and exposed the waste, fraud, and rot slowing down the Arsenal of Democracy. He proved you could be a fierce patriot and a ruthless auditor at the same time.

Not everything will work. Programs will fail. Competing priorities will crowd some spending out and redirect it toward new challenges.

But the North Star of clear strategic intent, a Hub to synthesize data, a Clock with clearly defined timelines, a Scoreboard to measure results, and a Throttle to accelerate or kill programs become the strategic levers we deploy to manage them effectively.

Austerity is not the answer. We can’t cut our way out of this mess. Strategic investment, responsible governance, and definable metrics will get us back on the path to sustainable growth.

James Madison gave Congress the power of the purse. We cannot build high-speed rail, reform our schools, or save Social Security if we are governed by whim, petulance, and grievance rather than the weight of vision and responsibility.

Roosevelt, Marshall, and Truman knew that you can’t build an Arsenal of Democracy on a foundation of rot. Do we?