# Institute for Progress (IFP) **Draft profile.** Washington, DC think tank founded in **January 2022** by **Alec Stapp** and **Caleb Watney** as the policy-and-advocacy arm of the [[Progress Studies]] movement. IFP's stated mission is *"to accelerate scientific, technological, and industrial progress while safeguarding humanity's future"* — Progress Studies vocabulary translated into a DC operating model. Focus areas: **metascience, high-skilled immigration, biosecurity, and emerging technology**. ## Founders - **[[Alec Stapp]]** — Policy director at the Progressive Policy Institute; former Mercatus Center fellow; M.A. economics, George Mason University. - **[[Caleb Watney]]** — Policy director at the Progressive Policy Institute; former Mercatus Center fellow; M.A. economics, George Mason University. Both co-founders are products of the **Mercatus / GMU economics → DC think tank** pipeline that produced [[Tyler Cowen]]'s broader institutional network. Their PPI tenure and GMU credentials gave IFP immediate respectability in the bipartisan-wonk corridor. ## What It Does ### Metascience Research and advocacy on how the U.S. R&D system actually works — grant-making bureaucracy, peer review, NIH/NSF reform, DARPA-style ARPA proliferation, ARPA-H launch. IFP was a visible advocate during the Biden-era ARPA-H buildout and the bipartisan CHIPS-and-Science Act R&D appropriations. ### High-skilled immigration **IFP's most consequential policy work to date.** White papers, Congressional testimony, and op-eds pushing for green-card reform, H-1B expansion, "Heartland Visa" / O-1 expansion, and pathways for STEM PhD recipients. The org operates as one of the most influential pro-skilled-immigration voices in Washington — a politically rare position aligned with both Silicon Valley tech CEOs and traditional Chamber-of-Commerce Republicans. ### Biosecurity Pandemic preparedness, biosurveillance infrastructure, dual-use research governance. Heavy overlap with EA-funded biosecurity organizations (Open Philanthropy biosecurity portfolio, Nuclear Threat Initiative, Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security). ### Emerging technology AI policy, semiconductor industrial policy, energy permitting reform (NEPA, FERC, transmission). IFP has been a notable voice for the *"build more, regulate less"* permitting-reform coalition that gathered cross-partisan momentum in 2023–2025. ## Funding IFP's major institutional backers include **[[Open Philanthropy]]**, **[[Schmidt Futures]]**, and Stripe-adjacent personal donors. This places IFP at a direct funding intersection between: - **[[Dustin Moskovitz]] / Coefficient Giving** (Open Phil, EA megafunder) - **[[Eric Schmidt]]** (Schmidt Futures, AI/defense-adjacent megafunder) - **[[Patrick Collison]]** (Stripe / Progress Studies patron) That funding triad is **the financial signature of the Progress Studies movement** and one of the cleanest examples of how EA, defense-tech-adjacent, and Stripe-orbit capital converge on a single policy operation. ## Why It Matters in This KB ### 1. It is the policy-execution layer of Progress Studies [[Roots of Progress]] builds the writers and the community. [[Stripe Press]] publishes the canon. IFP **gets the actual legislation drafted, the actual testimony delivered, and the actual administrative-state reforms proposed.** It is where Progress Studies stops being a movement and starts being a policy operation. ### 2. It maps cleanly to defense-tech-adjacent priorities IFP's policy stack — fewer R&D regulations, more high-skilled immigration, more permitting reform, more biosecurity capacity, more semiconductor onshoring — is **substantively indistinguishable from the [[American Dynamism]] / defense-tech investor thesis** that runs through [[Anduril]] / [[Founders Fund]] / [[Andreessen Horowitz]]. IFP is not a defense-tech think tank, but it argues for the **policy preconditions** that make the defense-tech investor thesis work. ### 3. It is the most bipartisan-legible TESCREAL-adjacent think tank IFP's deliberate posture as a non-ideological metascience shop lets it work both sides of the aisle — testifying to Republican-controlled committees, partnering with progressive immigration advocates, citing both [[Sam Altman]] and Senator Bennet in the same memo. That bipartisan legibility is the **brand asset** of Progress Studies' policy arm. ### 4. It survives the Trump 2.0 environment that hostile-to-EA messaging now characterizes Where overtly EA-coded orgs ([[Centre for Effective Altruism]], [[Anthropic]] post-Pentagon-standoff, [[Open Philanthropy]] under its EA-flagged tagging) face political headwinds, IFP's progress-and-growth framing **rides the same priorities under a friendlier flag**. That makes IFP an important node for understanding how TESCREAL-adjacent ideology survives a politically hostile administration. ## Critiques - **Selection effects in policy focus.** IFP's "non-ideological" focus areas (immigration, R&D, biosecurity, permitting) reliably align with priorities of the tech-CEO investor class. Critics argue this is the politics laundered as technocracy. - **"Safeguarding humanity's future"** in the mission statement is functionally indistinguishable from [[Longtermism]] / [[Effective Altruism]] x-risk framing — but IFP doesn't market under that brand. - **Funding triangulation problem.** Taking money from Open Phil (EA), Schmidt Futures (defense-AI-adjacent), and Stripe-orbit personal donors means IFP cannot meaningfully critique any of them. ## Draft Notes / To Expand - Confirm exact incorporation date and 501(c)(3) filing - List Senior Fellows and full team - Document specific legislative wins (high-skilled immigration provisions in CHIPS-and-Science, ARPA-H buildout, permitting reform amendments) - Trace post-2024 election engagement with [[Trump 2.0]] personnel - Detail Schmidt Futures grant history - Add board composition - Pull testimony record before House Science Committee, Senate HELP, etc. ## See Also - [[Alec Stapp]] — Co-founder - [[Caleb Watney]] — Co-founder - [[Progress Studies]] — Parent movement - [[Roots of Progress]] — Sister organization (movement-building side) - [[Fast Grants]] — Metascience proof-of-concept that IFP advocates institutionalizing - [[Arc Institute]] — Permanent metascience institution IFP cites as a model - [[Mercatus Center]] — Founders' shared alumni home - [[Open Philanthropy]] — Major funder - [[Patrick Collison]] — Movement patron - [[Tyler Cowen]] — Movement co-founder - [[Eric Schmidt]] — Schmidt Futures funder - [[American Dynamism]] — Aligned defense-tech investor thesis - [[TESCREAL]] — Adjacent ideological bundle