Operation warp speed: Harbinger of American industrial innovation policies

Abstract

Operation warp speed (OWS) was a crash effort from 2020 to 2021 to undertake the late-stage development, production, and distribution of vaccines for the coronavirus pandemic. The vaccines were developed, approved, and available in a record time of 8 months using an industrial policy approach. Mainstream economists have long opposed industrial policy approaches as market interference, unless they can be justified by clear market failures. The nation has long had industrial economic policies in such areas as defense, health, transport, and agriculture. However, interventionist policies on the non-defense innovation side of the economy after the research stage have generally been avoided. OWS was a departure, an industrial innovation policy. OWS built a new organization with officials from major health science, regulatory, public health, and research agencies as well as the Defense Department. Elements of its program included: supporting a portfolio of different technology platforms, guaranteed contracts that enable production to evolve alongside development, flexible contracting mechanisms that enabled rapid procurement and intervention into supply chains, rapid technology certification that assured the new vaccines of rapid market entry, mapping supply chains and filling gaps to assure rapid production and distribution, and major product distribution. The elements applied in OWS amount to a new tool kit potentially relevant to other areas, and the USA is now pursuing a series of these in other technology fields.