It illustrates best practices in program design, as well as in government contracting. OWS is a working model of how different government agencies, and the private sector, can cooperate to quickly solve a technological challenge. To avoid stagnation, it should involve competition among firms as well-which in OWS took the form of a race for FDA approval of vaccines.īut OWS can also be understood as a specifically American operational success story, a government structure that can be used to implement industrial strategy more broadly. Instead, reindustrialization requires sustained demand 2-as provided by Warp Speed’s guaranteed contracts. Investing in only basic scientific research, the traditional strategy of the United States, is not sufficient.

OWS offers insights into what is required to rebuild American production of key medical products and other industrial capabilities more generally. developmental state, despite forty years of ideological assault. government can still accomplish when it comes to tackling a seemingly unsolvable technological challenge.

But it was also a triumph and validation of industrial policy.

Operation Warp Speed was a triumph of public health policy. A partnership between the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Defense (DoD), other agencies, and the private sector, its goal was to “accelerate the testing, supply, development, and distribution of safe and effective vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics to counter Covid-19.” As a result of OWS, millions of lives were saved from the pandemic. Operation Warp Speed 1 (OWS) was launched on May 15, 2020.

Operation warp speed vaccine