Industrial Policy Under Uncertainty

In "Industrial Policy for an Age of Uncertainty" (Project Syndicate, May 2026), Yuen Yuen Ang, AGI Senior Fellow, begins with a distinction between uncertainty and risk: uncertainty does not mean unpredictability or calculable risk, but unknown possibilities that cannot be known in advance. In the 21st century, this condition is made acute by simultaneous disruptions across AI, deglobalization, climate, and geopolitics. Because winners cannot be identified ex ante, the challenge of industrial policy shifts from picking winners to discovering them, then tailoring support beyond the usual toolkit of tariffs and subsidies. One mechanism is directed improvisation, in which the state exercises influence rather than control to discover and scale successes that were not expected by planners.

Read the full article here. here