How to Build the British ARPA
This is the first installment in a new Statecraft series: we’re calling it our across-the-pond edition. Intermittently over the next few months, we’ll be sharing interviews with British civil servants, policy makers, and iconoclasts. Don’t worry: we’re not giving up our focus on American institutions. But we think comparing and contrasting with our counterparts over there can help us better understand the policy environment over here.
Today’s interviewee, James Phillips, was formerly the science and tech adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson. An acclaimed systems neuroscientist, Phillips helped develop the UK’s rapid COVID testing and helped create the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA).
I'd previously been in neuroscience. During my PhD, I'd become very interested in how science might be more effective and how we might change how we organize and fund scientists to get better results. This is now broadly known as “applied metascience.” In January 2020, Dominic Cummings, who was Prime Minister Boris Johnson's Chief Adviser, put out a blog post to try to bring in people from outside government who wouldn't usually get into government. The idea was to diversify the range of backgrounds, experiences, and skillsets that would be around the Prime Minister. And I was one of those who was brought in.
I ended up walking through the door of Downing Street on April 15th, three days after the Prime Minister left the hospital and midway through the first lockdown. It was a surreal time to enter government. I’d come in to look at how to improve science, but the pandemic ended up being a major part of the first year, at least.
