Moonshots are in. I’m not referring to space travel, although the regular launches and landings of space probes suggest that the conventional use of the word is apropos. Here, “moonshots” are grand, government-backed missions that unite the considerable powers of the state, its scientists and its entrepreneurs to accomplish a single goal.
There are many potential moonshots, from creating a vaccine for COVID-19 to solving global warming. What differentiates them from other problems is that they address extraordinary, if not existential, challenges.
The pursuit of moonshots is forcing a reassessment among governments that normally — wrongly in many cases — view industrial policy as an aberration, a dangerous indulgence that is inefficient at best and corrupt at worst. China’s impressive performance in its super-charged economic competition with the West has forced those governments to reconsider their opposition to greater intervention in the market.