 COVID-19, climate change, racial justice, weapons of mass destruction, extremist violence, high-tech revolution, human rights violations, great power rivalries, migration. U.S. security policy needs innovative responses to help us catch up to those and other challenges. At the same time, the way the United States makes security policy and who is at the table need to catch up to the realities of who our country is and who security is for. Earlier this year, the New Models of Policy Change Initiative at New America's Political Reform Program issued a call for policy essays offering innovative approaches to U.S. national security. We received more than 100 submissions from across the U.S. and all over the world from people with a range of backgrounds, employment, and life experiences. That's important because we know innovation comes from putting a new lens on an old problem, like Philip Emi Aguali, whose work on the first supercomputer was inspired by the way bees make honeycombs. Innovation comes from putting existing technologies to different uses, like the World War II Navajo Code Talkers, or the way space program research gave us microwave ovens, freeze-dried ice cream, and the Super Soaker. And innovation happens when we open the problem-solving table up to smart minds. Our essay authors had lots of ideas for ways to do U.S. security policy differently. They suggested that the United States teach more of its people in mechanical engineering and the history of racism. They proposed turning plastic waste into currency and starting a next generation of nuclear arms control. They want to make American diplomats better listeners and state-of-the-art consumers of artificial intelligence. A committee of prominent advisors from think tanks, government, and academia review the top essays, blind. They chose several of the very best ideas to present to you here. My name is Margaret Bachman. I'm a senior in Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, and my essay is called Holding the Line, the U.S. role in combating information warfare in Taiwan's electoral system. My essay argues that information warfare in Taiwan represents a significant threat to U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific, threatening the democratic system of a crucial U.S. partner. But it also represents an opportunity for the U.S. to invest in understanding Chinese tools of influence and to develop countermeasures before the tools are directed at American electoral systems. Combating Chinese information warfare should be a strategic priority in U.S. Indo-Pacific policy, and Taiwan represents the ideal focus for American engagement on this issue. Hi, my name is Chris Jackson, and I'm a graduate student at UC Berkeley. The title of my essay is Revamping Battery Storage Policies to Bolster U.S. National Security. So as the U.S. shifts towards more intermittent energy sources such as solar and wind, it is increasingly reliant on battery energy storage technologies. In current reliance on foreign supply chains and manufacturing, coupled with a growing military need for reliable battery technology, should prompt leaders to consider this urgent issue through a national security lens. To this end, the U.S. should work to increase research and development of new battery technologies, spur investment in commercialization, and drive demand for domestic manufacturing. My name is Ishan Sharma, and I'm a Herbert Scoville Junior Peace Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists. The piece I helped co-author titled Defending Democracy or Despots, Don't Leave Artificial Intelligence Reform to Authoritarians. Our surveillance industry is broken and morally bankrupt, but it may become our saving grace in fighting digitally empowered authoritarians who are perhaps the gravest threat to for your world. Citizens should never have to guess who, where, or what is under surveillance. Governments need to answer these questions, likely through public reports and posted signs. Before and after crime statistics, minority impact assessments, and express statements on the scope of data collection should become inherent features of the surveillance system. My name is Reneet Langer, and I'm also a Scoville Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. If we allow China to control the proliferation of AI surveillance, we risk the modern resurgence of authoritarianism finding permanence in recently digitizing, backsliding, and illiberal countries. America will only weaken in isolation. In contrast, by developing an ethical surveillance brand exported in moral lockstep, America can harmonize dissonance at home and abroad. I am hugely honored to be named one of the winners of New America's Essay Contest, and I'm also excited and grateful to have the chance to share my policy idea for an Asia-Pacific Risk Management Council. This council would combat two challenges that the US and its Pacific allies now face. First up, the allies are grappling with new non-military security threats, not only from an increasingly assertive China, but also from systemic shocks to regional interconnectivity like COVID-19. But at the same time, attempts to reinvent regional cooperation around purely military mutual defense have faltered because of strategic differences and historical distrust. My proposal is that the US should envision its Pacific alliance system not merely as a hub and spoke series of military alliances, but instead as a mechanism for managing risk. The collective security community, in other words, that is set up to defend against these non-military security threats. The APRMC would tackle three such threats, coercion, compromise and contagion. Coercion through economic exposure, such as China's boycotts against South Korea, Australia and others. Compromise of high tech supply chains such as through untrusted 5G networks. Agen of systemic shocks like COVID-19 and ransomware that cut across multiple domains. APRMC member nations would cooperate at the ministerial and agency-to-agency level, but they would also develop a network of centres of excellence, modeled after NATO's own, that tap private sector and civil society expertise. By protecting member countries against coercion, compromise and contagion, the APRMC offers a chance to rethink the security of the Asia Pacific, modernizing the US's Pacific alliance system for the new threats of the 21st century. To learn more about these ideas and their authors, check us out at newamerica.org or on Twitter at PaulReformNA.