Simulated Top-Level Briefings Prepare Tomorrow’s Leaders

Featured in the Spring 2022 Newsletter »

As the culmination of their Spring Exercise requirement at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), Master of Public Policy (MPP) first-year students worked in groups to prepare briefing memos laying out detailed implementation plans to mine rare earth minerals on the moon by 2032. In late April, the student groups presented their plans in simulated “Final Decision Briefings” to either the U.S. President or the European Space Agency (ESA) Director General, role-played by various HKS faculty and staff.  

The final briefings were the third part of the three-phase exercise, which started with a fictional catastrophic earthquake that destroyed Mountain Pass Mine in California, the only (actual) rare earth mineral mine in the United States. The students heard from James Litinsky, CEO of mine owner MP Materials, who made the scenario realistic by laying out the impacts of the destroyed mine. The students then got briefings on rare earth mineral supply chains from the Belfer Center’s Geopolitics of Energy Director Meghan O’Sullivan and Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary for Acquisitions & Sustainment at the Department of Defense Aditi Kumar. Belfer Fellow D'Seante Parks spoke on the importance of crisis communications.  

The following day, students had to switch gears and prepare policy options for National Security Council briefings to NSC officials (played by Belfer Center Co-Director Eric Rosenbach and Executive Director Natalie Colbert) on Ukraine post-conflict reconstruction and war crimes prosecutions. In these briefings, students role-played Cabinet-level leaders and associated senior staff to craft and debate recommendations across key policy issues. They were offered opportunities to conduct dry runs of their presentations ahead of time with Belfer Center National Security Fellows.  

While the student task for the final briefing was to present detailed plans and briefing memos, the role of the principals in the simulation was to provide tough assessments of, and questions about, the plans presented by each team to make the lunar mining goal a reality. A successful lunar mining plan would secure for the United States/EU a continuing supply of rare earth minerals that are essential components of clean energy, information technology, defense, and industrial applications. Currently, 85% of the world’s supply of rare earth minerals come from China. Supply chain problems during the pandemic highlighted the problems inherent in depending on other countries for these vital minerals. 

The principal in the simulation was charged with ensuring that the presenters included everything in their plan from clearly defined goals and timelines to necessary lunar mining technology, private sector involvement, solid legal basis for lunar mining, cost estimates, budget, risk, and political and communications strategy. An essential goal for the POTUS option was the passage of an “Operation Moonshot Act” to provide a 10-year appropriation bill and use of funding from the annual National Defense Authorization Act. 

Spring Exercise is the capstone of the semester’s coursework required of all first-year public policy graduate students at HKS. The focus of the exercise this year was policy execution and implementation, using systems thinking and project management that the students studied during the semester. 

Belfer Center Co-Director Eric Rosenbach was a lead organizer of Spring Exercise. Center members who played the role of U.S. President or ESA Director General included Center Executive Director Natalie Colbert, Professors Graham Allison, Linda Bilmes, Matthew Bunn, John P. Holdren, and Tarek Masoud, Intelligence Project Director Paul Kolbe, and Visiting Scholar Afreen Siddiqi. 

Rosenbach’s Research Assistant Emily O'Toole, a graduating MPP student, and Mid-Career student Heather Ichord, contributed extensively to the planning and running of the exercises. “Emily's and Heather's contributions were amazing and it wouldn't have happened without their months of hard work,” Rosenbach noted.