A note from the editor

From the editor

The seventh floor of the State Department is where the Secretary sits. The seventh floor at Langley is where the Director sits. It is the floor where the decisions get made, and the floor that is supposed to answer for their actions. We named the publication after it because that is the question we keep asking: this is what you said you would do, so what did you do?

I spent this summer on a research project that came down to one finding. The tools to fix the problem I was studying already existed. The people who could have used them were not paid to. That changed how I read everything afterward. An institution that cannot do something is one kind of story. An institution that can and does not is a different one, and the second is almost always closer to reality. We do not assume bad intent. We assume people and agencies behave the way their incentives tell them to, and we go find the document that shows where the incentives pointed.

Our first two pieces are the model. One is a single chart: the federal debt against what the Congressional Budget Office projected in 2001, with the ten decisions along the way that explain the distance. The other is the first part of a series called The Gap: one agency, one exchange on the Senate floor, and two proposals two years apart that cite the same words for opposite conclusions.

Three of us run it. I am the editor in chief, in Pittsburgh, and I cover foreign policy. Jack Eustice is a founding editor, in Arlington, Virginia, and covers health policy. Kaz Rubel is also a founding editor, from the Bay Area, and covers AI and mathematics. The site is theirs as much as mine.

A piece runs when there is one worth running. Reading is free. The newsletter is one email per piece. Documents we should see go to tips@theseventhfloor.press. Pitches go to submissions@theseventhfloor.press.