EA - Want to make a difference on policy and governance? Become an expert in something specific and boring by ASB

Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: Want to make a difference on policy and governance? Become an expert in something specific and boring, published by ASB on August 31, 2023 on The Effective Altruism Forum.I sometimes get a vibe that many people trying to ambitiously do good in the world (including EAs) are misguided about what doing successful policy/governance work looks like. An exaggerated caricature would be activities like: dreaming up novel UN structures, spending time in abstract game theory and 'strategy spirals', and sweeping analysis of historical case studies.Instead, people that want to make the world safer with policy/governance should become experts on very specific and boring topics. One of the most successful people I've met in biosecurity got their start by getting really good at analyzing obscure government budgets.Here are some crowdsourced example areas I would love to see more people become experts in:Legal liability - obviously relevant to biosecurity and AI safety, and I'm especially interested in how liability law would handle spreading infohazards (e.g. if a bio lab publishes a virus sequence that is then used for bioterrorism, or if an LLM is used maliciously in a similar way).Privacy / data protection laws - could be an important lever for regulating dangerous technologies.Executive powers for regulation - what can and can't the executive actually do to get AI labs to adhere to voluntary security standards, or get DNA synthesis appropriately monitored?Large, regularly reauthorized bills (e.g., NDAA, PAHPA, IAA) and ways in which they could be bolstered for biosecurity and AI safety (both in terms of content and process).How companies validate customers, e.g., for export control or FSAP reasons (know-your-customer), and the statutes and technologies around this.How are legal restrictions on possessing or creating certain materials justified/implemented e.g. Chemical Weapons Convention, narcotics, Toxic Substances Control Act?The efficacy of tamper-proof and tamper-evident technology (e.g. in voting machines, anti-counterfeiting printers)Biochemical supply chains - which countries make which reagents, and how are they affected by export controls and other trade policies?Consumer protection laws and their application to emerging tech risks (e.g. how do product recalls work? Could they apply to benchtop DNA synthesizers or LLMs?)Patent law - can companies patent dangerous technology in order to prevent others from developing or misusing it?How do regulations on 3d-printed firearms work?The specifics of congressional appropriations, federal funding, and procurement: what sorts of things does the government purchase, how does this relate to biotech or AI (software)? Related to this, becoming an expert on the Strategic National Stockpile and understanding the mechanisms of how a vendor managed inventory could work.A few caveats. First, I spent like 30 minutes writing this list (and crowdsourced heavily from others). Some of these topics are going to be dead ends. Still, I'd be more excited about somebody pursuing one of these concrete, specific dead ends and getting real feedback from the world (and then pivoting), rather than trying to do broad strategy work and risk ending up in a never-ending strategy spiral. Moreover, the most impactful topics are probably not on this list and will be discovered by somebody who got deep into the weeds of something obscure.For those of you that are trying to do good with an EA mindset, this also means getting out of the EA bubble and spending lots of time with established experts in these relevant fields. Every so often, I'll get the chance to collect biosecurity ideas and send them to interested people in DC. In order to be helpful, these ideas need to be super specific, e.g. this specific agency needs to task this other subag...