“A compass, I learned when I was surveying,.. it’ll point you true north from where you’re standing, but it’s got no advice about the swamps, deserts and chasms that you’ll encounter along the way. If in pursuit of your destination, you plunge ahead heedless of obstacles, and achieve nothing more than to sink in a swamp… what’s the use of knowing true north?” Abraham Lincoln, in the film Lincoln (2012).
The US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, met with the members of the Senate Budget Committee recently on the Administration’s goals. He remarked:
My priorities for the Department are clear— to unleash a golden era of American energy dominance, strengthen our national security, and lead the world in innovation. A reliable and abundant energy supply is the foundation of a strong and prosperous nation. When America leads in energy, we lead in prosperity, security and human flourishing.
Some practical steps flowing from those priorities are ruffling feathers — especially among clean energy advocates, such as the Carbon Capture Coalition, who saw nearly $4 billion in Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) awards abruptly canceled.
Today, I’d like to shift focus from what this administration is doing to ask a broader question: why do some policies endure while others vanish with the stroke of a pen? What determines whether a program weathers partisan transition — or gets erased by the next budget cycle?
Too often, we chase treasure maps — short-term gains, political wins, a flood of funding before the next election. And we trust the compass to point us in the right direction. But the compass, as Lincoln warns, gives no advice about the terrain.
Why Not a Treasure Map? Because a treasure map leads to something finite. It assumes stability — that the goal doesn’t move, erode, or rot. It invites short-term behavior: chase the bounty, burn the boat.
Why a Persistence Map? Because it doesn’t promise wealth — it shows where life survives. It doesn’t tell you “where to go” — it tells you where you can go and come back again. It doesn’t glorify movement — it honors endurance.
That’s where GTESI comes in — the General Theory of Evolutionary Systems & Information. It offers a framework not just for asking whether a policy is smart or popular, but whether it can survive pressure, adapt across time, and persist beyond the cycle that birthed it. GTESI tracks four core vectors: IPR (Information Persistence Rate), SCD (Structural Continuity Density), TRFI (Thermodynamic-Response Friction Index), EED (Entropy Export Delta).
You see, GTESI does not just point to systems that align with persistence. It reveals the obstacles on the way. Systems with low SCD are like rope bridges across chasms. Systems with poor IPR are travelers with no memory of the road behind them. High TRFI? That’s the swamp. You enter at your peril unless prepared to adapt. Poor EED? You carry your garbage with you. You’ll collapse from the load. Because the goal isn’t to avoid all obstacles — it’s to persist through them, learn from them, and grow stronger in the crossing.
Let’s apply the four GTESI vectors to this DOE moment:
GTESI Vectors in Action
| Vector | Key Question | Trump DOE Example | Clean Energy Comparison |
| IPR (Information Persistence Rate) | Does the policy encode institutional memory or generate it? | Updates to GREET models for hydrogen and biofuels now use facility-specific data, embedding firm-level memory into the system. | Biden-era OCED projects often treated as demos, not data sources. Minimal memory retention beyond individual project reports. |
| SCD (Structural Continuity Density) | Are there durable structures (legal, financial, physical) that uphold this policy over time? | Revamped LNG permitting, deregulatory EOs, and AI-nuclear-hpc pipelines connect across agencies (DOE, NRC, DOD), reinforcing a structural network. | Many clean energy projects relied on discretionary grants and EO-based frameworks without embedding into regulatory code. |
| TRFI(Thermodynamic-Response Friction Index) | How adaptable is this policy under shifting input conditions? | Fossil and nuclear policies framed around resilience: “works whether the wind blows or not.” They appeal to high-friction adaptation scenarios. | Clean energy programs framed around optimization and cost-reduction — more fragile under shifting economics or political resistance. |
| EED (Entropy Export Delta) | Does the policy help the system offload disorder while preserving function? | Termination of 24 projects framed as “waste removal,” exporting symbolic and financial entropy back into public trust and fiscal identity. | Clean energy investments often absorbed uncertainty, hoping future payoff would retroactively justify present disorder — an entropy import rather than export. |
Policy Persistence: Why Clean Energy Struggled to Stick
- Misalignment Between Symbol and Structure
Clean energy awards were framed as “demonstrations” but operationalized as “deployments” — large-scale, fast-moving, semi-commercial efforts. That mismatch made them vulnerable to claims of fraud, waste, or overreach, especially when issued late in the term. - Low IPR Encoding
Many projects lacked mechanisms for persistent knowledge capture. Without built-in evaluative feedback loops or shared metrics across projects, memory did not compound across the ecosystem. - Fragile SCD
The policy scaffolding relied on discretionary funding and partisan EOs, not on regulations with bipartisan traction, industry mandates, or market-pull dynamics. - TRFI Vulnerability
Clean energy projects depended heavily on favorable capital, political, and regulatory conditions. When those changed, systems couldn’t adapt. By contrast, fossil and nuclear policies have higher TRFI tolerance: they’re sold as essential even under stress.
Strategic Lessons for Policy Persistence — Ranked by Feasibility
Let’s revisit the five GTESI lessons and rank them by ease of execution vs. difficulty in today’s political and structural environment, while layering in your insights.
| Lesson | Feasibility | GTESI Note |
| Avoid deployment disguised as demo | High(Easy win) | Projects should match the stated purpose. Avoid overloading demos with deployment ambitions. Keeps TRFI low and IPR high by reducing entropy at the start. |
| Build IPR through interoperability | Medium | Needs systems thinking, but can be implemented through reporting rules, shared metrics, and open-access data — like the FracFocus database in fracking. |
| Choose durable narratives | Medium | Requires reframing from “climate crisis” to “energy resilience,” “freedom,” “jobs,” etc. Can be done with savvy comms and coalition alignment. |
| Use GTESI vectors to vet before the spend | Medium | Needs cultural shift toward systems literacy in government agencies. Could be piloted through DOE or OSTP scoring frameworks. |
| Embed in law, not just budget | Low(Hard) | Requires bipartisan coalition-building and structural consensus. But we can learn from past success: RFS, fracking, national labs, 1980s semiconductor policy. |
GTESI Guide to Embedding Policy in Law
- Encode shared interest, not partisan identity
RFS succeeded because it linked agriculture, fuel independence, and climate across red-blue lines. Same with fracking: a Texas oil play that helped a Democrat-led DOE prove peak oil wrong. - Institutional SCD matters more than agency headlines
Many durable programs live inside dull acronyms: USDA Rural Dev, Section 45Q, Title 17 Loan Programs. They last because they’re bureaucratically boring but functionally powerful. - Build cross-TRFI coalitions
A good coalition includes high-friction actors (e.g. transmission builders, utilities) and low-friction innovators (e.g. synthetic biology startups). That mix keeps entropy export high and adapts across shocks.
Case Study: Rebuilding an OCED Project for GTESI Persistence
Let’s choose a representative cancelled OCED project — say, a Carbon Capture Retrofit for a Gas-Fired Power Plant (based on the pattern in the DOE announcement).
What Went Wrong (GTESI View)
| GTESI Vector | Problem |
| IPR | No clear learning mechanism. Each project isolated, minimal shared data protocols. |
| SCD | Dependent on discretionary funds; lacked utility mandates, ratepayer alignment, or market hooks. |
| TRFI | High sensitivity to input changes (political support, cost of capture, permitting delays). |
| EED | Imported entropy: regulatory complexity, uncertain ROI, public backlash, engineering unknowns. |
Roadmap for Future Viable Carbon Capture Demo
| Feature | GTESI-Aligned Revision |
| Rename OCED | “Office of Strategic Energy Trials” — clarity, mission match, less partisan tone. |
| Anchor in Utility Regulation | Work with FERC/state PUCs to embed carbon capture cost recovery into rate structures. |
| Require Modular Tech Learning | Design every project to produce interoperable insights: shared hardware, data standards, lessons learned (as NASA does). |
| Diverse Tech Portfolio | Bioenergy, cement, industrial decarb — not just power plants. Symbolically expands “clean energy” to rural, industrial, bipartisan geographies. |
| Piggyback on Basic Research + Regional Dev | Tie each OCED demo to a national lab and a local EDO. Ensure each has a workforce and basic science uplift path. |
Coalitions That Persist — and the GTESI of Long Timeline Trust
Is there simply an energy-industrial complex where the same old big companies chase government project awards for non-dilutive capital and to align with government-of-the-day priorities? Do large coalitions simply exist to tap funds, rather than build broad coalitions? Opinions differ. Yet, today’s energy coalitions can learn much from what fracking, RFS, and other energy coalitions did to persist, transform, and endure.
GTESI Profile of Transformative Coalitions
| Example | Why It Worked (GTESI View) |
| Fracking (Mitchell Energy et al.) | High IPR (private data sharing), High TRFI (17 failures), Medium SCD (service supply chain), Strong narrative of “American ingenuity.” |
| RFS | High SCD (written into law), High EED (farm surplus → fuel), Low TRFI (static model), Strong bipartisan coalition: agriculture + climate + independence. |
| Transformer Architecture (TA) | Insanely High IPR (open-source model sharing), Medium TRFI (hardware bottlenecks), Networked SCD across academia, startups, and big tech. |
| DOE Labs | Boring but brilliant: High SCD, Moderate TRFI, constant EED through talent, tech, and symbolic trust. Their resilience is proof of a non-flashy coalition strategy. |
GTESI Notes on Coalition Design
- Avoid grant-dependent identity groups.
Build around value chains, not funding chains. Focus on what connects across cycles (e.g., grid stability, rural jobs, materials sovereignty). - Lengthen the timeline.
Coalitions built for 10+ year returns (like semiconductors or DARPA) endure longer. Avoid pitch decks chasing the next 18-month RFP cycle. - Anchor Symbol in Structure.
Don’t just say “AI for good” — build a GPU farm and invite regional universities. Don’t just say “carbon removal” — build salt dome permitting reform. The action creates the trust.
The Bottom Line
The opposite of GTESI persistence is the entropy of the instant: a press release, a ribbon-cutting, a headline that fades. But persistence lives where information becomes structure, structure adapts to stress, and coalitions outlive their creators.
We can rebuild DOE to be that. Weather-vane energy policy is useless. Compass energy policy (it must be so!) is not much better. Yes, a compass gives orientation. But orientation without topology is delusion. Knowing “true north” is only valuable if you also understand the terrain between you and your destination — swamps, deserts, chasms.
In GTESI terms: True north is telos — the long vector of persistence. The swamp is entropy — the mire of misalignment, fragility, and loss. The chasm is TRFI — the friction index, the cost of ignoring adaptation. The desert is symbolic drift — where meaning fails to refresh, and systems dry up.
The good news? We are not lost. But we must stop following weather vanes — chasing whichever way the wind is blowing this quarter. The compass can help — if we pair it with a map of persistence. That map doesn’t lead to treasure. It leads to trust. And trust, when earned, is more valuable than gold — because it endures. We must build structures that adapt, encode memory, offload disorder, and span the divides. We can do this. We’ve done it before.
We just have to look up, align on true north — and map the terrain together.
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