Dear President _________,

Congratulations! Now brace yourself for an avalanche of advice — from the 21 people in your Cabinet, from dozens of advisory councils, hundreds of members of Congress, thousands of lobbyists and pundits, and millions of voters. Everyone's got an opinion on what needs to be done. But the policies that emerge from such groupthink tend to be weird mashups of conflicting interests or warmed-over slabs of conventional wisdom. Enough of that. The country needs fresh directions and crisp action plans on intractable issues like climate change, energy, security, and defense. To help shape your thinking, we've come up with a Smart List of 15 Wired people with big ideas about how to fix the things that need fixing. Hail to the new chief — and please listen up.

1. Parag Khanna

Embrace the Post-American Age

2. David Laibson

Tweak Human Behavior to Fix the Economy

3. Carolyn Porco

Use Big Robots—and Big Rockets

4. Leroy Hood

Look to the Genome to Rebuild Health Care

5. Montgomery McFate

Use Anthropology in Military Planning

__ 6. Peter Gleick__

Deal With the Water Crisis Now

__ 7. Jagdish Bhagwati__

Keep Free Trade Free

__ 8. Ellen Miller__

Make Washington More Like the Web

9. Ram Shriram

Open Up the Airwaves

10. A.T. Ball

Wage Smarter War With Agile Army IT

11. Steve Rayner

Take Climate Change Seriously

12. Mitchell Joachim

Redesign Cities From Scratch

13. Mark Smolinski

Detect Epidemics Before They Start

14. Charles Ferguson

Beware of New, Easy-to-Make Nukes

__ 15. Robert Dalrymple__

Get Ready for Extreme Weather

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Informal Conference Borrows TED's Big Ideas, Not Its Pretense

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