Agreed, public engagement is not a direct bottleneck, but I think that governments respond to political salience, and the window for governance intervention is narrowing. Public engagement that builds salience might be what makes government regulation arrive in time rather than after power concentration. or gradual disempowerment has taken place.
On narrative overload, the Seismic research I cited found existential-risk framing performs worst across almost every demographic. So the problem may not just be too many voices, but that the loudest ones are using the register least likely to reach anyone not already convinced.
I can also envisage an "America Talks AI" version if the UK route isn't the right one, built on More in Common's US Hidden Tribes segments and that could launch through an existential-risk incubator with a strong US presence.
@Oscar Sykes Can I check for a source/reference to hire for lots of EA orgs saying they struggle to hire for ops, marketing and comms roles? As @SiobhanBall said, lots of people apply for these roles. Is it that the candidates aren't good enough or have higher salary expectations? That there are lots of applicants to some EA org but not others? That some orgs are willing to pay higher salaries than others? Geographical differences, e.g. higher pay in the US compared to for example the UK?
YC does have a nonprofit program: https://www.ycombinator.com/nonprofits/
List of nonprofits YC have invested in, including 80,000 Hours: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies?nonprofit=true
Thanks @Martin Underwood. Both of your challenges have been taken on board.
On the bottleneck question, I'm planning to use the next few weeks of ecosystem conversations to test this, starting with whether the audience is policy-adjacent rather than general public. The ordering you suggest (policy audiences, professional groups, adjacent orgs) is probably the right one to work through.
On the analogy doing too much work, agreed. Climate Outreach is useful as a functional model (values segmentation, trusted messengers, long-term framing infrastructure) but the audience, governance, and legitimacy questions are hopefully different enough. Will treat it as a starting point for questions and further research.
Good prompt on finding 10 people to send it to directly. Will do that before making any more concrete plans.