The Biden administration has embarked on the largest industrial buildout since World War II—more than $250 billion to create a battery industry. But who’s in charge of disbursing all that money? This week, we look at the battery triumvirate, three men—two of them little known outside renewable energy—stewarding one of the most important government initiatives of the age.

A new section: At the bottom of this week's newsletter, we introduce "Of Note," a section of short news items worth your time.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order that over the next three years commandeered much of the U.S. industrial base to arm and equip the Allied forces in World War II. Alcoa, Ford and Chrysler turned to the armaments business, organized by a new body called the War Production Board. All but lost to history, the board’s chair during most of its tenure was an amiable former Sears Roebuck executive: Donald Nelson, a trained chemist with an encyclopedic knowledge of supply chains. The board’s work shaped a U.S. economy that produced almost two-thirds of Allied war needs and helped defeat Germany and Japan.

Today, the Biden administration is embarking on an industrial buildout on a scale not seen since that wartime effort, as part of its wrangling with China. Backed by more than $250 billion in funding approved by Congress, the administration is attempting to build an electric vehicle battery industry almost from scratch and puncture China’s dominance of global battery manufacturing. The three men helping to steer that funding, while not household names, are among the most powerful officials in Washington.

The men—Jigar Shah, director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office; David Howell, acting director of the DOE’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains; and John Podesta, senior climate adviser to President Joe Biden—have no policymaking authority. But their atypical combination of political, financial and bureaucratic skills has so far kept the battery effort largely out of the brutal partisan fray.