evidence: When President Joe Biden took office last week, his administration swiftly announced it would be renaming Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration's crash program to develop COVID-19 vaccines. The decision puzzled immunologist Moncef Slaoui, scientific head of Warp Speed, but he attributes it to a word he says with disdain: politics. Slaoui recently resigned from his post, but has agreed to help the Biden transition team into February. In a lengthy chat with Science from his home in Pennsylvania last week, he reflected on his time with Operation Warp Speed, discussing challenging interactions with former President Donald Trump and how to be better prepared for a future pandemic. Never a Trump supporter—he's a Democrat—Slaoui had reluctantly taken the Warp Speed job because, as the former head of vaccines at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), he thought he could help solve one of the world's most urgent problems. [...] I'm surprised we got an email yesterday saying, "As of tomorrow, you cannot use the name Operation Warp Speed any more." I asked myself, why? What's the added value? This is probably why I'm not a politician. It just escapes rationality and understanding. Because in a way, everybody that works under Operation Warp Speed feels like, "What did we do wrong?"