The New York Times editorializes today that, despite the very real threat, the nation continues to be woefully unprepared to defend against a “cyberattack” on our critical infrastructure. Power grids, water treatment and distribution systems, major dams, and oil and chemical refineries are all controlled today by networked computers. Computers make the nation’s infrastructure far […]
The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, Commerce, Justice, State marked-up it’s FY 2006 appropriations bill earlier today and included increases for NSF and NASA. Details are a little sparse until we see the full committee print next week, but here are the early figures: NSF would increase 3.1% — $171 million over FY 2005, $38 […]
The House Appropriations Committee on Wednesday completed its markup of the FY 2006 Energy and Water Appropriation bill (HR 2419), which includes funding for the Department of Energy, approving increased funding for DOE’s Office of Science. The House bill would boost the Office of Science budget to $3.67 billion in FY 06, an increase of […]
Despite a $213 million increase to the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate in FY 2006 and a report from a presidential advisory committee noting the dangerous lack of support for cyber security research at DHS, the House approved a cut to cyber security research activities at the agency as part of the […]
Apparently inspired by this week’s Science editorial by Ed Lazowska and Dave Patterson (covered here), the Los Angeles Times today editorializes on DARPA and university IT research. Since 1961, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, or DARPA, has distributed IT research dollars in largely open-ended grants to universities. The grants encouraged basic research aimed not […]
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee responsible for funding NSF and NASA, today stepped up his effort to champion federal support for basic research by urging President Bush to triple funding for federal basic research and development over the next decade. Wolf made the request in a letter to Bush (pdf), […]
CRA commends the House for its swift passage today of the High Performance Computing Revitalization Act (H.R. 28). The bill, which would provide sustained access by the research community to federal HPC assets, assure a balanced portfolio in HPC research pursuits and beef up interagency planning, passed by voice vote. The measure now moves on […]
Roll Call’s Morton Kondracke writes in an OpEd (sub. req’d) that Congress must act to increase federal support for fundamental research or risk future competitiveness. The good news is, he notes, is that Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), Chair of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Science, State, Justice, Commerce committee, appears to be up to the […]
This OpEd (free link) by Norman Ornstein, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (a reasonably influential conservative think tank — Newt Gingrich is also a fellow), ran today in Roll Call (sub req’d), “the Newspaper of Capitol Hill.” It’s a strong defense of federal support of basic research that cites DARPA’s declining support for […]
The Seattle PI makes the economic case for federal support of R&D in an editorial today. But what happens if the United States not only gives up every trade protection benefit, continues to suffer a loss of manufacturing and fritters away its research leadership in science, medicine and technology? That’s a lose-lose proposition. And it […]
