Mort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of US News and World Report uses his latest column to berate the Administration for cutting the federal investment in scientific research:
The American century, as the 20th century was known, was built on scientific progress. American corporations were the first to develop major in-house research labs and the first to work closely with academic institutions. After the Soviets launched Sputnik, we went into the overdrive that put a man on the moon.
In the second half of the 20th century, we reaped the harvest: fiber optics, integrated circuits, wireless communications, lasers, the Web, global positioning satellites, hybrid automobiles, video games, computers, and an enormous variety of medical technologies and drugs. All these inventions and discoveries transformed daily life around the world because American know-how and entrepreneurial energy married them to venture capital, then produced and marketed them.
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Today, however, this is all being reversed. Why? Two reasons. The first is the cutback in federal support for advanced science. The second, many researchers believe, is that the Bush administration is fostering an antiscience culture. President Bush paved the way to double the National Science Foundation’s budget over five years, then, just two years later, he allowed Congress to cut the projected budget by $2 billion. Cut budgets for research and training, and we won’t have the economic growth tomorrow that we had yesterday. And this when we face, for the first time in our history, competition from low-wage, high-human-capital communities in China, India, and Asia. At the very least, it means fewer American jobs.
We must find the money to reverse this trend. It is not so much a current expenditure as an investment in our future. But money has to be accompanied by a recommitment to basing policy on professional analysis and scientific data from responsible agencies. An administration that packs advisory committees with industry representatives and disbands panels that provide advice unacceptable to political ideology is shortchanging the future of all of us.
Zuckerman also makes the case for the reestablishment of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment — an office set up during the Nixon Administration to provide non-partisan advice to lawmakers on scientific and technical matters, but eliminated in FY 96 as part of congressional belt-tightening. While I agree that the current Administration appears to have issues with scientific advisory bodies that offer advice that conflicts with its policy goals, I’m not sure reconstituting OTA will help. As a veteran of the House Science Committee staff (though after OTA was disbanded), I can attest to the value of having direct contact between Members of Congress and researchers and technologists. I’m sympathetic to arguments that OTA, by virtue of the “buffer” they created between scientists and legislators, encouraged a “bureaucratic” approach to science policy, and I think the most critical functions of the office are probably well-tended to by entities like the Congressional Research Service, the National Academies, and the Government Accountability Office. Plus, as a science advocate now, I appreciate that organizations like CRA are more relied upon by key members of Congress and staff to provide input on science and technology policy.
But otherwise, I think Zuckerman’s piece is on the money. He’s certainly right about the importance of looking at federal support for research as an investment in the future of the country. Read the whole thing.
As mentioned previously, the House Science Committee met yesterday to focus on the threat cyber security vulnerabilities pose to various critical sectors of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. Representatives from the oil and gas, chemical, electrical and communications sectors all testified that their industries are becoming more and more dependent upon public networks, those networks are under serious threat from cyber attack, and the federal government has a clear role both in supporting information exchange and coordination among all the industry stakeholders, and supporting a research agenda aimed at addressing the threat, primarily in the long-term. I’m not sure there’s much more I need to add to that, other than to point to the archived video, the hearing charter (pdf), and the testimony of the five witnesses.
A few observations:
Committee chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY) set the tone for the hearing in his opening statement by declaring that despite everything else that was taking place on the Hill that day — including the Roberts confirmation hearing and the party caucus meeting to choose a new Chairman of the Homeland Security Committee (Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was the choice) — he couldn’t think of another event more important than this hearing on cyber security.
We shouldnt have to wait for the cyber equivalent of a Hurricane Katrina – or even and Hurricane Ophelia might serve – to realize that we are inadequately prepared to prevent, detect and respond to cyber attacks.
And a cyber attack can affect a far larger area at a single stroke that can any hurricane. Not only that, given the increasing reliance of critical infrastructures on the Internet, a cyber attack could result in deaths as well as in massive disruption to the economy and daily life.
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So our goal this morning is to help develop a cybersecurity agenda for the federal government, especially for the new Assistant Secretary. I never want to have to sit on a special committee set up to investigate why we were unprepared for a cyber attack. We know we are vulnerable, its time to act.
Despite federally-supported research and development in cyber security being cited as a critical need by each one of the industry witnesses, the only federal witness — Andy Purdy, Director of the National Cyber Security Division at DHS — didn’t mention R&D in his oral remarks other than to hope that he’d get a chance to talk about it during questioning (alas, he didn’t). In his written testimony, Purdy noted that DHS’ R&D goals are almost exclusively short-term:
Perform R&D aimed at improving the security of existing deployed technologies and to ensure the security of new emerging systems;
Develop new and enhanced technologies ofr the detection of, prevention of, and response to cyber attacks on the nation’s critical infrastructure; and
Facilitate the transfer of these technologies into the national infrastructure as a matter of urgency.
Of course, as PITAC found in its review of the nation’s cyber security R&D portfolio, even this narrow commitment to the short-term suffers from a severe lack of priority within the agency. The agency has requested only $17 million for FY 06 ($1 million less than last year) for cyber security research, out of a total S&T budget of over a billion dollars. I was disappointed that the members of the committee didn’t spend more time questioning DHS’ priority when it comes to funding cyber security R&D.
The hearing was well-attended by members of the committee. Despite lots of other events on the Hill, the hearing drew at least 23 different Members of Congress, with many sticking around to ask questions. There was plenty of room in the audience and the sections reserved for press however, which led Chairman Boehlert to complain that cyber security is still greeted with a “muffled yawn” outside his committee room and that he hoped it wasn’t going to take a “cyber Katrina” to wake people up about the dangerous threat.
I was pleased that Boehlert took a few minutes out of the question period to suggest to the industry representatives (SBC, British Petroleum, Dow Chemical, and American Electric Power were all represented) that they make use of their exceptionally persuasive “hired guns” in DC to advocate for more R&D and better coordination. The lobbyists need to be out there putting focus on the importance of this subject, he said.
Finally, an odd tack during the question and answer portion of the hearing: Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) used his five minutes to berate DHS and the industry representatives for failing to plan and prepare adequately for the “ultimate low-probability, high-impact event” threatening the nation: a nuclear electromagnetic pulse attack. An EMP attack (by detonating a large yield nuclear weapon many miles in the atmosphere above the US) would potentially render every non-hardened microprocessor in the country completely inoperable, which given the ubiquitousness of microprocessors in just about everything, would have a devastating effect on the country. Bartlett was especially interested in hearing how the energy companies would cope, given that every transformer they operate would likely be destroyed, including ones we no longer have the ability to manufacture domestically. None of the witnesses could point to any significant preparation in their sectors.
Federal Computer Week’s Aliya Sternstein has an interesting piece in this week’s issue on the role of computing technology in helping predict and mitigate the cost of Hurricane Katrina.
Scientists are using a range of technologies to better predict the impact hurricanes can have on the economy and environment to minimize future damage and save lives.
Supercomputers, modeling programs and geographic information systems are some of the technologies scientists use to track the movement of hurricanes and predict damage. Experts warn, however, that skilled professionals are as crucial to accurate forecasting as technology.
Supercomputers aided the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in accurately forecasting Hurricane Katrina’s path. The storm devastated the coastal areas of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
“Two and a half to three days before the hurricane hit, we were pretty much zoomed in on the Louisiana/Mississippi Gulf Coast as where the hurricane would hit,” said Jack Beven, a hurricane specialist at the NOAA Tropical Prediction Center. “It’s probably not the most accurate we’ve been, but it’s certainly pretty accurate.”
From what I understand, NOAA does a great job with the computing resources its been allocated. I’m just not sure they’ve been allocated nearly enough. The article points out that NOAA has been able to upgrade its supercomputing capacity from 0.5 teraflops to 1.5 teraflops within the last year. (Update (9/16/2005): This is questionable, see note below. More clarification below!**) That’s a great improvement, but given the scale of the problem they face, I’m not sure it’s adequate.
In its look at the state of computational science in the U.S. in the last year, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) (now disbanded, sigh) came up with a really interesting economic case for the need for increased computational resources in hurricane forecasting. I’ve cited it here once previously, but I’ll quote it again:
One nugget I found especially interesting from the presentation [of the PITAC Subcommittee on Computational Science] was an example of both the economic benefit and the health and safety benefit that will arise from more capable modeling enabled by advanced computing. The subcommittee noted that 40 percent of the $10 trillion U.S. economy is impacted by climate and weather. As one example of this, the subcommittee cited the hurricane warnings provided by the National Hurricane Center and the cost of the evacuations that often result. According to the subcommittee, there is $1 million in economic loss for each mile of coastline evacuated. With the current models, the U.S. now “over warns” by a factor of 3, with the average “over-warning” for a hurricane resulting in 200 miles of evacuations — or $200 million in unnecessary loss per event. Improved modeling (better algorithms, better software, more capable hardware, etc) would improve the accuracy of forecasts, saving lives and resources.
While over-warning probably wasn’t much of an issue in Katrina’s case, there are a number of capabilities that we currently lack that may have proven useful. Folks in the severe storms community tell me that current operational forecast models run by NOAA suffer from a number of limitations that work against obtaining accurate predictions of hurricane intensity and path. For example, they cite the lack of resolution in the current models that misses important fine-scale features like rain bands and the eye wall; the lack of coupling between atmospheric, wave and ocean prediction models; and computing resources that can generate only one or a few forecasts (as opposed to large ensembles), which impacts NOAA’s ability to improve forecasting skill and quantify uncertainty. While NOAA’s move to a 1.5 teraflop capacity is a welcome change, it’s still far below what one would consider a “leadership class” computing capacity for the agency — like those available at NSF, NASA and DOE centers. I know it’s a coarse measure, but 1.5 teraflops doesn’t even get you in the top 300 fastest machines — never mind a machine capable of the kind of improvements hinted at above.* And it’s not all about big iron. NOAA needs additional resources to ramp up its infrastructure — software, hardware and personnel — and to boost basic research programs within the agency and the university community. Asking for any increase in resources anywhere is obviously very tough in the current budget environment, but the size of the “bump” required here is relatively small, given the potential benefit.
But none of this is intended to take away from the job NOAA has done with the resources it already has. Because of NOAA’s forecasts, there was ample warning that this major storm was barreling in on the Gulf Coast and there were reasonable estimates of what it was going to do once it got there. But given sufficient resources the models will get even better, which means the forecasts will get better — more accurate, more precise, and more timely. How much would it be worth to have the accuracy and precision we have now at 24-36 hours before a major storm available 3 days out? Or five days out?
I know it may seem a bit crass to be talking about boosting funding for computing only days after a tragedy as big as Katrina’s impact on the gulf coast, but events like this are a trigger for the reevaluation of national priorities, and it seems to me that computing resources at NOAA haven’t been a national priority for quite a while. * Update: (9/16/2005) Actually, it looks like NOAA has slightly more adequate computing resources than the FCW article suggests. According to the Top500 list, NOAA has two machines capable of 4.4 teraflops and two capable of 1.8 teraflops. So I’m not sure what the FCW article reflects. That’s still quite some distance from “leadership class” computing, trailing machines in Japan, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Korea, China, and Australia, but it’s better than the figures quoted in the article above. ** Update 2: (9/16/2005) Aliya Sternstein writes to note that the 1.5 teraflop measurement cited in the FCW piece applies to the NWS system at the IBM facility in Gaithersburg, MD, not all of NOAA’s computational capacity.
Apologies for the dearth of timely updates recently. As many readers familiar with the congressional calendar are aware, Congress disappears for the entire month of August so that members can find their way back to their home districts, partake in a few county fairs and local parades, and generally get a longer-than-usual glimpse of how people outside the Beltway actually live. Consequently, you can see the tumbleweeds blow through the streets of DC until about Labor Day.
Now that Congress is back in town and focused on confirming a Chief Justice, dealingwith the aftermath of Katrina, and finishing all the must-pass appropriations bills — ideally before the end of the fiscal year on Sept 30th (they’ve finished just 2 of 12) — things are already heating up quickly, so expect this space to get a bit busier as well.
For example, three events worthy of note are scheduled for this Thursday (September 15th). First, at 10 am, the House Science Committee will revisit federal support for cyber security R&D in a hearing that will focus on the risk cyber vulnerabilities pose to critical industries in the U.S. and what the federal government can do to help. Scheduled to testify are:
Mr. Donald “Andy” Purdy, Acting Director, National Cyber Security Division, Department of Homeland Security;
Mr. John Leggate, Chief Information Officer, British Petroleum Inc.;
Mr. David Kepler, Corporate Vice President, Shared Services, and Chief Information Officer, The Dow Chemical Company;
Mr. Andrew Geisse, Chief Information Officer, SBC Services Inc.; and
Mr. Gerald Freese, Director, Enterprise Information Security, American Electric Power.
Presumably, the committee hopes to hear from the industry representatives how significant the cyber threat is to their industries what the Department of Homeland Security is doing about it. Hopefully the committee and the industry witnesses press DHS about its minimal efforts to engage in long-range research to counter the threats. The hearing, like all Science Committee hearings, will be webcast live (10 am to noon) and archived on the Science Committee website.
Also on Thursday are two policy lunches on Capitol Hill relevant to federal support for R&D. The Forum on Technology and Innovation, an offshoot of the Council on Competitiveness and co-chaired by Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), will hold a policy briefing on “Basic Research — The Foundation of the Innovation Economy.” Scheduled to speak are George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association; Carl A. Batt, Director of the Cornell University/Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Partnership; and Brian Halla, Chairman of the Board and CEO of National Semiconductor. The event is scheduled from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm, in the Senate Hart building, room 209. Readers in DC can register to attend here. It looks like the forum archives video of their events, so those unable to attend might want to check afterwards for the video stream.
Over on the House side, unfortunately at exactly the same time, is a briefing put on by the House R&D Caucus (CRA is a member of the advisory committee for the caucus) focused on the R&D tax credit. The event is sponsored by the R&D Credit Coalition, which is chock full of industry representatives. From the invite:
Microwaves, laptops, car airbags, life-saving medical technologies and even your MP3 player have one thing in common.
U.S.-based research helped create these innovative products. Research makes our lives better.
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Come learn how we can encourage U.S.-based research through the strengthening and extension of the R&D Credit. See real examples of how research continues to improve America.
The briefing will be in 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, from Noon – 1:30 pm. DC-area folks wishing to attend can find the RSVP info here (pdf). Apparently attendees can also sign-up to drive “the latest hydrogen fuel cell cars,” which could be fun.
The presence of so many U.S. manufacturers and companies on the panels and sponsor-cards for the briefings should add a little heft to the message of both events. I only wish that they hadn’t been scheduled for almost exactly the same time….
In a letter (pdf) to John Marburger, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium — a group that includes representatives from IBM, HP, SIA, Lockheed-Martin and representatives from Bay Area universities and federal labs — urged the Adminstration to address concerns about federal support for fundamental research in IT. The letter makes a case that should be very familiar to readers of this blog — namely, that “at a time when the U.S. faces enormous challenges to its scientific and technological leadership, U.S. policy is headed in the wrong direction.”
For example, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is reducing university participation by: (1) classifying research, even in broad, enabling areas such as embedded software for wireless networks; (2) focusing more on shorter-term deliverables, and dramatically reducing its traditional levels of investment in high-risk, high-return research; and (3) evaluating success of projects on one-year time-scales. Between 1999 and 2004, DARPA’s research funding at the top-ranked computer science departments (Berkeley, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT, and Stanford) declined by 38-54 percent. These trends are not limited to IT research, but are evident in a broad range of fields.
In fact, beyond just the top schools, the overall DARPA investment in university-led IT research has declined precipitously since FY 2001, falling from $199 million to $108 million in FY 2004 (in constant dollars).
The letter goes on to point out the burden placed on NSF as a result of DARPA’s “retrenchment,” noting the precipitous fall of proposal success rates and the impact that has on the peer-review process — it becomes more conservative, resulting in proposals that tend not to be as high-risk and potentially high-return as we need to be supporting to keep the U.S. at the cutting-edge of technological innovation.
BASIC makes two specific recommendations:
1. DARPA should be given a clear mandate to dramatically increase its support of high-risk, unclassified, university-based research.
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2. The National Science Foundation should be given additional funding in the Administration’s FY 2007 budget for a “Pioneer Award” for IT research.
These ~$500k awards would be for “individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering approaches to major contemporary challenges.” The coalition urges an immediate funding increase for NSF to fund at least 25-50 of these pioneer awards, with an eventual “steady state” of 100-150 awards.
It’s an interesting approach, and it makes essentially the same case we’ve been making about IT research — and many other groups have been making about the physical sciences and engineering generally. But the more groups that make this case — especially groups with significant industry membership like BASIC and the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation and the Council on Competitiveness and the American Electronics Association and the Telecommunication Industry Association and the Business Roundtable and many others, the harder it is for the Administration to ignore the message.
You can read the full letter here (pdf).
Last Thursday, NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate (CISE) officially unveiled their Global Environment for Networking Investigations (GENI) initiative, a program designed to “advance significantly the capabilities provided by networking and distributed systems.” As NSF points out in their fact sheet covering the program:
The GENI Research Program will build on many years of knowledge and experience, encouraging researchers and designers to: reexamine all networking assumptions; reinvent where needed; design for intended capabilities; deploy and validate architectures; build new services and applications; encourage users to participate in experimentation; and take a system-wide approach to the synthesis of new architectures.
The unveiling of the initiative did not go unnoticed in the press. Wired ran with the story on Friday, quoting CRA board member Jen Rexford and UCLA’s Len Kleinrock. Federal Computer Week also had coverage Friday. And today, the New York Times’ John Markoff takes a look.
The program has the goal of supporting both a research program and a new “global experimental test facility” — all for an estimated $300 million. That’s a very ambitious budget number in the current environment. But making progress on the challenges posed — how do you design new networking and distributed system architectures that build in security, protect privacy, are robust and easy to use? — could make that $300 million seem like one of the better investments taxpayers have made. As Bob Kahn pointed out in his interview with C-Span last week, the original investment in the research behind what would become the Internet turned out to be a pretty good deal….
In any case, we’ll follow the progress with the initiative as it moves forward. Any “new start” of this magnitude will require substantial effort and support from the community to demonstrate to policymakers the need addressed and opportunity presented by the new program. And we’ll be right there.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page leads today (subscription required) by arguing that Congress should lift the cap on H1-B visas and that the market should dictate skilled labor immigration policy. Let’s see how much I can quote and claim a fair use exemption:
[The H1-B visa cap means that] any number of fields dependent on high-skilled labor could be facing worker shortages: science, medicine, engineering, computer programming. It also means that tens of thousands of foreigners — who’ve graduated from U.S. universities and applied for the visas to stay here and work for American firms — will be shipped home to start companies or work for our global competitors.
Congress sets the H-1B cap and could lift it as it has done in the past for short periods. Typically, however, that’s a years-long political process and cold comfort to companies that in the near term may be forced to look outside the U.S. to hire. Rather than trying to guess the number of foreign workers our economy needs year-to-year, Congress would be better off removing the cap altogether and letting the market decide.
Contrary to the assertions of many opponents of immigration, from Capitol Hill to CNN, the size of our foreign workforce is mainly determined by supply and demand, not Benedict Arnold CEOs or a corporate quest for “cheap” labor. As the nearby table shows, since the H-1B quota was first enacted in 1992 there have been several years amid a soft economy in which it hasn’t been filled. When U.S. companies can find domestic workers to fill jobs, they prefer to hire them.
And let’s not forget that these immigrant professionals create jobs, as the founders of Intel, Google, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, Computer Associates, Yahoo and numerous other successful ventures can attest. The Public Policy Institute of California did a survey of immigrants to Silicon Valley in 2002 and found that 52% of “foreign-born scientists and engineers have been involved in founding or running a start-up company either full-time or part-time.”
They also include this handy and condescending guide to H1-B visa figures:
The August void has been filled, to some degree, by discussion about immigration of skilled and unskilled foreign workers; among other things, the governors of Arizona and New Mexico have declared “states of emergency” along their borders and a debate in Herndon, Virginia over the establishment of a day laborer gathering site has brought immigration into the spotlight in the Washington newspapers and has spilled over into the Virginia gubernatorial race.
So if there is a coming national debate about immigration of both skilled and unskilled workers, the computing research community has to be ready to voice our side and claim a seat at the table.
The New York Times has a great piece today by reporter Steve Lohr on computer science majors — what they do (“It’s so not programming,” one says), what the job market for their skills is like (pretty strong), and what some schools are doing to get the message out.
On campuses today, the newest technologists have to become renaissance geeks. They have to understand computing, but they also typically need deep knowledge of some other field, from biology to business, Wall Street to Hollywood. And they tend to focus less on the tools of technology than on how technology is used in the search for scientific breakthroughs, the development of new products and services, or the way work is done.
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Edward D. Lazowska, a professor at the University of Washington, points to students like Mr. Michelson [who is going to medical school at Columbia after earning a computer science degree at Washington] as computer science success stories. The real value of the discipline, Mr. Lazowska said, is less in acquiring a skill with technology tools – the usual definition of computer literacy – than in teaching students to manage complexity; to navigate and assess information; to master modeling and abstraction; and to think analytically in terms of algorithms, or step-by-step procedures.
The piece would be a great read even without the quotes from CRA’s Government Affairs co-Chair Lazowska and current board Chair Dan Reed. And it’s a good antidote to the more dourpieceswe’ve seen recently about the future of the field.
Give it a read: A Techie, Absolutely, and More
A global race is under way to reach the next milestone in supercomputer performance, many times the speed of today’s most powerful machines.
And beyond the customary rivalry in the field between the United States and Japan, there is a new entrant – China – eager to showcase its arrival as an economic powerhouse.
The new supercomputers will not be in use until the end of the decade at the earliest, but they are increasingly being viewed as crucial investments for progress in science, advanced technologies and national security.
The article highlights the recent announcements of long-term commitments by a number of countries to fund efforts to develop petaflop-scale computing systems. France, China and Japan have all initiated multi-year investments in programs designed to produce petaflop machines in the next decade. While support for supercomputing research and development here in the U.S. continues to “remain a priority” in the Administration’s plans, our commitment to long-term support for the development of these leadership class machines isn’t as stellar as it could be. PITAC’s June 2005 report on the state of computational science in the U.S. put it a bit more bluntly:
Yet, despite the great opportunities and needs, universities and the Federal government have not effectively recognized the strategic significance of computational science in either their organizational structures or their research and educational planning. These inadequacies compromise U.S. scientific leadership, economic competitiveness, and national security.
As the Council on Competitiveness is fond of noting, in order to compete in the global economy, you must be able to out-compute your rivals. The U.S. needs to ensure that it maintains a commitment to the long-term R&D that will continue to “prime the pump” for the innovations in high-end computing that will allow us to keep pace with our international competitors. Adopting PITAC’s recommendations (pdf) would be a good place to start.
An interesting interview with Turing Award co-winner (and CRA board member) Robert Kahn by C-Span’s Brian Lamb ran yesterday, covering everything from the birth of the Internet, to his role at DARPA, and whether he was a geek in high school and college. As is usually the case with C-span programs, it’s pretty in-depth and worth watching. It’s viewable online, and there’s a written transcript as well.
Here’s a snippet:
LAMB: Today, or even in history, how much has the taxpayer, through the government, paid for, do you think, to create this Internet?
KAHN: You know, I think, I dont know the exact numbers and there may be no way to know the exact numbers, but I bet its the biggest bargain that the American taxpayer and the economy has ever had.
In fact, I remember in the late 1990s when the Clinton administration was riding a big economic boom, they had come out with some numbers that said one-third of all the growth in the economy was due to Internet-related activities of one sort or another.
I remember that when we built ARPANET, the very first of the networks, the actual money that was spent on the network piece of it was a few millions of dollars. I dont have the exact number, but it was less than 10 million.
And if you took into account the amount of money that was spent on the research community to help them get their computers up and develop applications, maybe over its lifecycle a few tens of millions, that would be my guess, I dont have the exact numbers, and maybe they are not findable anymore, but it was a number like that back in the early 70s.
If you were to look at all the other monies that were spent in other agencies of the government, the Department of Energy had a major program, NASA had a major program in networking. Of course, you have all the National Science Foundation expenditures, you know, where money is spent on building other kinds of nets. I mentioned the satellite and radio net.
But, you know, if you compare that with what private industry is putting in even on year today, private industry contributions dwarf everything that the federal government probably put in over its lifetime.
And so that has got to be one of the biggest or most successful investments that has ever been made.
(“Mad props” to Tom Jones for the head’s up!)
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Zuckerman in US News: Investing in Tomorrow
/In: R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaMort Zuckerman, editor-in-chief of US News and World Report uses his latest column to berate the Administration for cutting the federal investment in scientific research:
Zuckerman also makes the case for the reestablishment of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment — an office set up during the Nixon Administration to provide non-partisan advice to lawmakers on scientific and technical matters, but eliminated in FY 96 as part of congressional belt-tightening. While I agree that the current Administration appears to have issues with scientific advisory bodies that offer advice that conflicts with its policy goals, I’m not sure reconstituting OTA will help. As a veteran of the House Science Committee staff (though after OTA was disbanded), I can attest to the value of having direct contact between Members of Congress and researchers and technologists. I’m sympathetic to arguments that OTA, by virtue of the “buffer” they created between scientists and legislators, encouraged a “bureaucratic” approach to science policy, and I think the most critical functions of the office are probably well-tended to by entities like the Congressional Research Service, the National Academies, and the Government Accountability Office. Plus, as a science advocate now, I appreciate that organizations like CRA are more relied upon by key members of Congress and staff to provide input on science and technology policy.
But otherwise, I think Zuckerman’s piece is on the money. He’s certainly right about the importance of looking at federal support for research as an investment in the future of the country. Read the whole thing.
House Science Cyber Security and Critical Infrastructures Hearing Wrapup
/In: Events, Policy, Security /by Peter HarshaAs mentioned previously, the House Science Committee met yesterday to focus on the threat cyber security vulnerabilities pose to various critical sectors of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. Representatives from the oil and gas, chemical, electrical and communications sectors all testified that their industries are becoming more and more dependent upon public networks, those networks are under serious threat from cyber attack, and the federal government has a clear role both in supporting information exchange and coordination among all the industry stakeholders, and supporting a research agenda aimed at addressing the threat, primarily in the long-term. I’m not sure there’s much more I need to add to that, other than to point to the archived video, the hearing charter (pdf), and the testimony of the five witnesses.
A few observations:
Of course, as PITAC found in its review of the nation’s cyber security R&D portfolio, even this narrow commitment to the short-term suffers from a severe lack of priority within the agency. The agency has requested only $17 million for FY 06 ($1 million less than last year) for cyber security research, out of a total S&T budget of over a billion dollars. I was disappointed that the members of the committee didn’t spend more time questioning DHS’ priority when it comes to funding cyber security R&D.
Katrina and Computing
/In: R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaFederal Computer Week’s Aliya Sternstein has an interesting piece in this week’s issue on the role of computing technology in helping predict and mitigate the cost of Hurricane Katrina.
From what I understand, NOAA does a great job with the computing resources its been allocated. I’m just not sure they’ve been allocated nearly enough. The article points out that NOAA has been able to upgrade its supercomputing capacity from 0.5 teraflops to 1.5 teraflops within the last year. (
Update (9/16/2005): This is questionable, see note below.More clarification below!**) That’s a great improvement, but given the scale of the problem they face, I’m not sure it’s adequate.In its look at the state of computational science in the U.S. in the last year, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) (now disbanded, sigh) came up with a really interesting economic case for the need for increased computational resources in hurricane forecasting. I’ve cited it here once previously, but I’ll quote it again:
While over-warning probably wasn’t much of an issue in Katrina’s case, there are a number of capabilities that we currently lack that may have proven useful. Folks in the severe storms community tell me that current operational forecast models run by NOAA suffer from a number of limitations that work against obtaining accurate predictions of hurricane intensity and path. For example, they cite the lack of resolution in the current models that misses important fine-scale features like rain bands and the eye wall; the lack of coupling between atmospheric, wave and ocean prediction models; and computing resources that can generate only one or a few forecasts (as opposed to large ensembles), which impacts NOAA’s ability to improve forecasting skill and quantify uncertainty.
While NOAA’s move to a 1.5 teraflop capacity is a welcome change, it’s still far below what one would consider a “leadership class” computing capacity for the agency — like those available at NSF, NASA and DOE centers. I know it’s a coarse measure, but 1.5 teraflops doesn’t even get you in the top 300 fastest machines — never mind a machine capable of the kind of improvements hinted at above.* And it’s not all about big iron. NOAA needs additional resources to ramp up its infrastructure — software, hardware and personnel — and to boost basic research programs within the agency and the university community. Asking for any increase in resources anywhere is obviously very tough in the current budget environment, but the size of the “bump” required here is relatively small, given the potential benefit.But none of this is intended to take away from the job NOAA has done with the resources it already has. Because of NOAA’s forecasts, there was ample warning that this major storm was barreling in on the Gulf Coast and there were reasonable estimates of what it was going to do once it got there. But given sufficient resources the models will get even better, which means the forecasts will get better — more accurate, more precise, and more timely. How much would it be worth to have the accuracy and precision we have now at 24-36 hours before a major storm available 3 days out? Or five days out?
I know it may seem a bit crass to be talking about boosting funding for computing only days after a tragedy as big as Katrina’s impact on the gulf coast, but events like this are a trigger for the reevaluation of national priorities, and it seems to me that computing resources at NOAA haven’t been a national priority for quite a while.
* Update: (9/16/2005) Actually, it looks like NOAA has slightly more adequate computing resources than the FCW article suggests. According to the Top500 list, NOAA has two machines capable of 4.4 teraflops and two capable of 1.8 teraflops. So I’m not sure what the FCW article reflects. That’s still quite some distance from “leadership class” computing, trailing machines in Japan, Sweden, Germany, Russia, Korea, China, and Australia, but it’s better than the figures quoted in the article above.
** Update 2: (9/16/2005) Aliya Sternstein writes to note that the 1.5 teraflop measurement cited in the FCW piece applies to the NWS system at the IBM facility in Gaithersburg, MD, not all of NOAA’s computational capacity.
Things Will Get Busier…
/In: Events, Policy, Security /by Peter HarshaApologies for the dearth of timely updates recently. As many readers familiar with the congressional calendar are aware, Congress disappears for the entire month of August so that members can find their way back to their home districts, partake in a few county fairs and local parades, and generally get a longer-than-usual glimpse of how people outside the Beltway actually live. Consequently, you can see the tumbleweeds blow through the streets of DC until about Labor Day.
Now that Congress is back in town and focused on confirming a Chief Justice, dealing with the aftermath of Katrina, and finishing all the must-pass appropriations bills — ideally before the end of the fiscal year on Sept 30th (they’ve finished just 2 of 12) — things are already heating up quickly, so expect this space to get a bit busier as well.
For example, three events worthy of note are scheduled for this Thursday (September 15th). First, at 10 am, the House Science Committee will revisit federal support for cyber security R&D in a hearing that will focus on the risk cyber vulnerabilities pose to critical industries in the U.S. and what the federal government can do to help. Scheduled to testify are:
Presumably, the committee hopes to hear from the industry representatives how significant the cyber threat is to their industries what the Department of Homeland Security is doing about it. Hopefully the committee and the industry witnesses press DHS about its minimal efforts to engage in long-range research to counter the threats. The hearing, like all Science Committee hearings, will be webcast live (10 am to noon) and archived on the Science Committee website.
Also on Thursday are two policy lunches on Capitol Hill relevant to federal support for R&D. The Forum on Technology and Innovation, an offshoot of the Council on Competitiveness and co-chaired by Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) and Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), will hold a policy briefing on “Basic Research — The Foundation of the Innovation Economy.” Scheduled to speak are George Scalise, president of the Semiconductor Industry Association; Carl A. Batt, Director of the Cornell University/Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research Partnership; and Brian Halla, Chairman of the Board and CEO of National Semiconductor. The event is scheduled from 12:30 pm – 2:00 pm, in the Senate Hart building, room 209. Readers in DC can register to attend here. It looks like the forum archives video of their events, so those unable to attend might want to check afterwards for the video stream.
Over on the House side, unfortunately at exactly the same time, is a briefing put on by the House R&D Caucus (CRA is a member of the advisory committee for the caucus) focused on the R&D tax credit. The event is sponsored by the R&D Credit Coalition, which is chock full of industry representatives. From the invite:
The briefing will be in 2325 Rayburn House Office Building, from Noon – 1:30 pm. DC-area folks wishing to attend can find the RSVP info here (pdf). Apparently attendees can also sign-up to drive “the latest hydrogen fuel cell cars,” which could be fun.
The presence of so many U.S. manufacturers and companies on the panels and sponsor-cards for the briefings should add a little heft to the message of both events. I only wish that they hadn’t been scheduled for almost exactly the same time….
Bay Area Industry, University, and Lab Group Urges Increased Fundamental IT Research
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaIn a letter (pdf) to John Marburger, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium — a group that includes representatives from IBM, HP, SIA, Lockheed-Martin and representatives from Bay Area universities and federal labs — urged the Adminstration to address concerns about federal support for fundamental research in IT. The letter makes a case that should be very familiar to readers of this blog — namely, that “at a time when the U.S. faces enormous challenges to its scientific and technological leadership, U.S. policy is headed in the wrong direction.”
In fact, beyond just the top schools, the overall DARPA investment in university-led IT research has declined precipitously since FY 2001, falling from $199 million to $108 million in FY 2004 (in constant dollars).
The letter goes on to point out the burden placed on NSF as a result of DARPA’s “retrenchment,” noting the precipitous fall of proposal success rates and the impact that has on the peer-review process — it becomes more conservative, resulting in proposals that tend not to be as high-risk and potentially high-return as we need to be supporting to keep the U.S. at the cutting-edge of technological innovation.
BASIC makes two specific recommendations:
These ~$500k awards would be for “individual scientists of exceptional creativity who propose pioneering approaches to major contemporary challenges.” The coalition urges an immediate funding increase for NSF to fund at least 25-50 of these pioneer awards, with an eventual “steady state” of 100-150 awards.
It’s an interesting approach, and it makes essentially the same case we’ve been making about IT research — and many other groups have been making about the physical sciences and engineering generally. But the more groups that make this case — especially groups with significant industry membership like BASIC and the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation and the Council on Competitiveness and the American Electronics Association and the Telecommunication Industry Association and the Business Roundtable and many others, the harder it is for the Administration to ignore the message.
You can read the full letter here (pdf).
NSF’s New Networking Initiative in the News
/In: R&D in the Press, Research /by Peter HarshaLast Thursday, NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering directorate (CISE) officially unveiled their Global Environment for Networking Investigations (GENI) initiative, a program designed to “advance significantly the capabilities provided by networking and distributed systems.” As NSF points out in their fact sheet covering the program:
The unveiling of the initiative did not go unnoticed in the press. Wired ran with the story on Friday, quoting CRA board member Jen Rexford and UCLA’s Len Kleinrock. Federal Computer Week also had coverage Friday. And today, the New York Times’ John Markoff takes a look.
The program has the goal of supporting both a research program and a new “global experimental test facility” — all for an estimated $300 million. That’s a very ambitious budget number in the current environment. But making progress on the challenges posed — how do you design new networking and distributed system architectures that build in security, protect privacy, are robust and easy to use? — could make that $300 million seem like one of the better investments taxpayers have made. As Bob Kahn pointed out in his interview with C-Span last week, the original investment in the research behind what would become the Internet turned out to be a pretty good deal….
In any case, we’ll follow the progress with the initiative as it moves forward. Any “new start” of this magnitude will require substantial effort and support from the community to demonstrate to policymakers the need addressed and opportunity presented by the new program. And we’ll be right there.
Wall Street Journal on H1-B Visas
/In: Policy /by DanRothschildThe Wall Street Journal editorial page leads today (subscription required) by arguing that Congress should lift the cap on H1-B visas and that the market should dictate skilled labor immigration policy. Let’s see how much I can quote and claim a fair use exemption:
They also include this handy and condescending guide to H1-B visa figures:
The August void has been filled, to some degree, by discussion about immigration of skilled and unskilled foreign workers; among other things, the governors of Arizona and New Mexico have declared “states of emergency” along their borders and a debate in Herndon, Virginia over the establishment of a day laborer gathering site has brought immigration into the spotlight in the Washington newspapers and has spilled over into the Virginia gubernatorial race.
So if there is a coming national debate about immigration of both skilled and unskilled workers, the computing research community has to be ready to voice our side and claim a seat at the table.
NY Times on the “new” Computer Science Majors
/In: People, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaThe piece would be a great read even without the quotes from CRA’s Government Affairs co-Chair Lazowska and current board Chair Dan Reed. And it’s a good antidote to the more dour pieces we’ve seen recently about the future of the field.
Give it a read: A Techie, Absolutely, and More
NY Times on Supercomputing Arms Race
/In: R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaThe New York Times’ John Markoff, who launched much of the media and congressional attention on computer science this year with his April 2005 piece “Pentagon Redirects Its Research Dollars“, is still on the computing beat. His most recent is today’s “A New Arms Race to Build the World’s Mightiest Computer.” Here’s a sample:
The article highlights the recent announcements of long-term commitments by a number of countries to fund efforts to develop petaflop-scale computing systems. France, China and Japan have all initiated multi-year investments in programs designed to produce petaflop machines in the next decade. While support for supercomputing research and development here in the U.S. continues to “remain a priority” in the Administration’s plans, our commitment to long-term support for the development of these leadership class machines isn’t as stellar as it could be. PITAC’s June 2005 report on the state of computational science in the U.S. put it a bit more bluntly:
As the Council on Competitiveness is fond of noting, in order to compete in the global economy, you must be able to out-compute your rivals. The U.S. needs to ensure that it maintains a commitment to the long-term R&D that will continue to “prime the pump” for the innovations in high-end computing that will allow us to keep pace with our international competitors. Adopting PITAC’s recommendations (pdf) would be a good place to start.
Bob Kahn Talks to C-Span
/In: People /by Peter HarshaAn interesting interview with Turing Award co-winner (and CRA board member) Robert Kahn by C-Span’s Brian Lamb ran yesterday, covering everything from the birth of the Internet, to his role at DARPA, and whether he was a geek in high school and college. As is usually the case with C-span programs, it’s pretty in-depth and worth watching. It’s viewable online, and there’s a written transcript as well.
Here’s a snippet:
(“Mad props” to Tom Jones for the head’s up!)