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 at marketable innovations but at basic scientific mysteries. DARPA and its investments have paid off handsomely nevertheless.
Its legendary role in developing the Internet as a free-for-all instead of a commercially owned space is widely known. Less so are its militarily and commercially important developments, such as global positioning satellites, the JPEG file format for efficiently storing photographs and Websearching technologies like those later refined by Google.
Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, however, Homeland Security officials have pushed DARPA to rein in its democratic funding systems. Grants once available to universities can now flow only to military contractors, and graduate student support once open to the most excellent thinkers can be offered only to U.S. citizens. Administration officials say the changes are needed to keep technological innovations out of the hands of potential terrorists. The effect may be instead to dampen imagination itself.
Edward Lazowska and David Patterson (both former CRA board members and current members of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee) have penned an excellent OpEd (sub. req’d) in this week’s issue of Science magazine on the impact of the changing federal landscape for support of computing research. The OpEd makes a case that will be familiar to readers of this blog: the unique environment responsible for the IT innovations that drive much of the new economy is at risk by recent shifts within the federal IT R&D portfolio.
U.S. IT research grew largely under DARPA and the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF relied on peer review, whereas DARPA bet on vision and reputation, complementary approaches that served the nation well. Over the past 4 decades, the resulting research has laid the foundation for the modern microprocessor, the Internet, the graphical user interface, and single-user workstations. It has also launched new fields such as computational science. Virtually every aspect of IT that we rely on today bears the stamp of federally sponsored research. A 2003 National Academies study provided 19 examples where such work ultimately led to billion-dollar industries, an economic benefit that reaffirms science advisor Vannevar Bush’s 1945 vision in Science: The Endless Frontier.
However, in the past 3 years, DARPA funding for IT research at universities has dropped by nearly half. Policy changes at the agency, including increased classification of research programs, increased restrictions on the participation of noncitizens, and “go/no-go” reviews applied to research at 12- to 18-month intervals, discourage participation by university researchers and signal a shift from pushing the leading edge to “bridging the gap” between fundamental research and deployable technologies. In essence, NSF is now relied on to support the long-term research needed to advance the IT field.
Other agencies have not stepped in. The Defense Science Board noted in a recent look at microchip research at the Department of Defense (DOD): “[DARPA’s] withdrawal has created a vacuum . . . The problem, for DOD, the IT industry, and the nation as a whole, is that no effective leadership structure has been substituted.” The Department of Homeland Security, according to a recent report from the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, spends less than 2% of its Science and Technology budget on cybersecurity, and only a small fraction of that on research. NASA is downsizing computational science, and IT research budgets at the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health are slated for cuts in the president’s fiscal year 2006 budget.
The OpEd’s conclusion is stark:
At a time when global competitors are gaining the capacity and commitment to challenge U.S. high-tech leadership, this changed landscape threatens to derail the extraordinarily productive interplay of academia, government, and industry in IT. Given the importance of IT in enabling the new economy and in opening new areas of scientific discovery, we simply cannot afford to cede leadership. Where will the next generation of groundbreaking innovations in IT arise? Where will the Turing Awardees 30 years hence reside? Given current trends, the answers to both questions will likely be, “not in the United States.”
As I mentioned previously, the piece contains a link to the a page here at CRA HQ that’s sort of a one-stop shop for information relating to IT R&D policy. Ed has also placed a link to a pdf version of the article on his website.
The OpEd appears in an issue of Science devoted to distributed computing issues, with articles on Grassroots Supercomputing, Grid Sport: Competitive Crunching, Data-Bots Charting the Internet, Service-Oriented Science, and more. The timing of the issue also couldn’t be better, given the the House Science Committee will hold a full committee hearing on “The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S.” on Thursday, May 12th. You can catch the details here, or watch it live on the Science Committee’s real-time webcast (also archived).
And keep an eye out for future editorials….
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), noting that
America today finds herself at a crossroads when it comes to leading the world in science and innovation. We can continue down the current path, as other nations continue to narrow the gap, or we can take bold, dramatic steps to ensure U.S. economic leadership in the 21st century and a rising standard of living for all Americans.
The letter calls on the President to make a “bold commitment” to invest in the future of the country by tripling of the “innovation budget” — federal basic research — and continues:
We must ensure for future generations that America continues to be the innovation leader of the world. Investing in research and development is a critical part of optimizing our nation for innovation, a process that will require strong leadership and involvement from government, industry, academia and labor. We must choose whether to innovate or abdicate.
Since becoming chair of the reorganized Science, State, Justice, Commerce appropriations committee in January, Wolf has become an outspokenadvocate for federal support of fundamental research. As we’ve noted previously, much of the credit for this has to go to the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation and its “Benchmarks” report, from which Wolf apparently grabbed a number of examples for his letter (he’s cited the report elsewhere, as well).
Wolf’s goal in writing to the President isn’t to affect the FY 06 appropriations process directly — after all, at this point the President’s only official role in the FY 06 budget process is to veto or sign the final approps bill — but to encourage the President to make basic research a priority in his FY 2007 budget request. Doing so would give appropriators next year more “headroom” to increase budgets for basic research — headroom sorely lacking this year. This is an approach many groups in the science community (including CRA) are taking as well, in addition to working very hard to get the highest possible funding level in FY 06.
We’ll have more details in the coming weeks on other opportunities for Wolf and others to make the case for federal support of fundamental research. In the meantime, you can read a scan of Wolf’s two-page letter to the President here.
As I was updating the IT R&D policy resources page here in anticipation of it appearing as a link in a soon-to-be published Science magazine OpEd on the state of federal support for computing research (titled “An Endless Frontier Postponed” — watch this space for details), I realized that I hadn’t yet posted a link to this recently released report (pdf) from the Defense Science Board. The report includes an excellent appendix that notes the impact policy changes at DARPA will have on the Defense Department’s long-term mission. Here’s what I wrote on the IT R&D page:
In February 2005, the Defense Department’s Defense Science Board — an independent advisory committee comprised of researchers from academia, government, and industry — released an examination of the microelectronics industry, which provides hardware capability that “underlies much of America’s modern military leadership technology.” Part of that examination involved a review of DOD’s research efforts in the space to determine if the Department is doing what it can to “secure continued ‘Moore’s Law’ improvements in processing capacity that will enable it to maximize the advantages inherent in its superior sources of information and the superiority of the algortihms and networks that are used to process and benefit from them.” What they found is that changes in emphasis at DARPA have impacted DOD-related research long-term:
Historically, the rapid rate of growth in U.S. microchip capability resulted from a robust national portfolio of long-term research that incorporated both incremental and revolutionary components. Industry excelled in evolutionary technology developments that resulted in reduced costs, higher quality and reliability and vastly improved performance. DOD now is no longer perceived as being seriously involved in — or even taking steps to ensure that others are conducting — research to enable the embedded processing proficiency on which its strategic advantage depends. This withdrawal has created a vacuum where no part of the U.S. government is able to exert leadership, especially with respect to the revolutionary component of the research portfolio.
[footnote]
This development is partly explained by historic circumstances. Since World War II, the DOD has been the primary supporter of research in university Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) departments, with NSF contributing some funds towards basic research. From the early 1960’s through the 1980’s, one tremendously successful aspect of the DOD’s funding in the information technology space came from DARPA’s unique approach to the funding of Applied Research (6.2 funding), which hybridized university and industry research through a process that envisioned revolutionary new capabilities, identified barriers to their realization, focused the best minds in the field on new approaches to overcome those barriers and fostered rapid commercialization and DOD adoption. The hybridization of university and industry researchers was a crucial element; it kept the best and the brightest in the university sector well informed of defense issues and the university researchers acted as useful “prods” to the defense contractors, making it impossible for them to dismiss revolutionary concepts whose feasibility was demonstrated by university-based 6.2 efforts that produced convincing “proof of concept” prototypes. As EECS grew in scale and its scope extended beyond DOD applications, a “success disaster” ensued in that EECS essentially “outgrew” the ability of the DOD to be its primary source of directional influence, let alone funding. Furthermore, DOD never developed a strategy to deal with this transition. With pressures to fund developments are unique to the Defense (e.g., military aircraft, tanks, artillery, etc.), the DOD withdrew its EECS research leadership. Recently, DARPA has further limited university participation, especially as prime contractors, in its Computer Science 6.2 programs, which were by far its most significant investments in university research (vastly outstripping 6.1 funding). These limitations have come in a number of ways, including non-fiscal limitations, such as the classification of work in areas that were previously unclassified, precluding university submission as prime contractors on certain solicitations, and reducing the periods of performance to 18-24 months.
–High Performance Microchip Supply, Defense Science Board, February 2005, Appendix D, p. 87-88
The entire report is available here (pdf).
So add the DSB to the growing list of organizations, advisory committees, congressional committees, and the press that have noted their concern for the impact of DARPA’s policy shift.
A reminder: the House Science Committee will hold a hearing on “The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S.” on May 12, 2005. Appearing as witnesses before the committee will be Jack Marburger, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Anthony Tether, Director of DARPA; Bill Wulf, President of the National Academies of Engineering; and Tom Leighton, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Akamai Industries, and also the Chair of the PITAC Subcommittee on Cyber Security. All Science Committee hearings are webcast live (and then archived for later viewing as well). And, of course, we’ll have all the details here.
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 to the Senate, where previous efforts to reauthorize portions of the Networking and Information Technology R&D program have failed to receive timely consideration.
Here’s our previous coverage of the bill, which has a bit more detail.
CRA and USACM joined in issuing a press release applauding the bill’s authors and the members of the House for moving the legislation. A copy of that release can be found after the jump.
The House Science Committee’s press release has further (positive) reaction from Chair Sherwood Boehlert.
“This is very important legislation that deals with the competitiveness of the United States of America in the global marketplace. We are not going to be preeminent in the competitive world if we don’t invest wisely and direct our resources in the proper way, because the competition is all over the place. It isn’t one state against another. It’s the United States against the world. Right now, we’re ahead. That’s the position I like. But when we look back, we see a lot of people following closely behind. That’s why it’s critically important that we do things like invest in high-performance computing so that we maintain our competitive edge.”
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 challenge.
Wolf, who has led Congressional campaigns against gambling and has focused national attention on religious persecution and other human rights violations around the world, is now putting together an agenda to reverse America’s decline in science.
On April 12, he and two House colleagues – accompanied by former Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) – announced the introduction of legislation to have the U.S. government pay the interest on undergraduate loans for students who agree to work in science, math or engineering for a five-year period.
Wolf also favors holding a blue-ribbon national conference on technology, trade and manufacturing where leaders of industry would highlight the danger to U.S. leadership. He wants to triple funding for federal basic-science programs over a period of years.
…
Wolf told me in an interview, rather diplomatically, that “I personally believe that [the Bush administration is] underfunding science. Not purposefully. I think we have a deficit problem, and previous administrations have underfunded it also.”
Gingrich is less diplomatic. “I am totally puzzled by what they’ve done with the basic-research budget,” he told me. “As a national security conservative and as a world trade-economic competition conservative, I cannot imagine how they could have come up with this budget.”
He continued: “There’s no point in arguing with them internally. They’re going to do what they are going to do. But I think if this Congress does not substantially raise the research budget, we are unilaterally disarming from the standpoint of international competition.”
Much of the credit for influencing Wolf’s position has to go to the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation (of which CRA is a member). Their Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future (pdf) report seems to be resonating well with congressional offices, and special efforts to reach out to Wolf (who has been very receptive) seem to be paying off.
Now the trick is to turn that enthusiasm into real appropriations — something that remains a real challenge in current budget environment. We’ll keep you posted.
The National Science Foundation has included a new, special section on computing research at NSF on the Foundation’s homepage. It’s a nice overview of the types of innovation that have resulted from their decades of support for fundamental research in computing, as well as some of the challenges ahead (pulled from CRA’s Grand Challenges in Computer Science and Engineering conference).
There’s even a snazzy screensaver.
Since there’s been so much recent coverage of computing R&D issues in the popular press, and since we’ve been trying to cite so much of it here, I figured I’d make life easy on myself and anyone else looking for a collection of recent articles by creating a new “R&D in the Press” category over there on the left. Clicking the link gets you to an archive of all the posts we’ve made citing news reports — though at the moment it only goes back a couple of weeks. When I get some time, I’ll go deeper into the archive and tag more relevant posts with the new category.
Enjoy!
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 university computer science research as one of the flawed policy decisions that need correcting to preserve our future competitiveness. Here’s a snippet:
But I am growing increasingly alarmed, less because of the dynamism in Asia and more because of our blindness and obtuseness when it comes to our crown jewel: our overwhelming lead in basic research and our position as home to the best scientists in the world.
Basic research is the real building block of economic growth, and here we have had the franchise; just look at the number of Nobel Prize winners from the United States compared to the rest of the world combined. Our academic institutions and research labs have been magnets attracting, and often keeping, the best and the brightest. Our academic openness and our culture of freedom have encouraged good research and challenges to orthodoxy. Our politicians have recognized that most basic research has to be funded by the government because there is scant short-term economic benefit for most businesses to do it themselves.
But now, in a variety of ways, we are frittering away this asset, and for no good reason. Start with the federal budget. Basic research has been concentrated in a few key institutions: the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon. After a series of pledges to double the NIH budget and then keep it on a growth path, NIH has stagnated. Budget growth for next year is one-half of 1 percent, which will be below inflation for the first time since the 1980s, at a time when the need for more biomedical research is obvious.
The NSF budget is slated to grow by 2 percent, leaving it $3 billion below the funding level Congress promised in 2002. At NIST, the Bush administration is trying to eliminate the Advanced Technology Program and to slash the Manufacturing Extension Partnership by 57 percent. At DARPA, which originated the Internet but where computer science research has been flat for several years, the money going to university researchers has fallen precipitously, along with a larger focus on applied research for the here and now.
…
It is gut check time. The foolish fiscal policies that keep big entitlements off the table, wont consider revenues along with spending, and have turned the one-sixth of the budget that is discretionary into a vicious, zero-sum game, are truly eating our seed corn in this critical area. Somebody needs to get the White House to wake up, and Congress to understand what it is mindlessly doing.
LA Times on DARPA R&D: “The Imagination Drain”
/In: Funding, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaApparently 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.
Here’s the whole thing.
The collection of articles and editorials addressing this issue since the story first ran in the New York Times back on April 1, 2005 (covered previously) is almost too long to list. But I’ve done my best here.
Science OpEd: An Endless Frontier Postponed
/In: Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaEdward Lazowska and David Patterson (both former CRA board members and current members of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee) have penned an excellent OpEd (sub. req’d) in this week’s issue of Science magazine on the impact of the changing federal landscape for support of computing research. The OpEd makes a case that will be familiar to readers of this blog: the unique environment responsible for the IT innovations that drive much of the new economy is at risk by recent shifts within the federal IT R&D portfolio.
The OpEd’s conclusion is stark:
As I mentioned previously, the piece contains a link to the a page here at CRA HQ that’s sort of a one-stop shop for information relating to IT R&D policy. Ed has also placed a link to a pdf version of the article on his website.
The OpEd appears in an issue of Science devoted to distributed computing issues, with articles on Grassroots Supercomputing, Grid Sport: Competitive Crunching, Data-Bots Charting the Internet, Service-Oriented Science, and more. The timing of the issue also couldn’t be better, given the the House Science Committee will hold a full committee hearing on “The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S.” on Thursday, May 12th. You can catch the details here, or watch it live on the Science Committee’s real-time webcast (also archived).
And keep an eye out for future editorials….
Wolf Calls for Tripling of “Innovation Budget”
/In: Funding /by Peter HarshaRep. 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), noting that
The letter calls on the President to make a “bold commitment” to invest in the future of the country by tripling of the “innovation budget” — federal basic research — and continues:
Since becoming chair of the reorganized Science, State, Justice, Commerce appropriations committee in January, Wolf has become an outspoken advocate for federal support of fundamental research. As we’ve noted previously, much of the credit for this has to go to the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation and its “Benchmarks” report, from which Wolf apparently grabbed a number of examples for his letter (he’s cited the report elsewhere, as well).
Wolf’s goal in writing to the President isn’t to affect the FY 06 appropriations process directly — after all, at this point the President’s only official role in the FY 06 budget process is to veto or sign the final approps bill — but to encourage the President to make basic research a priority in his FY 2007 budget request. Doing so would give appropriators next year more “headroom” to increase budgets for basic research — headroom sorely lacking this year. This is an approach many groups in the science community (including CRA) are taking as well, in addition to working very hard to get the highest possible funding level in FY 06.
We’ll have more details in the coming weeks on other opportunities for Wolf and others to make the case for federal support of fundamental research. In the meantime, you can read a scan of Wolf’s two-page letter to the President here.
Defense Science Board on the Impact of Changes to DARPA IT R&D
/In: Policy /by Peter HarshaAs I was updating the IT R&D policy resources page here in anticipation of it appearing as a link in a soon-to-be published Science magazine OpEd on the state of federal support for computing research (titled “An Endless Frontier Postponed” — watch this space for details), I realized that I hadn’t yet posted a link to this recently released report (pdf) from the Defense Science Board. The report includes an excellent appendix that notes the impact policy changes at DARPA will have on the Defense Department’s long-term mission. Here’s what I wrote on the IT R&D page:
In February 2005, the Defense Department’s Defense Science Board — an independent advisory committee comprised of researchers from academia, government, and industry — released an examination of the microelectronics industry, which provides hardware capability that “underlies much of America’s modern military leadership technology.” Part of that examination involved a review of DOD’s research efforts in the space to determine if the Department is doing what it can to “secure continued ‘Moore’s Law’ improvements in processing capacity that will enable it to maximize the advantages inherent in its superior sources of information and the superiority of the algortihms and networks that are used to process and benefit from them.” What they found is that changes in emphasis at DARPA have impacted DOD-related research long-term:
The entire report is available here (pdf).
So add the DSB to the growing list of organizations, advisory committees, congressional committees, and the press that have noted their concern for the impact of DARPA’s policy shift.
A reminder: the House Science Committee will hold a hearing on “The Future of Computer Science Research in the U.S.” on May 12, 2005. Appearing as witnesses before the committee will be Jack Marburger, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Anthony Tether, Director of DARPA; Bill Wulf, President of the National Academies of Engineering; and Tom Leighton, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Akamai Industries, and also the Chair of the PITAC Subcommittee on Cyber Security. All Science Committee hearings are webcast live (and then archived for later viewing as well). And, of course, we’ll have all the details here.
High Performance Computing Act Passes House
/In: Funding, Policy /by Peter HarshaCRA 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 to the Senate, where previous efforts to reauthorize portions of the Networking and Information Technology R&D program have failed to receive timely consideration.
Here’s our previous coverage of the bill, which has a bit more detail.
CRA and USACM joined in issuing a press release applauding the bill’s authors and the members of the House for moving the legislation. A copy of that release can be found after the jump.
The House Science Committee’s press release has further (positive) reaction from Chair Sherwood Boehlert.
Read more →
Roll Call OpEd Calls on Congress to Support Science
/In: Funding, Policy, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaRoll 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 challenge.
Much of the credit for influencing Wolf’s position has to go to the Task Force on the Future of American Innovation (of which CRA is a member). Their Benchmarks of Our Innovation Future (pdf) report seems to be resonating well with congressional offices, and special efforts to reach out to Wolf (who has been very receptive) seem to be paying off.
Now the trick is to turn that enthusiasm into real appropriations — something that remains a real challenge in current budget environment. We’ll keep you posted.
Computing at NSF
/In: Research /by Peter HarshaThe National Science Foundation has included a new, special section on computing research at NSF on the Foundation’s homepage. It’s a nice overview of the types of innovation that have resulted from their decades of support for fundamental research in computing, as well as some of the challenges ahead (pulled from CRA’s Grand Challenges in Computer Science and Engineering conference).
There’s even a snazzy screensaver.
Reaction to Trends in CS Majors article
/In: CRA, Misc., People /by Peter HarshaFirst, there was Jay Vegso’s Computing Research News article: “Interest in CS as a Major Drops Among Incoming Freshmen”
Then his blog post.
Then C-Net picked it up.
Then Techdirt.
Now it’s hit Slashdot and the comments are pouring in.
Housekeeping Note: New Blog Category
/In: Misc. /by Peter HarshaSince there’s been so much recent coverage of computing R&D issues in the popular press, and since we’ve been trying to cite so much of it here, I figured I’d make life easy on myself and anyone else looking for a collection of recent articles by creating a new “R&D in the Press” category over there on the left. Clicking the link gets you to an archive of all the posts we’ve made citing news reports — though at the moment it only goes back a couple of weeks. When I get some time, I’ll go deeper into the archive and tag more relevant posts with the new category.
Enjoy!
Ball Keeps Rolling: Ornstein Writes in Support of Basic Research and IT R&D at DARPA
/In: Funding, R&D in the Press /by Peter HarshaThis 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 university computer science research as one of the flawed policy decisions that need correcting to preserve our future competitiveness. Here’s a snippet:
And with that, the (bipartisan) chorus of voices grows….