Let me start by saying that I am a physicist and have been involved with many of the leading U.S. research facilities over the years — Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia Laboratories, just to name two. I also directed the Socrates Project under the Reagan administration. So the quick knee-jerk reaction to the title that “I don’t understand research and development or the value of technology” holds no water at all. Please don’t even try to argue this point.
Research and development (R&D) does not equate to a competitive advantage in the marketplace or on the military battlefield. Knowledge for knowledge’s sake is a worthwhile pursuit. Totally agree. But it is conceptually flawed and detrimental to the objective — being competitive — when companies and governments use the need to increase economic and military might as justification for higher expenditures on R&D. But yet this is the rapidly rising battle cry among the leading thinkers in Congress, the Pentagon, academia, think tanks, and the press — “Raise R&D funding levels, and America’s future will be secured.” How so far from the truth.
One highly critical set of decision makers who suffers from this R&D is the key to competitiveness thinking is the leadership in the office of the Secretary of Defense. But this was all avoidable.
In the late 1980s, I “assisted” in writing legislation that would force DoD out of this R&D is the key to competitiveness thinking. As a member of the intelligence community, working directly with the U.S. Congress was considered a hanging offense. But I was willing to risk it because I foresaw that DoD thinking in this manner would lead to the massive dilemma that DoD is now at a loss to address — the rise of China as a military threat and the almost total erasure of U.S technology leadership on which our military strength is based.
The legislation mandated that the Secretary of Defense develop and present a Department of Defense technology strategy to Congress every year. It was a process that would force DoD out of its R&D is the key to competitiveness thinking. The legislation passed, and for all intents and purposes, lies dormant and unexecuted to this day.
But let me go back to the beginning of the story — The Socrates Project.
For More: http://www.financialpolicycouncil.org/blog/will-stop-blindly-pissing-away-money-rd-rat-hole/
Thank you.