March 31, 2004
CRA Analysis of Computing Research in the FY 2005 Budget Request
As part of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual review of R&D in the President's Budget Request, CRA provides an analysis of computing research in the request. This is essentially a look at the current status of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development initiative -- the government-wide program that encompasses all federal IT R&D activities. In short, the President's request would keep things pretty steady-state. A slight decline in overall funding -- made up of slight increases at some agencies, and slight declines in other. But the overall funding requested still falls well short of the amount recommended by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) when they did their last comprehensive review of federal IT R&D funding back in 1999.
Here are the highlights from the report:
HighlightsRead on to get the full scoop...
Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) funding would fall 0.7 percent in FY 2005 to $2.00 billion across eleven federal agencies, under the President’s budget request. The President's request would increase funding for computing research at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the lead agency in the NITRD initiative, to $761 million in FY 2005, an increase of 0.9 percent. Concerns about interagency coordination of large-scale "cyberinfrastructure" investments in FY 2005 will likely lead to greater congressional oversight of NITRD programs in 2004.
Computing Research in the FY 2005 Budget Request
Peter Harsha
Computing Research Association (CRA)
Highlights
Introduction and Background
The importance of computing research in enabling the new economy is well documented. The resulting advances in information technology have led to significant improvements in product design, development and distribution for American industry, provided instant communications for people worldwide, and enabled new scientific disciplines like bioinformatics and nanotechnology that show great promise in improving a whole range of health, security, and communications technologies. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that the growing use of information technology has been the distinguishing feature of this "pivotal period in American economic history." Recent analysis suggests that the remarkable growth the U.S. experienced between 1995 and 2000 was spurred by an increase in productivity enabled almost completely by factors related to IT. "IT drove the U.S. productivity revival [from 1995-2000]," according to Harvard economist Dale Jorgenson.
Information technology has also changed the conduct of research. Innovations in computing and networking technologies are enabling scientific discovery across every scientific discipline – from mapping the human brain to modeling climatic change. Researchers, faced with research problems that are ever more complex and interdisciplinary in nature, are using IT to collaborate across the globe, visualize large and complex datasets, and collect and manage massive amounts of data.
A significant reason for this dramatic advance in computing technology and the subsequent increase in innovation and productivity is the "extraordinarily productive interplay of federally funded university research, federally and privately funded industrial research, and entrepreneurial companies founded and staffed by people who moved back and forth between universities and industry," according a 1995 report by the National Research Council. That report, and a subsequent 1999 report by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), emphasized the "spectacular" return on the federal investment in long-term IT research and development.
However, in that 1999 report PITAC – a congressionally-chartered, presidentially-appointed committee charged with assessing the overall federal investment in IT R&D – also determined that federal support for IT R&D was inadequate and too focused on near-term problems; long-term fundamental IT research was not sufficiently supported relative to the importance of IT to the United States' economic, health, scientific and other aspirations; critical problems in computing were going unsolved; and the rate of introduction of new ideas was dangerously low. The PITAC report included a series of recommendations, including a set of research priorities and an affirmation of the committee's unanimous opinion that the federal government has an "essential" role in supporting long-term, high-risk IT R&D. This opinion was buttressed by the inclusion of a recommendation for specific increases in funding levels for federal IT R&D programs beginning in FY 2000 and continuing through FY 2004 – an increase of $1.3 billion in additional funding over those five years.
The PITAC report has done much to shape the current federal IT R&D effort -- a $2.0 billion, multi-agency enterprise called the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program and coordinated by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) on Information Technology Research and Development of the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC). NITRD is the successor of the High Performance Computing and Communications Program established by Congress in 1991. NITRD agencies coordinate research in seven Program Component Areas (PCAs): High End Computing Infrastructure and Applications; High End Computing Research and Development; Human Computer Interaction and Information Management; Large Scale Networking; Software Design and Productivity; High Confidence Software and Systems; and Social, Economic, and Workforce Implications of IT and IT Workforce Development. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is the lead agency in NITRD; other participating agencies include the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Department of Energy (DOE) National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), DOE Office of Science, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), National Security Agency (NSA), and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).
Current Policy Environment
Despite the impact of the 1999 PITAC report on the current structure of the NITRD program, the funding levels recommended by the committee have never been realized. The FY 2004 enacted level of $2.02 billion fell $683 million below the recommended level, continuing a trend of shortfalls established within the first year of the recommendations. At a congressional hearing shortly after the President's FY 2005 budget release, John H. Marburger, the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, defended the slight decrease in NITRD funding in the request by describing the initiative as "highly successful" and "mature," justifying limited reprioritization within some agencies and allowing for program cuts, an announcement met with some concern in the computing research community.
The issue of NITRD prioritization will likely receive increased congressional attention in 2004, partly in response to developments overseas in 2002. An April 2002 announcement that the Japanese "Earth System Simulator" supercomputer, designed to perform simulations of the global environment, had surpassed the fastest U.S.-designed supercomputer -- the ASCI White system at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- in computational speed by nearly a factor of five, garnered much attention in Congress and the Administration. The House Science Committee began focusing on the issue in earnest with the start of the 108th Congress in 2003, examining the U.S. effort in "high-end computing" -- a catch-all phrase intended to encompass not only supercomputing, but high-speed networks, large-scale databases, data storage, software and hardware design. In this way, high end computing is infrastructure that supports advancements in practically every field of scientific endeavor -- sometimes called "cyberinfrastructure." In July, 2003, the committee held its first hearing to explore whether the Japanese advance indicated that the U.S. had lost its leadership role in high-end computing.
The Administration was asking the same questions. The President's FY 2003 budget request directed the NITRD Interagency Working Group (IWG) to establish a "High End Computing Revitalization Task Force" (HECRTF) to examine the current state of federal high-end computing efforts, with the goal of having all the participating agencies submit a coordinated budget request for high-end computing for FY 2005. The Task Force convened a public workshop on the issue in June 2003 that resulted in a report, The Roadmap for the Revitalization of High End Computing (pdf), which mapped out the short and long term technical challenges required to revitalize the area. However, the Task Force had not, at the time of the President's FY 2005 request, been able to take that input and develop a coordinated interagency budget plan.
In the absence of a coordinated plan, many of the NITRD agencies have begun to move forward with their own versions of a cyberinfrastructure plan, raising concerns for the House Science Committee that important, time-sensitive opportunities for coordination and long-term collaboration are being lost. The Committee will likely act on these concerns in 2004 by introducing NITRD "reauthorization" legislation aimed at encouraging that coordination and collaboration.
Recent efforts at reauthorizing NITRD programs have not met with much success. A bill introduced by former House Science Committee Chair F. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) in the 106th Congress (H.R. 2086) passed the House but fell victim to a dispute with the Senate Commerce, Science and Technology Committee over an unrelated matter. House Science Subcommittee on Research Chair Nick Smith (R-MI) and Ranking Member Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) also introduced similar legislation in the 107th Congress (H.R. 3400) that garnered committee approval. However, H.R. 3400 failed to receive the consideration of the full House. It is not clear how easy a path a NITRD authorization in the second session of the 108th Congress will face.
One other area of computing likely to see a considerable amount of congressional attention continue is research into data-mining techniques that might prove valuable in the war on terror. Concerns in 2003 about the privacy risks to innocent U.S. citizens due to data-mining research -- specifically about Defense-sponsored research into "a prototype network that integrates innovative information technologies for detecting and preempting foreign terrorist activities against Americans," a project known a Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) (pdf) -- resulted in Congress taking the unusual step of not only singling the program out for elimination in the FY 2004 Defense Appropriations bill, but eliminating the entire program office in which the program was housed. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) led the charge against TIA-related research at DARPA, ultimately pressing for elimination of DARPA's Information Assurance Office (IAO), run (until his resignation under pressure in August 2003) by former Admiral John Poindexter.
Though the congressional action prevented DARPA from pursuing any research that might someday result in a TIA-like system, congressional appropriators did insert language that appeared to allow that work to continue in unspecified intelligence agencies, as long as the work did not focus on U.S. citizens. The result of the language, however, is that the bulk of the research in this area is now classified, raising concerns from some in the academic community that outside oversight of the work is no longer possible.
One final area likely to see some action in 2004 is computing research and standards setting at NIST. Congress cut $21 million from NIST FY 2004 funding as part of the FY 2004 Omnibus Appropriations bill, a move that NIST warns will cause them to cut back ‘significantly" on the agency's cybersecurity projects, as well as stop all of its activities in e-voting standards development called for in the 2002 Help America Vote Act (HAVA). As table II-14 shows, much of that funding would be restored under the President's budget plan. However, it is not clear how much unaccounted for spending requirements incurred in canceling NIST's Advanced Technology Program (ATP), as called for in the budget, would affect NIST's computing related activities in FY 2005.
Budget Request
Seven agencies included requests for FY 2005 funding as part of the NITRD activity. Under the President's plan, NSF, as the recipient of the largest amount of NITRD funds, would once again be designated as the lead agency for the initiative, with NSF Computing and Information Systems and Engineering (CISE) directorate head Dr. Peter Freeman serving as the head of the NITRD Interagency Working Group. For FY 2005, the President has requested $2.0 billion for the NITRD initiative, a decrease of 0.7 percent over the FY 2004 enacted level (see table I-10). Under the President's plan, NSF, HHS, Energy and Commerce would small to moderate increases in FY 2005, while NASA and DOD would see cuts of 5.8 and 10.3 percent respectively.
National Science Foundation: NSF has requested $761 million in NITRD-related funding, an increase of $7.0 million over the FY 2004 request, or 0.9 percent. The bulk of IT-related funding in the NSF request is contained within the request for the CISE directorate, which would grow 2.2 percent over FY 2004 to $618 million. CISE itself has undergone reorganization into a new set of sub-activities, as shown in table II-7. Four of the new activities -- Computer and Networked Systems, Computing and Communication Foundations, Information and Intelligent Systems, and Shared Cyberinfrastructure -- would see increases in FY 2005 under the President's plan. The increases are largely offset by decreasing the request for the Information Technology Research activity, which had been an NSF-wide priority area until FY 2004, by $40 million for FY 2005.
NSF remains active in every aspect of the NITRD program component areas and continues in its role as the principal source of federal funding for university-based basic research in computer science, computer engineering, information science, networking and the computational science disciplines. NSF's request of $761 million is more than double the size of the next largest NITRD participant (HHS, $371 million).
Two areas of significant focus for NSF in FY 2005 will be "Cyber Trust," research aimed at addressing concerns about the vulnerability and trustworthiness of computers, networks and information systems, and "Cyberinfrastructure," managing and supporting the creation of a widely shared high-end computing infrastructure aimed at revolutionizing the conduct of research and education across the sciences.
Department of Defense: The DOD request of $226 million for NITRD-related activities department-wide represents a decrease of $26 million from the FY 2004 level. DARPA constitutes the largest share of NITRD-related defense funding, with the bulk of that effort taking place within the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO). Program cuts at DARPA called for in the FY 2004 Defense Appropriations bill (P.L.108-87) account for the majority of the planned decrease in funding. Appropriators, concerned that DARPA's TIA program (described above) posed serious threats to American civil liberties, cut all funding for the program and eliminated DARPA's Information Assurance Office, where it (and related research efforts) were housed.
Additionally, much of DARPA's formerly unclassified work in cybersecurity research and development has been classified in FY 2005. DARPA Director Anthony Tether explained the move to a February 2004 gathering of computer society and association leaders as necessary because so much of the Defense Department's warfighting capability now depends upon using the computer networks as both offensive and defensive weapons. Exposing potential methods of attack or defense would therefore put national security in jeopardy, he explained. This has raised some concerns within the computing community, especially because research that formerly might have been available to help secure public networks now cannot be disseminated.
Agency-wide, DARPA is focused on future-generations computing, communications and networking as well as embedded software and control technologies. Within IPTO, the focus is on "cognitive computing" -- described as "systems that know what they are doing" and have the ability to reason about their environment. Meeting this focus means concentrating on six core research areas: computational perception; representation and reasoning; learning, communications and interaction; dynamic coordinated teams of cognitive systems; and robust software and hardware infrastructure for cognitive systems.
Health and Human Services (HHS): NIH constitutes the bulk of funding in IT R&D at HHS. For FY 2005, the President's plan includes $371 million in IT R&D funding at HHS, an increase of 0.8 percent, or $3 million over the FY 2004 level. Within HHS, NIH participates in NITRD by supporting research that advances its mission of developing the basic knowledge for the understanding, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of human disease. IT research in this area includes applying the power of computing to manage and analyze biomedical data and to model biological processes. AHRQ focuses on research into state-of-the-art IT for use in health care applications such as computer-based patient records, clinical decision support systems, and standards for patient care data.
Department of Energy: IT R&D activities in DOE's Office of Science and NNSA constitute DOE's participation in NITRD. The Office of Science focuses on computational and networking tools that enable researchers to model, simulate, analyze, and predict complex physical, chemical and biological phenomena important to the department's overall mission. NNSA supports research developing new means of assessing the performance, safety, and reliability of nuclear weapons systems through high-fidelity computer models and simulations. Under the President's plan DOE NITRD funding would be $354 million for FY 2004, an increase of 2.9 percent, or $10 million, over the FY 2004 level.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration: Under the President's plan, NASA would see a decrease in IT funding for FY 2005, in part related to the elimination of a number of congressional earmarks enacted as part of the FY 2004 Omnibus Appropriations bill (P.L. 108-199). NASA NITRD funding would shrink 5.8 percent for FY 2005, down $16 million from the FY 2004 enacted level to $259 million. NASA IT funding is focused on advancing the agency's mission to extend U.S. technological leadership to benefit the U.S. aeronautics, Earth and space science, and spaceborne research communities. NASA, NIH, and NSF are alone among NITRD agencies in their support of research efforts in all seven NITRD program component areas.
Department of Commerce (DOC): The DOC request for FY 2005 contains NITRD-related funding requests from two agencies: NOAA and NIST. NIST IT R&D efforts include working with industry, educational, and government organizations to make IT systems more useable, secure, scalable, and interoperable. In addition, NIST works to apply IT to specialized areas like biotechnology and manufacturing, and to encourage industry to accelerate development of IT innovations.
NOAA supports IT research in emerging computer technologies for improved climate modeling and weather forecasting, and for improved communications technologies to disseminate weather products and warnings to emergency responders, policymakers, and the general public.
Environmental Protection Agency: The EPA would receive $4 million in FY 2005 under the President's plan, the same amount it received in FY 2004. EPA intends to use that funding to support IT technologies that facilitate ecosystem modeling, risk assessment, and environmental decision making at the federal, state, and local levels.
Department of Homeland Security: Because the Department of Homeland Security, established in 2003, was created well after the original passage of the legislation creating the current NITRD structure (the High Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991), the agency is not officially a member of the NITRD Interagency Working Group. However, the agency has requested $18 million in FY 2005 for cyber security research and development within the agency's Science and Technology Directorate.
March 30, 2004
Another Data Point in the P2P Debate
Researchers from Harvard Business School and the University of North Carolina released a study today that suggests that illegal downloading of songs via P2P networks is not having a significant effect on legitimate music sales and in many cases may help album sales. The Washington Post has the story.
A few choice paragraphs:
Songs that were heavily downloaded showed no measurable drop in sales, the researchers found after tracking sales of 680 albums over the course of 17 weeks in the second half of 2002. Matching that data with activity on the OpenNap file-sharing network, they concluded that file sharing actually increases CD sales for hot albums that sell more than 600,000 copies. For every 150 downloads of a song from those albums, sales increase by a copy, the researchers found.
"Consumption of music increases dramatically with the introduction of file sharing, but not everybody who likes to listen to music was a music customer before, so it's very important to separate the two," said Felix Oberholzer-Gee, an associate professor at Harvard Business School and one of the authors of the study.
Oberholzer-Gee and his colleague, University of North Carolina's Koleman Strumpf, also said that their "most pessimistic" statistical model showed that illegal file sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.
"From a statistical point of view, what this means is that there is no effect between downloading and sales," said Oberholzer-Gee.
March 26, 2004
Senate Bill Would Allow DOJ to Target Filesharers
Tech Daily (sub. req'd) reports on a Senate bill introduced yesterday by Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) that would allow the Justice Department to file civil lawsuits and bring criminal charges against song-swappers using peer-to-peer networks. Complaints from content providers about the relatively few numbers of criminal prosecutions for file trading apparently led Leahy to introduce the bill (S. 2237 -- should be available online shortly). Currently, the government has to prove that song traders demonstrate "willful conduct" to bring criminal charges. Leahy's bill apparently lowers that threshold. Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch is a co-sponsor. RIAA and MPAA are on board:
"This legislation provides federal prosecutors with the flexibility and discretion to bring copyright-infringement cases that best correspond to the nature of the crime," said Mitch Bainwol, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America.More info as it becomes available....
"I commend Senators Patrick Leahy and Orrin Hatch for their vision and leadership in combating the theft of America's creative works," said Jack Valenti, CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America.
Bush Announces Broadband Policy
Speaking in New Mexico today, President Bush announced his support for rolling out universal broadband service within three years. From Reuters:
"We ought to have universal, affordable access to broadband technology by the year 2007," Bush said. "And then we ought to make sure as soon as possible thereafter consumers have plenty of choices."In addition, Bush urged that broadband access be tax free. It looks like the issue, long dormant for this White House in particular, may become a campaign issue:"It's important that we stay on the cutting edge of technological change, and one way to do so is to have a bold plan for broadband," he said. Bush did not elaborate on how he would accomplish the 2007 goal.
Minutes after the president spoke, Democratic presidential contender John Kerry mentioned broadband as a key growth area during a campaign speech laying out his economic policy.The scorecard for IT campaign issues so far then: IT offshoring (to protect or not to protect); Universal Broadband (how to roll it out, who should pay); maybe soon IT R&D? :)
The Spread of the Witty Worm
The folks at UCSD Computer Science and Engineering and the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis (CAIDA) put their "Network Telescope" to good work in analyzing the spread of the Witty Worm. From their analysis:
The conclusion is ominous:Witty was the first widely propagated Internet worm to carry a destructive payload.
Witty was started in an organized manner with an order of magnitude more ground-zero hosts than any previous worm.
Witty represents the shortest known interval between vulnerability disclosure and worm release -- it began to spread the day after the ISS vulnerability was publicized.
Witty spread through a host population in which every compromised host was doing something proactive to secure their computers and networks.
Witty spread through a population almost an order of magnitude smaller than that of previous worms, demonstrating the viability of worms as an automated mechanism to rapidly compromise machines on the Internet, even in niches without a software monopoly.
Witty demonstrated that any minimally deployed piece of software with a remotely exploitable bug can be a vector for wide-scale compromise of host machines without any action on the part of a victim. The practical implications of this are staggering; with minimal skill, a malevolent individual could break into thousands of machines and use them for almost any purpose with little evidence of the perpetrator left on most of the compromised hosts.And finally:
The patch model for Internet security has failed spectacularly. To remedy this, there have been a number of suggestions for ways to try to shoehorn end users into becoming security experts, including making them financially liable for the consequences of their computers being hijacked by malware or miscreants. Notwithstanding the fundamental inequities involved in encouraging people sign on to the Internet with a single click, and then requiring them to fix flaws in software marketed to them as secure with technical skills they do not possess, many users do choose to protect themselves at their own expense by purchasing antivirus and firewall software. Making this choice is the gold-standard for end user behavior -- they recognize both that security is important and that they do not possess the skills necessary to effect it themselves. When users participating in the best security practice that can be reasonably expected get infected with a virulent and damaging worm, we need to reconsider the notion that end user behavior can solve or even effectively mitigate the malicious software problem and turn our attention toward both preventing software vulnerabilities in the first place and developing large-scale, robust and reliable infrastructure that can mitigate current security problems without relying on end user intervention.Interesting stuff...
March 24, 2004
SLOWDOWN IN UNDERGRADUATE CS DEGREES
After several years of growth, results from CRA's most recent Taulbee Survey show a slight decrease in the number of Bachelor's degrees in computer science granted last year by Ph.D.-granting schools, and a 20+ percent drop in the number of new undergraduates declaring their major in computer science. The numbers are available on the CRA website.
The Mercury News has a lengthy piece on this; the Atlanta Business Chronicle a shorter piece on the IT talent shortage.
March 23, 2004
March 18, 2004
Encouraging Words from Sen. Domenici (R-NM)
Thanks to Richard Jones of the American Institute of Physics for sending around remarks Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM), former chair of the Senate Budget Committee (now chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee), made on the Senate floor in support of increased funding for basic research.
"The time has come to spend money on basic research, just as we have on medical research," Domenici said.
Read the complete remarks by following the link below.
Mr. President [of the Senate], I rise to speak for 2 minutes on the fiscal year 2005 budget resolution currently pending before the Senate. In particular, I want to focus for just a little bit on the budgets for scientific research.The funding for the National Institutes of Health should be my starting point. In the omnibus bill of 2003, thanks in large part to the leadership of President Bush, we met our commitment; that is, in 2003, we met our commitment to double the funding for NIH .
Senator [Don] Nickles [R-Oklahoma] remembers that clearly, that a couple of Senators started and everybody followed, and a resolution was adopted that said - it was incredible to many of us, but we did it - let's double the NIH . President Bush helped us, and we did that.
Allow me to explain these numbers. In 1998, we spent $13.7 billion on the National Institutes of Health for cancer, for all of these various diseases, heart conditions, and mental illness. When the commitment was fulfilled, we spent $27.1 billion for medical research.
We need not stop there, however. Last year, we further increased it to $27.9 billion. This means we have spent $145.9 billion in the last 7 years on the National Institutes of Health -- a 109-percent increase. This year we are planning on further increasing the budget of NIH to $28.7 billion."
After criticizing lobbying efforts seeking higher funding for NIH, saying "Enough is enough," Domenici continued:
The NIH is doing amazing work in developing techniques to detect, diagnose, and treat many of the most devastating diseases humans face, such as cancer, diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease. I hope that we can continue to fund this important agency at these record levels.
I am concerned, though, that we have collectively failed to be as aggressive when it comes to funding basic scientific research in other agencies.
Basic research is defined as systematic study directed toward greater knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable facts without specific applications towards processes or products in mind.
The technologies transitioned from basic research are the foundation of applied programs and eventually fielded systems.
Put another way, basic research is the engine that makes our national defense, homeland security, and economic superiority possible.
However, basic scientific research is not funded in a single place as with medical research at NIH .
The correlative type research to NIH is something we call in America basic research--physics, computer science, chemistry, engineering, et cetera. We have no central focus point for that in America. I am not sure we should or should not. It is just a fact.
In 2004, the sum total of expenditures for that was $11 billion, and that included the Veterans' Administration - we assume some of what they do is science - Interior, EPA, NASA, DOE. This is compared to $8.8 billion for these programs in 1998.
In the same period of time these programs have increased 35 percent, while NIH increased by over 100 percent. I do not think America can continue to dominate the world, invent the products, maintain our standard of living with that kind of disparity for too much longer. The time has come to spend money on basic research, just as we have on medical research.
It is important to note much of our scientific research is done at our universities. They have plenty of research in medical science and medical science problems. But I guarantee you, Mr. President and fellow Senators, they are very short on research for the basic sciences.
The Presiding Officer comes from a State that has great wealth. They devote great quantities of that wealth to their schools, and then say: Spend it on science. Go look at the University of Texas and a few other of your universities and see where you put your money. You put it there. But America does not put it there across the board.
I put this statement in comparing the two only because to keep them at such a disparate level of a 100-percent increase in 10 years in one and 30-some percent in the other is not going to keep America great.
I am hopeful when we finish with this resolution, we will get on to thinking a little bit about where we are going the next decade, and maybe we should start a resolution saying basic science ought to be increased over the next decade in a substantial way, maybe even as we did with the National Institutes of Health. I only wish I could see the way clear to find the money. I would be here offering that resolution right now.
Our future is just as certainly tied to our basic science moving up into a parity position with wellness research. Eventually wellness research will come up against insolvable problems. At least the technology of application won't work because we won't have the physics solved, the physical science.
With that, I thank the Chair for giving me a few moments and hope every now and then somebody in a position to do something about this can join together and see if we can't get this done.
Some TIA-related work goes on, but not privacy work?
The Boston Globe has a piece on the apparent disposition of some TIA-related (DARPA .pdf) work in the wake of Congress' move last year to eliminate DARPA funding for the controversial program. The program, an attempt to "design a prototype network that integrates innovative information technologies for detecting and preempting foreign terrorist activities against Americans," came under fire from a number of groups, including CRA, who saw the eventual deployment of such a system as a serious threat to American civil liberties and security. (However, CRA also argued, in a letter to the House and Senate negotiators, that while a prohibition on deploying the technology might be appropriate, prohibiting research into these areas would not be in the national interest.)
Though Congress cut funding at DARPA for TIA-related research at DARPA and eliminated the office at the agency that housed the project, language in the FY 2004 Defense Appropriations bill did allow related research to continue at unspecified intelligence agencies. The article notes that this work is apparently going forward, though parallel work DARPA had undertaken to insure there were privacy protections in any TIA-related system is apparently not.
It's difficult to know with any certainty whether privacy-related research is actually being funded by any of the intelligence agencies (though it's clear from the article that work that had been funded by DARPA in the area has not been continued). This lack of transparency is an unfortunate consequence of the research moratorium imposed by Congress, and one of the reasons CRA opposed it....
March 17, 2004
Business Week Special Section on "America's Tech Might: Slipping?"
Business Week is running a special report on US R&D policy and how America may be slipping down the curve compared with other countries. Some choice quotes:
For anyone concerned about strengthening America's long-term leadership in science and technology, the nation's schools are an obvious place to start. But brace yourself for what you'll find. The depressing reality is that when it comes to educating the next generation in these subjects, America is no longer a world contender. In fact, U.S. students have fallen far behind their competitors in much of Western Europe and in advanced Asian nations like Japan and South Korea.Though the articles note (and the interview with White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John Marburger also mentions) that information technology R&D has been a focus of US federal R&D efforts, it's also worth pointing out that the Bush Administration request for IT R&D in FY 2005 is for a reduction of 1 percent in spending vs. FY 2004. And that level is still $685 million below the funding level recommended by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee way back in 1999.This trend has disturbing implications not just for the future of American technological leadership but for the broader economy. Already, "we have developed a shortage of highly skilled workers and a surplus of lesser-skilled workers," warned Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan in a March 12 address at Boston College. And the problem is worsening. "[We're] graduating too few skilled workers to address the apparent imbalance between the supply of such workers and the burgeoning demand for them," Greenspan added.
As a result, "the future strength of the U.S. science and engineering workforce is imperiled," the National Science Board warned in a sweeping report issued last year.
- from "America's Failure in Science Education
William Harris spent most of his career in the U.S. teaching chemistry or working at the National Science Foundation, where he was responsible for doling out $750 million a year in federal grants. But three years ago, Harris, now 59, moved to Ireland, the land of his forebears, to help turn it into a technology power.
He became director general of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), which since its founding in 2000 has attracted dozens of internationally renowned scholars from the U.S., Britain, Germany, and Russia. The newcomers get labs, promises of fast response to requests for assistance, and, most important, money for research into cutting-edge areas such as nanotechnology. SFI has $1 billion to play with -- an enormous resource for a country of just 4 million people.
FERTILE CULTURES. The intent is to emulate America's success as a worldwide technology leader -- a transformation that not just Ireland but China, South Korea, India, and Israel, among others, intend to replicate. As these countries make their run for glory, they could eat into America's dominance, experts say. "The U.S. has more aggressive competition than it has had in the past decade or so," notes Erich Bloch, a principal at Washington Advisory Group, management consultancy in Washington, D.C.
Already, the European Union has outstripped the U.S. in the number of scientific papers it publishes in major journals every year. That's a key barometer of a region's reputation in the scientific world, says R.D. Shelton, president of technology assessment for the nonprofit World Technology Evaluation Center in Baltimore. And the international pressure will only grow as other governments support their domestic companies with ambitions in telecommunications, semiconductors, and nanotechnology, among other initiatives.
Here's more detail from CRA's Computing Research News Online.
March 16, 2004
Latest CRA-Bulletin is Out!
The latest issue of the CRA-Bulletin has been e-mailed to subscribers. You can find a web version here.
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CA Attorney Gen. Circulates Anti-P2P Letter Authored by MPAA?
Wired has an eye-opening article on a draft letter circulated by the California Attorney General's office to other state attorneys general that suggests peer-to-peer software producers are making a "dangerous product" and that the failure of technology makers to warn consumers could constitute a deceptive trade practice. More intriguing is that Wired obtained a copy of the draft document (a Word file) and reports that the document's metadata suggests it was either authored by or reviewed by the Motion Picture Association of America.
The letter represents a continuation of the attack on P2P technologies themselves -- rather than a focus on the illegal activities -- begun by groups like MPAA and RIAA. From the letter (which is intended for P2P software producers):
It is widely recognized that P2P file-sharing software currently is used almost exclusively to disseminate pornography, and to illegally trade copyrighted music, movies, software and video games. File-sharing software also is increasingly becoming a means to disseminate computer worms and viruses. Nevertheless, your company still does little to warn consumers about the legal and personal risks they face when they use your software to "share" copyrighted music, movies and computer software. A failure to prominently and adequately warn consumers, particularly when you advertise and sell paid versions of your software, could constitute, at the very least, a deceptive trade practice.Fred Lohman, of The Electronic Frontier Foundation, is quoted a bit later in the article in reaction:
It's one thing for the MPAA to come up with a theory like that, but it would be quite another for a state attorney general to adopt it. The principle has no limit -- you can use Internet Explorer to violate the law or unintentionally access pornography, so does he want to suggest that Microsoft is also breaking the law? Why stop at the Internet -- should Ford be held liable for failing to warn drivers that exceeding the speed limit will expose them to citations?"Here are the other behaviors the letter writers believe characterize P2P programs:
Whether it is the widespread availability of pornography, including child pornography, the disclosure of sensitive personal information to millions of people, the exposure to pernicious computer worms and viruses or the threat of legal liability for copyright infringement, P2P file-sharing software has proven costly and dangerous for many consumers.Not a very optimistic view of the technology....
Anyway, it's not surprising that MPAA may have been involved in drafting the document, but that doesn't make it any less unseemly. If nothing else it shows they still have a bit to learn about digital content.
March 15, 2004
FBI, Justice Seek Easier Internet Wiretaps
Just a quick link to a worrisome Washington Post story about a Justice Department petition to the FCC urgently requesting the agency intervene to require internet service providers to allow easier access to their networks for wiretapping purposes. The news article suggests that Justice is asking for technological changes to the network in order to make this possible, but I have not yet read the 75-page Justice Department petition (link forthcoming, hopefully).
March 13, 2004
DARPA takes aim at IT sacred cows
Government Computing News has an interesting, short article on DARPA's focus on new computer architectures and networking protocols, discussed this week at the DARPATech conference in Anaheim.
Flaws in the basic building blocks of networking and computer science are hampering reliability, limiting flexibility and creating security vulnerabilities, program managers said this week at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s DARPATech conference.There's an aspect of this that could be worrisome. DARPA Director Tony Tether told CRA's Computing Leadership Summit last month that the Department of Defense increasingly sees the Internet and computer networks in general as critical to its network-centric strategy of warfare. As a result, they are, with increasing frequency, moving their information security and assurance research into the "black" or classified world. They believe that any information about DOD's capability -- offensive or defensive -- in network warfare is a threat to national security. It will be interesting to see how their focus on new paradigms for the "building blocks" of computing will exist in this new, more classified environment.Among the IT holy grails that DARPA wants to see revamped are the Internet Protocol, the seven-layer Open Systems Interconnection model—which defines how devices communicate on today’s networks—and the von Neumann architecture, the basic design style underpinning almost all computers built today.
Many military commanders have been slow to adapt IT for critical tasks because they sense the equipment is unreliable, said Col. Tim Gibson. He is a program manager for DARPA’s Advanced Technology Office, which is leading efforts to radically redefine computer architecture.
“You go to Wal-Mart and buy a telephone for less than $10 and you expect it to work,” Gibson said. Yet people usually do not expect the same of their computers. “We don’t expect computers to work, we expect them to have a problem.”
“If a commander expects a system to have a problem, then how could they rely upon it?” Gibson said.
March 08, 2004
Science Committee Views on the Budget
The House Science Committee released its annual Views and Estimates, its analysis of the President's budget request for the agencies and programs under the Committee's jurisdiction. The Committee provides this analysis to the House Budget Committee, which is in the process of putting together the House Budget Resolution for FY 2005.
The document confirms that the Science Committee's top objective for the coming year will be evaluating the President's space exploration initiative. But also cited for attention interagency efforts for networking and information technology R&D and cyber security R&D. Here's what the Committee had to say about the President's request in those areas:
The Administration proposes a 1 percent decrease from the FY04 estimated level for the interagency program on Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD). This program includes important work on high-end computing and high-confidence software and systems, and the Committee believes that funding for work in this area should be raised, not lowered.About half of the committee members endorsed this V&E, including the Committee Chair Sherwood Boehlert and new Committee Ranking Member Bart Gordon. Here's the complete list.While cybersecurity R&D is not a formal Presidential initiative, significant effort is being put into programs in this area at a number of agencies. While the budget requests $76 million for cybersecurity R&D and education and training programs at NSF (up 19 percent) and $18.5 million for cybersecurity R&D at NIST (up 48 percent), this funding is still well below the levels authorized in the Cyber Security Research and Development Act (P.L. 107-305). In addition, within the DHS Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate, the FY05 budget requests only $18 million for cybersecurity R&D, the same level as in FY04. The Committee believes that increased funding for, and increased coordination of cybersecurity R&D programs are needed.
March 03, 2004
Database Bill
(from Wired Magazine courtesy of Phil Bernstein)
A nice introduction to the issues for non-technical types.
[Peter Harsha adds: CRA has joined with USACM in educating Members of Congress about the potentially serious impact the bill could have on legitimate research. More details soon....
USACM also has an excellent summary of the issue on their policy web site.]
March 02, 2004
Upper-end Outshoring
It appears that corporate R&D is following the off shore trend:
R&D Starts to Move Offshore, from Computerworld.
(thanks to Jim Foley for pointing this article out)