Cutting U.S. Investment in R&D; Is Bad Policy

If the Republicans in Congress are successful in passing their proposed budget, federal science and technology policy will be changed more profoundly than at any time since the National Science Foundation was initiated 40 years ago. And these changes will be devastating--not only to the global competitiveness of American industry, but to the idea that we, as citizens, can shape our technological future.

Already the availability of public scientific and technological information has been drastically curtailed by the demise of the Office of Technology Assessment, which closed its doors Sept. 30. For more than 20 years, the technology office provided members of Congress and the public with significant reports from panels of experts and citizens asked to consider the trajectories of technology and innovation in the United States. Its loss, a victim of Republican hostility, will be, according to author Howard Rheingold, “like driving into the future with the headlights off.”

Now the deathwatch is set for the Department of Commerce, which has managed most of the substantial federal investments in non-military technology. The department’s Advanced Technology Program, which President Clinton launched to help U.S. industry stay competitive with government-subsidized overseas firms, was the only federal program specifically singled out for elimination in the House Republicans’ “Contract With America.”

The only technology programs benefiting from the Republican budget are those for military research and development, including the perennial Republican favorite, “Star Wars,” or the Strategic Defense Initiative. With the Soviet Union history, and Russia unable even to wage a conclusive war in Chechnya, increasingly Baroque military technologies are what the U.S. needs least.

What the proposed cuts in federal technology policy signal is a return to the so-called black box model of innovation. Proponents of this model, such as Rep. Robert S. Walker (R-Pa.), the chairman of the House Science Committee, believe that the government’s role in technology policy should be limited to investments in basic research, primarily in basic science. Out of this investment, goes this argument, will come generic knowledge that private firms can use to develop marketable technologies. The term black box refers to where the investment dollars enter, and from where innovation emerges--what happens inside the box cannot be seen or planned.

*

Practically no policy experts believe in the black box model of innovation anymore, and the United States is the only country in the world proposing to return to this 1950s approach. Every other industrialized nation has some form of industrial policy for targeting industries of the future, mobilizing and coordinating researchers and skilled labor, and refining the innovation process “inside the box,” between investment and output.

The result of a relapse to the black box model will be a transfer of world leadership in technological vision to countries willing to stake a claim on the future by “priming the pump” of innovation with public investment. In contrast, private U.S. firms, facing intense competition, will have to turn their attention to short-term investment returns, cutting long-range R&D; budgets and slashing talented personnel--as AT&T;’s recent decision to spin off its world-famous Bell Laboratories illustrates only too well.

Moreover, the dismantling of public agencies that can provide a vision of our collective technological future will remove the means by which citizens can have an influence on important issues like environmental quality, equitable access to technology, the character of work, and the livability of our cities, among other things. The Republicans’ fetish for the wonders of the market will mean that the only way we’ll be able to shape technology will be as individual, atomized consumers, instead of as citizens with a democratic vision about how we want American society to look and function in the next century.

Thus, the worst result of the Republican plan for technology policy is that it will rob citizens of the chance to create a vision of the future that we can pursue as a nation, instead of as a disorganized collection of customers.

Does anyone believe that the United States will continue to remain the world’s leader in technology by focusing exclusively on whatever individuals may want to buy? Has consumerism become synonymous with civilization?

Frank Press, former president of the National Academy of Sciences, warns that, “Without a vision of the future, there is no basis for choosing policies for science and technology that will be appropriate for the years ahead.”

The U.S. middle class is so pressed by economic turbulence and uncertainty that many people cannot muster the optimism needed to sustain a vision of a better future over the long run. They want relief now, and cutting taxes and government seems to be the way to ease the pressure many families are feeling these days.

But if we junk the agencies that can transform a vision of the future into effective public policy, we may never recover what it will take to rekindle our optimism and our national purpose. We and our children may then have more high-tech gadgets to play with, but we’ll live in a far poorer country.