An ad hoc committee will examine the science and technology (S&T) strategies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, Japan, and Singapore and the relevance of those strategies to U.S. national security. The committee will compare and contrast U.S. S&T strategy planning by federal and nonfederal sources to that of the selected nations and evaluate the implications of any differences for U.S. national security strategy.

Specifically, the committee will:

• Assess key foreign national S&T planning—derived from various national position documents—with special relevance to U.S. national security objectives, evaluate the current, mid-term (3-5 years), and long term (10+ years)* strategies of each, and estimate the expected timeline for the achievement of national S&T goals.

• Identify potentially high-impact areas being pursued by the identified countries (possibly including advanced energy technology, advanced physics, neuroscience, or nanoscience) and identify the potential impact of these areas on national security.

• Recommend nation-specific indicators for each country that could be used to effectively monitor progress in high-impact research. These could include:

  • National research priorities and drivers

  • Funding sources (government, industry) and allocation across fields

  • Financial and human resource allocation

  • Intellectual property (e.g., published papers, patents, and rate and distributional changes thereof)

  • Management: overall policy, work force planning, and mechanisms of execution

  • Other internal and external factors impacting strategy (e.g., global financial climate, demography, environmental issues, incentives for success, and penalties for failure)

• Analyze relationship between foreign S&T strategy and military capability

• Offer key recommendations to the U.S. government and the IC on the application of the identified strategies to the United States