Partnering Against Terrorism Summary of a Workshop (2005) / Chapter Skim
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I. Introduction
I. Introduction
Pages 1-20
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Bruce Alberts, President of The National Academies, in the Proceedings chapter of this volume. 2See National Research Council, Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and Technology in Countering Terrorism, Lewis M
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As Congressman Boehlert noted in his conference presentation, the gov ernment must provide security, and there is as yet no market for many of the products or services required. To meet this "market failure," he emphasized the need for partnerships among industry, universities, and national laboratories to develop solutions to unique challenges of homeland security.
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With well-managed partnerships, the government can realize missions in health, environmental protection, and national security, often leveraging lower cost or more effective technologies.3 Appropriately structured partnerships can also serve as a policy instrument that aligns the incentives of private firms to achieve national missions without compelling them to do so. As the 2002 National Academies report on countering terrorism notes, "A more effective approach is to give the private sector the widest possible latitude for innovation and, where appropriate, to design R&D strategies in which commercial uses of technologies rest on a common base of investment.
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railway network through the Pacific Railroad Act of 1862 and the Union Pacific Act of 1864.7 Private enterprise lacked the means to construct transcontinental railroads without the substantial federal support provided by these Acts. The railways transformed the American economy while also integrating the western territories with the East.
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181194. The authors note that the commercial aircraft industry is unique among manufacturing industries in that a federal research organization, the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics (NACA, founded in 1915 and absorbed by NASA in 1958)
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"The solution," he concluded, "requires partnerships -- it requires the best minds, including the flexibility to include future technology; it needs an adequate budget, built with offthe-shelf software and hardware products; and it probably requires a short-term and long-term strategy that will be most effective in handling the security problems we have to anticipate." Some Characteristics of Successful Partnerships How can we apply what we have learned about partnerships to meet the challenge posed by terrorism? The NRC Committee found that "properly constructed, operated, and evaluated partnerships can provide an effective means for accelerating the progress of technology from the laboratory to the market."12 At the conference, Bill Spencer and Michael Borrus highlighted many of the specific features that the Committee found to be necessary for a successful partnership.13 · Clear and measurable set of objectives: Bill Spencer noted that a partnership's objectives should be established, measured, and reported on regularly.
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An effort to stop and inspect all such containers in the United States would take about six months and effectively tie up global commerce -- with potentially a much larger negative economic fallout than any particular terrorist strike itself. An alternative approach is to implement a new system that reliably reports on the integrity of a given container and that tracks its movements to make sure that it has not been intercepted or tampered with.
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Finally, industry has to be involved because private firms bring an essential perspective as to what is needed in this rapidly evolving field, and because advances in computer security must be able to succeed in the private marketplace if they are to have the desired impact. Congressman Boehlert predicted that new legislation -- the Computer Security Research and Development Act -- would create, to this end, new partnership programs at the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
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Yet, private firms attempting to develop new anti-virals and antibiotics face not only daunting technical challenges, but also serious financial hurdles -- especially given that the failure rate for drug discovery averages at about ninety percent, with failure rates for antibiotic drug discovery ranging even higher. Recognizing that these hurdles dampen private sector enthusiasm for drug discovery, noted Dr.
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In addition, the experience of the Sematech semiconductor consortium in providing best practice lessons for effective partnerships and in securing the nation's capability in a key technology were reviewed. The Advanced Technology Program As Maryann Feldman of Johns Hopkins University noted, ATP was initiated as a means of funding high-risk R&D with broad commercial and societal benefits that would not be undertaken by a single company, either because the risk was too high or because a large enough share of the benefits of success would not accrue to the company for it to make the investment.
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This bottom-up approach encourages the private sector to identify and invest in the kinds of applications that have the highest potential to bring new capabilities to bear on national security concerns.18 The Small Business Innovation Research Program This early-stage technology development program can be a useful mechanism to draw ideas from small companies and university research and connect them to market needs and agency missions. Noting that the university community has shown strong interest in adapting their research to serve the needs of the nation in the wake of the September 11 attacks, Christina Gabriel of Carnegie Mellon University outlined initiatives that Carnegie Mellon was taking to facilitate innovation transfer.
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Kenneth Flamm of the University of Texas described some best practice lessons in assessing the contributions of the Sematech consortium, which he described as the highest profile government-industry consortium in the United 19STTR is a highly competitive program that reserves a specific percentage of extramural federal R&D funding (2 percent) for award to small business and nonprofit research institution partners.
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Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 1995. For an overview of current programs to support the semiconductor industry in Japan, Taiwan, Europe, and the United States, see National Research Council, Securing the Future: Regional and National Programs to Support the Semiconductor Industry, C
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Sematech demonstrated that industry roadmaps could help accelerate the rate of innovation by coordinating research among multiple actors and by setting the pace of market competition. And as Bill Spencer also noted at the conference, industry leadership, and cost sharing -- important features of the Sematech model -- provide the experience, expertise, and motivation required for partnerships to succeed.
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that would be "the systems equivalent of DARPA, but with many of the procurement issues and problems put aside." HSARPA would help "couple the research and development and testing and evaluation enterprises with actual entities -- whether they are in the private sector or in academia -- and the actual end users." Addressing Liability, Regulation, and Intellectual Property Issues Confusing liability, regulation, and intellectual property issues can be a serious impediment to effective public-private partnerships. Christina Gabriel of Carnegie Mellon University described how complex federal regulations (including new and changing rules on export controls)
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Responding to a question on whether product liability should be extended to cover software -- an issue that potentially could impede partnerships for homeland security -- Gordon Moore noted that the threat of excessive liability can slow innovation. He said that society had to decide on a balance that made sense.
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PUTTING IT TOGETHER The importance of a systems approach to harmonizing disparate technologies and social cultures together in the war on terror was an important undercurrent to the conference discussions. Christina Gabriel noted that in addition to a sound policy agenda, good goals, and quality leadership, a partnership program must also possess the right operational features.
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This war on terrorism presents unique challenges. The strength of the United States in science and technology must be used to make the nation less vulnerable to future terrorist attacks and to reduce the risk and potential impact of such attacks.
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