Fresh Options to Reinvigorate Defense Innovation for the World as It Is Now
Speakers: Brown, M. (Director, Defense Innovation Unit, Former CEO of Symantec Corporation); Hunt, C. (US Army, Retired); Lewis, J. (Senior Vice President and Director, Strategic Technologies Program, CSIS); Mulgan, G. (University College, London, [UCL]; Former Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation); Wright, N. (Intelligent Biology, Georgetown University, UCL, and New America)
Date: 3 February 2021
Speaker Session Summary
SMA hosted a panel discussion as a part of its new SMA NDU/PRISM event series, entitled “Innovation Now—New Paths Forwards.” The panelists included Mr. Mike Brown (Director, Defense Innovation Unit, Former CEO of Symantec Corporation), Dr. Jim Lewis (Senior Vice President and Director, Strategic Technologies Program, CSIS), Sir Geoff Mulgan (University College, London, [UCL]; Former Chief Executive of Nesta, the UK’s innovation foundation), and Dr. Carl Hunt (US Army, Retired). The moderator was Dr. Nicholas Wright (Intelligent Biology, Georgetown University, UCL, and New America).
Dr. Wright began the discussion by stating, “Strategy is the art of creating power.” He went on to explain that technological innovation has been central to creating political, economic, and military power for at least the last two centuries; however, the way innovation creates power has changed over time. In the 1960s, US innovation was driven by its competition with a peer competitor: the Soviet Union. The Cold War was also responsible for the creation of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), whose purpose is to federally fund and conduct innovative research. Dr. Wright then emphasized that unlike the Soviet Union, China is not currently a peer competitor to the US; however, he argued that China is competing with the US in the field of research and development (R&D). He concluded his introduction by presenting the primary question of this discussion: “How does the US and its allies continue to innovate in today’s environment?”
Mr. Brown began his presentation by also referencing the Cold War. He stated that in the 1960s, the environment for innovation in the US’s DoD was vastly different than it is today. He pointed out that in the 1960s, the DoD accounted for most of R&D in the US, which in turn made up most of the R&D globally. However, today, the US is responsible for less than a third of the world’s total R&D. Unlike during the 1960s, the US’s private sector now accounts for more innovation and spends more on R&D than the government sector, Mr. Brown added.
Mr. Brown continued by stating that not only has the amount of R&D produced in the US changed, but there has also been a shift in the focus of the research being done. During the 1960s, thirty-six percent of global R&D was produced by the US’s DoD and focused on technology, including microelectronics, touch screen, global positioning systems (GPS), space launch, and satellite imagery. Today, US defense-related R&D makes up only four percent of the world’s R&D and mostly focuses on technology related to 5G networks, artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, mobile payments, quantum computing, batteries, and power systems. Mr. Brown argued that part of the reason why the US’s share of global R&D has shrunk is because other countries have grown their own economies immensely.
Mr. Brown then added that because the US private sector innovates more quickly, the DoD has gone from a first adopter of technologies to an investor in technology research, which leads many of the technologies being adopted to carry dual-use capabilities. He further explainned that because the DoD is relying on the commercial sector for innovation in technology, it needs to find and adopt these technologies quickly. This is partly why the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) was founded.
Mr. Brown continued to emphasize the importance of the government’s investment in R&D by stating that federally funded R&D traditionally leads to large societal breakthroughs in technology. However, this trend has changed due to the percentage of US GDP that federally funded R&D makes up has shrunk from two percent in the 1960s to less than one percent today. To further emphasize this point, Mr. Brown highlighted that the top five technology companies in the US have spent 70.5 billion dollars, while the top five US federal defense companies spent 6.2 billion dollars on R&D. He explained that one reason why innovation occurs more quickly in the private sector is because commercial entities have fast moving product cycles, which has caused the DIU to try and match technological breakthroughs in the commercial sector with urgent DoD needs. Moreover, Mr. Brown stated that the DIU is hoping to increase this practice by helping private sector vendors, which provide dual use capabilities, flourish. An example of this public-private partnership is Capella Space, which is partnered with the DIU and produces high resolution satellite imagery.
According to Mr. Brown, budget reform in Congress is the largest roadblock to the DoD possessing the latest defense technology. He also stated that bureaucracy in the US State Department and DoD make securing funds from Congress for R&D difficult. He added that new advancements in technology occur much more quickly than the two-year budget cycle in Congress. However, because this issue has increased in prevalence, more attention has been given to acquisition reform in the last five years than in the previous thirty. Due to this added security, the DIU benefits from Other Transaction Authority (OTA), which was given to NASA 60 years ago in a reaction to the Soviet Union’s successful launch of Sputnik and allowed NASA to carry out its own research more quickly. Mr. Brown concluded his presentation by stating the DoD wants to implement technologies that are better, faster, and cheaper in a timeframe that the Congressional budget cycle does not allow.
Dr. Lewis began his presentation by concurring with Mr. Brown’s previous statement that the way the US generates innovation has changed. He claimed the US government (USG) is more focused on innovations coming from the private sector, both domestic and foreign, than creating innovation itself. This is partly because although private corporations in the US innovate quickly, they have weak economic incentives to work directly with the USG due to concerns over export control, which can negatively affect companies’ financial profits. According to Dr. Lewis, the fact that the largest private US corporations do not establish their headquarters in DC is evidence of their lack of interest to be involved directly with the USG.
Dr. Lewis also acknowledged that the USG has a risk averse culture, which is counter intuitive to creating innovation. This raises the question, “How does the DoD work to change its culture to be more risk acceptant while still creating innovation despite its current risk averse culture?” Dr. Lewis believes the answer to this question is for the DoD to continue partnerships with entrepreneurs, who are risk averse by nature. He also asserted that being both serendipitous and opportunistic will play a large role in whether the DoD will successfully innovate because it is impossible to be certain where the evolution of technology will end. This makes it important for the DoD to be able to take advantage of unexpected opportunities for further innovation.
Dr. Lewis asserted that adequate funding for R&D programs and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) courses in the US educational system are fundamental requirements. He then emphasized that there is not a cheap way for the US to win its competition with China over technological advancement. Concurring with Mr. Brown’s evaluation of the current R&D environment, Dr. Lewis stated that the US’s bureaucratic system slows down R&D programs. He argued that the system should become less bureaucratic and that there should be more job security risk for those running the R&D programs if they do not deliver.
Dr. Lewis then transitioned his focus to how the DoD can translate investing in R&D programs to acquiring a usable product. He mentioned incremental innovations in a technology, which are especially prevalent in the automotive industry, as being important to the overall success of a technology’s evolution. He also made the point that technological innovation and risk adversity are usually positively correlated because technological advancements are mostly designed to lessen risk. Dr. Lewis further claimed that the USG can create internal innovation by funding the National Science Foundation (NSF) and DARPA to similar levels as the National Institute of Health (NIH). This would be an easily quantifiable goal but also a politically challenging one. Dr. Lewis concluded by stating that the translation from investing in R&D to acquiring a usable product is the area that requires the most revision and that one way the USG can improve is by providing a regulatory safe harbor for commercial innovators and entrepreneurs.
Dr. Hunt’s first comment was that innovation in language—mankind’s first global singularity which eventually led to the printing press—was the first indication that there could be an international pool of shared ideas. Dr. Hunt likened the printing press to the creation of the first internet. He claimed that the current environment is a mixture of software, hardware, and tactics, which all must be blended effectively for the USG to innovate in a systemic fashion. Dr. Hunt believes that the need to innovate in a targeted and systematic way largely varies between the commercial and government industry, as commercial companies innovate and build products purely for financial gain.
Dr. Hunt then referenced Stuart Kauffman (the founder of the idea of the adjacent possible (TAP)) and Steven Johnson’s later representation of Kauffman’s theory, which shows that individuals tend to work on innovations surrounding the materials and technology they already possess. Dr. Hunt pointed out that as innovation accelerates, it frequently places stress on resources new technology utilizes, which could potentially lead to further innovation to address new challenges. Several examples of stress on resources caused by innovation are water scarcity and climate change.
Dr. Hunt concluded by emphasizing that issues such as water scarcity and global warming are global issues and can be better solved by the US sharing scientific information with its allies. A possible way to increase the sharing of scientific information between the US and its allies would be the development of an International Academy of Defense, Science, and Innovation, which would also potentially help the US harness and take advantage of new technologies in AI, evolutionary computation, discovery-based modeling, and emergent engineering.
Sir Geoff began his presentation by referencing Bell Labs, which was the US company most responsible for innovation during the 1960s. He stated that Bell Labs’ key to success was aggregating as many researchers as it could to create the largest pool of knowledge possible. Sir Geoff believes that this is still a research model that is applicable in the current R&D environment, which is much broader than it was in the 1960s. He stated that types of innovation that could occur through this model include user, social, public, design-led, frugal, services, and data.
Sir Geoff then commented that a current challenge to the research community is that the productivity in innovation has slowed down immensely despite increased spending on R&D. This issue has led to innovations in how companies and governments innovate. In his opinion, Parliament and Congress have not yet recognized this situation; however, they will if the current downward trajectory of productivity in R&D programs continues. Sir Geoff added that AI and machine learning (ML) can increase productivity of R&D programs. A success story of AI learning is DeepMind, located in London, which was able to increase the discovery of proteins found in DNA strands by aggregating thousands of AI researchers, much like the R&D strategy Bell Labs used. Like previous speakers, Sir Geoff emphasized the importance of scientific collaboration and used the incredibly fast-paced development of the COVID-19 vaccine as an example. He also asserted that R&D programs in the Netherlands, which allow researchers to help allocate funds for further research, helped decrease bureaucratic roadblocks to funding timely research programs. Sir Geoff emphasized that those in the research community should focus on research examining research practices, which could help researchers identify which tools work in each of their unique innovation ecosystems.\
Sir Geoff then argued that the way in which the US is conducting whole system innovation is not as effective as China. To make this point, he referenced City Brain Lab, an offshoot of Alibaba that is now experimenting with intelligence systems at a city-wide level. Communication between governing bodies and entrepreneurs can lead to anticipatory regulations, which can allow a country’s business regulations to change and allow innovation to occur and have maximum impact. Anticipatory regulation is a practice that is mostly used in finance but has also been used in mechanical technology such as drones and automobiles. Sir Geoff also suggested that having “challenge prizes” for finding innovative solutions to issues can help increase individual researcher’s productivity.
Sir Geoff finished his presentation by stating that by combining the research elements discussed in the presentation (AI, individual’s own intelligence, and data) is the best way to innovate and problem solve through collective intelligence.
Speaker Session Recording
Note: We are aware that many government IT providers have blocked access to YouTube from government machines during the pandemic in response to bandwidth limitations. We recommend viewing the recording on YouTube from a non-government computer or listening to the audio file (below), if you are in this position.
Comments