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Pentagon to Significantly Cut CS Research
GabrielF writes "Over the last few decades, DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has funded some of the most successful computer science research projects in history, such as the Internet. However, according to the New York Times, DARPA has recently decided to significantly cut funding of open-ended computer science research projects in favor of projects that will yield short-term military results. Leading computer scientists, such as David Patterson, the head of the ACM are outraged and worried."
Since the whole .COM bust, technology has been slow moving. Doesn't come as a surprise funding will be cut on such either. Pretty sad unfortunately, but just look at the slowdown in any research, new products and innovation.
I am not surprised but this is kind of sad. Lets stop open ended research that may help people in the future... instead we will spend that money on killing people in the short term.
as great as this country is, it is sometimes frustrating to be an American
Obama is a twitter sock puppet
The problem is that Computer Science hasn't advanced much since the 80's. All the core concepts have been long established, and precious little groundbreaking research has emerged. I hate to say it, but most of the valuable work being done today is at the commercial level. i.e. Building upon the CompSci foundations to create useful, real world products.
:-) Not that I begrudge the AI research. It's fascinating stuff and deserves to be done. Just don't expect any sort of immediate results.
The biggest area that I see research being useful is in artificial intelligence. There's so much that we;re still trying to comprehend about emergent behaviors. Unfortunately, AI is very much like Fusion. It's only 20 years away (for the next century).
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Basic CS research ought to be funded, IMO, but there's no reason completely open-ended CS research should be funded by DARPA---that's what the National Science Foundation is for.
Of course, this cut in DARPA funding is unlikely to be matched by a commensurate increase in NSF funding, which is the real problem...
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
While it sucks for the CS people in the Pentagon, it just makes sense right now to divert money to things that will benefit the troops in Afganistan and Iraq. I'm sure that some of the CS projects help soliders on the ground, but as we know, 95% of IT projects aren't completed on time. So why not deliver better weapons, vehicles, body armor, and other technology that has the capability of saving lives right now.
Once we're completely out of Iraq and Afganistan, hopefully they'll put the money back into long term research.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
So the gist is that DARPA wants to fund companies, and not universities. And when they do fund .edus, they have outrageous
restrictions, like requiring all help on
a project be US citizens.
/. news today: they
are switching to a pure IP model. Exactly what
makes use sure that this model is sane for a country? Production capacity is not very mobile, but intellectual talent does not have to stay put in the US. The engineers who invent the IP can just as easily be located (and will soon be born, educated, and working entirely) overseas.
As a CS students, I can tell you: finding hack US coders is easy; find qualified US students who can do research is hard. It's like they don't teach math or science in US schools anymore or something. Kids from Greece or China or wherever come over here, and run circles around US students in formal predicate logic, discrete math, and other subjects that Ken and Barbie found too hard. It's no exaggeration to say that over 70% of all research students are foreign--simply because there are not many qualified US students. (It's a different story if we needed literature or communication students--we've got tons of those.)
America is a country where companies don't make anything anymore. Instead, they just own the IP, and outsource the *production* to China/Taiwan/India. Hell, look at Transmeta, also in
US Companies went through a similar cylce of eating-the-seed corn in the 80s. What happened was they got their asses handed to them by Japan, where R&D was focused on basic science, and not the "short term" deliverables. Now, it seems DARPA is going to try to repeat the same experiment in failure.
Don't get me wrong. This is not the last straw for the US R&D system, but merely one more straw in what has to be the last bundle. It's twilight of the empire, folks. If you're young, start learning another language.
A far better solution is to let all students in US institutions work on projects. (If a project is truly classified, then just use one of the many defense contractors.) When foreign students graduate, most of them (not all) want to become US citizens. What better way to recruit new talented citizens for a country? With the *reeeediculous* DARPA restrictions, many of the foreign students I know are going home. They expect (rightly) that in 10-15 years, their countries will dominate in the industries they've trained for.
... in favor of projects that will yield short-term military results.
If they can predict beforehand what a project will yield, then it's not research; it's engineering. So they should change their name from DARPA to DAPA.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
So here's my question: how many Slashdot users are going to whine here about DARPA not giving out enough research money and then wander over to DailyKos and whine there about how the Bush administration has brought about the largest budget deficits in US history?
And how many people will post arguements that are entirely nonsensical.
They aren't cutting the cost. They are redirecting it.
AND!
I assure you that this funding is no where near the funding of the Iraqi war.
Which had nothing to do with 9/11.
So Bush made a choice to attack Iraq, gave us justification that at best was terrible intelligence and at worst was a bold faced lie.
Free money doesn't come without a cost to something else.
Exactly, The cost of the Iraq war is not only lives, but could fund social security and medicare quite nicely.
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In these times of budget shortfalls and spiralling national debt, money has to be saved somewhere. Things with unknown results a long way in the future are an obvious target.
Does it suck? Sure. But America has shown in elections it doesn't want European-style high taxes to pay for stuff, and when you can't pay for stuff, you can't have stuff.
Blah blah economy blah blah free market forces blah blah alledgedly unpatriotic intellectuals blah blah small government blah blah starve the beast blah blah 9-11 blah blah blah.
Michael
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
Without even DARPA funding pure research, the US will really be screwed. AT&T, while it was a monopoly, had enough money that it did a lot of rather open ended research. That's gone. XEROX had the PARC for a while. That's gone. We got wonderful benefits from all the research they did for the space program, and now that's nearly gone.
Pure research is what makes for major innovations. It's what keeps a nation on top. The fact the the US invented the internet is one of the major reasons that the US is still so dominant in the IT field. If the US keeps funding some open-ended goals, it might manage to stay on top through these recessions due to inventing something the rest of the world just doesn't have. With the way things are now, the US will have trouble competing against India and China if it sticks to the same jobs that everyone else does.
This is another moronic desicions i have seen come from the current US administration in the field of scientific research. ... Which given the current administrations track record is not a positive sign for world peace . .
What worrys me most is the fact they are diverting the funding into short term yield millitary research project
The 20th centuary can be rememberd for many many things and i think DARPA deserves alot of respect for some of the CS projects it funded , however near totaly ignoring the long term benefits of CS research projects in favour of short term gains will just lead to problems further down the line
I was angry enough when the US gouvernemt decided to halt funding to Stem-cell research and other things , now here is another nail.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
There's a big difference between funding CS research, and competing with the code for hire shops in India.
DARPA funds quite a bit of research that is a long way from becoming technology that we use in our homes. Many papers that I read that are funded by DARPA, I read with the realization that I won't see a practical system do these things for at least 10 years, probably much longer.
That said, there are a few other things to say:
1) The D in DARPA is for defense... many of these projects get into places that are hard to tie directly to defence.
2) Most of the work is publicly published, companies in India would have it anyway.
3) It really is a problem that they are cutting this money. Universities desparately need it. It is hard to find funding for everything that needs to get done. Somebody needs to fund it.
4) DARPA probably gets much more bang out of their buck for university research funding than they do internal projects. I know it cost quite a bit more to run projects at my contract house than it does to get projects funded at a University. All the U is looking for is money to run the lab and pay the students' tuition and stipends. There is significantly more overhead for contractors.
Outraged? Perhaps you may be outraged, but you slander individuals when you attribute them for saying things they did not say. Nowhere in the article did I read that anyone was outraged.
The military has decided not to put as much money into basic CS research as they did in the past. "Basic CS research" means theoretical research. By its nature, that means the Pentagon cannot turn around in 3 years and produce a tangible return on its investment. How dare those officials decide to not spend money that's not directly related to killing people or keeping personnel from getting killed! How dare those officials prevent foreign enemies from directly profiting from US funded military research! Why not attack your private sector employer? Most of them have been cutting back funding on basic research.
It certainly is unfortunate. But if you think basic CS research is critical to the US's well being (or more likely, your well being), bitch out your congressman for not funding research, not the military for doing its job. (Good for you for getting a CS degree, but the world does not owe you a living.)
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
> Leading computer scientists, such as David
> Patterson, the head of the ACM are outraged and
> worried.
Everyone who's budget is cut is outraged and worried.
--
Toby
... When you're not at war, keep your techies on the payroll doing whatever will keep 'em interested, but when you're at war, refocus.
The US is at war. Get used to it.
If you don't like the strings that are attached with the money, don't accept the money. Theo didn't, which is fine, and his posse whined about it somewhat, which is annoying but also fine.
Besides, given how much stuff DoD is buying COTS, it looks like private industry and academia can handle 'pure' research anyway, and if you're gonna fight a number of wars, give away tax cuts for the rich and free viagra for the elderly, you gotta find the money somewhere...
The cost has been worth the rewards.
So you would give up your child's life to secure Fallujah?
So you condone lies as justification for the poorer class of America to go fight for what you deem important.
Social Security and Medicare cannot come before security.
Not only should it come before security, WHAT ABOUT THE IRAQ WAR IS SECURITY?
The security of the USA and the world has been better now that Saddam is in jail and a free democratic government in Iraq is formed.
Wrong, the security of the US is obviously worse because of this. You are completely wrong.
The dominoes are falling in the Middle East, and draining the swamp in Iraq will prove to be one of the most brilliant moves ever.
That's why Bush only takes credit for it when who comes into power fits his agenda.
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So, I program for Lockheed, and therefore for the Air Force directly, and I can tell you the kind of feedback we've been getting. I can also tell about the kind of feedback we got when I was hanging around the Computer Security groups at UCSB's graduate labs.
The Government seems fed up with Computers. They need them, they need them incredibly badly, but they can't seem to get exactly what they want. This goes for both contract work and research work. I'll adress it in two parts.
For Research Work: Two major factors are at work here. First is the rule of 80/20. We can do 80 percent of what DARPA (or whatever they're named this week) wants, but that last 20% ("Now make it distributed!" or "Now make it fault tolerant!" or "Now make it cryptographically secure!") needed to make the system usable is really really hard. Lots of research projects have hit dead ends. You expect this to happen in research, of course, but still...
Also, I always got the vibe that DARPA was more than slightly pissed off with us Open Sourcing everything left and right. Maybe it was just us they seemed cross at (and by cross I mean grants and funding tended to shift away from projects with lots of open source offerings), but I've heard other folks doing research mention this too.
I mean, you can easily get the impression that the Government has an attitude of, "You're supposed to be working for us!" Every time a group open sources DARPA-funded stuff (or the components of it, which is usually the case), other people benefit from the research. This may leave a sour taste in the mouth of the accountants over there.
For Contract Work: The US Government's policy is horribly broken. "Cost Plus" contracts may have been great in the 50's for jets and stuff, but we're reaching the point with computer systems and software where we're proving that Design Up Front does not work for large projects.
But, the various millitary branches have so much CYA (Cover Your Ass) paperwork, precedent and process that they cannot disentangle themselves. It's a really bad situation for them, because they have to adapt or die, and they're dying. This is not to say that the Army or Air Force will "go out of business," it's that projects... multi-billion dollar projects... are failing every year now. New projects, huge projects that even a lightweight process would need hundreds of people to deal with, are starting at costs that are so low they'd barely turn a profit for a contractor, because the Army/Navy/Air Force expects to fail.
What I think the Government really needs to do is become more tech-savvy in general. They need to start paying top dollar to hire the best engineers. No more of this "We Give Good Benefits" junk. The Government needs to have its own research groups and they need to be driven by results, technical excellence, and they need to have open-ended budgets (that are limited by results).
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Modding a post up again is easier than looking for a post that hasn't been modded yet. "Me too" mods don't take thought, and that's why they're so popular. Finding the unspotted nuggets of gold hidden in the dross is much more rewarding, but it does take work and that's why most moderators never even try. If they did, we'd have less posts modded to +5, and a lot more at +2 and +3.
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I like CS professors, but there's something damned precious about someone who seems to actually believe that the government should just give him/her money without asking for any deliverable. And, if the government somehow cuts off the stream of money, they have a right to bitch about it.
When you see changes in govenment funding of high-tech research like this, you can go back in history of ther super powers, for instance, this mirrors the gradual wind-down and collapse of the british empire. The british empire had the biggest high-tech navy in the early 20th century and the competitive pressures brought on by other competing super powers of the day, and the pressures of fighting the first world war was too much to sustain this empire. The first things to go when an empire is winding down, is the government funding for basic science and applied sciences (both of which are big requirements of military industrial complexes). The fact that a lot of high tech that a country needs to grow its future can only be funded by govenment (industry is too short sighted in most western countries because their profit models don't support such long term thinking). It can be seen that the asian countries (in this century) will eclipse the United State and the western world in economic growth in high-tech such as biotech, nanotech and the development of super AI's etc, all of which will have massive applications in future computer and keeping people perpetually young (ie: biotech developments in stem cell research and making of custom stem cells from scratch and nanotech). Of course, all these technologies can have military applications too (so we will find better ways of blowing eache other up (boring)). If you cut back on basic research, you lose the long-term (25 year or more) race to stay ahead of the technological curve.
It's actually $2B, just in 2004 alone, to the superstition mills which are "faith based" according to Pope Bush's criteria. The "news" is that the top 10 states got 40% of the money, or $1B. Grants, paid with tax money, while Bush cuts "reality" based programs like education, veterans contracts, etc - and now computer science.
--
make install -not war
A *huge* fraction of U.S. DoD money has been diverted from research to fund the war in Iraq.
It's possible that, once we manage to lose the cowboy mentality, the longer-term research will resume.
Don't underestimate the cost of the war in Iraq on the DoD's normal operations.
Ummm... the US is famous around the world for having one of the most cut-down, frugal Social Security programmes to be found anywhere. There is something seriously wrong if it is "out of control".