Institute For The Future

Gregg Zachary on terrorism and innovation

Three years ago, Gregg Zachary wrote an essay arguing-- indeed, lamenting-- that the war on terror hadn't had much impact on Silicon Valley. In tomorrow's New York Times, he revisits that territory:

 

WHY has the pace of fundamental innovation in military technologies slowed? Why, six years after 9/11, is there no mega-research project — along the lines of the crash Manhattan Project that 62 years ago produced the first atomic bombs — to address the plausible security threats to the United States in the 21st century?

These two questions say a lot about how innovation happens today, and why concerns about national security, which once motivated civilian scientists and engineers to make crucial contributions to military technologies, may again shape innovation priorities.

The short answer to both questions is that the nation lacks a grand technological challenge that might galvanize the interests and energies of talented researchers and propel them into close cooperation with war-fighters in pursuit of innovations that will enhance national security.

 

The big story, he argues, is that while for much of the 20th century many key innovations-- particularly in computing, materials science, networking, chemistry, and other fields with military significance-- were funded or even driven by the government, today "the leading technologies are hatched by commercial companies pursuing lucrative and large civilian markets." Another big issue is that the Cold War presented the U.S. with a bounded set of enemies and problems, terrorism is a more heterogeneous problem: there can be no magic bullet.

Zachary concludes:

 

For great leaps forward in military technology, the commercial market alone provides no answers. Instead, the gulf between civilian researchers and war-fighters — a gulf decades in the making that is addressed only haphazardly today — must be bridged. And the best way to do so is for both sides to agree on a grand national security challenge.

In short, America needs a mega-project that brings together a Silicon Valley all-star team and the nation’s savviest soldiers.

 

But is such a mega-project possible, in an era of small, varied enemies? Is it even desirable to formulate the problem of defending against terrorism in such terms, or would it be counterproductive? The danger, it seems to me, is that a mega-project invites a mega-solution: something big, centralized, and inappropriate to the scale of the problem.