In their wide-ranging dialogue, O’Sullivan and Prabhaker talked about know-how in nationwide safety—“If you are in the national security enterprise, you never get to stop worrying about anything,” stated Prabhaker—local weather change, and the present administration’s method to each points, in addition to science funding, AI, and competitors with China.
Read some of Prabhaker’s feedback excerpted under.
On personal versus public sector innovation funding
I really feel so fortunate that I’ve seen science and know-how and innovation from actually completely different views. I led DARPA, the place the favourite phrase is “risk.” From there I went to NIST, the place the favourite phrase is “careful.” They couldn’t be extra completely different, however I realized how important every of their roles was.
Every massive factor we’ve achieved with science and know-how occurred as a result of of the private and non-private sectors enjoying their roles. The universities have been important. Venture capital and personal funding, entrepreneurs and massive firms, have been all important.
But the inspiration for all of it was the general public funding that we made as a rustic. I feel that’s the most fun factor we may argue and battle for.
Of course as we speak we’re within the center of an assault on the general public funding in research, not like something now we have seen in our nation. It’s a mix of initiatives that have been stopped with the funding freeze; it’s the hundreds of folks being eliminated from federal research companies. It’s the broader assault on universities. It’s the reversal of immigration insurance policies that brings so many essential people who we want from world wide to do that work.
It’s extraordinarily harmful to the science and know-how enterprise as we speak, however much more regarding is the damage it’s doing for America’s future.
The query of who pays for research is all about what you need that research to perform. I’ve labored in a specialty chemical compounds manufacturing firm, and we weren’t doing the environmental research about what the well being results of our supplies have been. We counted on the federal government to do this.
I don’t wish to diminish personal foundations, impartial donors, or philanthropic funding. It’s an essential connection however not a really giant share. I simply suppose we ought to be clear that they aren’t going to be a substitution for public funding.