Pentagon to Significantly Cut CS Research 408
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."
Technology (Score:3, Insightful)
sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
as great as this country is, it is sometimes frustrating to be an American
Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Should I be worried? (Score:3, Insightful)
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).
Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Not saying there is anything special about this president but next time try to pick one who has friends in industries you want to see funded because thats how this game works.
it was an odd arrangement (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, this cut in DARPA funding is unlikely to be matched by a commensurate increase in NSF funding, which is the real problem...
This Makes Sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Once we're completely out of Iraq and Afganistan, hopefully they'll put the money back into long term research.
Twilight of the empire (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather my president have a combatitive relationship with industry than a friendly relationship.
They'll also make a slight name change (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
First, why do you assume that short-term military spending won't help people in the future? It's not at all obvious that having a powerful, technologically advanced military prevents us from helping people in the future. I would hope that the reverse is true, in fact.
Second, do you think there's a compelling reason to believe that in the absence of military research, people would stop killing one another? Isn't it true that (at least in theory) having better, more accurate weapons means that we kill *fewer* people?
Re:Technology (Score:1, Insightful)
Companies (defense contractors) are getting the
research monies that schools used to get.
Your theory about an echo-of-the-dot-com bust
is wrong.
Re:My question... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Budget Defecit (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Pure Research (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Brains at the top (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Should I be worried? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:This Makes Sense (Score:2, Insightful)
yeah. good point. I'll start holding my breath now........
Re:zerg (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:sigh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Just think for a moment here. If they've got massive multi-million dollar budgets, where is all the research money going?
Re:sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
The US already has the most advanced military and by far the largest military spending. Why is such an increase in military research nececessary at this point in time?
Second, do you think there's a compelling reason to believe that in the absence of military research, people would stop killing one another?
Who said anything about the absense of military research. The question is about the purpose of redirecting funds from long term CS research into short-term military spending.
Re:sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
To GabrielF or the /. editor (Score:3, Insightful)
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.)
Re:Should I be worried? (Score:4, Insightful)
Inventioning things that aren't apparent and obvious but which are useful and ground breaking is all about funding ideas which usually don't pan out. If your not willing to spend money to try risky ideas then the technology that might have been 20 or 60 years off will NEVER come.
Re:Should I be worried? (Score:2, Insightful)
I understand that quite well. But I'm still not seeing amazing new algorithms that have future potential in many areas. AI seems to be the most promising, with most other areas of research trying to tackle the same sorts of problems without AI.
Beyond AI, I have a very difficult time coming up with CompSci advances in the last decade. The BWT algo, Bayesian Filters, and that's about where I run out.
Budget cut aphorism (Score:3, Insightful)
> Patterson, the head of the ACM are outraged and
> worried.
Everyone who's budget is cut is outraged and worried.
--
Toby
Re:This Makes Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Should I be worried? (Score:2, Insightful)
Experimented with and designed in the 70's and 80's. Commercially available in the 90's.
- the Web
Experimented with and designed in the 80's. Commercially available in the 90's.
- scalable clusters and Internet services
Experimented with and designed in the 80's. Commercially available in the 90's.
- mobile computing
Commercially available since the 80's. Lowering costs of commercial hardware made mobile devices more popular in the 90's and 00's.
- breakthroughs in graphics
All designed in the 60's through 80's, but lacking in powerful enough hardware until the late 90's.
- breakthroughs in vision
???
- stunning advancements in computer architecture
Eh? What stunning advancements? Most of the architectures in use today go all the way back to the early 70's. They've merely become commercially available to the average Joe in recent years.
- fundamental advances in theory, algorithms, etc.
*What* fundamental advances? Name them!
Makes sense.... (Score:2, Insightful)
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...
Re:Pure Research (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:My question... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:This Makes Sense (Score:5, Insightful)
We can put a pile of high-tech weapons and defense systems in the hands of our troops. It won't make a spit of difference. The issues there are political and social. Decades of killing hasn't made any progress at all. I just gets worse. If we kill people more efficiently that's not very likely to change.
Why do you think there are so many countries that have been terrorized for decadees? Lack of good enough weapons? I would tend to think it runs deeper than that.
This is different from a regular war where you've got a leader of a cohesive nation invading other nations. In that case you can "win". This stuff is based on centuries of internal religious conflict amont the people themselves. It's unlikely we'll make a high enough percentage of the people there happy in the near future.
Ah well. Let's just nuke the whole area and let God sort them out. Because weapons will help. Right?
Cheers.
Experience of a Governement Contractor (Score:5, Insightful)
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).
Re:sigh... (Score:1, Insightful)
Clusters, Large scale systems, mainframes, all require it in mass quanities, and that costs $ $ $
Re:Should I be worried? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that it takes 20 years for many fundamental advances to make it into mainstream. So the fundamental research that you claim is not happening? You'll see it in 20 years, when it will be mainstream.
Re:sigh... (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything because the "90-99%" of the research is intellectual, it can be argued that more of the money goes to exactly what it is that you want more of.
Plus you now have the problem that as more and more money goes into the corporate sector, fewer and fewer people benefit. While the military's relationship with higher education has always had a little tension, it's the right place for the funding to flow to. If you fund research into advanced data mining techniques using quantum computers at a college, the money goes to creating research that can be used by everyone, including corporations, individuals, and other research institutions. You contribute to the education of more computer science students. If you decide to go elsewhere for your follow-up project, you can take the body of research that was done and go anywhere. By relying on private corporations, all you're doing is subsidizing the CEO's golf club memberships and tying yourself to a single vendor.
If they've got massive multi-million dollar budgets, where is all the research money going?
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "research." I've never seen an educational institution that was wasteful about it's funding (Maybe Harvard). The professors and grad students are paid wages that nobody in the private sector would accept. They don't have crazy offices or private jets or 100,000 dollar golf club memberships. When was the last time the head of a college recieved a 30 million dollar golden parachute?
If you can't phathom where the research money is going, you are in no position to say that it is being wasted.
DARPA has always been the blue-sky arm of the military funding group, and it has served the country well in that respect. The internet is it's most obvious triumph (which is also comp sci), and that took something like 30 years to catch on. They also funded BSD, nuclear test detection research, and a whole lot else [wikipedia.org]. To say that they're going to fund practical immediate research for making weapons instead is a little silly, we have branches of the military and civillian companies who do this regularly. DARPA, however, funds projects that have a 1 in 100 chance of taking off and changing the world. And DARPA funds hundreds of them.
Re:Experience of a Governement Contractor (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Does decent formatting mean nothing to you? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's see is it Eastasia or Eurasia. Which enemy is it again? I forget. Who is it that when defeated we can declare peace and not just always move though continual war?
Anyway, as a side note for those people asking, "What has darpa research done for us recently?" Well, keep in mind that when academic research into the original internet protocols and such was in progress you could have asked the same thing, not knowing what was coming. Also realize that the skill set required for true research and the skill set required for producing a product are not the same thing. Some people are suited for research some are not. Both kinds of people are needed for longterm progress.
Lastly, some guy was pointing out that p2p did not come from academia. That may be true, but significant advances in things like scalability, privacy, and simplicity are in the works. Yes revolutionary ideas can come from anywhere, but someone usually has to slog through many steps of little improvements to make those ideas reach their full potential. Complex systems do not tend to spring fully formed from someone's head like a greek goddess. Instead, someone has to do the research, and often that research does not have a clear (short-term) monetary incentive, so don't expect industry to do it.
We should all have no deliverables (Score:2, Insightful)
1rst sign of sun setting on american empire.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:sigh... (Score:2, Insightful)
The only reason for the military to fund science, is to use it as a foundation for later military technology. Now, that doesn't mean our society as a whole can't put lots of effort into science, but let's just be honest about it, instead of funding it through taxes that are supposed to go into the military budget. Either fund it through a department of government that is honestly labelled as being science-oriented, or better yet, if people really care about science, then we can keep government out of it all together.
Re:it was an odd arrangement (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's be frank, there are certain things in basic long term CS research that DARPA is going to be a lot more interested in than the NSF. It makes sense for DARPA, then, to bother to make sure that research is getting done. The best way to make sure that research is getting done is to pay for it.
What sort of research should DARPA be interested in? Anything related to software security and assurance is going to be of more interest to DARPA than the general public (yes the general public is interested, but they aren't quite as motivated as DARPA). There's plenty you can do in that field, from new security architectures in the OS (like, for instance, what the NSA did with SELinux etc.), through to new protocols, better fault tolerance, intrusion detection etc. Having your military computer networks secure is just good practice. You should be interested in being at the cutting edge of of that. If you want a nice list of things DARPA could be doing, along with a reccomendation that more money ought to be invested in long term research at DARPA, you could try this report to the President [nitrd.gov] from a month ago by the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee.
Jedidiah.
Jedidiah.
Re:Technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Mainly because much of what we have is designed to fight a straight up war with the (then) USSR. While that equipment is second to none in a normal fight, as the Iraqi's found out; it's not as well equipped for the future. Many of the thing sthat make it good for the cold war are less useful in urban fighting or fast reaction situation.
Take the M1A1 tank - it's one fantastic killing machine if you are an enemy tank - heavy armor up front. accurate and powerful cannon to defeat enemy tanks as well as decimate infantry and any other softargtes. It'll do 40+ mph over rough plowed fields (but so will a rental car)to get to an engagemnet in the Fulda Gap. But that war is gone, and it isn't so well equiped for fighting in a city - like many tanks, its ass end is its weak spot - and an individual armed with an anti-tank weapon can pop out and shoot it in the rear.
Much of the spending looks at transforming the military to fight a different war.
Re:God Protect Us (Score:3, Insightful)
Blame it on Iraq (partially) (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
The US military is currently overstreched doing peacekeeping in two medium-sized countries. "Most advanced military" in the world doesn't necessarily cut it when you're up against several opponents at once and when you have more complex objectives than merely destroying your enemies (crushing Saddam's army was trivial, building a democracy is another matter). Moreover, as someone pointed out current military technology is still largely oriented on cold war situations.
Re:excellent. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Technology (Score:3, Insightful)
to get more bang for the buck -- outsourcing!
We can always rely upon the Chinese and the
Indians (and whoever comes cheapest next) for
the core R&D in CS and IT we will need, right?
The DoD has been in love with outsourcing since
before some Pentagon stuffed shirts decided to
buy uniforms (berets) from the PRC. For example:
(a) they are having problems getting enough
new USA-borne recruits -- solution (1) is to
raise enlistment bonuses and pay (too much $$$);
while solution (2) is to enlist more illegal
aliens.
(b) they are having problems retaining enough
experienced air crews (in spite of the current
recession in commercial air service) -- solution
(1) is to raise re-enlistment bonuses; solution
(2) is to pour money into UAVs and keep the
pilots on the ground (controlled from anywhere).
In the Dubya/Rumsfeld world, outsourcing is the
answer to all labor/union/manpower issues. The
increase in the number of foreigners in our military
(, and whatever security risks that may entail,)
is less of an issue than short term costs.
Someone should remind our leadership that the
Roman Empire ultimately failed because they
also outsourced their military - a military
that, in the end, they could not trust to
protect the homeland.