For the final installment of this short series, I will be talking about how we go about building our future. The amazing technologies that have enabled us to bring the entirety of human knowledge with us or create revolutionary treatments for rare diseases did not simply spring from a void and the technologies of tomorrow will not either. Foundational research in basic science (basic meaning theoretical, not simple) paves the way to the next steps to our society. Historically, great leaps in technology have been sparked by war or competition between countries. Many of those inventions are now essential to our everyday lives.
As an example, let’s look at some of the things that were discovered during World War II. Alan Turing invented the computer (with some help) to break German cryptography that protected their communications. Jet engines were a nut both Germans and Allied powers cracked by the end of the war. Radar and nuclear fission began their lives in World War II. Government resources were poured into researching technologies that were deemed potentially useful for the war, and commercial applications sprang forth immediately following its conclusion.
During the Cold War, the US and the Soviet Union were locked into an arms race that was wasteful in that we spent gobs of money on weapons that could have instead been spent on improving the lot of our citizens, but it also encouraged money to be poured into information technology. GPS and the internet came about because we were looking for ways to track the Soviets or quickly share information. DARPA, or the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has been an essential investor in basic research that propelled us forward.
We don’t even have to go into the past to find adversity that helped us decide to open the spigots. The race to find a vaccine for COVID-19 has pushed mRNA technology ahead by at least a decade. Faster research turnarounds were possible because of improved information technology, we placed more focus on efficiency in the approval process, and an accomplishment of barely 20 years ago – sequencing the human genome – was an integral part of the vaccine itself.
Federally funded research is used in approximately a third of all US patents, but that number is falling. Public knowledge allows firms to compete on its application, so a discovery’s value to society is multiplied many times over if the research is public. That’s why the fact that federally funded research falling below 50% in 2012 is problematic. There is plenty of room for the government to spend more on research. One in ten NIH (National Institute of Health) grants directly results in a patent, but its funding was just slashed.
It isn’t just about the sum of money that is going to research, either. The method of distribution has put sand in the gears as well. We can be a guaranteed buyer, leveraging markets for more efficient public-private partnerships or we can invest in scientific discoveries with implications for health, energy, transportation, and, yes, weapons. Splashing money around via an archaic bureaucratic system, as we do now, is probably not the most efficient method of getting money in the hands of the best researchers. Instead, it’s the best way of getting money into the hands of the best navigators of bureaucracy. There is likely some overlap, but it’s also more like using a shotgun than a sniper rifle.
The US has been the global leader in innovation for a century, but China is hot on our heels right now. Their economic system is a handicap for them, but they also spend a much greater portion of their GDP on research. We spend less than three percent of our GDP on research and development, a number that could be far higher. By creating ambitious goals for ourselves, we can push ourselves into the future we deserve.