Make America Innovate Again

Launch event for the Summer 2017 Issues in Science and Technology

Technological innovation is at the core of America’s prosperity and global competitiveness. But in sectors ranging from energy to medicine to manufacturing, innovation is foundering under the Trump administration. Planned budget cuts, inept leadership, and backward-looking policies are stalling advances in critical fields. This could have a dire impact on US technological and economic leadership and Americans’ jobs and well-being.

Improving our national innovation system will require learning from models of innovation that have worked effectively to develop and commercialize new technologies. The Department of Defense offers one such model, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is the most famed component of the Defense Department’s innovation system. By partnering with private industry and academia on mission-driven goals, DARPA pioneered some of today’s most vital technologies, including the internet, GPS, and autonomous vehicles.

For the Summer 2017 Issues in Science and Technology, Richard Van Atta, an adjunct research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University, draws on his deep knowledge of defense-led innovation to assess two recent histories of DARPA, Imagineers of War by Sharon Weinberger and The Pentagon’s Brain by Annie Jacobsen. For our issue launch event on July 18, Van Atta will be joined by Joel Garreau, professor at Arizona State University and Future of War affiliate, to discuss what we can learn from the Defense Department and DARPA—about effective partnerships, priorities, and policymaking—in advancing innovation in a variety of essential fields.