This report describes the organizational cultures of the Department of Defense and Silicon Valley to determine where they have differences and common ground for stronger collaboration to bridge the civil-military divide on artificial intelligence.
In this report, the authors assess the state of artificial intelligence (AI) relevant to DoD, conduct an independent assessment of the Department of Defense's posture in AI, and put forth a set of recommendations to enhance that posture.
This book develops a new concept—“martial culture”—with which to problematize and reframe thinking surrounding the lifeways of US servicemembers, by exploring the values, beliefs, norms, and rituals they are exposed to and practice during military service. By reuniting the two concepts of servicemember and veteran into one overarching cultural model, the author shows how the concept of martial culture can be used to acknowledge the unbroken, holistic, multidimensional life cycle of an individual. Adopting a comparative mythological approach and drawing upon Roman, Navajo, Hindu, Norse, and Japanese myths that speak to the lived experiences of servicemembers, veterans, and their families, it weaves together ancient voices and contemporary servicemember experiential existences to offer new insight into the psychological experience of servicemembers. It will be of strong interest to psychologists who seek to develop their treatment of veterans by understanding the unique lifeway of service without judgement and offering a balanced, integrated spiritual connection, while pushing back against both inaccurate assumptions of martial lifeways and the influences of industrialized secular approaches to service. It will also appeal to those within the fields of military sociology and psychology.
The SBIR program allocates 2.5 percent of 11 federal agencies' extramural R&D budgets to fund R&D projects by small businesses, providing approximately $2 billion annually in competitive awards. At the request of Congress, the National Academies conducted a comprehensive study of how the SBIR program has stimulated technological innovation and used small businesses to meet federal research and development needs. Drawing substantially on new data collection, this book examines the SBIR program at the Department of Defense and makes recommendations for improvements. Separate reports will assess the SBIR program at NSF, NIH, DOE, and NASA, respectively, along with a comprehensive report on the entire program.
Gaining a decisive technological edge is a never-ending pursuit for defense establishments and the countries they protect. Intensifying geo-strategic and geo-economic rivalry among major powers, especially the U.S. and China, and the global technology revolution occurring in the civilian and military domains promise to reshape the nature and distribution of global power. This book examines the state of global defense innovation in a select number of countries chosen because they are representative of the diverse make-up of the global defense innovation community. These include small countries with advanced defense innovation capabilities (Israel and Singapore), closed authoritarian powers (North Korea and Russia), large catch-up states (China and India), and advanced large powers (U.S.). The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies.
Created in 1982 through the Small Business Innovation Development Act, the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program remains the nation's single largest innovation program for small business. The SBIR program offers competitive awards to support the development and commercialization of innovative technologies by small private-sector businesses. At the same time, the program provides government agencies with technical and scientific solutions that address their different missions. SBIR at the Department of Defense considers ways that the Department of Defense SBIR program could work better in addressing the congressional objectives for the SBIR program to stimulate technological innovation, use small businesses to meet federal research and development (R & D) needs, foster and encourage the participation of socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses, and increase the private sector commercialization of innovations derived from federal R&D. An earlier report, An Assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program at the Department of Defense, studied how the SBIR program has stimulated technological innovation and used small businesses to meet federal research and development needs. This report builds on the previous one, with a revised survey of SBIR companies. SBIR at the Department of Defense revisits some case studies from the 2009 study and develops new ones, and interviews agency managers and other stakeholders to provide a second snapshot of the program's progress toward achieving its legislative goals.
A history of the innovative practices in the San Francisco-area electronics industry that paved the way for the rise of the computer industry in Silicon Valley.
Like the Greeks who sailed with Jason in search of the Golden Fleece, the new Argonauts--foreign-born, technically skilled entrepreneurs who travel back and forth between Silicon Valley and their home countries--seek their fortune in distant lands by launching companies far from established centers of skill and technology. Their story illuminates profound transformations in the global economy. Economic geographer AnnaLee Saxenian has followed this transformation, exploring one of its great paradoxes: how the "brain drain" has become "brain circulation," a powerful economic force for development of formerly peripheral regions. The new Argonauts--armed with Silicon Valley experience and relationships and the ability to operate in two countries simultaneously--quickly identify market opportunities, locate foreign partners, and manage cross-border business operations. The New Argonauts extends Saxenian's pioneering research into the dynamics of competition in Silicon Valley. The book brings a fresh perspective to the way that technology entrepreneurs build regional advantage in order to compete in global markets. Scholars, policymakers, and business leaders will benefit from Saxenian's firsthand research into the investors and entrepreneurs who return home to start new companies while remaining tied to powerful economic and professional communities in the United States. For Americans accustomed to unchallenged economic domination, the fast-growing capabilities of China and India may seem threatening. But as Saxenian convincingly displays in this pathbreaking book, the Argonauts have made America richer, not poorer.
Militaries with state-of-the-art information technology sometimes bog down in confusing conflicts. To understand why, it is important to understand the micro-foundations of military power in the information age, and this is exactly what Jon R. Lindsay's Information Technology and Military Power gives us. As Lindsay shows, digital systems now mediate almost every effort to gather, store, display, analyze, and communicate information in military organizations. He highlights how personnel now struggle with their own information systems as much as with the enemy. Throughout this foray into networked technology in military operations, we see how information practice—the ways in which practitioners use technology in actual operations—shapes the effectiveness of military performance. The quality of information practice depends on the interaction between strategic problems and organizational solutions. Information Technology and Military Power explores information practice through a series of detailed historical cases and ethnographic studies of military organizations at war. Lindsay explains why the US military, despite all its technological advantages, has struggled for so long in unconventional conflicts against weaker adversaries. This same perspective suggests that the US retains important advantages against advanced competitors like China that are less prepared to cope with the complexity of information systems in wartime. Lindsay argues convincingly that a better understanding of how personnel actually use technology can inform the design of command and control, improve the net assessment of military power, and promote reforms to improve military performance. Warfighting problems and technical solutions keep on changing, but information practice is always stuck in between.
The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program is one of the largest examples of U.S. public-private partnerships, and was established in 1982 to encourage small businesses to develop new processes and products and to provide quality research in support of the U.S. government's many missions. The U.S. Congress tasked the National Research Council with undertaking a comprehensive study of how the SBIR program has stimulated technological innovation and used small businesses to meet federal research and development needs, and with recommending further improvements to the program. In the first round of this study, an ad hoc committee prepared a series of reports from 2004 to 2009 on the SBIR program at the five agencies responsible for 96 percent of the program's operations-including the National Science Foundation (NSF). Building on the outcomes from the first round, this second round presents the committee's second review of the NSF SBIR program's operations. Public-private partnerships like SBIR are particularly important since today's knowledge economy is driven in large part by the nation's capacity to innovate. One of the defining features of the U.S. economy is a high level of entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurs in the United States see opportunities and are willing and able to assume risk to bring new welfare-enhancing, wealth-generating technologies to the market. Yet, although discoveries in areas such as genomics, bioinformatics, and nanotechnology present new opportunities, converting these discoveries into innovations for the market involves substantial challenges. The American capacity for innovation can be strengthened by addressing the challenges faced by entrepreneurs.