Rethinking technology policy - the 50th anniversaries of the moon landing and first ARPANET message

The anniversaries of these milestones remind us of the economic and social returns we have seen from ambitious Federal research, development and procurement programs. Why isn't this a Sputnik moment for the United States?

Log entry for the first ARPANET
message (Source)

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of the Apollo 11 lunar lander and set foot on the moon. On October 29th, Charley Kline, an ARPANET programmer at UCLA, attempted to log in to a host at Stanford Research Institute (SRI), but the system crashed after he had typed LO. After a bit of debugging, he succeeded in typing LOGIN and the rest is history.

These events were milestones in ongoing, federally-funded research and development efforts -- the manned spaceflight program and the development of digital telecommunication networks from Morse's telegraph to early electronic digital computers and telemetry experiments, the SAGE early-warning system and eventually the ARPANET and the Internet. (The previous link is to a text version of the history article. Contact me if you would like a pdf of the article as it appeared in the Communications of the ACM).

The anniversaries of these milestones remind us of the economic and social returns we have seen from Federal research, development and procurement programs. When President Franklin Roosevelt was inaugurated in 1933, he enacted many ambitious government programs aimed at ending the great depression -- a "new deal." He initiated programs like Social Security and infrastructure projects like rural electrification. Confidence in the Federal Government being able to pull off large, successful programs continued through World War II, the Berlin Airlift and Marshall Plan, the Interstate highway system and the space program.

Early ARPANET sketch, showing
UCLA and SRI nodes (Source)

President Kennedy kicked off Apollo program in 1961, saying he believed "that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth." But pendulums swing and, in a 1986 press conference, we heard President Reagan say “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.” Today we are discussing a "green new deal" -- is the pendulum about to swing back?

Update 3/14/2019

Former National Security Advisor Tom Donilon addressed technology policy in an terrific interview. The following is a paraphrase of his reflection on the emergence of collaboration between government, universities and private companies that was born when the Russians launched their Sputnik satellite:

I don't think we're having anywhere near the conversation we need to have about the missing piece of China policy which is: what is the United States going to do? Why isn't this a Sputnik moment for the United States? In the late 1950s, when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, the United States undertook an enormous national effort that changed the way we taught math and established NASA and the Golden Triangle of technological and innovation development between the government and research universities and private companies.

We face a similar challenge at this point in terms of technology competition with China. That is something I think we need to be talking about and the discussion includes immigration policy, infrastructure investment, education investment and [consideration of the] impact of technology, particularly artificial intelligence, robotics and automation on labor markets. Populism is not at its peak right now -- we need a really serious discussion about how we are going to manage the future of work in the face of technology.

This comment was made at around 33:15 of the interview:

An example of effective government support for new communication technology

Based on their questions and comments during the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on the commercial satellite industry, one could not tell whether a senator was a Democrat or Republican.

The US government has a history of support of telecommunication. On March 3, 1843, the US Senate passed a bill "to test the practicability of establishing a system of electro magnetic telegraphs by the United States." The bill provided $30,000 for Samuel Morse to conduct the test. He built a telegraph link between Washington and Baltimore and the rest is history.

Source

US government R&D, procurement, regulation, and expertise also played an important role in the development of the Internet -- see Seeding Networks, the Federal Role. (If you do not have access to the paper, send me a request for a copy). Government collaborated with universities and industry on the development of the Internet up to the time they phased out support, as shown below:

Federal funding prior to the NSFNet phase out
Source: my ACM bibliography (scroll down)

The October Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing on the commercial satellite industry provides a current example of effective government support of new communication technology.

The hearing focused on broadband access, primarily from low-Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Witnesses from four companies -- Intelsat, OneWeb, ViaSat and SpaceX -- testified and the tone of the hearing was set by the opening statements of Committee Chairman John Thune and Ranking Member Bill Nelson. Thune began by saying "I believe we are at a critical moment in the development of satellite capability, and I am excited to hear from our panel of distinguished witnesses today." In his opening remarks, Nelson echoed Thune's optimism and among other things stated that he "would like to thank our witnesses for being here today and I look forward to discussing how we can work together to bring about this new Space Age."

The senators were sincere in their desire to serve the American people and they were asking for recommendations as to how they could craft legislation to realize the potential of satellite broadband service. A short introductory statement by each witness was followed by questions and answers. The senator's questions were constructive -- trying to learn from the witnesses, not score political points with their constituents. Based on their questions and comments, one could not tell whether a senator was a Democrat or Republican. They were all constructive.

I was also struck by the degree of overlap in the recommendations given by the four executives, for example:

• They are all in favor of sharing spectrum among themselves and with terrestrial service providers. They agree that dividing frequency bands among operators is the least desirable and most inefficient way to avoid interference.
• The four agree that satellite safety and debris mitigation will be critical in an era of large constellations of LEO satellites and that we need to work with International agencies to establish standards. They understand that a disastrous collision would set the entire industry back so they have a common interest in satellite safety.
• Global standards are needed for debris mitigation, spectrum sharing, etc. and the US, with its history and expertise at NASA and the staffs of agencies like the FCC and NTIA, can and should take the lead in establishing those international standards.
• The government definition of "broadband Internet" should be technology neutral. Today's geostationary satellite service is slower than terrestrial service, but speeds of coming LEO services will be comparable to terrestrial service.
• OneWeb is also working on a grappling mechanism for retrieving spent satellites and Greg Wyler said they "hope to open source" the design. No other witnesses mentioned open source, but given Tesla's open source policy, we might expect open source designs from SpaceX as well.

The only explicit disagreement I heard was OneWeb arguing against the Connect America Fund subsidy, but, if it is not limited, I am sure they would like to receive funds. In general, the satellite providers have many common interests and they would like procedures and policies adjusted to allow them to compete on a level playing field with terrestrial ISPs.

Watching this hearing reminded me of the collaboration between Intel, Digital Equipment Corporation and Xerox to create the Ethernet standard. Potential competitors grouped together to define a standard that would enable a large, competitive market as opposed to several small proprietary markets. LEO satellite broadband feels like a startup industry -- reminiscent of the early personal computer days in the US, the ARPAnet and Internet in the days of the Acceptable Use Policy or even the Cuban start-up scene today.

You can see the hearing yourself -- the senators' opening statements, the written testimony of the witnesses and a video of the entire hearing, including questions, answers, and discussion among the senators and witnesses may be found here. SpaceX and OneWeb are both planning large LEO satellite constellations and you will find summaries of their testimonies at the end of these progress reports: SpaceX and OneWeb.

Government spending: seeding the Internet cost $124.5 million, Morse's telegraph $30 thousand

On July 22, Wall Street Journal columnist Gordon Crovitz wrote an article giving "full credit" for the invention of the Internet to the Xerox Corporation.  That article was embarrassingly inaccurate in denying the role of the US government, and there have been a spate of rebuttals.

Steve Crocker, Internet pioneer and current chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, has summed up the roles of government and industry in an excellent article. He explains why the Internet could not have been created by private industry without government’s help and also points out that once the initial infrastructure was in place and its feasibility demonstrated, it was vital for industry to step in and develop products, software and services.

That initial infrastructure began with research and theory leading to the ARPANet, which demonstrated the feasibility of a large scale network. Critical mass and training were achieved when the government funded the spread of networking to universities through CSNET for computer science departments, the National Science Foundation NSFNet for connecting all US colleges and universities and the NSF International Connections program, which brought in university and research networks in 28 nations, most of which were in the developing world.

In a 1996 Communications of the ACM article Seeding Networks: the Federal Role, I documented the cost of that government effort. The ARPAnet cost $25 million, CSNET $5 million, the NSFNET backbone $57.9 million, connecting universities to the backbone $30 million, and the NSF International connections program $6.6 million. The US taxpayer got a pretty good return on an investment of $124.5 million.

The US government investment that led to the Internet paid a handsome return, but it was not the first federal networking investment. As we see here, in 1843, the US Congress appropriated $30,000 for the construction of a line of electro-magnetic telegraphs under the supervision of Professor Samuel F. B. Morse in order "to test the capacity and usefulness" of the system he invented. He used the money to construct a 37 mile telegraph connection between Washington and Baltimore, and, indeed, it turned out to be useful. That was a pretty good investment too.

Of course it is not only the US Government. Donald Davies was at the National Physical Lab in England when he coined the term "packet switching" and built an early test network and Tim Berners Lee was working at CERN, which was funded by 20 European governments and the European Union, when he invented the Web.

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Update 4/21/2016

The Internet is one example where Federal funding of research has paid off handsomely. For other examples, see this post on Presidential science initiatives.