Last month, as preparation for a regular ERAC meeting, representatives from the European science ministries were tasked with reading a “policy working paper” with the goal of exchanging views upon it for “Funding Strategies for High-Risk High-Reward Innovation”.
What was needed was objective analysis tailored to European needs and grounded in the achievements, as well as mistakes, of past European science and technology policy. At the least, an even-handed presentation of different perspectives should have been tabled. Instead, the General Secretariat of the Council gave officials a sales-pitch for the American military-industrial complex.
Let us dissect assertions in the briefing paper officials read and why they need to be challenged:
- DARPA is “much lauded” and the “gold standard”
- “Nascent innovation ecosystems” need to be “nudged towards a form more amenable for the DARPA model”.
- Dominic Cummings and Peter Thiel are “thought leaders”
- Civilian programs modeled on DARPA were failures, for example, the US’s ARPA-E, “floundered” while the EU’s Human Brain Project “did not succeed”.
DARPA is the “gold standard”
Perhaps you consider DARPA a great success – but that success is fundamentally about war. If you do not agree with war, DARPA, as an integral part of the military-industrial complex, is a failure. This moral and political point has to be surfaced in the policy discussion because it relates to the goal we have in mind. If you think DARPA created the Internet and you think this was a positive step for humanity you have to set it against the other projects DARPA undertook such as “Project AGILE”.
Innovation ecosystems need to be “nudged towards a form more amenable for the DARPA model”
Military research is about secrecy and command. If you are developing a new weapon you want others to know only what you wish them to know. As DARPA is part of the overall American weapon system, to put it in Mary Kaldor-type terms, it has to be understood in this light. No one developing a weapon has any interest in the opponent knowing its true capability. Capability is either exaggerated or diminished to evoke, respectively, fear or surprise; therefore, the “true” capability of DARPA cannot be known even perhaps by its closest associates (accounting also for all the other bureaucratic sleights of hand in military projects to keep “the brass” onside). The second point is about command. The military depend on orders, a hierarchy and a chain of command.
Contrast these qualities with civilian technology. Secrecy and command would undercut the possibility of such technology. It must be known by as many people as possible to be used (and sold). Its design must be shaped according to the ideas of a wide range of people who are not part of a hierarchy such as customers. In a democratic society and when talking about technology intended to meet societal goals, these qualities are indispensable. Therefore, we must consider the possibility that it would be a fool’s errand to nudge a civilian innovation system towards a militarized model, which is, itself, integral to a weapons system and cannot exist outside it. Indeed, as the historical record suggests, when DARPA tried to run a large civilian program, SEMATECH, problems began to arise.
Dominic Cummings and Peter Thiel are “thought leaders”
Neither man can be considered a major analyst of European science and innovation policy. There are plenty of such analysts already who should be consulted including many officials within the European Commission.
Civilian programs modeled on DARPA were failures, for example, the US’s ARPA-E, “floundered” while the EU’s Human Brain Project “did not succeed”.
These programs cannot be so easily dismissed as failures; we have to ask more detailed questions about how decisions were made. Furthermore, we really ought to take into account a wider number of programs in our analysis including the majority that were not modeled on DARPA. I commend people to take a look at the bigger projects in the framework programs and look at the appraisals. They ought also to look at investments by the European Investment Bank. Let us agree on a handful of the larger EU projects across a range of technological and societal areas likely appeal to different parts of the political spectrum, such as SiPearl and the Urban Innovative Actions, and ask what could be done to improve their performance and expand them.
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