What would a rational UK policy in “frontier technology” look like?
High technology, frontier technology, and so on, appear crucial in asserting national importance on the global stage. The OECD talks about “synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics and quantum technologies” as the pivotal exemplars (although others cite a wider range, and relevant policies of China and the USA in particular need to be studied and understood because they play out in different contexts).
While it is unclear exactly why these technologies (and not others) have such geopolitical potency, they evidently draw the attention of many politicians, who claim oracular powers in seeing a rosy future in which these technologies play an important role.
Yet the future cannot be known and, on many occasions, horizon scanning has turned out to be misleading. Furthermore, predictions rely on an ex-ante notion of technological determinism that innovation emerges from scientific laboratories in a foreseeable way to shake up our political economy. If this were true, we would already all be stupendously rich; the fact we are not suggests a more unpredictable picture. Therefore, why does the policy community, including officials, talk about the supposed future impacts of frontier technologies with such certainty?
The closest I can get to a rational explanation is that these technologies are felt to be “bargaining chips” in a partly symbolic, partly real, war, which plays out in the minds of elites. This perhaps reflects an inter-mixture of categories represented by such terms as “dual use” (which recalls the centrality of the US military-industrial complex in shaping our idea of science and research).
Advances in technique, once assimilated into society have also fudged the distinction between “war” and “peace” creating uncertainty about their respective meanings which affects the forming of policy…The fudging…raises an entire range of complex problems. Industrialization during the last [19th] century increased the options open to policy; it has now reached the point of multiplying the ambiguities.
Pearton, 1982, The Knowledgeable State: Diplomacy, War, and Technology since 1830, p. 258
Therefore – almost like we are living in the Sun Tzu classic of “all warfare is based on deception” (which, indeed, fascinates Western military planners) – rhetoric and reality intermingle in the overall presentation. A quantum computer does not exist, but talking about it makes an impression. Ultimately, it is unclear who is deceiving whom, or even what is at stake: a tainted intellectual environment where it is easy to lose grip on reality.
If distinct categories of war and peace, civilian and military technology, present and future, are all jumbled together in the minds of elites, the outlandish rhetoric is a symptom of disordered minds. It also begs the question as to why certain, imaginary, technologies are seen as important, while others, that are tremendously important in reality such as household appliances, feature much less often.
I cannot be totally serious in seeking an explanation for something that is, by objective standards, irrational. But, perhaps, we ultimately need to agree an explanation. This might rest with generic human failings like hubris and perennial vices like corruption. Or it could be attributed to an intellectual crisis unique to the present, due to an unfortunate doom loop of our political economy and science and technology infused with militarism (and even the impacts of climate change).
The closest I read in terms of an explanation was Warren Chin’s pessimistic account, War, Technology and the State. Chin based the book on a course he taught to military officers. Obviously there is a vast library of other relevant literature on the sociology of technology.
David Edgerton regularly reminds us to avoid the word « technology » and describe what we are actually talking about. This is an important point. We can think about why we would lump together such distinct inventions as “technology”. Frontier technology is often based on claimed abilities to bend the emergent properties of silicon (computers) and carbon (biotech) to human will. But the objects themselves have little obvious commonality in physical terms. A computer is not an enzyme, for example. These thoughts, to my mind, raise telling economic and political questions that have an historical basis, such as common ancestry in the petrochemical industry (Mody, 2023).* Common ancestry is also revealed in material terms.
Intellectual worlds collide
Understanding the strategic picture is one thing, but finding a way to connect it to the mass of detail is extraordinarily difficult. Two different intellectual worlds definitely collide. I would observe the grating between overblown official rhetoric and the humdrum world of S&T policy. But, due to possible intermixing of civil and military technology in the minds of elites, there is presumably a risk that the grotesque bureaucracy of “defense procurement” would be imported wholesale into taxpayer-funded civilian science.
Civilian S&T policy has identifiable purposes which are practical and, indeed, useful. Perhaps, therefore, we need to understand how such policy could, as it were, short-circuit the more unhinged emotions of the powerful, while also being rational in the conventional sense. By this I mean that the country would be perceived as scientifically prestigious with an indispensable position at the (imaginary) “top table” while avoiding excessive opportunity costs.
An intentional, high tech, policy would ideally be considered separately, and based on a much lower budget, than other major science policies (e.g., those intended to support the delivery of societal goals like decarbonization, pollution control and public health; as well as policies to strengthen universities, notably, in economically under-performing regions). Experience suggests these varied goals should be kept separate and delivered through separate policies and, indeed, by separate organizations. For example, regional budgets ought to be delivered autonomously by regional authorities.
When the question of who should lead a high tech policy gets asked, the obvious answer would be DSIT (government department). But you could just as well propose a contractor, even an overseas contractor. Perhaps Google would like it.
Given the UK had historically focused on science and research in universities, over decades, a high tech policy would build on such experience of sustaining esoteric academic expertise.
The UK has experimented with different kinds of delivery mechanism. Typically, these interventions revolved around one or more of the following:
- University consortia, often featuring, in a prominent role, one the four most famous universities.
- Programs designed to encourage patenting of university research through technology transfer offices and the creation of “spin outs”.
- Programs managed in conjunction with large firms, including firms that were historically « British » as well as from overseas.
In the last category, the now defunct Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is an example, analyzed by Watson (2021).† “Operating for ten years, it invested £400m largely into supporting the development of modelling and evaluation technologies and offshore wind deployment” (pp. 84-85). It was a “50:50 public-private partnership (PPP) between six private energy firms and the UK government”.
[Whilst] the ETI intended to accelerate energy transition, its design as a PPP…was informed by prevailing system dynamics, leading to incremental innovation outputs. This impeded the pursuit of its mission, which aimed to develop the revolutionary technologies needed to accelerate transition beyond 2030. [Furthermore, there was] a lack of a diverse staff competencies and communication of accountable outputs also affected the ETI’s operation; as these factors contributed to the development of a highly technical, less collaborative approach to innovation, and the organisation’s role in accelerating energy transition to be unclear.
Watson, 2021, Accelerating low carbon innovation: national institutions and effective organisation design (University of Sussex), p. 129
In addition to Watson’s comments on the ETI, I believe we must ask specific questions, in hindsight, about the concept of “energy transition” as a valid theory of change, as well as the known general inadequacies of PPP. Neither of these were issues that the staff of the organization could realistically have solved in light of the situation in which they had been placed.
It is probable that all the varied initiatives had limitations; I leave it to others to analyze the details. Taken together, perhaps, it is impossible to know the extent to which they helped, hindered (or, simply, left little trace). Certainly, few if any of them produced spectacular results of the kind implied by recent rhetoric but, as the example of the ETI suggests, they probably could not have done so even if staffed by Einsteins.
If there was a major overall learning, it could be that effective policy developed through a combination of approaches across a range of targeted high technology areas, with flexibility kept in mind (more or less, a statement of the obvious).
Specific, relevant, measures often included:
- Primary scientific publications in peer-reviewed journals (basic requirement).
- Generation of extensive grey literature such as policy reports often through an additional “social science” module.
- Senior figures capable of communicating the program on the international stage and among decision-makers in the private sector and governments.
- PhD training for a combination of UK residents and overseas students.
My proposed new high tech program would seek to shepherd all the current high tech initiatives into a single policy with a unitary budget, likely with a single strategy group, and a single social science and PR module “think tank” (the latter, primarily aimed at generating grey literature such as policy reports likely to resonate with influential target audiences in Asia, Europe, the USA, and multilateral forums). Ministerial announcements would be planned with the goal of telling a simple, logical, story as it unfolded.
There would be flexibility in the scientific programs, as each high tech field has its own ways of working; there ought to be minimum interference in existing structures, with the goal of placing leading scientists in overall control of the scientific program and ensuring a maximum degree of scientific autonomy.
I currently have concerns about the scientific quality of the UK research enterprise, despite claims it is “world-leading”. To my knowledge, the turn of the millennium was the last time that major strands of civilian research were evaluated by scientific experts who were genuinely independent, i.e., who did not rely on funds and patronage in the UK system to advance their careers, as they were recruited from continental Europe, Israel and the USA. Their reports identified deep problems.‡
This is obviously a long time ago. I am unaware of any means to understand what happened in subsequent decades. But the modest goal at present would be at a minimum to sustain quality and international visibility centered around a charismatic group of leading scientists in the universities; the program would be appraised on that basis.
Notes:
‡Schneider and Rodd (eds.), 2001, International Review of UK Research in Computer Science (EPSRC). “The first, undertaken in 1999, concerned engineering; it was followed, in 2000, by a study of physics and astronomy.” I have personally read the studies, but the only one seemingly still on the web is for computer science.
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