The Next Wave (TNW) for the Foresight’S Contributions to Decisive Action Result in Opportunity to Write This Issue’S Guest Editor’S Column
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Vol. 20 | No. 3 | 2014 Forecasting faster, more powerful, and more secure technology At a Glance | Pointers | Spinouts T GUES Editor’s column Communications Technology Forecasting Leader, Research Directorate, National Security Agency I would like to thank the sta of The Next Wave (TNW) for the Foresight’s contributions to decisive action result in opportunity to write this issue’s guest editor’s column. It is gaming or rehearsal of potential critical challenges and an honor to contribute to TNW, especially because this is an identication of transition strategies that move toward issue that looks ahead to a future world in which scientic preferred futures. insights are applied to new or improved technologies that Drs. Cox and Mosser describe the concept of US touch our lives. It is in this context that I would like to discuss Department of Defense (DoD) forecasting which “implies foresight and the art and science of technology forecasting foresight, planning, and careful consideration of how the and why these four feature articles are valuable at so future operating environment may look” [1]. And they many levels. emphasize DoD forecasting implies a “conscious eort to After deep consideration of a Canadian colleague’s match capabilities to resources” [1]. The authors also note clear argument over these past years, I now share his view that these activities occur at every level of the defense and that foresight is a strategic tool that does use technology security apparatus, and that national policy and strategy are forecasting inputs. Furthermore, we agree that foresight intertwined at the very highest levels. is even more than that. Our shared mental model denes This approach is reected in DoD Directive 7024.20 of foresight as about thinking, debating, and bounding September 25, 2008, issued by the Deputy Secretary of the diverse technology futures that lie ahead. Thus, Defense. Capability portfolio management is described foresight is the application of critical thinking to long- as “optimiz[ing] capability investments across the term developments, trends, and emerging or disruptive defense enterprise [so as to] minimize risk in meeting the technology breakthroughs. Foresight is about anticipating, Department’s capability needs in support of strategy” and with adequate lead time, the possibilities. Ultimately, that this would be done by leveraging the expertise available foresight, we believe, informs decisive action. in various forums and identifying issues, priorities, and Foresight activities include capability or resource mismatches for decision makers [2]. Examining long-range prospective developments; The fundamental elements of forecasting and foresight Identifying and understanding key factors and drivers are a) scanning the horizon, b) identifying potentially critical of change; technology, c) predicting the likelihood of emergence, Accounting for risk, diversity, and contingencies; d) anticipating the potentials or eects to business and Anticipating multiple, plausible futures; and processes, e) and then optimizing the future capability Highlighting emerging opportunities and threats. portfolio in time to remain mission eective. The most The Next Wave | Vol. 20 No. 3 | 2014 1 Guest editor's column dicult problem, of course, is identifying and acting on Similar activities are under way elsewhere. Dreyer discontinuous or massively disruptive technologies. and Stang’s review of worldwide governmental foresight activities is useful for at least three reasons. First, the Experiments are under way today that may atten reader is presented with a historical review of the foresight forecasting and foresight activities in organizations. For movement. Second, key methods are discussed and example, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects compared. Third, a number of foresight projects in Australia, Activity’s Aggregative Contingent Estimation program New Zealand, the Nordic countries, the European Union, and seeks to “dramatically enhance the accuracy, precision, elsewhere are identied. Implementations in 22 countries and timeliness of intelligence forecasts for a broad range are noted [4]. of event types” [3]. If successful, the promise seems to be accurate insights and a signicant reduction in costs With that said, it is time to turn our attention to the typically associated with full-bore, formal forecasting and articles and insights of our experts. What are the implications foresight activities. One interesting activity within that embedded in each of these forecasts? What foresight do we undertaking is the Good Judgment Project (see http://www. derive from their words? goodjudgmentproject.com). Communications Technology Forecasting Leader, Research Directorate, National Security Agency References [1] Cox D, Mosser M. “Defense forecasting in theory and in [3] Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. practice: Conceptualizing and teaching the future operating Research Programs: Aggregative Contingent Estimation environment.” Small Wars Journal. 2013;9(1). Available at: (ACE) [accessed 2014 Apr 9]. Available at: http://www. http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/defense-forecasting- iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/ace. in-theory-and-practice-conceptualizing-and-teaching-the- [4] Dreyer I, Stang G. “Foresight in governments—practices future-operatin. and trends around the world.” In: European Union Institute [2] England G, US Deputy Secretary of Defense. for Security Studies, YES 2013: EUISS Yearbook of European Department of Defense Directive Number 7045.20: Security. Condé-sur-Noireau (France): Corlet Imprimeur; Capability Portfolio Management [accessed 2014 Apr 2013. p. 7–32. 9]. 2008 Sep 25. Available at: http://www.dtic.mil/whs/ directives/corres/pdf/704520p.pdf. e Next Wave is published to disseminate technical advancements and research activities in telecommunications and information technologies. Mentions of company names or commercial products do not imply endorsement by the US Government. is publication is available online at http://www.nsa.gov/research/tnw/index.shtml. For more information, please contact us at [email protected]. The Next Wave | Vol. 20 No. 3 | 2014 2 Forecasting superconductive electronics technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory oday’s state-of-the-art computer systems are a result of steady, predictable scaling of silicon complementary metal- Toxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit technology. In addition, shrinking transistor dimensions over the past several decades have enabled transistor counts as high as seven billion on commercially available processor chips [1]. However, the energy dissipation of CMOS transistors is reaching physical limits and has become a dicult barrier to building more powerful supercomputers [2]. Advances in “beyond-CMOS” device technologies [3–5] are now seen as a key step towards achieving the next major leap in high-performance computing. At least an order of magnitude improvement in at Moscow State University in the 1980s by a team processor energy eciency will be necessary before led by Professor Konstantin Likharev [9], SFQ tech- exascale supercomputers are viable. e recently nology has seen a resurgence to address the needs announced Chinese Tianhe-2 machine is reported of exascale computing. to operate at a record-breaking 33.9 petaops [6], Operating at cryogenic temperatures, SFQ where one petaop is a thousand trillion, or 1015, devices are based on physical phenomena unique oating-point operations per second. is per- to superconductive circuits. Early SFQ research formance is achieved by operating close to 80,000 emphasized ultrahigh-speed operation, highlighted CMOS-based Intel processor chips in parallel. e by the experimental demonstration reported in power consumption of this machine, including the 1999 of an SFQ toggle ip-op operating at an cooling system, is about 24 megawatts. Applying astounding 770 gigahertz (GHz) [10]. Since then, simple scaling, an exascale system providing on the the emphasis for computing applications has order of 1,000 petaops would require hundreds of shied towards energy eciency. Recent advances megawatts of power—comparable to a large utility- in SFQ architectures have allowed researchers to scale generating station. develop small-scale, high-speed computational One beyond-CMOS technology, digital inte- circuits that dissipate more than one thousand grated circuits based on superconductive single- times less power than state-of-the-art silicon ux-quantum (SFQ) logic, oers a combination of CMOS circuits—a large energy advantage even high-speed and ultralow power dissipation un- aer taking into account power for cryogenic cool- matched by any other device. First pioneered [7, 8] ing. As a result, superconducting SFQ electronics The Next Wave | Vol. 20 No. 3 | 2014 13 Forecasting superconductive electronics technology technology may prove advantageous for the future A second fundamental property of superconduc- of high-performance computing [11]. tors is ux quantization. e magnetic ux passing through a closed superconducting ring carrying a Superconductive circuit basics current is quantized in multiples of the ux quan- tum expressed simply in terms of fundamental Superconductivity was rst observed by physical constants as Φ0= h/2e, about 2 millivolt Kamerlingh Onnes in 1911 when he experimen- picoseconds (mV-ps), where h is Planck’s constant tally discovered that the electrical resistance of and e is the electron charge. Superconductive SFQ pure mercury dropped