REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DESIGNING A DIGITAL FUTURE: FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN NETWORKING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Executive Office of the President President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology DECEMBER 2010 REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS DESIGNING A DIGITAL FUTURE: FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN NETWORKING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Executive Office of the President President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology DECEMBER 2010 About the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) is an advisory group of the nation’s leading scientists and engineers, appointed by the President to augment the science and tech- nology advice available to him from inside the White House and from cabinet departments and other Federal agencies. PCAST is consulted about and provides analyses and recommendations concerning a wide range of issues where understandings from the domains of science, technology, and innovation may bear on the policy choices before the President. PCAST is administered by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). For more information about PCAST, see http://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/pcast ★ i ★ The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Co-Chairs John P. Holdren Eric Lander Harold Varmus* Assistant to the President President, Broad Institute of President, Memorial Sloan- forScience and Technology Harvard and MIT Kettering Cancer Center Director, Office of Science and Technology Policy Members Rosina Bierbaum Chad Mirkin Dean, School of Natural Resources and Rathmann Professor, Chemistry, Materials Environment Science and Engineering, Chemical and University of Michigan Biological Engineering and Medicine Director, International Institute of Christine Cassel Nanotechnology President and CEO, American Board of Internal Northwestern University Medicine Mario Molina Christopher Chyba Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry Professor, Astrophysical Sciences and University of California, San Diego International Affairs Professor, Center for Atmospheric Sciences Director, Program on Science and Global Security Scripps Institution of Oceanography Princeton University Director, Mario Molina Center for Energy and S. James Gates, Jr. Environment, Mexico City John S. Toll Professor of Physics Ernest J. Moniz Director, Center for String and Particle Theory Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and University of Maryland Engineering Systems Shirley Ann Jackson Director, MIT’s Energy Initiative President, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Massachusetts Institute of Technology Richard C. Levin Craig Mundie President Chief Research and Strategy Officer Yale University Microsoft Corporation * Dr. Varmus resigned from PCAST on July 9, 2010 and subsequently became Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI). ★ iii ★ DESIGNING A DIGITAL FUTURE: FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IN NETWORKING AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Ed Penhoet Daniel Schrag Director, Alta Partners Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry Professor, Environmental Science and and of Public Health Engineering University of California, Berkeley Director, Harvard University-wide Center for Environment William Press Harvard University Raymer Professor in Computer Science and Integrative Biology David E. Shaw University of Texas at Austin Chief Scientist, D.E. Shaw Research Senior Research Fellow, Center for Maxine Savitz Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Vice President Columbia University National Academy of Engineering Ahmed Zewail Barbara Schaal Linus Pauling Professor of Chemistry and Physics Chilton Professor of Biology Director, Physical Biology Center Washington University California Institute of Technology Vice President, National Academy of Sciences Eric Schmidt Chairman and CEO Google, Inc. Staff Deborah Stine Mary Maxon Gera Jochum Executive Director Deputy Executive Director Policy Analyst ★ iv ★ EXECUTIVE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT PRESIDENT’S COUNCIL OF ADVISORS ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY WASHINGTON, D.C. 20502 President Barack Obama The White House Washington, DC 20502 Dear Mr. President, We are pleased to send you this report, Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology, prepared by your President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) acting in its role as the President’s Innovation and Technology Advisory Council (PITAC). This report fulfills PCAST’s responsibilities under Executive Order 13539 and the High-Performance Computing Act of 1991 (Public Law 102-194) as amended by the Next Generation Internet Research Act of 1998 (Public Law 105-305) and by the America COMPETES Act of 2007 (Public Law 110-69). The Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program is the primary mechanism by which the Federal government coordinates its unclassified networking and information technol- ogy (NIT) research and development (R&D) investments. Fourteen Federal agencies, including all of the large science and technology agencies, are formal members of the NITRD Program, with many other Federal entities participating in NITRD activities. The program helps ensure that the Nation effectively leverages its strengths, avoids duplication, and increases interoperability in such critical areas as supercomputing, high-speed network- ing, cybersecurity, software engineering, and information management. To provide a solid scientific basis for its assessment of NITRD, PCAST appointed an expert 14-member Working Group, which consulted with more than 50 individuals, including government officials, industry representatives, and experts from academia. PCAST finds that NITRD is well coordinated and that the U.S. computing research community, coupled with a vibrant NIT industry, has made seminal discoveries and advanced new technologies that are helping to meet many societal challenges. Importantly, however, PCAST also finds that a substantial fraction of the NITRD multi-agency spending summary represents spending that supports R&D in other fields, rather than spend- ing on R&D in the field of NIT itself. As a result, the Nation is actually investing far less in NIT R&D than the $4 billion-plus indicated in the Federal budget. To achieve America’s priorities and advance key research frontiers to support economic competitiveness in NIT, this report calls for a more accurate accounting of this national investment and recommends additional investments in NIT R&D, including research in networking and infor- mation technology for health, energy and transportation, and cyber-infrastructure, among others. NIT has yielded enormous benefits for the Nation’s economic competitiveness, national security, and quality of life. To maintain America’s leadership in NIT in an ever more competitive global environment, the Federal Government must be bold in its investments, including funding of high risk/high reward research with the potential to move this essential field in unanticipated directions. PCAST believes that execution of the recom- mendations in this report will enable us to address critical priorities and challenges in the years ahead. Sincerely, John P. Holdren Eric Lander Shirley Ann Jackson Eric Schmidt PCAST Co-chair PCAST Co-chair PITAC Co-chair PITAC Co-chair ★ v ★ Executive Report From smartphones to eBook readers to game consoles to personal computers; from corporate data- centers to cloud services to scientific supercomputers; from digital photography and photo editing, to MP3 music players, to streaming media, to GPS navigation; from robot vacuum cleaners in the home, to adaptive cruise control in cars and the real-time control systems in hybrid vehicles, to robot vehicles on and above the battlefield; from the Internet and the World Wide Web to email, search engines, eCom- merce, and social networks; from medical imaging, to computer-assisted surgery, to the large-scale data analysis that is enabling evidence-based healthcare and the new biology; from spreadsheets and word processing to revolutions in inventory control, supply chain, and logistics; from the automatic bar-coding of hand-addressed first class mail, to remarkably effective natural language translation, to rapidly improving speech recognition – our world today relies to an astonishing degree on systems, tools, and services that belong to a vast and still growing domain known as Networking and Information Technology (NIT). NIT underpins our national prosperity, health, and security. In recent decades, NIT has boosted U.S. labor productivity more than any other set of forces. The United States has a proud history of achievement and leadership in NIT. The Federal Government has played an essential role in fostering the advances in NIT that have transformed our world. Steady Federal investment in NIT research over the past 60 years has led to many of the breakthroughs noted above, often a decade or more after the research took place. The Federal investment in NIT research and development is without question one of the best investments our Nation has ever made1,2,3. In order to sustain and improve our quality of life, it is crucial that the United States continue to innovate more rapidly and more creatively than other countries in important areas of NIT. Only by continuing to invest in core NIT science and technology will we continue to reap such enormous societal benefits in