Report: U.S. Losing Leadership In 21st Century Science And Technology

By Michael Combier-Talk Radio News Service

The United States is facing the risk of losing ground on the science and technology field if no adequate funding are given to the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and to the laboratories, according to a report by the Stimson Center’s Task Force. Entitled “Leveraging the Nuclear Weapons Laboratories for 21st Century Security”, the report shows that a more successful cooperation needs to be sought between bureaucratic entities and the laboratories dealing with nuclear technology.

“If the entities that are intended to make strategic investments have to stand in line, you are not going to get where you need to go,” said Dr.Elizabeth Turpen, co-Director of the Cooperative Nonproliferation Program at the Stimson Center.

But, Turpen said, this collaboration can not occur while significant declines in the Defense Department funding limit growth.

“The relationship between the Department of Energy (DoE), NNSA and the labs is pretty fractured, if not completely broken… Laboratories definitely feel like they are not part of the decision making progress” and that will “impact their future,” said Turpen.

The lack of funding will ultimately result in the “potential for cascading unintended consequences to the detriment of U.S. national security,” Turpen said.

The report proposed the establishment of a “new and fully autonomous agency with multiple financial sponsors to provide broad national security, science and technology mechanisms and oversight to achieve the envisioned transformation,” which will make the agency less a victim of bureaucratic authority and having a more direct link with the laboratories.