AT LAST, the wait is over. The US has a Science Advisor, John H. Marburger
III. Not since Floyd Kvamme was named as chairman of the President鈥檚 Council of
Advisors on Science and Technology has there been such excitement in Washington
science policy circles.
Well, maybe excitement is the wrong word. Perhaps relief would be more like
it. Or better still鈥攁t least among the science policy elite鈥攅nnui.
The reason for the muted response has nothing to do with Marburger, who has
reasonable credentials. Currently director of Brookhaven National Laboratory,
Marburger is a physicist and a Democrat (so the White House can claim to be
bipartisan), and is easily on a par with recent science advisors鈥攚hether
from Clinton鈥檚 era or the administration of Bush the elder. No, the ennui stems
from the fact that the White House Office of Science and Technology
Policy鈥攖he office Marburger will head once confirmed by the
Senate鈥攈as virtually no influence in shaping the big science policy issues
of the day. The people who will make decisions about the environment or
embryonic stem cells are more tuned in to winning elections than Nobel Prizes.
The science advisor鈥檚 role has become one of defending science policy decisions,
not making them.
Just in case you鈥檙e wondering what Kvamme has been doing since he was
appointed chairman of the President鈥檚 Council of Advisors on Science and
Technology, I鈥檓 happy to report he鈥檚 been meeting with lots of scientists.
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THE lemming-like retreat from the dotcom sector and high-tech businesses has
not gone unnoticed in Washington. Yes, the Republicans have long claimed to be
the true champions of Darwinian economics鈥攍et the market impose its own
selective pressures to weed out the most poorly adapted. Nonetheless,
Republicans didn鈥檛 get into office without the help of large corporations, and
so begins again the plaint from corporate allies in Congress鈥攑lease, oh
please, drop those pesky restrictions on exporting top-of-the-line
computers.
Currently, countries like Sudan and Libya can鈥檛 buy the fastest computers
from American manufacturers. And exporting to countries such as Russia and China
requires a permit. Manufacturers in the US have long complained about these
restrictions, saying that buyers simply go elsewhere to get what they want. In
the meantime, they鈥檙e losing money to competitors. Moreover, these days a laptop
can supply all the computing power you鈥檇 need to design, say, a nuclear weapon.
The horse has already bolted, say the manufacturers, so why shut the stable door
now?
Opponents use the same facts to support the export ban. There鈥檚 so much
computing power available at bargain prices, they say, that the threat is
greater than ever. So it鈥檚 worth at least attempting to slow nuclear
proliferation, or whatever other means of destruction are facilitated by digital
innovation.
Members of the Bush administration have been sympathetic to the arguments of
the high-tech corporations in the past, but they鈥檙e in a tricky spot now. A
Chinese scientist purportedly pilfered nuclear secrets from a government lab in
Los Alamos, New Mexico. Nothing has been proven, but even suspicion can have a
chilling effect on those who would sell China the means to invent what we claim
they already stole. More recently, the FBI has uncovered a double agent in its
midst, Robert Hanssen, who sold as yet unnumbered secrets to Russia. And Bush is
trying hard to sell a missile defence system (that would abrogate the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) based on the premise that some rogue nation,
rather than Russia or China, might try to nuke us. How could he sell those
nations the means to launch such an attack鈥攐r perhaps even break through
the defence shield鈥攅ven as the shield is being built?
ABORTION politics in Washington is a strange business. The administration
recently announced that it would allow state health officials to consider
fetuses as children, in something called the Children鈥檚 Health Insurance
Program. Pro-abortion campaigners say that it鈥檚 a ploy to win tacit acceptance
of fetuses as 鈥減eople鈥� to help end abortion. Bush representatives say it鈥檚
simply an effort to promote health among children . . . just starting
earlier.