A couple of weeks ago we reported on the changing focus of the NIH's microbial research funding priorities from basic to defense related research. Apparently, this is also a (less intuitive) trend at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Pentagon (Darpa). Although Darpa has long been focused on research for military applications, this New York Times article details how the "blue-sky" funding of the past couple of decades is being curbed. The recent research agenda increasingly excludes the types of basic research that have resulted in the broad applications of research such as the Internet, the technologies behind say- Google, Intel, Xerox Parc, and Apple, not to mention a myriad of key computer applications of the past few decades. The article details how the cuts are affecting research and researchers:
"University researchers.....assert that Darpa has shifted a lot more work in recent years to military contractors, adopted a focus on short-term projects while cutting support for basic research, classified formerly open projects as secret and placed new restrictions on sharing information."Darpa says....
Darpa officials...revealed that within a relatively steady budget for computer science research that rose slightly from $546 million in 2001 to $583 million last year, the portion going to university researchers has fallen from $214 million to $123 million.
The New York Times article lists other funding trends that threaten to disturb the University research environment: Darpa has increasingly turned to private military contractors to fund research. Research grants have favored short term goals as opposed to longer term research agendas. Open source applications have been discouraged, and some research has had to remain unpublished under the more restrictive post 9-11 security regime. Finally, the article reports that Leonard Kleinrock, a University of California, Los Angeles professor associated with the development Arpanet, recently refused Darpa funding that demanded that all the researchers involved in a particular grant be American citizens.
Accordingly, the article reports that the shift is seen by some as "necessary to prepare the nation for a long battle against elusive enemies", while others are alarmed, as it affects their labs, their students, and the flow of newly emerging technologies.
