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TI: Now I'm curious, when the government thinks about this, thanks to you and others in terms of creating the internet, so much of the smartest, brightest talent are going into the for-profit sector in these startups, technology. How will -- and I'm guessing as the government looks at sort of national security and maybe creating maybe similar skunk works or something to really innovate and focus, how are they gonna attract the talent?

SA: Well, the government has to do the same thing we did when the Soviets launched Sputnik and Eisenhower started the space race. He basically (created) an environment (with the) universities, priorities on the universities, gave it R&D funding, and said to universities, "I want you to help us develop the right kind of technology." And I've also sense that commercial companies will also help, and what needs to be done is a government industry team to be built up, just like it did during the Cold War.

TI: Are you talking about like more basic research, at that level?

SA: You've got to start with basic research. See, when the Cold War ended, the U.S. stopped all basic research. And the commercial companies do a lot of research, but it's applied research, because you've got to have payoff in a year or two. So there is no basic research in this country, not enough. There is some, National Science Foundation puts together some funded programs, but nothing that is application-oriented basic research for national security and business, because business operates on a year-to-year development.

TI: And so when you look at the world, are you optimistic or pessimistic about how things are going?

SA: Well, I'm optimistic because I think that the U.S. is still in a very powerful position, both economically and national security-wise. We're having problems today, the stock market is depressed, but you know what? Shale oil was a tremendous innovation. It changed the whole economics around the globe, and that's what we're fleshing out right now. We've lowered the oil price, it made other services much more efficient with lower price, it created U.S. as a major supplier of energy rather than a major importer of energy just ten years ago. So I think the U.S. is in a very good position if it takes advantage of that.

TI: But then going back to something you said earlier, and I can't remember if this was before the cameras were running, but how during the, I guess, under the Clinton administration, you called it a "peace dividend" where he made all that technology that you and your teams were working on, he opened it up, and that infused this...

SA: It's technology and systems, too.

TI: And that infused this huge burst of essentially Silicon Valley and all that.

SA: In fact, it's global.

TI: Especially global. And so in many ways, what only the United States had prior to that, the world has. And you just said, and since that time, the United States hasn't really invested in new basic research. And I would think that there are some other countries that perhaps are investing more in basic research in certain areas, or they're starting to catch up.

SA: They're in the same boat, too, because they're all privatized, and the government is not doing that much.

TI: But I guess I'm trying to make is this real, almost fundamental advantage that we had in the past isn't there anymore, or is it?

SA: Yes, that's a good point, because we basically transferred technology (and systems) to the world, and we transferred manufacturing processes to the world. So the recession that we had and the slow buildup is a result of the fact that we did all the software development in this country, we did all of the electronic manufacturing in this country, it all went overseas. So when you talk about a gap in the middle, in the middle, that's where the gap got created. And we're having a hard time filling that. But, see, because we didn't do that much innovation, we could have helped manufacturing companies in the U.S. become more modernized, developing new techniques like 3D printing is a perfect example, robotic operation is another example, nanotechnology is another. It totally changes the whole manufacturing process. The U.S. didn't take leadership and the whole world did it. The U.S. was not a leader because R&D was done around the world. So as a result, our manufacturing capability had no advantage over China or Japan or South Korea.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.