Former Clinton Secretary of Defense William Perry–along with MIT Prof. John Deutch–have an op-ed on proposed funding cuts to the long-term advanced R&D efforts at the defense department. Next year’s budget devotes only about $10 billion of the Pentagon’s $420 budget will be devoted to this “technology base,” down 20 percent from last year.

Perry and Deutch point out:

Of course, the administration and Congress need to make tough budget choices. But to shift money away from the technology base to pay for Iraq, other current military operations or research on large, expensive initiatives, is to give priority to the near term at the expense of the future.

Their line of reasoning is one that is frequently our line of reasoning:

American companies not only draw heavily on the Pentagon’s work, but they have also come to depend on it. The research and development programs of many of America’s major information technology companies are almost exclusively devoted to product development.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 13th, 2005 at 10:28 am and is filed under Federally funded institutions, Policy, Publications, Commercial Applications. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.