26 Items

The country needs your expertise

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Analysis & Opinions - The National Interest

Why the U.S. Congress and STEM Experts Must Work Together

| December 2020

To the engineers, coders, geneticists, and others on the front lines of innovation who may be considering public service, I want to make the case for a type of service you may not have previously considered: offering policy advice on science and technology issues to the United States Congress.

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Paper

Boston Tech Hub Faculty Working Group Annual Report 2018-2019

| September 2019

The Boston Tech Hub Faculty Working Group (FWG), hosted by former Secretary of Defense and Belfer Center Director Ash Carter and Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Dean Frank Doyle, holds monthly discussion-based meetings that explore and answer the question:

How do we resolve the dilemmas posed to public good and public purpose, created by technology’s unstoppable advances?

The Boston Tech Hub Faculty Working Group Annual Report is a summary report of findings, key insights, and outstanding questions from the discussions held during the 2019-2020 academic year.  

The fireball of a hydrogen bomb lights the Pacific sky a few seconds after the bomb was released over Bikini Atoll on May 21, 1956. (File Photo, AP)

AP

Analysis & Opinions - MIT Technology Review

What I Learned from the People who Built the Atom Bomb

| Nov. 27, 2017

When I began my career in elementary particle physics, the great figures who taught and inspired me had been part of the Manhattan Project generation that developed the atomic bomb. They were proud to have created a “disruptive” technology that ended World War II and deterred a third world war through more than 50 years of tense East-West standoff. They were also proud to have made nuclear power possible. But their understanding of the underlying technology also gave them a deep regard for the awesome, unavoidable risks that came with those technologies.

Defense Secretary James Mattis, left, applauds former Defense Secretary Ash Carter, right, during the portrait unveiling ceremony for the former secretary at the Pentagon on Friday, Feb. 2, 2018. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Analysis & Opinions - WIRED

DoD Head Ashton Carter Enlists Silicon Valley to Transform the Military

    Author:
  • Jessi Hempel
| Nov. 18, 2015

The DOD of course has a long history of jump-starting innovation. Historically, it has taken the megafunding and top-down control structures of the federal government to do the kind of investing required to create important technology for the military. Digital photography, GPS, the Internet itself—all were nourished by defense contracts before being opened up to the private sector, which then turned them into billion-dollar industries.

Now the flow has reversed. Defense has been caught in the throes of the same upheaval that has disrupted legacy industries, unseated politicians, and upended global dynamics.

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

If Necessary, Strike and Destroy: North Korea Cannot Be Allowed to Test This Missile

| June 22, 2006

Should the United States allow a country openly hostile to it and armed with nuclear weapons to perfect an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of delivering nuclear weapons to U.S. soil? We believe not. If North Korea persists in its launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.