Science, Technology, and Public Policy

The authors recount the history of ARPA-E and describe how it has supported clean energy innovation in the United States. They argue that ARPA-E needs two things in the short term in order to increase its chances of success in the long term: resources and a leader who can channel the country's top science and engineering talent toward particularly tough technical challenges.

Professor John P. Holdren welcomes the belated creation of a Trump administration President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) to work with Office of Science and Technology Policy Director Kelvin Droegemeier on some of the important issues of national policy on science, technology, and innovation. Historically, PCAST and its predecessor group, the President's Science Advisory Committee, have played important roles connecting the White House with the views of top scientists, engineers, and innovators from business, universities, and civil-society organizations.

Codex's "World's Top 50 Innovators 2019" event took place at the Royal Society in London from 23–25 September 2019. Bruce Schneier gave a 15-minute talk during the Cyber Security Session.

John P. Holdren, who ran the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy under the Obama administration, comments on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in this Harvard Gazette Q&A.

The authors describe the growing ecological and economic threats of plastic pollution to the Arctic. Iceland's Arctic Council chairmanship, the Harvard Kennedy School's Arctic Initiative, and the Wilson Center are co-hosting  a workshop in October 2019 to enable policymakers and experts to begin developing a framework for addressing Arctic plastic pollution. 

Bruce Schneier writes that when it comes to 5G technology, a trustworthy system needs to be built out of untrustworthy parts.  It is not even really known how to build secure systems out of secure parts, let alone out of parts and processes that aren't trustworthy and that are almost certainly being subverted by governments and criminals around the world.

The Arctic Transformation and Resilience Study Group, led by Arctic Initiative Senior Fellow Joel Clement, will give students the opportunity to learn about and work on issues of Arctic resilience. Working together to deliver a compilation and brief analysis of existing policies that support or inhibit resilience in the Arctic, students will have the opportunity to meet with top Arctic scientists, policymakers, indigenous knowledge-holders, and finance experts, while developing a report that will be delivered to the Secretariat of the Arctic Council Sustainable Development Working Group.

This study group will be held on Tuesdays, from 6pm–7:30pm, beginning Oct 29, and including Nov 5, 12, 19, and 26. For more information or to sign-up, please contact brittany_janis@hks.harvard.edu. Space is limited; please register by October 21.

After many years of productive service, industrial plants reach the end of their useful life and must be dismantled. This complex and costly process, know as decommissioning (commissioning refers to the beginning of a plant useful life), is a confluence of economic, environmental, physical, and regulatory challenges.

Bruce Schneier  explains that there is no escaping the technology of inevitable surveillance. Consumers have little choice but to rely on the companies that build their computers and write their software, whether in  smartphones,  5G wireless infrastructure, or subway cars.  China is more likely to try to get data from the U.S. communications infrastructure like the United States does rather than try to produce a subway car outfitted with surveillance apparatus.

Shaughnessy and Joel Clement, Senior Fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists and former Director of the Office of Policy Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Interior, talk about blowing the whistle on former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke for his efforts to purge the agency of government scientists working to address climate change in the Trump Administration.