Bruce Andrews moderates a panel with Dr. Ian Chandani, Dr. Larry Schutte, and Bess Dopkin on federal science investments, detailing the triangular model linking universities, government labs, and industry for military capabilities like the F-35. They address critical hurdles including travel restrictions hindering networking, funding gaps for security-cleared students, and the "valley of death" between basic research and commercial adoption. While acknowledging China as both a threat and inspiration, the experts warn that workforce development and talent attraction represent the single greatest risk to U.S. leadership over the next decade, urging continuity in NSF funding and new mechanisms to out-compete rivals in how science is conducted. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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jahana hayes
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jennifer levasseur
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jim mcgovern
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norah odonnell
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Federal Science Investment Evolution00:07:07
unidentified
Excellent.
All right.
I was a little worried there for a second.
Well, good.
Well, why don't we get started as we wait for Bess?
Just in the interest of time, and I don't want to get in trouble with Sujay, so we'll keep moving forward.
So, you know, I think, as you all know, scientific research has long been the foundation of U.S. military advantage, from nuclear deterrence to space, computing, and emerging dual-use technologies.
This panel will explore how the federal scientific investments strengthen defense capabilities, inform strategic planning, and shape the United States' ability to deter and to respond to evolving threats.
And we're very fortunate today to be just joined by a distinguished panel.
I am Bruce Andrews, your moderator, who I'm both a senior advisor here at CSIS, but also a partner at Covington and Burling.
We are joined by Dr. Ian Chandani, who is the Assistant Director for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships at NSF and runs TIP, but has also worked at NSF since 2012 and has had a very distinguished career both as a leader in the U.S. government, also in research.
We're joined by Dr. Larry Schutte, who is the Director of Global Science and Technology at Lockheed Martin and had previously served in the U.S. government for 33 years, both at DOD and HHS.
And we're going to be shortly joined by Bess Dopkin, who is a former Senior Director for Research and Engineering at DOD, and then also previously was a senior staff member for science and technology at the House Armed Services Committee.
So let's just jump in and begin.
So let me start with the first question, which is: the relationship between federal science investment and military advantage has evolved significantly over the years, from the Manhattan Project to GPS to AI.
The world has changed significantly since Vannevere Bush did the Endless Frontiers report in 1944.
And so, what I would ask all of you is: how would each of you characterize where we stand today in this arc of scientific development?
And are we investing at the right level in the right places?
Do you want to start, Doctor?
Sure, I'm happy to start.
Morning, everybody.
Thank you for this opportunity.
Larry Schuti, currently at Lockheed Martin, formerly Director of Research at Doffson Naval Research, so long career in the ST community.
I'd like to start, if I will, at ONR and then translate over to Lockheed Martin and where we are as part of this investment.
Everyone seems to be showing a mental model of how RD goes from university to industry, so allow me to provide my two.
The first is: universities are where invention occurs.
Principally around the globe, invention occurs at universities.
Principally, that's sponsored by the federal government of the United States, although obviously it's changing, but certainly in the U.S., it's 99% federally funded.
Most of that money comes from the National Science Foundation, the mission agencies, ONR, ARO, DARPA, et cetera, provide other, but it's really about 90% of that is NSF.
The government research labs and the naval research lab where I came from, where GPS and radar were invented, do innovation.
And so they're hoovering out of the academic institutions in some fashion inventions and pulling those together and creating innovations.
Industry, where I am now, is really involved in the scale out of those innovations.
And it used to be a very linear, very distinct set of operations that occurred, principally papers published, beer drunken at conferences, people talk translating that.
Today, it's all merged.
So, industry is highly interested in what's going on at a university.
I spend a lot of time on campus looking at what's going on at the universities.
I spend a lot of time at government research labs understanding what's going on in those research labs.
And we're taking and working together across all three of those communities.
Industry does very little invention.
We do a fair bit of innovation in very discreet areas, but obviously, if you're going to buy something, it's getting made by some company.
There's very little that the warfighter uses that's built by the Naval Research Lab that exists, but most of it goes through an industry partner.
Another way to think of this model is as a triangle or a pyramid.
That base layer of foundational science and technology is coming out of the universities and for sure is principally being funded by the research agencies.
The next layer up, the technology layer, these are layers where people have pieced together inventions, wide band gap semiconductor, ultra-wide bandgap semiconductors, new processes to make gallium arsenide, gallium nitride actually work and be affordable out of that middle layer.
And at the top layer, the layer that the Department of War cares about is the capability.
So it all stacks together to create the F-35 or an embedded radio or a satellite.
That capability is that typically the industry partners, large and small, putting that together.
So, with all of that, I would say that the challenges that we face today as a defense company are really twofold.
One, the government sponsors are not coming to the conferences, so they're not traveling.
So, we're not getting the beer community together, which, as we all know, everything occurs around people.
Steve Covey Jr. wrote a book called The Speed of Trust.
You only need to know the title.
And it really is: if you know people and you trust them, you'll work well together.
Everything we do is done at the speed of trust because we can't afford the speed of no trust.
The other thing that's occurring is we talked at the last panel about that critical element, which is the workforce.
We require workers who can obtain a U.S. security clearance.
So, think about the workforce that's in grad school today and whether or not a defense company, which requires clearance for its employees, can hire those grad students.
Many universities have made strategic choices to bring in U.S. grad students into programs, but it's very challenging, and it's always a unique experience to talk to a U.S. student getting a PhD, how they're affording it.
And so, this is a challenge for NSF.
Critical Minerals and Workforce Challenges00:15:38
unidentified
It's a challenge for ONR.
How do we provide, if you will, a quote living wage, unquote, for those grad students?
Typically, there's a first-generation American mom with a thumb on the back of their son or daughter.
Yes, you will get a PhD.
I'm not first-generation, but my eighth-grade daughter is most unhappy that she's going to be an electrical engineer like her siblings.
And it's really a challenge for companies to provide that workforce, especially in these fascinating new areas like quantum and AI.
And so, I think for us, The relationships that NSF is creating under TIPS, the IUCRC, the industry-university collaboration so that NSF can start lots of programs that live and die based on industry interaction.
Not sure if that was the intent, but that's how I interpret it from the sidelines.
And then the new industry-university partnership programs that Erwin is hopefully going to talk about, I think are really impactful.
And now, our challenge, I think, and it's my last point: our story of taking science and making capability for the warfighter isn't nearly as good.
Our storytelling isn't nearly as good as our story.
I can look at any piece of technology, any piece of capability, and I can devolve out the science that begat it.
And in some cases, I know the individual researcher at the university, and I think that we just don't tell that story particularly well.
And because we don't tell it well, and because there's political reasons to not want to hear the story on every side of every argument, it's not getting told well or amplified well.
And so, I think that's really our challenge going forward: how do we tell that shared story in a way that makes the public understand that the investment that's being made at universities in the critical sciences that are needed is worth it.
And I'll cease with that.
Bess, let me turn to you because you worked at the intersection of research and engineering at DOD and on the Hill.
And how well do you think Congress understands the link between basic research funding and long-term defense readiness?
And where do you see the biggest gaps in understanding?
Well, this is kind of a fun day.
Thank you so much for having me.
And it's a fun day for you guys at CSIS to be hosting, actually, specifically on the importance of science funding from the government, just because the actual budget just came out a couple of minutes ago, right?
And everybody has been sitting there kind of like flipping through it on their phones in the audience today, just trying to see what happened everywhere.
I was in the Pentagon or staring at the Pentagon from the Hill for 20 years and was in the group that did the long-range planning for 11 years and then went back after having the science and technology portfolio on the Hill to go advise the Under Secretary of Research and Engineering and fought a lot of these battles inside the Pentagon, right?
Sometimes, you know, I would sit in meetings and I would hear like the top military, one of the retired, one of the former top military advisors in the Pentagon 4STAR say something like, I've never seen anything interesting come out of science and technology.
And they had been a submariner.
So they ate, breathed, and slept underwater.
And I feel like something came out of science and technology over the past couple of years on that one.
But, you know, what exactly what Larry was saying, you know, it's a hard story to tell from the science all the way to the capability that the military really cares about.
And when you ask about Congress, Congress knows the benefit of science, and thankfully they do.
And I hope that science is that the Hill is very interested in making sure that science continues to be funded.
But if you look, I'm very actually very proud of the department.
The department has kept a lot of the good funding on basic research and science and technology and that kind of things.
But additionally, the Hill understands the importance of science in its backyard, right?
So everybody has a university and everybody has students growing and everybody has a workforce that needs to work and everybody has an interest in STEM.
So that's always very helpful in making sure that Congress continues to fund that.
And actually, historically, Congress has, you know, and the appropriators have actually put a couple billion dollars extra into the Defense Department inside of S ⁇ T and has added to the basic research funds and all of those things.
So hopefully we continue to see that as well.
But it is always hard to get people very, very excited about something that's going to happen in 30 years.
Right?
So what we need to start doing is start working backwards and telling our stories backwards, like the things, you know, I loved seeing the three companies up here beforehand, right?
Because tell me how what you're really doing today, which is so cool, NVIDIA, right?
And like all of the gaming and all of the things and my iPhone and all the stuff and the fact that I have international banking on my phone, right?
And all of these things that are enabled because of the investments that have been made in science over the years.
You have to work that back.
And also, I think very particularly for Congress, because Congress gets to see all these companies coming in and companies asking for money and companies showing really cool things.
And if I got a little bit more money, I could do this really quickly and I can deliver this really fast.
That is absolutely important.
And the company needs to say.
Also, by the way, I'm the CTO that came out of this university and I had this funding and my professor had this research funding that was funded by NSF or the Department of Defense or War and the Department of Energy and all of these things.
Tie that back so it's very clear that when I'm coming to you today with my really cool thing, here's the shoulders that I stand on.
Great.
And let's turn to you, Dr. Gianchindani, which is you're really...
Common Irwin.
Irwin, okay, that's easier.
Thank you.
Look, this is much, you know, you were on the front lines of this.
And, you know, NSF's TIP directorate was stood up explicitly to accelerate use-inspired research.
Can you tell us what is TIP doing at this moment?
And what programs have you put in place in recent years to help us really meet the moment we're at?
Sure.
So let me just, first of all, thank you for doing this to my CSIS colleagues.
It's great to be a part of this forum today.
And it's great to hear, I think, all of the amazing support and the great stories of success that NSF has helped unlock for this nation going back over the course of the last almost 80 years now.
By the way, I want to just say I could not agree more with what my fellow panelists just articulated in terms of sort of the innovation ecosystem that has helped promote that success and those success stories over the course of that 80-year period.
And also, you know, the story about how we need to do a better job of communicating.
We need to do a better job of recognizing sort of the backyard secret sauce that exists in every corner of this country and trying to lift that up and elevate that as we go forward.
But I do want to just say, maybe I'll put one asterisk on everything that I heard Larry and Bess describe here in the following sense.
I think that where we are today in a moment in time is also different than where we were 75, 80 years ago when NSF was first stood up, for example, right?
It is absolutely the case that basic science, you know, it still takes years for basic science to be unlocked, right?
But by the same token, with the emergence of data, with the emergence of AI tools and techniques, right?
I think one of the things that we are seeing is that every field of science and technology, every sector of our economy really is being transformed by the introduction of data and AI.
That is the new currency of scientific progress, right?
And in that context, I think the pace of discovery and innovation is greatly accelerated.
Similarly, the workforce.
You mentioned the workforce.
Where the workforce ends up for our nation, right?
Used to be that in certain fields, the majority of PhDs would go into academia.
Today, the majority of PhDs in those same fields are going anywhere but academia.
Nothing against our higher education institutions, but the types of jobs that we are training for, the types of opportunities that we are trying to unlock, span from the Department of Defense to the intelligence community to the private sector to venture capital and so forth.
And so I think there are some deltas today relative to even 10 years ago, even 15 years ago, as we see some of the evolution in the scientific and engineering enterprise.
So, to your question, though, about TIP, I think it is absolutely the case that when we stood up this new directorate, first time that we've done something like this in more than three decades, in fact, at NSF, the motivation, you know, NSF, for all the examples that you've heard this morning, has long been, I think, beneficial to the nation's defense, the nation's security, the nation's intelligence assets, right?
But I think that within the TIP directorate in particular, we wake up every day thinking about sort of that alignment between the investments that we're making and how they directly contribute to national security, national defense at the end of the day.
And so I look at the portfolio programs that we have.
Again, we have three core pillars within TIP.
Number one, it's about trying to accelerate technology to the market.
And the market is broadly defined.
Yes, startups and small businesses, absolutely.
But also, we collaborate closely with colleagues at other mission agencies to be able to understand what their needs and how those needs help shape the research agenda that we're trying to unlock as well.
The second is about the workforce.
How do we prepare a competition-ready workforce for the 21st century?
And yes, we want to be training PhD scientists and engineers, but we also want to be training the entirety of the STEM enterprise and the entirety of the job market when it comes to these fields and these spaces that are enabled by STEM or enabled by innovations around STEM going forward.
So that's skilled workforce, that's trade workforce, that's the entire complexion and at all levels of training that I think is necessary.
And then the third pillar for us is really thinking about the fact that there's talent and there's technological promise in every corner of this nation.
And so when we're thinking about what's that backyard secret sauce, if you think about energy innovation, for example, a lot of energy innovation comes out of Louisiana, where a lot of oil and gas flows through the ports there.
A lot of it comes out of western Pennsylvania and West Virginia and the Appalachians historically.
So thinking about how do we leverage that backyard secret sauce for those different communities and regions and really go into every part of the country to be able to unlock the potential for the nation's defense enterprise and security enterprise.
And so those three pillars, accelerating tech to the market, thinking about our workforce, and thinking about how we do this regionally across the country, are the frame for our investment framework within the TIP Directorate.
And all of the programs that we have are tied to that and thus tied back to thinking about defense and security day to day.
So I'll give you a couple of very prominent examples.
In fact, the previous panel stole my thunder a little bit, where they talked about the tech metal transformation challenge that we've done, right?
Why did we do that?
We absolutely did that because critical minerals are so vital to the nation's competitiveness.
We see that in the tech assessments that we do.
We see that in the tech assessments that our colleagues at other organizations, including CSIS, CSED, I mean, you name them, they're all talking about the vitality of our ability to be successful tied to critical minerals.
And it turns out that by the year 2030, about a quarter, several data sets have shown this, about a quarter of the nation's critical minerals needs could be addressed through the harnessing of end-of-life critical minerals, waste stream critical minerals, and so forth.
And so the tech metal transformation challenge is a means to be able to focus specifically on that and to be able to say, if we are going to be able to build the next generation of warfighters with all of this sophisticated technology, right?
If we're going to think about the equipment that you need for hypersonics and the ability to do ground and air scanning in real time, you're going to need those critical mineral assets.
And so being able to leverage this type of an approach and surfacing the teams that can potentially do so in a rapid manner and in a sort of a different way than we might traditionally do through some of our normal processes, I think allows us to be able to ensure that we are maintaining that competitiveness.
We collaborate with the Department of War on our translation to practice initiative, which is really about helping to build partnerships between the researchers whom we support through most of the rest of NSF, but also TIP, together with private industry, together with the DOW, and so forth.
And so those partnerships with DOW help to unlock the use cases, specifically the Naval Surface Warfare Center and the ground capabilities within the Army.
What are the specific use cases that they have?
And can some of the research coming out of other parts of NSF potentially be tuned to help address the needs that they see on a day-to-day basis?
So these are the kinds of efforts that I think we are trying to be very intentional and strategic about in the sense that I've always said with TIP, we want to sort of change that linear pathway that Larry described.
That sort of you start with just simply discovery science, you let the great flowers bloom and then you harness that.
But we want to complement that, I think, a little bit with also what are the real-world use cases from DOW, IC, et cetera, that can help to inform and shape some of that use-inspired research, some of that translational research, and accelerate that to actually have impact at the end of the day.
It sounds like your portfolio is providing great value really directly to our defense enterprise.
How do you navigate the tension between civilian use and dual-use applications?
So, you know, a couple of things I would say.
I think that, first of all, if you look at our competitors, right, let's look at, for example, the Chinese premier, right?
President Xi has said that science and technology is the new international battlefield.
It is the vehicle by which the international battlefield is going to be shaped going forward.
I think we have to take that, we cannot take that lightly.
If we are going to ensure our competitiveness, our security, our defense, we have to take that very seriously.
And that means that, yes, there are going to be instances, a lot of the technology that we are surfacing and that we are enabling are dual-use technologies.
Science as the New Battlefield00:13:49
unidentified
And we have to acknowledge that.
We have to identify ways in which we can, and we're doing this, we're collaborating with our internally within NSF, with our research security team, for example, to be able to understand where are there cases and opportunities where we have vulnerabilities and how do we ensure that we balance the open and transparent system that we have with some of those instances where we need to be a little bit more mindful of some of those considerations and some of those constraints as well.
I think, frankly, as I said earlier, I think the use cases that help to drive the research agenda can come from a variety of different settings.
And what we need to do is, we need to acknowledge that it's okay for those use cases to come from the DOW and IC.
It's our responsibility to be able to help put the best minds here in the U.S., the best talent here in the U.S. to bear to help unlock some of that research and innovation.
And then it's up to our colleagues at DOW and the IC, whom we collaborate with, to harness some of those outputs for the betterment of our national interests and our national needs.
So it is, of course, a balancing act on a daily basis, but I think it goes part and parcel why I think it's imperative for us to be entering into these relationships, building the trusted engagements, understanding what the needs are, understanding what the use cases are, and also being transparent with the research community that we help support as well when we're partnering and when we're seeing co-funding coming to the table.
So let me follow up on it because Bess had mentioned earlier about the President's budget request coming out today, which kind of makes it an auspicious day to be here, although I suspect many of you are going to run out after and spend your time combing through it.
I did see an initial headline.
I'm not going to be doing so right now.
Yeah, I was just going to say I did see an initial headline though about a significant increase in defense spending being proposed.
But I also saw that one of the sub-headlines of that was cutting some of the research programs in other parts of the federal government.
And as we've all seen, both the President's budget request and the congressional appropriations don't always align at RD priorities.
So, Larry, maybe let me turn it to you.
And from your vantage point, looking at how, both in your experience in government, working at the agencies and industry, how does the uncertainty in RD funding affect the pipelines from discovery to deployment?
I think we're well accustomed to uncertainty and turbidity in funding.
Those of us who've done hypersonics have lived through the peaks and valleys.
I think that the true challenge for the university faculty is, remember their number one priority is making tenure.
And so you're going to be head down securing funding to do research, getting your papers, getting peer reviews, getting your H-index up, and getting through that hurdle for tenure.
And as I go to universities today and in the past, the industry relationship that we're trying to create today and even in the past is not valued in the tenure process at most universities.
And I always ask about it, and I always enjoy watching the provost or the vice provost kind of look at their shoes metaphorically and then claim to do better.
And I was part of a Department of Energy Innovation Task Force.
We rewrote some of the P case rules for DOE.
In the Navy system, the MURIs, you get points for bringing in an industry partner for that MURI.
And I think if I could click my heels, we would reward this industry relationship not as an afterthought, but as a primary focus of academic rigor, because it is a primary focus for the nation, for the Department of Defense.
And so I think that turbidity is all up plus or minus to the federal government, the universities trying to smooth that out, industry coming in and helping.
But it really is that partnership gets done early, and it's typically a grad student.
You hire a grad student from a university, and the next thing you know, we're going back to that university to work with this professor.
At some point, the professor joins us and leaves behind a grad student to be part of a team.
And that repeats at every institution in the country in some fashion.
And so I think if we can tell our story better, Congress will trust the story.
It's when they suddenly do, if you will, a desk audit and realize there's a lot of stuff in the portfolio that's perhaps not defendable.
to the same rigor as much of it.
There's 20% of it we could go to the mat for, 20% of it we wonder why we're doing it, and then there's that 60% in the middle.
It all needs to be stuff we go to the mat for.
It all should be stuff we're very proud of.
And I think as we get to that kind of precepts and direction that we get from top down that our government sponsors take on board, that story will get better, the storytelling we do will get better, and we'll get that trust back, if you will, or we'll increase the trust we have from the Hill.
Can I just weigh in on that?
I can't let a conversation about tenure go without commenting just a little bit.
So I just want to say something about that.
So, you know, I think we're all human beings, and one of the marks of, I think, being a human being is sort of the sense that I had this experience, and so the next generation should have a similar experience, right?
And I think that to a large extent that tends to be one of the, in my view, critical challenge points when it comes to the conversations around promotion and tenure, right?
When I talk to faculty and when I talk to university leadership and when I talk to department chairs, I think the early career faculty today recognize that whether it be collaboration with industry, collaboration with DOW, collaboration with other parts of the space, right?
I think that our early career faculty are saying, you know, we want to have impact with the work that we're trying to do.
You can have impact with basic science, by the way.
You can have impact with use-inspired research.
You can have impact with translational research, right?
And for them, impact at the end of the day isn't necessarily about papers and publications.
It's about the startups that they can create.
It's about the ecosystem that they can cultivate.
It's about these partnerships with industry and seeing their ideas over time make their way into products and services that are changing people's lives or that are for the betterment of the U.S. defense and intelligence enterprises.
That's early career faculty who are up and coming who are trying to see that happen.
I listen to university leadership, right?
University leadership tell me similar things, similar virtues, that we are trying to build relationships with our backyard neighbors and colleagues and so forth, with our local community, right?
And it's sort of, and I don't fault them when I say this, please don't take this the wrong way.
I think it's sort of the middle layer of department heads and deans and so forth where sort of the currency of their fields historically has been papers and publications.
And moving away from that is hard because that's where the currency has rested up until this point.
But I think that over time, we will probably see this evolve as I think it needs to.
And I think that's one of the things that we've been trying to stress with the investments that we're making through my shop at NSF, that it's really about the impact that we're trying to deliver at the end of the day.
And figuring out the various ways in which you can measure that impact.
Training of talent, right?
How are we training talent through the investments, through that R D, to be able to expose them to what allows them to be job ready on day one, as opposed to I train a bunch of folks and then Larry, your company has to spend a year retraining them for whatever it is that you want them to be working on.
How do we get them ready for jobs on day one?
I think those are the kinds of things that we should be aspiring to through the investments that we're making.
Great, thank you.
Bess, let me turn to you to follow up on that because in your work at DOD, you work to better integrate science and technology planning into the national defense strategy.
So let me ask you, in practice, how effectively does long-range research investment actually inform strategic planning cycles?
So both on the Hill and in the Undersecretary of War for Research and Engineering, there was a lot of interest in trying to put that strategy out there and the vision.
Even the reason why the Undersecretary for Research and Engineering was actually created and broken off from the Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Group is because the Undersecretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, that had all of RDT ⁇ E and procurement at the time and sustainment constantly focused on the procurement issues of the day, right?
And they didn't get to really think through the vision.
And so part of the argument that happened before I arrived on the Hill was to separate it so that you could actually have an Undersecretary thinking through what that next vision is over the next 30, 50 years, et cetera.
And then inside of that, the Hill, when I was there, we also did principal directors for critical technologies.
And there were specific critical technologies that were chosen.
A lot of them align exactly to what Erwin is working on.
But, you know, hypersonics, biotechnology, quantum, et cetera, right?
But things that the undersecretary at the time really believed needed a roadmap.
And part of that conversation was what does the next 30 years look like?
And the principal directors underneath were not politicals because they wanted it to be the scientists, the scientific experts in that, right?
And it's not a political back and forth.
You don't want a roadmap going left and then right and then left and then right.
You know, you want a vision that everybody from that kind of community kind of pulling it together, we build that vision together.
So that has been very helpful when you also bring in the budgeting aspect, right?
Because now you actually should have these long-term visions for these critical technologies of like what needs to actually happen, hypersonic specifically, right?
Directed energy specifically, quantum specifically.
How do we actually advance from the basic research to the applied research to the advanced development, but like actually kind of like help pull it through?
One of the things we tried to do, for example, inside of research and engineering was starting to do advanced development for quantum for the first time.
Because really it's not what the services were going to do.
It's not what everybody else is doing, right?
Like we wanted to kind of like start putting a demand signal out there for more advanced pull, right?
Which is going to help transition that out at some point.
So a lot of that kind of thinking is going on in the department.
And the RE group, including all of the other folks that really think through the next five years and the next 10 years of budgeting, gets to think through how to do that.
And one of the things that we did do was we added the National Defense Science and Technology Strategy, right?
So and we offset it two years from the National Defense Strategy so that you would have a national defense strategy and then two years later you would update what that kind of vision is for the science technology strategy as well.
And trying to really like, so that way over the next couple of years and the next defense strategy, you could continue to iterate and kind of affect each other to really bring that science and technology, the future vision of where that should be going and what that should be laying in into the budgeting thought process.
Now, if you actually want to talk about the budget wars inside the Pentagon, of course, of the science and technology budget and the basic research budget and protecting that, right?
We try to put out, the Office Secretary of War puts out guidance to everybody in the beginning about what needs to be protected, what's off limits, where you have the opportunity space to make decisions and weigh in.
And we've always tried to insert into that language, you have to protect these things, science and technology, basic research.
Unfortunately, that protection is 0% real growth, is about the negotiating, right?
0% real growth.
And obviously, actual cost escalation is much higher than normal inflation.
And so, you know, you have a loss of buying power over time.
And so, those were kind of the budget wars that we would try to be in and try to really champion, let's move investment forward in science and technology, move it forward in basic research.
Of course, that 0% real growth thing or 0% of the top line also, you can do it either way, makes people skeptical of ever increasing ST or basic research because then next year they'll have to spend more of their money that they had the opportunity space to make decisions.
So it's a really hard, hard problem.
And I've seen many different undersecretaries go to war for it and not succeed.
But there was, you know, I mean, we definitely did in the last administration, and again, this, but like you can see a greater investment in RDTE overall.
And that is actually a pretty exciting thing.
At some point, though, you do start to hear the things like, okay, we've invested in that, and now it's time to buy, right?
And so it's kind of, and really the way we type to do things now inside of the world of iterative development and iterative fielding is that ideally you could do a lot of stuff inside of RDTE, right?
Building Regional Innovation Engines00:09:20
unidentified
And so you start to push and like you're constantly developing and iterating and doing better at constantly kind of like spiraling improvements out to the field.
So it's kind of a that's not really a fair, you know, like we spent money on development, now it's time to buy.
It's actually like how do we buy more things through constantly evolving?
Thank you.
Recognizing that we're time-limited, I do want to get to something that I think, you know, you can't really have a conversation about United States innovation without talking about workforce.
You know, Erwin, you twice referenced workforce, and I know how passionate you have been in your role about the importance of workforce.
So let me just ask, and really all three of you, but what are the biggest challenges with workforce and what should we be doing to make sure that we have the workforce to be successful and remain globally competitive?
And maybe, Larry, do you want to start and then we'll go to Erwin and then to Beth?
Sure.
So Lockheed Martin hires approximately 3,000 to 6,000 new entrants every year.
So that's undergraduate, first work experience, or master's.
And so obviously 120,000 employees, you know, plus or minus.
We're always hiring.
And we're always going after the same top talent as everybody else.
And so we have a very active team that's out in the universities finding those students.
We have a very successful intern program is really the secret sauce.
About 80% of our new hires have had at least one, possibly two, internship experience with us.
It's that try before you buy.
Going on after boutique labor, meaning as an example, a PhD at University of Maryland in quantum, perhaps.
I'm pointing up the hill somewhere up there is Maryland.
And we've known that individual for most of their PhD experience.
And so when they go across the stage, they join the company.
And you find that it's harder to attract good people than it is to keep them.
And so we work very hard to keep our people working on things that interest them, the ability to move around, move up, all the usual things you would expect out of a company.
But I think we're very fortunate as a country, at least to date, we have an incredibly good academic system that's training the theoretic piece.
What we go after is the other side of the equation.
So it's not the IQ that gets you hired, it's the EQ.
You know, the IQ gets your resume looked at.
It's the EQ exhibited in the interview or in that internship that keeps you up as part of the team.
So I couldn't agree more with Larry's comments, particularly right there at the very end.
People who know me know that I am very interested in sort of the, I'm far less interested in what's on the C V or what's on the resume, and I'm much more interested in sort of what are the on-the-job skills and experiences that an individual brings, even just to my shop, right?
And I think that that is, and by the way, I agree, retaining people is so much harder than I think anybody acknowledges.
But having said that, I think to your question, Bruce, sort of at a national scale, you know, I said this earlier and I'll just double down on this.
I think that when we talk about the STEM enterprise and when we talk about sort of being at the bleeding edge of science and technology, we need to acknowledge that we need to be training folks who are researchers, yes, but we also need to be training entrepreneurs and practitioners and technicians and sort of the trade workforce that you need to be able to make all of these jobs a possibility in the first place.
The educators, right?
The teachers, the faculty, right?
There is a whole ecosystem that is what is boosting up our innovation potential and the ties between that and national security and national defense.
And we need to do as much as we can, I think, to be sure that we are touching all of that workforce and really helping to enable all of that workforce going forward.
I think it is increasingly clear that workforce training has to be sort of industry inspired or industry relevant.
I think it's also the case that it is often regional or locally relevant as well.
So I'll give you a couple of examples.
I'll borrow from the way yes to degrees, but also certificates, stackable credits increasingly, thinking about sort of non-traditional ways of boosting your sort of book smart competencies, if you will, but then balancing that with the practical experiences of internships and apprenticeships, the experiential opportunities that I think are so critical in these trade spaces as well as we go forward.
But I'll give you a couple of examples and I'll borrow from the Regional Innovation Engines program that we've been running out of NSF for almost four years now.
We funded nine engines two years ago.
These are the largest investments that the agency makes in terms of R D and workforce development and it was part of the authorization that Congress gave us to establish the TIP directorate.
So the engines program is focused on what is that backyard secret sauce that I can coalesce a coalition of the willing around to put a region on the map as the nation's leader and the world's leader in a particular topic space.
And I'll give you two examples.
Florida.
So we funded an engine in central Florida in Osceola County, Florida that increasingly now covers more and more of the state with a particular focus on semiconductor technologies and specifically advanced packaging capabilities.
By the way, we invested in that engine and within weeks there was an announcement that the Department of War was also investing in that same ecosystem in that same team.
So that shows you sort of the symbiosis between our investments and that of our colleagues elsewhere in the government.
But in that engine, they have brought together Valencia Community College.
They've brought together their backyard secret sauce, which is the only municipal-owned fab in this country to our knowledge, operated by Skywater Technologies.
And that particular setup has allowed them to be able to reskill, upskill the workforce in Osceola County to the point that folks were making minimum wage, and six months later they're making three or four times as much, which has huge implications on their livelihoods, has huge implications on their ability to put food on the table for their families.
And oh, by the way, it's also a job that they're really excited about working in these semiconductor fabs.
So that's one example.
The engines across the board, an investment of $135 million over the last two years has been matched by over a billion and a half in matching commitments from state and local governments, private industry, venture capital, and so forth.
And they've touched at least 20,000 Americans.
That's a floor, probably much more than that, but at least 20,000 Americans with reskilling and upskilling.
The other example that I'll give is the textile engine that we funded in North Carolina, in Western North Carolina.
Now, you might say, well, what does textiles have to do with a whole heck of a lot, Erwin?
Well, let's be clear that if you talk about robotic systems, for instance, which, by the way, there's a question today about who has the competitive advantage in robotics going forward, but in robotics, the ability to be able to do a lot of the soft robots and soft robotic manipulation requires next generation textile innovation as well.
So what we've done there is we've laid down an investment in an engine that has now partnered with the state of North Carolina to be able to launch new instructional material at the high school level to bring textile engineering back into the classrooms all across the state of North Carolina, across all 109 or what have you, counties in that state through their Department of Public Instruction.
It's a local level effort, state-level effort, right, driving new instructional material, predicated on this investment by NSF and the federal government in this engine.
And at some level, it is bringing the textile industry that we have lost out on over the course of the last two or three decades back into the part of the country that was a leader in textiles, North and South Carolina, southeastern United States, many, many years ago.
So that's when we talk about workforce development, that's what we're talking about in terms of trying to have real impact and real touch points at all levels.
And again, industry relevant and sort of local and regional inspired.
And let me say, you know, having, you know, I think it's great what you're doing on these accelerator engine programs because creating innovative regional ecosystems I think is one of our both biggest challenges, but it will also drive the workforce.
You know, it reminds me when I was the deputy secretary of the Commerce Department, we created a program called Investing in Manufacturing Community Partnerships.
And what you just described, it's exactly what our goal was: to get the state governments, the local governments, the business community, the community colleges, the bigger research universities all together to identify what's an area's comparative advantage and then how to propel that forward.
Boosting the National Ecosystem00:12:47
unidentified
And the biggest challenge we had was getting money for it.
So I'm actually thrilled to hear that you're putting actual dollars behind it because I think that's often the biggest challenge.
Credit to our colleagues on the Hill, some of whom are in the room.
Very good.
Okay, so let's go.
I know we're running out of time, and Sujay's giving me the look, so I'm going to go to the closing question.
If I can ask each of you to answer relatively briefly, but what is the single greatest risk to U.S. scientific and technological leadership and advantage over the next decade, and is it being adequately advanced and addressed?
Pastor, you want to start?
Sure.
Yes.
I mean, so I would add on to this last question, which is the workforce question, which is we need to remember that there are people all across America, not just on the coasts and in certain other places, right?
Like that actually we need to do that K through 12 so that we can bring them up and bring them into our universities so that they can start to do this amazing research that we really need and invest back into the national security economy, all of the things.
And also, I would say that we are only about 5% of the world's population.
And so, for us to believe that all of the best scientists in the world will come from the 5% of the world's population is probably not accurate as much as I do love this country, and I think that we produce very wonderful people.
I do think that we need to have kind of that attraction that has been like our greatest kind of like war on talent, exactly what we're talking about, but like bringing people to America to go to universities in America and then create wonderful research here,
then create awesome billion-dollar companies, unicorn companies, and stay here and be able to get the ability to stay and stay with their families and live here forever and attract that both economic power and national security power here.
And just as Larry was saying, like, we need clearable people.
We absolutely do need clearable people who come from all over America, especially in the places that we haven't really invested.
So, there's programs like DEPSCOR and other things like that, and other universities that would be great to invest in so that we can get those clearable people, specifically for Larry's company and other companies like that.
And then also realizing that there's a bunch of non-clearable people that could be doing amazing work here in America that we grab that technology and we apply it in.
And they're a wonderful opportunity for that.
And if we ignore that, then the strategic surprise will be brought to us as opposed to us bringing it to others.
Larry?
I am actually really bullish on where we're going as a country and the science and technology ecosystem that we have.
Sure, we've got little things going on and there's forces on every direction, but when you go into a university and you talk to the students and you talk to the faculty and you see what they're working on, you just got to be amazed.
And so I'm actually really excited about it.
If I was worried about one thing, and you alluded to it, I do worry that we've spent a lot of money on primary education in this country.
We could always spend more, but I think there's not a strong correlation between investment and output.
And we need to recorrelate those two.
And when I look at my children and where they are and what they're doing, and I guess it does come back to parents and the tiger mom image of beating on their child so that they'll do better, it's real.
And I worry that the kids have walked away from the screen time, they're not reading as much, they're not getting the education that you get not in the classroom, but outside the classroom.
And so that piece starts to show up in the workforce.
And I worry about that showing up in the workforce.
Can your workers read the instructions that were written for a workforce 30 years prior and do what they say?
So is the sailor on the ship able to do what his predecessor was able to do with the training they were Is our workforce able to do that across the country?
And in the back of my mind, there's alarm bells going off there, which is the attention to detail and the persistence of attention.
Can I stand an eight-hour watch and not make mistakes?
What mistakes are we seeing in the field wouldn't have occurred 30 years ago because people were better?
I don't know, but I do worry about that.
So I think what we just heard Bess and Larry say is that the workforce in this country, or the talent that we have in this country, maybe is the way I should say it, the talent that we have in this country, is our single biggest asset, and it's also a place of potential risk for this nation, too.
I would agree with that, but since I'm sure it's not as interesting if I say exactly what they said, I'm going to offer one other risk, right, which I think is both a risk and an opportunity.
I think for a long time, we in this country and that innovation ecosystem that you described at the outset, so let's come back to that, right?
We talk about how we are investing in basic science, and often that comes with federal government investment.
And the private sector is oftentimes invested.
They're doing research, right?
But I think it's much, much further upstream.
And oftentimes, it is really focused on products and services and delivery of that and so forth.
So this is where folks in the room who know where I'm going with this will know that I've probably drunk too much of the Kool-Aid.
But there's a valley of death that exists in between, right?
And it's not a single valley.
It's multiple micro-valleys that exist.
If you're an entrepreneur and you're trying to get your idea de-risked and get it to the point where industry takes it up or you create a startup that becomes the next Qualcomm or what have you, right?
There is a pretty big gap that exists between that basic science space and where industry actually starts to take it up or where VCs and others start to engage with it.
That is sort of the tip sweet spot.
That is the sweet spot of where we have been trying to focus within my shop at NSF.
And I think it's an area that is critically important for us to, so I won't frame it as a risk, Bruce, but I'll say it's an area that I think is critically important for us to be sure that we are appropriately boosting up because there are so many entrepreneurs with great ideas,
right, who just need that bit of resourcing or that bit of mentoring or that bit of guidance on how do I develop a business plan or how do I do this experiment so I can provably demonstrate that my technique can work for this market niche, right?
Or for this set of customers who maybe weren't the original set of customers that I had in mind when I first went down this path five, ten years ago, right?
If we don't solve for that, if we don't continue to solve for that, I think we absolutely run the risk of those entrepreneurs finding other investors, and those other investors may not necessarily be the most friendly in terms of what we're trying to achieve here in the U.S.
And so absolutely agree with the comments about talent and workforce.
But this is where I say to those who have been skeptics or concerned about is NSF moving too far away from the basic sciences.
We absolutely need the basic sciences.
But you also need this valley of death or micro-valleys of death to be plugged, or else those basic sciences are going to find other ways, other routes to end up in China and elsewhere to be solved for.
Great.
Well, thank you so much.
And I just want to ask the audience to join me in thanking the panel for a great job.
And this was really fantastic.
So thank you.
So we will, it's been just an incredible day.
I don't know our ability to absorb all this wisdom.
We have, just to make sure that we end on time logistical note, we just have a quick speed round.
I think the idea is just to make sure that we capture some of the and underline some of the key points that we have learned today.
There's one, just to get back to the beginning of the morning when we had Acting Director Stone talk about NSF's early foundations in terms of the Endless Frontier.
A lot of the focus of NSF and historically has been obviously on basic research, universities, and supporting the university research system.
But I think as the China panel pointed out, that research is now, the fruits of that research now can be capitalized anywhere on earth.
And so we, and that China is really putting a lot more emphasis on their innovation system that can absorb and bring those fruits of that research to the marketplace and to build their national strength.
So I think we have to also understand that our innovation system is a national security asset and deal and support it with that same intensity.
We no longer are in a world where we have a national security adversary as we did in the Cold War.
Today we also have an economic competitor.
And as we heard from the first panel, China is a peer, not a near peer, and they are forging ahead.
And so we need to double down on our ability not only to create the science, but also to absorb and to turn that into our own commercial and military strengths.
So with that, I just also wanted to just show some data that comes to us courtesy of NDIA, and I want to thank Logan Whitehair, who's in the audience, for putting this together next.
So this is a quick diagram coming from the data at NDIA that sort of shows just how pervasive NSF's footprint is.
I realize that the information on the companies, but it's basically a who's who.
And you can see not only primes like Lockheed Martin, but also companies like NVIDIA, IBM, and Qualcomm who have been participating in our events today.
So NSF is very much a part and parcel of our innovation system.
And where we are is many respects a huge compliment to the role that NSF has played as an integral part of our innovation ecosystem.
But moving ahead, and I think Irvin touched on this point a little bit earlier, that we need to start building that ecosystem to actually be fit for purpose for the 21st century.
So with that brief introduction, what I thought I would do is to ask the chairs of the previous two panels maybe to pick up on two or three key or interesting ideas that they picked up over the course of their panel or over the course of the symposium today, and then maybe Irvin, I could ask you to have the last word.
Chuck, would you like to go first?
Sure.
Am I on?
Yes.
All right.
Well, first, I'd like to congratulate the last panel.
I thought that was extremely, extremely interesting.
And frankly, there's some more nuanced discussion here than you often find in conferences by people who are active participants in the ecosystem who are making their contributions.
I think the organization of the conference itself highlights these different actors and why they matter, and including when you have leading high-tech companies who are really admired the world around the fact that they are insisting on the importance of the NSF contributions to the foundations of our economic prosperity.
Innovating How We Innovate00:09:28
unidentified
Frankly, it's just not an idle point.
What do we need?
We need continuity.
We need perhaps less turbulence and steadily increasing investments.
We need more focus on workforce training.
In my personal view, we have to stop admiring the problem of workforce training and do something about it.
You want to provide incentives.
Well, there's an incentive well known in Washington called funding.
And if we get tax incentives for corporations to invest in training, they will do it.
And they'll also ensure, I think, the points that Dr. Shudi just raised about training people on the ground before hiring is a very effective mechanism.
And the more of that training you can get, the better we are.
We need more talent and we need more diversified talent, and there are programs to do that.
We also need to import more talent and recognize how we got here.
And I mean, just look at the names of the CEOs.
They're not all John Smith, however good a guy he might be.
But the point is, this diversity is a key to our strength.
So importing that talent and nurturing that talent when it's here, you know, the old call of the president of the National Academy of Sciences, when you give them the PhD, a green card should be stamped to it.
We've already invested upwards to half a million dollars, if not more, in each of those PhD programs.
And lastly, to encourage Sujay here, lastly, we need to recognize the dimension of the challenge we're facing from China.
And there are elements of a threat there, but there's also elements of inspiration.
You know, as I was saying, they are working hard at doing things better for their citizens.
And I think the fundamental challenge we have to recognize here is the challenge is us.
It's our lack of continuity, our lack of commitment, our lack of recognition that our defense is deeply anchored in the investments at NSF.
Our defense is anchored in the researchers that the NSF funds.
If you're for security, for our national security, you're for an enlarged NSF budget.
We're not paid to say this.
It's just let's be polite, we're on the air.
It is a clear fact, and we need to recognize that and act on it.
Great.
Let me make four very brief points.
Number one is, you know, I think the pyramid that Larry talked about is super important, which is how do we make sure we're building at all three layers of the pyramid.
So the foundational research layer, which is we know the important work that NSF does and continuing that and across other federal agencies as well, the technology layer and then the capability building layer.
Because I think the valley of death that you described, Irwin, is both real and super important because we could have all these great technological ideas, but if we can't help nurture them through that process, and I do think the federal government plays a key role here.
Second is, and I want to harp on what you said about building innovative ecosystems, because I do think that's something that's so important.
And there's an important federal role here where the government can help catalyze.
And I think NSF does this well, but I think we need to look at it in other agencies as well, which is helping to catalyze all of the different actors and helping them to be successful because when they come together, it's really important.
But there is a really critical seed funding layer that the federal government plays.
Third is just footstomping on the basic research.
I think educating people, because I do worry in times of budget deficits, it becomes something very easy for people to say, oh, well, let's just cut that because the private sector can do it.
We don't see the immediate benefits of it today.
There's a million reasons why it sounds good and easy to do, but we pay a long-term price if we don't do it.
And then last is I'll just footstomp the point on workforce because I think the talent issue is important.
Couldn't agree more on immigration.
But I'll tell you: 10 years ago when I was the Deputy Secretary of the Commerce Department, we were having this same conversation.
And I think we have made some progress in 10 years, but to be fair, we haven't made nearly enough.
And so I think we've got to continue to have a laser focus on the talent and the workforce training issues.
Thanks, Chris.
Okay, so I get sort of the last word, it sounds like.
Okay.
So let me make three points, three observations that I've had through the course of this morning, but also through the course of the work that we've been doing in TIP over the last few years and my time at NSF more generally.
So number one, I think that, and it was said earlier, the pace of science is changing before our very eyes.
It is greatly accelerating.
And as that pace accelerates, that also means that going from basic discovery to an innovation to thinking about a new capability, right?
That entire spectrum is the rate at which we're making progress is changing.
And so it's important for us to be acknowledging that, and it's important for us to be thinking about science sort of as a front and center vehicle that allows us to be able to keep that cutting edge, keep that leadership mantle that I think we want to see for our national defense and for our national prosperity as we go forward.
So that's sort of front and center in my mind is number one.
The second thing that I would say is I think it's also important for us to acknowledge that as this pace of science is changing, as we see where talent ends up after being trained across a number of different sectors, across a number of different parts of the economic engine of our country, I think it's important for us to realize that to be successful, we have to be partnering across those sectors.
There's a reason why the NSF TIP Directorate is not the NSF Technology Directorate.
We are technology innovation and partnerships.
The P is for partnerships.
And so in every bit as much of a way as we are trying to collaborate with our colleagues at DOW and USDA and other parts of the federal government, Department of Labor, we just announced a collaboration on getting this country AI ready just last week with the Department of Labor and SBA and USDA and others.
In every bit as much as we're doing that, we also want to be doing this with the private sector.
We want to be doing this with the VC community.
So, any of you who are in the room who are looking at ways in which you might potentially work with us, I encourage you to please reach out, right?
Because that is the way in which we build these relationships, and that is the way in which we can harness these partnerships and drive forward momentum.
Again, it's so important for us to be thinking about, yes, discovery science, but also the use cases that can further motivate further discovery and innovation as we go forward.
It's sort of a cyclic process in my mind, our virtuous circle.
And then, the third one, the third comment that I want to make is: we also have to acknowledge that we're not just experimenting in the science that we're conducting, but we're experimenting in how we're conducting that science as well.
I think when Congress established the authorization for TIP, one of the things that I heard loud and clear anyway, and folks can debate this, but one of the things that I heard loud and clear was: we need to, you know, China and others have studied our innovation enterprise that Larry so well characterized earlier over the course of the last 80 plus years.
They've studied it and they are emulating it and they are putting their own stamp on it, right?
And I think it's important for us to be constantly innovating in terms of how we innovate as well.
And so, to the extent that we can experiment with new mechanisms, new approaches, to the extent that we can experiment with how we get a variety of different types of organizations and individuals engaged in the conduct of science, right?
I think that helps us, at the end of the day, out-compete not just in the technology spaces that are so important, but out-compete in how we get at the next set of technology spaces that are going to be so important as we go forward.
So, that at least are those are some of the observations that I have for this.
Thanks.
I like the idea of innovating about how we innovate.
Certainly, we need to mainstream innovation much more into our national conversation.
Well, we began this conversation this morning talking about flight delays.
I'd like to think that I'm able to land this plane on time.
But before I do that, I'd like to thank all the participants today.
It's been just an incredibly rich conversation.
I think, as you'll agree, I'd like to also thank the audience in the room here today.
You'll be rewarded by lunch, which is waiting outside.
Mainstreaming National Conversation00:02:49
unidentified
And I'd like to thank also our online audience and the audience on C-SPAN.
I hope you've learned as much from today's discussions as I have.
So, again, thank you very much, and we stand adjourned.
Thank you.
Thanks, everybody.
We continue live coverage of the Artemis II lunar mission on Sunday with a status update by NASA on this day before the four astronauts are scheduled to orbit the moon.
Watch that news conference live on Sunday at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile video app and online at c-span.org.
Non-fiction book lovers, C-SPAN has a number of podcasts for you.
Listen to best-selling non-fiction authors and influential interviewers on the Afterwords podcast and on QA.
Hear wide-ranging conversations with the non-fiction authors and others who are making things happen.
And Book Notes Plus episodes are weekly hour-long conversations that regularly feature fascinating authors of non-fiction books on a wide variety of topics.
Find all of our podcasts by downloading the free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts and on our website, c-span.org/slash podcasts.
Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A.
The Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum's Jennifer Lavasser discusses the history of the 135 mission space shuttle program and takes us on a tour of the space shuttle orbiter.
There are well over 20,000 tiles on this vehicle and about 80% of them are original to Discovery's very first flight in 1984.
So that some of this evidence goes all the way back to 1984 and it's really and it's one of the funniest things about being the curator is sometimes people will look and say well it looks really dirty why don't you clean it?
That's not dirt.
That's the evidence of all the hard work that happened.
unidentified
The Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum's Jennifer Lavasser.
Sunday night at 8 Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts.
This year, as we mark the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, C-SPAN's Student Cam documentary competition invited students to create short films exploring themes from American history, the rights and freedoms rooted in this founding document, and pressing issues of today, from the economy and immigration to criminal justice, education, and healthcare.
Cost Shifting in SNAP Bill00:05:42
unidentified
Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. took part in this year's competition.
Throughout this month, we're proud to showcase our top 21 winners.
This year's second prize high school central winner is Adelaide Brown, a 12th grader from Jinx High School in Jinx, Oklahoma, where C-SPAN is available through Cox Communications.
Her winning documentary is titled Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.
I spent August talking to and listening to my constituents, like I hope my Republican colleagues did too.
And you know what I heard the most?
That they are scared out of their minds about the impact of Republicans' big ugly bill, particularly on how we'll make hunger worse in this country.
unidentified
That's not how our country was started, and it's just not who we are as a people.
This new year means changes for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
New federal laws could make it harder for some people to qualify for benefits, and new state rules will reduce what SNAP recipients can buy at the grocery store.
We are now approaching the longest shutdown in American history.
unidentified
Democrats World.
The most famous line in the Declaration of Independence is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
However, I would argue that under our current administration, these are not possible.
After all, how are we supposed to live and pursue happiness if we don't have reliable access to food?
Millions of Americans struggle with food insecurity, and many more are at risk of becoming food insecure.
So if we have these unalienable rights, why doesn't the government help those who are struggling to truly pursue them?
I'm Michelle Bromson.
I'm the COO of Hunger Free Oklahoma.
So food insecurity actually has a very proper definition by the USDA.
A person who doesn't know where a meal is coming from in a fairly long period of time, so months or a year.
A lot of people experience it, only at certain times of the year.
The difference between hunger and food insecurity is that hunger would be ongoing, an ongoing issue of not knowing where your food's coming from.
My name is Liz Wright.
I am one of seven board members here at the Jinx Food Bank.
Our average is 217 families, which is a little over 700 people.
We are seeing a lot more families coming and needing food.
One thing that is just really tough is that the minimum wage has stayed stagnant, but the cost of food and other goods is going up.
We have a lot of families that are the working poor.
They just can't get ahead, have multiple jobs.
Even when I go to the grocery store, I'm shocked at how much things have gone up even in the last six months.
We actually have almost as many food insecure Americans as we did at the height of the Great Recession.
We are kind of on the cusp of a major program change, probably the biggest shift we've had in the program since its founding.
The controversial One Big Beautiful bill was passed in July of 2025.
With it came cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and the SNAP program.
The opposition's main argument for the cuts to the SNAP program is to help mitigate high error rates around the country, the national average being 10.93% in the year of 2024.
We are finally creating real accountability incentives for states with high payment error.
And we are protecting the hardworking American taxpayer who has been footing a $100 billion annual SNAP bill that increased by close to 70% in five years.
The issues with the Big Beautiful bill that are really going to be very, very problematic for Oklahomans is the cost shifting, which means the state's money doesn't go as far.
So the state's not going to probably put in more money.
They're going to put in the same amount of money and we get matched way less.
That's just Oklahoma, which only has 4 million people.
We have about 700,000 people on SNAP, but just imagine what that is across the nation where there's 40 million people on SNAP.
The quote, one big beautiful bill that was passed by Republicans in July has already begun to hurt Americans.
Americans are feeling the high food costs, higher rents, more expensive health care, child care, and energy costs.
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The other thing that is worse is the sharing of the cost of the benefits, which has not ever happened before.
That's a big problem.
Depending on your error rate, you could pay nothing if your error rate's under 6%.
You could pay 15% of benefits that are distributed if your error rate's over 10%.
Right now, Oklahoma's is 10.8%.
So we're in that 15% coverage area, and that equates to $270 million.
Oklahoma, even though we pay our taxes to the federal government, that money will no longer be used for benefits to feed our most vulnerable neighbors.
It will be instead shifted to the state that will have to pick up a surprise bill of $270 million.
Now that doesn't start immediately, but it's coming.
It's coming like a freight train.
It breaks my heart to see people as pawns in a political war.
Just, you know, this is not what America is about.
We're there to take care of each other.
It's not practical.
I think it benefits one group more than the other, than the rest of the country.
Food should be a human right.
I believe that the Declaration of Independence is an important document and help leading the next movement to solving the food crisis in this country.
I feel as though with enough pushback, we can restore the SNAP program to not only how it was before, but better.
Student Cam Documentary Competition00:02:37
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Be sure to watch all of the winning entries on our website at studentcam.org.
C-SPAN, bringing you democracy unfiltered.
Lights, cameras, impact.
To celebrate the 250th anniversary since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, thousands of students across America started writing and filming for this year's C-SPAN Student Cam documentary competition.
Nearly 4,000 students from 38 states and Washington, D.C. created documentaries examining themes from American history, exploring rights and freedoms rooted in the foundational document, or tackling modern-day issues from the economy to immigration, criminal justice, education, and healthcare.
They researched, they interviewed experts, and they told powerful stories, exploring the enduring impact of the Declaration of Independence.
And now it's time to announce the top winners of Student Cam 2026.
The middle school first prize goes to Harper Hayden and Helena de la Hussé of Correa Middle School in San Diego, California.
Their documentary, This Is What Democracy Looks Like, about free speech and the No Kings movement.
The High School Eastern Division First Prize goes to Kessler Dickerson and Charlotte Ligga from Millbrook Magnet High School in Raleigh, North Carolina for Roots of Freedom: The Struggles and Tensions of Rural American Agriculture, about farmers and government policies that impact food production.
In the high school Central Division, Benjamin Curian of Onuentangi Liberty High School in Powell, Ohio, won first prize for A Right to Health about healthcare policy.
And in the high school Western Division, first prize goes to Danaya Safi and Juhi Pari from Indercom High School in Sacramento, California for Dreamers Deferred, the American Dream on Hold about Immigration Policy and Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.
And we're happy to announce the Student Cam 2026 Grand Prize winner earning $5,000 is Irena Holbrook from Troy Athens High School in Troy, Michigan for her documentary, The Pursuit of Fair Pay, about the impact of name, image, and likeness, known as NIL, on college sports.
And out of almost 4,000 students who participated this year, you've won $5,000 in this year's grand prize.
Congratulations.
Thank you.
Want to see their amazing films?
Watch all 150 award-winning documentaries at studentcam.org and catch the top 21 winners airing this April on C-SPAN.
C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered.
Artemis II Moon Mission Launch00:00:37
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On Wednesday, four astronauts aboard an Orion rocket ship blasted into space for NASA's historic Artemis II 10-day test mission to the moon.
The crew remained in Earth's orbit close to 24 hours before slingshotting to the moon.
They're not expected to get there until Monday for their anticipated flyby.
Up next, we'll show you a portion of that launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.