U.S. Loses High-Tech Dominance

For most of the 20th Century, the U.S. was the world leader in science, technology, and innovation, with the best scientists, the best universities and the most advanced research and development programs. But all of that has begun to change as other countries and regions have become more advanced and more competitive and increasingly challenge U.S. dominance.

A recent article in the New York Times addressed the U.S. technological decline, and the ways Senators Obama and McCain have approached the issue. This story includes some eye-opening statistics about the loss of U.S. primacy in technology, innovation and R&D. At the top of the story, the Times points out the importance of this sector for America’s economy and role in the world:

For decades the United States dominated the technological revolution sweeping the globe. The nation’s science and engineering skills produced vast gains in productivity and wealth, powered its military and made it the de facto world leader. Today, the dominance is eroding.

One sees this in multiple indicators, but perhaps the most important is the country’s high-technology balance of trade. Until 2002, the U.S. always exported more high-tech products than it imported. In that year, the trend reversed, and the technology trade balance has steadily declined, with the annual gap exceeding $50 billion in 2007.

The U.S. has also fallen behind in spending on research and development, which drives high-tech innovation and development. As a percent of GDP, total R&D expenditures have remained flat since the 1960s, while federal government spending on R&D has declined steadily. The U.S. has fallen to 8th place worldwide on R&D spending as a share of GDP, behind Israel, Sweden, Finland, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and Iceland (Popular Science 11/08).

China is not yet on that top-ten list, but may not be far behind. The country is ramping up support for high tech innovation and R&D, and President Hu Jintao this year called on Chinese scientists to challenge other countries in this area: "We are ready for a fight,” he said, “to control the scientific high ground and earn a seat on the world’s high technology board.” ("China's Industrial Ambition")

The U.S. is also slipping, relative to other countries, in the creation of patents, scientific inventions, the publication of science and engineering articles, and the number of students focusing on science, math and engineering. In international comparisons of scientific and mathematical literacy, and in international competitions in those fields, American students fare poorly, often ranking near the bottom of the group of wealthy countries. Increasingly the top science and engineering students in this country are citizens of other countries, who then return home. Science magazine (7/11/08) recently reported that the most likely undergraduate alma maters for those who earned a U.S. Ph.D. were—get this--Tsinghua University and Peking University—both in Beijing.

These worrisome developments prompted a major study recently, “Rising Above the Gathering Storm,” from the National Academies, the nation’s most eminent scientific and engineering organization, calling for the U.S. to strengthen its international competitiveness. The authors of the report were “deeply concerned that the scientific and technological building blocks critical to our economic leadership are eroding at a time when many other nations are gathering strength” and were “worried about the future prosperity of the United States. A review of high tech by the magazine Popular Science (11/08) puts it a but more bluntly: “The technological dominance of the United States may soon go the way of the dollar.”

Fortunately, the man who will probably take over as President next January, Barack Obama, is on top of these issues, often speaks about them, and has aggressively promoted efforts to remedy them. In his book The Audacity of Hope, he called for a doubling of federal funding for basic research and the training of 100,000 more engineers and scientists over the next four years. He co-sponsored a bill in Congress based on the recommendations of “The Gathering Storm” and called for increased federal support of science education, especially for women and minorities. The Senate passed the bill 88 to 8 ( Senator McCain abstained), but has not yet funded the programs. It will be an expensive proposition—about $43 billion for the first three years—which will be all that much more difficult to manage in this time of economic crisis. But these long-term investments are critical to recovering America’s economic dynamism

Are We Smart Enough to Manage These Problems? An Engineer's Perspective

My friend Charlie Yokomoto, a Professor Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a savvy observer of the political scene, has read this blog and offered the following thoughts on the difficulties of managing complex systems. Maybe we human beings aren't smart enough to deal with these devilishly complicated systems (think financial markets!) that we have created!

Here are some thoughts in engineering terms about the difficulty of decision making in modern society. One of the things that engineers do is to model a system with mathematics so that they can predict behavior to different inputs and find ways to control the system. The system can be a rocket to the moon, a car's transmission, a car's engine, etc. These are fairly basic systems to model because they can be treated as systems whose parameters don't change, or if they change, they change in easily describable ways.

When the system is more complex, like the stock market, the human mind, the atmosphere, a tornado, etc, the modeling becomes far more complicated. When society was much simpler (all white, mostly all middle class, mostly traditional families, mostly church going, low crime, low poverty), then the modeling becomes simpler, and making rules to control the society was simpler than today.

Now for complex systems. A semi-trailer truck sliding on an icy road can also be modeled, but it is more difficult. Mathematics profs are now modeling economic systems, where parameters are always changing. Probabilistic methods have to be used, and time varying dynamic equations have to be used. The atmosphere has been modeled with time varying parameters for years. These equations are more difficult to solve, making it more difficult to use them to predict things, and to control it.

OK, now about controls. Then a system can be accurately modeled, then mathematical methods can be used to determine if the system is observable from the outside (can you observe all of the changes, or will some changes be hidden from the observer?). Methods can be used to determine if the system is controllable (are there ways to push the system in a direction you want it to go?) Sometimes, you find out that you can't--the system will go where it wants to go.

As systems become more complex, you then find out that your mathematics is not equal to the task of modeling it--you need more complexity. Example. If you have a groups of points on a graph, and they all line up in a straight line, you can easily model it with a straight line. If there is a slight curvature, you can try modeling it with a second order equation. But if it is fluctuating wildly, then you need a very high order equation to model it.

I believe that society is getting to the point where it is getting so complex that the human brain cannot intuitively, through experience, fully understand develop a heuristic model of society--how creation of jobs, curbing crime, helping the needy, paying for roads and schools, keeping the food supply safe, etc.--can be done using the same decision making processes that were used successfully when the system was much simpler (fewer parameters, slower changing, and more homogeneous). If the system become more highly complex at rates faster than the human mind becomes smarter (not necessarily in IQ, but in terms of ability, tools, and know-how), how can they solve problems in a system whose complexity if more that their brains can handle?

Take crime. If you have 100 cops and 1 person breaking the law, they can handle it. If you have two people breaking the law, they can handle it. What if there are 10 people breaking the law? Twenty? At what point, will the system of people breaking the law become too complex for 100 cops to handle? Some say that you can't have a perfect law enforcement system and that you have to tolerate a certain level of crime going on at any time. Well, people in charge were ok with that as long as the crime was kept in particular neighborhoods.

Anyway, that's how an engineer looks a society, which is just another system--a very complex one at that, that becomes more and more difficult to model and influenced as the complexity increases, possibly to levels that cannot be understood or influence with legislation and rules.