3
Leveraging the S&T Activities of Other Federal Agencies
The federal government is a major force in U.S. science and technology (S&T), particularly in funding basic research, applied research, and early technology development. While the U.S. government is no longer the dominant driving force in global S&T that it was in the mid-20th century—when it accounted for nearly half of the world’s research and development (R&D) spending1—the federal government still supports a significant amount of the global R&D effort. In addition to funding, the federal government is a major performer of R&D, maintaining hundreds of its own laboratories where federal, academic, and private-sector research staff work. Roughly half of this capacity is in the national security sector, of which the Intelligence Community (IC) is an integral part. The government maintains formal mechanisms for R&D planning and coordination across government agencies, including multiagency R&D initiatives; in addition, ad hoc arrangements are available to IC agencies.
Because of the increasing importance of S&T to accomplishment of the IC’s missions, and the increasing competition the United States faces in this space (especially from China), the IC needs to take better advantage of all of the S&T capabilities that it can leverage. In that light, it would benefit the IC to do more to leverage the very large S&T footprint that already exists in the U.S. government, which includes large S&T investment budgets;2 the funding, operation, and staffing of major laboratories; and the maintenance of networks with researchers and S&T experts in academia and industry both in the United States and abroad. The IC does this to some extent, but the committee sees opportunities to do more through mechanisms such as cross-government R&D coordination activities, staff exchanges, and cross-agency R&D.
Strengthening such leveraging could afford the IC opportunities to (1) receive the results of that work by making appropriate arrangements; and (2) find and cooperatively fund specific R&D projects that are of interest to the IC as well as to other agencies. Increased interactions with other agencies also could provide benefits such as staff exchanges and shared assignments. Of course, in pursuing increased interactions, important issues have to be resolved, particularly those associated with the mismatch between IC security needs and culture, and the
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1 See, for example, American Association for the Advancement of Science, “Historical Trends in Federal R&D,” https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/historical-trends-federal-rd, accessed August 7, 2022; U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, 2022, Global Research and Development Expenditures: Fact Sheet, R44283, updated September 14, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R44283.pdf.
2 Intelligence Community (IC) research and development (R&D) budgets are generally classified, so this report cannot present a direct comparison of IC science and technology (S&T) to the rest of the U.S. government. However, several experts have commented to the committee that IC R&D funding is a small part of total federal R&D funding.
norms of open research environments. There can also be appearance issues, and risks posed by the fact that many foreign nationals are engaged in the country’s open R&D. Also, in some cases it is important not to reveal that the IC is interested in particular areas of research.
In a very general sense, the IC has the same goals as most other organizations that depend on S&T:
- Maintain awareness of what is being researched and developed (everywhere that matters).
- Develop and maintain understanding of the implications and potential of knowledge and developments.
- Gain access (preferably exclusive access, or at least better access than adversaries and competitors) to exploitable results; and move to exploit those results in a timely manner.
- Know and understand what adversaries and competitors are doing.
- Share awareness of new S&T developments with other government agencies close allies on a reciprocal basis.
However, unlike most other government agencies—and private corporations—the IC performs these functions not just to support acquisition of needed technology-based tools for conducting intelligence activities, but also as part of the rest of its mission space. For the IC, these goals could be restated as:
- Conduct S&T intelligence.
- Analyze and report.
- Be positioned to surprise adversaries.
- Help the nation avoid surprise.
- Help keep secure and secret the essential elements of national security-related S&T.
Because the IC and other parts of the government share a need for S&T awareness, and can benefit from improving that capability, it would be mutually beneficial for affected agencies to improve their communication of S&T information. To the extent that the IC is proactive about this, it could also contribute to building bridges and trust that may be beneficial in other ways as well. This chapter explores a range of options to help strengthen the IC’s leverage of the whole of government.
MECHANISMS FOR COORDINATION ACROSS FEDERAL AGENCY S&T PROGRAMS
The Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) within the Executive Office of the President is charged with coordinating S&T activities across and among federal agencies. While OSTP does not have control over individual agency budgets, it does have the implicit authority of the White House, ties to the National Economic Council, and a connection to the National Security Council. (OSTP’s Deputy Director for National Security also serves as the Coordinator for Technology and National Security at the National Security Council.) Moreover, each year the Director of OSTP and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget jointly issue a memorandum to government agencies outlining priorities that they each should seek to meet in their R&D budget requests. Other coordination activities exist both bilaterally between agencies, departments and offices, and among more than two entities. Some of these involve IC agencies. For example, several IC agencies participate in multi-agency initiatives coordinated at the White House level.
Multiagency R&D initiatives established by statute--such as the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the National Quantum Initiative, and the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP)—are coordinated by the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) within the White House. These initiatives are not the only examples of excellent opportunities for the IC to increase its level of collaboration with other elements of the U.S. government.
RECOMMENDATION 3.1: The Intelligence Community (IC) should position itself to take better advantage of opportunities afforded by interagency science and technology (S&T) committees and other contacts with non-IC agencies that have substantial S&T activities. More interagency staff exchanges would be helpful, as
would more active IC participation in cross-agency research and development. Successful activities on the part of some IC agencies should be studied and mined for best practices.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) is probably the natural IC office to promulgate more outward-facing involvement by IC agencies because it interfaces with all of them. If a chief technology and innovation officer (CTIO) office is established, as recommended in Chapter 2, it could play the lead in such an effort. To do so, it would need some staff members who are S&T professionals and—we would propose—who do not conduct S&TI (so as not to inadvertently involve intelligence authorities or concerns over intelligence sharing). Those individuals could and should actively engage as equals in interagency S&T activities, with their roles and positions made clear to those they interact with. The ODNI should ensure that the IC has representation on all such multi-agency coordination groups.
PERFORMERS OF FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
The R&D funded by federal agencies is performed at federal laboratories, federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), Department of Defense (DoD) university affiliated research centers (UARCs), universities, and private corporations. This section discusses the first three of these mechanisms and identifies approaches that could be helpful to broadening the IC’s capabilities in S&T.
“Federal laboratories” is somewhat ambiguous. The committee uses it here to cover (1) facilities staffed primarily by federal employees (e.g., the Naval Research Laboratory; NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center; or the intramural laboratories of the National Institutes of Health [NIH]); and (2) government-owned and contractor-operated laboratories (e.g., most Department of Energy [DOE] laboratories, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory), FFRDCs (42 institutions that are public–private partnerships sponsored by federal agencies3), and DoD UARCs, such as the Applied Research Laboratory at The Pennsylvania State University. The extensive and diverse system of federal laboratories range from very specific mission-oriented facilities to large multifunctional laboratories. This broad array of federally funded R&D is many times larger than the IC’s capacity for S&T, and it offers extensive opportunities for individual IC agencies and the IC as a whole. The focus here is on R&D supported by DoD and DOE. NIH is another major system of federal R&D, which, like DoD and DOE, supports in-house R&D efforts as well as extramural grants to non-federal researchers. However, to date the IC has not been closely tied to NIH work, even though there are clear overlaps in interests. It is likely that the IC’s interests in biological R&D will grow, as referenced in several places in this report, and the ideas presented in this chapter for leveraging DoD- and DOE-funded R&D would apply to NIH-funded R&D as well.
DoD Laboratories
The three military departments maintain among them 20 named Science and Technology Reinvention Laboratories. These are government owned and operated institutions that can take advantage of specific legislated authorities including personnel flexibilities and director discretionary funding flexibility. These DoD laboratories form a diverse group, with work ranging from basic research through technology development, engineering design, and equipment evaluation, support, and eventual disposal. Some have a broad range of work, while others are more narrowly focused. The three major military research laboratories—Air Force Research Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, and Naval Research Laboratory—have a strong, but not exclusive, focus on basic and applied research.
The DoD laboratories can, and do, work for other government agencies, and maintain partnerships with industry and academia—including through UARCs. For example, the Naval Research Laboratory conducts research not only for the Navy, but also work funded by DOE and NASA. Research partnership agreements that DOD laboratories currently have in place with universities and private corporations include Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), Collaborative Research Agreements/Cooperative Technical Agreements,
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3 National Science Foundation, 2022, “Master Government List of Federally Funded R&D Centers,” updated February, https://www.nsf.gov/statistics/ffrdclist.
and UARC contracts.4 Such arrangements can be helpful because, as current and former IC S&T managers told the study committee, the time and complexity of writing research contracts in accordance with the terms of the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) undermines the flexibility and timeliness needed for leading edge research. The existence of other mechanisms such as CRADAs provides S&T managers with helpful options and latitude.
University Affiliated Research Centers
DoD sponsors 14 UARCs, which are described as follows:
Research organizations within a university or college that are established to provide or maintain essential engineering, research, and/or development capabilities through a long-term, strategic relationship with DoD. Each UARC has areas of expertise that are identified as core competencies that it must provide in support of its mission to support DoD.5
UARCs can do work for others (i.e., work sponsored by an agency other than the UARC’s principal sponsor), and many do. For example, the Navy’s Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University (JHU/APL) does work for the Missile Defense Agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), intelligence agencies, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and NASA.6
Federally Funded R&D Centers
Thirteen federal agencies sponsor a total of 42 FFRDCs. Not all of these conduct scientific research and/or technology development (e.g., some primarily produce studies and analysis), but many are major laboratories. In 2020, 10.5 percent of U.S. government R&D spending ($14.9 billion) was spent at FFRDCs.7
FFRDCs are private-sector institutions that have unique relationships with their federal sponsoring agencies. They are administered by universities, other nonprofit organizations, or industrial firms, and they have a special relationship with their sponsoring agency to enable them to serve as independent technical experts. The rules governing FFRDCs are specified in FAR Section 35.017(a)(2). All but one of the 17 DOE National Laboratories are FFRDCs.8 Others are sponsored by DoD, DHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, the National Science Foundation, and NASA. For most of these, funding and tasking come primarily from their sponsoring agencies, but they also do work for other agencies under separate contracts, and work with or for private-sector entities.
STRENGTHENED INTERACTIONS WITH THE NATIONAL LABORATORY SYSTEM
IC agencies within DoD can—and some do—sponsor FFRDCs and UARCs; however, the cost can be substantial. Other mechanisms are available to IC agencies to make use of these institutions. Individual task contracts are another means for engaging the capabilities of these institutions; IC agencies have used task contracts with DOE national laboratories. The committee believes the IC could benefit from expanded use of, and interaction with, the federal laboratories, including FFRDCs and UARCs. Doing so would provide more ready access to published R&D results, and available capabilities at those entities could be enhanced by the IC funding projects or adding funding to existing projects. Personnel exchanges with in-house laboratories could bring expertise into the IC and get researchers knowledgeable about, and interested in, IC R&D problems.
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4 N. Gupta, B.J. Sergi, E.D. Tran, R. Nek, and S.V. Howieson, 2014, Research Collaborations Between Universities and Department of Defense Laboratories, IDA Document d-5230, Washington, DC: Institute for Defense Analyses.
5 Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, 2013, “Engagement Guide: Department of Defense University Affiliated Research Centers (UARCs),” OSD Studies and FFRDC Management Office, Alexandria, VA: Defense Laboratories Office.
6 Acqnotes. “University-Affiliated Research Center (UARC),” https://acqnotes.com/acqnote/industry/uarc, accessed August 7, 2022.
7 Congressional Research Service, 2020, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFDRCs): Background and Issues for Congress, by Marcy E. Gallo, R44629, Washington, DC.
8 The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is not an FFRDC, but is DOE’s only government-owned, government-operated laboratory.
One DOE perspective sorts the research environments at its laboratories into two categories:9
- An open science environment that is broadly open to the best ideas based on merit, and that has deep ties to the academic and international research communities; and
- A closed science environment that is focused on developing science in disciplines that are not broadly published or are closely tied to national security missions and issues, but which can involve international partners on targeted problems.
The full reality is a spectrum of research environments that range from open to closed, often in different parts of a given laboratory. In addition, conscious links have been set up between the open and closed research environments in which coordination is particularly important, such as the case of the Exascale Computing Project.
The IC already has some strong and valuable interactions with selected DOE laboratories. Primarily these are with DOE’s three National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratories, which deal with national security issues as well as basic science (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories), but connections exist with others in the DOE system, including Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The deep S&T capabilities of the DOE laboratories, coupled with the classified environments available at many of the sites, provide complementary services to those the IC receives from industry and academia. The IC’s partnerships with DOE laboratories takes advantage of the latter’s well-developed capabilities in areas such as nonproliferation, biosecurity, space technologies, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence, and climate and environmental science.
Some DOE laboratory directors expressed a view to the study committee that the most productive research collaborations are long-term relationships between agencies and individual laboratories and multi-laboratory consortia. In contrast, they characterized much of the IC work at the DOE national security laboratories as based on individual transactions between sponsoring agencies and principal investigators; work is done under contractual arrangements that hand specific research tasks to research groups at the laboratories. This approach can produce specific research advances that meet critical IC needs, but it does not provide a mechanism for the IC research leadership to become deeply familiar with the capabilities of the laboratories or with the emerging research that goes on there, or for the laboratories to develop infrastructure that would be particularly suited for IC problems.
This is not unusual for these laboratories. While there are a few cases in which a non-DOE agency supports specific infrastructure at a DOE laboratory directly for their dedicated use—for example, NIH supports a beamline at a DOE light source for its structural biology research, and DHS supports a simulation center at Sandia—for the most part DOE supports the laboratory infrastructure and facilities that are sufficient to meet its own needs, or that provide a DOE-funded service to the broader scientific community. (Outside agencies that sponsor targeted R&D projects do of course contribute through the indirect cost charges.)
Thus, the DOE laboratories are primarily used by IC agencies as a group of highly capable contractors available to solve specifically defined problems. By following this approach, the IC misses an opportunity to tap the S&T situational awareness that exists within the DOE laboratory system, and it limits the chance for those laboratories to learn about, and contribute to, the broader set of S&T questions that may be of interest to the IC. The IC can access and exploit capabilities that the laboratories have otherwise developed, but has little influence in what future capabilities the laboratories choose to develop.
In contrast, if the IC were to develop longer-term strategic partnerships with some of these laboratories, it could better leverage their S&T capabilities. Enduring strategic partnerships provide stability of both funding and interpersonal relationships that lead to the laboratories developing and maintaining the expertise that best serves IC needs. The model of individually contracted R&D does not allow the laboratory business managers to plan ahead with the IC in mind, as they manage workforce and infrastructure. Examples of successful long-term relationships between DOE laboratories and DoD exist, and a couple exist with IC agencies. Methods to streamline access to the laboratories also can emerge from such trusted relationships.
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9 D. Kusenzov, 2014, “The Department of Energy’s National Laboratory Complex,” paper presented to the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of National Energy Laboratories, Washington DC: Department of Energy, July 18.
There have been sporadic attempts to increase engagement between the IC and the DOE national laboratories, particularly the laboratories of the NNSA. For example, about 10 years ago the Director of National Intelligence and the Secretaries of Energy, Defense, and Homeland Security signed a “Governance Charter for an Interagency Council on the Strategic Capability of DOE National Laboratories as National Security Assets.” Among other things, this created a Mission Executive Council (MEC) to implement the agreement. This broad approach, involving several large agencies each with different missions and interest, was not as successful as hoped.10 A direct bilateral engagement between representatives of the IC and representatives of the DOE laboratory complex would be more likely to reach agreement on shared goals and on what each side needs from the other to be able to work productively together.
Finding ways to get the DOE laboratories more interested in areas of R&D of interest to the IC, and getting the IC more involved in planning research directions and capabilities at those laboratories, would be of real benefit to the IC. For one thing, greater involvement with the DOE laboratories on a day-to-day basis could aid the IC in maintaining S&T situational awareness. The DOE laboratories encompass a broad and deep range of S&T and a high caliber of scientists and engineers. The workforce at these laboratories excel not only in performing cutting-edge R&D, but also in developing and discussing new ideas and research strategies that can lead to dramatic advances. These ideas also benefit from the formal and informal exchanges that DOE laboratory personnel have with much broader S&T communities. The participation of IC S&T personnel in such discussions and planning could be very beneficial to the IC.
Other mechanisms exist for getting deeper insights into the work at the DOE laboratories, such as through more rotational assignments (both to and from the laboratories) and greater involvement of IC personnel in committees that advise or review those laboratories.
The IC could benefit in other ways through increased partnership. For example, it might study how the DOE laboratories attract and retain S&T expertise; both DOE and the IC have shared challenges related to salary constraints, hiring practices, and security.11 The three NNSA national security laboratories have developed extensive practices to attract some of the nation’s brightest scientists, interest and train them in nuclear warhead design and stockpile stewardship, and give them a career balanced between work in this very classified field and in open scientific research. The laboratories use Laboratory Directed R&D funds to support exploration of new concepts, especially by early career researchers, thus making for a more attractive research environment. Analogous approaches might be tailored to help the IC meet S&T workforce goals. Three of the DOE laboratories (Lawrence Berkeley, Argonne, and Oak Ridge) have developed fellowship programs to support developing technology entrepreneurs (e.g., Lawrence Berkeley laboratory’s Cyclotron Road, Argonne laboratory’s Chain Reaction Innovations, and Oak Ridge’s Innovation Crossroads), which is another way to attract talent and stimulate fresh S&T ideas. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory has recently begun something similar.
Overall, the system of laboratories owned and funded by the U.S. government—including, in particular, the DoD laboratories and the DOE national laboratories—is a major S&T asset available to the IC. The DOE system connects national security laboratories that do classified work to open laboratories and to academic and industrial research teams. While individual IC agencies do have connections to these federal laboratories, the IC is far from taking full advantage of this opportunity.
RECOMMENDATION 3.2: The Intelligence Community (IC) should engage in more active partnering with Department of Energy and Department of Defense laboratories (government, federally funded research and development centers, and university affiliated research center laboratories), to take advantage of their extensive infrastructure and capabilities as well as to employ them as a vehicle for expanding the IC’s access
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10 These topics are discussed in detail in National Research Council, 2015, Aligning the Governance Structure of the NNSA Laboratories to Meet 21st Century National Security Challenges, Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
11 Department of Energy laboratories are not staffed by federal employees, but rather work for the contractor for each laboratory. They are nearly all government-owned contractor-operated (GOCO) facilities. By contrast, the IC is staffed by federal employees. But there is a commonality of security rules and related hiring practices, and somewhat less of a commonality regarding salary constraints (salaries may be somewhat higher at GOCOs but still not competitive with much of the private sector).
to academic and industrial research and development activities through overt relationships. The IC should increase its engagement with various laboratory program review activities.
Specifically, the CTIO could be charged with developing strategic relationships with the national laboratories, FFRDCs, and UARCs. This strategic relationship should be designed to leverage long-term goals of both the non-IC entities and the IC, rather than to identify short-term, single-project opportunities. This could begin with the CTIO developing a road map toward creating more working level connections, through staff exchange, mutual education and similar programs. An additional idea could be to hold annual meetings among IC-sponsored principal investigators from different laboratories as a useful tool to strengthen ties among them. Finally, the IC could explore whether the recently established CIA Labs might be expanded to support the entire IC and/or whether it would be advantageous to create a similar organization at the ODNI level to further increase cooperation with other federal laboratories.
