Avoiding Surprise in an Era of Global Technology Advances (2005) / Chapter Skim
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1 Technology Warning: Motivation and Challenge
1 Technology Warning: Motivation and Challenge
Pages 9-19
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military capabilities is vital to the ability of the nation's leadership to make informed decisions. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and its satellite nations were a central focus of the intelligence community (IC)
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The objective of the DIA was not intelligence gathering per se, but rather the development of a new source of information on burgeoning technologies and their potential for "technology surprise," with attendant military ramifications. In particular, the Technology Warning Division of the DIA recognized the potential value of ongoing engagement with the nation's technical communities in fulfilling its responsibility to "provide the earliest possible warning of technological developments that could undermine U.S.
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Additional indicators may be derived from the increasingly global distribution of science and engineering talent as nations increase the capacity and quality of their higher-education systems and entice their citizenry to stay home or to return from studies abroad to serve growing national economies and research enterprises. In 1999, 13 nations (United Kingdom, Finland, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Norway, Canada, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, France, Spain)
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COMMERCIALIZATION IS CHANGING THE TEMPO OF TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION Many have observed the growing importance of commercial technologies to the defense establishment. Harvard University Professor Ashton Carter contrasted the defense technologies of the Cold War era with those of the future, as shown in Table 1-1.
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funding to stimulate the development of such technologies.3 In other areas, such as information technologies, significant drivers stem from the commercial marketplace, which, as discussed above, is increasingly global. The fact is that defense capabilities are increasingly dependent on innovations developed by commercial companies for the commercial market in many sectors, including telecommunications, aerospace, microelectronics, data processing, cryptography, special materials, biotechnology, and propulsion (DSB, 1999)
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While private-sector spending was at least partially driven by the boom in information technologies, the ratio between government and private investments remains indicative of the trend toward technology commercialization. The profit motive and the associated availability of large amounts of investment capital result in the rapid commercialization of new technologies that are perceived by investors to address unmet market needs.
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, and nanotechnology. Second-tier technologies, those seen as dependent upon particularly vigorous innovation, include optical communications, regenerative medicine, efficient software development, sensor webs, and advanced materials.
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· Distributed-Grid-Based Processing Systems · Performance-Enhancing Drugs · Multilingual Voice Recognition · Molecular Electronics · Ubiquitous Water Generation · High-Power Lasers · Directed Energy (Microwave) NOTE: See definitions of these technologies in Appendix C of this report.
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. absent unforeseen market potential or government assistance; technologies in this category include hypersonic military and supersonic commercial aircraft, next-generation space shuttle system, alternative energy, distributed energy, new-generation nuclear power plants, and fuel cells (OTI IA, 2001)
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This report therefore focuses on a few specific technologies and applications rather than attempting to provide a "complete" or prioritized list of important evolving technologies. Furthermore, the Technology Warning Division asked that the committee specifically exclude technologies relating to adversarial threats posed by weapons of mass destruction, since that topic is outside the division's scope of responsibilities.
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1999. New World Coming: American Security in the 21st Century, Major Themes and Implications: Phase I Report on the Emerging Global Security Environment for the First Quarter of the 21st Century, Washington, D.C.
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