Press Release 12-011
New Report Outlines Trends in U.S. Global Competitiveness in Science and Technology
Aspects of this report were digested in the Washington Post on January 17 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/us-losing-high-tech-manufacturing-jobs-to-asia/2012/01/17/gIQA9P1S6P_story.html). But the overview (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind12/) contains a lot of information not covered in the press. The full report is at:
http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=122859&org=NSB&from=news It turns out that if you disinvest enough in education and foster anti-science attitudes sufficiently, there can be long-term consequences.
The bottom line:
The United States remains the global leader in supporting science and technology (S&T) research and development, but only by a slim margin that could soon be overtaken by rapidly increasing Asian investments in knowledge-intensive economies. So suggest trends released in a new report by the National Science Board (NSB), the policymaking body for the National Science Foundation (NSF), on the overall status of the science, engineering and technology workforce, education efforts and economic activity in the United States and abroad.
"This information clearly shows we must re-examine long-held assumptions about the global dominance of the American science and technology enterprise," said NSF Director Subra Suresh of the findings in the Science and Engineering Indicators 2012 released today. "And we must take seriously new strategies for education, workforce development and innovation in order for the United States to retain its international leadership position," he said.
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According to the new Indicators 2012, the largest global S&T gains occurred in the so-called "Asia-10"--China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand--as those countries integrate S&T into economic growth. Between 1999 and 2009, for example, the U.S. share of global research and development (R&D) dropped from 38 percent to 31 percent, whereas it grew from 24 percent to 35 percent in the Asia region during the same time.
In China alone, R&D growth increased a stunning 28 percent in a single year (2008-2009), propelling it past Japan and into second place behind the United States.
"Over the last decade, the world has changed dramatically," said José-Marie Griffiths, chair of the NSB committee that oversees production of the report. "It's now a world with very different actors who have made advancement in science and technology a top priority. And many of the troubling trends we're seeing are now very well established."
Thursday, January 26, 2012 
This
is very cool: The New York Times has video of Barack Obama’s State of
the Union address from last night paired with a real-time transcript
down the side and a fact check on some key points.
On the issues I mentioned in my blog post, the fact check says of a
couple of them:
Claim: Bin Laden Not a Threat to the U.S.
President Obama can claim a record of aggressive pursuit of al-Qaeda and
its affiliates abroad over the past year, including the killing of
Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda's founder, in May; Anwar al-Awlaki, the
American-born propagandist and plotter for the terrorist network's
branch in Yemen, in September; and scores of suspected militants in
Pakistan.
Before the mission to kill Bin Laden, Mr. Obama made a high-risk
decision to send a Navy Seal team deep into Pakistani territory without
alerting Pakistani officials, a bold move that later drew praise even
from some ...
Read More...
While
it has been known since early 2004 that the illicit proliferation
network headed by A.Q. Khan of Pakistan supplied the nuclear programs of
Iran, North Korea, and Libya, certain questions have not yet been
resolved.http://www.carnegieendowment.org/2012/01/23/q-khan-network-and-its-fourth-customer/95hs
Posts
“What’s move two, three, four or five down the board?” Hayden said, arguing that an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities was only a short-term fix. “I don’t think anyone is talking about occupying anything.”
Hayden then said he didn’t believe the Israelis could or even would strike Iran — that only the United States has the capability to do it — but either way, it’s still a bad idea.
“The Israelis aren’t going to [attack Iran] … they can’t do it, it’s beyond their capacity. They only have the ability to make this [problem of Iran's nuclear program] worse. We can do a lot better,” he said. “Just look at the physics, the fact that this cannot be done in a raid, this has to be done in a campaign, the fact that neither we nor they know where this stuff is. [The Israelis] can’t do it, but we can.”