0:00

Hi, I'm Nyla Budu, host of

0:02

One Big Thing from Axios. Every

0:05

week, I talk to leaders you know

0:07

or need to know in business, politics

0:09

and culture. We're not going to be changing

0:11

the world if we don't take some risk. We

0:13

can't live burying our heads.

0:15

This technology is here. We're going about

0:18

it the wrong way because we don't know the stuff to

0:20

go for. Interviews, ideas and

0:22

context, all in 20 minutes or

0:24

less. That's One Big Thing

0:26

from Axios. Find us every

0:28

Thursday wherever you get your podcasts. Try

0:32

This from The Washington Post is a

0:34

new series of audio courses that takes

0:36

on life's everyday challenges. I'm

0:39

Christina Quinn and I'll help you find

0:41

real guidance with practical, easy enough approaches

0:43

that won't feel like the advice you

0:45

hear everywhere else. Each audio

0:47

course will have anywhere from two to five classes

0:49

on things like how to get better sleep, how

0:51

to get the most out of your relationships and

0:54

even how to get out of your own way.

0:57

Try This from The Washington Post wherever

0:59

you listen. Hey

1:02

there, it's Emma. Season six

1:04

of What Could Go Right is fast approaching.

1:06

But while we're working on it, we wanted

1:08

to share an episode of a podcast we

1:10

think you'll enjoy called The Ongoing Transformation. Produced

1:13

by our friends at Issues in Science

1:15

and Technology, this episode explores the Chips

1:17

and Science Act, which aims to secure

1:20

American competitiveness and innovation by investing $280

1:23

billion into domestic semiconductor

1:25

manufacturing, scientific innovation and

1:27

regional development. Michael Crow,

1:30

president of Arizona State University, talks to

1:32

host Lisa Marginelli about these initiatives and

1:34

together they share some of the historical

1:36

context that may help us predict how

1:39

they'll impact American life. I hope

1:41

you enjoy the episode. We're

1:43

going to have to turn around

1:45

for all those people who keep saying what

1:47

we've always done at that point. It's

1:50

our young people who are going to have

1:52

to do it. Welcome

1:55

to The Ongoing Transformation, a podcast

1:57

from Issues in Science and Technology.

2:00

Issues is a quarterly journal published by

2:02

the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering

2:04

and Medicine and Arizona State University.

2:08

In 2022, Congress passed an

2:10

extraordinarily bipartisan initiative called the Chips

2:12

and Science Act. The act is

2:14

meant to make the U.S. the leader in industries

2:17

of the future. It has $52 billion

2:19

for semiconductor chip development, $200

2:21

billion for science, and $10 billion

2:23

for regional hubs. It's a lot of

2:25

money. In today's dollars,

2:27

it's twice the cost of the Manhattan

2:30

Project for the chips element alone. How

2:32

could these investments transform American life?

2:35

I'm Louisa Marganelli, Editor-in-Chief of

2:37

Issues. On this episode, we're

2:39

talking to Dr. Michael Crow, President

2:42

of Arizona State University, about

2:44

previous government initiatives around science and security

2:46

and what they suggest about the chips

2:48

initiative and our possible future. Michael,

2:51

welcome. Hey, Lisa, thank you.

2:53

Glad to be here. There's a lot of

2:56

talk about how chips and science is unprecedented.

2:58

But how does it fit into the history

3:00

of government investments in science and security? You

3:03

know, what's funny in a lot of

3:05

Americans, I don't think remember this or

3:07

have thought about it, but the American

3:09

government from its design and its outset

3:11

has always been scientifically driven. President

3:13

Jefferson in 1804 formed the

3:16

core of discovery after

3:18

the purchase of the Louisiana property from

3:20

France and then had Lewis and

3:22

Clark then as the captains of the core

3:24

of discovery, scientifically explore

3:27

from the Mississippi River in

3:29

St. Louis all the way to the

3:31

coast of Oregon at the mouth of

3:33

the Columbia River, an unbelievable scientific exploration.

3:35

And then many times in the

3:37

history of the United States with the Coastal and

3:39

Geodetic Survey and all kinds of other things along

3:41

the way, the country just became

3:43

very, very science driven, very, very knowledge

3:46

core driven. And then three

3:48

times prior to the Chips and

3:50

Science Act, the U.S. government stepped up

3:52

and decided to ensure

3:54

national security around something that they

3:57

felt was absolutely essential. The

3:59

first was... our moves in the 19th

4:01

century in the 1860s with both

4:03

the establishment of the Department of

4:05

Agriculture and the land-grant universities to

4:07

make certain that food security would

4:09

always be maintained in

4:11

the United States. And now

4:13

we've become the most agriculturally

4:15

abundant, most agriculturally creative, most

4:18

scientifically driven food secure place

4:20

that's ever existed. That

4:22

was sort of case number one. Case

4:24

number two was following the

4:26

Manhattan Project during World War II,

4:28

nuclear security became a thing where

4:30

we had developed this scientific thing,

4:32

atomic fission. We'd done this

4:35

during World War II. We built all

4:37

of these labs and now we knew

4:39

we had this tiger by the tail

4:41

that would have both civilian applications and

4:44

weapons applications, which we needed

4:46

to basically be the best

4:48

at forever so that we could maintain the

4:50

advantage that we'd gained. And so the

4:53

Atomic Energy Commission was formed in 1946. Later, the ERDA, the

4:57

Energy Research and Development Administration in the

4:59

early 1970s, and this really became a

5:01

core thing. A third thing kind of

5:03

on the side was that

5:05

we decided after the launch of Sputnik

5:07

in October of 1957 that

5:10

we were going to be the masters

5:12

of space technology. President Kennedy announced to

5:15

going to the moon, NASA was

5:17

created from the previous agency that had

5:19

existed since World War I, all

5:21

kinds of things happened in that space. And in

5:24

those three areas, food, nuclear, and space, the

5:26

United States is able to protect all

5:28

of its interests and to advance its

5:31

knowledge seeking requirements in those spaces to

5:33

our advantage. And finally, now, just recently

5:36

with the Chips and Science Act, we've

5:38

decided that all things digital are

5:40

so important to the future of the country,

5:42

like food in the 1860s, that

5:45

all things digital are so essential

5:47

that we have to maintain technological,

5:49

not superiority, but constant technological

5:52

innovation, constant manufacturing capability, constant

5:54

ability to be the best

5:56

at all things digital. So

5:58

the Chips and Science Act

6:00

are like the agricultural project, the nuclear

6:02

project and the space project. They're decisions

6:04

by the country to maintain national security

6:07

around a certain area of technology. That's

6:09

really interesting. And I think what's, you

6:11

know, in the story of 20th century

6:15

science, we're pretty familiar with

6:17

the Manhattan Project and the

6:19

space program, but we're a little bit less familiar

6:21

with what happened in the 1860s. So

6:24

I want to kind of dive down

6:26

into that. There was the formation of

6:28

the Agriculture Department and there

6:30

was also the formation of

6:33

the land grant universities. And these

6:35

things had huge and long lasting

6:37

transformative effects. So let's talk a

6:39

little bit about that. So

6:41

imagine it's 1860, the country is deeply divided.

6:43

There's three people running for president. A person

6:45

is elected president with around 40% of the

6:48

vote. That would be Abraham

6:50

Lincoln. Several states secede from

6:52

the union. The country's in crisis. There's

6:54

about 30 million people living in the

6:56

United States at the time, but it's

6:58

expanding wildly and quickly, particularly into the

7:01

West. Food security becomes

7:03

a question. And then also the

7:05

notion of inequitable social outcomes becomes

7:07

a question as well as our agricultural

7:10

productivity. So with Congress realigned

7:12

with fewer states present in

7:14

Congress, two things could

7:16

be created. One was a national

7:19

initiative in agriculture, agricultural science, agricultural

7:23

trade, oversight, agricultural ideas and

7:25

thinking and so forth, agricultural innovation. So

7:27

that's the Department of Agriculture. And then

7:29

along the way, a guy

7:32

named Justin Morrill, who was a congressman

7:34

from Vermont at the time, had

7:37

thought for some time that each state

7:39

should sell some of the land given

7:41

to the states by the federal government

7:43

to build a college for agricultural and

7:45

mechanical arts open to the

7:47

sons and daughters of farmers and mechanics, which was

7:49

90% of the population at the time. That

7:52

got passed in July of 1862. The

7:55

state set up land grant schools like the

7:57

University of California, the University of Illinois and

8:00

Michigan State. Purdue, Cornell, MIT, in each of

8:02

those states and many others, Iowa State, where

8:05

I went to undergraduate school as one of

8:07

those schools. Those universities then became, and the

8:09

history shows this, unbelievable

8:11

transformative elements on two dimensions

8:14

relative to the United States.

8:16

First, we moved into unbelievable

8:18

agricultural security and agricultural productivity and never

8:20

had the food insecurity that then existed

8:22

in Europe, existed in Asia, has existed

8:24

in other places around the world, and

8:26

then food has just been taken for

8:29

granted in the United States because it's

8:31

been such a perfect area of national

8:33

security. And then in addition to that,

8:35

the innovation created out of these schools

8:38

then became the driving force for the

8:40

post-Civil War industrial success of the United

8:42

States. And there's a lot of

8:44

the literature has looked at the role of the land

8:46

grants. It's really quite remarkable.

8:48

Those land grants then, several of them,

8:51

became among the first research universities at

8:53

scale. The United States accelerated its economic

8:55

evolution, its social evolution. And

8:57

all these things were driven by

8:59

basically stabilization of agriculture, movement

9:02

of agricultural into a powerful economic driver,

9:04

and then all the engineering solutions and

9:06

special training and special people that came

9:08

out of these schools were really, really

9:11

powerful to the late 19th

9:13

century transformation of the American economy.

9:16

It's really interesting because you're reading

9:18

what you had written about this sort of

9:20

sent me back to Hunter Dupre's book on

9:23

the history of science and the federal

9:25

government. And two things came

9:27

out of that that struck me. One thing is that

9:30

that transformation of the U.S.

9:32

sort of science and knowledge enterprise was

9:35

not really anticipated when they started. When

9:37

the agriculture department started, it was run

9:40

by a milkman, I think, and

9:42

it didn't know how to generate knowledge. It didn't

9:44

know how to solve problems. The Texas fever among

9:46

cattle got completely out of hand. They had all

9:48

the wrong ideas. And

9:50

they gradually moved towards this very

9:52

unified way of looking at problems

9:54

and solving problems. And they also

9:57

kind of transformed on a very

9:59

intimate level. farmers all

10:01

across the country into scientists. Yes,

10:03

so what they did was, I mean, you're absolutely

10:05

right with that history. And so what

10:07

we learned was that there was collective

10:09

advantage to shared knowledge. There was collective

10:12

advantage to shared training and shared experience.

10:14

So over time, county extension offices

10:16

were built in every one of the 3,000 plus

10:18

counties in the United States. There

10:20

were agricultural extension specialists that

10:22

were helping individual farmers to accelerate

10:24

their innovation, hybrid corn

10:26

varieties, ways to take

10:29

care of pests and insects and

10:31

plant pests, weeds, all kinds of

10:33

things, all enhancing productivity and also

10:35

enhancing farmer success. So throughout European

10:37

history and other parts of the

10:40

world, farm collapse, agricultural collapse,

10:42

economic collapse, bread riots, food riots, starvation,

10:44

all these things were avoided here because

10:46

we found a way to turn every

10:49

individual farmer into a state-of-the-art agriculturalist so

10:51

that they could use their own ingenuity

10:53

but then they could draw from the

10:56

collective knowledge of the country. And yes,

10:58

the Department of Agriculture started the same

11:00

way that the Department of State. I

11:03

mean, I think the first patent

11:05

agents and spies for the United States

11:07

in terms of acquiring other technology reported

11:10

directly to Hamilton and Jefferson,

11:12

you know, when they were both cabinet members

11:14

in the first administration. And so all these

11:16

departments started out as small unorganized

11:18

things. But then what happened was

11:21

then the value of connection and

11:23

collective knowledge and core scientific knowledge

11:25

and core technological knowledge became really,

11:27

really important to the success of

11:29

the country. Yeah, it's

11:31

really a fascinating transformation. I think one of the other

11:33

things that came up, another parallel

11:35

to chips and science, which has

11:38

been discussed as industrial policy or

11:40

the government getting out of its

11:42

lane and getting involved in working

11:44

directly with industry, was that when

11:46

these agricultural acts started,

11:48

they essentially transformed the role

11:50

of government into working

11:53

on the general welfare and

11:55

generating knowledge. And we have something sort

11:57

of similar happening here. what's

12:00

weird about that, it's always funny to me

12:02

when people talk about the interference of the

12:04

government. In fact, they've forgotten to go back

12:07

and read the founding documents or

12:09

the debates that occurred in the summer of 1787.

12:11

So a lot of things got left on

12:14

the cutting room floor in Philadelphia in the

12:16

summer of 1787, left a lot

12:19

of things that were proposed and not brought into

12:21

the Constitution and then those things that were

12:24

put into the Constitution and the general

12:26

welfare remains in there and people just forget

12:28

what does that mean? Well, how about food

12:30

security? How about nuclear security? How

12:33

about making certain that we never have

12:35

to live without the essential digital devices

12:38

that we're going to need for

12:40

every aspect of our life, you

12:42

know, our drinking water, our clean

12:44

air, our cars, our electric vehicles,

12:46

our computational tools, our learning assistants,

12:49

our everything. All these things require

12:51

these digital assets and so if

12:54

you go back, you know, it's kind of weird like all these people

12:56

that are against earmarks. So

12:58

Samuel Morris's funding for the first

13:00

telegraph was an earmark from Congress.

13:03

The wind tunnel that ultimately became the

13:05

jet propulsion laboratory was an earmark and

13:07

so this notion that somehow you can't

13:09

have politics involved in building national capability,

13:11

don't get that, and then there's just

13:13

this weird thing about, well,

13:15

the government shouldn't be involved in this. Well, it's

13:18

not the government that's involved in

13:20

this. The government is facilitating collective

13:22

knowledge. It's facilitating base knowledge

13:24

from which everyone can benefit. If you

13:26

look at somebody like George Washington Carver

13:29

and what he was able to do in organizing

13:31

knowledge about the peanut and the growth of the

13:33

peanut, helping after reconstruction black farmers

13:35

in the South to gain wealth and

13:37

move forward with things. I mean, all

13:40

of this was no individual farmer could

13:42

do that by themselves. Every

13:44

individual farmer could be a better farmer because

13:46

of the collective knowledge and then from that,

13:48

the industries that were developed from that base

13:51

in the United States are unbelievable. It's almost

13:53

20% of the economy. If

13:55

you look at all things that agriculture touches

13:57

just in that particular area. History

14:00

doesn't repeat itself, but it often

14:02

rhymes. That may be a

14:04

Mark Twain quote, but it's just as true

14:06

today as when he originally said it. "'My

14:08

History Can Beat Up Your Politics' is a

14:10

podcast that compares and contrasts history to the

14:13

current events of today. Host Bruce Carlson has

14:15

recently done deep dives on fascinating topics like

14:17

the fall of the Soviet Union, which sets

14:19

the stage for today's geopolitics, the man who

14:21

was in prison and still won a million

14:23

votes for the presidency, and the mystery behind

14:26

George Washington's involvement, or lack thereof, in the

14:28

Bill of Rights. "'My History Can Beat Up

14:30

Your Politics' offers deep context to all these

14:32

historic stories, especially those that you

14:34

may think you know well, and is particularly

14:36

adept at relating them to current events. So

14:38

don't miss out. Listen to "'My History Can

14:40

Beat Up Your Politics' on all platforms." Hey,

14:44

it's Emma. They say you should learn something

14:46

new every day. It's good advice,

14:48

but with so much to do in your daily life,

14:51

how are you gonna make the time to learn and

14:53

stay curious about our world? Well,

14:55

with everything everywhere daily, you can

14:57

easily make that goal an actual reality.

15:00

Everything Ever Daily is one of the world's

15:02

most popular daily education podcasts and a top

15:05

three history podcast. In about

15:07

10 minutes, you can learn something new every

15:09

day. The show covers history,

15:11

science, geography, mathematics, and technology, as well

15:13

as biographies from some of the world's

15:15

most interesting people. Fans

15:17

of the show are so passionate that you don't

15:20

work to join the Completionist Club. The

15:22

group of dedicated listeners who have listened to

15:24

every single one of the show's more than

15:26

1,000 and counting episodes. All

15:29

the episodes are informative, interesting, and best of

15:31

all, always under 15 minutes. So

15:34

go ahead, learn something new every single

15:36

day with Everything Everywhere Daily. Find

15:39

it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you

15:41

get your podcasts. I

15:43

think this is a good time to move on to

15:45

the second major initiative, which is after World War II,

15:48

when you had the science

15:50

and security initiative that

15:53

had sort of three elements to it.

15:55

It created an infrastructure, it mobilized talent,

15:58

and it had critical supply chain. can

16:01

you talk a little bit about how that

16:03

transformed? Well, you know,

16:05

it was interesting. President Franklin Roosevelt in the

16:07

summer of 1940 was already speculating

16:11

that the United States was highly likely to

16:13

become involved in World War II. We

16:15

had not been attacked yet by the Japanese.

16:18

And in general, the public did not want to

16:20

get into the war, but the president's job is

16:23

also to be prepared for the war. So he

16:25

called on a person named Vannevar Bush, who at

16:27

the time was the president of the Carnegie Institution

16:29

of Washington. He had been the

16:31

vice president for research at MIT in the

16:33

1930s, and he was one of the founders

16:35

after his PhD in electrical engineering in

16:38

the 19 teens of a company

16:40

called Raytheon. So he was a sort

16:42

of a polymathic computer person,

16:44

a design electrical engineer. He could do

16:46

all these things. And he was

16:48

an amazing writer, too. Yeah, he was, absolutely. So

16:51

he was called upon by President

16:53

Roosevelt to create a thing that was

16:55

ultimately called the Office of Scientific Research

16:57

and Development, OSRD. And that

16:59

became the mechanism by which President Roosevelt said,

17:01

I want you to bring all of

17:04

the talent of American universities and American

17:06

science and American technology to bear so that

17:08

when we enter this war, we can have

17:10

as few casualties as possible and we can

17:13

end this war as quickly as possible, which

17:15

is a fantastic objective. And then when

17:17

we entered the war in December of 1941, he

17:20

accelerated unbelievably the scientific capabilities

17:23

of the United States, particularly

17:25

at the universities, building the

17:27

Manhattan Project, launching other initiatives. So as you

17:30

said, he brought talent to bear, he brought

17:32

ideas to bear, he brought structures

17:34

and mechanisms, in a sense, transformed

17:37

the way that we thought about

17:39

science as a mechanism to protect

17:41

democracy and science as a

17:43

mechanism to advance our economic and health success,

17:45

so much so that by the end of

17:48

the war, just as President Roosevelt had passed

17:50

away in April of 1945, just

17:52

prior to that, Bush had been asked to

17:54

put together a report on what do we

17:56

do with all this science capability, and they

17:58

wrote the famous report, Science. the endless frontier came

18:00

out in July of 1945, President

18:03

Truman accepted it. And from that

18:05

point forward, you see that

18:07

we got out of that, the Atomic Energy

18:10

Commission, we got the National Science Foundation, we

18:12

got the expansion of the National Institutes of

18:14

Health. The United States became the most significant

18:16

scientific place in human history

18:18

in terms of discoveries and technologies and

18:20

moving things forward. And research universities began

18:22

growing up all over the place and

18:25

the economy began doubling and doubling and

18:27

doubling and doubling. And so what

18:29

happened was we secured ourselves,

18:32

in a sense, nuclear defense, which

18:34

has proven to be complicated but

18:37

positive. But we also designed out

18:39

of that an unbelievable creative enterprise

18:41

engaging the entire country. It's

18:43

also interesting because it also

18:46

kind of remodeled the relationship between

18:48

government, research universities, and industry. It's

18:50

been called sort of the golden

18:53

triangle or quote, a new kind

18:55

of post-war science that blurred the

18:57

traditional distinctions. And

18:59

that has proven to be an

19:02

incredibly powerful engine of change and

19:04

innovation through the development of GPS

19:06

as it migrated out of military

19:08

applications and into our cars and

19:10

our phones. And right now, as

19:12

we talk, smartphones, AI, jet

19:14

engines, all of this sort of stuff

19:16

moved from the military and security sphere

19:19

out into our lives. Well,

19:21

what happened was that these research universities, which

19:23

began being built in the 1870s with

19:25

Johns Hopkins in the 1890s with

19:27

Stanford and the University of Chicago, then a

19:29

bunch of the public universities and the land-grant

19:32

universities came in and became research universities. But

19:34

even by 1939, they weren't heavily funded by

19:38

the government. They were doing their own research. They

19:40

were funded by some foundations. There were some private

19:42

entities. And then when they were asked

19:44

to rise up to the national challenge to carry

19:46

out a global conflict, to advance

19:48

the United States to victory on

19:51

two massive war fronts at the

19:53

same time, technology played an unbelievably

19:55

important role in all of that,

19:57

from proximity fuses to other kinds

19:59

of... devices, to code breakers, to

20:01

atomic weapons designers and torpedo developers,

20:04

everything that you can imagine that

20:06

quickly brought the war to an

20:08

end. The main combatants

20:11

in the form of Germany and

20:13

Japan transformed forever into functional democracies

20:15

of significant economic outcome and so

20:17

this was perceived at the moment

20:19

as an unbelievable transformation in

20:22

the role of universities and it just

20:24

has never stopped. So what began

20:26

in 41 and 42 accelerated

20:29

in the 50s, accelerated in the 60s,

20:31

accelerated and has continued to accelerate which

20:33

has then fueled as you said the

20:36

internet, advanced technologies, it

20:38

fueled us becoming you know

20:40

the unbelievable developers of these

20:42

advanced semiconductors and microchips, you

20:44

know advanced materials research, advanced

20:46

computation research, medical research, all

20:49

these things got going and now it

20:51

is a core part of who we

20:53

are and in fact has been emulated

20:55

by others which is making others nervous

20:57

now that other places are quote-unquote catching

20:59

up or passing us or whatever because

21:02

they've decided to take on the same

21:04

model, build research universities, fuel these research

21:06

universities and become competitive with the

21:09

unbelievably successful United States.

21:12

Yes and that actually brings me to

21:14

my next question which is you've called

21:16

failing to secure digital security a strategic

21:18

error. What do you mean there? So

21:21

what I mean by that so we developed the

21:24

fundamental material sciences, the fundamental engineering,

21:26

the fundamental designs, the breakthroughs in

21:28

the first semiconductors, the breakthroughs in

21:30

what was the first transistor, all

21:33

the things that came the transistor was 47 and

21:35

in the in the 50s and in the 60s

21:37

the semiconductor materials were being built. We

21:39

then built the most advanced chips, microchips

21:42

built the most advanced systems and then

21:44

because of costs of

21:46

manufacturing being potentially lower in other parts

21:48

of the world, manufacturing

21:50

got offshore development got

21:52

offshored so much so that by the time we get

21:54

to the 2020s the late

21:57

teens in the 2020s we find ourselves with

21:59

a small manual. manufacturing base, a

22:01

significant research base and our supply chain

22:03

interruptible. So the strategic error was to

22:05

not see these as a national asset.

22:07

It's only in the way that we

22:09

see nuclear or the way that we

22:11

see food, both of which are, you

22:14

know, inseparable from our existence. And so

22:16

in this case, we thought that this

22:18

was only a commercial thing. It's

22:20

not only a commercial thing. These chips have

22:22

become as essential as

22:24

water to our success

22:26

going forward. It's interesting too,

22:29

because like food, it has national implications,

22:31

but also has sort of personal implications

22:33

as we're seeing with this talk

22:36

of taking TikTok off of our phones

22:38

and things like that. Well, I mean

22:40

the technological applications using these technologies are

22:42

slightly ahead of our social thinking right

22:44

now and our ability to understand these

22:46

things. So we've got all kinds of

22:48

technology manifestations that are causing social disruption

22:50

and social upset. And, you know,

22:52

we have potential for security threats. We have potential for

22:55

cultural threats. We've got all these things that are going

22:57

on. All those things are

22:59

transitory and will be addressed. What's

23:01

not transitory is the fact that

23:03

our species is now enabled by

23:06

these microchips, which are basically enhancing

23:08

every single individual. All of

23:10

us carry or most of us carry an iPhone

23:12

or something like an iPhone or an Android phone

23:14

or something like this. Well, that's a supercomputer attached

23:16

to your body connected to all the other supercomputers

23:18

that are out there. And with chat

23:20

GPT and other things coming along, those will become

23:22

over time powerful assistance

23:25

to every person, every

23:27

organization. And so what's going to happen

23:29

here is that our species

23:31

for the first time has now created

23:33

a foundational tool, a computational

23:36

device in the form of a semiconductor,

23:38

which is an electronic system, which is

23:40

then reducible because of advanced science

23:42

to up to. I mean, I think the

23:44

most advanced chip that IBM has has 50

23:47

billion transistors on a single microchip.

23:49

My phone has, I think only

23:51

12 billion transistors on the microchip.

23:54

So everything will change. Medicine will change. Business

23:57

will change. Computational change. Learning will

23:59

change. everything will continue to evolve.

24:01

And so like food and

24:04

like nuclear, digital will be that

24:06

kind of thing. And we've just come to that realization

24:08

and the Chips and Science Act is that. Yeah.

24:12

It's so interesting when you really put

24:14

it in a larger context of how

24:16

far this may take us and how

24:18

it may change and transforms our lives

24:21

and our fundamental relationships. I

24:23

think the question here is what

24:25

can we learn from the past about

24:28

how the Chips and Science

24:31

can have the same sort of transformative

24:33

potential? Well, one thing we need

24:35

to learn from what we learned in agriculture is that

24:37

you've got to work at the level of the people.

24:40

You've got to think sociologically about the

24:42

outcome of these kinds of technologies. You've

24:45

got to do technology assessment. You've got

24:47

to understand what these technologies might do.

24:50

You've got to think about how to educate the

24:52

people to then fully take advantage of the technology

24:54

and become, as we have in agriculture, basically

24:58

spurring development across the entire economy,

25:00

not just in concentrated corporations.

25:04

That will then get the most fueling

25:06

of all of Schumpeter's forces

25:08

of creative destruction, quote unquote, the terms

25:10

that he used, Schumpeter being the Austrian

25:12

economist who thought about what is innovation,

25:14

how do you drive innovation? So innovation

25:16

can't be just these big chip manufacturers

25:18

or the big tool manufacturers only. They

25:20

have to be then spurred by whole

25:22

new ways of thinking about chips and

25:24

using chips and using technology. So we

25:26

need to, that's a lesson from the

25:29

past. Another lesson from the past is

25:31

to basically not

25:33

take our foot off the gas. This

25:35

can't be on again, off again, on

25:37

again, off again. It has to be

25:39

continuous innovation, continuous forward movement. The

25:41

other thing is that competition is real. We

25:44

can't stop competition from other parts of the world. We

25:46

can only win. And so if

25:48

you try to stop something, you don't win. If you

25:50

try to block something, you will lose. And so you

25:52

need to understand global competition. And then I think the

25:54

other thing that we need to think about in terms

25:57

of a lesson from the past coming out of nuclear

25:59

is that You know, we were clueless

26:01

as to all of the ultimate

26:03

implications of nuclear weapons technology,

26:05

certainly. And so now

26:07

we have unmitigated nuclear proliferation, which

26:10

hasn't been thought through, hasn't been managed.

26:12

And so how do we manage the

26:14

negative outcomes of some of these technologies

26:16

more carefully? That's certainly a lesson from

26:18

the past. And I think another lesson

26:21

from the past is that we just sometimes, we

26:23

don't think about what it all means. For

26:26

instance, through agricultural technology development, we

26:28

eliminated the agricultural workforce. Okay,

26:31

well, that happened kind of

26:33

gradually and we adjusted, but

26:36

we had a deep cultural impact on the

26:38

country because much of the country was agriculturally

26:40

based. And so these

26:42

digital technologies will also have huge

26:44

workforce implications. And we should

26:46

think about them in front of these changes

26:48

as opposed to during or after these changes.

26:50

And so those are lessons from the past.

26:53

The government of Kenya pledged to end gender-based

26:55

violence by 2026. The

26:58

Ministry of Health in Uganda is trying to eradicate

27:00

yellow fever. It's ambitious to make

27:02

these kinds of pledges, but it is much harder

27:04

to achieve these lofty goals. Are

27:06

these leaders really delivering on these promises for women

27:08

and girls? Tune into a

27:10

new season of the Hidden Economics

27:12

of Remarkable Women, a podcast from

27:15

Foreign Policy, as reporters across Africa

27:17

meet courageous women holding leaders accountable

27:19

in various sectors, including healthcare, startups,

27:21

and the government. Listen to

27:23

Hidden Economics of Remarkable Women wherever you get

27:25

your podcasts. Yeah, recalling what

27:27

happened with the Agricultural

27:30

Act of sort of transforming people's

27:32

ability to be scientists in their own lives and

27:34

have that contribute to their

27:37

own satisfaction and ability to feed themselves

27:39

and their families has some interesting

27:41

sort of parallels for this. Yes,

27:44

and so one parallel is it certainly is

27:46

the case, in fact, on a project that

27:48

I'm working on as a part

27:50

of the National Advisory Committee on Innovation, which I'm

27:52

a member of, I've been arguing that we need

27:54

to make certain that we can have Down

27:57

to the level of communities and incubators

27:59

for. The. Uses of chips

28:01

in ideas that teenagers and others are

28:03

coming up with. and how help people

28:05

to build new kinds of chips and

28:07

new kinds of activities and so forth.

28:09

And you gotta look at these things

28:11

as not just the realm of the

28:13

massive global corporation, but the realm of

28:15

any tinkerer. any innovator. If you read

28:18

Isaacson book on the innovators, it's a

28:20

fabulous story about how some of these

28:22

innovations in digital technologies emerged. and they

28:24

were not the product of just the

28:26

big corporations, they were the product of

28:28

all kinds of people and the big

28:30

corporations. And so what we need is

28:32

both and then more or and so

28:34

how do you facilitate all of that

28:36

And and also how do we get.

28:39

More. Even economic benefit across the

28:41

country from these kinds of technologies.

28:43

and so what could be developed

28:45

using these kinds of technologies in

28:47

new applications to help. You. Know

28:49

manage. I don't know the Mississippi

28:51

river grow of rice better in

28:54

the delta regions of Arkansas and

28:56

Louisiana. Along. The Mississippi River and

28:58

Tennessee. And so how how do we do

29:01

all those things? And so we need as

29:03

much of this to be like the Agriculture

29:05

Department localized as. A

29:08

brings up to other interesting parallel

29:10

to the agricultural act one was

29:12

the realization that manufacturing this. Ah,

29:15

knowledge could help raise

29:17

everybody's both. And

29:19

that. Is. Kind

29:22

of clothing class. In a little bit with the

29:24

tips and science as well as are we gonna

29:26

try to raise the knowledge only in the U

29:28

S and raise everybody's boat in the Us are

29:30

we still got a global knowledge producer and that

29:32

seems like something that's gonna have to be negotiated.

29:35

Why? I mean, there's there's. yes, it's

29:37

complicated because some of these technologies can

29:39

be particularly handy in weapons. Systems are

29:41

and so and so what one wants

29:43

to think about is. how do

29:45

we floats all boats to drive up

29:48

all economic activity so the i'm going

29:50

a up the global economy hundred trillion

29:52

dollars well there's no reason that it

29:55

couldn't be a thousand trillion dollars be

29:57

environmentally clean drive up per capita income

30:00

the entire planet drive us into all kinds of new

30:02

things. Well, we're not going to do that if

30:04

we hold on to these

30:06

digital technologies in a way that everyone doesn't benefit.

30:09

We just have to find a way to make

30:11

certain that we reduce the probability of

30:14

kinetic combat. And there may be ways

30:16

where these technologies can be very helpful

30:18

to us in that also. We just

30:20

have to think it through. We're not

30:22

thinking it through enough. Right now, we

30:24

are heavily concerned about the rise of

30:27

new major competition in China,

30:30

new major competition in other parts of the world.

30:33

I'm all for competition. Competition makes

30:35

you perform better, harder, cheaper.

30:37

There's all kinds of ways that you solve things. We

30:39

just have to make sure that what we get out

30:42

of this is global

30:44

evolution and fair

30:46

competition. We are in this very

30:48

interesting point in history because we are at the

30:50

beginning of this sort of arc of another 80

30:52

years. As you mentioned, we've had 80 years

30:55

of transformation from the initial sort of

30:57

nuclear security work. And we've had 150

30:59

years of evolution from

31:03

the agricultural work. And

31:05

as we start down that path, history

31:08

shows us that we don't actually know where we're

31:10

going. But we have to actually keep our eyes

31:12

on what things are important as we go

31:14

forward. Well, essentially, no one in

31:16

1940 would have predicted where we

31:19

are now with either nuclear weapons,

31:21

nuclear power, the emergence of fusion

31:23

power, the perseverance rover on the

31:25

surface of Mars being nuclear powered,

31:28

all these things that are happening. No one would have

31:30

thought about any of that. We will have nuclear powered

31:32

spaceships. We'll have all these things going on, all

31:35

these things that are happening. No one would have predicted

31:37

any of that. And then in agriculture, no

31:39

one would have predicted that only 2% of

31:41

the American population would be involved in production

31:44

agriculture, feeding 340 million

31:47

people in the United States and probably another 300

31:49

million people around the world, something like that, all

31:51

from 2% of the American

31:53

population. No one would have predicted that.

31:55

No one would have thought about sustainable

31:57

agriculture or a whole to

32:00

build plant-based meats and all these other kinds of

32:02

things that are going on, not a single person

32:04

could have thought of that. And here we are

32:06

now in 2023 thinking about what will

32:09

happen between now and 2100 when

32:12

in fact these technologies, these digitally

32:14

based technologies will be more impactful

32:16

than either nuclear or food. No

32:19

one can predict where it's all going, which

32:21

means then therefore that we need more

32:24

technology assessment capabilities, more

32:27

predictive analytics, more deeper understanding of

32:29

what these things might do and

32:31

just more thoughtfulness, not

32:33

to predict because we'll never get the predictions correct,

32:36

but to understand and to adjust as we

32:38

go along the way. You have

32:40

been really active in chips and science

32:42

in Arizona and

32:44

as you think forward for

32:47

how Arizona's life and not

32:49

just the whole state, but the

32:52

individual life could potentially be transformed.

32:54

What are the things that

32:56

you hope to steer towards and what are the

32:59

things that you worry about? Well,

33:01

I mean, so one of the things I

33:03

think that will happen for certain is that

33:05

Arizona already is a huge manufacturing center for

33:08

semiconductors and will become even more than that.

33:10

It'll become the most concentrated semiconductor manufacturing place

33:12

on the planet and then

33:14

all of the supply chain related to that, which

33:16

then also connects to the battery companies that are

33:19

here and the electric vehicle companies that are expanding

33:21

here. So empowerment of all

33:23

kinds of renewable energy systems, renewable

33:25

tools, renewable devices, all those kinds

33:27

of things. All of

33:30

that will be advanced here. And

33:32

then I think beyond that, then what

33:34

happens in all of that is how

33:37

does one find a way in Arizona

33:39

to become the place where the best

33:41

renewable energy-based, best sustainability-based

33:44

economy can be built

33:47

using every microelectronic computational tool

33:49

imaginable. So you can better

33:51

manage water with

33:53

more data, more data, more data, more data,

33:56

more data. You can better manage all complex

33:58

systems like adjustments to all

34:00

of the complexities of global management

34:03

with more computational outcomes. We don't

34:05

have the computational capabilities to manage

34:08

the complex interfaces that we have

34:10

with the environment. So if we want to better manage

34:13

our relationship with the environment, we need more

34:15

intensive tools to do that, and we

34:17

need companies building those tools. And so I'm hopeful that

34:19

Arizona will be a place where a lot of those

34:21

things grow. Now, the downside here is there's

34:24

some chance of uneven economic opportunity

34:26

for the population because of educational

34:28

differences, and we're working very heavily

34:30

to address that at ASU by

34:32

giving pathways to everyone to have

34:34

a chance to participate. There

34:37

are unresolved issues of the waste

34:39

streams from these advanced digital technologies,

34:41

which have to be very

34:43

seriously thought about because the chemicals are

34:45

particularly hazardous in many

34:47

cases. And then I'd say that there

34:49

is a huge worker

34:52

transformation that we have to worry about. So

34:54

as these computational tools become,

34:56

the reason that autonomous vehicles don't work as well as

34:59

we would like them to work is that we don't

35:01

have computational tools that are good enough. You

35:03

get a computational tool that's 20 times better

35:05

than the chip today, and you

35:07

can now calculate almost anything, any error function.

35:09

And then all of a sudden, half the

35:11

drivers don't have jobs, half the servers

35:14

don't have jobs in restaurants, the grocery stores, as you've

35:16

already seen if you've been to one lately, there's

35:19

nobody that works there. I mean,

35:21

you just check out yourself. And

35:23

so what that means then is that I think the

35:25

downside that we have to think about is how do

35:27

we build an economy that

35:30

is robust for everyone with these

35:32

technological breakthroughs driven by these digital

35:34

technologies? And this will be, this

35:36

happened in agriculture, it's

35:39

going to be more complicated with digital. And

35:41

so we're going to have to really, really worry

35:43

about this significantly. To

35:46

learn more about previous science

35:48

initiatives mentioned in this conversation,

35:50

please visit the podcast page

35:52

at issues.org. You can

35:54

email us at podcast at issues.org

35:56

with any comments or suggestions, and

35:59

you can subscribe to the. ongoing transformation wherever

36:01

you get your podcasts. Thanks

36:03

to our podcast producer, Kimberly Kwach, and

36:05

audio engineer, Shannon Lynch. I'm

36:08

Lisa Marginelli, editor-in-chief of Issues in Science

36:10

and Technology. Thank you for joining us.

36:16

Hey, it's Emma again. We hope you enjoyed

36:18

this episode of the ongoing transformation. If

36:21

so, there's plenty more where that came from. Listen

36:23

to the show wherever you get your podcasts.