TECHNOCRACY MEETS THE JASONS

Global collaboration of scientists needed to solve polycrisis

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

According to the research authors, a ‘global polycrisis’ occurs when crises in multiple systems interact in ways that greatly magnify their threat to humanity’s well being.

Heightened global interconnectivity and human pressures on planetary boundaries generate increasingly harmful and extensive crisis interactions that make it impossible to solve any one problem alone, findings published in Cambridge University Press journal Global Sustainability reveal.

The polycrisis concept is valuable for understanding the interaction between crises and helping address them.

Researchers have identified five key properties of global systems that help generate polycrises while hampering crisis mitigation: multiple causes, non-linearity, hysteresis, boundary permeability, and “black swan outcomes”.

They also identified five key global systems currently undergoing radical change: the Earth’s environmental system, the global human energy system, the international security system, the global economic system, and the information system.

Tackling the polycrisis

An international group of natural and social scientists from the Cascade Institute, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the Research Institute for Sustainability is calling on scientists from around the world to work together to better understand the growing interconnections between the world’s problems.

The climate crisis and its ties to other global systems show just how urgent that call is. 

Climate change is already threatening food production by altering growing conditions and generating increasingly frequent and severe extreme weather events. The resulting dilemma shows just how entangled our problems have grown. Food production could adapt by deepening its dependence on industrial methods and converting further ecosystems into farmlands, but these strategies will increase greenhouse gas emissions while threatening biodiversity, placing even further stress on food systems. Yet food production will have to expand to reliably feed a still growing human population.

A worldwide transition to renewable energy sources could help reduce agricultural and other emissions, but such a transformation requires immense amounts of cement, plastic, and steel, none of which can yet be produced in the quantities needed without consuming large amounts of fossil fuels.

Lead author of the new research, Dr. Michael Lawrence of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University, said: “The concept of polycrisis highlights several difficult features of contemporary global crises: specifically, that their combined effects are different than those the crises would have separately; they lack single causes and thus have no simple solutions; and they stem, in part, from the dense interconnectivity within and between global systems, which makes them especially difficult to understand and manage. 

“The growing popularity of the term polycrisis indicates that more and more people recognise that the world's problems require new ways of thinking and acting. Orthodox responses are not up to the task. 

“Above all else, the polycrisis concept emphasises that crises interact with one another in highly consequential ways that are grossly underappreciated by academic and policymaking institutions that study those crises individually, in separate silos.”

Looking forward

The researchers made three policy recommendations based on their findings.

• Focus on crisis interactions, not isolated crises.
• Address systems architecture, not just events.
• Exploit high-leverage intervention points.

In considering polycrisis, it is vital to remember that a single, well-formulated solution might ease several crises simultaneously – meaning, it might do multiple good things. A global effort to keep climate heating under 2°C (if not 1.5°C) could limit extreme weather, the disruption of ecosystems, pernicious health effects, and climate-propelled migration, significantly improving humanity’s prospects.

Research co-author, Prof. Ortwin Renn of the Research Institute for Sustainability Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, said: “The complex and interconnected world creates major challenges and problems, but it also provides new opportunities.

“If we are able to understand the key triggers that are responsible for releasing a whole set of interdependent consequences, we may also be able to use them prudently to induce positive changes with many positive repercussions.”

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JOURNAL

Global Sustainability

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Content analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Global Polycrisis: The Causal Mechanisms of Crisis Entanglement

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jan-2024

 

THE PASSING OF A JASON

Steven Weinberg: the passing of science's most intellectual spokesman

As important as his Nobel Prize-winning technical accomplishments was his ability to communicate to the public.

TOM HARTSFIELD

21 August, 2021

Physicist Steven Weinberg, January 28, 2008.

Credit: Larry Murphy / University of Texas at Austin

• Theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg passed away on July 23.
• Due to his heavyweight intellect and unparalleled ability to communicate, he was science's most effective spokesman.
• His passing leaves a void in the world of science communication.

I recently read two Big Think articles (here and here) memorializing Steven Weinberg, who passed away last month. These articles were written by Marcelo Gleiser, a theoretical physicist, and they concern Weinberg's place in that field and its meaningfulness to a practitioner. Weinberg's role in creating the Standard Model and its candidate successor string theory rank him as possibly the greatest theorist of the last 60 years. He was also a giant in another field.

Weinberg was a science communicator — a writer, a speaker, a steady scientific advisor to decades of governments. In other words, he was a rare, true public intellectual. Beyond his Nobel Prize-winning technical accomplishments, he played a big part outside of his specialty: an exceptional spokesman for science.

Weinberg the spokesman

As a PhD student in his physics department — but more interested in science communication than in mathematical theory — I periodically encountered not the towering physicist but the spokesman. Walking along the theory floor I would occasionally see his door open. Men of Weinberg's stature have assistants, regulating the flow of visitors and maintaining a careful schedule. One time, his entire office was open and his assistant had stepped away, so I stuck my nose in. The rows of packed bookshelves were largely obscured. On that random day, a set of silvered umbrellas and stage lights were arranged about, preparing for the filming of some television show.

On film, Weinberg spoke for scientists on many matters: religion, philosophy, history, the meaning of mathematics, the story of everything. Many of these videos are freely available on the internet. These were not scripts for computer-generated movies of black holes. They were interviews and discussions. He professed himself to be "an unreconstructed believer in the importance of the word" despite "the ascendency of the culture of the image."

His book, The First Three Minutes — well before A Brief History of Time or The Elegant Universe — was one of the first books on cosmology written for the layman. Weinberg penned elegant essays on a wide array of topics outside of his research for publications such as The New York Times Book Review and Physics Today. These span astronauts to educated Texans and debates on Whig history to Israel. They have been published in a series of books over the past two decades, forming a style guide for a particular sort of popular science writing — not flashy but careful, intelligent, and clear of thought.

While Weinberg's fame was not as great as other science popularizers of recent decades, his gravitas outweighed them. Weinberg was widely read, carefully considered, and respectful of those with whom he disagreed.

Weinberg the statesman

His spokesmanship extended to government leadership and secret programs. Weinberg was an early member of the JASON advisory group. This body sought to recruit a panel of geniuses to advise U.S. government decision-makers on important matters. JASON's assessments included tactical nuclear weapons, magnetic gun fusion, the SDI ("Star Wars") program, the direction of the U.S. National Laboratories, and laser spacecraft propulsion. Much of this work is still classified

Weinberg as an elder statesman carried an aura. His deep authoritative speaking silenced the room. (When Weinberg came to a talk, the speaker was given a mark of importance and might be visibly intimidated.) We badly need voices like Weinberg's — carefully considered and polymathic — speaking up in our public debates and advising our leadership. His death leaves a void in that world.

• To the very beginning: going back in time with Steven Weinberg ›
• The first three minutes: a tribute to Steven Weinberg - Big Think ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

• Steven Weinberg (1933–2021) ›
• Steven Weinberg - Biographical - NobelPrize.org ›
• Steven Weinberg, Groundbreaking Nobelist in Physics, Dies at 88 

JASON (advisory group) - Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JASON_(advisory_group)

• Overview
• Membership
• Activities
• Chairs
• Early history
• Vietnam War
• Recent history
• Research

JASON members, known informally as "Jasons," include physicists, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, mathematicians, and computer scientists, predominated by theoretical physicists. They are selected by current members, and, over the years, have included eleven Nobel Prize laureates and several dozen members of the United States National Academy of Sciences. All members have a wide range of security clearances that allow them to do their work.

1. The JASON Society & The JASON Group - Red Ice

   https://redice.tv/news/the-jason-society-and-the-jason-group

   2007-06-08 · The Jason Society (Jason Scholars) - Former President Eisenhower commissioned a secret society known as the Jason Society (or Jason Scholars) under the leadership of the following; Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Welsh Dulles, Dr Zbigniew Brzezinski, President of the Trilateral Commission from 1973 until 1976, and Dr. Henry Kissenger, leader of the scientific effort, to sift through all the 

Amazon.com: The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's ...

https://www.amazon.com/Jasons-Secret-History-Sciences-Postwar/dp/...

The Jasons are a well-guarded group of world-class scientists, briefly outed in the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War, who have been meeting every summer since 1960 to tackle classified problems that the Defense Department cannot solve.

Steven Weinberg: probably the greatest theorist of his age

21 Aug 2021 Matin Durrani

Matin Durrani recalls his brushes with the Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg, who died on 23 July 2021 at the age of 88.

A passion for physics: Steven Weinberg at the 2016 March meeting of the American Physical Society in Baltimore, US (Courtesy: Matin Durrani/IOP Publishing)

For reasons I can no longer quite remember, I was once invited to CERN to interview the Nobel-prize-winning theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg. I think Weinberg, who died last month, had travelled to Geneva to lecture on the development of the Standard Model of particle physics, in which he had played a key part, and there was time in his schedule for journalists like me to quiz the great man.

It’s usually the case that the simplest questions reveal the most illuminating answers, but that tactic, with Weinberg, was like asking someone who’d scaled Everest what they thought of the picnic tables at base camp. I was completely out of my depth.

If he was irritated or bored by my remarks, Weinberg was too polite to let it show.

If he was irritated or bored by my remarks, Weinberg was too polite to let it show and he responded with trademark lucidity and insight. He probably felt that anyone seeking a succinct explanation of his thinking should read one of his many books and essays, which set out his ideas precisely as he wanted.

The First Three Minutes remains one of the best popular books about cosmology, while his three-volume The Quantum Theory of Fields was vital for any serious theorist thirsting to make progress on nature’s inner workings.READ MORE

US Nobel-prize-winning physicist Steven Weinberg dies aged 88

Despite some misgivings, I wrote up the interview and e-mailed it to Weinberg to check. He replied pointing out a few errors I’d made near the start – and flatly refused to read it further. I shouldn’t have been surprised, given that Weinberg was used to working largely alone.

Most of his papers were single-authored, including “A model of leptons” (Phys. Rev. Lett. 19 1264), in which he described the unification of the electromagnetic and weak forces. Just three pages long, it led to his Nobel prize, which he shared with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow, and remains one of the most highly cited papers of all time.

Weinberg’s approach was atypical in a world where thousands routinely collaborate – as they did, for example, to generate the first image of a black hole. But that’s not to say that Weinberg was a loner or curmudgeon. He enjoyed the arts and had a keen interest in the history of science, as I witnessed firsthand (see photo) at a session of the 2016 March meeting of the American Physical Society (APS), organized by Physics World columnist Robert Crease.READ MORE

A trip through Weinberg’s world

Speaking in the wake of his book To Explain the World, which outlined the development of the scientific method, Weinberg reminded delegates at the APS that he was unashamedly a “Whig historian”. The notion that we can only understand the past from the present enraged historians, but Weinberg’s position was at least clear and honest.

He defended his stance in a letter to Physics World a few months later, saying that René Descartes, for example, was flawed not because of his scientific errors but his “mistaken self-confidence” in his method for seeking truth. After all, as he wryly noted, “All scientists make scientific errors – even me.”

I just wish he’d corrected mine.


Matin Durrani is editor-in-chief of Physics World magazine

The Jasons: The Secret History of Science's Postwar Elite

Working in secrecy to solve highly classified problems for the Department of Defense, CIA, and NSA is an elite group of scientific advisors who provide the government with analyses on defense and arms control and they call themselves Jason. Named for the hero in Jason and the Argonauts, the group grew out of the Manhattan Project and counts as its members scientists such as Freeman Dyson and Murray Gell-Mann. Of the roughly one hundred Jasons over time, 43 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, eight have won MacArthur awards, one a Field's Medal, and 11 have won Nobel Prizes. Its members have gathered every summer since 1960, working in absolute secrecy and with unparalleled freedom.

The Jasons' work poses vital questions: what role should the government play in scientific research? At what point is the inventor accountable for the hazards of the invention?

SEE: https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=JASONS

The Jasons: The Secret History of the Science's Postwar Elite PART II

The Jasons: The Secret History of the Science's Postwar Elite , ANN FINKBEINER , Viking, New York, 2006. $27.95 (304 pp.). ISBN 0-670-03489-4 Buy at Amazon
Physics Today 59, 10, 63 (2006); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.238708

Ann Finkbeiner’s The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite is an excellent book that not only thoughtfully recites the history of the JASON group but also identifies the conflict of values faced to this day by physicists who become involved in national security affairs while at the same time they try to preserve their independence. The subtitle of the book, however, is misleading: The author relates a great deal of detailed information without breaking any “secrets.” JASON members are generally less than eager to talk about their association and work with the group, and the majority of JASON reports are classified. Finkbeiner recounts some of the critical events without completing the story, which is more in deference to the wishes of those she interviewed during the process of generating her book than it is to maintaining secrecy.


During World War II, US physicists demonstrated that they could get things done if they were well supported but not directed by the federal government; accomplishments include developments in nuclear energy and weapons, radar, and rockets. Subsequently, most physicists involved in the war effort returned to their academic pursuits after the war ended. In an unorganized way, several of them continued to consult with government or industry on military matters, and some rotated between academia and industry. After Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957, the government promoted science advice to the presidential level and made a commitment to revitalize American science. Physicists themselves, mainly under the leadership of John A. Wheeler, attempted to create a full-time organization for military research, but their endeavors inspired little enthusiasm.


Separately, a small group, principally Marvin “Murph” Goldberger, Ken Watson, and Keith Brueckner, proposed to establish the JASON group to pursue national security work compatible with full-time academic duties. The name JASON, inspired by the Greek mythological hero who led the Argonauts in the search for the Golden Fleece, was suggested by Goldberger’s wife. The group was supported by Charles Townes, who at the time headed the Institute for Defense Analyses. In turn, IDA was supported by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which was under the leadership of Herbert York and reported to the newly created Directorate of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E) at the Pentagon. The entire lineup of JASON and the research agencies was populated by physicists who had been colleagues on the Manhattan Project. The contractor handling the administrative work, such as travel, security, and financial matters, shifted from IDA to SRI International to the MITRE Corporation.


JASON members have had a love–hate relationship with ARPA and its successor, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Incoming heads of the agency generally resented the independence of JASON, but Finkbeiner reports that after some experience, each director recognized that the value generated by the JASONs exceeded their “nuisance.” The matter came to a climax under the administration of President George W. Bush, when in 2001 the incoming head of DARPA, Anthony Tether, demanded that JASON add to its ranks two nonacademics and one academic prescribed by the administration. Traditionally, members had been selected by the JASON steering committee; thus the JASONs objected to the administration’s plans, and DARPA cancelled their contract. However, the contract was later reinstated by DDR&E through a process not recounted by the author in polite deference to the administration.


During its history JASON made many technical contributions to military research, in addition to serving as a reviewer of frequently dubious initiatives from the military establishment. It made the concept of adaptive optics practical by proposing the use of a laser-generated, artificial guide star. JASON showed that ceasing nuclear tests of any nuclear yield would not harm security any more than permitting very small undetectable nuclear explosions. The work of JASON also diversified to include engineering, oceanography, climatology, computerand information sciences, and more recently biological issues with security implications.


The most controversial JASON contribution, which was developed during the Vietnam War, was the electronic barrier, whose origin and final demise is ably described in Finkbeiner’s book. The barrier required US sensors to be airdropped along potential infiltration routes. The goal of the sensors was to detect infiltrators on those routes for the US to bomb, thus discouraging the incursion of North Vietnamese troops along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. A JASON study had shown that the bombing campaigns in Vietnam were ineffective. The barrier was intended to decrease the level of violence, but it was never fully deployed. The instruments were instead diverted by the US Air Force to relieve the siege of Khe Sanh and assist the continued bombing campaign. The role of the JASONs in originating the electronic barrier became public and—notwithstanding their constructive intent—led to extensive protests, some of which were quite ugly, against JASON members on their home campuses.


The episode illustrates the tensions inherent in having academic physicists engage in military research. I believe that most JASON members, in conformance with the views of most fellow academics, are for arms control at heart and basically strive for a de-emphasis of violence as a means for settling international conflicts. At the same time, they make their skills available to the military establishment as independent scientists, maintaining with merit that the objective analyses will lead to more rationality in the military arena. The military is well aware of the basic outlook of most JASONs but appreciates their talents and objectivity.


To demonstrate JASON’s dilemma, Finkbeiner cites the well-known anecdote about three people, one of whom is a physicist, sentenced to death by guillotine. During the first two attempted executions, the blade gets stuck, and the two are freed. But the physicist takes a look at the guillotine and says, “I think I can tell you what’s wrong with it.” The correspondence to JASON’s activities may not be too remote.


Today, independent scientific advice on national security has largely been eliminated in the top levels of government. Thus the independence of outsiders who operate on the inside, like the JASONs, is a unique asset today in the national security arena. This fact is duly noted and documented in Finkbeiner's very readable book.

ROBOTS
|
By Ben Sullivan
|
Jan 19 2017, 10:45am
Elite Scientists Have Told the Pentagon That AI Won't Threaten Humanity

JASON advisory group says Elon Musk’s singularity warnings are unfounded, but a focus on AI for the Dept. of Defense is integral.

A new report authored by a group of independent US scientists advising the US Dept. of Defense (DoD) on artificial intelligence (AI) claims that perceived existential threats to humanity posed by the technology, such as drones seen by the public as killer robots, are at best "uninformed".

Still, the scientists acknowledge that AI will be integral to most future DoD systems and platforms, but AI that could act like a human "is at most a small part of AI's relevance to the DoD mission". Instead, a key application area of AI for the DoD is in augmenting human performance.

Perspectives on Research in Artificial Intelligence and Artificial General Intelligence Relevant to DoD, first reported by Steven Aftergood at the Federation of American Scientists, has been researched and written by scientists belonging to JASON, thehistorically secretive organization that counsels the US government on scientific matters.

Outlining the potential use cases of AI for the DoD, the JASON scientists make sure to point out that the growing public suspicion of AI is "not always based on fact", especially when it comes to military technologies. Highlighting SpaceX boss Elon Musk's opinion that AI "is our biggest existential threat" as an example of this, the report argues that these purported threats "do not align with the most rapidly advancing current research directions of AI as a field, but rather spring from dire predictions about one small area of research within AI, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)".



A USAF Global Hawk UAV rests in its hangar on the flightline of this desert base. Image: Tech. Sgt. Mike Hammond/U.S. Air Force/U.S. Air Force

AGI, as the report describes, is the pursuit of developing machines that are capable of long-term decision making and intent, i.e. thinking and acting like a real human. "On account of this specific goal, AGI has high visibility, disproportionate to its size or present level of success," the researchers say.

Motherboard reached out to the MITRE Corporation, the non-profit organisation JASON's reports are run through, as well as Richard Potember, a scientist listed on the report, but neither responded to emails before this article was published. A spokesperson for the Defense Department told Motherboard in an email, "DoD relies on the technical insights provided by the JASONs to complement DoD's internal assessments as we set our strategic direction. All reports and recommendations are read and carefully considered in this context as we make investment decisions for research initiatives and future programs of record."


In an email on Thursday, Aftergood told Motherboard, "JASON reports are purely advisory. They do not set policy or determine DoD choices. On the other hand, they are highly valued, very informative and often influential. The reports are prepared only because DoD asks for them and is prepared to pay for them."

Aftergood said that JASON reports act as a "reality check" for Pentagon officials, helping them decide what's real and what's in the realm of possibility.

In recent years, the purported malicious intent of artificial intelligence is an idea that has flourished in the media, compounded by much more realistic fears of entire employment sectors being replaced by robots. This issue is not helped by the conflation of robotics and AI by some media outlets and even politicians, as illustrated last week by a debate among members of the European Parliament on whether robots should attain legal status as persons.

Highly publicized recent AI victories against humans, such as Google's AlphaGo win, don't illustrate any breakthrough in general machine cognition, the report argues. Instead, these wins rely on Deep Learning processes on Deep Neural Networks (DNNs)—processes that can be trained to generate an appropriate output in response to an input. Think a dog sitting to your command, rather than a dog knowing to sit itself.

"The two main approaches to AI are nothing like how humans must live and learn,"


Andrew Owen Martin, senior technical analyst at the Tungsten Network, a collaborative team consisting of math, AI, and computer science experts, and secretary of The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour (AISB), agrees with the JASON report, arguing that the public's and other high-profile technologists' fear of existential threats is overblown.

"Any part of human experience that's at all interesting is too poorly defined to be described in either of the two main methods AI researchers have," he tells Motherboard. "The implication here is that the two main approaches to AI are nothing like how humans must live and learn, and hence there's no reason to assume they will ever achieve what human learning can."

Nevertheless, AGI is recognised by the JASON scientists as being somewhat pertinent in the DoD's future, but only if it were to make substantial progress. "That AI and—if it were to advance significantly—AGI are of importance to DoD is so self-evident that it needs little elucidation here," reads the report. "Weapons systems and platforms with varying degrees of autonomy exist today in all domains of modern warfare, including air, sea (surface and underwater), and ground."

Northrop Grumman's X-47B uncrewed bomber is given as one example, and DARPA'sACTUV submarine hunter is given as another. Systems like these could no doubt be improved by enhanced artificial intelligence, but the scientists note that while these systems have some degrees of autonomy, they are in "no sense a step…towards 'autonomy' in the sense of AGI". Instead, AI is used to augment human operators, such as flying to pre-determined locations without the need for a human piloting the systems.



DARPA's ACTUV uncrewed submarine tracker. Image: DARPA

Yet, while not categorically autonomous, AI-augmented weapon systems are obviously are still pain points for opponents of their use in military scenarios. Max Tegmark, cosmologist and co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, a think tank established to support research into safeguarding the future of human life, tells Motherboard that he agrees with JASON's view that existential threats are unlikely in the near term. However, Tegmark believes the imminent issue of autonomous weapons is "crucial".

"All responsible nations will be better off if an international treaty can prevent an arms race in lethal autonomous weapons, which would ultimately proliferate and empower terrorists and other unscrupulous non-state actors," he says.


So human-like autonomy is still a long way off, if not impossible, and the goalposts keeps moving too, according to JASON. "The boundary between existing AI and hoped-for AGI keeps being shifted by AI successes, and will continue to be," say the scientists. Even military applications for technologies such as self-driving tanks may be at least a decade off. Discussing the progress of self-driving cars by civilian companies such as Google, the JASON scientists conclude, "going down this path will require at least a decade of challenging work. The work on self-driving cars has consumed substantial resources. After millions of hours of on-road experiments and training, performance is only now becoming acceptable in benign environments. Acceptability here refers to civilian standards of safety and trust; for military use the standards might be somewhat laxer, but the performance requirements would likely be tougher."


This article must be concluded, however, with the looming caveat that the entire JASON report is based on upon unclassified research. "The study looks at AI research at the '6.1' level (that is, unclassified basic research)," say the scientists. "We were not briefed on any DoD developmental efforts or programs of record. All briefings to JASON were unclassified, and were largely from the academic community."


Could America's military be working on top-secret artificial general intelligence programs years ahead of those known about in the public sphere? Probably not, ponders Martin. "AGI isn't around the corner, it's not even possible. I don't mean that it's 'too difficult' like 'man will never fly' or 'man will never land on the moon', I'm saying it's hopelessly misguided like 'man will never dig a tunnel to the moon'."


Update 01/23/17: This article has been updated to include a statement from the Department of Defense.




ALSO SEE
JASONS PART I

THE MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX (MIC)
AND THE PERMANENT ARMS ECONOMY TODAY

THE JASONS PART I Pentagon Cancels Contract for JASON Advisory Panel
Posted on Apr.10, 2019 in Dept of Defense, Science by Steven Aftergood
Updated below

In a startling blow to the system of independent science and technology advice, the Department of Defense decided not to renew its support for the JASON defense science advisory panel, it was disclosed yesterday.

“Were you aware that [the JASON contract] has been summarily terminated by the Pentagon?”

That was one of the first questions asked by Rep. Jim Cooper, chair of the House Armed Services Committee Strategic Forces Subcommittee, at a hearing yesterday (at about 40’20”).

NNSA Administrator Lisa Gordon-Hagerty replied that she was aware that the Pentagon had taken some action, and said that she had asked her staff to find out more. She noted that NNSA has an interest in maintaining the viability of the JASON panel, particularly since “We do have some ongoing studies with JASON.”

In fact, JASON performs technical studies for many agencies inside and outside of the national security bureaucracy and it is highly regarded for the quality of its work.

So why is the Pentagon threatening its future?

Even to insiders, the DoD’s thought process is obscure and uncertain.

“To understand it you first have to understand the existing contract structure,” one official said. “This is a bit arcane, but MITRE currently has an Indefinite Delivery / Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract with the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), the purpose of which is to manage and operate the JASON effort. However, you don’t actually do anything with an IDIQ contract; rather, the purpose of the IDIQ contract [is to] have Task Orders (TO’s) placed on it. These TO’s are essentially mini-contracts in and of themselves, and all the actual work is performed according to the TO’s. This structure allows any government agency to commission a JASON study; conceptually, all you need to do is just open another TO for that study. (The reality is slightly more complicated, but that’s the basic idea).”

“The underlying IDIQ contract has a 5-year period of performance, which just expired on March 31. Last November, OSD started the process of letting a new 5-year IDIQ contract with essentially the same structure so that the cycle could continue. They decided to compete the contract, solicited bids, and were going to announce the contract award in mid-March. Instead, what happened is that about two weeks ago (March 28, two days before the expiration of the existing IDIQ contract) they announced that they were canceling the solicitation and would not be awarding another contract at all. Instead, they offered to award a single contract for a single study without the IDIQ structure that allows other agencies to commission studies.”

But “I do not know the reason” for the cancellation, the official said.

And so far, those who do know are not talking. The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Research and Engineering) “would not answer any questions or discuss the matter in any way whatsoever.”

The news was first reported in “Storied Jason science advisory group loses contract with Pentagon” by Jeffrey Mervis and Ann Finkbeiner in Science magazine, and was first noticed by Stephen Young.

The JASON panel has performed studies (many of which are classified) for federal agencies including the National Nuclear Security Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, as well as the Census Bureau and the Department of Health and Human Services.

Lately, the Department of Agriculture denied a Freedom of Information Act request for a copy of a 2016 JASON report that it had sponsored entitled “New Techniques for Evaluating Crop Production.” The unclassified report is exempt from disclosure under the deliberative process privilege, USDA lawyers said. That denial is under appeal.

The Pentagon move to cancel the JASON contract appears to be part of a larger trend by federal agencies to limit independent scientific and technical advice. As noted by Rep. Cooper at yesterday’s hearing, the Navy also lately terminated its longstanding Naval Research Advisory Committee.

Update, 4/25/19: National Public Radio and Defense News reported that the National Nuclear Security Administration has posted a solicitation to take over the JASON contract from the Department of Defense.
https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2019/04/pentagon-jason/

Pentagon's Independent Science Research Group, the Jasons, Is Set to Disband After 59 Years

Matt Novak 

4/25/19 11:15am
Filed to: JASONS

An aerial view of the Pentagon in the mid-1960s

Photo: Brian Parker/U.S. Military

The Jason Group, an independent panel of academics who have advised the Pentagon for the past 59 years, will likely disband on April 30. The group had hoped to get a one-year extension to continue its work.

The Jasons was founded in 1960 as a scientific advisory panel that helped the Pentagon solve some of the most complex problems facing the U.S. military. The early days of the Jasons focused primarily on physics problems, but over the last six decades, the panel’s roughly 50 members have expanded their research to include studies on topics like artificial intelligence, health care, and climate change.

The Jason contract is managed by the MITRE Corporation, which allowed the group’s contract with the Department of Defense to expire on March 31, 2019. The Jasons advise other agencies like the Department of Energy, but without MITRE’s sponsorship, the group will have to dissolve completely and end all current studies for the DOE and other agencies by April 30.

“The department has determined that the requirements previously supported through JASON National Security Research Studies have changed and that the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, Research and Engineering will require only one study, rather than multiple studies, as projected under the previous solicitation,” Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb told Gizmodo via email. “Because our requirements have changed, the DOD does not anticipate issuing a follow-on Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ).”

That means that the next meeting of the Jasons will likely be their last. And the group’s snacks won’t even be paid for during their farewell, according to one member.

“There is a very real chance that the Jason advisory group will effectively be disbanded shortly after the spring meeting, under circumstances that will make its recovery unlikely,” Ellen Williams, vice chair of the Jasons, told Science magazine in an article published on Wednesday. “This is despite the indication of intent at high levels across the U.S. government to resolve the present situation by extending the Jason contract for 1 year.”

The Jasons were formerly sponsored by Darpa and had a near-death experience back in 2002 when the group was pushed out by then-Darpa director Tony Tether. But the group found a new sponsor with the MITRE Corporation that allowed the panel to continue its work.

Journalist Ann Finkbeiner’s 2006 book The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Postwar Elite, details the storied history of the organization, including some of its most controversial work done during the Vietnam War. But despite previous controversies, the Jasons were widely regarded as a much-needed independent voice that could speak freely with the Pentagon when other advisors might just tell U.S. military leaders what they wanted to hear. That adversarial voice was sometimes criticized by the military establishment as a hippie mindset.

“The Jasons were, and I don’t mean to be insulting to them, but let’s just say peaceniks,” former Darpa director of the 1970s Steve Lukasik told me in 2015 for a story about the use of computers during the Vietnam War.

Some Fellow researchers in other areas of government see the disbanding of the Jasons as a mistake. Nickolas Roth, who studies nuclear policy at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, told Gizmodo earlier this month that losing the Jasons would be “profoundly misguided” and a “significant loss” of expert voices that are needed right now.

But it looks like this is the end for the Jasons and their 60-year history of independent research. And the military is doing its best to position this as a simple way to save money

“The department remains committed to seeking independent technical advice and review,” Pentagon spokeswoman Heather Babb told Gizmodo. “This change is in keeping with this commitment while making the most economic sense for the department, and it is in line with our efforts to gain full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense.”

Perhaps the Pentagon should become acquainted with the phrase, “penny wise, pound foolish.”

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Call it “The Jason Mystery.” No, not Jason Bourne, Matt Damon’s tortured cinematic assassin. This would be Jason, the independent but less-than-widely known group of top-level experts that has long studied security-related science and technology matters for the US Defense and Energy departments and the intelligence community.

Science reported this week that the Defense Department has told the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit that manages the Jason contract with Defense, to “close up shop by April 30.” Begun in the 1950s and named for the Golden Fleece-seeking character of Greek mythology, the Jasons (as they sometimes are referenced) have over five decades produced a wide variety of classified and unclassified reports on thorny security issues, from the state of the US nuclear deterrent to ways that carbon dioxide emissions might be measured for climate treaty purposes. (The Federation of American Scientists has an interesting selection of non-classified Jason studies here.)

So far, I have seen no official explanation for the Jason contract cancellation, which was met with Twitter blasts of exasperation from experts who know the value of Jason research.

Stephen Young@StephenUCS

BREAKING NEWS!! Just confirmed by Hill staff: Pentagon has terminated the contract of JASON, the independent science advisory group that Congress & the public rely on for assessment of many technical issues. This is a travesty & will lead to more ill-informed, bad government.

8,149

3:45 PM - Apr 9, 2019

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Hans Kristensen

✔@nukestrat

Extraordinary stupid and self-defeating decision. JASON has been invaluable over the decades to provide science-focused analysis and recommendations on defense programs. Without that, DOD and Congress will have difficult time making sound decisions.

Perhaps that’s the point...

Stephen Young@StephenUCS

BREAKING NEWS!! Just confirmed by Hill staff: Pentagon has terminated the contract of JASON, the independent science advisory group that Congress & the public rely on for assessment of many technical issues. This is a travesty & will lead to more ill-informed, bad government.

The import of the end of the Jasons’ Defense contract is perhaps best summarized by a few paragraphs from a New York Times review of science writer Ann Finkbeiner’s book, The Jasons: The Secret History of Science’s Post-war Elite.

Jason (the term refers both to the group as a whole and to individual members) was conceived in the late 1950’s, when the physicist John Wheeler proposed assembling a few dozen top academic scientists to give the government no-holds-barred advice. In 1960 the group began gathering each June and July in various locations. Physics was still riding the wave of prestige generated by the Manhattan Project, and all the original Jasons were physicists. …

Those who eventually enlisted included giants like [Freeman] Dyson, Murph Goldberger and the future Nobel laureates Steven Weinberg, Val Fitch, Charles Townes, Murray Gell-Mann and Leon Lederman. Some of their motives, like serving their country and reducing the threat of nuclear war, were altruistic. Others were less so: becoming an insider with access to secret information; finding “sweet” solutions to technical puzzles (to borrow Robert Oppenheimer’s description of the Manhattan Project); and getting paid ($850 per diem today).

The Jasons interviewed take pride in some of their accomplishments. They have excelled at “lemon detection,” finding the flaws in ideas like “dense pack” nuclear-missile sites, which one Jason, Sid Drell, called “dunce pack.” In the 1980s, Jason helped establish a Department of Energy program to improve the accuracy of climate models. In 1996 Bill Clinton signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, in part because Jason had concluded that tests were no longer needed to ensure the viability of America’s nuclear arsenal.

The Jasons certainly have been fallible. Some of the group’s Vietnam-era studies (including one on the potential use of tactical nuclear weapons) were excoriated on ethical grounds, a judgment with which even some of the scientists involved later came to agree. Even so, a decision that could mark an end to the Jason era of unblinkered expert advice to America’s security services would seem to call for public discussion, and perhaps even congressional inquiry.

Publication Name: Science