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.”

• 
  

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

Twitter Ads info and privacy

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

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
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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: 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