More often than not, intense publicity does American science and engineering more harm than good. In the short run, talent is attracted and dollars pour in. But in the long run, stagnation and cynicism are too often the result, because what had to be promised in the short run–to generate publicity and money–was more than could be delivered.
One can only hope that President Reagan`s 11-point ”Superconductivity Initiative,” announced July 28, will be the exception; but, unfortunately, it does not smell like one. It springs from the understandable and commendable impulse to make sure other nations, particularly Japan, are not able to translate American achievements in high-temperature superconductivity into a worldwide market dominance.
It is a busy package that includes a relaxation of antitrust laws to make industrial combination easier in the field; stronger patent laws to punish potential foreign competitors who may infringe upon American patents;
modification of the Freedom of Information Act to permit de facto classification of nonmilitary superconductivity information; speedier processing of patent applications; and four new national superconductivity research centers.
The less than reassuring part about the proposal is an apparent lack of recognition of the deeper reasons for the differences between Japanese and American performance at translating scientific achievements into marketable mass production. There is no indication of an understanding of either (1) what a long-term proposition such an initiative would have to be if it were to work or (2) how many other equally important technical situations are going unnoticed because they have not made headlines.
The point consistently ignored about the Japanese is that much of their spectacular economic success of the last decade has followed from subtly interrelated decisions and procedures dating from the 1950s. Many of these were unprofitable and almost invisible for 15 or 20 years. Their programs did not come into being as a result of ad hoc initiatives of high visibility. Nor did they spring from a competitive free-market economy as that term is understood in this country.
It may be argued that the Japanese style of planning is not even possible in the present American style of economy. Japanese planning is collectivist. The mobilization of an entire national economy, including its machinery for encouraging and applying scientific research, is a formidably complex undertaking. It requires a stable, capable bureaucracy, and the voluntary cooperation of nearly every member of society. The time scales for its operations exceed the turnover time for presidents and Cabinet officers, and greatly exceed the congressional budget cycle.
Such a mobilization cannot be managed by a corporation that needs to show quarterly profits to survive. It must be structured sensitively enough that opposing political parties will permit it to exist through long periods of manifest unprofitability. Its policies cannot be formulated by adversary procedures, slick parliamentary moves, 51-49 votes and a clear identification of winners and losers at every decision point. It has no place in its scheme of things for destructive internal fighting, for corporate raiders and hostile takeovers, or for poison pills.
The most convincing thing this administration could do to show its genuine concern about the sagging fortunes of American technical export industries might be to forgo initiatives and crash programs altogether. Only two crash programs have ever really worked: the Manhattan Project and the Apollo program. Perhaps they worked because of the lucky circumstance that the necessary scientific knowledge and their goals had been pretty well thought through before they started.
What might be done instead of intitiatives and crash programs would be to create a Cabinet-level department of scientific and industrial planning. Its tasks could include anticipating not only the spectacular possibilities, such as high-temperature superconductivity, but also more obscure ones (ceramics?
industrial smokes?). It also could begin to study the kinds of industrial policy that are compatible with other American beliefs.
That there might be some structural incompatibility between the purposeful exercise of national economic and technical power and the rights of individuals to manipulate their own resources as they damn well please is, one suspects, a possibility this administration prefers not to think about.
The question is: Can a nation compete effectively with other nations at the same time as its own citizens compete wholeheartedly with each other, particularly if the other nations avoid the more wasteful kinds of internal competition? This question may lie at the heart of the dilemma of American industry, and it may be beyond the reach of publicity-conscious initiatives, however well-intentioned.
