Taking Risks and Innovating Along the Way with Al Romig

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Welcome to AMSEcast, coming to you from Oak Ridge, Tennessee,

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a global leader in science, technology, and innovation.

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My name is Alan Lowe, director of the American Museum

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of Science and Energy, and the K-25 History Center.

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Each episode of AMSEcast presents world-renowned authors,

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scientists, historians, policymakers, and everyone in between,

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sharing their insights on a variety of fascinating topics.

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Welcome to a special edition of AMSEcast as

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we celebrate 250 years of American innovation.

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With much appreciated support from the Institute for Museum

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and Library Services, or IMLS, we’re undertaking a series

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of AMSEcast interviews focusing on American innovations as

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part of our commemoration of our nation’s semiquincentennial.

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On this episode, being recorded at the National Academy of Sciences Building in

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Washington, DC, I’m very honored to be joined by Dr. Alton D. Romig, Jr. With

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his BS, MS, and PhD in materials science and engineering from Lehigh University.

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Al has had a truly exceptional career,

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full of more awards than I can list today.

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Most recently, for example, the 2024 IEEE McClure Citation of Honor for

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engineering leadership, and more positions than I can include today,

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but they’ve included leadership roles at Sandia National Lab, service

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as vice president and general manager of Lockheed Martin’s Advanced

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Development Programs, better known to all of us as the famous Skunk Works.

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And currently, Al serves as Executive Officer

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of the National Academy of Engineering.

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Al, it’s a real honor to speak with you.

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Welcome to AMSEcast.

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Well, thank you so much for hosting me.

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I really also want to thank our mutual friend and colleague, Guru Madhavan.

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Guru has been so good to AMSE, and to our mission there,

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and we really appreciate him connecting us with you today.

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So, I want to start back at Sandia.

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You know, we work a lot at AMSE and K-25 with our good

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friends at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and we know you

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spent time at Sandia, really an amazing place as well.

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A lot of innovation there, particularly in the fields of national security.

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From your time at Sandia, what can you note as some of that

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lab’s most significant innovative contributions to our nation?

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And can you perhaps also comment on the more general role of national

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labs in spurring innovation in the public and private sectors?

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In the case of Sandia, it’s really useful to

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think about the history of the laboratory.

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It was actually born in 1943 as the ordinance

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division in Los Alamos, during the Manhattan Project.

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Part of the group was in Los Alamos, Part of it was at the Wendover field

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in Utah, and towards the end of the war, during the summer of 1945, the

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organization moved towards Albuquerque, New Mexico, and was part of Los Alamos

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until 1949, when the government made the decision that nuclear weapons were

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going to be part of the future defense portfolio, if you will, of the United

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States, which was going to mean some quite fundamental changes in how weapons

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were designed, and manufactured, and put into the hands of the military.

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So, in 1949 the laboratory was spun out of Los Alamos and was

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taken over under contract by AT&T, Bell Labs, and Western Electric,

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and they actually held the contract until 1993, when it went

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to Lockheed Martin, and now recently it’s gone to Honeywell.

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So interestingly, it’s the one laboratory that’s actually had

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industrial leadership for the entire life of its existence,

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which is unique amongst all the national laboratories.

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But I think if you go back and look at that very reason why the laboratory was

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created in the first place, one of the issues was, to use the terminology and

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jargon of the day, is they wanted to create what they called a wooden bomb.

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If you look at the weapons, Fat Man and the Little Boy

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that were used in World War II, they were really quite

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specialized gadgets, as the term was used at the time.

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And as a matter of fact, it actually took an engineer on board

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the bomber to arm the planes in flight, and certainly that

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was not going to be a suitable thing if you wanted to include

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nuclear deterrence as a way to deter aggression around the world.

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And that meant redesigning and manufacturing the bombs in such a way that they

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could actually be put into storage, and taken out and used as a way to, quite

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frankly, coerce an adversary into not starting trouble in the first place.

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And so, this notion of having wooden bombs and developing the Mark 4 weapon, as

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it was called at the time, was really at the heart of what made Sandia a tick.

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So, I think the first great innovation that it had was taking

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the nuclear weapon from being a bomb that was really a laboratory

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gadget, and making it into something that actually had a

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proper slot, if you will, in the nation’s arsenal of defense.

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You know, as that went along, it was clear that things like electronics

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were going to be a lot more important to how these weapons worked.

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Along the way, in the late-1950s, one of the engineers at the laboratory by

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the name of Willis Whitfield invented the laminar-flow clean room, which, of

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course, is so predominant today in the manufacture of electronics, and, of

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course, in pharmaceuticals, and even cases of orthopedic surgery, it’s now used.

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But that was a creation that was done in 1959.

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The laboratory held the patent for it.

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And back in those days, it was long before the notion of tech transfer

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had entered the jargon or the lexicon of the laboratories, and so the

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license was actually, it was licensed for free to anybody who wanted

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it, but the only restriction mean that the laboratory and the weapons

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complex could continue to use it, which in fact, it has to this day.

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And then during my tenure at the laboratory, one of the things

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that we created was a facility called MESA, which is an advanced

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facility for advanced micro systems and micro electronics,

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which still, in fact, makes use of that clean room technology.

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So, I think the wooden bomb and the laminar-flow clean

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room are two of the things from earlier in its history.

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One that came along when I was just starting my career, I hired in 1979,

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and this is something I worked on in 1980 and ’81, was something called

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SWERVE, which was the Sandia Winged Energetic Re-entry experiment.

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It was a guideable hypersonic vehicle that was, in fact, designed and intended

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to be used as a way to make a maneuverable nuclear warhead at the time.

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It was done under the Advanced Development Program.

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It was done, it was flown to prove that it worked, and it was put

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on the shelf, but in fact, when people talk about our adversaries

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having flown hypersonic weapons, we flew the first one in 1981.

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And then it got parked on the shelf.

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And if you look at some of the ones that are about

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to be deployed by our own DOD, they are evolutions at

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that design that came out of Sandia in the early-1980s.

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I think if I look at one of the other things that came along during

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my tenure was the creation of what we called Intelligent Integrated

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Microsystems where we began combining silicon microelectronics memories,

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and microprocessors, along with laser or RF communications devices, MEMS

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devices, and so forth, all in a single chip or small multi-chip module.

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And I think one other thing that I’m really quite proud of that

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happened during my tenure, and continued after I had gone to the

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Skunk Works, where the activities in creating all the architecture

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today that we know as parallel computing, which has been such a major

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advance in how we can do things computationally in terms of modeling

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and simulation nowadays, oftentimes called the use of digital twins.

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We built the first cluster machine, in fact, using that architecture

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with Dell computers back in the late-’90s or thereabouts.

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I might be off a bit on the time of it.

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But there’s just been sort of one incident

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after another that every few years out it comes.

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And although the engineers have come and gone, just because

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of age, the leaders have come and gone, the basic ethos of

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innovation that exists in the laboratory persists to this day.

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I just recently completed a term on the revisiting committees,

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actually, for material science and engineering, it’s quite clear that

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the whole notion of sort of this pipeline of innovation has continued

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now for almost 80 years, from 1943 or certainly ’49, depending on

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how you want to start the clock running, and still exists today.

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So, I think if you look at what national labs in general can do, you

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know, most private companies, it’s very hard for them to make bets and

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investments for things that have time rises beyond maybe a few years.

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Universities tend to do things that have very long time frames, and they

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can build small prototypes, but there’s this so called—often called—Valley

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of Death that sits between the very basic research and the final product.

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The laboratories, in fact, most of them, and if you take a look across

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the spectrum the labs, some are more towards the engineering spectrum,

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some are more towards the basic science spectrum, but across the broad

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suite, they’re very good at actually trying to nurture technology across

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that, and the government and its investments have the patience to do so.

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And so, I think one of the things that happened in the late-’80s and

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early-’90s, with the rise of tech transfer, licensing [unintelligible]

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, and so forth, was an attempt to have the university, industrial, and

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national laboratory communities work together to bridge this Valley

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of Death and more quickly and more efficiently and more effectively

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take technology out of the laboratory and put it into production for

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products, whether it’s for the government or for the commercial sector.

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Truly a remarkable record.

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I was wondering, as you were saying that, when you were at Sandia,

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and we’ll talk about this more with your other positions, how do you

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encourage that among the people working there, that ethos of innovation?

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Of thinking of new, of thinking of better how

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is that instilled into the workforce at the lab?

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Well, you know, it’s interesting because the same thing that I’m about

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to say would apply to a place like the Skunk Works, that if you look

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at the times when they were created—and I’ll get into this maybe a

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little bit later in the dialog—but at the times that they were created,

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innovation was critical to what created them, and that created a culture.

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And what we’ve been fortunate in it happening is that culture that

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encouraged risk-taking, but prudent risk-taking, it’s okay if things

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fail, if you learned from it, but by the time you’re done, you come up

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with a version of it that, in fact, is as good or better than it was than

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originally maybe you had thought that it would be, and then not to break it.

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So, you need to encourage people to take chances,

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and you need to give them the resources to do that.

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Now, that doesn’t mean you just throw money all over the place.

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It’s got to be prudent investments.

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You’ve got to manage it, you’ve got to nurture it through some kind of a

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gating process as it evolves, but I think right now, for laboratories like a

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Sandia, Los Alamos, Livermore, and Oak Ridge, a place like the Skunk Works,

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and Apple, et cetera, these cultures, they’re there, and so it’s now really

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incumbent upon the management not to break what’s been created over time.

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Let’s go to Skunk Works.

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When was that created?

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Under what circumstances was Skunk Works created?

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Well, the Skunk Works sort of had its pre-season, if you will, in the

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late-1930s when the government asked for a fighter that could exceed,

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actually, they said 360 miles an hour, but in essence, 400 miles an hour.

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And there was a brilliant young engineer at the conference by the

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name of Clarence Johnson—who went by Kelly, so Kelly Johnson—brilliant

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designer, had gotten hired out of a master’s degree from the University

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of Michigan, went to Lockheed at the time, it was long prior to a

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merger that led to Lockheed Martin, but went to Lockheed at the time.

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Actually was looking at a design for a twin engine

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transport slash potential bomber, later called the Hudson,

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that he thought was not particularly stable in flight.

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He put it into a wind tunnel, showed that it wasn’t stable in flight, and

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then went along to making giant design changes to correct those issues.

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He did this all as a very, very young engineer in his 20s, I think it was.

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So, he had risen to the top of being sort of the creative genius, if you

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will, of aircraft designer of his day, in fact, probably is still the

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greatest aircraft designer the country, if not the world, has ever seen.

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And so, by the time the late-1930s came along, he was put

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in charge of trying to create this fighter, and it led to

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what was eventually the creation of the P-38 Lightning.

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It was the only fighter during World War II that was produced during the

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entire length of the war, from 1938 to sometime after the end of the war.

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And the way he did it is he gathered up the best engineers at

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Lockheed, moved them off into the remote area of the work site in

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Burbank, California, where they proceeded to build this aircraft that

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was then later accepted by the Army Air Corps, and off they went.

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And then the group disbanded.

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It was gone.

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Well, Then in 1943, we began to get evidence that the Germans

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were about to field the Me 262, the world’s first jet fighter.

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And the word went out, we need to be able to do the same.

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And there was an initial contract that led—with Bell aerospace—to build

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something called the X-39 that demonstrated you can make an airplane

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fly, but it certainly didn’t have the characteristics of the fighter.

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But then the call went out for a fighters, and the call came to Lockheed again.

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And this time, Lockheed drafted Kelly Johnson again to put together a team,

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which he did, to create the P-80, which was the first operational jet fighter.

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And when he did it, the plant was so busy building

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aircraft for the war, there was no room for him.

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So, he went out and rented a circus tent, and put it at

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the very periphery of the Burbank Airport on Lockheed land.

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Put up this circus tent.

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So, you got a classified circus tent, and inside he had a little

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over a hundred engineers, and procurement officials, and so

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forth, and technicians, designing and building this airplane.

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It was called Advanced Development Projects at the time.

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And it just so happens across the street, there was a factory that

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made plastics that smelled really bad, and at the same time, there

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was also a comic strip that was being written that—Li’l Abner—that

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had a very smelly backwood still called Skonk Works with an O in it.

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And so, people began making the association.

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And one of the engineers there, an individual by the name of Irv

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Culver, took to answering the phone, “Skunk Works, your man, Culver

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here.” Of course, Kelly didn’t like it, but it was one of the few

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times in his life where his hundred employees said, “Too bad Kelly.

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We’re going to use it.” And it stuck.

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At the end of the war, it turns out there was a copyright issue with

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the—or a trademark issue—with the term Skonk Works, and it flipped

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to Skonk Works, and the name was trademarked, and the little image

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drawn that you see in the skonk today, and it’s persisted ever since.

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If you’ve never read it, there was a book written by Kelly’s

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successor, an individual named Ben Rich, who led the Skunk

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Works from 1975 until 1990, it’s just simply called Skunk Works.

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But it’s a delightful read and really quite accurate

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in terms of capturing the culture of the organization.

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And then through time, of course, whether it was the U-2, the high

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flying spy plane, or the SR-71 you know, the Blackbird, which is

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a very exciting plane, and more recently, the F-22 and the F-35.

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One of the projects that we started, just as I was leaving and

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retiring, was something called the X-59 which is a regional jet-sized

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supersonic aircraft being built for NASA that I like to describe

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really as much of a sociology experiment as an aeronautics experiment.

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The airplane is shaped in such a way that rather than having

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a sharp sonic boom, like most of us might be used to or had

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heard before, it produces a rumble more like distant thunder.

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And the idea—it should fly sometime, very soon,

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sometime later next spring, I would think.

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It got derailed a bit by the whole Covid event

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and people being able to work together on it.

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But in any case, once NASA takes possession of the airplane, the

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plan is to fly it around cities and monitor how crowds react to it.

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Another very exciting thing that we did when I was there was, came out

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with a released design for a successor to the SR-71 called the SR-72,

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which was a mock five-and-a-half or thereabouts, air-breathing aircraft.

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And in fact, it is the inspiration behind the airplane

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that’s in the opening scenes of Maverick, Top Gun.

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So, if you look carefully at that airplane, you’ll see it’s got

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a skunk on the tail and a skunk on the yoke on the inside, and

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that’s a derivative of a design that was done when I was there.

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There’s also a whole raft of other things that have been done or

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are being done now that are classified that we can’t talk about.

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But the litany of innovations from one to the next is just quite remarkable.

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It’s different than a place like a Sandia, or a Los Alamos, or an

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Oak Ridge because there’s a lot less basic research done there.

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Its really is mostly advanced development, and they look for a lot

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of the basic research to be done, say, in the university community.

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There’s some very basic rules about how the Skunk Works is supposed to

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operate, you know, meaning things like—there’s something called Kelly

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Johnson’s Rules, which you can Google and look up—the things about keeping

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requirements to a minimum, just specify what you really, really need, a

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strong, knowledgeable leader, managing your subcontractors, a list of 14 of

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these that all really are a great way to run a project, which have applied.

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And then there’s some tongue-in-cheek things, if you will, like

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only one miracle per program, don’t invent what you don’t have to.

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So, if you look at the F-117 Night fighter, the stealth airplane that many

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people know, the Darth Vader-ish looking airplane that was made public back

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in the late-1980s, if you look at that airplane, landing gears, engines,

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cockpits, guidance systems, all were things taken out of other aircraft.

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So, don’t invent what you don’t have to.

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And so, the one miracle for that plane really was

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the stealth: the shape and materials for the stealth.

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And maybe there was a miracle-and-a-half because the second half is,

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how do you make a shape like that actually fly, which was actually done.

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But nevertheless, a great place for innovation.

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And one of the things that I think is interesting, if I think about

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these, Alan, is that—and it’s really in common to Los Alamos slash Sandia

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and the Skunk Works—and then if you go back to 1943, both the nuclear

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weapons program, Manhattan Project, and the Skunk Works were born in 1943.

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And at the time, think about it, the US was under an existential threat.

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No one knew if we were going to win the war or

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not, and because of that, money was no object.

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So, what it was going to cost to build a jet fighter, or

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what was going to cost to build a B-29, or what it was going

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to cost to run the Manhattan Project didn’t really matter.

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Both in the area of Aeronautics and in the area of physics, there had been a

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couple of decades with the ’20s and ’30s—even a little bit further back in the

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00:17:50,620 --> 00:17:53,810
[unintelligible] of physics—Were great advances in physics and in aeronautics.

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The fields really blossomed with a continuous stream of new big

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ideas, not all from those institutions, but just in general.

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And then there were a couple of charismatic leaders.

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In the case of the Skunk Works, of Kelly Johnson, in

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the case of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer.

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And so, that was really kind of a magic mix that actually led to

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the creation of both of those places back in the 1940s, and so far,

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leadership teams that have—and the government, whether it’s DOD or

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00:18:19,549 --> 00:18:22,959
DOE—that’s worked very hard to maintain that innovative culture and

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not break it along the way, while still being safe, and compliant,

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and not harming the environment the best they can, and so forth.

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So, tell me about your role in the National Academy of Engineering and how

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00:18:33,530 --> 00:18:37,690
that mindset is here, that mindset of supporting and fostering innovation.

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00:18:38,010 --> 00:18:40,169
Well, the National Academies of Engineering

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00:18:40,180 --> 00:18:42,290
actually go back a lot further than that.

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So, a bit of history.

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We were all born in 1863—80 years before the Skunk Works and

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the nuclear weapons program—created by Abraham Lincoln under

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a charter from Congress that Lincoln signed in April of 1863.

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And what it did was create an organization

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called the National Academy of Sciences.

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And the reason Lincoln did that was, if you think about it, in

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many ways, the Civil War was our first technological conflict.

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Hot air balloons, the trains for moving troops and logistics,

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rifling of gun barrels, you know, prominently on the battlefield,

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iron bottom ships, all of these things encountered—as with

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any new technology of his day—encountered difficulties.

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And what Lincoln found—let’s take the iron bottom ships because

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00:19:25,840 --> 00:19:28,369
those were the first things that appeared on the radar screen at the

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00:19:28,369 --> 00:19:31,470
Academies—he could go to the ship builders and said, “Give us more money.

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We’ll figure it out.” The two big problems were corrosion of the iron,

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and number two, how do you make a magnetic compass work on an iron ship?

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So, he goes to the ship companies.

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They say, “Give us money.

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We’ll figure it out.” Okay.

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He goes to the iron companies.

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“Well, give us the money.

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We’ll figure it out.” He goes to the Navy, “Give us money.

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We’ll figure it out.” And he wasn’t very satisfied with that, so

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he said, I’m going to create my own independent body, and I’ll

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pay their expenses, but I’m not going to pay them just to exist.

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And that’s the model that’s captured in the charter

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from Congress, and it’s one that we still live by today.

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00:20:01,920 --> 00:20:04,919
If you look at that original charter, it gave the names of the original

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00:20:04,940 --> 00:20:08,910
50 or 60 members, by name, and by institution, and by what they did.

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And so, it didn’t say, for example, engineer, but it

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might have said ship builder, something like that.

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And you can look at that original group of members, and they

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were scientists, engineers, and physicians and health people,

356
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and they came from academia, government, and universities.

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And over time, stimulated by the executive order that Woodrow Wilson

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wrote for the Academies on the eve of World War I to expand what

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it could do, the National Academy of Sciences eventually went on

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a trajectory of being more pure science and more pure academic.

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And so, that disrupted the balance that the government wanted

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in the body that gave it advice, and that ultimately led to the

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00:20:44,580 --> 00:20:48,820
creation of the National Academy of Engineering in 1963, and then

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later, in a couple step process, the National Academy of Medicine.

365
00:20:52,690 --> 00:20:54,720
And so, if you take a look at the National Academy of

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Engineering, about 40% of our members are from industry, about

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00:20:59,129 --> 00:21:02,810
50% are from academia, and about 10% are from government.

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Typically, DOE laboratories being the most prominent

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source of those, and places like JPL as well.

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And so, the charter all along has been, actually, if you think about the

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00:21:12,120 --> 00:21:15,709
very first two projects the Academies were given were, what do you do about

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00:21:15,709 --> 00:21:19,590
corrosion on an iron ship, and how do you make a compass work in an iron ship?

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Well, the corrosion one, they never really quite figured out.

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But they actually came up with a way to figure out how

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to use the compass on an iron ship, all by innovation.

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And you look at things that were done, you know, in the late-1800s it

377
00:21:30,660 --> 00:21:33,389
turned out everybody and his brother, there were, like, nine different

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00:21:33,389 --> 00:21:36,120
organizations that thought they were mapping the land in the West.

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And the government said, “Stop, stop.” And they asked

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the academy to figure out a way to rationalize how we

381
00:21:40,890 --> 00:21:44,050
were exploring and documenting the resources in the West.

382
00:21:44,550 --> 00:21:46,770
The Academy came along, did a study that eventually led

383
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to the creation of the USGS that still exists to this day.

384
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Things that were done during World War I.

385
00:21:52,580 --> 00:21:55,629
I mean, one very prominent project that ties back to your history

386
00:21:55,630 --> 00:21:59,750
at Oak Ridge, in the late-1930s and between ’39 and ’41, there

387
00:21:59,790 --> 00:22:02,450
was a series of three reports written that are broadly called the

388
00:22:02,460 --> 00:22:06,390
Uranium Reports, or the Fission Reports, about what could you do with

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00:22:06,390 --> 00:22:09,809
this new thing called uranium and the fission that happened in it.

390
00:22:09,809 --> 00:22:11,970
And the first report talked about either

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00:22:11,980 --> 00:22:14,580
powering ships with it or building a bomb.

392
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The decision was, we couldn’t build a ship in time with

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00:22:17,770 --> 00:22:20,340
it to affect the war, but maybe we could build a bomb,

394
00:22:20,340 --> 00:22:22,380
and that led to the creation of the Manhattan Project.

395
00:22:22,830 --> 00:22:25,910
So, while people might say the letter that was written by Szilard

396
00:22:27,070 --> 00:22:30,409
and signed by Einstein is what created the Manhattan Project, that

397
00:22:30,410 --> 00:22:33,570
really triggered the study of the Academy that said, “Yeah, you could

398
00:22:33,570 --> 00:22:36,590
really do this.” And [unintelligible] you look at that report, it’s

399
00:22:36,590 --> 00:22:39,070
written on a little mechanical typewriter, the equations are written

400
00:22:39,070 --> 00:22:42,949
by hand, but about half the committee ended up being Nobel laureates.

401
00:22:42,960 --> 00:22:43,080
Wow [laugh]

402
00:22:43,080 --> 00:22:43,110
.
And,

403
00:22:45,120 --> 00:22:46,430
you know, and [unintelligible] goes on.

404
00:22:46,430 --> 00:22:49,410
And the one of the things that we do these days is a decadal surveys

405
00:22:49,420 --> 00:22:53,050
for NASA that tell us what are going to be the sequence of next

406
00:22:53,050 --> 00:22:56,060
experiments for the next decade: the Hubble telescope, the James

407
00:22:56,060 --> 00:22:59,100
Webb telescope, what’s going to come next after that, for example.

408
00:22:59,100 --> 00:23:02,040
A report that was just done on next generation

409
00:23:02,040 --> 00:23:03,850
small module reactors is another one.

410
00:23:03,850 --> 00:23:06,339
A lot of things that are done in the area of health and medicine.

411
00:23:06,850 --> 00:23:10,385
In fact, anyone can go to the National Academies Press, and they’re

412
00:23:10,540 --> 00:23:14,050
about 300 or so between reports and studies and workshops that are

413
00:23:14,050 --> 00:23:18,250
done a year, maybe 250, 200, and you can download PDFs of any of

414
00:23:18,250 --> 00:23:21,450
these things for free, from the National Academies Press website.

415
00:23:21,450 --> 00:23:23,939
So very, very interesting things, indeed.

416
00:23:24,180 --> 00:23:24,699
Very good.

417
00:23:24,930 --> 00:23:27,310
I will be there tonight for sure.

418
00:23:27,510 --> 00:23:29,550
Let’s talk generally about American innovation.

419
00:23:29,550 --> 00:23:32,700
In all of our interviews, and certainly this interview,

420
00:23:32,750 --> 00:23:35,789
we see this remarkable record of American innovation.

421
00:23:36,050 --> 00:23:39,000
One of the questions we have is, how do we keep that going?

422
00:23:39,450 --> 00:23:42,699
How do you keep it over the next 250 years, and what are the big obstacles

423
00:23:42,700 --> 00:23:47,150
we need to be aware of and to be ready to confront as we start that next 250?

424
00:23:48,040 --> 00:23:49,270
Well, I think there’s two things.

425
00:23:49,270 --> 00:23:52,489
I mean, one, of course, is you need to maintain a talented workforce.

426
00:23:52,550 --> 00:23:56,610
And if you take a look at our history of doing this, that requires two things.

427
00:23:56,610 --> 00:23:59,329
One, it requires making sure that we have a very

428
00:23:59,340 --> 00:24:02,420
healthy and effective education system in this country.

429
00:24:03,020 --> 00:24:06,420
Quite frankly, we do well, or have done well at the university

430
00:24:06,420 --> 00:24:09,050
level, although there may be some evidence that’s beginning to erode.

431
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:12,489
We certainly have not done so well at the K through 12 level.

432
00:24:12,590 --> 00:24:15,670
And when you look at the scores we have for reading, math, science, and so

433
00:24:15,670 --> 00:24:19,840
forth, we’re kind of a middling-looking country, and it’s not really very good.

434
00:24:19,930 --> 00:24:22,780
A lot of our young people seem to catch up when they get to college,

435
00:24:22,950 --> 00:24:26,879
which is a good thing, but nevertheless, we need to find some way to crack

436
00:24:26,880 --> 00:24:31,480
the code to improve the effectiveness and the efficiency with which we

437
00:24:31,770 --> 00:24:35,320
educate our students in the K through 12, and at the same time keep our

438
00:24:35,320 --> 00:24:38,550
universities healthy and vibrant [unintelligible] . That’s number one.

439
00:24:39,060 --> 00:24:42,399
The second thing is we’ve always relied on the fact that if the

440
00:24:42,400 --> 00:24:45,909
economy is growing faster than the population is, it’s going to

441
00:24:45,910 --> 00:24:49,590
really be important to import the right kinds of high-level talents.

442
00:24:50,160 --> 00:24:53,089
So, whether you know it’s been scientists, and engineers,

443
00:24:53,090 --> 00:24:56,610
and mathematicians from Europe, Eastern Europe, from

444
00:24:56,620 --> 00:24:59,730
Asia, et cetera, that’s a stream that needs to continue.

445
00:24:59,730 --> 00:25:03,050
If you take a look, for example, in the National Academies, the

446
00:25:03,050 --> 00:25:07,600
percentage of members that are naturalized citizens, you know, it’s

447
00:25:07,830 --> 00:25:12,110
somewhere between the mid-20s, and up to 40% depending on which

448
00:25:12,110 --> 00:25:14,909
Academy you’re talking about, that actually are naturalized citizens.

449
00:25:14,910 --> 00:25:19,870
So, the ability to cultivate our own talent, and the ability to continue to

450
00:25:19,870 --> 00:25:23,169
attract high end talent from around the world is going to really be important.

451
00:25:23,840 --> 00:25:25,919
And of course, one of the subsets that I should have

452
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,400
mentioned when it talks about retaining our own talent is,

453
00:25:29,520 --> 00:25:32,010
everybody’s got to get to the starting gate to do this.

454
00:25:32,010 --> 00:25:34,120
So, the notion of it can only be someone that looks a

455
00:25:34,120 --> 00:25:36,879
certain way, let me say, we need all brains on deck—

456
00:25:37,030 --> 00:25:37,360
Yeah.

457
00:25:37,360 --> 00:25:37,525
Yeah.

458
00:25:37,690 --> 00:25:39,450
You know, in order to pull this off.

459
00:25:39,450 --> 00:25:41,490
So, education is the first thing.

460
00:25:42,190 --> 00:25:43,719
Talent, broadly speaking.

461
00:25:43,790 --> 00:25:45,879
I think the second thing that we need is

462
00:25:45,910 --> 00:25:48,379
we need to have adequate capital to invest.

463
00:25:48,529 --> 00:25:52,159
And whether that’s a matter of government money that funds, you know,

464
00:25:52,440 --> 00:26:00,290
DARPA or NSF or DOE or NASA or the SBR programs, NIH, whatever it might

465
00:26:00,290 --> 00:26:04,470
be, the government needs to invest money in things that are longer-term,

466
00:26:04,470 --> 00:26:08,040
that are higher risk, recognize that some things are going to fail.

467
00:26:08,110 --> 00:26:09,790
That’s why they call it R&D.

468
00:26:09,920 --> 00:26:13,200
And I remember one time being asked, “Why couldn’t I”—I won’t

469
00:26:13,200 --> 00:26:15,759
even say where it was, but someone to me said to me, “Why can’t

470
00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:18,870
you just invest your R&D dollars and things that work?” You know?

471
00:26:18,870 --> 00:26:22,000
And my reply to that was, “If I knew how to do that, I wouldn’t be here.

472
00:26:22,000 --> 00:26:24,309
I’d be on my own private island somewhere in the Caribbean.”

473
00:26:24,470 --> 00:26:26,350
And I think one of the things that’s happened is, in our

474
00:26:26,350 --> 00:26:29,490
entire acquisition system, everyone’s afraid to fail.

475
00:26:29,490 --> 00:26:31,480
And if everyone’s afraid to fail, that means you’re not

476
00:26:31,480 --> 00:26:33,710
going to take the risk to, sort of, keep that investment

477
00:26:33,710 --> 00:26:36,929
engine going and really keep driving the thing forward.

478
00:26:37,389 --> 00:26:41,319
And then the third thing, along with the workforce and the capital

479
00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:44,430
investment, the third thing is just really oneness of culture.

480
00:26:44,430 --> 00:26:46,199
And I just alluded to that.

481
00:26:46,260 --> 00:26:49,630
But so willingness to take a chance, it’s not bad to fail.

482
00:26:49,630 --> 00:26:52,090
I mean the old line in the Silicon Valley, you

483
00:26:52,090 --> 00:26:54,189
got to fail two or three times before you succeed.

484
00:26:54,349 --> 00:26:55,189
It’s okay to fail.

485
00:26:55,660 --> 00:26:59,349
Just learn from it and pick yourself up and go on and do it the next time.

486
00:26:59,779 --> 00:27:02,060
And I get the real sense, at least in government circles

487
00:27:02,090 --> 00:27:05,810
because money is getting so tight that the appetite to tolerate

488
00:27:05,810 --> 00:27:09,129
failure has gone down, and I think we really need to avoid that.

489
00:27:09,130 --> 00:27:13,160
So, I would say, in summary, it’s talent, it’s investment

490
00:27:13,250 --> 00:27:16,849
capital, and it’s a culture that’s willing to accept failure and

491
00:27:16,850 --> 00:27:20,090
learn from it, one that’s really meant to say, “Let’s innovate.

492
00:27:20,100 --> 00:27:21,730
And if it doesn’t all work, that’s okay.”

493
00:27:22,120 --> 00:27:26,760
I’m in with an unfair question, which I often do, in terms of,

494
00:27:27,370 --> 00:27:30,570
when you look into the crystal ball coming forward, you know, next

495
00:27:30,639 --> 00:27:35,870
25, 50, years, what are the sectors of the economy, the sectors of

496
00:27:35,910 --> 00:27:40,450
industry where you anticipate, kind of, transformative innovations?

497
00:27:40,520 --> 00:27:42,149
We’re on the cusp of transformative

498
00:27:42,180 --> 00:27:43,950
innovations; what would you say those might be?

499
00:27:44,220 --> 00:27:45,589
Well, I think there’s three of them.

500
00:27:45,870 --> 00:27:50,180
You know, I think one obvious one is sometimes I describe the 20th century

501
00:27:50,690 --> 00:27:54,319
as the century of physics of materials, and I would describe the 21st

502
00:27:54,720 --> 00:27:58,800
century as the study of the and exploitation of the physics of life.

503
00:27:58,950 --> 00:28:00,560
So, I think we’ve already see it happening.

504
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:03,540
The whole notion of how physics and mathematics and all the

505
00:28:03,540 --> 00:28:07,120
analytical tools give us a better understanding of how life

506
00:28:07,130 --> 00:28:11,019
behaves, and how that ramps into medicine, whether it’s personalized

507
00:28:11,070 --> 00:28:13,340
precision medicine, I mean, all these things are going to happen.

508
00:28:13,350 --> 00:28:15,790
You know, the fact that, okay, you know, we’re going to grow

509
00:28:15,790 --> 00:28:17,860
you a new heart because you need one, or whatever it might be.

510
00:28:17,860 --> 00:28:21,460
But I think things we’re going to see happening in the area of the life

511
00:28:21,460 --> 00:28:25,399
sciences and medicine, underpinned by physics, chemistry, mathematics,

512
00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:28,869
and engineering are going to really—I think that’s number one.

513
00:28:29,100 --> 00:28:31,580
I think number two is going to be, who knows where

514
00:28:31,590 --> 00:28:34,720
artificial intelligence, and how quantum will impact.

515
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:36,390
I mean those—and the two things that I just

516
00:28:36,390 --> 00:28:38,189
said are really, I think, pretty obvious.

517
00:28:38,200 --> 00:28:40,020
A lot of people would say those same, too.

518
00:28:40,719 --> 00:28:43,649
And once again, where AI and all the various

519
00:28:43,650 --> 00:28:45,510
quantum effects really go, I don’t know.

520
00:28:46,170 --> 00:28:49,000
You know, are we going to get to a Star Trek world where somehow you can all of

521
00:28:49,000 --> 00:28:53,149
a sudden communicate over infinite distances instantaneously using entanglement?

522
00:28:53,630 --> 00:28:55,700
I’m sure somebody could write a science fiction book on it, but

523
00:28:55,720 --> 00:28:59,529
whether or not it could ever happen over 200 years, I mean, who knows?

524
00:28:59,900 --> 00:29:02,239
And the third one is, I don’t know.

525
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:07,169
There was going to be an unknown unknown out there that’s going to crop up.

526
00:29:07,300 --> 00:29:10,500
I’m fairly sure those first two are going to happen, but they won’t be alone.

527
00:29:10,510 --> 00:29:14,310
There will be something else, of which there’s maybe just a twinkling out there

528
00:29:14,310 --> 00:29:17,950
in somebody’s eye, but only that one person, and we don’t know what it is.

529
00:29:18,040 --> 00:29:22,609
I certainly recall the days of high school where I wouldn’t have known any idea

530
00:29:22,609 --> 00:29:26,590
of what an internet might be, and now look at how that has changed the world.

531
00:29:26,590 --> 00:29:29,880
So, such a fascinating conversation, Al. Thank you so much.

532
00:29:29,880 --> 00:29:30,510
Really enjoyed it.

533
00:29:30,510 --> 00:29:32,510
Thanks for joining us on AMSEcast.

534
00:29:32,510 --> 00:29:34,989
My pleasure, and I look forward to seeing you in Oak Ridge.

535
00:29:39,410 --> 00:29:42,209
Thank you for joining us on this episode of AMSEcast.

536
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,850
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537
00:29:47,120 --> 00:29:53,480
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540
00:29:59,430 --> 00:30:03,610
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541
00:30:04,050 --> 00:30:07,500
Thanks to our production team with Matt Mullins, plus our supportive colleagues

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00:30:07,500 --> 00:30:11,340
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544
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545
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And of course, thanks to our wonderful guests

546
00:30:23,410 --> 00:30:25,250
today, and to all of you for listening.

547
00:30:25,720 --> 00:30:28,490
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