OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar on A Pivotal Moment: Science and Technology for America’s Future
As prepared for delivery at the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine
Thank you, Victor, for that warm introduction. I want to thank the National Academies and especially Marcia McNutt for the invitation to speak here, as well as the Moore, Simons, and Kavli Foundations for their support for this event.
As I look around this room, I see heads of our federal R&D agencies and many of the public servants from these agencies. I see Congressional staff, and I see people from companies and universities and labs and associations. You are—and you represent—the people and the organizations that make science, technology, and innovation work in America. I’m grateful to be here with you.
When President Biden asked me to come to the White House to serve as his advisor on science and technology and to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy, I was over the moon to get to work for a President who sees America as “a country that can be defined in a single word: possibilities.”
And I was elated to have another opportunity to serve our country. Half of my professional life has been public service and half has been in the private sector. Across these decades I have found no greater joy than working with dedicated people like all of you to make a better future possible for our country.
Today, here we are at the start of a new year. It’s a time to be proud and grateful for what we have been able to accomplish. And with a new Administration coming in soon, bringing change and uncertainty, it’s also a time to get ready for the work ahead.
The purpose of science and technology
I want to ground our discussion in the purpose of science and technology. That purpose is to open possibilities so we can achieve our great aspirations. Today, America’s aspirations are as great as they’ve ever been: Health and opportunity for every single person, not just a few. National security and global stability. Robust economic growth that creates good-paying jobs in every part of the country. Overcoming the climate crisis. Using AI & other technologies to strengthen rather than erode our values. And constantly expanding the horizons of knowledge.
America must always be a country with great ambitions—it’s who we are. And science and technology are integral to achieving those ambitions.
In my time at the White House, I’ve had the privilege and great pleasure once more of working with so many of you to keep the pact that science and technology has with the American people: the promise of a better future for all of us.
A pivotal moment for federally funded R&D
Looking ahead, today, we are in a pivotal moment for federally funded R&D. This is the R&D that our nation comes together to support. It’s R&D done for public purposes. It’s done in universities of every type, in government labs and national labs across the country, and in companies of every size.
Past federal R&D funding has given us so much. Of course, our modern world was shaped by industries and policies and communities of all sorts. But this group knows that it simply would not have been possible without federal R&D.
As people move through their days, they don’t often think about how we’re living lives that those earlier investments made possible.
Think about when you use GPS to find yourself on a map, or the internet to stream a movie, or snap a picture on your phone.
Think of the mRNA vaccine that’s protecting you from COVID. And I think about the treatment that allowed one of my close friends to survive cancer.
Think about the clean air that we breathe. Solar panels on rooftops. How we understand the rich biodiversity of our beautiful blue planet. And even how we understand ourselves.
Federal R&D made each of these things possible.
That’s a proud history. Today, as so much has changed in the world, we all understand that federal R&D must evolve, too. Together, we’ve made real progress in making this enterprise more and more effective for our times, and we’ll talk about that today.
We’re making these changes understanding that federal R&D is still as important as ever—that it plays an unreplaceable role in America’s bigger ecosystem of innovation.
Dangerous myths and misunderstandings
But with trust in institutions now at historic lows, too many myths and misunderstandings are swirling around the science and technology enterprise.
Let me tell you about three of the most dangerous of these myths and misunderstandings that threaten to break public R&D rather than build it.
One you will hear is that we have to choose between attracting people from other countries and opening opportunities for kids here.
Just look around you to see how wrongheaded this is. Here we are, people from countries around the world, from every part of America, and from every kind of family background. In reality, our success depends on making sure everyone in our country can get a STEM education and access to great jobs, and making sure that our nation always continues to draw talented people from all parts of the world—people who join us in seeking freedom and who stay to help build our country.
That’s why the Biden-Harris Administration has created a renaissance of manufacturing across America. It’s why we have doubled down on STEM education for all our kids. It’s why we have made the STEM immigration process more fair and more efficient.
The second myth and misunderstanding you will hear is that industry can do all the R&D we need. I’ve worked at many companies and worked with many more, and I can tell you: this just isn’t so. The amount of industry R&D has grown dramatically, which is great for our country. But the purpose of industry R&D has not changed. It is still—appropriately—to make advances that lead to new products and services and more growth and profit.
So, let’s not kid ourselves that companies will make the investments in R&D for public missions. These are the responsibilities that government has for national security, health, energy and the environment and agriculture, space and education and transportation.
And let’s not kid ourselves that companies will make the foundational investments that they themselves depend on. Let’s remember: it was federal R&D that started so many of our innovative industries: aerospace, pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, communications and computing, and now AI and renewable energy, with more to come.
Federally funded research is what all these industries draw on for their product development. And federally funded research educates the students they depend on hiring.
All of these are enduring, essential public roles for R&D. And today, with the People’s Republic of China and other nations racing to create a future built on their values, public R&D is more important than ever.
Before President Biden took office, the prior administration requested cut after cut to federal R&D budgets. And only because of bipartisan Congressional support did R&D budgets stay intact.
President Biden came in with a strong commitment to science and technology, and he proposed and won significant increases in his first two years. He increased federal R&D by 24% from FY21 when he arrived to FY 23–that’s 24% in two years. And so many of you have put this funding to work:
We have strengthened our world-leading research at NIH, NSF, and other agencies.
We have started important new efforts to accelerate the impact from basic research. That includes the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health and the new Directorate for Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships at NSF.
We have opened the opportunity to participate in and benefit from American S&T to more and more people.
And we re-engaged and expanded our relationships with our allies and partners around the world on S&T for global challenges.
This is how we make federal R&D more and more effective for our times and aim it at today’s great aspirations.
Now, some of these advances are at risk, and that’s because—very unfortunately—Congressional Republicans held the country hostage last year, threatening to default on our debt obligations. The upshot was budget caps that, among many problems, have stalled progress on federal R&D funding and even cut critical federal R&D budgets.
The third kind of myth and misunderstanding you will hear is in the form of long debunked notions about climate and vaccines and more—notions that support certain pocketbooks and certain fears and fantasies.
These myths are the most corrosive of all because they attack scientific integrity. That is the commitment that each of us has to honesty and objectivity, to decisions based on facts.
I want to be clear about why facts matter so much. Without facts, the foundation for all the progress we seek Is nothing more than a bed of sand.
The President knew how important it was to restore scientific integrity to make sure that Americans can trust in scientific information that the government supports and uses. So, on the day that President Biden was sworn into office, he signed an Executive Order that contained the declarative statement: “The Federal Government must be guided by the best science.” And with you—we have worked to make that so—in every aspect of our endeavors.
So, today, at this pivotal moment for science and technology in our nation, our community is facing some vexing challenges. This matters not just for our community—but for every American. Because how we meet this moment will determine how the future unfolds.
Postcards from the future
To explore what that can look like, I’d like share with you some glimpses of possible futures in three areas—in health, in climate, and in artificial intelligence. In each area, I want to show you a postcard from a dark future and postcard from a bright future and tell you what we—together—have done to move us towards progress.
Let’s start with health. Here’s a postcard from one possible future: A kid grows up eating poorly and drinking contaminated water. Exercise isn’t part of his life, and his friendships dry up as he falls deeper into his online world. He sees relatives die early from diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Tragically, this is already today’s reality for too many. Add to that the fact that in this particular future, vaccination rates drop to below herd immunity—and this kid grows up expecting to live only until maybe his 50s. Think about that: only to his 50s.
Today, there dozen countries have longer life expectancy than we do. That is unacceptable for the wealthiest nation in the world, and in this dark future we slip even farther behind.
In a different future, kids grow up running and jumping and playing in nature with thriving friendships and family relationships. They are eating all kinds of healthy food and drinking clean water and breathing clean air. They are getting regular checkups.
In this future, no infectious disease outbreak ever becomes a pandemic. It’s a future in which people are able to take care of themselves, and they can go about their lives taking robust health for granted.
Achieving this future can seem overwhelming. But today the Biden Cancer Moonshot is showing what’s possible.
President Biden and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden started the Moonshot knowing that cancer is as personal to all Americans as it is to them. We have all lost someone we love to cancer. And to achieve the big goals of the Moonshot, we’ve taken a systems approach – addressing prevention, early detection, and treatment.
To prevent cancer, we made the investments to get rid of lead pipes, and EPA established a national drinking water standard that will protect over 100 million Americans from PFAS. We pursued actions to decrease smoking, which causes 30% of cancer deaths—and that includes the first steps to decrease nicotine levels to minimally- or non-addictive levels. At the same time, we’re doing the research with clinical trials to make it possible to prevent cervical cancers with tests simple enough to do at home.
For early detection, we made a host of investments to expand screenings to reach people who don’t have primary care or insurance and veterans who have been exposed to toxins. At the same time, we are developing and validating new ways to make it easier and easier to detect cancer early, through blood or even saliva tests.
For treatment and care: President Biden lowered health care costs and made sure more Americans than ever have insurance. And that means more people get the life-saving screenings and medicines and treatments that have come out of research. We expanded access to cancer navigation services for more than 150 million Americans. And at the same time, we boosted research for the next generation of innovations. We shaped clinical trials to include people of all backgrounds. We increased funding for the National Cancer Institute, and President Biden launched ARPA-H.
The impact of these actions on cancer will be felt for decades. And more broadly for American health outcomes, the Biden Cancer Moonshot also shows what’s possible ahead.
Let’s turn to the natural world we call home. Today, in a world with average temperatures of nearly 1.2OC above pre-industrial levels, climate change is already exacerbating extreme heat, droughts, and wildfires; storms and flooding; and the unraveling of biodiversity.
In one future, we go into feedback loops that spiral out of control. Our Earth becomes less and less habitable. We go headlong into a sixth mass extinction, losing the biodiversity that is the foundation for human life.
That’s a grim future.
We know the climate will keep changing, but it’s in our hands how severe those changes get. In a better future, we decarbonize and achieve net-zero emissions in time to avoid tipping points. We take action to protect every community. We renew our relationship with nature, using nature’s gifts as part of managing climate change and hitting the brakes on biodiversity loss.
President Biden and Vice President Harris have taken the most ambitious action that anyone, anywhere has ever taken to get us on the right track—from clean energy to resilience to conservation.
These actions build on prior R&D, and they show that we can make change at a scale that the climate notices.
Meanwhile, the R&D community has been working to change what’s possible for the challenges still ahead.
To decarbonize, we are doing the R&D to massively scale and deploy new technologies needed beyond renewables and EVs, from advanced grids and battery storage, to nuclear and fusion energy, to advanced geothermal, to decarbonizing industrial processes.
We’ve charted the course to reestablish our relationship with nature, working on the scale of the entire planet, from the arctic regions to the vast ocean.
All of this work on climate and nature is anchored in an understanding that these topics are integral to our security, our economy, our health, and equity. And that means that as we take these actions, companies are creating good new jobs. We are mitigating health risks. The most vulnerable communities are getting the help they need. And we are safer and stronger as a country as we do this work.
Turning to artificial intelligence: with AI, there’s a future in which we make everything very efficient. But in the process, that future grows dark, because discrimination and bias are now implemented at mass scale in housing and loans and criminal justice and health care. Every worker’s every move and click is surveilled. Mis- and disinformation and deepfakes are so rampant that reality is distorted. Fraud is so rampant that trust is destroyed. And there is no privacy: no protection from the prying eye of corporations, your government, or another government.
On the flip side, if we can get AI right, we can not only gain great efficiency while maintaining our values, AI can also help us embrace and work through complexity in every domain. It’s not that we eliminate every hard problem or dangerous possibility, but that we see our challenges clearly and navigate to the future we want.
The Biden-Harris Administration has done so much to get us on the right track.
AI was already in our lives in so many ways, when generative AI burst on the scene with chatbots and image generators. President Biden and Vice President Harris used that moment to recognize that like every powerful technology, AI brings promise and peril. They were clear that our task as a nation is to manage its risks so that we can seize its benefits.
We did a lot of good work, first to manage AI’s risks. That’s now translating into practical changes that improve people’s everyday experiences.
Today, when you go to a bank for a loan or mortgage and your application is processed by an AI system, you are due an explanation to go with the answer so you can do something about it.
Today, when you go to your doctor or the emergency room, they can use an AI system to determine your diagnosis or treatment—but only after they have confirmed that it isn’t distilling the discriminations of the past to cause you harm.
And, today, the FTC has ruled that it’s illegal to use AI to impersonate a business or bank or agency to defraud you.
We’ve also made an important start on making AI safe, effective, and trustworthy with an AI Safety Institute to develop tests and standards and norms. And we’re building the deep fundamental research base that AI will require to progress.
As we build a stable foundation we can count on, we’re also using AI to stand on that stable foundation to reach for the stars. That is much more than just the business and consumer productivity applications that the market is pursuing today.
AI can also supercharge how we do the country’s work, making possible a future in which we can design and approve medicines for seemingly intractable diseases in months rather than decades; a future in which we use edtech, finally, to close learning gaps among our kids; a future in which we deliver a better weather forecast to all Americans as the climate changes.
I’ve touched on three areas where S&T is helping America achieve its great aspirations—health, climate, and AI. And we are making major contributions for other great aspirations, too.
For national security, today we are developing revolutionary new military capabilities for a new era of great power competition. And at the same time, we have worked to reduce nuclear proliferation and to set global norms in space.
To expand opportunity in all parts of the country, the President has put in place a modern industrial strategy with the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act, each of which builds on the results of prior R&D—and also makes new R&D investments. That includes important efforts to boost regional economic development, boost STEM education, and catalyze new industries like biomanufacturing here at home.
And in every field of research, we’re making exhilarating and mind-bending discoveries:
We’re measuring the movements of Earth’s mantle with GPS, deepening our understanding of plate tectonics and volcanoes.
We’re rewriting evolution, as advances in DNA sequencing reveal surprising connections between species.
We’re rewriting human migration timelines, with discoveries like the 23,000-year-old footprints found in White Sands, New Mexico.
Hundreds of meters below the surface of the ocean, we’ve found a deep-sea coral reef more massive than we’ve ever seen before.
And to image the farthest reaches of the universe, we’ve caught photons created more than 13 billion years ago, just after the Big Bang.
In every domain—and in every way—we are expanding the boundaries of human knowledge.
The great American experiment
Let me finish with a postcard from the past. This is a postcard on the subject of great experiments.
Every scientist and engineer does their work by crafting experiments. We set hypotheses and test them with experiments. They don’t always work on the first try, but we learn from failure and we get back up again and keep going until we bring forth solid facts and practical solutions.
We do our work in a country that is itself conducting a great experiment—a great experiment called democracy. This experiment tests the most inspiring hypothesis of all: the notion that We The People can achieve equality, liberty, and opportunity beyond the limitations of the past.
It’s a hypothesis that Americans have proven over and over again, as geopolitics evolved, as the conditions of people’s lives evolved, and even as our definition of the people in “We The People” evolved.
For two and a half centuries, generations of Americans have struggled with and ultimately proven the great hypothesis—that We The People can form a more perfect union.
Now, this experiment depends on the 340 million people across our nation today.
Yesterday, on the fourth anniversary of a violent insurrection, President Biden reminded us: “It is our democracy that makes everything possible—our freedoms, our rights, our liberties, our dreams.” And he reminded us: “It falls to every generation of Americans to defend and protect it.”
So, each of us has a responsibility as a citizen. And we in science and technology also have some responsibilities in our professional lives.
And this is what I want to leave you with: I want to call you to two special responsibilities in the days and years ahead.
One is to lay out scientific facts as best we understand them, clearly and with context, with humility and with error bars, and without bias.
The other is to use science and technology to change what’s possible, so we can move beyond today’s constraints into a different tomorrow—into a better tomorrow.
This is how we contribute to the great American experiment.
For me, it is a privilege every day I get to work with you, as we fulfil this tremendous and joyous responsibility for our country.
Thank you for joining me here today, and Godspeed in the important work ahead.
The future is counting on you.
Thank you!
###