In the second half of the 20th century, the US enjoyed pre-eminence ...

5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The authors reached the following conclusions:
• By the middle of the 21st century, the U.S. share of the global S&T enterprise will
decrease, and only a small fraction of U.S. S&Es will work on national security
problems.
• The U.S. share of S&T productivity will decline from about 26 percent in 2005 to about
18 percent in 2050.
• The United States will remain one of the world’s most significant contributors to
scientific knowledge, and the U.S. S&T workforce should be large enough, relative to the
world S&T workforce, to remain cognizant of S&T developments around the world. The
DOD S&T workforce alone will not be large enough, and maintaining authoritative
awareness of S&T globally will be among DOD’s greatest challenges.
• Maintaining an authoritative awareness of S&T around the world will be essential if the
United States is to remain economically and militarily competitive. The required
awareness can be maintained only if the U.S. S&T workforce is a participant in the global
S&T community. This is true for the DOD S&T workforce as well.
• The people best able to maintain authoritative awareness of progress in S&T are those
contributing to that S&T progress. Such individuals must form the core of the DOD S&T
workforce.
• It will be necessary to find means to tap the global S&T knowledge that the national U.S.
S&T community will have. We must ensure the knowledge of global S&T held by the
national U.S. S&T community is available to the military and that DOD has the internal
capability to comprehend and exploit this knowledge through the DOD S&T workforce.
• TF and data mining will play increasingly important roles in maintaining global S&T
awareness.
• In the transition to 2050 and beyond, DOD must wisely manage the legitimate
competition between the need to control S&T information and the need for open S&T
communications.
• Even if the DOD S&T community is reinvigorated as suggested in this paper, the
problems confronting DOD as a result of S&T globalization will be formidable and
beyond the ability of DOD alone. Some nonmonetary means must be found to motivate
the national S&T community to accept some responsibility for keeping DOD aware of
global S&T developments that could have significant national defense implications.
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