New Publication: Reopening The Endless Frontier
Melissa Flagg
The Andrew W. Marshall Foundation is pleased to present this first essay by Melissa Flagg, PhD, in a new series that raises important and sometimes provocative ideas about America’s R&D funding priorities.
We invite you, the reader, to read Melissa’s essay, raise your own questions, come to your own conclusions, and then, please share them with us. You can always reach us at info@andrewwmarshallfoundation.org. We hope you derive insights from her essay and the provocative questions it raises.
At the end of 2016, I began to believe that our longstanding DoD priority of achieving technological superiority across all domains was simply no longer feasible. I left DoD and took a year off. During that time, I dove into the foundation of the American R&D system: Science the Endless Frontier by Vannevar Bush. Revisiting this guidestar reshaped my perspective on what was needed going forward.
After seven years of developing my ideas further, I am excited to share this first essay in a body of work that spans strategy, R&D, and national security topics. In this essay, Reopening the Endless Frontier, I begin with a challenge to the R&D community to stop treating Bush’s 1945 prescriptions as eternal truths and instead embrace his actual legacy: the methodical analysis of current challenges to create new solutions. The global R&D landscape has transformed dramatically – science funding has tripled since 2000, talent is globally distributed, and the U.S. federal share of R&D has shrunk from 70% to under 20%. Domestic trust in the federal government is waning and industry is playing an unprecedented role in R&D. As Bush would likely advise today, we need fresh frameworks for modern challenges, not attempts to recreate a past that no longer exists.
–Melissa Flagg, PhD
Melissa is an advisor for the Andrew W. Marshall Foundation and the founder and president of Flagg Consulting LLC. She is also a fellow at the Acquisition Innovation Research Center (AIRC), a visiting fellow at the Perry World House, on the Board of World Forest ID, and a senior advisor to the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET) at Georgetown University where she was previously a senior fellow. Previously, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research, responsible for policy and oversight of Defense Department science and technology programs. She has worked at the State Department, the Office of Naval Research, the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Army Research Laboratory. Melissa has served on numerous boards including the National Academy of Sciences Air Force Studies Board and the Department of Commerce Emerging Technology Research Advisory Committee. She holds a Ph.D. in Pharmaceutical Chemistry and a B.S. in Pharmacy.
The Andrew W. Marshall Foundation
November 2024