[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]


                   REIMAGINING OUR INNOVATION FUTURE

=======================================================================

                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                      COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE,
                             AND TECHNOLOGY
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                             APRIL 15, 2021

                               __________

                            Serial No. 117-8

                               __________

 Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
 
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 


       Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
       
                               __________

                    U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE                    
44-177PDF                   WASHINGTON : 2023                     
          
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              COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY

             HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California              FRANK LUCAS, Oklahoma, 
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon                 Ranking Member
AMI BERA, California                 MO BROOKS, Alabama
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan,             BILL POSEY, Florida
    Vice Chair                       RANDY WEBER, Texas
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey           BRIAN BABIN, Texas
JAMAAL BOWMAN, New York              ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BRAD SHERMAN, California             MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado              JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
JERRY McNERNEY, California           PETE SESSIONS, Texas
PAUL TONKO, New York                 DANIEL WEBSTER, Florida
BILL FOSTER, Illinois                MIKE GARCIA, California
DONALD NORCROSS, New Jersey          STEPHANIE I. BICE, Oklahoma
DON BEYER, Virginia                  YOUNG KIM, California
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida               RANDY FEENSTRA, Iowa
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois                JAKE LaTURNER, Kansas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania             CARLOS A. GIMENEZ, Florida
DEBORAH ROSS, North Carolina         JAY OBERNOLTE, California
GWEN MOORE, Wisconsin                PETER MEIJER, Michigan
DAN KILDEE, Michigan                 VACANCY
SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
VACANCY
                         
                         C  O  N  T  E  N  T  S

                             April 15, 2021

                                                                   Page

Hearing Charter..................................................     2

                           Opening Statements

Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................     8
    Written Statement............................................     9

Statement by Representative Frank Lucas, Ranking Member, 
  Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of 
  Representatives................................................    10
    Written Statement............................................    11

                               Witnesses:

Mr. Norm Augustine, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer 
  of Lockheed Martin
    Oral Statement...............................................    13
    Written Statement............................................    15

Dr. Frances H. Arnold, Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical 
  Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry, California 
  Institute of Technology
    Oral Statement...............................................    23
    Written Statement............................................    25

The Honorable Ernest J. Moniz, President and Chief Executive 
  Officer, Energy Futures Initiative and Former Secretary, U.S. 
  Department of Energy
    Oral Statement...............................................    32
    Written Statement............................................    34

Dr. Farnam Jahanian, President, Carnegie Mellon University
    Oral Statement...............................................    58
    Written Statement............................................    60

Discussion.......................................................    74

 
                   REIMAGINING OUR INNOVATION FUTURE

                              ----------                              


                        THURSDAY, APRIL 15, 2021

                          House of Representatives,
               Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
                                                   Washington, D.C.

     The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:02 a.m., via 
Zoom, Hon. Eddie Bernice Johnson [Chairwoman of the Committee] 
presiding.
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]

     Chairwoman Johnson. The hearing will come to order, and 
without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recess at 
any time. Pursuant to House Resolution 8, today the Committee 
meeting is virtual. I look forward to when we can all get back 
together.
     I want to announce a couple of reminders to the Members 
about the conduct of this remote hearing. First, Members should 
keep their video feed on as long as they are present in the 
hearing, and Members are responsible for their own microphones. 
Please also keep your microphones muted unless you are 
speaking, and finally, if Members have documents they wish to 
submit to the record, please email them to the Committee Clerk, 
whose email address has been circulated to all.
     Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing and welcome 
to our distinguished panel of witnesses. I look forward to 
hearing your expert insights on how we can ensure the continued 
United States leadership in science and technology (S&T), and 
harness our research enterprise, and all of our Nation's talent 
to develop solutions to our most pressing challenges.
     This morning, the Committee will discuss the current state 
of the American science and technology enterprise, the 
challenges posed by both increasing global competition and 
shortcomings in our own system, and the opportunities to 
reimagine and recommit to our innovation future. I understand 
the depth of the challenges we face, but I remain hopeful 
because I see the commitment, passion, and talent of our 
scientists, engineers, and especially our students and early 
career researchers. I am inspired to do everything I can to 
support them.
     For many decades, the United States was the unquestioned 
leader in science and technology. This premise was firmly 
established through a massive investment in the 1950's and 
1960's to build national laboratories and entire agencies like 
the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA (National 
Aeronautics and Space Administration), and to support 
unfettered research at U.S. universities. That commitment paid 
real dividends, allowing the government, the private sector, 
and indeed the world to reap the technological benefits.
     However, since that peak, our commitment to nondefense R&D 
(research and development) fell rapidly, then plateaued as a 
share of our discretionary budget. As a share of our GDP (gross 
domestic product), it has continued to decline. In the 
meantime, many other countries have increased their investments 
and built innovation systems based on our own successful 
models. One of those on the minds of many here today is China. 
China is already outspending us. It may only be a matter of 
time before they are out-innovating us, including in critical 
technologies that underpin our economic and national security.
     I agree that China's rise in science and technology 
creates real challenges for us. We have good reason to be 
worried about research integrity and how research will be used. 
However, we should not let those concerns misguide our thinking 
about how we will lead in the future. We will lead by doing our 
own best selves, not by emulating China.
     In a forthcoming issue of Issues in Science and 
Technology, a scholar of innovation policy writes, 
``competitiveness is neither a necessary nor a sufficient basis 
for equity, sustainability, or security . . . China's 
industrial policy has improved neither equity nor 
sustainability. Russia's economic collapse has done little to 
erode its national security.'' I believe we can do both. We can 
compete globally, and we can inspire innovation that confronts 
long-standing societal challenges. We can build from the 
institutional foundations established decades ago and work 
together to re-envision a bold and more inclusive model for 
American innovation in the 21st century.
     There are a lot of big ideas to discuss, and I am sure 
that today's hearing will be valuable and a constructive 
conversation for all. In particular, we will be looking to the 
expertise on this panel as we continue to develop bipartisan 
science and innovation legislation in the coming weeks and 
months.
     [The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]

    Good morning and welcome to today's hearing. And welcome to 
our distinguished panel of witnesses. I look forward to hearing 
your expert insights on how we can ensure continued United 
States leadership in science and technology and harness our 
research enterprise and all of our nation's talent to develop 
solutions to our most pressing challenges.
    This morning the Committee will discuss the current state 
of the American science and technology enterprise, the 
challenges posed by both increasing global competition and 
shortcomings in our own system, and the opportunities to 
reimagine and recommit to our innovation future. I understand 
the depth of the challenges we face. But I remain hopeful 
because I see the commitment, passion, and talent of our 
scientists and engineers, especially our students and early 
career researchers. I am inspired to do everything I can to 
support them.
    For many decades, the United States was the unquestioned 
leader in science and technology. This primacy was firmly 
established through a massive investment in the 1950s and 1960s 
to build national laboratories and entire agencies like the 
National Science Foundation and NASA, and to support unfettered 
research at U.S. universities. That commitment paid real 
dividends, allowing the government, the private sector, and 
indeed the world to reap the technological benefits. However, 
since that peak, our commitment to nondefense R&D fell rapidly, 
then plateaued as a share of our discretionary budget. As a 
share of our GDP, it has continued to decline.
    In the meantime, many other countries have increased their 
investments and built innovation systems based on our own 
successful models. One of those, on the minds of many here 
today, is China. China is already outspending us. It may only 
be a matter of time before they are out-innovating us, 
including in critical technologies that underpin our economic 
and national security.
    I agree that China's rise in science and technology creates 
real challenges for us. We have good reason to be worried about 
research integrity and how research will be used. However, we 
should not let those concerns misguide our thinking about how 
we will lead into the future. We will lead by being our own 
best selves, not by emulating China. In a forthcoming issue of 
Issues in Science and Technology, a scholar of innovation 
policy writes, ``competitiveness is neither a necessary nor a 
sufficient basis for equity, sustainability, or 
security.China's industrial policy has improved neither equity 
nor sustainability. Russia's economic collapse has done little 
to erode its national security.''
    I believe we can do both. We can compete globally, and we 
can inspire innovation that confronts long-standing societal 
challenges. We can build from the institutional foundations 
established decades ago and work together to re-envision a bold 
and more inclusive model for American innovation in the 21st 
century.
    There are a lot of big ideas to discuss, and I am sure that 
today's hearing will be a valuable and constructive 
conversation for all. In particular, we will be looking to the 
expertise on this panel as we continue to develop bipartisan 
science and innovation legislation in the coming weeks and 
months.
    With that, I now recognize Ranking Member Lucas for his 
opening statement.

     Chairwoman Johnson. And with that, I recognize our Ranking 
Member, the Honorable Mr. Lucas, for his opening statement.
     Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, for holding this 
hearing on the future of American innovation, and thank you for 
those wonderful thoughts you just offered.
     I believe this is one of the most essential concerns 
facing our Committee, because our commitment to America's 
scientific progress is what underpins every other issue that 
comes before us, from space exploration to clean energy 
development, and from the strength of our economy to our 
national security. Our investment in basic and early stage 
Federal research gives us lower food prices, better healthcare 
treatments, cleaner and cheaper energy, and widespread access 
to reliable broadband internet. It just hasn't come to my farm 
yet in western Oklahoma. Reliable, that is.
     In short, our investment in basic Federal research 
infrastructure and workforce development pays massive 
dividends. American companies use the knowledge and tools 
gained in our laboratories to commercialize innovations that 
improve our lives and our economy.
     Historically, the United States has been the world's 
largest investor in research and development. U.S. Government 
and industry spent a combined $511 billion on R&S in 2016, 
generating over $860 billion for our Nation's economy, while 
supporting over 8 million jobs. As numerous studies have 
concluded, as much as 85 percent of the long-term growth of the 
American economy comes from scientific and technology advances.
     But our research in science and technology is under 
threat. China has likely surpassed us in total R&D spending 
already. While they increased their research investment by 56 
percent between 2011 and 2016, ours fell by 12 percent. The 
Chinese Communist Party has an aggressive and strategic plan 
for their scientific development. They have been very clear 
that they intend to overtake us in critical technologies. 
Communist leadership in China hasn't been shy about how they 
plan to outpace us.
     In addition to outspending us, they're looking to acquire 
foreign research, attract premiere talent by building up world-
class research infrastructure, and buildup their domestic STEM 
(science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) workforce. 
With our leadership in science and technology at risk, we need 
to reevaluate our commitment to the fundamentals we need to 
success. Basic research, cutting edge facilities, and a 
thriving STEM workforce.
     Chairwoman Johnson and I agree on the need to support 
Federal research. A few weeks ago, we introduced legislation to 
reauthorize the National Science Foundation, along with 
Research and Technology Subcommittee Chairman Stevens and 
Ranking Member Waltz, we put forth the NSF for the Future Act, 
which increases the funding to $13 billion over 5 years. It 
invests in industries of the future, works to expand STEM 
education, and develop our STEM workforce, and includes 
important provisions to secure our research from foreign theft. 
I appreciate the bipartisan work that went into this 
legislation, and I look forward to working to move it forward.
     It dovetails nicely with the Securing American Leadership 
in Science and Technology Act, or SALSTA, as I like to call it, 
which is legislation I've introduced to double our funding in 
basic research and create a national strategy to focus our 
investment on critical technologies like artificial 
intelligence (AI), cybersecurity, and quantum computing. SALSTA 
will invent in our research infrastructure so we have the 
facilities required to do groundbreaking research. It helps to 
grow a strong American STEM pool of talent through workforce 
development and STEM education programs, and it makes it easier 
to transfer technology breakthroughs from the lab to private 
industry through regulatory reform. Taken together, SALSTA is a 
comprehensive and strategic approach to investing in American 
science and technological development.
     We're still benefiting today from research investments 
made generations ago, and that begs the question, what 
investments are we making for our grandchildren and their 
grandchildren? Are we being strategic and forward thinking in 
our commitment to Federal research and development? We have a 
fantastic panel of witnesses here today, and I am looking 
forward to their insights into that question.
     As a wheat farmer, I am an internal optimist. I always 
plant seed in the ground. I'm optimistic I'm going to make a 
good crop every year. And I'm also optimistic that we can work 
together in a bipartisan fashion to strengthen our research 
industry and invest in the future of our scientific 
development.
     And with that, Madam Chairman, I yield back and 
enthusiastically look forward to the rest of this hearing.
     [The prepared statement of Mr. Lucas follows:]

    Thank you, Chairwoman Johnson, for holding this hearing on 
the future of American innovation.
    I believe this is one of the most essential concerns facing 
our committee, because our commitment to America's scientific 
progress is what underpins every other issue that comes before 
us: from space exploration to clean energy development, and 
from the strength of our economy to our national security.
    Our investment in basic and early-stage federal research 
has given us lower food prices, better health care treatments, 
cleaner and cheaper energy, and widespread access to reliable 
broadband internet (just not yet on my farm in rural Oklahoma). 
In short, our investment in basic federal research, 
infrastructure, and workforce development pays massive 
dividends.
    American companies use the knowledge and tools gained in 
our labs to commercialize innovations that improve our lives 
and our economy. Historically, the United States has been the 
world's largest investor in research and development. U.S. 
government and industry spent a combined $511 billion on R&S in 
2016, generating over $860 billion for our nation's economy 
while supporting over 8 million jobs. And numerous studies have 
concluded that as much as 85 percent of the long-term growth in 
America's economy is from scientific and technological 
advances.
    But our leadership in science and technology is under 
threat. China has likely surpassed us in total R&D spending 
already. While they increased their research investment by 56% 
between 2011 and 2016, ours fell by 12%.
    The Chinese Communist Party has an aggressive and strategic 
plan for their scientific development. They've been very clear 
that they intend to overtake us in critical technologies. 
Communist leadership in China hasn't been shy about how they 
plan to outpace us. In addition to outspending us, they're 
looking to acquire foreign research, attract premier talent by 
building out world-class research infrastructure, and build up 
their domestic STEM workforce. With our leadership in science 
and technology at risk, we need to reevaluate our commitment to 
the fundamentals we need to succeed: basic research, cutting-
edge facilities, and a thriving STEM workforce.
    Chairwoman Johnson and I agree on the need to support 
federal research. A few weeks ago we introduced legislation to 
reauthorize the National Science Foundation. Along with 
Research and Technology Subcommittee Chairwoman Stevens and 
Ranking Member Waltz, we put forth the NSF For the Future Act, 
which increases the funding to$13 billion over five years. It 
invests in industries of the future, works to expand STEM 
education and develop our STEM workforce, and includes 
important provisions to secure our research from foreign theft.
    I appreciate the bipartisan work that went into this 
legislation, and I look forward to working to move it forward. 
It dovetails nicely with the Securing American Leadership in 
Science and Technology Act, or SALSTA, which is legislation 
I've introduced to double our funding in basic research and 
create a national strategy to focus our investment on critical 
technologies like Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, and 
quantum computing.
    SALSTA will invest in our research infrastructure so we 
have the facilities required to do groundbreaking research. It 
helps to grow a strong American STEM pool of talent through 
workforce development and STEM education programs. And it makes 
it easier to transfer technological breakthroughs from the lab 
to private industry through regulatory reform. Taken together, 
SALSTA is a comprehensive and strategic approach to investing 
in America's science and technological development.
    We're still benefiting today from research investments made 
generations ago. And that begs the question: What investments 
are we making for our grandchildren, and their grandchildren? 
Are we being strategic and forward-thinking in our commitment 
to federal research and development?
    We have a fantastic panel of witnesses here today, and I'm 
looking forward to their insights into that question. As a 
wheat farmer, I'm an eternal optimist- I plant seed in the 
ground and I'm optimistic that I'll have a good yield each 
season. And I'm optimistic that we can work together in a 
bipartisan fashion to strengthen our research industry and 
invest in the future of our scientific development.
    With that, I yield back.

     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Mr. Lucas.
     If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening 
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this 
point.
     And at this time, I'd like to introduce our witnesses. 
Before I do so, I would just note that they all have such 
distinguished careers. I depend on their voices so much that I 
could spend 30 minutes just introducing them. I'll try not to 
do that, but I would encourage everyone to read their bios.
     Our first witness is Mr. Norm Augustine. Mr. Augustine was 
previously the chairman and CEO (chief executive officer) of 
Lockheed Martin, a position from which he retired in 1997. 
[inaudible] Secretary of the Army and Acting Secretary of the 
Army, among many other positions in his long and distinguished 
career, and a grade mark on where we are now and our future now 
in the scientific endeavors.
     Our next witness is Dr. Frances Arnold. Dr. Arnold is the 
Linus Pauling Professor of Chemical Engineering, 
Bioengineering, and Biochemistry at the California Institute of 
Technology. She pioneered directed enzyme evolution, for which 
she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2018, becoming 
the first American woman to do so. Dr. Arnold has also co-
founded three companies and served on several private and 
public company boards. Dr. Arnold was recently appointed as co-
chair of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and 
Technology.
     Our third witness, the Honorable Ernest Moniz. From 2013 
to 2017, Dr. Moniz served as the 13th U.S. Secretary of Energy. 
As secretary, he advanced energy technology innovation, nuclear 
security and strategic stability, cutting edge capabilities for 
the American scientific research community, and environmental 
stewardship. He is currently the President and Chief Executive 
Officer of Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), and a professor 
emeritus and Special Advisor to the president of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
     Our final witness, Dr. Farnam Jahanian. He is currently 
the tenth president of Carnegie Mellon University, where he 
previously served as provost and chief academic officer, as 
well as vice president for research. Prior to his service at 
Carnegie Mellon, he led the National Science Foundation 
Directorate for Computer and Information Science and 
Engineering from 2011 to 2014. He spent much of his career at 
the University of Michigan, during which time he co-founded an 
internet security company.
     As our witnesses should understand we will have five 
minutes of spoken testimony from each of you. Your written 
testimony will be included in the record for the hearing, and 
when all of you have completed your spoken testimony, we will 
begin a round of questions. Each Member will have five minutes 
to question the panel.
     So, now we will start with Mr. Augustine. You are 
recognized for your testimony.

        TESTIMONY OF MR. NORM AUGUSTINE, FORMER CHAIRMAN

         AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER OF LOCKHEED MARTIN

     Mr. Augustine. Well, good morning, Chairwoman Johnson, 
Ranking Member Lucas, and Members of the Committee. Thank you 
for the invitation to appear today.
     My comments are going to draw heavily on a report, ``The 
Perils of Complacency'' which was produced by the American 
Academy of Arts and Sciences, an organization now almost 250 
years old, in conjunction with the Rice University Baker 
Institute of Public Policy.
     The thrust of the message is very straightforward. First, 
America's well-being depends heavily on having a strong 
economy. Second, having a strong economy depends heavily on 
advancements in science and technology. And third, America is 
on a path to lose its leadership position to China in science 
and technology in the not-too-distant future.
     Wen Jiabao, the former Premier of the State Council of the 
People's Republic of China, had the following to say, and I 
quote, ``Scientific discovery and technological inventions have 
brought about new civilization, modern industries, and the rise 
and fall of nations. I firmly believe that science is the 
ultimate revolution.''
     There have been a number of studies that have shown that 
up to 85 percent of the growth of the U.S. economy is due to 
advancements in science and technologies. Two of those studies, 
incidentally, were the bases of Nobel Prizes.
     There are really two principal ingredients that dominate 
scientific advancement: financial capital and human capital. 
Beginning with financial capital, our current path is such that 
China is passing us in investments in research and development 
at purchasing power parity. The U.S. Federal investment in R&D 
has fallen from 1-1/2 percent of GDP in the 1960's to 7/10 of 1 
percent today, a period of increasing impact of science and 
technology.
     Turning to human capital, perhaps the best recognized 
international test of primary and secondary education is called 
the PISA test of 15-year-olds, it's given every 3 years. 
Currently, the United States places in 25th place among the 
developed Nations of the world in composite literary, math, and 
science scores.
     It is noteworthy that U.S. scientific and technology 
enterprise today would barely function were not for foreign-
born individuals who have come to our country, received their 
advanced degrees here, remained here, and raised their families 
here. These individuals today provide 28 percent of the faculty 
of science and engineering at our universities. They provide 1/
3 of the entire U.S. scientific and tech workforce. They 
provide 1/2 of the postdoctoral workers who perform much of our 
Nation's research.
     I've been asked to comment briefly on military 
implications of these trends. I would note that China has four 
times the population of the United States. We are not likely to 
compete effectively on a personnel manpower basis with China, 
either militarily or economically.
     Further, the history of warfare is replete with examples 
where technological breakthroughs have had decisive results in 
combat. It goes all the way back to the stirrup and the longbow 
to the aircraft and nuclear weapons today.
     But there's another important consideration not widely 
acknowledged, and that is in the past much of the military 
advancements in science and technology are traceable to 
arsenals. However, today commercial technology is driving 
military applications. I refer, of course, to microelectronics, 
high speed computing, manufacturing, AI, robotics, automation, 
and so on.
     One thing that's clear is that we can't build a wall 
around commercial science and technology. It's out there in the 
marketplace, so we have a rather simple choice. We could either 
be a leader, or we could be a follower.
     What might be the U.S. report card in science and 
technology as it would exist today? In terms of quality of our 
research universities, we are unarguably No. 1. In terms of 
innovation, we've dropped from first to eighth place. R&D 
intensity and fraction of GDP, we've dropped from first to 
tenth. Primary and secondary education, we're at 25th. 
Professionals in R&D, per capita, 28th in the world. Fraction 
of research funded by the government, 29th in the world. In the 
fraction of initial degrees awarded in engineering we're 76th, 
just behind Mozambique.
     Permit me a personal word in closing. My first trip to 
China was 44 years ago. I saw a handful of automobiles. Every 
adult was wearing a Mao suit. I have visited there every half 
dozen years or so since that time. While I don't admire many of 
their methods, the economic, military, and S&T results are 
truly astonishing. I'm 85 years old. I probably won't be around 
for the results of the decisions that we make today and that 
are being made in China. But I will note that very early in my 
career as a young engineer, I had the great privilege to play a 
very tiny part in putting 12 people on the Moon, all of whom 
became my friends later on. And it's truly amazing what our 
country could accomplish when we put our minds to it.
     Thank you very much.
     [The prepared statement of Mr. Augustine follows:]
    [GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
    
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much.
     Dr. Arnold?

              TESTIMONY OF DR. FRANCES H. ARNOLD,

        LINUS PAULING PROFESSOR OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING,

                BIOENGINEERING AND BIOCHEMISTRY,

               CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

     Dr. Arnold. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking Member Lucas, 
Members of the Committee, first of all, thank you for 
supporting science and for inviting me to appear today.
     As an inventor, teacher, entrepreneur, and researcher, I 
have seen where innovation succeeds and also how it can fail. 
The quest to understand our universe and our place in the 
natural world is one of the great manifestations of human 
creativity, and as we well know, such exploration is also the 
foundation of wealth. The rest of the world appreciates science 
as the driving force of prosperity, and they are making the 
necessary investments to compete.
     Now, I've been everything from a taxi driver to a 
mechanical and aerospace engineer working for the nuclear 
industry, later building solar energy facilities. After earning 
a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and doing basic research in 
biophysics, I became a professor, an inventor, and co-founder 
of several companies. Now, I was never particularly expert at 
any of these professions, but through these diverse 
experiences, I acquired knowledge I could recombine to solve 
problems in new ways.
     Inspired by the astounding feats--engineering feats of the 
biological world, I chose to become an engineer of that world 
and tune nature's machinery to do chemistry for us. And I have 
little doubt this will be the century of biotechnology, where 
we'll be able to engineer biology to make everything from 
pharmaceuticals, to fuels, to food, to cure cancer, and to 
fight pandemics.
     I am but one of the many Nobel laureates this country has 
produced although, yes, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize 
in Chemistry. But importantly, I am the product of government 
investment in science. That funding has supported cutting edge 
research and trained more than 200 postgraduate researchers who 
are now at top universities, government laboratories, industry. 
And several have started companies that today employ hundreds 
more.
     Federal grants enable seedling ideas to take shape, but 
not to create the many commercial products that come out of our 
research. Getting technology into the hands of users--in other 
words, making research truly useful, requires a much bigger 
innovation ecosystem that includes applied or development 
research, collaboration with industry, and entrepreneurial 
activities, all of which I've done. Importantly, we do not 
separate fundamental science aimed at understanding from 
research aimed at applications. To me, they go hand in hand and 
separation would impoverish both of them.
     The strength of the academic research system in this 
country, in my opinion, comes from empowering younger 
scientists. I strongly favor portable fellowships because young 
people are capable of deciding where the future lies, what 
science fields, what problems. They will choose the 
universities and research settings that meet their 
expectations. Unrestricted grants to the most promising young 
researchers pay off with work that is truly innovative, rather 
than conservative by design, because these PIs (principal 
investigators) are free to formulate whole new questions 
outside the confines of bigger projects, whose goals are 
already set in stone. I received such support early in my 
career from the Packard Foundation.
     Make no mistake, not all ideas are good, nor do all such 
investments lead to breakthroughs, because scientists know 
there may be no pot of gold or Nobel Prize at the end of their 
little rainbow. But I believe we should reward exceptionally 
talented scientists who can tackle those high risk, high reward 
problems. And please note that all three U.S. women who've won 
Nobel Prizes in the sciences in the last 3 years were supported 
in their early years by the Packard Foundation. This is 
remarkable and it is not a coincidence.
     I love what I do for what it can do to alleviate suffering 
of people and the planet. It was easier, however, 35 years ago 
to start a career in academic research because we did not spend 
2/3 of our time in department meetings, writing proposals, or 
complying with regulations. Instead, we focused on research, 
mentoring, teaching. That has degraded. With additional 
responsibilities that women have with respect to family, it is 
very difficult to compete, almost impossible to enjoy the 
process. It is also a struggle for scientists from 
underrepresented communities, and the most talented people have 
multiple choices and simply take other paths.
     I'm honored to be testifying before you today. I greatly 
appreciate the recognition each of you has given to these 
issues in recent legislation, and your recognition that there's 
more that we must do.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Arnold follows:]
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     Mr. Bera. I don't know if we lost the chairwoman. Can we 
get----
     Ms. Stevens. Yeah, it looks like Chair Johnson is not 
there.
     Mr. Bera. Should we go to the next witness?
     Ms. Stevens. Yeah, Secretary Moniz.

          TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE ERNEST J. MONIZ,

             PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,

                   ENERGY FUTURES INITIATIVE

        AND FORMER SECRETARY, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY

     Mr. Bera. Secretary, you're on mute.
     Mr. Moniz. Yeah, the most famous expression of the new 
age, you're on mute. Thank you.
     OK. Madam Chair, Ranking Member Lucas, Members of the 
Committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify before you 
today.
     Many countries have committed to net zero carbon emissions 
by mid-century, and the U.S. will soon release a new ambitious 
interim target for emissions reductions by 2030. A decade of 
supercharged innovation is needed, starting now, in order to 
have a chance of meeting these goals.
     It's important to place the associated investments in a 
larger context: the changing risk profile, the growing 
interdependencies of critical infrastructures, the growing 
importance of supply chains, and regional differences and 
needs. Traditional weather risk profiles are no longer 
adequate. The modernized climate risk disclosure needs to be 
supported by research with sufficient regional granularity for 
the full spectrum of extreme weather events. Electricity, 
natural gas, and water systems are interdependent, and 
innovation in systems analysis is needed badly. The need to 
address supply chain issues was underscored by President 
Biden's Executive order on American supply chains. Critical 
minerals and metals availability are a major challenge and 
needs innovation.
     The administration has proposed an ambition innovation 
agenda. Federal energy innovation should expand the Federal 
Government's innovation role beyond early stage R&D, address 
key breakthrough technology areas, improve coordination across 
the Federal Government, harness the full range of tools for 
Federal support, bring together public and private innovation 
players, support regional innovation, build on and supercharge 
successful innovation structures like ARPA-E (Advanced Research 
Projects Agency--Energy) and the Energy Frontier Research 
Centers.
     The Energy Act of 2020 marks a significant move to advance 
and accelerate the energy innovation agenda. It authorized new 
energy RD&D (research, development, and deployment) efforts in 
seven major titles, and emphasized the importance of Federal 
support for demonstration projects.
     Internationally, the current focus of mission innovation 
should be expanded to include emerging technologies for carbon 
dioxide removal (CDR) and advanced nuclear energy, both fission 
and fusion.
     RD&D areas that merit additional support include cross 
cutting technologies that reduce emissions in multiple sectors 
and strengthen the foundation of the innovation infrastructure.
     A few examples are clean hydrogen, sustainable supply 
chains, climate risk analysis tools, and as a complement to 
emissions mitigation, carbon dioxide removal, and in addition 
to direct air capture, emphasis should be extended to other CDR 
pathways and multiple Federal agency roles.
     A 2019 EFI IHS study also identified the importance of so-
called platform technologies as an enabler of innovation for 
clean energy and multiple other sectors. Key platform 
technologies include additive manufacturing, materials by 
design, artificial intelligence, and big data analytics, 
genomic science and synthetic biology, and much more.
     A greatly enhanced platform technologies initiative could 
be led by NSF with important contributions from DOE (Department 
of Energy), DOD, Commerce, NIST (National Institute of 
Standards and Technology), HHS (Health and Human Services), NIH 
(National Institutes of Health), and others in a whole of 
government approach.
     The architecture and processes for implementation of a 
Federal energy innovation investment program are also 
important. First, innovation investment programs should build 
upon and better integrate the existing unparalleled innovation 
capacity in the United States across private industry, 
universities, research institutions, entrepreneurs, and 
Federal, State, local, and tribal government entities. Federal 
policies should encourage public/private partnerships, 
formation of regional innovation ecosystems, and alignment of 
innovation investment with market formation policies.
     Second, it's essential that the innovation portfolio 
support the entire innovation spectrum from use-inspired 
fundamental research through learning by doing demonstrations 
and pioneering commercialization. The innovation process is not 
a simple linear process. There's an opportunity to further 
expand the NSF role beyond discovery science to support use-
inspired fundamental research in areas of science and 
engineering, especially in platform technologies that cut 
across many applications. However, adding a major focus on 
technology development and commercialization to NSF's mission 
would be a major risk to the nature and culture of the agency, 
and would been to be circumscribed with great care.
     A great example of use-inspired research comes from DOE. 
Energy Frontier Research Centers focus on fundamental research, 
and yet, have produced significant advancements in the 
technology base toward commercialization. ARPA-E has also been 
successful in bridging the gap and deserves more funding.
     The future role of NSF in use-inspired fundamental 
research should be complementary to and closely coordinated 
with similar fundamental research at DOE and other Federal 
mission agencies. The innovation agenda calls for better 
alignment of the policies, players, and programs that are the 
key building blocks of our national energy innovation 
ecosystem.
     Madam Chair, Ranking Member Lucas, Members of the 
Committee, I look forward to your questions.
     [The prepared statement of Mr. Moniz follows:]
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     Mr. Bera. Should we go to the final witness?

               TESTIMONY OF DR. FARNAM JAHANIAN,

             PRESIDENT, CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY

     Dr. Jahanian. I'd be happy to. Chairwoman Johnson, Ranking 
Member Lucas, and Members of the Committee, I am grateful for 
the opportunity to testify today. My testimony is shaped by my 
perspective as a university president, my public service at the 
National Science Foundation, my experiences as a computer 
scientist and an entrepreneur, and as an immigrant who came to 
this country at the age of 16.
     Throughout this Nation's history, a thriving research and 
development ecosystem has served as a foundation for broad 
economic prosperity, national security, and individual and 
collective well-being. Today, we see this ecosystem at a 
crossroads, shaped by three major trends. The first is the 
unprecedented scope, scale, and pace of innovation. Major leaps 
in data-enabled, technology driven research are impacting a 
wide range of applications and industries, from drug discovery 
and enhanced telemedicine, to new materials for clean energy, 
breakthroughs in transportation and manufacturing, and the very 
essence of scientific discovery itself.
     The second is the rise of global competition, as you just 
heard. The U.S. R&D engine has been the envy of the world for 
the past half century, and our global competitors are now 
replicating our model of an innovation-based economy. The need 
to invest and out-innovate could not be more urgent.
     And finally, this moment is defined by a widening 
opportunity gap and a rising economic inequality. Digital 
transformation and globalization have contributed to a profound 
reshaping of our workforce, and persistent structural barriers 
to access and opportunity are preventing the benefits of our 
innovation-based economy from being widely shared.
     At this critical moment, our national response should rest 
on four thrusts as outlined in my submitted testimony. 
Investing in research at the pace of discovery and innovation, 
winning the global race for talent, committing to a robust 
research and innovation infrastructure, and finally, expanding 
the geography of U.S. innovation.
     Let me highlight key recommendations in several of these 
areas.
     First, if we're to compete and win, the Nation must 
urgently increase Federal investment in research to double the 
current levels for the next several years. To some, the current 
moment creates an imperative to choose between increased 
support for curiosity-driven research versus strategic mission-
driven initiatives in emerging technologies. This is a false 
choice. Scientific exploration occurs along a dynamic continuum 
from foundational discovery to use-inspired research. 
Breakthroughs from the internet to self-driving cars, to rapid 
development of MRNA vaccines all stem from support for 
innovation across this dynamic continuum.
     Along with foundational research across all disciplines, 
we must also invest in use-inspired research motivated by 
national and societal priorities in healthcare, sustainability, 
transportation, clean energy, public health, cybersecurity, and 
much more.
     To catalyze mission-driven approaches for these complex 
challenges, the Nation needs targeted investments in the 
emerging technologies that have become near ubiquitous in their 
impact, including artificial intelligence, robotics, advanced 
manufacturing, materials, biotechnology, quantum computing, and 
next generation wireless.
     Second, the Nation must win the global race for talent and 
build a broad-based science and technology workforce that 
leaves no one behind. We must ensure every child and young 
adult has access to training and digital competency and 
computational thinking, double the number of graduate students 
and postdoctoral researchers in science and engineering, and 
broaden public/private partnerships for human capital 
development.
     Finally, the United States needs now bolder strategies for 
transitioning discoveries from lab to market. With an 
intentional focus on expanding the geography of U.S. 
innovation, our universities and national labs have 
extraordinary capacity to generate discoveries and innovations 
that catalyze economic growth and job creation. The Nation must 
invest in entities adjacent to universities that are capable of 
facilitating the seamless fusion and transfer of ideas, 
technologies and skills. The possibilities for creative, 
innovation-based economic development to support American 
competitiveness are endless.
     I'm grateful to this Committee for the important work that 
you do, including advancing the NSF for the Future legislation. 
The boldness of your actions is a poignant reminder of the 
transformative power of science, technology, and innovation to 
advance our economic prosperity and national security. The 
education and research community is ready to seize the 
opportunities that lie ahead.
     Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today.
     [The prepared statement of Dr. Jahanian follows:]
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     Ms. Stevens [presiding]. Great. Thank you so much to our 
speakers, and as Vice Chair of the Committee, as our Chairwoman 
proceeds to address her technological issues, I will take over 
as chair.
     We want to thank you all for wonderful testimony, and what 
we'll do right now is move into the first five minutes of 
questions. The chair will recognize herself for questions, and 
then pass it over to the Ranking Member.
     So, certainly the breadth of topics and needs that all of 
you discussed are quite pertinent, and in particular, Secretary 
Moniz, you had mentioned that the need to not just focus on 
R&D, but to look at technology transfer applications. And you 
as well, Dr. Arnold, also touched on that.
     But I'd like to get a little more specific. As you 
mentioned, Dr. Moniz, we can't get this--we don't want to 
necessarily house all the technology transfer at the NSF, in 
part because it's early stage, original research applications, 
and you briefly mentioned DOE. But could you get a little bit 
more specific about where we might see this mature is the DOD 
an avenue or at the acceleration of SBIR (Small Business 
Innovation Research) awards or other public/private 
partnerships that we should be pursuing? And you can feel free 
to chime in as well, Dr. Arnold.
     Mr. Moniz. Yes, Congresswoman, I think these are very 
important issues that you've highlighted.
     Let me first kind of reiterate, my view at least is that 
what we need is not to look in the same way that several of my 
colleagues have emphasized that there is a kind of continuum 
across the innovation spectrum. What we need to do is to match 
that to what I believe is the structure of our very 
successful--in need of some juicing up--but very successful R&D 
enterprise across the multiple agencies, with NSF having a 
very, very broad remit across the entire science spectrum, and 
other agencies being mission agencies with narrower focus and 
complimentary roles. It's maintaining the complementarity which 
is critical.
     But as I said, I could see easily NSF having a major lead 
in leading use-inspired fundamental research. And as I said in 
the DOE example, once you're into use-inspired fundamental 
research, you will see spillovers into commercialization. 
That's the stage at which then that initiatives like SBIR can 
be extremely successful. I mean, I think we all know of so many 
examples of SBIR that has helped small companies grow up to the 
next stage going forward.
     And in doing that, I would like to emphasize something 
that Farnam said, and I said in my testimony as well. In terms 
of regional innovation systems, we really need to get regional 
pushes on innovation, and that includes--if you look in my 
testimony, the written testimony, the heat map of innovation 
institutions, we've got some blank spaces there, and we need to 
take advantage of all of our talent in this country, and use 
that also as a criterion for going from use-inspired research 
all the way to commercialization.
     Ms. Stevens. Thank you so much.
     Dr. Arnold, did you want to chime in there at all? And 
specifically honing in on a few things that you said that, you 
know, I love what you were talking about--different topic, but 
portable fellowships, which I think gets us there too a little 
bit.
     Dr. Arnold. Oh, well I'm all for portable fellowships 
because who does the future belong to? It's those students, and 
they're smarter than you might think about knowing what the 
future will be.
     But I also want to say that I have received SBIR grants 
and STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) grants that are 
critical for taking things out of the basic research laboratory 
and moving them at least to the next stage. And it's those 
young people who often start the companies that benefit from 
those SBIR grants, so that's a wonderful mechanism, and it's 
also a very high-quality mechanism. Those are hard to get, and 
they're very competitive, and I think could easily increase in 
number and be very beneficial.
     Ms. Stevens. Thank you. Great. Thank you all, and I've got 
about 30 seconds left, so I'll just reclaim the time. Because 
in part, even though I'm Vice Chair, right, it's still--I was 
going to be three in the ranking, so I do want to be respectful 
of my colleagues and recognize our Ranking Member, Mr. Lucas, 
for five minutes of questions. Thank you so much, Mr. Lucas.
     Mr. Lucas. Thank you, Vice Chair, and I address my 
question to the entire panel.
     The Securing American Leadership in Science and Technology 
Act, SALSTA as I like to call it, which I introduced last month 
directs the development of a national science and technology 
strategy and a quadrennial review, like the process that DOD 
undertakes for national security.
     Can each of you comment on what you would like to see in a 
process for a whole government strategy for S&T, and how that 
might benefit American competitiveness? Whoever would care to 
go first.
     Mr. Augustine. Well, I'll be happy to start, if I may.
     I think your question touches on a very important aspect 
of the issue we're addressing. One of the problems today is we 
really have no R&D strategy or R&D plan. We also fund our R&D 
efforts on a yearly basis, and R&D just doesn't work on an 
annual cycle.
     Furthermore, I'm not aware of any successful corporation 
in America that doesn't have a capital budget. The Federal 
Government has no capital budget, not in R&D or anywhere else. 
I think one of the very first steps will be to put together 
planning that includes emphasis on the transition from the 
laboratory to the field. We lose a lot of our edge in that 
transition period.
     I will be brief so that my colleagues can speak. I'll turn 
it over to them.
     Mr. Lucas. Absolutely. Doctor, Doctor?
     Dr. Jahanian. I'll be happy to chime in next.
     If you step back and look at our R&D ecosystem, which 
candidly is the envy of the rest of the world, the investment 
that we've made in this country over the last 75 years has not 
only enhanced our global competitiveness, but very, very 
bluntly, has enabled so much in this country in terms of the 
prosperity of our Nation and national security.
     But the entire R&D ecosystem not only has the government 
investment, but it also has to be catalyzed by private sector. 
You need to have public/private partnerships that spur, 
essentially, productive entrepreneurship and enhance both 
skilled development and innovative supply chain of ideas. You 
also need to have strategic alignment of education, economic 
and community development, as well as infrastructure 
initiatives.
     So, any kind of a decadal survey or assessment of this 
would really have to look at the entire R&D enterprise of the 
country. Clearly, the government has a huge, huge role to play 
in this without any doubts. Our agencies across the country, 
whether it's NSF, NASA, DOD, and so on, and Department of 
Energy, they have a massive role in terms of shifting and 
prioritizing our priorities in this country.
     But I think we're going to have to bring the private 
sector into the picture. We're going to have to look at very 
creative public/private partnerships to be able to advance not 
only scientific discovery and innovation, but also win the 
global race for talent, and furthermore, transition effectively 
what we discover in our labs to market, hopefully creating new 
industries, products, and services, and beyond.
     Mr. Lucas. Anyone else care to offer some input on that?
     Mr. Moniz. May I add, Mr. Ranking Member?
     Mr. Lucas. Absolutely.
     Mr. Moniz. Let me tee off just from one of the elements 
that you introduced, the quadrennial review of DOD. I will note 
that when I was secretary, we initiated a quadrennial energy 
review, which had the idea of looking at whole of government 
and looking at an extended period of time, like a 5-year 
horizon, which was very important. And I might say, that seemed 
to strike a chord because we had--and you know, in what was a 
difficult political environment, we had 21 recommendations from 
that review passed into law by the Congress. So--because I 
think that leads to a, you know, completely nonpartisan 
approach to meeting these needs.
     So, today, just as one example of this need for 
integration and looking ahead, I mentioned a couple of times a 
critical technology that is getting more and more attention in 
the Congress, carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere and 
the upper oceans. We did a portfolio analysis. DOE has a huge 
role. NSF has a huge role. Agriculture has a huge role. 
Interior has a huge role. NOAA (National Oceanic and 
Atmospheric Administration) has a huge role. I think that's the 
kind of perspective we need to bring to more of our critical 
challenges in terms of bringing it together, putting it before 
Congress, and going forward based upon sound analysis, and I 
think garnering, I would hope, strong bipartisan support.
     Mr. Lucas. My exact point.
     Dr. Arnold, my time is expired, and I regret that.
     Dr. Arnold. That's fine. I don't have anything to add 
here.
     Mr. Lucas. I yield back, Vice Chair.
     Ms. Stevens. Great, and thank you so much.
     With that, our Madam Chairwoman Johnson has returned, and 
I will pass the running of the hearing back over to her.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Ms. Stevens, and 
thank you for filing in during my wi-fi failure. Let me thank 
all the witnesses as well.
     Let me say that when I think about reimagining our 
innovation future, one of the things that's in my focus is how 
we need to be more inclusive in our approach to innovation. By 
inclusion, I mean by gender, ethnicity, race, and disability, 
and institutional and regional diversity, diversity in 
expertise and in perspectives. I think about listening to those 
in our communities who might have something to say about the 
nature of our challenges and our research agenda, but who 
aren't traditionally connected to our local research 
institutions.
     That's just not a moral perspective, but it's also an 
economic and national security imperative. And I just wanted 
[inaudible]----
     Mr. Bera. Looks like we may have lost the Chairwoman.
     Ms. Stevens. I was going to say, I think her wi-fi went 
out again, and I know we've been having problems with that in 
various office spaces and whatnot. So, we need--what we'll do 
is we'll----
     Mr. Bera. Do you want to recognize Ms. Bonamici, who's 
next?
     Ms. Stevens. Yeah, we'll just have to let Ms. Bonamici 
take it over.
     Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Vice Chair Stevens, and thank you 
to Chairwoman Johnson and Ranking Member Lucas, and thank you 
especially to our witnesses for joining us today.
     This hearing is about our innovation future, so as a 
Member of the Education Committee, I want to first note the 
importance of well-rounded education and educating students to 
be innovative, and to be able to, as Dr. Arnold noted, solve 
problems in new ways. A student may become interested in math 
by playing an instrument or learning chess strategy, by growing 
a garden or glazing and firing pottery can spark a child's 
interest in science. We need intellectually curious critical 
thinkers to solve the challenges we face and it is at our peril 
if we don't recognize that, which is why I'm leading a 
bipartisan call for robust funding to Title 4A grants under the 
Every Student Succeeds Act to support that well-rounded 
education that will educate students to be creative and 
innovative.
     So, moving on, the United States has the ability and the 
obligation to lead the world's efforts to curb greenhouse gas 
emissions, and addressing the climate crisis is our next 
moonshot innovation challenge. Our Nation does have some of the 
world's best scientists, researchers, programmers, and 
engineers in the world. We can and should take bold action that 
is informed by their sound peer-reviewed science.
     I have two questions for Secretary Moniz, so I'm going to 
state the two questions and then turn the time over to you to 
answer them.
     Secretary Moniz, you in your testimony noted your work at 
the Department of Energy to develop mission innovation to 
accelerate clean energy research development and demonstration. 
We are anticipating that the Biden Administration will soon 
announce our next Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) 
under the Paris Agreement, so how would you recommit or how 
would recommitting mission innovation contribute to a whole of 
government approach under an ambitious NDC accelerate our 
transition to 100 percent clean energy economy? So, that's my 
first question.
     Then the second question, Secretary Moniz, following up on 
your comment about regional approaches. I appreciate that you 
highlighted that. In northwest Oregon, for example, we 
recognize the tremendous potential of marine energy, but the 
same researchers--resources are not accessible in landlocked 
States. So, regions differ in energy resources, markets, and 
innovation ecosystems. So, as part of mission innovation, as 
you mentioned, you proposed funding during the Obama 
Administration to support those regional clean energy 
innovation partnerships. Last year, I introduced the Regional 
Clean Energy Innovation Act, which is modeled on this idea.
     So, how can the Federal Government better harness and 
align local, State, tribal, regional, and national solutions to 
advance the deployment and commercialization of clean energy 
technologies and help innovative concepts avoid that 
commercialization valley of death? And I'll turn it over to 
you, Secretary Moniz, for your response.
     Mr. Moniz. Well, thank you, Congresswoman. Very good 
questions.
     Let me say on the first question on mission innovation, I 
do expect, as you implied, that the administration will put 
forward a very ambitious NDC probably next week, and it will 
have an extraordinary challenge for the electricity sector by 
2030, and then, of course, economy-wide reductions. If I had to 
guess, it would be north of 50 percent reductions economy-wide 
in line with the EU, for example.
     Now, as I said, to reach that, we need what I called 
supercharged innovation for this next decade that will include 
international collaboration, and I think now that we have 
rejoined the Paris Agreement--and I will give a shoutout to the 
Deputy Secretary, Dave Turk, who when I was Secretary already 
was playing a role in stewarding mission innovation, and he 
continued to do that at the IEA (International Energy Agency). 
So, I think Dave could play an important role in our getting 
back into mission innovation. But importantly, expanding its 
scope.
     I mentioned two areas. Carbon dioxide removal is 
absolutely essential if we are going to meet net zero, and 
almost by definition, if we're going to get eventually to a 
negative economy, we need negative carbon technologies. That's 
a perfect area for international cooperation.
     Another more challenging organizationally, but I believe 
the advanced nuclear technologies--and by the way, that 
includes one from Oregon----
     Ms. Bonamici. Right.
     Mr. Moniz. Yeah. Seriously need a public/private 
partnership because enormous amounts of private capital have 
gone in, but they have to get over the hump in terms of 
demonstration.
     On the second issue I'll be very brief, but you said it. 
The low carbon solutions will look entirely different in 
different parts of the country, No. 1, and therefore, we should 
have some regionally driven innovation that will look at the 
solutions most appropriate to that part of the country, 
engaging their own innovation institutions to advance that.
     Secondly, I believe the regional innovation centers, as I 
said, will be very important for the inclusive nature that we 
need of our system, and although it's the opposite end in a 
certain sense of the commercialization, I would say that 
starting in the 1970's--while I have to say it wasn't very 
popular at some of our leading research institutions, I was and 
I remain a major fan of F-score as a way of reaching areas and 
young students' talent that we need to bring into the system. I 
believe that can be a very effective mechanism as well.
     Ms. Bonamici. Thank you, Mr. Secretary, and as I yield 
back, I want to say if I had more time, I would ask Dr. Arnold 
about the importance of childcare, which I know you mentioned 
in your testimony.
     But I will yield back and submit a question for the 
record. Thank you.
     Ms. Stevens. That's a great one, Rep Bonamici, and thank 
you for that.
     I see we've got Chairwoman Johnson in the Committee Room. 
All right. Chair Johnson? I know we had Mr. Posey next in line 
here, which we can pass it over to Mr. Posey and then jump back 
to Chair Johnson so she can finish her questions. But however 
you'd like to proceed, Madam Chair.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much. Who is the next 
witness? I have changed locations.
     Ms. Stevens. We had Mr. Posey up next for questions.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Mr. Posey is recognized.
     Mr. Posey. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and I must 
say, I appreciate your passion toward the subject of 
innovation.
     And I hope we all recognize that China's economic and 
military goals are one and the same. Through economic 
dominance, they hope to achieve military superiority. So, this 
has been mentioned by two of the speakers already, intertwines 
with our national security.
     Mr. Augustine, in your testimony you state that America is 
on a path to lose its lead in science and technology to China. 
What are your recommendations as to make America competitive 
well into the future, and to fix our Nation's Pre-K through 12 
public school system, particularly in STEM? Would you be 
willing to give us more specific recommendations?
     Mr. Augustine. Thank you, Congressman. I'd be happy to do 
that. Perhaps the--there are two missing links--I know there 
are many, but two major ones that are science and technology 
competitiveness. One is a lack of investment and the second 
is--seems--the ability to produce scientists and technologists 
from domestically born children at scale. And certainly, there 
are some outstanding young people with some outstanding 
schools, but on average, by international standards we're 
failing.
     Part of the issue is having teachers who aren't qualified 
in science and technology. Too often middle school children 
have teachers who are the football coach and they've been given 
a book on algebra and said go teach algebra. We have too many 
teachers not qualified to teach the subject they're teaching in 
the STEM area. And that certainly has to be fixed.
     The problem, for once, is not money. We spend more money 
per student in pre-K through 12 than any other Nation but one, 
Switzerland. And our problem, I think, is to bring the free 
enterprise system, parts of it, to our public education system, 
which means that one has rewards for outstanding performance 
and accountability for poor performance. Somehow, that has been 
very hard to do because we have--I think it is 14,000 public--I 
should say independent public school districts.
     I'm optimistic that we can solve the financial part of 
this issue. The K through 12, and you said pre-K through 12, 
which is really important because too many of our young 
children start first grade 2 or 3 years behind, and pre-K is 
just essential if we're to solve this problem.
     So, thank you for that question, Congressman.
     Mr. Posey. Thank you for your answer.
     You also mentioned in your testimony and you mentioned it 
orally, a balance between technological breakthroughs of 
warfare history, they're the stirrup, the longbow, gunpowder, 
the cannon, machine guns, tanks, battleships, aircraft, nuclear 
weapons, rockets, and night vision, stealth, space, robotics, 
autonomy, and cyber. And I'm just wondering what you see as the 
next technological breakthrough, and do you see the United 
States taking the lead with it?
     Mr. Augustine. One of the wonderful things about 
technological breakthrough is that most of us can't foresee 
them, and I'm afraid I'm in that category. But to try to answer 
your question, there are some areas that certainly stand out as 
being at the leading edge of science today, and I defer to some 
of my colleagues on the panel. But artificial intelligence 
stands near to the top--as does quantum science with its 
several applications. We often talk about quantum computing, 
but there are many more applications. Robotics, autonomy, 
autonomous vehicles are being seen already, and certainly 
biomedical sciences--that's where I think the really big 
breakthroughs are going to come in the decades ahead.
     One of the great things about some of the proposals that 
have been made for legislation would be to have the NSF put 
together a group of people who are really qualified to answer 
that very tough question, and see if they can come to a 
consensus, and then readdress it periodically.
     One of the important things in my last 19 seconds of your 
time, I would just point out is that, as my colleagues have 
said, being first in research is of the utmost importance. 
That's where the ideas come from. My background is mostly in 
business, but research is where the foundation is. But ideas 
left in the research lab are of little value in terms of 
winning wars or succeeding in the market.
     I see my timer is at zero, so thank you, Congressman, for 
your question.
     Mr. Posey. Thank you, Mr. Augustine. I yield back, Madam 
Chair.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much.
     Our next witness--Mr. Bera.
     Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
     Look, this is a great conversation. One thing that I'd add 
to Mr. Augustine, when I think about my public school 
education, I also had wood shop, metal shop, auto shop, which I 
do think we've really disadvantaged a generation of kids by not 
having that exposure to the arts and--you know, where you have 
to use your imagination.
     Now, I went on to medical school, and when I was training 
at UC (University of California) Irvine, most of the Ph.D.'s 
that we were training with were going on an academic track. 
They'd go into academia, and then join faculty and go on a 
tenure track. Fast forward to my professional life prior to 
coming to Congress as an associate dean and faculty member at 
the University of California, Davis Medical School, most of the 
Ph.D.'s that we were training there were now actually getting 
their training and they were going to go into the private 
sector or startups--not all of them, but many of them, you 
know, were going in that space.
     And you know, I think the right mix--and again, Mr. 
Augustine, you touched on this a little bit--is how do we get 
that blend of academia, and you know, private sector 
innovation? When I think about academics, we are doing research 
and discovery just for the joy of solving these problems, not 
necessarily thinking about how we are going to commoditize it 
and bring it to the masses. Private sector is thinking about 
how you commoditize it and get it to folks.
     So, maybe I'll start with Dr. Arnold and then to the rest 
of the panel. You know, one of the areas that I have thought a 
lot about is this area of technology transfer, and private 
institutions can do technology transfer a little bit easier 
than public taxpayer-funded institutions. Yet, I'd be curious--
and again, maybe starting with Dr. Arnold, what things should 
we be thinking about doing to make that tech transfer, you 
know, a little bit tighter and easier?
     Dr. Arnold. Right. Well, first of all, let me just say I'm 
the mother of a young man who got his education and tech 
through the U.S. Army, so that's a wonderful training place for 
hands-on technology, and he built the Mars rover at JPL (Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory) after leaving the Army. So, there are 
wonderful careers in hands-on technology that young people 
should know about and should be ready for, and we shouldn't 
have to rely just on the military to train these people.
     Now, to answer your question, I am--what should we do to 
promote tech transfer in places is make it easier. Technology 
is not useful until someone uses it. Academics are very fond of 
saying this is useful for something, but they have no clue what 
it takes to get it into the hands of real users.
     On the other hand, the young people who actually do the 
development of the technology, who invent it, want to do that, 
and so, to the extent that we can support the transition of 
some of these young graduate students into the entrepreneurial 
space, we should do that, as often happens in California. 
California has a thriving ecosystem for that. To the extent 
that we can do that in other parts of the country, all the 
better. I think you'll see that the students have the passion 
and work ethic needed to make that happen in the right 
environment.
     Mr. Bera. Dr. Jahanian?
     Dr. Jahanian. Yes.
     With respect to your comment about education, I just want 
to add one point and then I'll talk about technology transfer.
     I think we're at a point in this country that we need to 
be reimagining not only K through 12, but also higher 
education, because we're going to have to break down 
disciplinary siloes. I think some of the most important 
advances that we're making, both on the discovery side as well 
as on innovation and its impact on society, are inherently 
becoming interdisciplinary, bringing people from different 
perspectives. So, one of the important things to recognize is 
that it is the convergence of disciplines that's really 
catalyzing now some of the innovation that we're seeing.
     Very briefly with respect to your very profound question 
in regard to technology transfer, what I can tell you in my 
experience over the past 25 years in academia is that U.S. 
academic institutions have come a long way. We do have one 
challenge, which is something that I mentioned, and also 
Secretary Moniz mentioned, which is that we need to expand the 
geography of innovation in the U.S., and the best place to do 
it is to look at where the concentration of research is 
happening. In fact, in the U.S. today, we have about 200 
institutions that are receiving more than $50-plus million in 
R&D, and that could be an innovation center that could catalyze 
innovation, working with the private sector, working with the 
economic development in the regions, and so on.
     So, one really important concept to recognize is that 
going from lab to market doesn't happen on its own. We need to 
create the conditions. We need to create the environments to 
facilitate transfer of knowledge from lab to practice, from lab 
to market, creating new industries and products.
     With respect to the universities, at Carnegie Mellon, for 
example, we have created a culture of innovation such that our 
faculty, students, and researchers don't just think about 
foundational versus use-inspired research. They think about the 
entire continuum. But most importantly, we have direct 
engagement with the private sector, and the private sector is 
often involved in research with us, especially in the area of 
use-inspired research, creating much more flexible policies for 
faculty members to be able to transfer their knowledge to 
practice, to be able to leave the university and come back. 
Again, at our institution and I know many other institutions in 
the country, we've made that possible.
     The final point related to the students is that our 
students in this next generation are hungry for the kind of 
use-inspired work that you described.
     So, I think our challenge at universities has been--and I 
think we've come a long way, is to create an entrepreneurial 
culture in the university, such that those who want to engage 
in it, whether they're undergraduates, masters, or Ph.D.'s, can 
do so. I am very optimistic about how far this country has come 
in terms of being able to facilitate this. We have some work to 
do, but there are some terrific examples of successes in this 
country in terms of the innovation ecosystems that we've 
created at universities that involve the community, leading to 
economic development and job creation that could be replicated 
across the country, hence expanding the map of innovation.
     Thank you for that question.
     Mr. Moniz. Madam Chair, may I add a brief comment?
     Chairwoman Johnson. Yes.
     Mr. Moniz. Just to say that I agree with all of that, but 
I don't want to lose sight of the fact that as has been said, 
the most important vehicle for tech transfer from the 
university is the moving van which takes our graduates to their 
next job.
     Chairwoman Johnson. OK. Mr. Clerk?
     The Clerk. Mr. Babin is next.
     Mr. Babin. Yes, thank you so very much, Madam Chair, and 
Ranking Member Lucas. What fascinating testimony here. I want 
to thank our witnesses for being here today. One of the 
greatest assets we have here in this country, as we've just 
heard so eloquently, is our vibrant venture capital market, the 
private sector. When we fully utilize the R&D capabilities of 
industry, we have the ability to dominate global innovation in 
science and technology. The partnership we have with the 
private sector is a unique advantage that we have, and one that 
sets us apart from other countries, who heavily subsidize R&D 
investment that is almost solely reliant on government funding.
     And now, thank you, Dr. Jahanian, for what you said, but I 
would like to ask the same--this question here of Dr. Arnold 
and Mr. Augustine. How do we make certain that we fully utilize 
this unique edge and partnership that we have with industry, 
and how can the government improve collaborative efforts with 
the private sector? I heard Dr. Jahanian, and I'd like to hear 
both of your opinions. Thank you.
     Dr. Arnold. Thank you for the question, Representative 
Babin. I've worked extensively with industry over the years. 
The problem, of course, is that industry has outsourced much of 
their fundamental research, and they have very short timelines 
for solving problem, and I'm talking about the big companies. 
And that's usually not the best partnership with, let's say, 
you know, elite laboratories that are trying to do the cutting 
edge research that will change the world in 10 years, or 20 
years. So there's a mismatch of time scales for industrially 
sponsored research. However, to the extent that companies are 
investing in the next generation of technology in their spaces, 
that seems to work very well, when the timelines are loosened a 
bit.
     Mr. Babin. OK, thank you. And Mr. Augustine? I think 
you're unmuted, Mr. Augustine. Go ahead.
     Mr. Augustine. Can you hear me now?
     Mr. Babin. Yes.
     Mr. Augustine. OK, good. Such an important question. My 
background is in industry, government, and academia. I've had 
three careers, and our system of producing new ideas and 
putting them in the market is really a three-legged stool. It 
depends upon these three elements. It--the government is going 
to have to be the funder of default of basic research. Industry 
just isn't going to do that under today's rules, with today's 
taxes and so on. So the government is going to have to fund 
basic research. That research will best be performed at our 
universities and National Labs. It used to be performed in 
industry, but industry can no longer afford long term 
investments of that type, high risk.
     When I first entered industry, the average shareholder 
held their stock for 8 years. Today they hold it 4 months, and 
they don't care what happens to the company 8 years from now. 
So industry will invest heavily in development, but not in R. 
So that's so important that the government fund R. Academia and 
the National Labs perform R, and then transition it to 
industry. And to pick up on Ernie's point, I've always felt the 
best way to transfer ideas between those three elements is to 
transfer people, and so the more easily that we could make it 
for people to move among those three elements, one to the 
other, I think we'll find transitioning much easier. Thank you 
for a great question.
     Mr. Babin. Yes, sir, and I think I've got time for one 
more. The FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and 
intelligence agencies have warned Congress about the threat of 
foreign espionage of U.S. science and technology, particularly 
on university campuses. So China's investment in development, 
and not on basic research, implies that they are building their 
technological success on the basic research developed in the 
United States, and around the world. We've seen infiltration of 
Chinese influence in our university systems in several 
different occasions at our top institutions. So how do we 
ensure that foreign nationals from China coming to study at our 
universities do not undermine our open system of research? And 
what is the right balance for protecting U.S. basic research 
while continuing to promote an open science system that has 
made our scientific enterprise the best in the world? Dr. 
Arnold, I'd like to have you start with that.
     Dr. Arnold. Well, Representative, I work in a field where 
the openness is a great benefit. It causes all boats to rise. 
And it's not related to national security. So I see the huge 
benefits of having fully open science, and I don't worry about 
infiltration from China because, frankly, the talent of the 
students who come make that research go forward. On the other 
hand, I recognize that there are areas of research where 
perhaps the openness should not be as open, and I'll leave the 
answer to those who know that better.
     Mr. Babin. OK. Anybody else like to take a stab at it?
     Mr. Moniz. Go ahead, Farnam.
     Dr. Jahanian. I was just going to say that, as you said, 
that we need to preserve and enhance the research, education, 
and innovation ecosystem that has fueled our Nation's 
prosperity since World War II. This is a model that we know has 
worked, and it is not a surprise that others are trying to copy 
it. Having said that, your question is very profound, and it's 
really important. There are areas of research in which openness 
is so important to the long term success of our own science and 
discovery enterprise, but we also recognize that foreign 
influence in the form of intellectual property theft, cyber 
attack espionage, other broad-scale state-sponsored efforts are 
a direct threat to our Nation's security and economic 
prosperity. And it would be a mistake to think that this is 
only happening at universities. This is happening across the 
board, and we have to be ready for it.
     I can give you my assurance that academic institutions in 
this country, including Carnegie Mellon, my home institution, 
are taking significant steps to protect against these 
challenges when it's appropriate. Again, openness, as Professor 
Arnold mentioned, is so important to the research enterprise of 
this country that has served our national security and economic 
prosperity so well. As examples of things that we're doing, 
we're being very diligent in protecting against some of these 
challenges, in working with other institutions; working with, 
obviously, policymakers; building awareness; increasing 
coordination; training faculty and staff; reviewing 
collaborations, contracts, and foreign gifts; reviewing, 
updating, and enforcing conflict of interest policies; 
implementing foreign travel safeguards and protections; 
developing requirements and vetting them; and so on.
     We need to double down on what we do best: leading the 
world in innovation, creativity, and finding solutions to 
society's most pressing challenges. In fact, many international 
students that come here want to stay, and they contribute so 
significantly to the culture of our academic institutions and 
our entire Nation. Our research enterprise has been so 
successful because we are solving some of the most pressing 
challenges for society.
     So instead of hoping that others will lose, I think we 
need to double down in the belief that when we win, when 
America wins, the world wins. We need to continue to ensure 
that our Nation remains a welcoming place for those who want to 
maintain our competitiveness, be part of our society, and 
contribute to it. And also, that's part of the reason that I 
believe we should not retreat from global engagement. We 
shouldn't change how we do research. We must not cripple the 
engine that has delivered amazing benefits to the country, 
while recognizing that we do have challenges--in the private 
sector, and academic institutions, and the government.
     And the very final point I want to make is that the 
biggest threat to our economic prosperity and national security 
at this point in time is cybersecurity, without any doubt, the 
cyber threat to this country. We need to absolutely double down 
to deal with cyber issues. Thank you.
     Mr. Moniz. My----
     Mr. Babin [continuing]. Time.
     Mr. Moniz. My simple point was that we can't kill the 
golden goose, so we need to support the open system, but what 
we also need to do is to get the clock speed up from that basic 
research to the ultimate products so that it is, in fact, a 
material advantage to us to have that open fundamental research 
system.
     Mr. Babin. Thank you very much, and I'll yield back, Madam 
Chair.
     The Clerk. Mr. Bowman is next.
     Mr. Bowman. Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and thank you 
to all of our witnesses providing testimony today. I would want 
us to maybe shift our paradigm a bit. It's good to think 
globally, but I also want us to think about the untapped and 
unlimited potential we have here in our country. I would 
propose that our golden goose is in our historically 
marginalized communities, our red lined communities, where we 
have historically underinvested in our schools and in our 
neighborhoods, particularly in our pre-K to 12 school system.
     And I'm so happy that so much of this conversation has 
focused on our pre-K to 12 school system because, you know, 
I've had the privilege of working in pre-K to 12 schools for 20 
years, in all Title I school districts, and I've worked in 
elementary, high school, and middle schools. I've been a middle 
school principal for over 10 years, and I could tell you that 
our kids are ready, willing, and able for more science and 
technology in the classroom, they're ready, willing, and able 
for more innovation. They are curious, they are collaborative, 
they are creative problem-solvers, and they are waiting for us, 
as the adults, to get our act together and bring them more 
curricula and instructional opportunities. So I think a focus 
on K to 12 with regard to science, with regard to arts--we 
spoke earlier about hands-on learning. Our kids are ready for 
all of this, and they're tired of the mundane, rudimentary 
education that we've been giving them for the last 20 years, so 
it's great to hear you all speak about the importance of K to 
12 education.
     Dr. Arnold, thank you so much for your testimony, and 
thank you for highlighting the difficulties that marginalized 
children face in pursuing STEM careers. For example, if they 
fall behind in math and science in middle school, as you 
mentioned. I recently proposed a green stimulus investment of 
$1.16 trillion over 10 years to make each of our public schools 
a healthy, zero carbon center of the community, and a big part 
of that vision is seeing our schools as living labs and putting 
our young people at the forefront of the sustainable energy 
transition. Given your work in biology, engineering, and green 
energy, I'm wondering if you could talk more about how solving 
the climate crisis is an opportunity to engage children on a 
deeper level here, to ignite their passion for learning across 
a variety of STEM fields, and to set them up for a variety of 
careers?
     Dr. Arnold. Representative Bowman, you've seen it with 
your own eyes, the children are passionate about making the 
world a better place, and they've always been, right? Remember 
how we were. Unfortunately, my generation is leaving them a 
world that doesn't look like a better place. We may be leaving 
behind a world that is worse in some ways than the one I 
entered, and I feel ashamed about that. I would like to see 
those children empowered--again, the word is empowerment--
empowered to make decisions about the future, about their 
education, about their careers that will enable them to make a 
difference.
     Science and technology is an incredibly powerful way to do 
that, and that's what I tell the young people. They need to 
know that, through science and technology, they can make an 
impact on these major problems, and what better challenge than 
climate change? Because that touches everything.
     Mr. Bowman. So just a follow-up question, if I'm a teacher 
in a second grade classroom, and I want to introduce my 
students to the world of science to put them on a pathway 
toward solving the problems that we all know are pressing, not 
just climate change, but other problems as well, what is the 
best way I might do that, Dr. Arnold? And then others can chime 
in.
     Dr. Arnold. Well, I'm not sure I'm the best second grade 
teacher, but I have raised three sons who are all curious. I 
found that just taking them out and showing them the world. and 
not being afraid of it, teaches resilience, curiosity and 
willingness to test the unknown. We've--we tend to often imbue 
our children with fear rather than confidence, and fear of the 
future is not an effective way to instill creativity. So 
confidence, getting out into the world, making things happen, 
seeing things happen, getting out into nature, observing. 
Observing with your own eyes, building with your own hands, 
it's a very hands on thing, science is, so anything that can do 
that, get them out of the Zoom room, and out of the classroom, 
and into the real world helps.
     Mr. Bowman. Thank you so much. Secretary Moniz, did you 
want to jump in with a quick response?
     Mr. Moniz. Well, I would just add that, again, I was not a 
second grade teacher, but my grandchildren are--have just gone 
through that phase, and I think the big thing is science is 
fun. Science is remarkable, and I think it goes back to what 
Norm said earlier, that's the teacher cadre that we need, that 
has the confidence, the interest, the excitement, to say, wow, 
you know, if we get these kids to see what science is about, 
remarkable stories, I think we'll get a new generation.
     Could I also add that I think it's very important, of 
course, the role of parents and mentors, et cetera, and on the 
climate side we are going through a big change in which people 
of our generation see with their own eyes that climate change 
is not only an issue for their children and grandchildren, it's 
for them too, because we are paying a lot. I mean, look, the 
recent Texas stuff would be an example of terrible results. And 
so maybe that will help the mentors also understand that this 
is important for the kids, to have that STEM education.
     Mr. Bowman. Awesome. Thank you so much. I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Baird is next.
     Mr. Baird. Thank you, Madam Chair, and Ranking Member 
Lucas, for having this important kind of a session. I've really 
enjoyed hearing from Mr. Augustine in the past, and again 
today, and I really appreciate all of the witnesses and their 
testimony. I think we've touched upon some very important 
things to help keep our country in a leadership role, 
particularly in STEM education, because it's so important to 
our future. It's becoming increasingly important, and a matter 
of national security. So with an institution like Purdue 
University in my district, and I might mention that they just 
recently was ranked fifth as the most innovative university in 
America by U.S. News and World Report, but I only mention that 
because they have the research part that's adjacent to the 
University. It really provides innovators the opportunity to 
take the information they get out of the lab and have a space 
to work, and be innovative, and develop their own company. So 
it really takes the lab research, and the results there, and 
puts it into practical application. And so I think that's 
really important to our growth and development in this country.
     I also really appreciate what Dr. Bera had to say, and 
also Representative Bowman had to say, regarding stimulating 
young kids, and utilizing their curiosity that was mentioned in 
order to do the pipeline and build a pipeline with young people 
that want to be in the STEM education. If you tell them that 
you want to make them STEM researchers and so on at a very 
young age, I'm not sure how excited they'd get about that. But 
what I have experienced in some of these facilities that I've 
seen, getting the hands-on, the opportunity to challenge 
themselves, and something exciting really does stimulate them, 
so I guess, Mr. Augustine, I'm going to start with you. By the 
way, I really appreciated having access to the ``Perils of 
Complacency,'' but would you care to elaborate on--are there 
other ways that we could stimulate these young kids? I'm 
thinking about Boy Scouts, the FFA, 4H, where they get that 
hands-on experience, that's already in place. What's your 
observations or experiences there, Mr. Augustine?
     Mr. Augustine. Well, thank you for that question. As a 
former President of the Boy Scouts, I appreciate the comment. 
They had merit badges in science, and aviation, and space, and 
you name it. There are many organizations outside of schools as 
you suggest that are doing wonderful work, and if it could be 
made available on a broader scale--I think of such things as 
the Challenger Center, I think of such things as FIRST 
Robotics, started by Dean Kaman. FIRST Robotics has a program 
that goes all the way from preschool through high school, and 
it starts out with a LEGO competition, building robots. And 
when you see these kids working on these things, they're so 
excited. It's unbelievable how they get into it. I think 
emphasis on these out of school things could be very, very 
important.
     I think there's another factor that gets into the 
preschool part of it. We're operating our science and 
technology enterprise with one hand tied behind our backs. And 
I say that because 58 percent of our college graduates are 
women, but only 19 percent of our Ph.D.'s in S&T are women. 40 
percent of the students in our pre-K through 12 public school 
system come from under-represented minorities. They produce 7 
percent of the Ph.D.'s in science and technology. If we could 
just get more of these young kids interested, keep them 
interested and excited, we could solve much of the problem we 
have with China. I think back to my own career. Who would have 
ever thought that a kid from Colorado would help put people on 
the Moon? This is exciting stuff. Thank you for your question.
     Mr. Baird. Absolutely, and you know, you talk about women 
in the STEM programs, Representative Stevens, and I see she's 
on here, we sponsored a bill way back in the last Congress that 
encouraged young women to get involved in the STEM program. I 
am sorry that I don't--I've got several other questions, but 
I'm out of time, and so I really appreciate the other witnesses 
and their testimony. I found a lot of interesting comments that 
you made, and I appreciate it. I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. McNerney is next.
     Mr. McNerney. Well, first of all, I want to think the 
witnesses. Great testimony, and it's great to see you all in 
front of us today.
     Dr. Moniz, we have to focus on mitigation and adaptation 
for climate change, but is it now the time for serious 
investments in climate intervention, i.e. geoengineering 
research, so that we have that as an option in the future? You 
will need to----
     Mr. Moniz. Sorry, I was muted, I was muted. Yes, a very 
important question. First of all, let me make the--first of all 
a distinction. There's sometimes confusion, I don't mean in 
this Committee, but--between carbon dioxide removal and 
geoengineering. I think on the carbon dioxide removal we need a 
big push in this decade toward demonstration and deployment so 
that we can address legacy CO2 in the atmosphere and 
the oceans. Geoengineering gets into much more difficult 
issues. I personally support highly regulated R&D getting into 
perhaps localized demonstrations, but maybe we need a structure 
like NIH review boards, for example, to do that. I--to be 
perfectly blunt, I sure as hell hope we don't need it, but I 
think we have to do cautious and prudent investigations in case 
we need band-aids for a while as we address the core issues of 
mitigation.
     Mr. McNerney. Well, moving on to fusion, what do you think 
the state of affairs is with regard to fusion as a potential 
energy source, including low energy nuclear reactions?
     Mr. Moniz. OK, well, let me first declare that I'm on the 
board of one of the privately funded fusion companies in 
Southern California, in fact. The fusion--first of all, a lot 
of people are surprised that fusion has probably attracted--
alternative fusion concepts has probably attracted $1-1/2 
billion of private capital. It's an unknown story, and that's 
happened because the progress is quite stunning. The company 
that I'm associated with, TAE, for example, put out a press 
release last week kind of admitting that we have reached stable 
temperatures approaching the 100 million degrees needed for DT 
fusion. At MIT there's a spinout that within months will be 
testing novel high temperature superconducting magnets that can 
make a compact tokamak design feasible.
     So we are--what I would say is in this decade we'll know 
if this dog hunts. And if it does, it is a big, big deal, 
because, of course, it doesn't have the challenges of fission, 
which is also doing remarkable things, remarkable innovation in 
advanced small fission reactors. But fusion would be an even 
greater breakthrough, and just change the--it would literally 
change the world.
     Mr. McNerney. Thanks. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about 
fusion too.
     Mr. Moniz. Yeah.
     Mr. McNerney. Dr. Jahanian, as co-Chair of the Artificial 
Intelligence Caucus, I want to make sure that we in Congress 
are taking the necessary steps to make sure our Nation stays 
competitive in AI. What metrics should we be examining in order 
to evaluate U.S. competitiveness in AI against significant 
players like China?
     Dr. Jahanian. Thank you very much for that question. As 
you know, advances in AI are probably among the most important 
developments in scientific discovery and innovation over the 
past probably quarter century, among a handful of others. 
Before I get to your question, I do want to highlight an 
important thing about AI, which is connected to basic research 
and importance of investing in foundational research.
     You know, we all look at AI and think that it just came to 
fruition overnight over the past few years. The truth is our 
Nation is leading it because for the past 40 to 50 years we 
have invested in foundational research that has led to 
artificial intelligence. And, in fact, some of the advances in 
machine learning, deep learning, and so on, have happened as a 
result of these major investments that the National Science 
Foundation, and then other mission-oriented agencies, including 
DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), DOE, and NIH 
have made in advancing AI. The importance of that is really 
something that I want to get across, because that 30 or 40 
years plus investment in research is now bearing fruit, and 
it's having impacts in various areas, as you know, from 
healthcare to manufacturing, in national intelligence, national 
defense, and so on.
     With respect to metrics, I think there are a number of 
them. One is we really do need to make sure that our production 
of talent in this country matches the pace and scale and scope 
of innovation that's needed. The second thing that's important 
is to look at the application of AI in various areas, as I 
mentioned, whether it's in healthcare, whether it's in 
manufacturing, whether it's in smart transportation, whether 
it's in energy and climate, and so on, and develop metrics 
around that to see the progress that we're making.
     The last point that I want to make is that we need to be 
very cognizant of what's happening in the rest of the world, 
and continue to out-innovate and outpace our competitors. 
Because of the importance of AI, we see massive investments, as 
others have alluded to, by our partners and competitors across 
the world, including China, so we can't take our eyes off the 
ball.
     Mr. McNerney. Thank you. Well, my time has expired. I'm 
embarrassed that I didn't get to ask a Nobel Prize winner a 
question in the Science Committee, but I'll submit something 
for the record. Thank you. I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Sessions is next.
     Mr. Sessions. Chairwoman Johnson, thank you very much, and 
our Ranking Member Lucas, thank you for doing this. To each of 
our three important people who are providing testimony today, I 
want to focus, if I can, on two issues. No. 1, I would like it 
to be said that if it's just a snapshot today, one would assume 
that we've been laggards and not paying attention to this issue 
for the past 15 years, when in fact we have, and we've done a 
number of things, including, as an example, the NIH, taking 
them on a 5-year model where we did not make them come up and 
beg under discretionary spending. We put them on mandatory. We 
gave them the money and said, ``Please come to us to keep us 
updated. Don't come to us to beg to get money'', and we did 
that. Second, we did right to try. We've done a number of 
things that have been very influential. We funded genome 
project years ago that would lead us to where Francis Collins 
is not today, but where he has been, that helped us at the time 
of the pandemic.
     So I would like for it to be noted in the record that for 
quite some period of time, between the Energy and Commerce, the 
Science Committee, and the Rules Committee that we pushed an 
aggressive agenda, including the Budget Committee, where we 
doubled--this is not a new term--doubled back in 1997 the NIH 
and other funding. Now, that said, thank you very much, we 
appreciate you being here.
     Dr. Moniz, this may be directed directly at you and 
Professor Augustine--Mr. Chairman Augustine. Please know that 
I've heard the discussion now about TAE, the company which Mr. 
Moniz, that you are affiliated with, and thank you very much, 
that is directly related to fusion. But another example I'd 
like to bring up is a company called Urenco, and Urenco is the 
world's leader from back in World War II of uranium enriched 
services. Urenco is, by and large, until they get pushed out of 
European countries that don't like atomic energy or fusion--
they exist in New Mexico, and they are the world's leader, by 
far, in these uranium enriched services. Close to fusion, not 
the same thing, but they have to begin with the same product.
     My point to you, and question now, with 2 minutes left, 
and I apologize, although we just went through, with Mr. 
McNerney, a little bit extra time, I'd like for you to discuss 
why in the world would we pay our labs or people here to 
compete against someone like TAE and Urenco when they've 
already solved the problem, and they, because they're in a free 
enterprise system, are driven to making things better every 
day, why would we pay $50 million to Oak Ridge Labs to try and 
learn how to do what we already know? Mr. Moniz?
     Mr. Moniz. Thank you, Mr. Sessions. First of all, on the 
fusion side, I should say that if I just use the company that 
I'm affiliated with as an example, it's a partnership with the 
labs, actually, has also been very important because the 
Department of Energy has provided large-scale computational 
services. And that, together with a partnership with Google on 
machine learning, all these things come together for the 
progress, so it's really an ecosystem there.
     On the enrichment side, Urenco, as you said, is certainly 
the leader in the West for sure. If I may note, however, we 
have a, in my view, pressing need in the United States to 
deploy an American enrichment technology because that's the 
only way we can serve our national security needs, and those 
national security needs range from making tritium for the 
nuclear weapons stockpile, eventually to making fuel for 
nuclear propulsion, and, in the near term, producing what's 
called high assay LEU (low-enriched uranium), 20 percent, 
roughly speaking, enrichment in order to satisfy some non-
proliferation objectives, and to support the innovation going 
on in fission because most of the new designs that are being--
and many are supported by the Department of Energy--almost all 
of them require this so-called high assay LEU. So we need to 
focus on getting an American technology out there to meet our 
national security needs quite separate from competing in the 
commercial market.
     Mr. Sessions. Well, OK, so--but we go to SpaceX to get the 
commercial market for what we need for NASA and other things.
     Mr. Moniz. Yeah, well, the--I mean, the--this national 
security service could be provided by a commercial entity, as 
long as they are using American technology, and American 
equipment, and American uranium because all of that is required 
by our non-proliferation agreements.
     Mr. Sessions. Well, they're in New Mexico, and doing quite 
well. They're a----
     Mr. Moniz. Yeah.
     Mr. Sessions [continuing]. Big power organization. Look, 
I'm just trying to get the concept, not the specifics, but 
sometimes in the concept you have to use an example, and that's 
why I tried using an example, TAE. You gave a great answer. I 
will just go to the premise, Mr. Augustine, and Ms. Arnold. I'm 
not trying to ignore you at all, because I think you bring a 
lot of common sense as much as anything. Norm, you bring a lot 
of realistic ideas about specifics. Should we be funding, 
through the Federal Government, things where there already is a 
world leader in trying to understand it, as opposed to spinning 
off our limited--or lots of resources, but the limited 
resources of trying to compete, as opposed to go build 
something. I'm worried about the competitive model, about 
government against something that's already been solved. Norm?
     Mr. Augustine. Well, thank you for the questions. If I 
could go back to the first part of your comments, they were so 
important, your Committee has played a key role in trying to 
keep America ahead in science and technology, and I think 
what's happened over the years, the past dozen years or so you 
mentioned, is in one word China. China has come along so fast 
that that it has become a concern. Secondly, I think that 
regarding your second part of your comments, fusion is the 
ultimate answer to the energy problem for the world. And it's 
come very slowly, tough technical issues, but there are 
projects in being--progress being made.
     Turning to the issue of fission, which we tend to neglect, 
small modular reactors offer a great deal of promise, another 
new development. We have to pick and choose--there's no such 
thing as second place, if it's an area that's of critical 
importance to us. I would say microelectronics. 
Microelectronics are the heart of all modern technology, if you 
really get down to the fundamentals. But we build now only 14 
percent of the microelectronics in the world. Now, that might 
be an area where we would want to build up our own capability 
even though others have ample capacity. But there's no sense 
reproducing things that our allies, reliable allies, are 
producing. Thank you.
     Mr. Sessions. Ms. Arnold?
     Dr. Arnold. Thank you. I think that the general idea that 
you're putting forward is that we shouldn't reproduce what 
already is happening in private industry as long as it's 
happening well, and there are many examples where private 
industry is fully capable of developing the technology, and, in 
fact, better capable than a research laboratory would be doing, 
so I'm all in favor of that. But you also have to supply people 
to support those industries, so the education of those people 
is critical. No technology exists as a silo.
     Mr. Sessions. Well, and that's the last point--Chairwoman 
Johnson, I just would request 15 more seconds. And this is why 
we made permanent R&D tax credit, so that companies could go 
and plan it in their long term strategy, as opposed to 
``worrying every year'', so I think we're going to get there. 
Chairwoman Johnson, thank you. Our three witnesses I find 
leading edge in the world, and I appreciate all three of them. 
Norm, thank you for your service to the Boy Scouts of America.
     Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much.
     The Clerk. Mr. Foster is next.
     Mr. Foster. Well, thank you, especially to all our 
witnesses, for your great written testimony. I stayed up far 
too late last night getting through it all. There appears to be 
a real appetite right now on both sides of the aisle to 
increase Federal funding for scientific research. You know, 
this obviously could result in a fantastic opportunity to 
propel forward enormous advances in science and research 
nationally as a sort of second Sputnik-like moment.
     Now, some of those proposals involve significant--renaming 
and mission change in our scientific enterprises, while others 
see the existing structure as primarily sound, but historically 
under-resourced, and basically just want to increase the amount 
of money there. And I guess Secretary Moniz has mentioned this, 
and I just was wondering if we could go through the witnesses 
and ask what your thoughts are on this general area, whether 
the first priority is just ramping up the budgets for the 
existing program versus structural change in this. And I guess 
I--we'll start with Mr. Augustine, who was a practicing 
engineer during the first Sputnik moment.
     Mr. Augustine. Well, I was, and thank you. I think that 
both are important. Certainly if we don't increase the 
financial support for research from the Federal Government, 
we're going to be in trouble, and I say that because industry 
simply--the old Bell Labs, or the great places like that--Bell 
Labs a canonical place, the home of the laser, the transistor, 
nine Nobel Laureates, is now owned by a company in Finland. So 
the government is really going to be the funder of only source.
     You also point to another problem, and that is these three 
entities that are involved here, the Federal Government, 
academia, and industry, don't work together as well as they 
could. The reasons go all the way from excessive regulation to, 
frankly, some distrust of one another. And, having been at all 
three of those entities, I've found wonderful people, dedicated 
people, competent people, but there is a bit of distrust, and 
somehow we have to tie those organizations together so that one 
plus one plus one is seven, or something like that. I think we 
could do it. Thank you.
     Mr. Foster. Yeah. Yeah, Frances?
     Dr. Arnold. Thank you. I--so structure is important, 
right? Money is important, structure is important. Structure 
can also be destructive, so it has to be very carefully thought 
out how to put together a structure that fosters the 
creativity. I personally am a bottoms-up person. I believe that 
the creativity lies in individual PIs, individual 
entrepreneurs, and individual research scientists in companies, 
however, without the structure, much of that goes to waste. So 
I'm very interested in seeing how a structure will develop to 
make this seamless transition from discovery to getting it into 
the hands of people can best be formed.
     Mr. Foster. Yeah. Farnam? Whoops, you're not muted--you're 
still muted.
     Dr. Jahanian. Thank you for that question. There is no 
question that we need to increase investment in research in 
this country. It's indisputable, as I mentioned earlier. We see 
that our adversaries and our partners across the world are 
taking a page out of the recipe for success of our country. For 
the past 75 years these investments have made us enormously 
successful as a nation, and benefited the country in 
immeasurable ways, so we need to match the scale and the pace 
of the discovery with the investment that goes into it. The 
structure, as the other witnesses mention, is extremely 
important, and, again, it's because of the pace, scale, and 
scope of the discoveries and innovation that we need to be 
creative about new structures. However, forcing down certain 
structures on agencies has a significant risk associated with 
it. We have to be very deliberate about it, and in particular 
in the context of the National Science Foundation, since I 
understand NSF well, I think providing flexibility to NSF is 
going to be, in the long run, extremely important in ensuring 
that we cover the entire continuum.
     My final point is the reason we need the structure and the 
investment is the urgency of the moment, but we can't forget 
that the investment has to happen along this entire continuum. 
Thank you again for that question.
     Mr. Foster. Thank you. And I guess I'm out of time, but 
Ernie's already made his feelings known on this in his opening 
remarks, I guess, and my time is up, and----
     Mr. Moniz. I'm happy to add, but that's up to the Chair.
     Mr. Foster. OK. Well, if there are a few seconds left 
here, I'd just like to point out the merit in the sort of non-
standard way that the Federal Government can invest in 
businesses to help them support research. An example of this 
was something NSF used to do called Moses, where they provided 
access to foundries, to universities, at a heavily subsidized 
rate, and I was sort of heartbroken to see that that seems to 
have stopped. But that's an example of Federal investment that 
would support something that's not profitable to the company, 
but very profitable to the long term health of our country, 
simply because businesses have advanced technology and 
capabilities that universities can't realistically have. And--
--
     Mr. Moniz. If I may just note, of course, the National 
Laboratories of DOE provide these tremendous user facilities 
that serve about 30,000 scientists per year, an example of 
something that would be totally impractical for individual 
universities, or companies. If I may add on the first question 
that I agree with the need for more resources. We have too many 
examples where the number of good proposals to available funds 
is such a large ratio that the--those selected are almost 
random, by definition, given the pull. We need that, but on the 
structure side, again, I would repeat two things. One is I am 
very concerned about some discussions going on about NSF 
somehow being commercialization driven. I think that would be a 
major slippery slope to get onto. And, secondly, there are 
areas, let's say in the energy area, where we have 
organizations that were put together to address the issue of 
oil embargoes in the 1970's, and do not quite reflect the 
technology-driven directions we need for addressing something 
like climate change.
     Mr. Foster. Thank you, and I will yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Meijer is next. Mr. Meijer, if you're 
ready, you're next. If not, Mr. Obernolte would be next.
     Mr. Obernolte. Thank you very much, and thank you to our 
witnesses. It's been an incredibly fascinating discussion on a 
very important topic. I'll direct my question to Dr. Arnold. 
And, Dr. Arnold, hello to my alma mater there in Pasadena. You, 
in your testimony, talked about the fact that portable 
fellowships would be a better way, perhaps, of investing in our 
future generation of talent, and I think that that's something 
I very much agree with, and something that I think would be a 
really interesting innovation, but I think it would cause some 
changes in disruption to the existing ecosystem that we have, 
where right now institutions, for better or for worse, kind of 
compete with each other for grant funding. And this would 
create an alternative system where institutions would compete 
with each other to attract these fellows. So can you talk a 
little bit about the pros and cons of shifting to that kind of 
a system? Because I find it a very interesting idea.
     Dr. Arnold. What a great question, Representative. I'm at 
an elite institution that competes fairly well for NSF fellows. 
So there exists a program that provides portable fellowships, 
and we compete very well. Some of the concern would be that all 
those portable fellowships will go only to those elite 
universities. But I don't think that will be the case. I think 
that we could triple, easily, the number of portable 
fellowships, and provide them more equitably than they are 
currently provided, and the students will choose the areas and 
the universities that meet their needs. These students know 
what the future will look like. These are the brightest 
students coming out of undergraduate institutions. They will 
create the future. They can choose whom to work for, which 
areas to work in, and so it really is a highly competitive way 
of distributing the funds.
     Research grants are also good, but that structure, again, 
is much more set in stone. So professors like I am, we've been 
in place for 40 years, and many of us tend to do some of the 
same things, and don't move as quickly as the younger 
generation does. So if you really want to promote innovation, 
give it to the young ones.
     Mr. Obernolte. Well, thank you. I completely agree with 
you. In your written testimony I noticed that you also said 
that a lack of structure and hierarchy is key to promoting 
creativity, which is something I also agree with. You know, 
however, it has to be said that part of our job as legislators 
is to make sure that taxpayer funds are used for their intended 
purpose, and are used appropriately and wisely, and sometimes 
that's why we need hierarchy and structure. So, you know, when 
we get kind of, you know, these two ideas that are in tension 
with each other. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit 
about how that would relate to this idea of portable 
fellowships, because, you know, when we're talking about 
funding a student, and not funding a research project, we're 
really getting into more of an educational grant than a 
research grant. So how would we with these portable 
fellowships, how would we ensure that there's accountability?
     Dr. Arnold. Well, of course, those grants are actually 
administered through universities, and I'm sure President 
Farnam Jahanian can discuss this as well. They're administered 
through a university, so you will have the same level of 
oversight of how the funds are spent. But instead of dictating 
the research area and the specific project they might work on--
which I don't think is the role of the government--if we are 
going to foster creativity, we have to let the young 
scientists, the students, make the choice. And with this 
mechanism you are also funding individual scientists through 
the votes of the students, whose careers depend on that.
     Mr. Obernolte. Sure. I agree with you. I think there's 
probably a happy medium there where we choose promising fellows 
in areas that we want to increase investment in, such as 
artificial intelligence, or nanotechnology, or nuclear energy, 
and then, you know, we trust that we've chosen good people, and 
that they're going to follow their passion, so I think there's 
probably, you know, some happy medium there. But I think----
     Dr. Arnold. That's a great idea.
     Mr. Obernolte [continuing]. It was a fascinating idea. I 
want to thank you for raising it, and thank you to all of our 
panelists. I think we all share a passion, as you do, for 
increasing investment in basic science in our country, and I 
want to thank you for being part of that effort. I yield back, 
Madam Chair.
     The Clerk. Ms. Ross is next.
     Ms. Ross. Thank you so much, and this panel has been 
great. I'm from the Research Triangle area of North Carolina, 
and we have just amazing students there, and amazing 
institutions of higher education, and then, of course, a lot of 
innovation. I want to start out my remarks by highlighting an 
exceptional constituent of mine who is, I think, an example of 
innovation, and creativity, and drawing talent from other 
countries. Her name is Sepi Saidi, and she's a visionary leader 
in civil engineering, has a women-owned civil engineering firm. 
She is a champion of community service, went to NC State, and 
came to the United States from Iran, and contributed immensely 
to the STEM industry, and nurturing the next generation of 
engineers.
     I wanted to ask Dr. Jahanian, since you've had a similar 
experience to my constituent Sepi, coming from abroad, becoming 
an expert and a leader in your field, and in your testimony you 
talked about the U.S. needing to better facilitate the ability 
of international students who earn advanced degrees in the U.S. 
to stay here and add to our talent development. This is vital 
to the universities in my district, and to the highly 
innovative Research Triangle Park, where there's a real 
pipeline from the institutions of higher education directly 
into the park. What can you advise these students as they look 
to advance their careers? We've taken some steps already this 
Congress for Dreamers, and for documented Dreamers, who came 
with their parents on H-1B visas, but what can you tell them 
about how to navigate our current system for staying in this 
country and being able to contribute?
     Dr. Jahanian. Thank you so much for that question. And for 
sharing the story of a resident of your community, Sepi. I'm 
delighted to hear the stories. As you know, and I know other 
witnesses would attest to this, there are thousands, and 
thousands, and thousands of stories like this. International 
scholars make incomparable contributions to United States 
leadership in science, in innovation, in discovery, and many of 
them, the overwhelming majority of them, after they finish, 
want to stay here. In fact, you heard from Norm Augustine 
compelling data that 28 percent of U.S. STEM faculty were born 
overseas. Nearly half of the Fortune 500 companies were founded 
by immigrants and children of immigrants, including founders or 
co-founders of eBay, Google, and Moderna. These are amazing 
stories. Members of the National Academies are immigrants to 
this country.
     I'm just going to be very candid, because this is also 
personal to me: we invest in these students to come here. They 
become part of our society. We should do everything we can to 
keep them. I think that has benefited us, without any doubt, 
over the past 75 years, certainly in recent decades, and I 
think it's been a recipe for success for our Nation. And I 
think the more we do to facilitate not only their success, but 
to make it easy for them to stay in this country and continue 
to contribute to the vibrancy of the economy that's based on 
science, and innovation, and technology, the better.
     Students reach out to me, and I tell you, it's been 
stressful for many students, domestic as well as international 
students. COVID has had a dramatic impact on our students, 
their mental health, as well as on our doctoral students, in 
terms of the progress of their work. So in the short term I 
know all academic institutions are doing what we can to support 
our students across the board at all levels, but with respect 
to the international students I'll go out on a limb and say we 
should stamp a green card on these students' diplomas when they 
finish in these areas that we have critical needs, and let them 
go into society and contribute to the vibrancy of our economy, 
and they will continue to play a significant role in the 
progress that our Nation makes in addressing significant 
societal challenges, as well as in innovation that catalyzes 
our economy.
     I'm happy to take some of that offline and give advice to 
students in terms of how they navigate this, but, honestly, I 
think the responsibility is much more on us to create an 
environment to enable the success of all the students on our 
campuses. My humble recommendation to our policymakers is that 
we should make it easy for them to come and stay here. Thank 
you for that question.
     Ms. Ross. Thank you so much for your response, and we'll 
do the best we can. And, Madam Chair, I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Feenstra is next.
     Mr. Feenstra. Well, thank you to each one of the witnesses 
for their testimony, and sharing their extensive research and 
opinions with each one of us. I'm excited to be an original co-
sponsor, with Ranking Member Lucas's SALSTA, which helps create 
a long term strategy for investment in basic research and 
infrastructure to protect the economic and national security of 
the United States, and I really am excited about that bill.
     I've got a question specifically directed for Dr. 
Augustine. Dr. Augustine, your publication on the perils and 
complacency, and your testimony mentions taxes and red tape 
regulations that hinder research and development carried out by 
universities, public and private partnerships. Can you expand 
on this a bit and explain which taxes or regulations are most 
limiting to this R&D, and then which would you advise reducing 
or removing entirely to prevent China from surpassing us in 
innovation?
     Mr. Augustine. Well, thank you for that question. We have 
built many roadblocks. I'm aware of one study that shows that 
40 percent of the time of our researchers is spent submitting 
reports, bidding on new projects, and administrative functions, 
as opposed to performing research, so that's a major thing. 
Another factor is the last time I was involved, the NIH awarded 
contracts to 17 percent of the qualified proposals they 
received, so in the rejection box there is an enormous amount 
of opportunity to be pursued.
     And turning to taxes, one of the problems industry faces 
is the issue that the tax structure discourages long term 
investments, and I have a rather radical proposal that I've 
been making for years with little impact. Industry takes a very 
short term view of the world. The pressure's on for the next 
quarter from the marketplace. My proposal is to change the 
capital gains tax--I should qualify here, I'm an engineer, not 
an economist, but I am a rocket scientist. I would make the 
proposal that the tax on a gain, on an asset that's 
appreciated, the tax on the appreciation--if the asset is held 
10 years, the tax should be one percent. If it's held one month 
or one day, the tax should be 99 percent. Then you could draw 
whatever line between them--whatever revenue you need. That 
would change the way industry would behave entirely.
     And I will just quickly tell a story that relates to this. 
When I was working in industry, our company decided to increase 
spending on research, and we sent the president of the company 
to Wall Street to tell what we were going to do because we were 
so excited about the opportunities we had in research. The 
audience from Wall Street literally got up and ran out of the 
room when our president finished talking, sold our stock, and 
our stock dropped 11 percent in four days. And we got the 
message, don't invest in research if you're in industry. The 
industry will invest in development, it has done so, but 
investing in research is not going to happen under today's tax 
laws and regulatory procedures. So thank you for the question.
     Mr. Feenstra. Well, thank you for that information, Dr. 
Augustine. I just think it's so important that we have these 
public private partnerships, and we see that at our 
universities in the State of Iowa. And that's my last question 
I want to just quickly note, you know, private/public 
partnerships are crucial when it comes to American leadership 
in research and development, and one example in my district is 
the Critical Materials Institute, led by Ames Laboratory, which 
includes Iowa State University on its team. I'd imagine that 
the benefits and incentives that an academic institution 
assesses before agreeing to enter into a partnership would be 
different than those that a private industry assesses. Do both 
universities and private industries look for the same type of 
incentives to join these private/public partnerships, or 
there's differences? And I'd ask anybody on the panel that 
question. Any thoughts on that?
     Mr. Moniz. Well, yeah, I would just add, Congressman, for 
the specific example you put forward, I think right now there 
would be tremendous interest because the critical--critical 
minerals and metals, we are so far behind the eight ball on 
that it's crazy, in terms of the kind of supply chain focus 
that I mentioned in my statement that we need. So that's a 
critical example of bringing together public and private to 
address a serious supply chain issue, and raise some difficult 
questions. For example, can we develop environmentally sound 
mining to get back into domestic production? You know, the Ames 
Laboratory had a very, very critical role in the Manhattan 
Project, and that was based upon, of course, domestic mining, 
with different conditions than we need today. So that's a very, 
very important area, and the Ames Lab is doing a great job.
     Mr. Feenstra. Thank you so much, and thanks for the time. 
I yield back.
     The Clerk. Mr. Kildee is next.
     Mr. Kildee. Thank you, and I want to thank the Chairwoman 
for holding this hearing, and for really a stellar group of 
witnesses for your important, and I think really informative 
perspective, so thank you for your participation. Some of you 
know, because I mention it nearly every time I speak, that I 
come from Flint, Michigan, which, at the turn of the last 
century, was really one of the innovation capitals of the world 
related to the automotive industry. In Flint we helped put the 
world on wheels. If you drive around--in fact, if you drive 
around my hometown, you'll see streets named after some of 
these great innovators, Chevrolet, DuPont, who once was the 
president--Pierre DuPont, once the president of General Motors, 
Dort. But, of course, due to pretty dramatic changes, 
technology change, globalization, disparate impact of trade 
policy, Flint, like lots of other older industrial cities, has 
lost parts of our manufacturing base.
     But, you know, foundationally we have people with hard 
work, grit, determination. That's still intact, and we have 
access to great research universities. And Dr. Jahanian, you 
know one of them quite well, the University of Michigan. But, 
unfortunately, we haven't been able to make this connection to 
fully transition to the new economy, or especially to the new 
automotive industry. And I think, for example, we all know that 
electric and autonomous vehicles are the future of transit, of 
transportation and mobility, and it's important that we 
transition to these vehicles for safety, combatting climate 
change, improving mobility, et cetera, but in many ways we fear 
that much of the population is left out. So we can't stop this 
change, we don't want to stop this change, this is where the 
market is going, but I'm really curious about your perspective 
on how we make sure that we all share in this transition, in 
this transformation.
     I'm working on Federal policy to help target investments 
to these older industrial cities, and so in the space of 
innovation and invention, I'm curious about how you think those 
connections are made. So perhaps starting with Dr. Jahanian, 
because you make reference to Pittsburgh, and how it made this 
transition from a steel and mining town to one focused on 
robotics and AI, a real center of innovation. What are the 
lessons, at least from your perspective, that you think could 
be applied to other older industrial cities trying to make this 
connection?
     Dr. Jahanian. Thank you so much for that question, and 
there are so many layers to it. As I indicated in my testimony, 
one of the challenges we face in this country is that there is 
a widening opportunity gap, and that widening gap is 
exacerbated, in fact, by advances in technologies, by 
globalization, and barriers to access, and these are structural 
barriers to access and opportunity. I think it's an issue that 
many communities in the Nation face, and certainly I think 
Pittsburgh, long before I came here, was facing the same issue 
as a result of the decline of the steel industry.
     I think Pittsburgh is a great success story, and has come 
a long way as a result of doubling down in education and 
research, and connecting that to the private sector, and 
creating an ecosystem that is catalyzed by not only these 
technologies, such as AI, and robotics, and autonomous 
vehicles, as you mentioned, but also by the sciences, and in 
recent years, as a result of resurgence of advanced 
manufacturing. So it's been very intentional, but the 
connection between the public sector and the private sector, 
and creative public/private partnerships, have been extremely 
important. It's not a self-serving comment, but the role that 
the university can play in expanding what I refer to as the 
geography of U.S. innovation is undeniable. We have 
extraordinary concentration of intellectual capital and 
capacity for ideas and discoveries that has to permeate and 
involve the community.
     There's a lot more to say about this, but I want to 
acknowledge it's an important issue, and I think expanding this 
map would require us to make very targeted investment to create 
these innovation hubs around not just the universities, but 
also things that are adjacent to them, including incubation 
spaces, community and economic development entities that will 
essentially connect that technology transfer. It's not just the 
push from the university, but it's also the pull, and 
connecting all these pieces of the innovation ecosystem 
together. I hope that, at least at some level, scratches the 
surface in answering your question.
     Mr. Kildee. It's very helpful, I appreciate that. And I 
know my time's expired, but I do want to say that one of the 
weaknesses in communities such as this is that there has been 
an attrition in the public, and even in some of the business 
sector leadership because of the dramatic changes, and I think 
this is the space where academia can help fill some of that 
leadership capacity that's required. So, again, a great panel, 
I really appreciate all of your input, and I wish I had more 
time. I see Secretary Moniz might want to say something.
     Mr. Moniz. Could I add one comment? Which is that--just--
as information for now, MIT and Harvard, with partners in 
Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio, we are looking at a case study of 
the transition from internal combustion engines to EVs 
(electric vehicles), specifically in that area looking at how 
the communities and the workers can be brought along in the 
transition, through supply chains and other methods.
     Mr. Kildee. Well, I would certainly want to follow up with 
that--with you on that, so thank you for that. Again, excellent 
panel.
     The Clerk. Mr. Meijer is next.
     Mr. Meijer. Thank you, and thank you to our panelists for 
being here with us today. I represent Michigan's Third 
Congressional District. One of my predecessors, Vern Ehlers, 
sat on this Committee during his congressional tenure, and it 
was during that period that the first publication of ``Rising 
Above The Gathering Storm'' was published by the National 
Academies in 2007. So this congressionally requested report 
looked at improving K through 12 STEM education, developing and 
recruiting top students, engineers, and scientists from the 
U.S. and abroad, strengthening the Nation's commitment to 
funding basic research, and ensuring that the U.S. is the 
premier place in the world for innovation.
     That seems to be exactly where we are right now, and with 
similar sentiments, so I guess my question for Mr. Augustine, 
and the broader panel as well, you know, this 2000 report 
seemed to have recommended just about the same actions that 
we're discussing today, in broad terms, you know, 14 years 
later. So I guess what--this is a bit of a compound question, 
but what, if anything has changed, you know, how should we take 
action to respond to these broader questions of competitiveness 
posed by the countries that are emulating our research 
ecosystem, and have been robustly investing in R&D?
     Mr. Augustine. Yes, it's been about a dozen years ago that 
the first ``Gathering Storm'' report was prepared by the 
Academies, and, frankly, many of the problems that exist today 
are the same ones that we had pointed to at that time. There 
has been some progress made, much of it at the State and local 
level. I think there have been encouraging signs. The thing 
that we did not recognize when we prepared that report was the 
speed at which China would move forward. My first trip to China 
was 44 years ago, and I saw a few automobiles, every adult was 
wearing a Mao suit. And I've gone back every half dozen years 
and seen what they have done, and it's remarkable. That's 
really the new ingredient here, China.
     One recommendation that you provided me an opportunity to 
point to from the ``Gathering Storm'' report--or two, really--
one was to increase the investment of basic research 
substantially. The other recommendation related to K through 12 
education, and had to do with a lack of teachers available to 
teach in STEM. Not to just teach from the book, but to excite 
the kids about discovery and innovation. And that 
recommendation, if I can state it properly after all these 
years, was that the Federal Government should fund 10,000 
competitively awarded scholarships to U.S. citizens to study 
science or engineering, with the agreement that they would 
teach at least 5 years at a public school after they received 
their degree. Today the average teacher only stays for 5 years, 
so the 5 year condition shouldn't worry us. Hopefully many of 
them would stay a lot longer than 5 years. And that would have 
a huge impact, I think, in enhancing our public school system. 
That probably was the most important recommendation of the 
``Gathering Storm'' report that was not adopted, so thank you 
for the question.
     Mr. Meijer. Well, thank you. And I guess, you know, I 
appreciate you kind of filling in a little bit more on other 
opportunities we have to build on that. I certainly don't want 
us to be having the same conversation in another 14 years from 
now, talking about the same issues. But I guess I--you know, 
using that metaphor of the gathering storm, has that already 
passed, and are we in response/recovery mode right now because 
of that unforeseen, you know, explosion in R&D investment in 
China?
     Mr. Augustine. The rate of progress of science and 
technology is just so immense it's hard to describe. A friend 
of mine who ran Intel a few years ago told me that 90 percent 
of the revenues Intel receives on the last day of any year come 
from products that didn't even exist the first day of that same 
year. That's the kind of a race we're in. Whether we're a year 
ahead or a year behind, it's hard to tell. The one thing that's 
very clear is that we're in the process of losing, and that 
China's got long term solutions. They've got their 14th 5 year 
plan. They've made very clear where they're going, and this 
Committee has the opportunity, I think to help America get on 
that same foundation. One thing I would caution--what is needed 
is continuity of funding, and of activity, and of actions. 
We've been through the shot in the arm, the doubling of NIH, 
the ``shovel-ready'' at the beginning of the Great Recession, 
post-Sputnik. What we need is continuity over time, and that 
would be, I think, kind of my bottom line, so thank you.
     Mr. Meijer. Thank you. Could not agree more, and I yield 
back.
    Staff. Ms. Wild is next.
     Ms. Wild. Thank you so much, I appreciate it. And I thank 
you, Madam Chairwoman. I really appreciate this very timely 
hearing. I represent a district in Pennsylvania, and I'm so 
proud of the many researchers and innovators at Pennsylvania's 
companies and universities. I have Lehigh University in my 
district, Pennsylvania 7, and it's one of those that are 
charting the future of a clean energy and an America that still 
leads the world technologically. And in the House, I also serve 
on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And as we confront 
significant threats from authoritarian governments around the 
world, I believe that collaboration with our democratic allies 
is a key to maintaining national and global security, and I 
think it has to include research collaboration that advances 
American innovation, and ensures international technology 
standards that reflect our democratic values.
     And beyond maintaining those alliances, I believe it would 
be advantageous to global interests, and to accelerating 
innovation, to cultivate research partnerships with emerging 
economies and democracies. So my question first for Mr. 
Augustine is, what role does the international standard-setting 
process play in encouraging innovation in critical 
technologies? And Part B of that question is what steps should 
our government take to encourage American industry and 
stakeholder participation in international standards 
development?
     Mr. Augustine. Another important question. China has 
recognized the impact of controlling the standards process. I 
would not argue that any one country should control the 
standards process, certainly it should be a collaborative 
effort to come up with standards. But it's a fact that to be 
first, and set the standards, puts you in the driver's seat, in 
terms of the marketplace. China is currently putting the effort 
in to be first in the standards area. That would be a 
significant topic for us to address. Of course, the National 
Institute of Standards and Technology plays an important role, 
as do organizations throughout the country that support NIST. 
Let's see. I forgot the second part of your question. What was 
Part B?
     Ms. Wild. The second part was just what steps should the 
government take to encourage our American industry and 
stakeholder participation in standards development.
     Mr. Augustine. Obviously, the government plays a leading 
role in this. Industry, I must confess, tends to be very self-
serving, companies do, and I think that this is one of those 
roles that it takes government to kind of pull things together.
     So the beginning of your question, I think it was such an 
important point that the United States has one huge advantage 
over China, and that is our allies. We can work together with 
our allies, whether it's standard setting, or sharing research 
results, or educating each other's students--just as an 
example, if you take the United States and just two of its 
allies, Europe and Japan, they comprise a little over 50 
percent of the world's GDP. If you take China and its three 
putative allies, North Korea, Iran, and Russia, combined, 
they're 17 percent of the world's GDP. So one of our huge 
advantages is to work with our allies to build alliances. Share 
students, share teachers, share knowledge. And I'm so glad you 
raised the question.
     Ms. Wild. Thank you so much. Madam Chairwoman, I can't see 
the clock on the screen. I'm not sure if I have more time or 
not.
     Mr. Beyer. You have another minute, Susan.
     Ms. Wild. Thank you so much. I have a question for Dr. 
Moniz. Given your previous experience leading the Department of 
Energy, as we aim to develop and apply critical technologies to 
tackle global issues, how can policymakers leverage existing 
international research partnerships, and cultivate new ones, 
with emerging global economies?
     Mr. Moniz. Thank you, Congresswoman. Let me first add one 
footnote, if I may, to the discussion you had with Norm, namely 
that from the other point of view, namely foreign relations and 
geopolitics, I think we've made a major error in dialing back 
on scientist to scientist collaboration with our adversaries. 
Because, during the cold war, for example, those relationships 
were absolutely critical when the, you know, Iron Curtain came 
down, in effect. So I think we need to use a lot more of that 
kind of collaboration as well for our own geopolitical and 
foreign policy objectives. In terms----
     Ms. Wild. Thank you for that perspective. I agree.
     Mr. Moniz. Yeah. In terms of the--your question, well, 
again, in the--if I stay to the energy arena, as I said 
earlier, we have a vehicle, frankly, we were the drivers of 
setting it up, the so-called mission innovation. It's not--it's 
24 countries, allies, and less clear perhaps in that spectrum 
there, all committed to increasing the innovation pipeline, all 
committed to collaboration. Every thrust is basically jointly 
led by countries, and some of it is surprising. For example, 
early on Mexico took the lead in mission innovation to work 
with the United States and Canada to set up high throughput 
novel materials by design for energy technology cooperation. We 
chair, with Saudi Arabia, an initiative on carbon capture and 
sequestration (CCS). But frankly, it needs more juice. And as I 
said, now, with a new administration, rejoining Paris, we 
should go in now and take the bull by the horns in terms of 
revitalizing and expanding mission innovation into new areas. I 
mentioned nuclear, I mentioned carbon dioxide removal, for 
example, but we have a----
     Ms. Wild. Thank you.
     Mr. Moniz [continuing]. We have an opportunity waiting for 
us.
     Ms. Wild. Thank you so much. I yield back.
     Mr. Beyer. Thank you. Mr. LaTurner is next.
     Mr. LaTurner. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This question's for 
everyone. I believe there's a need to prioritize federally 
funded basic research, which is one of the goals of SALSTA. I 
have concerns about the proposals coming from the 
administration and Senator Schumer that will most likely be 
funded through reconciliation as a one-time money dump at 
levels that aren't sustainable in the long term. You have all 
testified to the importance of basic research, but if you 
could, in just a few words, can you comment, each of you, on 
how long term sustained growth in basic research funding would 
help the U.S. remain the global leader in innovation, and the 
threats of volatile, unstable funding, the threats that 
unstable funding may have on the U.S. research enterprise?
     Mr. Augustine. I'll start, if we're going in alphabetical 
order, if that's all right. The----
     Mr. LaTurner. Thank you.
     Mr. Augustine. I'll speak of the importance of continuity 
of research and development. Most research projects, from the 
time they begin until they produce something in the 
marketplace, you're talking about--on the order of a decade. 
Some are faster, some are slower, but it's certainly not the 
next quarter, or the next year, or the year after that. One 
concern is having an adequate amount of funding, and the second 
is to sustain it over time, and either one without the other 
leaves a rather hollow core. It would be my strong opinion that 
we should commit to a long term sustaining of growth. That also 
sends a signal back to young people. When you get these spikes 
that disappear, and all of a sudden there are jobs then there 
are no jobs, young people see that, recognize it, and they say, 
``That's not a field I want to go into because it's too 
turbulent.'' So that would be my comment, and I'll stop there 
so my colleagues have time.
     Mr. LaTurner. Thank you.
     Dr. Arnold. I agree. It's the volatility that's extremely 
harmful because, again, the best people have multiple choices, 
and they'll go to more stable or enjoyable careers. Basic 
research takes a real commitment to do it, and if the funding 
does not make an equal commitment, then we lose the best.
     Mr. LaTurner. Thank you.
     Mr. Moniz. Perhaps I will just add to that, that--and I 
won't repeat the volatility issue, but, as I said, I believe we 
need to really--you said prioritize. I think we really need to 
keep in mind the broad base of fundamental research as so 
important. Examples are myriad. I'll just mention one. GPS 
(Global Positioning System) is now so ubiquitous we hardly even 
talk about it anymore. Where did it come from? It came from 
people bringing together progress in communications, in 
satellites, and the atomic clock that was invented to test 
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Nobody was planning on 
a GPS system when that happened. So we can afford it, and we, 
in fact, can't afford not to, in my view, support this broad 
base of fundamental research, even as we then advance in 
addition toward the use-inspired research that will spill out 
all over the place into commercial products.
     Dr. Jahanian. I'll be very brief. You know, the process of 
innovation discovery is often marked by long, unpredictable 
incubation periods between the initial scientific discovery and 
the societal and economic impact that we see. In fact, 
sustained investment in basic research is so important because 
we can't predict the outcome. Some of the most important 
discoveries that we have made that have made fundamental 
advances and contributions to the well-being of society, to our 
economic prosperity, were not intended initially, in their most 
foundational stage of investment, to have that outcome. It's 
the unpredictable, unanticipated outcomes that are a result of 
sustained investment that often have the most impact. We have 
seen this in a broad range of technologies and industries, from 
the internet, to semiconductor technologies, to advanced 
materials, to nanotechnologies, and so on. So for that reason I 
think sustained investment is very important.
     Secondly, I want to echo what Ernie Moniz said, which is 
that, while we're talking about foundational research, we need 
to understand that investment in the entire continuum has to 
continue. Furthermore, at this particular moment, there are a 
set of technologies that are pervasive, and they're having 
disproportionate impact on everything else, including AI, 
robotics, biotechnologies, and wireless, and so on, and we 
can't lose focus that those targeted investment have to happen 
in addition to the investments that we're making in all areas 
of scientific inquiry. Thank you again for that question.
     Mr. LaTurner. Thank you so much for all of your answers. I 
yield back.
     The Clerk. Mrs. Fletcher is next.
     Mrs. Fletcher. Thank you so much. Thank you to Chairwoman 
Johnson, and Ranking Member Lucas, for holding this hearing 
today, and thank you to the witnesses for testifying. I really 
appreciate your perspectives on our investment in our people, 
and in our research, and the things we need to do moving 
forward, and I also very much appreciate the important work 
that you do, Dr. Jahanian, Dr. Augustine, Dr. Arnold, you are 
an inspiration and a role model for many, especially the women 
in science who--many of whom live in my district, because I 
represent Houston, Texas, where we have a ton of innovation, 
and a ton of really critical research going forward. And, of 
course, I am focused, as they are, on energy innovation in 
particular.
     So I want to take the opportunity to start my questions 
with Dr. Moniz, and I really appreciate the comments that you 
just made, Dr. Moniz, about carbon capture, utilization, 
sequestration. I agree that that is really important. We passed 
important bills out of this Committee, and out of the House 
last year, trying to make sure that we are investing in that. I 
wanted to take this opportunity, while I have you here, to ask 
you a little bit about hydrogen, because hydrogen is currently 
enjoying unprecedented political and business private 
investment momentum, with the number of policies and projects 
in the world expanding, as I understand it, rapidly. Houston is 
home to 48 plants that extract hydrogen from natural gas, and 
produces more than a third of the United States' supply of 
hydrogen. Several sectors have concluded it's really important, 
and timely, and pertinent for the U.S. to scale up technologies 
and bring down costs to enable hydrogen to become more widely 
used. So I would love to get your thoughts on what further 
technology innovation is needed to bring down the cost of 
hydrogen, and specifically hydrogen produced from clean energy 
sources.
     Mr. Moniz. Thank you, Congresswoman. Hydrogen--we're--we 
are certainly very, very bullish on--as a very important 
innovation direction, and a reason for it, just to--I mean, 
you're aware, but perhaps others may not be, that--the thing is 
that hydrogen, in a certain sense, like natural gas, is--can 
play the role of a fuel in multiple sectors, from power, to 
industry, to transportation, and the like, so it could be--it 
could play an absolutely critical role.
     We think that there are many places in the country, and 
you'll be pleased that, of course, Texas is obviously one of 
them, where we can see major hubs developing around both 
hydrogen and CO2 management at the same time. And 
the reason for that is, while there is a lot of discussion 
about so-called green hydrogen, electrolysis of water, which we 
think will be playing an important role in the future, 
innovation is needed to both reduce the electrolyzer costs--
it's like battery costs, et cetera, that have to come down in 
time--and innovation that will provide the electricity system 
to produce very, very low carbon, very inexpensive electricity 
to drive green hydrogen. But we believe there is also a major 
opportunity for blue hydrogen, which, as you said, is 
extracting hydrogen from methane, which is mostly hydrogen, but 
then capturing the carbon dioxide and sequestering it 
underground, where, of course, also Texas has got lots of 
experience. And right now blue hydrogen is certainly 
substantially less expensive than green hydrogen.
     So a big issue here is the co-development of the 
infrastructures for hydrogen utilization and for large-scale 
CO2 management. And Texas, and many other places, by 
the way, the upper Midwest, the Appalachian region, there are 
many places in the country with also heavy industry that can go 
clean in this direction.
     Mrs. Fletcher. Well, that's great. Thank you so much, Dr. 
Moniz. And if I can just follow up on that, because you 
mentioned sequestration, and kind of the Texas geology being, 
you know, particularly useful. There's another thing that I've 
been hearing lately about our geology, and I've got 30 seconds 
left, so I just will follow up with you on your thoughts about 
geothermal energy as well.
     Mr. Moniz. Well, geothermal energy, if it can be developed 
at scale, particularly so-called engineered geothermal systems, 
that has the enormous advantage of being a dispatchable 
renewable source, in contrast to wind and solar, where, of 
course, we have major storage issues that need to be handled, 
and reliability issues, grid integration issues because of the 
variability. But all of these can come together into a reliable 
and resilient system as we go forward. We need innovation. For 
example--OK, one more thing. In Texas, for example, we looked 
at wind resources for a year, hour by hour, and what we found 
were there were as many as nine days in a row with no wind, 
essentially, in the State. So that just reinforces we need not 
just batteries, but long duration storage and integration with 
other sources so that the system is always reliable and 
resilient.
     Mrs. Fletcher. Well, thank you for that. I agree, we need 
a diversity of fuel sources, and it's really important for us 
to understand the science of our energy, so I really appreciate 
you being here. I appreciate all of your testimony, and your 
written testimony. I've gone over my time, so I'm going to 
yield back, but thank you----
     Mr. Moniz. But I'm going to add one more thing. It's very 
important. Many of these approaches, CCS and engineered 
geothermal, what's very important, they will also draw upon the 
skillset of the oil and gas industry, and so this can be an 
enormous continuity of workforce issue as well. Sorry.
     Mrs. Fletcher. No, thank you, Dr. Moniz, and I yield back. 
Thank you.
     Mr. Beyer. Thank you, Lizzie, very much. I'm Don Beyer, 
and I'm batting cleanup, but first I want to thank all of you 
for hanging in there for 3 hours. I hope you're at your home or 
your office, but you've been very patient, and very brave and 
resilient. And let me just begin--Dr. Arnold, you--I'm going to 
quote from your testimony. You said, ``It was easier, however, 
35 years ago to start a career in academic research. We didn't 
spend 2/3 of our time at department meetings, writing 
proposals, or making''--``we were complying with regulations. 
Instead, we focused on''--``that has degraded.'' Why, or how do 
we fix--how do we reform the university? Because this is not 
the first I've heard that complaint, that you spend all your 
time in committee hearings.
     Dr. Arnold. Yes. Well, it's not entirely university's 
fault, right? The size of the typical grant from the National 
Science Foundation, for which I am hugely grateful, supports at 
most one student, and often research group have several 
students, so that means that, with these very small grants, 
we're always just writing. And then with--along with each 
grant, the compliance is very complex. Financial compliance, 
research integrity, everything is very complex, and we often 
don't have a lot of support. So the university can help by 
providing the support, but, of course, that's complex for the 
university, and expensive. We're--we end up doing a lot of 
things we're not very good at, and it way--and it uses our time 
in a way that takes us away from our chief mission. There has 
to be some better distribution of some of these 
responsibilities.
     Mr. Beyer. OK. By the way, we're all very proud of you, as 
the first woman to--first American woman to win the Nobel in 
Chemistry. It's very cool, inspiration to my three daughters.
     And I really want to thank Mr. Augustine and Dr. Moniz for 
your leadership on fusion energy. We've actually stood up a 
bipartisan fusion energy caucus here on the hill. Had a couple 
meetings already. And, Dr. Moniz especially--when I talked to 
my pals at MIT, they said fusion energy, which has been 25 to 
50 years away every year for the rest of our lives, is now 
maybe 5 years away. And the National Academy of Sciences--or 
National Academy came two weeks ago and said, you know, the 
first power plant could be ready by 2035. And yet our private 
sector folks, people like Key A and Conwell Fusion think must 
faster. Where what--what's--where's reality lie, in terms of 
commercial delivery of fusion?
     Mr. Moniz. Well, first of all, I think the--as I said 
earlier, the 5 years which are being quoted by those two 
companies, and by other companies as well, with novel fusion 
approaches, it really is that within 5 years we think that 
the--we'll have an answer, yes or no, that the scientific 
challenges required for a fusion power plant will be resolved. 
If that is resolved--we're optimistic, but if it's resolved 
positively, I think it's--personally, and some of my colleagues 
on the board may argue with me, but I think it's--in the real 
world it's got to be at least 10 years to go through the 
engineering, the licensing, the building, the capital raise, to 
get a power plant.
     But if we have power plants based on that technology that 
are coming out in 2035, or even 2040, it is a just--as I said 
earlier, a total game changer for where we go with clean 
electricity, including a game changer on how you would design 
the grid infrastructure. Because having a large number of very 
small footprint, high output dispatchable low carbon power is 
very, very different system design to having, you know, very, 
very low energy density spread out far from load technology. So 
it's going to be----
     Mr. Beyer. So----
     Mr. Moniz [continuing]. It's going to be interesting.
     Mr. Beyer. So it would all have to be in Texas, right? 
So--but the other piece of this--I can talk to you--I've got a 
bill on air capture, you know, of carbon, and of course the 
dilemma there is we have to turn it into a refundable tax 
credit because there's not much you can do with it. We're 
basically going to have to pay the private sector to take it 
out. So what I'm told is that the only energy source as 
plausible to pull the carbon out of the air is going to be 
fusion.
     Mr. Moniz. Well, I don't know. We'll see about that. There 
are many other approaches going. What I would like to 
emphasize, Congressman, is that direct air capture is one of 
many, many routes towards removing CO2 from the 
atmosphere, including terrestrial approaches. Some of them 
involve biology, like new plants with very, very deep root 
systems. The Salk Institute actually is developing that kind of 
technology. Mineralization technologies. There's really a big 
portfolio, and I--what I would urge is significant support 
across this broad portfolio. We estimated that roughly $10 
billion over a decade would bring a huge number of those 
different technology pathways to commercialization in a decade.
     Mr. Beyer. So I--this is good time for a shoutout for the 
Land Institute in Salina, Kansas that's working on food sources 
for perennial plants, so you----
     Mr. Moniz. Uh-huh.
     Mr. Beyer [continuing]. Get those deep roots----
     Mr. Moniz. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
     Mr. Beyer. And one last comment. I know my--Jake LaTurner, 
the Congressman, brought up the idea of the long term 
commitment to research funding, so it doesn't go up and down. 
And, of course, we hear from the National Science Foundation, 
NIH, et cetera, the shrinking number of excellent projects that 
are approved because of this. The only way to--since one 
Congress can't commit the next Congress, the only way to do 
this is through so-called mandatory spending. Dr. Moniz, you 
were a lead bureaucrat, Secretary of Energy, how do you think 
we could actually get mandatory spending for R&D into the 
budget?
     Mr. Moniz. That was a pejorative description of my job, 
but--no--well, let--I mean, I'll just speak again from the 
energy area, there are a variety of ways it's been done. For 
example, about 15 years ago, maybe, there was a--Congress 
approved for 10 years a fraction of oil and gas royalties paid 
to the Federal Government would go into an R&D program for--in 
that case for unconventional natural gas. So there's an example 
of the kind of thing which could be done. Earlier there was 
also a discussion of--for example, if you--as one example, if 
you had a one mil per kilowatt hour charge on all electricity 
delivery going into R&D to manage CO2, that would be 
$4 billion a year. One mil per kilowatt hour, which would be, 
you know, well underneath the fluctuations in the electricity 
bill. So I think there's--I'd love to talk with you, if there 
are some options for moving legislatively to create a mandatory 
funding stream, for energy and for other areas.
     Mr. Beyer. Thanks. We've been working for a number of 
years on just a House resolution, which is a sense of Congress, 
that is should increase 4 percent per year.
     Mr. Moniz. So----
     Mr. Beyer. We will definitely----
     Mr. Moniz. OK.
     Mr. Beyer. Well, look, it's one o'clock. I'm so grateful 
for you guys. I think you've heard from Democrat and Republican 
for the last 3 hours how fascinating this has been, and I could 
take another hour, but I'm not allowed to. So I just want to 
formally say that we bring this hearing to the close, that we 
very much thank you for your testimony, for all your wisdom, 
for your experience. The record will remain open for two weeks 
for additional statements from Members, and for any additional 
questions the Committee may ask of the witnesses. And, with 
that, with my Zoom gavel, I declare this hearing over. Thank 
you very----
     Mr. Moniz. Thank you all.
     Mr. Beyer. Thank you.
     [Whereupon, at 12:59 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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