Chopra: National Innovation Strategy Depends on Smart, Secure Infrastructure

SUPERCOMM — The nation’s chief technology officer, Aneesh Chopra, addressed the crowd at SUPERCOMM in Chicago and said President Obama’s innovation strategy is depending on them.

Chopra, CTO of the U.S. and Associate Director for Technology in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, stressed the need for a smart, secure and robust infrastructure that could not only spur innovation, meet the growing demands of data users and support the administration’s agenda, but also protect against escalating cyber security threats.

“You all are playing critical roles in providing modernized more robust infrastructure upon which we hope to deliver game-changing innovations to address our national priorities,” Chopra said.

He identified from a recent Cisco study the significant growth rate in the use of communications services which will task the infrastructure. Individual consumption will grow from just under a gigabit per month today to 4.7 GB, a five-fold increase.

He suggested that by 2013 we might look back and laugh at those projections being far too low. While admitting that the public policy community hasn’t yet embraced technology and innovation as it should, the strategy going forward is to change that in order to support the nation’s drive toward being more competitive, a metric in which he says the U.S. ranks dead last out of 40 countries in its rate of change.

Chopra said the administration plans to double the amount of the $150 billion research and development budget that goes to National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Science within the Energy Department.

“We as a nation are at our best when we invest in the building blocks of innovation. And these building blocks absolutely require robust, smart secure infrastructure,” Chopra said.

He said the administration is equally committed to promoting competitive markets to spark entrepreneurship – from corporate research to the proverbial two guys working in their garage. Chopra said the president has outlined some very difficult challenges ahead in health care, energy and education and that the administration has a portfolio of policy goals around protecting intellectual property, property rights, improving exports, creating a more open more transparent government that fulfills the promise of entrepreneurship.

“The president said … we must find a way to bring new ideas and innovation toward those sectors. The bottom line as we look to the nation’s innovation strategy, it sends a very clear signal both in the short run and the long run that we need a vibrant and progressive infrastructure and application environment that can deliver those game-changing capabilities,” Chopra said, adding that, “We must do our part with the nations broadband plan and work more generally to make sure we have the market conditions in general to spur continued improvement in our infrastructure, as well as nurture an environment that supports the applications that ride it.”

It is no secret that the administration says it believes that the openness of the Internet has been a key factor in the [historic] success of the nation’s economy, but Chopra said the next wave of tech-based economic growth presents new opportunity “if we do more to secure the nation’s infrastructure respectful of the cyber security threats that we know are real and pose a great challenge.”

“We must collaborate with the private sector to develop the kind of solutions that, yes, preserve the openness of the Internet, but also provide innovative capabilities in the infrastructure to strengthen our response with respect to cyber security. We must find a way to achieve both,” he said.

He said the administration and the nation in general need to do more to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics in order to achieve the nation’s higher education goals and that broadband plays a big part in that.

While Chopra was encouraging carriers to build the infrastructure that would support President Obama’s innovation strategy, carrier leaders were throwing not so gentle hints at the administration that it should not enact policies, particularly around Net Neutrality that would curtail their ability to do so.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg said the terms of the Net Neutrality debate are extremely troubling. “Proponents have this world view that companies like Verizon occupy a different part of the [ecosystem.]” They believe the network is just dumb pipes for their applications. “This is a mistake,” he said. “They fundamentally misread how innovation happens. And this undermines sound management practices.”

He urged the FCC not to stifle the progress, innovation and competition that has gotten the industry to this point. “From where I stand, the current era of communications is one of the most innovative and dynamic of our proud history,” Seidenberg said.