I could have titled it “Money is the root of all evil,” but I don’t believe that.  Money is useful and a reasonable metric for many things.  It is not proper to make it the nexus of all decisions.

“Anything that just costs money is cheap.” ― John Steinbeck

Today we are suffering from a crisis in leadership that is fundamentally driven by personal selfishness. Everywhere you look money is the dominant priority in decisions. It overwhelms almost everything else including many big items that transcend money in importance. If you want to see why a certain law or policy has come into effect the clearest path is to see who benefits from it, usually a financial benefit. There has almost become a mantra that if someone makes a lot of money it means that they are doing something right. Corruption is simply a means to the end where the end is enrichment. Little or no thought is given to long-term consequence or the moral and ethical dimension. Money is the end product and ultimate measure of effectiveness. The societal toll of this approach to governance is profound.

Even the most casual observer of the United States today would notice the obsession with money, and its inherent distortion of the national priorities. This distortion is present at almost every corner of life whether in business, school or institutions that define our society. It has swallowed other sources of meaning and driven other forms of measuring value from the discussion. The obsession has gotten steadily worse over my adult life seemingly driven by the equating of money with value. By almost any measure the USA is in worse shape now than when I entered into adulthood. It isn’t like our Country has great inspiring objectives. For all that is being scarified at the altar of the almighty dollar precious little is being achieved. It seems likely that the wholesale worship of money is the direct cause of so little achievement. If we want to change our fortunes as a Nation changing this is at the heart of it.

It is time to chart a different course for measuring what we are doing. There are hopeful signs such as the view that business is about building and satisfying customers rather than enriching stockholders. This is an outcome-driven philosophy that presumes (rightly) that if the customers are there, the money will take care of itself. By the same token schools should focus on education and students with a keen eye toward societal service as its outcomes. Similarly for the sort of Labs where I work, we should look toward the combined outcomes of scientific progress applied toward societal needs. In each case these outcomes should also be the yardstick of measurement, not the money used. Too often with government funding, the money is looked at without examining what it is enabling. Money invested in something that has future value is far better than money spent on consumption. Thus every dollar in the budget is not equal even though the dialog seems to treat them as such.

There are several ways of defining a country’s innate nature all lacking in one way or another. The clearest distinguishing factor for a Nation is its people with their culture, motives and character. Today, unfortunately, Americans are most clearly defined as being obsessed with the superficial and money is at the core. Being incurious and simple-minded has become a badge of honor while curiosity and intellect are tagged as being sources of suspicion. While this part of the American character is timeless, the level of dismissal of intellect has grown during the same period as the obsession with money. Serious thought and motives deeper than the accumulation of money are similarly looked down upon.

None of this is serving the Nation or the World well. Objectively, today’s America is defined by the stress of increasing stratification in income and wealth and the diminishment of most people’s dreams. Gone are the middle class aspirations of the blue-collar masses that once defined the post WWII economy. This rather dismal view of the American soul is a direct product of a leadership that has made the stockpiling of money their principle life objective. These principles are infecting every corner of the American experience and have replaced many of central tenets of citizenship.

“Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.” ― Peter F. Drucker

In the workplace the emphasis on money has a number of particularly pernicious impacts. Among the most prevalent is the loss of effective authority for those leading organizations. They are now “managers” instead, which is a much deeper change that is refreshingly reflected in the title. They now just manage the work and lead precious little. The consequence is the lack of self-direction or purpose in their oversight. This has been replaced by a set of directives coming from the customers paying bills. Increasingly the only thing that matters is whether someone will pay you to do something. What you do is of little importance, if you can get paid for it, its OK by definition. Organizations have effectively prostituted themselves to the highest bidder. The core of their being matters little in any conscious decision made.

Like prostitution, the impact on the lives of the people is distressing. Without the anchor of direction and the application of abiding principles, people in the organizations never develop deep sustainable careers and simply settle into their roles as money spending cogs in a machine that has little or no purpose. People are busy and the more successful among them provide a key role as super-consumers with society. Gone is the distinct value in achieving something important or essential for society. It has been replaced with the value that being rich is equivalent to being a celebrity. This celebrity status along with its affluence is the highest aspiration of many.

The impact on the capability of organizations to innovate and build their future has been profound. The lack of certainty and effective authority over direction saps the ability of organizations to follow their own judgment for investing in anything. The consequence is the degradation of organizations into collections of projects and people with less and less of a reason to engage with anything other than the source of the money that funds them. Nothing binds them together with a common purpose or overarching reason other than weak bonds of shared interests. For this reason the management through money as the organizing principle is a cancer on our institutions and is slowly, but surely eating away at their future.

Many have responded to these stresses by blaming other people for the ills of the Nation; people of differing color, differing sexual orientation, differing values and these differences have manifested themselves as a virtual complete paralysis of our ability to govern ourselves. These stresses and scapegoats are used to drive wedges through the citizenry and power moneyed interests into power. At no time in our recent history has the United States been so sharply divided and our “leadership” so completely incapable of solving problems. Our untended problems have grown larger and more difficult to solve in the wake of this dysfunction. Increasingly the Nation has come to serve only the interests of those who pay for the cost of electing the politicians.

A more dispassionate manner to look at what is happening is to measure the relative change in the quality of life and who is benefiting from the current milieu. The relative distance between the richest in society and the poorest has expanded dramatically over my adult life, as the ranks of those in poverty have swelled. The elderly used to be one of the poorest segments of society and now rank as the richest. Each of these trends is occurring with a diminishing value to the education being provided. What does work in government is structured to amplify and accelerate these trends beyond their current depressing state. For the young, the quality of the education available is crumbling while its cost is spiraling upward. Additionally the cost of the mediocre education is being funded by loans that act as another financial transfer mechanism from young to old and poor to rich (euphemistically called student aid). The rich and old have political power and have exercised it to enrich themselves at the cost of the National prosperity. No one is willing exercise any leadership to shift these priorities toward a healthy balance.

Why? What is driving this? Is it pure and unadulterated greed? Do the rich and elderly not care about the future of this country? Do they view the Nation through the prism of “values” and fail to see the economic havoc being committed? The conservative movement has transformed into a vehicle for greed where people are conned into trading the defense of their values for economic ruin. Worse yet, the Nation is accomplishing nothing of any gravity other than hollow out the future to fuel greed in the present.

I don’t know, but a large part of the reason for these trends is a tendency to see money and its acquisition as the raison d’être for all things. If you can make money or some one will pay you for something it must be OK. I see the corrosive effects of this philosophy all over the institutions I interact with daily, a government lab and universities where increasingly money is the sole barometer of success. Neither of these institutions used to function in this manner with missions that transcended money, but today these missions are footnotes. This is where the parallel is the strongest. The mission of an institution is very value loaded while money is simply a means to achieve the mission. Increasingly the institutions are signaling that the money is the only thing that matters, the mission success is completely optional.

“What’s measured improves” ― Peter F. Drucker

Another institution seems to be at the heart of the change in our society to a focus on money, the corporation. I’ve written before about the concept of maximizing shareholder value and its impact on transforming corporations into money making machines for their shareholders (and CEO’s, investors, banker…) often through savaging these companies. We see mass layoffs, plant closings, and a general failure to invest resources in the corporation’s future to improve today’s balance sheet with the commensurate improvement in today’s stock price. The result is the mass of stresses on the larger body of the public all the while the shareholders are the sole beneficiaries. The same value system has been adopted by government institutions such as research labs, universities, and hospitals, to the detriment of the entire Nation. Money is not and should not be the core measure of any of these entities. To do so is deep malpractice and loss of any sense of truer purpose, yet this is clearly happening.

“Action express priorities” – Mahatma Gandhi

To make matter worse during the Reagan administration the philosophy of governance took hold that looked at business for the model of how to run government. Thus the short-term model focused on enriching the top end of society by literally cooking the books (legally or not) became the model for government. All the public institutions like schools, labs, universities, roads, bridges, etc, etc, adopted this model. Suddenly it was money that mattered, and the long-term principled goals were cast aside. Increasingly the annual or quarterly return on money was all that mattered. These practices do not benefit society as a whole whether practiced in business and certainly not for government; they only benefit the people at the top.

“If everything is mission, nothing is mission.” ― Stephen Neill

It wasn’t always like this. Corporations and other institutions used to have an almost explicit contract with the Nation that transcended financial gain. Money was always in the frame, but there were deep imperatives associated with the impact of the institution on society as a whole. Today Germany’s companies much more closely follow this model, and that nation benefits from the social compact. The corporation is a holistic part of society sharing the in the benefits of stability and success while responsibly providing part of the foundation for the same.

The impact of the change to a financial model of governance is evident in government-supported research whether it is at the Labs or universities. The former missions of these institutions are increasingly an afterthought. If you want tenure and success as a professor than bring in lots of grant money; whether you can teach is not important. The same increasingly measures success at the research labs where the ability to bring in money is the prime measure of value. More and more what you are being paid to do matters very little compared to whether you are being paid. The Labs and universities are well on their way to having the same value system as the (high end) call girl or gigolo. If you got the money, we got the time.

On the corporate side of things the philosophy has caused the destruction of the great research laboratories. They are gone. The quarterly balance sheet driven decision-making leaves little or no room for long-term research. We are all poorer for it, and the diminishment of progress will seed a lack of economic growth in its wake for decades. Money that should be applied to long-term research now lines the pockets of the rich who have earned their fortunes by creating absolutely nothing (except perhaps exotic investment vehicles that are basically Ponzi schemes). We have allowed ourselves to trade in real progress, real knowledge and real technology for the smoke and mirrors of the financial industry. The thing that is called investment is no longer “an investment,” it is an increasingly abstract gimmick solely existing to produce money for their architects. The future prospects of the company that the stock is supposed to support are an unfortunate detail that is dealt with through creative accounting.

“Don’t think money does everything or you are going to end up doing everything for money.” ― Voltaire

The situation is terrible, but having college age children makes it even more galling. The cost of a university education is becoming obscene especially when it is compared with times past. To compound matters Universities seem to have placed the actual teaching part of their mission as secondary with it being paid little more than lip service today. Bringing money to the university has become the primary drive and yardstick of success. While this compliments the other dysfunctions in our system well, the decay of education as a core enabler for societal success shows the depth of our depravity. We are savaging some of our most cherished institutions all in the pursuit of money.

The manifestation of this trend at the governmentally supported labs is a lack of any stewardship for the careers of those working at the labs. Increasingly it is only important that money is paid to work on something, what that something is does not matter. Whether the work leads anywhere meaningful or develops the people working is less than a concern, such concerns are a viewed as detriments. This leads to careers that are incoherent and aimless with an increasing emphasis on the ability to work on anything. We are destroying the ability to build deep sustained careers. Once upon a time these labs were treasure houses of knowledge and expertise. This knowledge and expertise enriched everyone and help spur economic growth as well as military might. It undergirded our National Security in irreplaceable ways; yet we have allowed this resource to be utterly decimated and again in the name of money.

Projects and new starts are dead. It is easier to syphon value from existing work. Risk is eschewed over making incremental improvements upon existing work. As a result technical debt is accumulating in ways we haven’t seen before. The long-term consequences of the current environment are likely to be the utter ruin of our formerly magnificent technological base. The same holds for the physical infrastructure upon which our prosperity rests. The same thing is happening for roads, bridges, airports, power plants, it is easier to simply patch things cheaply rather than build new better things. Corporate and societal investment in science or R&D is similarly stressed, and the resources devoted towards these efforts are deployed in a horribly inefficient manner. Succinctly put, I cost too much and don’t do nearly enough, and what I do isn’t nearly bold enough. All that said, I do more than many and I’m much bolder than most.

In a time when we should be deeply investing in the future with science as well as modern infrastructure instead we are doing the opposite. For example a nationwide broadband Internet with pervasive wireless would be a boon to the economy and the Nation in a myriad of ways. Instead we hold any hope of this sort of investment hostage to the baser needs of greedy monopolistic telecom companies who will never provide such a network. Our politicians make excuses that are nothing more demagoguery while accepting the effective bribes from the companies that benefit from their efforts. We have become a kleptocracy (i.e., a Banana Republic) where the government is run for the benefit of the rich and well connected without any concern for the average citizen or the overall well-being of the nation.

The current infatuation with vampires in the media is an apt reflection of what is happening in society. The vampires are a metaphor for the upper crust (i.e., the 1%) that simply exists to suck the life from the masses. Most people are simply cattle to be harvested. The vampires of “True Blood” might be the truest example of this trend with their glamorous and sexy personas parroting the same character as the rich on reality TV. Everyone wants to be these rich, beautiful, sexy people who live lives we can only imagine. It is a sales pitch for greed and the accumulation of wealth for the sole purpose of hedonistic excess.

What changes need to be made? Money can’t be ignored, but value of work and achievement can take more of a priority. Institutions should define themselves by achievement in their positive role in society instead of the balance sheet. This includes corporate interests as well as government-funded institutions. Our laws and funding should be crafted to reflect this objective by assuring that the achievement of these ends results in good financial outcomes. Ultimately the overall well-being and prosperity of every citizen should be the chief determining factor in governance.

Today the United States is the predominant power in the World with its technological advantage leading the way. American technological superiority expresses itself in both economic and military power. Whether through drone, or the Internet it sits on top of the heap. The technology that drives this supremacy is largely the product of military research conducted during the more than fifty years of the Cold War. The Internet for instance was born from a defense related research project designed to enable communication during and after a nuclear conflict. The United States appears to be smugly holding its lead almost as if it were part of the natural order. While all of this isn’t terribly arguable, the situation isn’t so rosy for the United States that it can lay back and assume this situation will persist indefinitely. This is exactly what is happening and it is an absolute risk to the Country.

Several factors contribute directly to the risk the USA is taking. A number         of other nations are right behind the United States and they are acting like they are behind by aggressively investing in technology. The technology that the United States depends upon is old, mature and far from the cutting edge. Most of it reflects investments, risks and the philosophy of 40 or 50 years ago when the Cold War was at its height. With the Cold War fading from sight, and victory at hand the United States took the proverbial victory lap while pulling back from the basics that provided the supremacy.

A large part of this is a lack of aggressive pursuit of R&D and a remarkably passive, fear-based approach to investment and management. The R&D goals of excellence, innovation and risk have been changed to acceptable mediocrity, incrementalism and safe bets. We have seen a wholesale change in the federal approach for supporting science. Almost without exception these changes have made the USA less competitive and actively worked toward destroying the systems that once led the World. This is true for research institutions such as federal laboratories and universities. Rather than improving the efficiency or effectiveness of our R&D foundation we have weakened them across the board. It is arguable that our political system has grown to take the USA’s supremacy completely for granted.

Without reverting back to a fresh set of investments and a forward looking philosophy the United States can expect its superiority to fade in the next 20 years. It doesn’t have to happen, but it will if something doesn’t change. The issues have been brewing and building for my entire adult life. American’s have become literally and metaphorically fat and lazy with a sense of entitlement that will be overthrown in a manner that is likely to be profoundly disturbing to catastrophic. We have no one to blame other than ourselves. The best analogy to what is happening is a team that is looking to preserve its victory by sitting on the lead. We have gone into the prevent defense, which as the saying goes “only prevents you from winning” (if you like soccer we have gotten a lead and decided to “park the bus” hoping our opponents won’t score!).

The signs are everywhere; we don’t invest in risking, far out research, our old infrastructure (roads, bridges, power plants) is crumbling, and our new infrastructure is non-existent. Most other first World nations are investing (massively) in modern efficient Internet and telecommunications while we allow greedy, self-interested monopolies to starve our population of data. Our economy and ultimately our National defense will ultimately suffer from this oversight. All of these categories will provide the same outcome; we will have a weaker economy, weak inc
omes, poorer citizens, and an unreliable and increasingly inferior defense. If things don’t change we will fall from the summit and lose our place in the World.

To maintain a lead in technology and economic growth the Nation must aggressively fund research. This needs to happen in a wide range of fields and entail significant risk. Risk in research has been decreasing with each passing year. Perhaps the beginning of the decline can be traced by the attitude expressed by Senator William Proxmire. Proxmire went to great lengths to embarrass the scientific research he didn’t understand or value with his Golden Fleece Awards. In doing so he did an immense disservice to the Nation. Proxmire is gone, but his attitude is stronger than ever. The same things are true for investing in our National infrastructure; we need aggressive maintenance and far-sighted development of new capabilities. Our current political process does not value our future and will not invest in it. Because of this our future is at risk.

Another key sign of our concern about holding onto our lead is the expansion in government secrecy and classification. The expansion of classification is a direct result of the post 9-11 World, but also fears of losing our advantage. Where science and technology are concerned, the approach depends upon the belief that hiding the secrets can keep the adversary from solving the same problems we have. In some cases this is a completely reasonable approach where elements in the secret make it unique; however in situations where the knowledge is more basic, the whole approach is foolhardy. Beyond the basic classification of things, there is an entire category of classification that is “off the books”. This is the designation of documents as “Official Use Only” which removes them from the consideration under the Freedom of Information Act. This designation is exploding in use. While it does have reasonable purpose quite often it is used as another defacto classification. It lacks the structure and accountability that formal classification has. It is unregulated and potentially very dangerous.

The one place where this has the greatest danger is the area of “export control” which is a form of Official Use Only”. In most cases standard classification is well controlled and highly technically prescribed. Export control has almost no guidance whatsoever. The information falling under export control is much less dangerous than classified info, yet the penalties for violating the regulations are much worse. Along with the more severe penalties comes almost no technical guidance for how to determine what is export controlled. Together it is the recipe for disaster. It is yet another area where our lawmakers are utterly failing the Nation.

Ultimately the worst thing that the United States does is allowing extreme over-confidence to infect its decision-making. Just because the United States has over-whelming technological superiority today does not grant that for the future. As I noted about the superiority of today is based on the research of decades ago. If the research is not happening today, the superiority of the future will fade away. This is where the devotion to secrecy comes in. There is the misbegotten belief that we can simply hide the source of our supremacy, which is the equivalent of sitting on a lead and playing “prevent” defense. As we know the outcome from that strategy is often the opposite of intended. We are priming ourselves to be overtaken and surprised; we can only pray that the consequences will not be catastrophic and deadly.

The way to hold onto a lead is to continue doing those things that provided you the advantage in the first place. Aggressive, risk-taking research with a blend of open-ended objective applied to real-world problems is the recipe we followed in the past. It is time to return to that approach, and drop the overly risk adverse, cautious, over- and micro-managed and backwards looking approach we have taken in the past quarter of a century. The path to maintaining supremacy is crystal clear; it is only a matter of following it.

Over the past two days I transitioned from finding the discussion and content of a meeting provocative and thoughtful to increasing unease about everything happening around me. More and more the feeling seeped into my consciousness that the dialog wasn’t quite as deep as I had first thought, and I had been plunged into an echo chamber where various delusions exist unchallenged by countering viewpoints. The organizers had despite meritorious efforts had failed to provide sufficiently broad viewpoints on the important topics to be engaged during the symposium. 

I attended an odd meeting this week, or at least odd for me, the US Strategic Deterrence Symposium put on by the US Strategic Air Command. This week’s offering comes from Omaha Nebraska, the home of Cornhuskers (Big Red) as I was repeatedly reminded over the last two days. Aside from all too much celebration of the upcoming college football season, the symposium was exceedingly well run and professional. Even more remarkably, it took place in a Hotel conference center, not “on site” or “on base”.

As always on travel to a new place I am extra observant. Indeed traveling is a great way to see the country and the world while gaining much needed perspective on how others live. Omaha offers me the chance to see a real sunrise that the Sandia Mountains deny me. Omaha also seems to eschew the practice of supplying sidewalks for its citizens. This is irritating given my newfound habit of walking every morning, and might explain part of the (big) red state propensity towards obesity.

Part of my watchful state was the growing thought and an increasing sense of being an interloper at this symposium. I really felt like a complete outsider. The first thing I noticed was the complete lack of technology in audience aside from cell phones (I was using an iPad to take notes which made me an immense outlier! This grew into a sense that this was the tip of the proverbial iceberg). Furthermore the footprint of the meeting on Twitter was nearly zero (until the press release from our last keynote speaker from the State Department). For a topic so ripe with technological angles and implications the seemingly Luddite mass attending the meeting was very troubling. I’ll note that the demographics of the meeting appeared to be about 40% military from all the services, and an array of beltway bandits, and think tank thinkers with a sprinkling of international attendees and high-level government officials. It wasn’t clear how many academics were there, but not many beyond those on the panels.

I will note that the meeting did offer the laudable idea of letting attendees text or email questions to the panels. I availed myself of this, with limited success. Here are my to questions,

Q1; to what extent is the current peaceful Europe more of a reflection of the collective memory of WW2 rather than a permanent change in the political dynamic? How can we effectively extend the peace?

Q2: to what extent are we vulnerable to technological surprise and potentially overconfident about our technological superiority?

The first one was never asked. It was a response to an observation that the Napoleonic wars of the 19^th Century precipitated a pause in European conflict, and pondered whether WWII is the basis of the currently relatively peaceful Europe. Is the memory of the mass destruction caused by that war tilting governments toward peaceful resolution of differences? The second question was asked albeit in a modified form to an interesting subject. We had been treated to relatively jingoist discussion of American military superiority, and I wanted to know if we were a bit overconfident and could be surprised by an unforeseen technological advance. Instead the moderator asked the question to the Chinese member of the panel, who responded that yes they are afraid of this. Maybe the Americans shouldn’t be so sure of themselves. The Chinese are doing something about their fear and the Americans appear to be grossly overconfident of their technological hegemony.

When the meeting closed the Admiral who hosted the symposium highlighted the importance of youth, and their role in showing us the way forward especially with technology. He had everyone 35 years old and younger standup. Given my embrace of technology I think this approach isn’t good enough, not by a long shot. We need to challenge everyone in the field to be technologically advanced and learn how to live into eh modern World. Just because one is old shouldn’t allow one off the hook. Frankly this was one of the most disappointing moments of the whole meeting. This community needs to challenge itself to be current and up to date with a deep, broad understanding of the technology that our security hinges upon.

I’ll highlight three of the talks before I close. One that was very good, one that was off the mark and a third one that made me angry.

The dinner talk at the end of the first day came from Dr. Zuhdi Jasser. I found it to be very thought provoking with a message for supporting the rise of secular Islam as a policy. He was passionate and focused with a key message of supporting the liberal, secular forces that allow for Western ideals of liberty and freedom to flourish (I noted embarrassingly that “liberty” and “liberal” have the same root, but are perceived entirely differently by politics). One troubling aspect of Dr. Jasser’s speech was his failure to take on the forces of anti-secular Christianity (probably present in the room!). These forces actually legitimize the sort of philosophy he is speaking out against and it effectively makes the Jihad two-sided with Christian soldiers squaring off in a modern Crusade. This is a lost opportunity. This would also speak against his advocacy of dropping the enemy of my enemy is my friend philosophy that defines too much of US Foreign policy for the last 70 years (is he guilty of this very practice by embracing the American Right?).

General Frank Klotz, the NNSA administrator, gave the opening talk of the second day. In many ways the talk was not very interesting, but it was relevant to me. Ultimately, the item that stuck to me was the discussion of the maintenance of a World-class workforce in science and technology. General Klotz described the NNSA support for re-capitalizing the facilities as central to this. He reiterated the importance of the workforce several times. From my perspective we are failing at this goal, and failing badly. The science that the United States is depending on is in virtual free fall. Our supremacy militarily is dependent of the science of 20-40 years ago, and the pipeline is increasingly empty. We have fallen behind Europe, and may fall behind China in the not too distant future. The entire scientific establishment is receding from prominence in large part to a complete lack of leadership and compelling mission as a Nation. It is a crisis. It is a massive threat to National security. The concept of deterrence by capability used to be important. It is now something that we cannot defend because our capabilities are in such massive decline. It needs to come back; it needs to be addressed with an eye towards recapturing its importance. Facilities are no replacement for a vibrant scientific elite doing cutting edge work. Today, for some reason we seem to accept this as such.

One of the final panels offered a talk that just made me angry in a visceral, deep way. It came from DHS. The speaker offered up a vision of a walled off, gated community as a response to the potential terrorism. In my view this sort of approach to terrorism is the absolute failure of deterrence. He outlined an America where terrorism has won and our freedom has been scarified to the altar of fear. It is the surrender of our lifestyle to the forces of terror. He represented a view that hands victory to our enemies. One could argue that our response to terrorism has handed them success by the massive amount of resources squandered in fighting it, and the replacement of liberty, freedom and our fundamental principles by surveillance, torture and perpetual war.  As the events in Ferguson, Missouri have demonstrated, too much of the war has been exported to our streets by police disguised as an occupying army (the negatively of this was alluded to at the meeting although not directly).

The last thing that stood out to me was the political attitude of the attendees. People usually shy away from expressing deep political sentiment, but not here. I felt like a group preparing the talking points for Fox News surrounded me. I heard open climate denial without a hint of reservation. Interesting the climate issue looms large over US-Russian dynamics with the Artic being a potentially huge flashpoint. Other climate related topics such as increased regional conflict due to crop failures and energy were avoided. This is a huge problem. I felt that the audience was largely only tolerating the current administration, and deeply wanted to see a more strident policy aligned with Neo-Con ideals. The topic of strategic deterrent is too important to not be subject to a deeper more nuanced debate, but this wasn’t happening here.

In summary, this was an important and good meeting with lots of provocative content, but needs to sharpen its edge and challenge the audience’s conventional wisdom. They need to tear open the echo chamber naturally arising from this community. If the USA isn’t careful we will all be surprised by dangers and risks hiding in plain sight.

 

I’ll post a footnote to my thoughts of a week ago (it wasn’t my plan A). It comes from trying to piece together the early history of CFD, my frustration with the lack of detail and context associated with the scientific and mathematical writing. Upon reflection I think it is actually a deeper problem with deeper consequences.

A generation which ignores history has no past — and no future.” ― Robert A. Heinlein

The title is the proverbial chicken and egg question, but for each case there is a definite chicken or egg answer. The problem is that far too often the literature does not contain the information by whichthe answer may be determined. Our community history is thus lost and lessons of how knowledge was obtained are not passed along.

“We make our own monsters, then fear them for what they show us about ourselves.” ― Mike Carey & Peter Gross

The question in the title relates to how advances in computational science are related to the math used to explain them. The core of the question is whether the method is first demonstrated, or a problem is first found before the mathematical analysis explains why. My general belief is that most of the time the computed results precede the math. The math provides rigor, explanation and bounds for applying techniques. This reflects upon our considerations of where the balance of effort should be placed in driving innovative solutions. Generally speaking, I would posit that the computational experimentation should come first, followed by mathematical rigor, followed by more experimentation, and so on… This structure is often hidden by the manner in which mathematics is presented in the literature.

In developing the history of CFD I am trying to express a broader perspective than currently exists on the topic. Part of the perspective is defining the foundation that existed before computational science was even a conceptual leap in Von Neumann’s mind. I knew that a number of numerical methods existed including integration of ODE’s (the work of Runge, Kutta, Adams, Bashforth, etc…). One of Von Neumann’s great contributions to numerical methods was stability analysis, and now I’m convinced it was even greater than I had imagined.

I had incorrectly assumed that ODE stability preceded Von Neumann’s work, but instead it came in the wake of it. To me, this is utterly remarkable because ODE theory is much simpler. Note that a few weeks ago I used it to introduce analysis of methods, and Von Neumann’s stability technique, but instead the more difficult thing was done first.

Think about it. None of the precursors to the modern era in ODE integration had explored the time stability of the methods. The issue was clearly present and surely observed. It took the availability of (mechanical) computers to generate the impetus to study the topic. Perhaps the human computing of the earlier era was too dubious for the instability to warrant a deeper mathematical investigation. The problem is that the writing about the topic shines little or no light on the reasoning. None. This comes down to the style of the writing, which provides no context for the work; instead it hops right into the math. Any context in the literature seems to only come when the work is completed and the author is famous (and old). Then the work is discussed in a historical overview, which provides details that are completely absent from the earlier (technical) works. If the author dies early (e.g. Von Neumann) no such retrospective is available.

“For balance to be restored, lessons must be learned.” ― Sameh Elsayed

The true reasoning and inspiration for many of the great works of numerical mathematics is hidden by the accepted practices of the field. This is counter-productive and antithetical to pedagogical discourse. Too often in the modern literature work is done without any reason to believe it will manifest any utility in actual computing. In many cases this is indeed the case. In my opinion the literature has moved away from numerical analysis that should show numerical utility in the past several decades. In reading the older ODE literature I see that this is an amplification of previous tendencies.

This personally infuriates me because I often find no reason to actually digest the detailed mathematics without some sense that it will be useful. It also encourages the publication of results that have no practical value. This frustrating state of affairs is at the core of my comments last week, which, in hindsight, may have been aimed at the wrong target.

What is lost from the literary record is profound. Often the greatest discoveries in applied math come trying a well-crafted heuristic on a difficult problem and finding that it works far better than could be expected. The math then comes in to provide an ordered structural explanation for the empirical observation. Lost in the fray is the fact that the device was heuristic and perhaps a leap or inspiration from some other source. In other cases progress comes from a failure or problem with something that should work. We explain why it doesn’t in a rigorous fashion with a barrier theorem. These barrier theorems are essential to progress. The math then forms the foundation for the next leap. The problem is that the process is undocumented and this ill prepares the uninitiated for how to make the next leap. Experimentation and heuristic is key, and often the math only follows.

Worse yet, this tendency is only getting more acute. I’m not sure why the literature is like this. Is it that people are too insecure to admit the pedestrian events that led to creation? Do parts of the work just seem to be to close to engineering? I think these tendencies lead to bigger problems than simply historical inaccuracy and incompleteness; they lead to less progress and less innovation. This tendency is actually holding the field of numerical methods for scientific computing back.

I’ve noted a general lack of progress with algorithms in the last 20-30 years. Perhaps part of the issue is related to the lack of priority given to simply experimenting with methods and trying things, then doing the math. Instead there is too much just doing math, or even worse only doing the methods that produce the math you already know how to do. We need methods that work, and invent math that explains the things that work. A more fruitful path would involve working hard to solve problems that we don’t know how to attack, finding some fruitful avenues for progress, and then trying to systematically explain progress. Along the way we might try being a bit more honest about how the work was accomplished.

“In science if you know what you are doing you should not be doing it. In engineering if you do not know what you are doing you should not be doing it. Of course, you seldom, if ever, see the pure state.” – Richard Hamming

 

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve experienced something very irritating time and time again. Each time I’ve been left more frustrated and angry than before. It has been a continual source of disappointment. I went into a room expecting to learn something and left knowing less than when I entered. What is it? “The finite element method”

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.” ― Albert Einstein

In short, the answer to my title is nothing at all and everything. Nothing is technically wrong with the finite element method, absolutely nothing at all. Given that nothing is wrong with it there is a lot wrong with what it does to the practice of mathematics and scientific computing. More specifically there isn’t a thing wrong with the method except how people use it, which is too damn abstractly. Much of the time the method is explained in a deep code undecipherable to anyone except a small cadre of researchers working in the field. Explaining finite elements to a six year old is a long suit, but a respectable goal. Too often you can’t explain what you’re doing to a 46 year old with a PhD unless they are part of the collective of PhD’s working directly in the field and have received the magic decoder ring during their graduate education.

A common occurrence for someone to begin their research career with papers that clearly state what they are doing, and as the researcher becomes successful, all clarity leaves their writing. I saw a talk at a meeting where a researcher who used to write clearly had simultaneously obscured their presentation while pivoting toward research on easier problems. This is utter madness! The mathematics of finite element research tends to take a method that works well on hard problems, and analyze them on simpler problems while making the whole thing less clear. One of the key reasons to work on simpler problems is to clarify, not complicate. Too often the exact opposite is done.

Sometimes this blog is about working stuff out that bugs me in a hopefully articulate way. I’ve spent most of the last month going to scientific meetings and seeing a lot of technical talks and one of the things that bugs me the most are finite element methods (FEM). More specifically the way FEM is presented. There really isn’t a lot wrong with FEM per se, it’s a fine methodology that might even be optimal for some problems. I can’t really say because its proponents so often do such an abysmal job of explaining what they are doing and why. That is the crux of the matter.

Scientific talks on the finite element method tend to be completely opaque and I walk out of them knowing less than I walked in. The talks are often given in a manner that seems to intentionally obscure the topic with the seeming objective of making the speaker seem much smarter than they actually are. I’m not fooled. The effect they have gotten is to piss me off, and cause me to think less of them. Presenting a simple problem in an intentionally abstract and obtuse way is simply a disservice to science. It serves no purpose, but to make the simple grandiose and distant. It ultimately hurts the field, deeply.

The point of a talk is to teach, explain and learn not to make the speaker seem really smart. Most FEM talks are about making the speaker seem smart instead of explaining why something works. The reality is that the simple clear explanation is actually the hallmark of intellectual virtue. Simplicity is a virtue that seems to be completely off the map with FEM, FEM is about making the simple, complex instead. To make matter more infuriating, much of the current research on FEM is focused on attacking the least important and most trivial mathematical problems instead of the difficult problems that are pacing computational science. Computational science is being paced today by issues such as multiphysics (where multiple physical effects interact to define a problem) particularly involving transport equations (defined by hyperbolic PDE’s). In addition uncertainty quantification along with verification and validation is extremely important.

Instead FEM research is increasingly focused on elliptic PDE’s, which are probably the easiest thing to solve in the PDE world. In other words, if you can solve an elliptic PDE well I know very little about the ability of a methodology’s capacity to attack the really hard important problems. It is nice, but not very interesting (the very definition of necessary and insufficient). Frankly the desire and interest in taking a method designed for solving hyperbolic PDE’s such as discontinuous Galerkin and applying it to elliptic PDE’s is worthwhile, but should not receive anywhere near the attention I see. It is not important enough to get the copious attention it is getting.

The effect is that we are focused on the areas of less importance, which has the impact of taking the methodology backwards. The research dollars are focused on less important problems instead of more important ones. Difficult important problems should be the focus of research, not the kind of “Mickey Mouse” stuff I’ve seen the whole month. On top of Mickey Mouse problems, the talks make the topic as complex as possible, and seem to be focused on trying not to explain anything in simple terms.

“Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it and education to appreciate it. And to make matters worse: complexity sells better.” ― Edgar Wybe Dijkstra

I think Dijkstra was talking about something entirely different, but the point is similar, the complexity sells and that is why it is trotted out time and time again. While it sells, it also destroys the sort of understanding that allows ideas to be extended and modified to solve new problems. The complexity tends to box ideas in rather than making them more general and less specific. There is a lot at stake beyond style, the efficacy of science is impacted by a false lack of simplicity. Ultimately it is the lack of simplicity that works against FEM, not the method itself. This is a direct failure of the practice of FEM rather than the ideas embedded within.

The people who tend to work on FEM tend to significantly overelaborate things. I’m quite close to 100% convinced that the overelaboration is completely unnecessary, and it actually serves a supremely negative purpose in the broader practice of science. One of the end products is short-changing the FEM. In a nutshell, people can solve harder problems with finite volume methods (FVM) than FEM. The quest for seemingly rigorous mathematics has created a tendency to work toward problems with well-developed math. Instead we need to be inventing math to attack important problems even if the rigor is missing. Additionally, researchers over time have been far more innovative with FVM than FVM.

The FEM folks usually trot out that bullshit quip that FEM is exactly like FVM with the properly chosen test function. OK, fair enough, FEM is equivalent to FVM, but this fails to explain the generic lack of innovation in numerical methods arising from the FEM community. In the long run it is the innovations that determine the true power of a method, not the elaborate theories surrounding relatively trivial problems. These elaborations actually undermine methods and lead to a cult of complexity that so often defines the practice.

Where FEM excels is the abstraction of geometry from the method and ability to include geometric detail in the simulation within a unified framework. This is extremely useful and explains the popularity of FEM for engineering analysis where geometric detail is important, or assumed to be important. Quite often the innovative methodology is shoehorned into FEM having been invented and perfected in the finite volume (or finite difference) world. Frequently the innovative devices have to be severely modified to fit into the FEM’s dictums. These modifications usually diminish the overall effectiveness of the innovations relative to their finite volume or difference forbearers. These innovative devices are necessary to solve the hard multiphysics problems often governed by highly nonlinear hyperbolic (conservation or evolution) equations. I personally would be more convinced by FEM if some of the innovation happened within the FEM framework instead of continually being imported.

Perhaps most distressingly FEM allows one to engage in mathematical masturbation. I say this with complete sincerity because the development of methods in FVM is far more procreative where methods are actually born of the activity. Too often FEM leads to mathematical fantasy that have no useful end product aside from lots of self-referential papers in journals, and opaque talks at meetings such as those I’ve witnessed in the last month. For example computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is dominated by FVM methods. CFD solvers are predominantly FVM not FEM largely for the very reason that innovative methods are derived first and used best in FVM. Without the innovative methods CFD would not be able to solve many of its most important and challenging problems today.

Mathematically speaking, I think the issue comes down to regularity. For highly regular and well-behaved problems FEM works very well, and it’s better than FVM. In a sense FEM often doubles down on regularity with test functions. When the solution is highly regular this yields benefits. The issue is that highly regular problems actually define the easier and less challenging problems to be solved, not the hard technology-pacing ones. FVM on the other hand hedges its’ bets. Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) is a particular example. It is a really interesting method because it sits between FEM and FVM. The DG community puts a lot of effort in making it a FEM method with all the attendant disadvantages of assumed regularity.  This is the heart of the maddening case of taking a method so well suited to very hard problems and studying in incessantly on very easy problems with no apparent gain in utility. It seems to me that DG methods have actually gone backwards in the last decade due to this practice.

In a sense the divide is defined by whether you don’t assume regularity and add it back, or you assume it is there and take measures to deal with it when it’s not there. Another good example comes from the use of FEM for hyperbolic PDE’s where conservation form is important. Conservation is essential, and the weak form of the PDE should give conservation naturally. Instead with the most common Galerkin FEM if one isn’t careful the implementation can destroy conservation. This should not happen, conservation should be a constraint, an invariant that comes for free. It does with FVM, it doesn’t with FEM, and that is a problem. Simple mistakes should not cause conservation errors. In FVM this would have been structurally impossible because of how it was coded. The conservation form would have been built in. In FEM the conservation is a specially property, which is odd for something built on the weak form of the PDE. This goes directly to the continuous basis selected in the construction of the scheme.

Another place where the FEM community falls short is stability and accuracy analysis. With all the mathematical brouhaha surrounding the method one might think that stability and accuracy analysis would be ever-present in FEM practice. Quite the contrary is true. Code and solution verification are common and well practiced in the FVM world and almost invisible in FEM. It makes no sense. A large part of the reason is the abstract mathematical focus of FEM instead of the practical approach of FVM. At the practical end where engineering and science are being accomplished with the aid of scientific computing, the mathematical energy seems to yield very little. It is utterly baffling.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” ― Leonardo da Vinci

The issue is where the math community spends its time; do they focus on proving things for easy problems, or expand the techniques to handle hard problems? Right now, it seems to focus on making the problem easier and proving things rather than expanding the techniques available and create structures that would work on the harder problems.  The difference is rather extreme. The goal should be to solve the hard problems we are offered, not transform the hard problems into easy problems with existing math. If the math needed for the hard problems aren’t there we need to invent it and start extending ourselves to provide the rigor we want to see. Too often the opposite path is chosen.

A big issue is the importance or prevalence of problems for which strong convergence can be expected. How much of the work in the world is focused where this doesn’t or can’t happen. How much is? Where is the money or importance?

A think a much better path for FEM in the future is to focus on first making the style and focus of presentation simple and pedagogical. Secondarily the focus should be pushed toward solving harder problems that pace computational science rather than toys that are amenable to well-defined mathematical analysis. The advantages of FEM are clear, the hardest this we have to do is make the method clear, comprehensible and extensible.

I fully expect to catch grief over what I’m saying. Instead I’d like to spur those working on FEM to both attack harder problems, and make their explanation of what they are doing simple. The result will be a better methodology that more people understand. Maybe then the FEM will start to be the source of more innovative numerical methods. Everyone will benefit from this small, but important change in perspective.

“Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple.” ― Pete Seeger