Here are some thoughts on more scientific or technical posts and those that are less so, along with a short map of what lies ahead. I’m also going to explain why I give so much attention to the issues of leadership.

Despite my tendency to focus on technical things, my writings are often drawn to the failings of our current leadership at all levels. The basic thought is that none of these scientific issues can be addressed without improvements in how the leadership acts. It is born out of the frustration that I felt growing year upon year in my career. This is that all the good technical work in the world that I could do, that others could do, would amount to nothing unless the leaders showed greater integrity, and focus on technical excellence. I had seen science in general fade from importance and priority. These were replaced by other concerns that continually undermined the technical world. By the end of my professional career, the leadership’s behavior became so fucked up that I could no longer stand to work at what, by all accounts, is a premier institution.

I find that I have many readers who seem to share my observations and also provide their own perspective. The same issues are present where they are. Still a constant need in retirement is for me to tack towards joy and exploration of the technical work. It is where I would so like to focus on. There are the traditional things I’ve worked on in numerical methods, computational physics, and computational science that continue to need effort. Interspersed with this is the new focus on AI that has burst forth onto the scene with the massive success of LLMs.

Again my mind is drawn to the failings of leadership in this time. How toxic and poisoning the current leadership is towards the successful roll out of AI to society. I think it is a very clear worry given what I saw in terms of the shallow technical approach to AI on the part of the scientific community as expressed with federal research. The AI efforts that were announced lacked all nuance and technical depth and were yet another set of stunt efforts that were only geared towards securing more funding. It is the same completely fucked up pattern that I saw the last decade at Sandia.

I find myself drawn to this problem because it seems so fundamental. Without changes in leadership I don’t think we can succeed at AI, nuclear weapons, or science in general as a nation. Here, leadership is focused on everything, but the elements of success in any of these endeavors. With all the value being put into money and the appetite for greed, the decisions will surely be poor technically and harmful to society as a whole.

I do promise that my next two posts will be technical:

1. Stepping back to the ever-controversial and lightning rod of numerical dissipation.

2. Then probably to some aspect of AI as I attempt to use and understand it in a way that is better than the sort of bullshit I heard from my leaders at the laboratory and has been reported to me by friends at other laboratories.