Now Hear This!

I just became a support of Craig Barrett. Then again, I support anyone who calls out Congress for their slacker attitude toward tech.

Barrett in a Business Week interview headlined "Fired Up: Intel Chairman Barrett says America is Throwing its Future 'Down the Drain,'" talks technology, investment, and the current financial crisis.

Barrett makes special note of the Compete America Act, which increases funding for engineering innovation through the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, among other actions. While the act passed in 2007, there was no appreciation for it this year, and in the BW interview Barrett questions how we can spend $700 billion on a government bailout but not find a billion to fuel STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education and future innovation. "We as a country have chosen not to compete," he said in the BW interview.

Barrett goes on to apply Moore's Law to politics. "The political system has gone to a two-year return-on-investment cycle. Every problem we have takes longer than two years to solve. No one is willing to invest their political capital. Politicians are not following Moore’s Law. They are following whatever the hot topic of the day is," he told BW.

Perhaps the most telling line from the interview is Barrett's last: "It’s our future and we’re throwing it down the drain."

Barrett is far from alone in his views. Many tech industry leaders, including Bill Gates, TJ Rodgers, George Scalise, and Steve Appleton, have tried to reason with our political leaders and have put their weight behind STEM positive actions.
 
In the interview, Barrett says that the good news for Intel is that the majority of its business, 75 to 80%, comes from outside of the US. Before the below comments field gets flooded with remarks about outsourcing and the loss of America's wealth to Asia-Pac countries, it's our own political action (or inaction) that's driven semiconductor industry bellwethers like Intel to shield themselves against financial losses through opportunities outside the US. As has been stated many times in this blog by editors and readers alike, other countries -- competing world powers, no less -- are making sizable investments in their tech infrastructure and into the STEM education of their young, while we sit idle.

Take a few minutes and read the BW interview. And, as always, your comments are welcome below. Are Barrett and the like blowing things out of proportion? Will the US' history of innovation continue without substantial government assistance or are we flushing our future competitiveness "down the drain"?

--Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News