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Again, back to thumping my tub about governments responsibity to step in to market failure, this from the San Jose Mercury-News about a $19-million NSF grant to several universities for research "to develop new technologies to protect the nation's computer systems from cyber-attacks while improving reliability": Grant to research computer security. Notwithstanding the size of the order (which means: Hmmm, can it be done on such a slim budget? Can it be done at all?), this is great. And, thinking ahead, just imagine the value of the licenses if anything workable results. Not only is there a huge demand but almost ubiquitous need.
Why's it happening? Very simply, the market has failed. That is, obviously nobody has projected all the benefit to be derived accruing to itself in the form of economic return, so nobody has succeeded. Presumably the government gets its investment back and the nation gets both better protected and economic gain. Whew! That's got to be hard for a hard-core, anti-government, laissez-faire capitalist to swallow before reforming it to fit the "right" frame.
A description of the five-year program, led by UC-Beserkley, in the obligatory snip:
The universities will create the TRUST Center, which stands for Team for Research in Ubiquitous Secure Technology. It is one of two new science and technology centers to be funded by the NSF this year. The five-year grant includes a possible $20 million, five-year extension.Posted by Grayson at April 12, 2005 07:27 AMS. Shankar Sastry, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC-Berkeley, will direct the TRUST Center. Last week, he also was named director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), based at UC-Berkeley.