JASON Courts New Sponsor after DARPA Cancels Contract

After three months of uncertainty following a contentious breakup with its long-time US Department of Defense sponsor, the independent science advisory group JASON was on the verge in mid-April of signing a contract with a new DOD sponsor. The contract, which would allow JASON to continue its activities with only minor interruptions, was being negotiated with the DOD office of the Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), which plans and oversees the entire DOD science and technology program.

“We are very close to the end of productive discussions with DDR&E, and I hope we are going to get a contract in place within a couple of weeks,” said physicist Steven Koonin as Physics Today went to press. Koonin, the chair of JASON and provost at Caltech, said the new contract would be for somewhat less than the $1.5 million agreement JASON had with its previous sponsor, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Once the new contract is in place, money from other federal agencies is expected to flow in and boost JASON’s annual budget to about $3.5 million.

If the new agreement proceeds as anticipated, it will end a dispute that has threatened to put JASON out of business. “It will let us continue, and our membership integrity remains intact, which was an issue with DARPA,” Koonin said.

JASON began in 1960 as an independent group of 40-50 distinguished scientists who would meet for six weeks each summer in La Jolla, California, to review the science and technology involved in specific problems brought to the group by DARPA and other federal agencies. Over the past few years, JASON has played a significant advisory role in stockpile stewardship problems, infrared imaging, biowarfare concerns, and the potential of molecular electronics and other new technologies.

The dispute with DARPA began late last year when the agency, which has funded much of the JASON work for 42 years, insisted that two Silicon Valley executives and an engineer be accepted into JASON. The group has always selected its own members. In a series of discussions, JASON members concluded that DARPA’s candidates did not meet the group’s high standards and refused to admit them. DARPA abruptly canceled its contract with JASON, with an agency spokesperson saying the group was too heavily physics-oriented and unable to adjust its priorities to a post-cold-war world.

“That’s nonsense,” said JASON member and University of Texas at Austin physicist Roy Schwitters. JASON has actively expanded its membership over the years to include biologists, chemists, computer scientists, and engineers, he said. “But the standards are high and people have to be distinguished in their research. And they have to be able to get security clearances.”

Schwitters, who has been a member since 1995, said that, because JASON brings together so much talent for an extended period to focus on specific issues, it is unlike any other science group in the country. “We work together for weeks on a problem and it becomes an interesting and creative process. You’re getting to know each other as the problems are worked on. It’s not like a review committee.”

Although DARPA has declined to discuss the membership dispute, several JASON members have indicated that DARPA’s demand to include three specific new members was an effort to gain some control over the group’s agenda. “It was take it or leave,” Schwitters said of the DARPA demand.

The reaction to DARPA’s cancellation of the JASON contract was strong, Koonin said. “I was surprised by how many friends and people not directly connected with this organization came forward both to support us and also to support the stance we took vis-à-vis the membership issue.” One of those friends was Representative Rush Holt (D-N.J.), who on 27 March sent a letter to the leaders of the House Armed Services Committee and the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee asking for funding to “reinstate” JASON. DARPA’s attempt to select JASON members, he said, “would compromise the objectivity and independence of the group’s advice.” Congressional staff members familiar with science issues on Capitol Hill said the DARPA effort was widely viewed as politically motivated.

Koonin said the group was planning to conduct its usual three-day spring meeting in Washington, DC, to set the agenda for the summer session, even if a contract wasn’t in place. Getting the contract signed was important, not just for the money that would come directly from DDR&E, but because that DOD agency would serve as the channel for significant funds from other agencies that use JASON, including the Department of Energy and some intelligence agencies.