Money for quantum The Trump administration released its budget proposal this week, and science funding would take a hit. (Here's where we point out that Congress has, for the past three years, rejected these trims and generally increased funding at research agencies.) When asked to explain the proposed cuts to basic research, Kelvin Droegemeier, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy director, told reporters Monday: "The key priority in this administration is prioritizing of research and then, you know, placing our money on things that are extremely important. And then, for those things that are less important or lower priority, not focusing on them as much" while "relying on the private sector to innovate from the research outcomes that our universities and our federal labs produce." About those priorities: Quantum information and artificial intelligence remain the lodestars that guide the administration's research budget. The proposal "commits to double quantum R&D and nondefense AI R&D by 2022," said Michael Kratsios, the White House's chief technology officer. Kratsios said American leadership of artificial intelligence was an "imperative," as "our adversaries and others around the world" use AI "to track their people, to imprison ethnic minorities, to monitor political dissidents." The National Science Foundation requested $868 million to be allocated to artificial intelligence research and $226 million to quantum information science, NSF Director France Cordova said. At USDA, its competitive grant program would receive an additional $100 million for AI and other technology applied to agriculture — though the agency that distributes those grants, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, has been hobbled by its recent relocation out of the District. The request would provide $25 million to develop an "entangled quantum Internet" that connects Energy Department labs, said Paul Dabbar, the Department of Energy's science undersecretary. If successful, nodes at the 17 labs, from Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island to the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, would form the backbone of the first national quantum network. As science-fictional as a quantum Internet might sound, the reality is that its immediate importance is security — exploiting quantum mechanics to prevent information from being intercepted — rather than new online experiences. | By Joel Achenbach, Laurie McGinley, Amy Goldstein and Ben Guarino ● Read more » | | | |
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