Fighting Terrorism with Basic Science



Mark H. Thiemens


November 16, 2001


Since Sept.11, academic scientists have been willingly recruited as soldiers in America's war on terrorism by government and political leaders eager to use their expertise to safeguard the American public from future attacks.

In many respects, our new mission is similar to the role played by university researchers during World War II. Then, as now, our nation sought to develop ways to respond to an attack by a foreign adversary on American soil. And University researchers, motivated both by patriotism and an infusion of federal funds to support their work, contributed to the war effort by applying their knowledge of fundamental science to the development of technologies, such as radar, that aided the military and helped to protect U.S. citizens from another attack.

Here at the University of California, San Diego, we are seeking to do much the same throughout the campus to aid America’s war on terrorism. For example, chemists in UCSD’s Division of Physical Sciences are applying their knowledge in fields such as nanotechnology and silicon chemistry to develop ways to thwart future terrorist acts.

One effort involves a new technique of identifying trace amounts of TNT that could allow law enforcement officials to trace the handprint of a terrorist who constructed a bomb or even locate a bomb or mine in the depths of the ocean before it explodes.

Another is the development of an ingenious, portable nerve-gas detector. Using a silicon chip like that used in computers in combination with a CD-player’s laser, this detector can quickly and inexpensively warn citizens or troops of deadly nerve gas, such as Sarin, used in the 1995 Tokyo subway terrorist attack.

In another project, atmospheric chemists at UCSD are evaluating whether we can use sensitive chemical particulate detectors to provide an early warning of bacteria or viruses that might be used in a bioterrorist attack.

These types of projects, applications of the basic research we do at universities that can be directed to develop new anti-terrorist technologies, are likely to receive continued support from the government, thanks to increased interest by federal agencies in sponsoring new methods to combat terrorism. But federal financing for our main mission and value to the nation—advancement of the general scientific knowledge that underpins these developments—has languished in many federal agencies to the point where our future contributions to the nation could be threatened.

In 1945, Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the federal agency responsible for applying the research of 6,000 U.S. scientists to America’s wartime needs, argued that the nation’s long-term interests would be best served by a strong and stable base of federal support for fundamental scientific research at universities.

“If the colleges, universities and research institutes are going to meet the rapidly increasing demands of industry and government for new scientific knowledge,” he wrote in a report to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, “their basic research should be strengthened by the use of public funds.”

Vannevar Bush’s famous report, “Science: The Endless Frontier,” led President Harry S. Truman and Congress in 1950 to establish the National Science Foundation, the main federal agency charged with supporting the wide variety of basic science and engineering research on our nation’s campuses. While this new base of financial support for academic research strengthened U.S. research universities after World War II and made them the envy of the world, the portion devoted to general science research in recent decades has lagged far behind the growth of other areas of the federal budget.

According to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, nearly two-thirds of all federal research and development support to universities is now devoted to biomedical research. This very important portion of the federal research pie, which comes from the National Institutes of Health, has seen a 70 percent rise in the last five years, and appropriate increase given its importance to the nation.

But federal support for non-biomedical scientific research, and equally important category, has lagged far behind, making it increasingly difficult for physicists, chemists and other scientists at universities to push the frontier of their disciplines.

Granted, America’s war on terrorism may not rely as heavily as it did during World War II and the Cold War on academic physical scientist, often credited for producing the scientific underpinnings of our post-war technological innovation, such as the Internet.

But if anything is clear, the current war is likely to be more complex. In the 1950’s and 1960’s, we could identify our enemy and its threat. Now, both are unclear. How do we respond? What technological developments will be needed to identify and minimize future threats?

Many of those questions are just beginning to be raised at UCSD and other leading research institutions across the country. Whether we as scientists can find technological solutions depends not so much on how much money the federal governments spends on anti-terrorism research. It depends, as Vannevar Bush stated more than 50 years ago, on how the nation maintains its fundamental academic research enterprise.