ABSTRACT
The future of the United States is clouded by natural enemies, such as the AIDS virus, earthquakes, and volcanoes; by real or prospective military adversaries, such as the Soviet Union and Iran; and by domestic problems, such as functional illiteracy, drugs, self-serving bureaucracy, and a lack of attention to maintaining and building our physical and constitutional infrastructure. The President and the government, as a whole, lack a sounding board that would help to improve proposals or help reject them, and that would give some indication of reactions from the scientific community. The role of scientific analysis and invention in program evaluation is little understood by political leaders; one should neither accept nor reject a program as proposed without asking whether it can be improved through the application of existing technology and whether it would be worthwhile. Fundamentally, the United States denies itself one of its principal strengths if the Administration does not make use of the best technical talent available.
