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Message from the President 22 December 2004 News Release Contact: Meghan Blake As we move into a new year, and in fact into our second decade of service, I am particularly pleased to report on a mere few of our most exciting projects. The clear and challenging direction provided at our recent Board of Regents assembly is already being pursued, just as it has been in the past. Potomac’s strength of course is at the confluence of science, technology, and national security policy. Our world has always known the concepts of national security and of domestic tranquility. Now more than ever, we perceive an increasing blur between the two. Indeed, the establishment of a Department of Homeland Security by our government is both confirmation of the importance of domestic safety, and I think, at the same time, recognition that policies and technologies that reify national security are not independent of those that comprise homeland security. This recognition of course screams for leadership from the Potomac Institute, and from the highest levels of government. The Regents pointed; we engaged decisively. Following are examples of programs, some of which were already active, but are now more keenly focused on our challenge. The Institute hosted, over the course of several months, the Revolution in Intelligence Affairs Seminar Series. These seminars brought together the nation’s leading minds to focus on key intelligence issues, matters that frankly had to be understood and better engineered. The results became organic to policy recently signed by the President. The Institute continues to play critically important roles in supporting the intelligence communities. For example, we are focused on the stresses between security and privacy, with the continued success of Project GUARDIAN, led by Senior Research Fellow Dan Gallington. Similarly, Senior Research Fellow David Kay led a very successful examination of technological capabilities for WMD detection. These are only two examples, but it is clear that for the next few years, dependence on Potomac expertise in support of the intelligence frontier will continue to deepen and broaden. Related, we have launched full scale into the domain of cultural intelligence, for lack of a better descriptor. Here the emphasis is on building a scientific understanding of the roles that sociological, anthropological, and psychological variables play in contributing to terrorism, and thus potentially to countering terrorism. Securing the blessing and support from the executive leadership levels of the American Sociological Association, the American Anthropological Association, and others, Potomac outlined a course of pursuit that is already paying dividends. We were selected by the Defense Department to help build and demonstrate a culturally driven decision system for Regional Combatant Commanders. Our International Center for Terrorism Studies, under the direction of Senior Fellow Yonah Alexander, will provide principal leadership for this and other cultural intelligence projects. At their request, we have teamed with university partners Penn State, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, Penn, Stanford, and the Naval Post-Graduate School in pursuit of significant cultural intelligence research. Our National Security Health Policy Center is clearly at Mach number velocity. Led by Senior Fellow Steve Prior, this high-powered concentration on very important medical issues is thriving significantly beyond expectation. Demands on this Center come from many agencies, including most recently the Centers for Disease Control. The Institute’s National Center for Unconventional Thought is now staffed and making significant headway. Creative Director Sean Fitzpatrick and Managing Director Robert “Cab” Callaway are providing Systems of Systems based approaches for OSD, the Joint Staff, and other sponsors. Mr. Callaway in fact was the Institute’s 2004 Lewis & Clark Fellow. That he has joined Potomac full time is testimony to the success of the Fellowship and to the needs of government to re-think its approach to defining and satisfying the demands of security and tranquility. Inspired by this approach, studies led by Research Fellow Thomas Wingfield have helped change our most fundamental, but flawed concepts of cyber-security (DHS-sponsorship), and of intellectual property (ONR-sponsorship). Established recently as an independent but collaborative entity, the Potomac Institute New Zealand has been focused on technological production and opportunity from the host country, and additionally, from Australia, Singapore, and other Pacific partners. Our Chairman and CEO recently completed a whirlwind series of meetings with the senior-most government, academic, and industrial leaders of Kiwi S&T. PINZ leader Doug Bennett is also demonstrating that Potomac’s global reach is not just intellectual. Under his leadership, the Institute completed an examination of NASA’s scientific investment in pursuit of the President’s direction to exploit the moon and explore Mars. Concentrating on communication and computer technologies, the study team provided independent insight for NASA’s leadership--wisdom that is already being called “invaluable.” Increasingly penetrating the realms of neuroscience and human factors, Potomac recently led a DARPA program, Quantifying Human Information Processing, that has in turn, helped lead to the establishment of new national level efforts in Neurotechnology. The Institute will continue to help disrupt this new scientific trajectory. Augmentation of human cognition offers immense opportunity to improve, expand, and secure life as we know it, but also as we can only imagine life at this point. Our corporate scholarly journal Review of Policy Research is succeeding, to understate wildly. Now in nearly 2,000 academic libraries worldwide, and with the help of our partner, the Policy Studies Organization, RPR, is becoming focused on “actionable scholarship.” As such, this highly respected peer-reviewed journal is finding an hospitable home. The Review will soon be widely known as the agent provocateur of record on Capitol Hill. I believe that Potomac Institute is now the most productive and influential think tank in our nation’s capital. This is based on superficial measures such as total annual revenue (with no line item support), and certainly, research funding per investigator. But the claim is based fundamentally on a more important though less quantifiable metric: progress. The sense of growth in the quality of our democracy is palpable here in our nation’s capital. I hope, based on the sample that I have described in the preceding few paragraphs, that you agree that the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies is a significant leader in this vital growth. __________________________________________________________________________________
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