STATEMENT OF SENATOR AL GORE TUESDAY, MARCH 5 HEARING ON S. 272, THE HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ACT OF 1991 Today, the Science Subcommittee is considering S. 272, the High- Performance Computing Act. This bill will ensure that the United States stays at the leading edge in computer technology. It would roughly double the Federal government's investment in research and development on new supercomputers, more advanced software, and high-speed computer networks. Most importantly, it would create a National Research and Education Network, the NREN, which would connect more than one million people at more than a thousand colleges, universities, laboratories, and hospitals throughout the country, giving them access to computing power and information resources unavailable anywhere today. These technologies and this network represent our economic future. They are the smokestack industries of today's Information Age. We talk a lot now about jobs and economic development; about pulling our country out of recession and into renewal. Our ability to meet the economic challenges of the Information Age and beyond -- tough challenges from real competitors around the globe -- will rest in large measure on our ability to maintain and strengthen an already threatened lead in these technologies and industries. I have been advocating legislation such as this for more than one dozen years because I strongly believe that it is critical for our country to develop the best scientists, the best science, the fastest, most powerful computers, and then, to ensure access to these technologies to as many people as possible so as many people as possible will benefit from them. This legislation will help us do that. Every year, there are new advocates. This year, finally, President Bush is among them, including his budget for Fiscal Year 1992, $149 million in new funding to support these technologies. We cannot afford to wait or, to put off this challenge. Not if we care about jobs, economic development, or our ability to hold our own in world markets. During the last thirty years, computer technology has improved exponentially, faster than technology in any other field. Computers just keep getting faster, more powerful, and more inexpensive. According to one expert, if automobile technology had improved as much as computer technology has in recent years, a 1991 Cadillac would now cruise at 20,000 miles per hour, get 5,000 miles to a gallon, and cost only three cents! As a result of these amazing advances, computers have gone from being expensive, esoteric research tools isolated in the laboratory to an integral part of our everyday life. We rely on computers at the supermarket, at the bank, in the office, and in our schools. They make our life easier in hundreds of ways. Yet the computer revolution is not over. In fact, according to some measures, the price-performance ratio of computers is improving even faster now than it has in the past. Anyone who has seen a supercomputer in action has a sense of what computers could do in the future. Today, scientists and engineers are using supercomputers to design better airplanes, understand global warming, find oil fields, and discover safer, more effective drugs. In many cases they can use these machines to mimic experiments that would be too expensive or downright impossible in real life. With a supercomputer model, engineers at Ford can simulate auto crashes and test new safety features for a fraction of the cost and in a fraction of the time it would take to really crash an automobile. And they can observe many more variables, in much more detail, than they could with a real test. The bill we are considering today is very similar to the first title of S. 1067, the High-Performance Computing Act of 1990, which passed the Senate unanimously last October. Unfortunately, the House was unable to act on the bill before we adjourned. It is my hope that we will be able to move this bill quickly this year. There is widespread support in both the House and the Senate. In the House, Congressman George Brown, the new chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, has introduced a very similar bill, H.R. 656, which has been cosponsored by Congressmen Tim Valentine, Sherwood Boehlert, Norm Mineta, and others. On Thursday, the Science Committee's Subcommittee on Science and its Subcommittee on Technology and Competitiveness will be holding a hearing on the bill. I look forward to working with my House colleagues to move this bill as quickly as possible. This legislation provides for a multi-agency high-performance computing research and development program to be coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), whose director, Dr. D. Allan Bromley, is our first witness today. The primary agencies involved are the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Energy (DOE). Each of these agencies has experience in developing and using high-performance computing technology. S. 272 will provide for a well-planned, well-coordinated research program which will effectively utilize the talents and resources available throughout the Federal research agencies. In addition to NSF, NASA, DOE, and DARPA, this program will involve the Department of Commerce (in particular the National Institute of Standards and Technology and NOAA), the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education, the United States Geological Survey, the Department of Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Library of Congress, as well. The technology developed under this program will find application throughout the Federal government and throughout the country. S. 272 will roughly double funding for high-performance computing at NSF and NASA during the next five years. Additional funding -- more than $1 billion during the next five years -- will also be needed to expand research and development programs at DARPA and DOE. Last year, I worked closely with Senators Johnston and Domenici on the Energy Committee to pass legislation to authorize a DOE High-Performance Computing Program, and I hope to work with them and the other members of the Energy Committee to see that program authorized and funded in fiscal year 1992. Already, Senator Johnston and others have introduced S. 343, which would authorize DOE's part of this multi-agency program. To fund DOD's part of the program, last year I worked with Senators Nunn and Bingaman and others on the Armed Services Committee to authorize and appropriate an additional $20 million for DARPA's high-performance computing program, money that has been put to good use developing more powerful supercomputers and faster computer networks. Advanced computer technology was a key ingredient of the allies' success in the Persian Gulf War, but we cannot simply rely on existing technology, we must make the investment needed to stay at the leading edge. It is important to remember the Patriot missile and the Tomahawk cruise missile rely on computers based on technologies developed through Federal computer research programs in the 1970's. The High-Performance Computing Act will help ensure the technological lead in weaponry that helped us win the war with Iraq and that will improve our national security in the future. This same technology is improving our economic security by helping American scientists and engineers develop new products and processes to keep the U.S. competitive in world markets. Supercomputers can dramatically reduce the time it takes to design and test a new product -- whether it is an airplane, a new drug, or an aluminum can. More computing power means more energy-efficient, cheaper products in all sectors of manufacturing. And that means higher profits and more jobs for Americans. Perhaps the most important contribution this bill will make to our economic security is the National Research and Education Network, the cornerstone of the program funded by this bill. By 1996, this fiber-optic computer network would connect more than one million people at more than one thousand colleges and universities in all fifty states, allowing them to send electronic mail, share data, access supercomputers, use research facilities such as radio telescopes, and log on to data bases containing trillions of bytes of information on all sorts of topics. This network will speed research and accelerate technology transfer, so that the discoveries made in our university laboratories can be quickly and effectively turned into profits for American companies. Today, the National Science Foundation runs NSFNET, which allows researchers and educators to exchange up to 1.5 million bits of data (megabits) per second. The NREN will be at least a thousand times faster, allowing researchers to transmit all the information in the entire Encyclopedia Brittanica from coast to coast in seconds. With today's networks, it is easy to send documents and data, but images and pictures require much faster speeds. They require the NREN, which can carry gigabits, billions of bits, every second. With access to computer graphics, researchers throughout the country will be able to work together far more effectively than they can today. It will be much easier for teams of researchers at colleges throughout the country to work together. They will be able to see the results of their experiments as the data comes in, they will be able to share the results of their computer models in real-time, and they will be able to brainstorm by teleconference. William Wulf, formerly Assistance Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at NSF, likes to talk about the "National Collaboratory" -- a laboratory without walls which the NREN will make possible. Researchers throughout the country, at colleges and labs, large and small, will be able to stay on top of the latest advances in their fields. The NREN and the other technology funded by S. 272 will also provide enormous benefits to American education, at all levels. By most accounts, we are facing a critical shortage of scientific and technical talent in the next ten years. By connecting high schools to the NREN, students will be able to share ideas with other high school students and with college students and professors throughout the country. Already, some high school students are using the NSFNET to access supercomputers, to send electronic mail, and to get data and information that just is not available at their schools. In this way, the network can nurture and inspire the next generation of scientists. Today, most students using computer networks are studying science and engineering, but there are more and more applications in other fields, too. Economists, historians, and literature majors are all discovering the power of networking. In the future, I think we will see computers and networks used to teach every subject from kindergarten through grad school. I was recently at MIT, where I was briefed on Project Athena, a project to integrate computers and networks into almost every course at MIT. Students use computers to play with the laws of physics in computer models, to test airplane designs in wind tunnel simulations, to improve their writing skills, and to learn foreign languages. Many of the ideas being developed at Project Athena and in hundreds of other experiments elsewhere could one day help students and teachers throughout the country. The library community has been at the forefront in using computer and networking technology in education. For years, they have had electronic card catalogues which allow students to track down books in seconds. Now they are developing electronic text systems which will store books in electronic form. When coupled to a national network like the NREN, such a "Digital Library" could be used by students and educators throughout the country, in underfunded urban schools and in isolated rural school districts, where good libraries are few and far between. I recently spoke to the American Library Association annual meeting in Chicago and heard many librarians describe how the NREN could transform their lives. They are excited about the new opportunities made possible by this technology. The technology developed for the NREN will pave the way for high-speed networks to our homes. It will give each and everyone of us access to oceans of electronic information, let us use teleconferencing to talk face-to-face to anyone anywhere, and deliver advanced, digital programming even more sophisticated and stunning than the HDTV available today. Other countries, Japan, Germany, and others, are spending billions of install optical fiber to the home, to take full advantage of this technology. With this bill we can help shape the future -- shape it for the better. This is an investment in our national security and our economic security which we cannot afford not to make. For that reason I was very glad to see the Administration propose a High- Performance Computing and Communications Initiative, a program very similar to the program outlined in S. 272. I intend to work closely with Dr. Bromley and others within the Administration as well as my colleagues in Congress to secure the funding needed to implement this critically-important program. I look forward to hearing the testimony of Dr. Bromley and all of the distinguished witnesses who have made time in their very busy schedule to be here today. And I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Commerce Committee towards passage of this bill.