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STATEMENT OF DR. JOHN P. McTAGUE, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, 

 OFFICE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY POLICY, EXECUTIVE 

 OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT; ACCOMPANIED BY DR. WALLACE 

 KORNACK, ASSISTANT DIRECTOR FOR ENERGY, NATURAL RE- 

 SOURCES, AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, WASHINGTON, DC 



Dr. McTague. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am pleased to have 

 this chance to meet with the committee and its Task Force on Sci- 

 ence Policy. We have a small luxury here this morning because we 

 are not focusing on particular legislation or programs, but on a 

 sense of how Federal science policy can best address the future. 



So, taking advantage of that opportunity, I would like to ap- 

 proach this topic of international science from a different perspec- 

 tive than usual and present our sense of some major concerns that 

 are now emerging. 



As I am sure these series of hearings have been illustrating, we 

 are in the midst of momentous and rapid changes in both science 

 and technology themselves, as well as in the means by which govern- 

 ment assesses, supports, and uses the results of research and devel- 

 opment. 



Dr. Keyworth, the President's Science Advisor, has appeared 

 before this committee on many occasions to offer his own perspec- 

 tives on these changes and to discuss the rationale and expecta- 

 tions that underlie the administration's science and technology 

 policy. 



That ferment cannot help but spill over into the way in which 

 we cooperate with other nations in the pursuit of mutual interests 

 in science and technology. Yet I suspect that we all have some con- 

 cerns that the mechanisms — indeed, the attitudes — that still influ- 

 ence our international science relations may be rooted in a differ- 

 ent era, one characterized by a slower pace of technological ad- 

 vance, by an almost unquestioned dominance by the United States 

 of the world's science and technology, and by unspoken assump- 

 tions in the United States that international cooperation would in- 

 evitably be one-sided and done more in the sense of providing U.S. 

 assistance to science and technology in other countries than of re- 

 ceiving comparable technical returns ourselves. 



Too many of our programs have been cooperative more in name 

 than in reality. It is well past time to discard those outdated as- 

 sumptions and rethink what we expect and need in our interna- 

 tional programs. 



Mr. Chairman, in a very real sense the primary force driving sci- 

 ence policy today is a product of the success of science policies in 

 the fifties and sixties. Our postwar institutionalization of Federal 

 support for basic research — as embodied in the then-new agencies 

 like the AEC, NSF, NIH, and NASA, and in the enormously influ- 

 ential support for basic research within the Defense Department — 

 today is paying back our investment virtually across the spectrum. 

 One would be hard-pressed to find a discipline that isn't pushing 

 hard at new frontiers and isn't developing new research tools and 

 techniques of immense investigative power. 



No question, this U.S.-led scientific blossoming has been the 

 wellspring of today's new technologies and new industries, ranging 

 from the microchip to biotechnology. 



