New-Tech Fight Against Cocaine Cartel Detailed in The Cobra by Frederick Forsyth

In a meticulously researched book as current as today's headlines, Frederick Forsyth's new book The Cobra offers a high tech thriller about the problem of cocaine. His thesis is to change the terminology from "war on drugs" and reinterpret "drugs," and in particular cocaine, as a form of terrorism, and then use all the worldwide resources and technology that is already being used to fight terrorism.

A few reviewers have panned the ending of the book, saying:

You'd be better off reading until about three quarters of the way through, throwing the book away, and enjoying all the different endings you could come up with on your own.

Another spin on the ending, which I won't reveal, is that it is closest to a painful reality and that's what Forsyth is attempting to present.

The book uses Global Hawk UAVs, their pilots in Nevada, and their capabilities in critical information gathering, to harness the drug trade. That alone is worth the price of the book but there's lots more high-tech software utilized in the plot that we only read about from the research labs.  It's a great summer read.

Here's an excerpt from an interview with Forsyth about The Cobra - the last sentence is the clincher for why I'm so enthused about the book:

Readers nowadays have been around, seen a lot, traveled a lot. And there is the Internet. If they want to check you out, they can. So if it is uncheckable, you can make it up, but if it can be checked, it had better be right. That is why I go all over, looking, probing, inquiring, conversing in low places, until I am damn certain that even the smallest detail really is the way it is.

For The Cobra, a deep delve into the murky world of cocaine, smugglers, Coast Guards, cops, and gangsters, there were certain “must-go” targets. The HQ of the DEA in Washington, the backstreets of Bogotá, the dockside dives of Cartagena. But the more I researched, the more I came across a recurring name: Guinea-Bissau.

Once a Portuguese West African colony, G-B went through eighteen years of independence war and about the same of civil war. The two left it a shattered, burned-out hellhole. The ultimate failed state. It still is. And the cocaine cartels spotted a perfect shipment point for coke going from South America to Europe. They moved in, put almost every major official and politico on the payroll, and began to shift scores of tons of puro through from Colombia to Europe. This I had to see, so I went, posing as a bird-watcher (the swamps and marshes are a wintering ground for European wading birds).

It was not my fault I landed in the middle of yet another coup d’état. It started while I was airborne from Lisbon to Bissau city. When I arrived, my contact was in a hell of a state. Flashing his diplomatic pass, he whisked us both through the formalities. It was two a.m.: sweaty hot.

“What’s the hurry?” I asked, as he raced his SUV down the pitted track to the city. “Look behind you,” he said.

The horizon in the rearview mirror was aglow with headlights. A vengeful Army was also heading for the city. At eight-thirty the previous evening, someone had put a bucket of Semtex under the Army chief of staff. He was all over the ceiling. The Army reckoned it was the President—different tribes and eternal enemies. They were coming to settle accounts.

I was in my hotel by three a.m. but unable to sleep, so I put on the light. It was the only modern hotel and had a generator. There is no public lighting in Bissau. At four-thirty, trying to read, I heard the boom, about five hundred yards down the street. Not thunder, not a head-on crash. Ammo, big ammo. One remembers the sound. Actually, it was the Army putting an RPG through the President’s bedroom window.

It seems the explosion did not kill the old boy, even at seventy-one. He crawled out of bed. Then the building collapsed on him. Still alive, he crawled from the rubble to the lawn, where the soldiers were waiting. They shot him three times in the chest. When he still wouldn’t die, they realized he had a juju that made him immune to bullets.

But that juju cannot prevail against machetes. Everyone knows that. So they chopped him up. He died.

The next day was kind of quiet, apart from the patrolling Army jeeps bristling with the usual Kalashnikovs, looking for the murderers of their boss. My contact waved his diplomatic pass; I beamed and distributed signed photos of a smiling Queen Elizabeth, with assurances that she wished them well (the Third World reveres the queen, even with a facsimile signature). We were waved through.

The airport was closed; ditto the borders. I was trapped inside, but no one could get in either. In the trade, it’s called an exclusive. So I borrowed my host’s mobile and filed a thousand-word summing-up to London’s Daily Express, for whom I do a weekly column. I had the Express call me back and dictated the story to a lady with earphones in London. No one has filed news like that since Dan Rather was in college. Old-fashioned, but secure from intercept, I thought.

But of course the NSA at Fort Meade, Maryland, heard it all and told the CIA. In the matter of coups in West Africa, I have what London’s Cockneys call “a bit of previous.” I wrote The Dogs of War long ago about that very subject.

After the story, half the West’s media was trying to get me, but I was out in the creeks checking out the sumptuous mansion of the Colombians, notable for their ponytails, chains of gold bling, and black-windowed SUVs. When I got back to Bissau, a very voluble wife, Sandy, was on the phone.

It seems she was fixing a lunch date with a girlfriend and explained in her e-mail: “I’m free for lunch ’cos Freddie is away in Guinea-Bissau.” Mistake. The e-mail vanished off the screen unfinished. Her mailbox vaporized. Database wiped. Instructions appeared on her screen: “Do not open this file. Cease all sending or we will respond.”

I had a zany mental image of the morning conference at Langley. Corner suite, seventh floor, Old Building.

“What’s this going on in Africa, Chuck?”

“A coup in Guinea-Bissau, Director. Several assassinations. It could be that damn limey again.”

“Can we take him out of there?”

“It seems not. He is somewhere in the jungle.”

“Well, zap his wife’s lunch dates. That’ll teach him.”

The same night, I dined with new friends, and my neighbor at the table was an elderly Dutchman. “You work here?” I asked.

“Ja. Three-year secondment. I am a forensic pathologist. I run the mortuary.”

The only things that work in Bissau are the gift-aid projects donated by the developed world. The Dutch built the modern mortuary. Shrewdly, they put it next to the locally run general hospital. Smart, because no one leaves the hospital save feetfirst on a gurney heading for the morgue.

“Been busy?” I asked. He nodded solemnly.

“Ja, very busy all day. Stitching the President back together.”

It seemed the government wanted the old boy in his coffin more or less in the right order. I tucked into my stewed goat.

It took three days for things to calm down and the airport to reopen. I was on the next flight to Lisbon and London. At Heathrow, a passport officer checked the stamps, raised an eyebrow, and passed the document to a colleague. He contemplated both the passport and its owner for a while, then gave it back.

“How was Guinea-Bissau, Mr. Forsyth?” he asked mildly.

“Cancel the vacation,” I advised. “You won’t like it.” Both smiled thinly. Officials don’t do that. Never jest with officialdom. I stepped out into the crisp morning air of March 1, 2009. Beautifully cool. Good to be home.

So if you are interested, dear reader, it’s all in The Cobra. The dives of Cartagena, the U.S. Navy SEALs, their British equivalents the SBS, the Global Predator UAVs, oh, and dear old Guinea-Bissau. And it’s all true. Well, okay, it’s not all true, it’s a novel. But it’s accurate.

Eisenhower's Words 49 Years Later

In late 1961, as President Dwight Eisenhower was preparing to leave office, he carefully warned of a process which I believe parallels our situation today:

Throughout America's adventure in free government, our basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among people and among nations. To strive for less would be unworthy of a free and religious people. Any failure traceable to arrogance, or our lack of comprehension or readiness to sacrifice would inflict upon us grievous hurt both at home and abroad.

We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity.

The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Reading these words is a sad experience for me.  Eisenhower really had people and the world of people in mind when he developed and delivered this speech. And he had the perspective of having been a General in war needing and using equipment and a President during a peaceful time, keeping that peace while encouraging and growing the civilian economy.

Bringing this message home to the robotics industry involves a discussion on research in America versus the rest of the world, and the politics of representation to get funding for the industry.  The former has been incorporated into most of my blog entries, particularly the article on financing the strawberry project.

Getting government funding for defense and civilian research and development is what I want to talk about here. There are two Congressional Caucuses today representing the robotics industry. One is educational; the other little more than a platform for lobbying to expedite funding. One addresses industrial and service robotics (which includes UAVs of all types) with a goal of providing a roadmap (including a funding roadmap) to help tackle America's fledgling robotics industry (or watch it be lost to off-shore companies); the other is focused on unmanned aerial devices for the DoD and Homeland Security with little, if any, attention to civilian uses.

Which one do you think will have the biggest impact on America and our long-term strategic goals for continued American life as we know it? The Robotics Caucus. Which one is getting all the attention and money? The UAV Caucus, of course. And that is because of their focus to provide access to Congress for lobbyists from the defense sector.

CBS Sunday Morning did a piece entitled: "Our Future Is Already in the Hands of Robots" and included the following quote:

Enthusiasm for robots on the battlefield, it seems, is only outpaced by the speed with which the military is acquiring them, says the author of "Wired for War," P.W. Singer

"We went into Iraq with a handful of drones; we now have 7,000 in the inventory," Singer said. "We went into Iraq with zero unmanned ground vehicles that are robotic; we now have 12,000.

UGVs and UAVs are a big business right now as are all companies providing products and services to support our war effort. But war spending isn't good for the public, particularly when most of the spending is being spent off-shore. The public may be listening to the Tea Baggers but they know and are experiencing the loss to the economic well-being of our country - and their households - by the trillion dollars we've spent on the Iraq and Afghan wars. We are bankrupting ourselves while the military-industrial complex is thriving. Voters know this. That's why James Carville's maxim "It's the economy, stupid" is as applicable today as it was then. Except that I would add President Eisenhower's warning to the maxim:

"... [and] guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."

The Problem Today Is Inadequate Spending

Rhetoric is winning over substance these days with the resultant effect that people are suffering. Worse, there are "tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again" said NY Times columnist Paul Krugman in a recent op-ed piece entitled "The Third Depression."

It’s almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don’t: that while long-term fiscal responsibility is important, slashing spending in the midst of a depression, which deepens that depression and paves the way for deflation, is actually self-defeating.

So I don’t think this is really about Greece, or indeed about any realistic appreciation of the tradeoffs between deficits and jobs. It is, instead, the victory of an orthodoxy that has little to do with rational analysis, whose main tenet is that imposing suffering on other people is how you show leadership in tough times.

This is part of the hypocrisy of current-day politics that I find so terribly offensive and counter-productive, or as Krugman said, "self-defeating." People are being manipulated to do things against their own best interests by political consultants that stir unnecessary flames and heighten righteousness. Furthermore, because of the increasing polarity, nothing is able to get accomplished and people end up dissolute and cynical which makes them even more passive and persuadable. Congressional party-line votes illustrate how the partisan acrimony gripping Congress is preventing cooperation, even for universally shared goals like healthcare, financial regulation and campaign finance.

In an in-depth piece in the International Herald Tribune entitled: "Betting That Cutting Spending Won't Derail Recovery," David Leonhardt wrote:

Policy makers are betting that the private sector can make up for the withdrawal of stimulus over the next couple of years. If they’re right, they will have made a head start on closing their enormous budget deficits. If they’re wrong, they may set off a vicious new cycle, in which public spending cuts weaken the world economy and beget new private spending cuts.

All the while stocks are tumbling and the daily economic and business news is abysmal. Repeating what Krugman wrote: "It's almost as if the financial markets understand what policy makers seemingly don't."

I agree with Krugman that it's too soon to stop stimulating the economy. Stimulation is necessary to get people working and also to enable new technologies to flourish over longer periods of time. By being short-sighted and focused on quarterly profits many American companies have pulled back their research and development budgets thereby thwarting new technologies. And by the government pulling back on it's economic stimulus, it's like a one-two punch backwards.

A Lesson from Arkansas and a Call for Transparency

UPDATE May 18: Rhetoric lessons for Democrats by Drew Westen - see below.

In 2008, Arkansas voted for John McCain for President.  In fact, the state voted more Republican than all other states.  It swung 11% to the Right from the Bush vote in 2004.  That's what the figures show.

A lot happened in Arkansas in 2007 and 2008 leading to that misleading statistic.  Arkansas was already favored to be a solid Red state - just not one that changed so dramatically to the Right.

Hillary ran and lost a savage and divisive campaign against Obama.  Her home-state voters were particularly vocal and aggressive and really wanted her to win.  They were crushed when she lost and sour and embittered.  They lost their fervor to change America for the better and became resentful and lethargic and stayed away from the final days of the election.  Many of them didn't vote.  Arkansas Democratic votes in the 2008 election were down in numbers that didn't go to the Republicans... they just didn't vote.

Republicans had the devil Hillary to rail against and Mike Huckabee to root for.  The well-liked Arkansas Governor spoke to what they wanted to hear.  When he lost to McCain, Arkansian Republicans were also crestfallen.  But they acted differently than the Democrats.  They turned out to vote against the Democratic choice more than to vote for McCain.  Actually they voted for Sarah Palin.  They were bitter and hurt and angry, and Palin spoke to their needs, so they voted her way.

As a result, rather than Arkansas swinging 11% more Republican, what really happened is a large quantity of embittered Democrats didn't vote and an even larger angry group of Republicans voted against their own best interests by turning out for Palin.

In both cases, Republicans and Democrats voted against their own best interests.  Literally, their wrong-headed votes (or lack of votes) were self-punishment and self-destructive to themselves.  Voting for Palin when really they just didn't want to vote for a Democrat; not voting for Obama when he was clearly the only choice.

I see the lesson to be a psychological one that Drew Westen wrote about in his book "The Political Brain." People tend to vote against their own best interests when anger and/or fear provoke them out of their point of view.  Further, that anger/fear can be sustained - by manipulation - to achieve that state of doing the unthinkable.  That's why so many people who see that manipulation were/are angry at Karl Rowe because he was a master at provoking and sustaining that type of contentiousness and cynicism that would lead a person to withdraw - to get away - to not vote - literally to vote against their own best interests.

That manipulation through fear and anger is happening right now.  Republicans and others are translating their frustration with the lack of progress in getting jobs, solving problems, regulating the banking industry, and putting the guilty in jail and they are making Obama and his administration the scapegoat.

In a Washington Post article today by Perry Bacon Jr., Drew Westen said that Democrats should not talk about "the environment," "the unemployed" or "the uninsured." Instead, they should replace those phrases with ones that have more appeal to voters, such as "the air we breathe and the water we drink," "people who've lost their jobs" and "people who used to have insurance."

"There are a few things if you know about the brain, they change the way you think about politics," he said in an e-mail. "If you understand we evolved the capacity to feel long before we evolved the capacity to think, instead of barraging people with facts (the standard Democratic way of talking to voters) you speak to people's core values and concerns."

Westen also said in the e-mail that "the White House has sharpened its message substantially since the president's first year in office," although he thinks it could still be more blunt in illustrating differences between the two parties.

Transparency is one of the answers to this problem.  Clarity, honesty, feeling and transparency.

Let's hope that President Obama can speak about this problem.  There's no reason that clarity and transparency be limited to John Stewart and Bill Maher.

The Importance of Making vs Selling Stuff - sidebar on Goldman Sachs

Much discussion is being focused in Congress, recent books, articles, and in the media, on the financial crisis and the contributing factors to that crisis.  Omitting until the end the role of Goldman Sachs, one important factor about the crisis must not be overlooked said James Kwak of The Baseline Scenario:

Remember that financial services are an intermediate product -- that is, we don't eat them, or live in them, or put them on in the morning.  They are supposed to enable a more efficient allocation of capital, so that the non-financial economy is more productive. But what we saw since the 1980s was the unmooring of the financial sector from the rest of the economy.  

Financial services are supposed to serve our economy; not be the economy.  Yet the trend is otherwise... over 40% of the profits of the entire US corporate sector went to the financial industry.  As a reference, in 1970 it was 4%!

Paul Krugman wrote:

A growing body of analysis suggests that an oversized financial industry is hurting the broader economy.  Shrinking the oversized industry won't make Wall Street happy, but what's bad for Wall Street would be good for America.

Martin Wolf, of the Financial Times, wrote:

...the financial sector seems to be a machine to transfer income and wealth from outsiders to insiders, while increasing the fragility of the economy as a whole."

Even the ethic has changed.  Doing things with ones hands - the pride in the skill and craft of so doing - used to be our ethic; now it's who can earn the most money.

The real issue is that America has changed from a hands-on country to one that sells the products of others. As more and more production and service jobs go off-shore, only financial services are staying behind.  And as Andrew Sorkin said on the Charlie Rose show last week:

...so many of these instruments on Wall Street, it's really just a casino, there is no underlying assets, they don't actually own these devices; people aren't getting mortgages because of this... What is the social utility of that?

All of this can be seen in the difference between the growth of the robotics industries in America and everywhere else.  America used to develop, design and manufacture their robots.  Then they only developed and designed them - the products were built off-shore.  Now much of the non-defense design is being done elsewhere and manufactured off shore without America having a piece of the pie.  Most of the iRobot products sold to the DoD are manufactured offshore!

Sidebar about Goldman Sachs

From a blog entry in The Huffington Post by Senator Carl Levin:

Most investors make the assumption that people selling them securities want those securities to succeed. That's how our markets ought to work, but they don't always. The Senators who in the 1930s investigated the causes of the Great Depression stated the principle clearly:

[Investors] must believe that their investment banker would not offer them the bonds unless the banker believed them to be safe. This throws a heavy responsibility upon the banker. He may and does make mistakes. There is no way that he can avoid making mistakes because he is human and because in this world, things are only relatively secure. There is no such thing as absolute security. But while the banker may make mistakes, he must never make the mistake of offering investments to his clients which he does not believe to be good.

Goldman documents make clear that in 2007 it was betting heavily against the housing market while it was selling investments in that market to its clients. It sold those clients high-risk mortgage-backed securities and CDOs that it wanted to get off its books in transactions that created a conflict of interest between Goldman's bottom line and its clients' interests.

These findings are deeply troubling. They show a Wall Street culture that, while it may once have focused on serving clients and promoting commerce, is now all too often simply self-serving. The ultimate harm here is not just to clients poorly served by their investment bank. It's to all of us. The toxic mortgages and related instruments that these firms injected into our financial system have done incalculable harm to people who had never heard of a mortgage-backed security or a CDO, and who have no defenses against the harm such exotic Wall Street creations can cause.

Levin went on to say that: 

Running through our findings and these hearings is a thread that connects the reckless actions of mortgage brokers at WaMu with market-driven credit rating agencies and the Wall Street executives designing the next synthetic. That thread is unbridled greed, and the absence of a cop on the beat to control it.

I couldn't agree more.  I'm pained to see this happening during my lifetime.  

Rethinking Singularity

I have concerns about Ray Kurzweil's Singularity.  The following three stories will show you where I'm coming from and give some background to what I want to say:

(1) In the '80s, Tom Axworthy, then Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau (and now with the Center for the Study of Democracy at Queens U in Kingston, Canada and the Gordon Foundation), spoke before my group, the American Association of Political Consultants, and told why Canadians and other countries distinguished themselves from Americans and American political campaign technology.  He said that Americans pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a national credo whereas most other societies have as their goals peace, order, liberty and fraternity.  Fraternity being the sharing in the well-being of all of society.  Big difference between the individual pursuit of happiness to the altruistic sharing of the well-being of everyone.  And that difference translates into political orientation, campaign practices and social ethic.  In America elected officials have star status whereas most members of parliaments worldwide are part of the party and not well known.  They are often elected as the x-party member for the y area.  Hence there's less personality and more issue orientation.  Not Barney Frank versus Earl Sholley but instead Liberal versus Tory.  Axworthy's talk has stuck with me to this day because I strongly believe in his version of Fraternity and what it means for society and the future.  Also it was one of the many reasons I chose to sell off and quit my activities in politics.

(2) Ray Kurzweil's projections of logarithmic (exponentially accelerating) technological progress - particularly in the fields of robotics, biotechnology and nanotechnology - leading to a "singularity" or merging of these super-intelligent sciences sometime between 2040 and 2045, a merging where differentiating between a human with consciousness and a robot-like device acting as if it had consciousness, has been fascinating to me because I'm a technology enthusiast, particularly in the areas of computers, AI and robotics. I see it happening just as he says. In robots, genetics, longevity, artificial intelligence, aging, stem cells, and many more sciences, my vision of the future is similar to Kurtzweil's. And this is disturbing because his projections are leading to a conclusion that I don't want for society.

(3) While driving to and from Lake Tahoe last weekend, some friends and I listened to an audiobook entitled Death Match. Although it was a mystery, it was really about artificial intelligence. It involved a computer dating service that went beyond simple questionnaires and instead merged psychological, medical and financial data along with social data such as travel, movie and book preferences, phone call records, traffic tickets, etc. into a massive database which was then sliced and diced to provide information about the candidates well-beyond what they entered on their initial survey forms. Armed with all that data, the computer did it's match and was quite successful. A discussion occurred about individual boundaries, and computer capabilities. Coincidentally, I had recently listened to a podcast of an AI expert discussing how things were presently done (constructivist) and how they will be done shortly (software developing software). This shed light on what was fictional in the story. The discussion continued to include the fact that the story's software and manipulation of massive databases was available today but that it wasn't going to get too much better until more capable and extensive software could be developed and that was precluded because the present state of the art was constructivist (done by human programmers and limited by their time and capacity). Although software is used to create new computer chips, humans are still cranking out AI software. When AI software becomes self-generating, that's when robotics and other embedded sciences will grow - and the dangers I foresee begin.

This brings me to a long and old (2000) Wired Magazine article written by Bill Joy, co-founder and network computer scientist of Sun Microsystems, a VC at Kleiner Perkins Greentech and FOO (Friend of Obama).  In the article, Joy worked his way through his own history of thoughts about technology to an evening when he spent some time with Ray Kurzweil and learned, first-hand, what Kurzweil foresaw.

Ray was saying that the rate of improvement of technology was going to accelerate and that we were going to become robots or fuse with robots or something like that and John [Searle, also at the meeting] countering that this couldn't happen because the robots couldn't be conscious.

I had always felt sentient robots were in the realm of science fiction.  But now, from someone I respected, I was hearing a strong argument that they were a near-term possibility.  I was taken aback, especially given Ray's proven ability to imagine and create the future.  I already knew that new technologies like genetic engineering and nanotechnology were giving us the power to remake the world, but a realistic and imminent scenario for intelligent robots surprised me.

Joy wrote pages of his history in thought from then until he met scholar and author Jacques Attali who described his interpretation of Fraternity.

Jacques helped me understand... Fraternity, whose foundation is altruism. Fraternity alone associates individual happiness with the happiness of others, affording the promise of self-sustainment.

This crystallized for me my problem with Kurzweil's dream. A technological approach to Eternity - near immortality through robotics - may not be the most desirable utopia, and its pursuit brings clear dangers. Maybe we should rethink our utopian choices.

I believe we must find alternative outlets for our creative forces, beyond the culture of perpetual economic growth; this growth has largely been a blessing for several hundred years, but it has not brought us unalloyed happiness, and we must now choose between the pursuit of unrestricted and undirected growth through science and technology and the clear accompanying dangers.

We are getting a belated start on seriously addressing the issues around 21st-century technologies - the prevention of knowledge-enabled mass destruction - and further delay seems unacceptable. 

It seems to me that Joy's seriousness and concern is well-deserved and appropriate.  I share his concerns fully.  What do you think?

Just One Sentence for Robotics in the Presidents Stimulus Message

In a recent Washington Post op-ed piece, Google's Eric Schmidt described why America has an innovation deficit and suggested ways that stimulus might change that situation.

We see it reflected in our search trends at Google: Too many people are out of work, and the fear of unemployment is changing the behavior of millions more. 

We have been world leaders in innovation for generations. It has driven our economy, employment growth and our rising prosperity. 

But much of the cutting-edge research and development in key and critical areas now takes place outside the United States. 

We can no longer rely on the top-down approach of the 20th century, when big investments in the military and NASA spun off to the wider economy.

Schmidt is saying is what I have found to be true in robotics funding.  Other than DARPA, DOD and NASA, funding for robotics is not directed or strategic.  In other countries, however, strategic funding is reaping benefits that are placing America farther behind in robotics development, deployment and manufacturing. Here is Schmidt's five-point prescription to invigorate American technology innovation:

1. Start-ups and smaller businesses must be able to compete on equal terms with their larger rivals. They don't need favors, just a level playing field. Congress should ensure that every bill it passes promotes competition over protecting the interests of incumbents.
2. Encouraging risk-taking means tolerating failure -- provided we learn from it. If we want to be a leader in new industries such as green energy [and robotics], we have to accept that some of our investments won't pan out.
3. We need to invest more in our knowledge base. The decision by Congress to double science funding last year was a big step in the right direction. Now we need to extend the R&D tax credit so businesses can confidently invest in their future.
4. Information must become even more open and accessible. Government-funded research should be made public through "a Wikipedia of ideas," so entrepreneurs can harness ideas commercially. Broadband is a major driver of new jobs and businesses, yet America ranks only 15th in the world for access. More government support for broadband remains critical.
5. We need to hang on to talented people. The best and brightest from around the world come to study at U.S. universities. After graduation, they are forced to leave because they can't get visas. It's ridiculous to export such talent to our competition.

Yes, all these points are fine. But there are more important issues going on. There is a perception that robotics takes away jobs which is not being factually countered. National Robotics Week - an awareness program initiated by a few companies and America's major tech universities - is a good first step. However, the government's consistent omission of robotics in their stimulus proposals is, to me, a sad surrender to the cry from unions and others that robots take away jobs. Instead of arguing that retraining and innovation and strategic funding create jobs, we are steadily giving in to these ill-founded claims and eroding our possibilities to lead again in technological innovation.

2010 Robotics Predications; Reality Check for 2009

Trick math question: If you have $100 and lose 50% and then gain back 50% of that, how much do you have?

1. $100
2. $50
3. $75
4. None of the above.

Stock markets around the world rose dramatically in 2009. Robotic stocks did as well or better than the major tracking indexes, particularly service robotic stocks. But the real story isn't the gains of 2009 but the lack of recovery from 2007.

An example: U.S. publicly-traded industrial robotic companies saw their stocks rise 40% in 2009. But those same stocks lost 53% in 2008. Thus their year-to-date rise in 2009 of 40% really only recovered 16 points of the 53 lost the year before. U.S. industrial robotic stocks are still down 37% from their close at the end of 2007 as are almost all robotic stocks worldwide. That is what these Robo-Stox™ charts - one for industrial robotic companies and another for service companies - attempt to show. Click to enlarge.

Most countries' robotics stocks didn't fare as well as the American NASDAQ Index with the exception of Canada, India, Israel, Taiwan and a very few individual stocks. Thus although 2009 was a significant up year for stocks, and robotic stocks in particular, robotic stocks have yet to recover their highs of 2007 and have a long way to go to do so.

The seriousness of the recent worldwide stock market and economy crash - of the drop in market value of the companies - of the loss of jobs and orders, and revenue and profits - is a long way from recovery. Although jobs in the robotics sector are available for qualified takers, particularly in the service sector, unemployment in general is dramatically high and most economists are predicting that it will be well into 2012 before any real gains occur.

That is not to say that all is pessimistic, particularly for robotic businesses. 2010 looks to be a good year with definite "drivers" effecting selected marketplaces.

Worldwide military, police and security agencies are continuing to purchase and invest in R&D for all types of unmanned, remote-operated aerial, underwater and ground robotic devices. More jobs - with the likelihood of continued growth over the next few years.

Medical robotics (included in the services sector) are poised for many years of rapid growth propelled by:

1. Growing patient demand for non-invasive surgery,
2. The current effort to reduce hospital costs by increasing productivity through a variety of robotic activities (non-invasive surgery, pill dispensing, materials transfer, lab assistance, etc.),
3. Hospitals, which have held back capital purchases (such as Intuitive Surgical's million dollar da Vinci devices) for the past two years, are beginning to reinvest in these types of equipment.

With the return of small amounts of discretionary income back into the economy, consumers are once again interested in robotic toys and kits as can be seen by 2009's Christmas rush to buy millions of robotic hamsters (Zhu Zhu) and thousands robotic penguins.  And the hit of CES was an indoor-flying iPhone controlled quad copter by Parrot that will sell for $129.

For industrial robot manufacturers, orders will stay down for quite a while. For those vendors that have switched or are making inroads into the services sector, the horrendous spate of bankruptcies and buy-outs has stopped and the future is looking brighter especially in new markets including the SME market.

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are now being offered affordable robotic products that haven't been available to them before, first in Europe and Asia, and later in the U.S. Lightweight and easily trainable, these flexible robots are enabling these smaller manufacturers to increase productivity and not have to go off-shore to produce their products.

Robotics 2009 - A Review

Singularity Hub, a website reporting advances in nanotechnology, genetics, biology, AI, aging and robotics, presented their 2009 Best Robots pictorial, a graphic review of some of the most interesting robots in the news in 2009.  A few of the entries were frivolous or  prototypes with no prospect of near-term commercialization, and there were some major omissions, but overall it gives a favorable impression of the progress made during 2009 - and prospects for the future - in robotics. It made me think that it might be time to review my own progress through 2009.

In June, 2008, I began to research the robotics industry - and the future of robotics - with an eye toward selectively investing in publicly-traded or privately held robotics businesses. I set up The Robot Report as an adjunct of my research - to share the data I've collected and to provide a visual method to track the business of robotics.  I've also been compiling a database of robotic companies and facilities worldwide and developed an industry chart (RoboStox™) of publicly-traded service and industrial robotic companies from which to compare their change to that of the NASDAQ and the DJIA indexes. RoboStox™is updated and recapped monthly on The Robot Report.

My research was necessary because my stock brokers didn't have a list of companies involved in robotics. They had a few stock tips but nothing comprehensive about the industry. Nor was there a fund or index for the industry.  Not even a knowledgeable specialist or quant. I realized that I had to do the legwork myself. It's been an intensive project that has taken me to Korea, Germany, Japan, and all over the Internet. My eyesight has suffered but not my mind. I love what I'm doing and discovering.

September 2008 was right about the time that the economic crisis really hit. Stocks took their second and biggest dive. People were on the edge of panic. Things hidden behind years of obfuscation became painfully visible in the media.

Robotic stocks tumbled that September. Fell like bricks. But I was still optimistic. I thought that by the time I really grasped the business of robotics, I'd be able to select the good from the chaff, and ride the wave back up, should it ever happen.

Thus far I've identified more than 600 companies (worldwide) that produce robotic products, 150 of which are publicly traded. Of the 600, many are conglomerates or companies where robotics aren't their primary business - ABB is an example. Less than 1/3 of ABB revenue is from robotics, yet ABB is one of the major robotics providers in the world.  Many of the companies aren't listed on American exchanges. My database has another 650 companies, some of which are public, that are ancillary to the industry providing everything from engineering, integration, software, vision systems and other necessary components to purely educational and research facilities. I have another 200 UAV providers on hold because many are unlikely to become commercially viable due to restrictions in airspace and the probability that countless years will pass before those limitations are lifted.

Observations from 2009:

• Strategic funding toward a robotics industry via a roadmap is non-existant in the U.S. but not in Korea, Japan and the EU. Their "roadmaps" have been designed, plotted out, funded, the public-private groups selected, and the tasks and research are underway.  Korea's $1.25 billion Frontier Program has an overall goal of a robot in every household and for Korea to become the primary worldwide provider of industrial robots by 2018. Japan's $100 million transition to service robotics is reflected in a variety of prototype elder and home care robots and smaller multi-functional assistance robots. The EU has funded (at least $600 million) for a variety of public-private consortiums in the area of cognitive systems, human-robot and robot-robot interaction.
• In America, we are many years behind.  Our "roadmap" was presented to a congressional caucus in February but has yet to be approved or funded.  If it does get approved and then funded, it is unlikely to get into the budget until FY 2013 or 2014.  As an American, I find this to be quite disturbing.
• Pragmatic funding for robotics does happen in the U.S. particularly for defense through DARPA, space, and from a select few individual entrepreneurs.
• Although there is and will be stimulus for high tech from the 2009 Economic Stimulus Bill, there is NONE for robotics; rather, there's money for healthcare digitization, enhancing the national broadband system and for energy efficiency (mostly in the form of grants and tax credits) and the ARPA-E grants for the development of enhanced battery technologies, carbon capture and other non-robotic research.
• Industrial robot producers have been diversifying and consolidating into the service sector and improving their products by making them lighter, more capable, less requiring of a safety cage, and easily trained.
• Like other companies suffering the economic crisis, orders have been down and employee cuts were necessary.  But that trend appears to be reversing in the services sector.
• Proof of this last point came from job offer information from LinkedIn and the Robotics-Worldwide mailing list - sources for monitoring such offerings.  One can see particular progress in the areas of bionics, motion vision, human-robot and robot-robot communication, motion flexibility, and artificial intelligence.  
  
• Worldwide robotics stocks - in anticipation of a return to economic normalcy - have recouped much of their losses from lows reached early this year.  Nevertheless, almost all are still lower than they were in 2008.
• Other researchers are getting on the robotics bandwagon in addition to The Robot Report.  Three new players offered pay-for material about the industry in 2009. The Robot Report, of course, is free.
  

Thus 2009 was a year of retrenchment for industrial robotic suppliers - product improvements and movement toward new products in the service robotics sector.  Industrial orders may have been down, but companies making the move to the service sector are hiring and marketing.  One exception to this has been in defense, space and surveillance where orders and sales are up.  Although news reports make it appear to be an American thing, it really is a worldwide phenomenon.  Countries from Israel to South Africa, from Brazil to China, are all developing security and defense bots of one type or another.

For me, 2009 was a year of research, database development and learning.  As the year progressed I began to focus on areas of particular appeal: rehabilitative robotics, agricultural robots, and medium-priced robotic toys to name a few.  People and companies began to discuss their financial needs with me and my collection of NDA's is growing.  Hopefully 2010 will be the year where everything robotic gels and we all have an exiting and prosperous robotics New Year.  One can only hope!

PS: 'Christmas Fun with Electronic Robots' was the cover story on the now-defunct Popular Electronics magazine back in December, 1958 - 51 years ago.  The issue sold for 35 cents!  I scanned and Photoshopped the cover into the graphic shown above.

Revelations from Tokyo

iREX2009 (International Robot Exposition 2009) held at the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center in iREX2009 (International Robot Exposition 2009) held at the Tokyo Big Sight Convention Center in Tokyo November 25-28, was, to many, somewhat of a disappointment. The effects of the worldwide economic crisis appeared to have taken their toll on participation and attendance.

But from my point of view, things were quite different.  There was the fun of traveling to an exotic city, seeing all the different sights, experiencing the subways and noodle cafes and all the wonderful tastes and smells. There was the pleasure of meeting new people, talking about robotics and seeing the robots do their stuff.  And it was a terrific learning experience.  On the other hand, except for hobbyists and young peoples' contests, the excitement that you normally see in the crowds as they gather around the most interesting exhibit(s) at trade shows appeared to be missing.

There were few exhibitors that I hadn't already reported upon and included in The Robot Report's database of stories and links.  Nevertheless there were many noteworthy displays, some of which are discussed below.



Here is a slideshow of my photos to give you a feel for the show, it's colors and crowds.  Slide #1, of the Statue of Liberty - Tokyo version - was taken near the convention center and had a spectacular view back across Rainbow Bridge to central Tokyo and Tokyo Tower.

Robot --> robot interaction:  Robot-robot interaction (where multiple robots work together to achieve a common goal) was featured by most of the major industrial robot manufacturers. From the programmable dancing robots to the larger arms and hands that pass things to other robots, many companies presented where they were and what they were planning to offer.  Yaskawa and Kawada's robots (shown in the slideshow) worked, danced, moved in sync and were very stylish and colorful.

Robot --> human interaction:  (The enabling interfaces so that humans and robots can communicate.)  In the area of robot-human interaction, haptics and speech processing were shown in many different booths. Nevertheless, preprogrammed routines still control most robot activities although many manufacturers presented their prototype and edutainment robots which displayed every form of communication methodology.

Arms, grippers and hands:  There were many new thinner, smaller and very flexible arms including some very capable lab robots and very stylish tabletops. Incremental improvements in arms and grippers were displayed - like the flex-pickers from ABB and Fanuc and a wide array of hand-like grippers and the very capable grippers from Kawasaki and Panasonic.  KUKA invited people to their Tokyo headquarters to see their new sleekly designed arm unit (rightmost, above).

Sensors and vision systems were everywhere. Many 3D vision units were displayed. However, real-time sensing and perception -- the conversion to and interpretation of the digital results of the sensors and vision systems -- as has been coming out of research labs around the world, was lacking at the show.

Some achievements are now almost taken for granted and omitted or minimized from the show: navigation, mobility platforms and safety systems in particular. An infrared GPS navigation system from Toyo was one of the few exceptions.

Software normalization may be necessary, but there were so many competing software systems (SRI's Karto and Willow Garage's ROS to cite two that stood out) that standardization seems a long way off.

Many companies were offering virtualization software [a very necessary step in the acceptance and use of robotic surgery devices] for manufacturing, navigation and surgeries.

Service robots of all types were displayed: fire-fighting robots, surveillance scouts, security patrol bots, pipe cleaners, receptionists, edutainers and guides, etc.  One stand-out, ripe for commercial deployment, was Sumitomo's new line of autonomous industrial cleaning robots (right).

In one of the classes, KUKA and EUROP's Rainer Bischoff said, "Technology, economics and customer demand are re-shaping the future of robotics into one of service and human interaction." These sentiments were reflected in the actions of most of the major industrial manufacturers who were showing prototypes of their future service robot products as were a few Japanese technical universities (like the University of Tokyo KobaLab's pretty android receptionist Saya).

Another interesting prototype is Mitsubishi's Wakamaru robot.  Although not available for sale to individuals, it is available for universities, research projects and companies and is promoted as the first human-size robot that can provide companionship, or function as a care-taker or house sitter.  It's capabilities are similar to the other prototypes: recharges itself, call or e-mail if it notices a problem, continuous access to the Internet, voice and face recognition, and a dictionary able to recognize 10,000 words.

Healthcare, eldercare and medical robotics: Just as Intuitive Surgical was getting Japan's FDA approval to begin selling their da Vinci systems in Japan, Japan was preparing their own entry for trials and approvals in the EU and US (see below and in the slideshow).

The show had many healthcare robots from university labs and companies at varying stages of development. Yurina's Care Robot is a fascinating device for moving disabled people from and to beds and chairs. KobaLabs displayed robotic walking assistants. There were various exoskeletons shown: one from Tokyo's Institute of Technology enabled a person to lift and carry extraordinary amounts of heavy packages.  Cyberdyne was there with their new line of rental exoskeletons. Paro and Beatbot rehabilitation robots got lots of attention.

Concluding remarks: Two stories caught my attention during the show: one reported upon a GA Tech survey which found that older adults are more amenable than younger ones -- 77% to 67% -- to having a robot "perform critical monitoring tasks that would require little interaction between the robot and the human." The findings represent a significant heads up for the eldercare robotics industry and appeared to be reflected at iREX2009.

The second story, from the Atlantic, suggested that robotic takeover of repetitive, dull, dirty and dangerous jobs is having a serious impact on America's unskilled labor force and, combined with a continuing focus on cost-cutting and productivity increases, is going to have a large and continuing destabilizing effect on America's economy.

The fear of job losses, coupled with America's lack of investment in STEM education and research (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), is propelling the robotics industry to countries that already have funded robotics roadmaps designed and being implemented. In America, the roadmap was presented last February and is still being discussed. It's a long way from being funded.  President Obama has been making the rounds talking about strategic investments to help with STEM -- and many companies are getting onboard (iRobot just started a new program for the advancement of robotics knowledge) -- but will it be enough to tip the scales from the destabilizing effects suggested in the Atlantic story?  It was this pessimistic spin that was on the lips of the English speaking people I talked with. Additionally, America's lack of direction in robotics appeared to be reflected in the few American companies displaying their products at the show.

I left iREX with a bag full of robotics literature and a good feeling toward all the people I met and talked with.  I learned and saw things from the perspective of the biggest players in the field and I am grateful for the overall experience. And I'm anxious to return... I was so busy that I didn't have time to see the cult movie "RoboGeisha" (which has English sub-titles)!