[HN Gopher] UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research...
___________________________________________________________________
UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt
from FOI
Author : cesarosum
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-02-17 13:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thetimes.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thetimes.co.uk)
| tschellenbach wrote:
| Basic research (IE things that are not monetizable in the
| near(ish) term) don't get anywhere near enough funding. Companies
| do a great job taking things from 1% to 100. There is a funding
| gap for the first bit.
|
| A solution is definitely needed for that, I don't think a
| government funded agency will do it though.
| jtbayly wrote:
| So immediately this is where people will go to hide their pork?
| martingoodson wrote:
| What's stopping this money going to friends of Tory MPs or,
| worse, to Deloitte?
| FuckButtons wrote:
| Exempt from foi = is a vehicle for putting taxpayer cash in our
| mates pockets.
| niffydroid wrote:
| It's amazing how government comes around in a circle. There was
| DERA(Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) which the government
| pretty much privatised by spinning it off as Qinetiq
|
| For me the issue is they intend to invest into 'projects', why
| phrase it like that? If it's research, then you're finding out
| new information, proving theories etc, so to deem it as high risk
| project is strange, just treat it as research, it's allowed to
| fail!
|
| Another one is the FOI. This is just stupid, we should know what
| the money is being spent on, what the outcomes, things learnt
| etc. It doesn't have to be the costings down to how much a tea
| bag costs. Just the top level stuff. I'm happy for top secret
| projects to be exempt if there is serious national security
| concerns. But if the public aren't allowed to see it, then who is
| getting the benefit? Could very well be private companies (which
| isn't a bad thing, but we've paid for them to gain advantage...)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_Evaluation_and_Researc...
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qinetiq
| motohagiography wrote:
| I still don't see how any government granting committee can
| outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for
| exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government
| dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy
| investment community.
|
| As described, the risks I see are that, it has the incentives for
| a patronage slush fund, there will be selection bias to hedge
| political risk around people applying, and it will just become
| another grant vehicle for academics in the publish-or-perish
| regime, and instead of "making something people want," in the
| venture model, it means, "find things nobody else understands
| well enough to care about." To people outside of it, it will look
| a lot like corruption.
| ThouYS wrote:
| Depends all on the implementation. DARPA seems to (have)
| work(ed) fine
| donal6343 wrote:
| And this government has form for corruption.. awarding COVID
| PPE contracts to their chums!
| hogFeast wrote:
| The UK has had an issue with early-stage financing for nearly a
| century (the Macmillan Gap). There are numerous examples of
| these schemes working in the UK and without: in East Asia,
| ICFC, Scottish Enterprise, some programs in the EU...there is
| no real question that this can work (this isn't replacing
| venture capital btw, this is just...not what this is for, the
| idea that this wouldn't work though is also totally incorrect,
| you could have believed it in the 80s, not now).
|
| Equally, the UK has a gap in research funding. The private
| sector has had, literally, decades to close it. The gap is
| closed in many other economies by the govt, so this is a
| reasonable solution. The govt has also done a huge amount to
| involve the private sector, most of the approach has been about
| the private sector but this is targeted on an area where it is
| basically understood there is market failure.
|
| There are always risks around politics, this has happened to an
| extent with Scottish Enterprise and the new SIB, but this
| problem isn't going to solve itself, and the path to oversight
| is relatively straightforward. Saying that has to be corruption
| just makes no sense when any funding is going to be under the
| same constraints as most other govt funding (I have no idea why
| people FOI is public scrutiny, it isn't, FOI would not help you
| uncover corruption to any degree...that isn't what it is for or
| how it is used, if you believe that the govt is corrupt, defund
| all services, that is it...that is the only logical conclusion
| that can be drawn from that belief, we have FOI and it isn't
| stopping corruption...so defund it all).
| notahacker wrote:
| VC has quite specific expectations for an opportunity: the
| company that develops the service enjoying massive growth (or a
| massive strategic acquisition) within a decade or so. VCs
| weren't competing to fund Apollo missions or poverty reduction
| and not because nobody wanted them.
|
| Government can invest in projects which have different types of
| return: projects which are only beneficial or more beneficial
| if given away for free, projects which will take a lot longer
| than a decade to come to fruition, projects which are important
| to government social objectives but just not big enough
| commercial markets to be interesting to VC and projects which
| the government will be the only customer for so might as well
| cut the VC middleman out. Even on a purely financial return
| basis, the VC captures only captures the part of the return the
| portfolio company can charge for: the government collects the
| tax receipts from everyone who benefits in the sector including
| competitors who copy, and doles out resources to the entire
| supply chain and consumers too/
|
| Sure, _making it secret_ certainly increases patronage slush
| fund potential but it 's not like that isn't already there, or
| like VCs are perfectly efficient investment machines who never
| consider their network or biases before spending LP funds, or
| had much role in many of last century's significant inventions.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| For an indication of how this will go, it's worth looking at
| how the existing R&D grants system is used and abused.
|
| I have done a few "hold your nose" consultancy gigs for an
| outfit that specialises in the entirely legal, if morally
| dubious, process, of importing the family of high net worth
| individuals on entrepreneurship visas - and laundering their
| money into the U.K.
|
| I was approached in 2016, after I cashed out of my business,
| by an acquaintance from school who had spent a few years as a
| Tory MP, and was now using his barristers chambers to run
| this scheme. He was the head of chambers' nephew, and is
| still considered their golden goose, because this stuff is
| seriously lucrative.
|
| I'd provide a business plan, and would be the U.K. national
| director. They'd be the investor director from overseas. I
| assigned all reporting etc. over to the agency, so I was just
| producing business plans and providing a U.K. taxpayer's
| identity.
|
| They'd put in their money (as it's an investment the burdens
| of UWOs and so-forth don't apply, as it's counted as a
| liability, not an asset), the government would match it, and
| they then come to Mayfair, pay themselves a salary for three
| years, do an annual R&D tax credit and get a nice big cheque
| from HMRC, and then wind the whole thing up when it
| "unexpectedly fails".
|
| I did two of these before I got cold feet. A Russian
| oligarch's son, a Kazakh oligarch's wife. Never met them,
| only found out their IDs after the companies were
| incorporated.
|
| Whole damn thing stinks to high hell, but it's essentially
| the intended purpose of the scheme.
| IanCal wrote:
| That's about tax and R&D right? This is about a new funding
| agency, a very different thing.
| motohagiography wrote:
| So glad you told this story. We have analogous arrangements
| in Canada. The investment visa is one side of it, but we
| have a massive money laundering issue, to the point where
| casual BBQ conversations are about how many of the retail
| businesses in Toronto are obvious fronts and it's a
| significant factor in retail rents. Normal people think
| their politicians are paid off by foreign gangsters to turn
| a blind eye to the laundering operations.
|
| The problem is that local politicians can stay in power
| using "donations," from this grey/black market foreign
| money, laundered through the R&D credit system, and they
| don't need the support of the local citizens or businesses.
| The R&D credit system risks being more than just a public
| spending problem, it's a corruption problem.
| notahacker wrote:
| Sure, I'm disagreeing with the principle that government
| investment has no place in a world where VCs exist rather
| than praising the design of this particular scheme (no
| prizes for guessing which former SPAD known for being
| almost as enthusiastic about zero accountability as science
| might have designed it...).
|
| As I'm sure you know there are less um... creative uses of
| R&D tax credits and SEIS too, and I've heard some very
| strange entirely private sector funding arrangements ("but
| we don't need to worry about whether the losses on taking
| on this project with that obligation will burn our
| remaining capital, because someone who used to work at that
| company will be impressed enough to angel invest") proposed
| too. And some rank bad recipients of everyday properly
| tendered government procurement, for that matter.
|
| And I presume oligarchs and money laundering operations
| actually _want_ the paper trail to provide vaguely
| plausible explanations for being in London with the ability
| to write large cheques.
| tinktank wrote:
| > I still don't see how any government granting committee can
| outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for
| exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government
| dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a
| healthy investment community.
|
| Isn't the difference that VCs are looking for short-to-medium
| term opportunities as they want a return on capital? Presumably
| gvt funding means riskier projects can be undertaken.
| g_p wrote:
| I think the intention is to fund riskier investments that
| traditional VC would turn its nose up to and say "come back
| with an MVP and a customer".
|
| The internet is probably a cliche example, but it came out of
| DARPA as a resilient control network for the military. Nobody
| at the time envisaged the impact it would have - it was an
| interesting technical piece of work that scratched an itch.
| Funding it resulted in a huge economic and strategic benefit
| for the US. It makes sense for other countries to attempt to
| replicate this model.
|
| Being able to strategically fund technically interesting (but
| highly adventurous) moon-shots is not really attempting to out-
| perform VCs - the goal is to evaluate and fund a portfolio of
| crazy (but credible) ideas, accepting they may fail, and that
| they won't run according to nice quarterly deliverable
| schedules, as things will go wrong.
|
| Academic funding is very broken to begin with, as it focuses so
| hard on reducing the risk of projects that non-delivery (i.e.
| negative outcomes) are frowned upon or not tolerated (depending
| on the field) - this is a very unhealthy set of incentives. We
| should allow research to fail and return negative results, and
| not penalise the researchers. Not everything will work.
| Especially for early career researchers, they might be over-
| optimistic about how long something will take.
|
| Researchers are trained to be so risk-averse that they are
| often seeking grant funding for work they've already done, in
| order to reduce (to near-zero) the risk of non-delivery. They
| then use that grant funding to tide over doing innovative
| research on the side, or doing the majority of the de-risking
| of it, in order ot be ready to bid for future funding for that
| idea, keeping the conveyor belt moving. But you have to find a
| way to get onto the conveyor belt and get started running on
| it.
|
| Hopefully this research approach will embrace failure and
| delayed delivery for good reason, and focus instead on what can
| be learned, rather than on having low-skilled box-tickers
| focused on managing other people's projects - the two hallmaks
| of current govt funded research.
| addicted wrote:
| They are unlikely to be more efficient than VCs but that's not
| really relevant when VCs have completely different goals and
| incentives than what the government may need.
|
| If there was an effective way to enlist VCs while aligning
| goals then they would opt for it.
|
| Space exploration is a good use case here. The US government
| has found a way to align its goals with that of the private
| space industry and is therefore seeing tremendous efficiencies.
| However, because of a whole bunch of reasons (largely because
| there was a lot of basic open ended R&D that needed to be done)
| this alignment was probably not possible in the 60s and NASA
| was more successful.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Government research funds like this are able to have a much
| bigger risk appetite than a traditional VC would.
|
| Many moonshot projects require a very large amount of capital
| to get up and running, and run a high risk of failing. For a
| typical VC firm, they will rarely choose to invest in something
| like that if there are other opportunities that don't require
| as much up front capital, and with better odds of succeeding.
|
| When you don't have LPs and/or shareholders to answer to, you
| can afford to take greater risks on more ambitious projects.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses
|
| In Government? I chuckled.
|
| > it will just become another grant vehicle for academics in
| the publish-or-perish regime
|
| I can already see the selection committee, all from non-
| technical backgrounds, getting clear instructions on who to
| fund and who to reject based on the demographics the party
| wants to appeal to and existing donors.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| That's not how current government funding for projects
| currently works - why is this so fundamentally different?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| This one is exempt from FOI.
|
| So the public will never know why a project was selected
| over another. Or why it failed, or what happened to the
| money.
| mcguire wrote:
| (D)ARPA developed the research behind the Internet and GPS.
| Private venture capital gave us Facebook. Are you sure you want
| to make this argument?
|
| Venture capital funding is a great way for _product_ research
| and development to be outsourced---nobody is going to notice if
| the project fails but if it doesn 't there is money to be had.
| Near-basic research has an extremely long time horizon
| (internet research started in the 1970s and didn't become
| publicly useful until the 1990s) and may never be profitable.
| Further, _nobody_ wants the results of a long term research
| project until they already have it and can see the utility.
| jdavis703 wrote:
| The internet came out of a US government funded "advanced
| research projects agency." It took decades before VCs monetized
| that research.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Most of the tech industry in fact came out of that government
| funded research. I bet half of the people working for In-Q-
| Tel [1][2] _and similar gov VC_ funded companies don 't even
| understand that relationship. I should add that even if a
| company is not listed, it does not mean some of the VC
| funding did not come from one of the gov VC's.
|
| [1] - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/in-q-
| tel/recent_inve...
|
| [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel [note] not every
| company is listed
| motohagiography wrote:
| The Roman empire created roads, but we don't attribute
| railroads and cars to them. I think "government spending
| invented the internet," is the "you like roads, dontcha?" of
| our time. ARPA wasn't open ended research either, it was to
| respond to the existential threat of nuclear annihilation.
| Conflating public largess with national defence spending is a
| category error. Not to belabour it, but I do think this trope
| needs to be put to bed.
|
| How should government fund basic vs. moonshot research?
| Incentives. If they think they are smart enough to allocate
| funds via a committee, they need to be smart enough to figure
| out how to structure incentives.
| raverbashing wrote:
| "Incentives"
|
| 50 years (give or take) and with a lot of government help
| yet did we have private space exploration.
|
| How many medical companies sat on their hands and have not
| pursued a covid treatment of vaccines?
|
| The free market can't solve everything.
|
| Governments (or more specifically, countries) don't have
| the existential threat incentive that companies have.
| bko wrote:
| Finance was very immature industry at that time. There wasn't
| a lot of money in private investment funds and the investment
| vehicles to capitalize on this research didn't yet exist.
| Today's private market would likely seize on an opportunity
| like the internet. There is appetite for long term focus in
| today's investors. Just look at PE (price-earnings) ratios of
| today's stocks, and the frothy revenue multiples in
| valuations over the last ten years.
| cj wrote:
| Most VC funds have an expected lifespan of (roughly) 10
| years. Some longer, some shorter.
|
| If your VC makes an investment 2 years into the fund, the
| expected return must come within 8 years if it's a 10 year
| fund.
|
| I guess it comes down to what we consider "long term". If
| "long term" means 5-10 years, then the VC model works.
|
| But if "long term" means 10-25 years or longer, the VC
| model becomes an unrealistic financing option.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Similarly, the photolithography tech used by ASML Holding
| originated from research funded by the Dutch government.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASML_Holding
| yawaworht1978 wrote:
| Wasn't the internet itself funded by the government before
| companies like google and amazon abused everything that was not
| regulated soon enough?
|
| The governments should not be inventors, though, I agree.
| Government should regulate and protect without uncalled for
| interventions.
|
| Publicly funded non foi sounds like a playground for scammers
| and corruption.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Outperform on what?
|
| Different structures yield different results. Venture backed
| startups produce results different to internal R&D departments,
| for example. Open source/open culture projects yield different
| results than typical startups.
|
| I don't think a VC fund would have invented the internet, not
| in the 60s. I don't think the worldwideweb could have been
| invented by a typical corporation. If it had been, it would
| have been more like facebook than the www. America Online and
| others were attempts at a proprietary FB-esque www. The web
| would have been different if they won. Linux is different from
| Windows. Different types of organisations make different kinds
| of things. If we only have one type of organisation, we limit
| the possible outcomes.
|
| The vast majority of current VC success stories are neither
| here nor there in terms of public benefit. The next tiktok is a
| great return for VCs, but consumers are not likely to lack for
| social networking innovations either way. I think this is a
| sign of overinvestment in one category. They're fighting over
| the pie, more often that baking it now. This wasn't the case
| circa 2005.
|
| Funding structure and organisational structure are kind of
| similar for these purposes.
|
| Tesla's uniqueness is another case in point. Musk funded it
| himself. There isn't really a type of financing, besides self
| financing, that could have done that. Banks and hedge funds
| don't want high risk projects. VCs don't want projects that
| require lots of funding once successful. Despite being a
| superstar CEO, Musk's initial investment diluted him from 100%
| to nearly 0 at one point. Technically, the shares that he owns
| were earned back as CEO performance bonus. Not attractive to a
| VC... compared to a facebook.
|
| I doubt that Tesla is the only such project possible,
| technically. Funding structures just make it less likely.
|
| In much of the west (UK certainly), our economies have gotten
| very intangible. Software, Banking, financing, entertainment,
| patentable tech. Some of this is because the world presents
| those opportunities. Some of it is because of financial
| structures. We have bigger/better financing structures for some
| things more than others.
|
| Silicon Valley developed a unique economy based on a pretty
| unique web of financiers, angels and VCs.
|
| All that said, I have no idea if this agency is good/useful.
| Sounds dubious, honestly.
| [deleted]
| delightful wrote:
| Related recent official report on advanced research:
|
| https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/4665/documents...
| acallaghan wrote:
| In my opinion, there should still be an oversight board of non-
| govt people to stop abuse, and maybe still abide by ethical
| standards.
| bitcharmer wrote:
| Ah yes, another way for the tories and their rich friends to
| siphon public funds to private pockets with zero transparency.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| Why is the government spending tax money on creating new
| technology with huge risk? Surely this is something that
| investment funds should be doing, with the investors appopriately
| aware of the risks?
|
| Who is going to benefit from any discovered new tech? Are the
| benefits going to be socialised, or is it just the risk?
|
| If it was supporting pure research - finding great researchers
| and freeing them from the grant treadmill - I'd be supportive,
| but this doesn't sound like that.
| mcny wrote:
| > If it was supporting pure research - finding great
| researchers and freeing them from the grant treadmill - I'd be
| supportive, but this doesn't sound like that.
|
| Same here. I am all for more research but we want more
| transparency, not less.
|
| > Ministers will announce plans tomorrow for an PS800 million
| scientific research agency legally entitled to invest in
| projects that are likely to fail and which will be exempted
| from freedom of information laws.
|
| This makes no sense to me. Why would they need to be exempt
| from freedom of information?
|
| > It will be exempt from rules designed to prevent taxpayers'
| money from being invested in projects with little chance of
| success. Ministers hope that the agency, to be set up next
| year, will produce next-generation technology.
|
| This I completely support. From what I understand, the COVID
| vaccine wouldn't be here if it wasn't for some scientists
| working on some seemingly dead-end path for years.
|
| Overall, I don't understand this initiative at all. The last
| thing I'd want is pulling funding away form fundamental
| research and putting it in some Instagram clone. I'd even be OK
| if this money went to some kind of James
| Bond/Quartermaster/DARPA thing instead.
| richrichardsson wrote:
| > Why would they need to be exempt from freedom of
| information?
|
| So no-one can find out where the best part of a billion
| pounds went?
| parkersweb wrote:
| And specifically no-one can tie that billion pounds to the
| business interests of ministers or their family members...
| maxehmookau wrote:
| What on earth could possibly go wrong with this.
| Ericson2314 wrote:
| We have truly entered the state capitalist era. (Collectively
| funded research is great, secrecy about it isn't.)
| oli5679 wrote:
| The USA's DARPA program funded important research into
|
| - The internet
|
| - GPS
|
| - Graphical user interface and mouse
|
| - Onion routing
|
| - Voice assistant
|
| Hopefully this program executes well. There is clearly a big
| social payoff to betting big on credible people doing risky
| research with high potential impact.
|
| https://www.itpro.co.uk/technology/34730/10-amazing-darpa-in...
| madaxe_again wrote:
| That's nice, but this isn't what this will be about. This will
| be a means of funnelling cash to party donors without
| oversight, nothing more. Hence the FOI exception.
|
| I mean, just look at how they've fared in the last 18 months
| alone - how many unaccountable tens of billions did they pay
| out to their donors?
|
| I had Tory ministers' children approaching me about putting
| together business plans to help them get covid grants - same
| crowd who I used to help with R&D grants, which were also used
| to get high net worth individuals with money of dubious origin
| into the country. I anticipate I'll be hearing from them again.
|
| This kind of funding will not develop anything but the wealth
| divide.
| [deleted]
| afandian wrote:
| Anyone who doubts the veracity of the claims of Tory
| corruption, here and throughout the thread, please check out
| the Good Law project and the litigation currently in UK
| courts.
|
| https://goodlawproject.org/news/
| grey-area wrote:
| For those doubting the above, here is an example from the
| recent past of corruption from the Prime Minister, paying his
| lover with public funds:
|
| https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/31/10000-grant-given-boris-
| johns...
| dalbasal wrote:
| The problem with this line of argument is that it applies
| to anything and everything done under the current
| conservative banner.
|
| IE, Torrie/Boris corruption is the _only_ topic. Whether it
| 's a British DARPA, new sewage plant, or change to the tax
| code, the only thing to say is " _They 're corrupt. This is
| just another pilfering._"
|
| I'm sympathetic to the focus on corruption. Corruption is
| bad. That said, I don't think the UK is at the point where
| everything is just corruption and nothing more. There _is_
| room to talk about things other than corruption too.
| Besides, this particular flavour of corruption is almost
| always present. Whether it 's the VC's boyfriend, bank
| manager's mistress or political boys clubs. Insiders get
| insider access. I don't like it either, but where/when is
| this _not_ the case? It 's not a coincidence that so many
| of your (or american) parliamentarians went to school
| together?
|
| I am sure knowing people at DARPA, being married to a
| general or whatever is a big help too.
|
| Americans are worse than you guys on these fronts, and
| they're not the worst either.
| kergonath wrote:
| > IE, Torrie/Boris corruption is the only topic.
|
| Only because he's so enthusiastic and shameless about it.
| Open corruption is corrosive in a democracy, they deserve
| to be hit on the head with it until they stop.
|
| And there's no point lamenting these poor (!) tories. If
| you were around when a bunch of ministers and high-
| ranking politicians were sacked, some of them thrown in
| jail, for using public funds for their benefits, you know
| they did not get away with it. Both media and public
| opinion were relentless, and that was under New Labour.
| And the sums were much, much smaller than these phony
| contracts to old mates.
| hogFeast wrote:
| Just to be totally clear too, a certain section of the
| British public is neuralgic about the Tories (inner city
| Remainers usually).
|
| They believe there is massive levels of corruption
| because, unfortunately, the media is largely composed of
| neuralgics too and they are quite happy to feed the
| beast. The past twelve months or so has gone from: Brexit
| is stupid to there are huge levels of corruption, all
| these people are evil, and should be in jail. It is
| alarming, although not surprising, that untruths have
| been swallowed so eagerly (to be clear, this is 100%
| about Brexit, not corruption).
|
| So: under Labour the same stuff happened, when anyone
| asked for polling or consulting (the latest issue de
| jure) it inevitably came from people connected to Labour
| (McKinsey's London office in the 2000s was largely
| composed of people with political connections, they
| worked closely with Blair), this is normal because
| (shock) if you are in politics, you have certain ideas
| and aren't going to hire people who will try to actively
| sabotage you.
|
| In terms of public contracts, what isn't made clear to
| the public is that the UK has several bodies who examined
| all of these contracts. The public believes that because
| they were fast-tracked, there was no scrutiny. No, the
| NAO looked at all the contracts, and found no evidence of
| corruption (there is a substantiali report on this
| topic). There is a certain publicity hungry lobbying
| group which has repeatedly claimed there was no
| corruption...the actual evidence of this has, still, not
| been found (and they have moved on from their earlier
| claims to yet more "shocking" new claims of corruption
| that they will still likely be unable to
| prove...unsurprisingly, they are raising significant
| funds to reverse Brexit...which is presumably their angle
| with all this).
|
| So I would say: this isn't "corruption" in any global
| sense of the word. Most of the things that people
| attribute to "corruption" are bad govt. For example, PFI
| means some companies do very well but the issue was that
| civil servants and govts signed these deals, and paid no
| attention to the terms. There is massive scrutiny of govt
| purchasing in the UK. If you are corrupt, the risks are
| infinite and the return is zero. What does happen is:
| people choose to buy things from people they know and who
| agree with them (the latter being very important in
| politics), it is someone knowing someone else, this
| happens in business. Talking about "corruption" in
| British politics is, however, ludicrous.
| lordnacho wrote:
| It's a good point, Labour did a bunch of PPI deals that
| didn't seem to benefit the public as much as the private
| collaborators. So it's not exclusive to one party, but
| the Conversatives have been in power for a fairly long
| time now.
|
| Long term we need transparency from whoever is in charge.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Sure, corruption and insiderism is an important topic in
| its own right.
|
| Up and down this thread though, it seems that British
| HNers are insisting that it's the _only_ topic. IE, they
| 're against this agency (and presumably everything else
| that spends money in any way) because corruption.
|
| Is this true for roads? No new schools, parks or research
| agencies until corruption is gone? It seems over the top
| to me. The " _Boris ' girlfriend gets a PS100k grant_"
| storyline is salacious, but I don't think it's unusual.
| Insiderism exists. It existed yesterday, last year. I'm
| sure Winston Churchill's girlfriend also did well out of
| the deal. c'est la vie
|
| I'm definitely interested in ideas about insiderism, any
| solutions to it... but are you really at a point where
| you're against everything that the government does on the
| assumption that it's all going to Boris' girlfriends?
| JeanQuille wrote:
| > Insiderism exists. It existed yesterday, last year.
|
| I'm guessing you're not living in Britain? The last few
| years have been on a different scale entirely. We've had
| to get used to a government that delivers contracts free
| of tender to shell companies owned by friends and donors
| that fail to deliver and don't even pretend to be legit
| (have you heard the one about the "ferry company" that
| thinks it's a takeaway restaurant?), while on the other
| hand openly jeering and mocking such causes as health
| worker pay.
|
| In such light, tell me how you would expect "New project,
| PSX hundred million initial fund, will use novel
| legislation to remove public oversight" to be received.
| It's not rocket science to work out that if you want
| people to be grateful instead of angry and you're a
| cabinet with a documented history of lying and
| corruption, just remove the last clause.
|
| I appreciate the faith in progress, but in honesty, our
| legs are being peed on from a high height while you're in
| here nobly suggesting it could be raining.
| literallylol wrote:
| > have you heard the one about the "ferry company" that
| thinks it's a takeaway restaurant?
|
| As an American, no, so I Googled it. [1]
|
| > It added: 'Seaborne Freight (UK) Limited reserves the
| right to seek compensation through legal action for any
| losses incurred as the result of hoax delivery requests
| and will prosecute to the full extent of the law.'
|
| > ...
|
| > And Bristol North West MP Darren Jones added:
| 'Hilarious. Government Hard Brexit start-up champion
| Seaborne Freight Limited reserves the right to sue you if
| you order a hoax pizza.'
|
| OMG, I'm dying here. This is gold. A level of corruption
| and incompetence rivaled only by our own Republican
| Party.
|
| [1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6554499/No-
| deal-Bre...
| lordnacho wrote:
| Ideas that I haven't tested:
|
| - Once you leave office, you get a big salary for life,
| but can't have another job. No working for a bank, or
| happening into consultancy. No speaking fees, though you
| are of course free to give speeches to whomever you like.
| Yeah it's draconian, but there's plenty of people who
| want the role.
|
| - Make all the government's accounts visible to everyone.
| All the money, wherever it goes, is tied to some
| contract. Website where you can find out who they paid to
| do the plumbing in number 10, with a full paper trail.
|
| - You have to certify that you're not mates with anyone
| who is offering the contract for the new bridge. Someone
| finds out you went to school with him. You go to jail
| together (more likely a fine), lose the contract, he
| loses his job. Yes, it's a bummer if you're competent and
| you happen to know the PM, who needs you for something.
| But again, there's a lot of competent people.
| g_p wrote:
| 1. There's something far less draconian than this in
| place for senior roles in civil service, where
| restrictions are put in place upon leaving for a period
| of (say) 2 years, to prevent you using information gained
| in the process within a relevant sector, and requiring
| approval of appointments for that period of time. [1]
|
| 2. That pretty much exists as it stands [2], at least for
| sums above a certain level (usually 25k). Similar rules
| exist for spend above PS500 on purchasing cards [3].
|
| 3. In some niche sectors, there aren't a lot of competent
| people. There are generally a lot of people who think
| they are competent. It could be problematic in these
| areas (some of which are pretty important), but clearly
| this doesn't apply for all. Competitive procurement is
| the ideal approach, but it has many, many flaws when you
| know the system and how to game it. The big outsourcing
| companies have that finessed down to the N'th degree.
| Over-promising and committing to things that can't
| reasonably be delivered make competitive procurement a
| problematic system, but short of the ability to
| "blacklist" suppliers who inexcusably fail to deliver in
| bad faith (which would be controversial too!) this one
| seems hard to fix.
|
| [1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/u
| ploads/...
|
| [2] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-
| for-publ...
|
| [3] https://data.gov.uk/dataset/42c4d19b-aef7-45d1-bd92-1
| 167d2f8... (as a random example for purchase card
| payments above 500)
| Jochim wrote:
| > It existed yesterday, last year. I'm sure Winston
| Churchill's girlfriend also did well out of the deal.
| c'est la vie.
|
| It's exactly this type of dismissal that allows this
| level of corruption to fester. It was unacceptable
| yesterday and it still is today. The point is to try and
| do something about it rather than sit back while they
| make it harder to punish because "it's already a
| problem".
|
| A research fund where the public will be forbidden from
| scrutinising the spending of people who are known to be
| corrupt is not comparable to a public park.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _> Long term we need transparency from whoever is in
| charge._ "
|
| Corruption is bad, but not necessarily _that bad_ , of
| course. But this case is about an agency almost literally
| immune to outside investigation.
| grey-area wrote:
| I think the problem people have is the FOI exception.
| There is no good reason for this, save corruption and
| wasting public funds. _Other_ agencies are subject to FOI
| requests and public oversight, why should this one be
| different?
|
| So the objection is to that specific clause and based on
| very real facts about recent and ongoing corruption.
| Priti Patel is another example and there is a very long
| list if you want one of abuse of public office from the
| current cabinet, this is not an abstract concern or one
| without foundation.
|
| Nobody on this thread has said that everything the
| Conservatives do is bad, just that they are proven to be
| corrupt and _therefore_ a FOI exception is a bad idea in
| this case.
| jariel wrote:
| "There is no good reason for this, "
|
| No, there are a ton of things the US et. al. do in
| secret, it's normal.
|
| There needs to be oversight, public is better, but an
| independent council can work.
|
| But yes, there's going to be a problem with graft.
| kergonath wrote:
| You can have both industrial secrets and FOI. Documents
| got through FOI requests are routinely redacted, and
| requests denied, when there is a real justification. A
| blanket policy is counter-productive and a strong
| indication that there's something very dodgy.
|
| I mean, if you FOI the MoD, they say no, but they don't
| have a blank cheque to avoid any scrutiny either.
| grey-area wrote:
| We have government agencies for secret stuff - spies and
| the military, they already have lots of R&D funds.
| hogFeast wrote:
| The reason why the FOI exception exists is because that
| is how the scheme ran in the US, and having political
| pressure on this program will kill it.
|
| Also, remember that FOI isn't some magic tool for
| stopping corruption. Blair brought it in, and has said
| several times that it needs to be changed. FOI isn't
| public oversight.
|
| The Conservatives are not proven to be corrupt. This
| self-evidently not true because no-one has proved it.
| mcguire wrote:
| The problem with this line of argument is that it ignores
| the specifics of the case and overgeneralizes to a
| version of the slippery-slope fallacy.
|
| If someone were proposing building a sewage plant immune
| to FOI requests, I'd be feckin' _terrified,_ much less
| worried about corruption. And I 'm pretty blase about
| corruption in various activities (such as the ever-
| popular road construction and maintenance) in the US.
| dalbasal wrote:
| DARPA gets used as an example a lot, so let's take it as a our
| type specimen.
|
| What makes an (D)ARPA? What (besides funding) made it work?
|
| Is secrecy and/or low accountability important? Defense/weapons
| focus? Was the cold war a necessary condition? Do they have an
| investment philosophy that could be copied? Managerial
| philosophy?
|
| Is high level stuff even relevant or is it details like 5 year
| PM appointments and selection criteria? I always thought
| tenure-like jobs would be useful if you have high
| creativity/risk goals.
|
| Thoughts? Any agencies (outside the US, also) that should also
| be considered shining example? Any failed attempts at creating
| a DARPA?
| SllX wrote:
| A focus.
|
| DARPA research is performed in response to real challenges
| that service members and officers are faced with, and also in
| response to new capabilities that our adversaries develop.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Likely more than you ever wanted to know on the topic:
| https://benjaminreinhardt.com/wddw
|
| A couple things I'd pull out:
|
| Program managers sit limited terms to prevent empire building
|
| Program managers have a great deal of autonomy once funding
| is initially allocated
|
| DARPA has a high appetite for risk. They're ok with 90% of
| projects failing to hit their goal.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| From your link:
|
| > I would rather this be read by a few people motivated to
| take action than by a broad audience who will find it
| merely interesting. In that vein, if you find yourself
| wanting to share this on Twitter or Hacker News, consider
| instead sharing it with one or two friends who will take
| action on it. Thank you for indulging me!
|
| You maybe shouldn't have shared that here, but thanks!
| [deleted]
| Traster wrote:
| It's absolutely hilarious to watch a Prime Minister, who has
| previously given PS100k in Tech funding to his mistress, now
| establishing an even bigger tech fund without the FOIA
| requirements so that he can... get away with giving PS100k in
| Tech funding to his mistresses in the future I guess?
| arethuza wrote:
| Maybe it will be used to fund new tunnelling and/or bridge
| technologies - the current government seems surprisingly keen
| on connecting NI to Scotland....
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| That's a _very_ different kind of bridge-or-tunnel tho.
| dominotw wrote:
| > fund new tunnelling
|
| is this supposed to be a double entendre ? I don't see how
| this follows from the parent comment.
| emptyfile wrote:
| The comment is making fun of a proposal Boris Johnson once
| made about building a bridge from Scotland to Northern
| Ireland, which is considered borderline physically
| impossible as far as I understand.
| DaiPlusPlus wrote:
| Bridge, yes.
|
| Tunnel, no. It's very feasible and practical from a
| civil-engineering perspective, but the economic value of
| a road connection between NI and Scotland has not been
| demonstrated to outweigh the economic cost of its
| construction.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Infact: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-
| news/2021/feb/14/rail-bosses-...
| arethuza wrote:
| Even more fun: the relevant area of sea has had one
| million tons of explosives dumped there as well as
| chemical weapons and even some radioactive waste:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaufort%27s_Dyke
| rusk wrote:
| What's feesible? The tunnel or the bridge? I'd heard the
| tunnel wasn't possible due to the particular geography of
| the channel. But a bridge? Now that I'd be interesting I
| seeing. There used to be a giants causeway across there
| in mythical times ...
| onei wrote:
| The bridge is unfeasible because the channel is around
| 200m deep in places which makes it crazy expensive. I
| also found a couple of references to nuclear waste in the
| trench, but that might have been for another site.
| DenisM wrote:
| Floating bridge is a thing tho
| https://www.wired.com/2016/04/takes-keep-7700-foot-
| floating-....
| rusk wrote:
| Both of which I was aware of but I heard that some kind
| of suspension design would work. The tunnel is infeasible
| because there's a very deep trench there, and that as you
| mentioned is filled with all sorts of nasty stuff.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| I believe the latest proposal would swerve to avoid the
| trench.
| rjsw wrote:
| There was a suggestion that he was trying to do a bit of
| SEO to distract attention from another bridge [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_Bridge
| mattlondon wrote:
| There is talk of floating tunnels.
|
| I believe they have done similar things in Norway when
| they need to go across fjords which are about 1km deep on
| places.
| hkt wrote:
| And people say he can't plan!
| dalbasal wrote:
| OK so the British HNers commenting seem to be unimpressed. :)
|
| Leaving this specific agency/project aside, what _would_ be the
| right way to do this? How do we do public investment in high risk
| projects well?
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| I'd be fine with this project, just without the FoI exception
| and under a government that didn't constantly break FoI laws
| and that didn't have endless examples of giving contracts
| corruptly to incompetent friends and donors.
| dalbasal wrote:
| I understand the FOI misgivings, playing devil's advocate:
|
| (1) DARPA (and NASA) appear to be models. Secrecy and
| unaccountability are a big part of what makes them them. (2)
| The state of university grant making is currently terrible. A
| lot of what makes it terrible is accountability.
|
| A agree with the premise that you need independence to pursue
| high risk stuff. The whole premise is investing in things
| that most people think it are stupid and will never work.
| That's just not compatible with standard accountability
| norms.
|
| Meanwhile, as you say, contracts go to insiders regardless.
| It's not like FOI is preventing this corruption. I also feel
| that (at least on this thread) the British take on corruption
| is overblown. Was there ever a time or place where sleeping
| with the mayor of London was not good business? PS100k seems
| cheap. Not saying this is good, just that I don't see the
| escalation that some here see.
| lbriner wrote:
| A great book I read called Bad Buying by Peter Smith covers
| most of the issue. If you want success, you need to ask the
| right questions, define success criteria, contract properly
| etc.
|
| On the one hand it is good that they recognise that big wins
| often involve big risks. On the other hand, it is important
| that they decide how to tell the difference between great
| potential and milking the cash cow.
|
| As long as they have an independent ethics group who can make
| sure nothing untowards happens, it might be OK!
| FuckButtons wrote:
| Allow public oversight - the reason people from the uk are
| unimpressed is because we have no trust in this governments
| ability to not give large contracts to friends and donors
| rather than actually talented engineers with good ideas. The
| tories have a long and storied history of mishandling public
| science and technology funding in this country.
| hhmc wrote:
| Another approach is VCT/EIS, where private investment is
| incentivized via aggressive tax breaks.
| dalbasal wrote:
| Make the case. I'm fairly dubious of tax incentives
| generally. The system is so complex, with such an advanced
| loophole finding culture/industry...
|
| OTOH... IDK anything about VCT/EIS specifically. Any good
| examples success stories?
| JeanQuille wrote:
| As others have commented, I think the animosity against this
| announcement isn't necessarily that it wouldn't be successful,
| just that it's a clear attempt to widen and hush up the current
| government's already large grift pipeline.
|
| FWIW, from my experience in UK public projects, I think the
| question of how to improve their varied success is complex and
| would take a long time to fairly cover. Though, off the top of
| my head:
|
| * Pay market rates; non-private research seems to be struggling
| to attract and retain talent due to the lower wages, and
| without meaning to be unkind to anyone in particular, there is
| an evaporative effect where those that leave tend to be higher
| achievers that can find better offers elsewhere, so the
| organisation becomes increasingly mired and less functional
| over time.
|
| * End the mentality of "promotion" meaning "to management",
| which eliminates at a stroke any meaningful technical
| contribution from the promotee. I think this one is improving
| lately, but it's taking a long time to undo the damage of the
| 1990s-2010s.
|
| * Have advisers for scientific programmes at the level of
| policymaking, and *listen to them*. It's vexing enough from the
| outside, but an acquaintance employed in this capacity for the
| previous government described the scene from inside as "a shit
| show".
| gadders wrote:
| The British HNers skew left. Boris Johnson could personally
| cure cancer and they would complain about the oncologists that
| would become unemployed.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| The UK has been taken over by Spectre from the Bind movies I
| think. Some bizarre decisions these past few years.
| Havoc wrote:
| I mean darpa worked out pretty well.
|
| However the tory gov is currently busy handing out questionable
| contracts to friends like a pez dispenser so not super excited
| about the no FOI part.
| hkt wrote:
| The exemption to FOIA is because the press and civic society in
| the UK have rooted out cronyism and corruption with gusto in the
| last year. The conservative party does not believe we have the
| right to know how we are being governed or who benefits from the
| process of government.
|
| It makes me furious, and it should make you furious too, reader.
| morpheuskafka wrote:
| It makes sense to have a limited amount of funding going towards
| carefully selected, high-potential projects be exempt from risk
| limits. However, I do not believe it is a good idea for them to
| exempt it from public records laws, this will surely reduce
| public trust in the agency and if anything, high-risk projects
| need an enhanced level of transparency.
| bigtones wrote:
| Its also prime for fraud and pork barreling without
| accountability. The press plays an important role in democratic
| accountability and without FOI they are unable to do that.
| jokethrowaway wrote:
| First the European fund and now this.
|
| The last thing I want is for my taxes is to go into venture
| capital. Especially if it's run by the government.
|
| I wonder what's the best place where to run to, to escape this
| trend. Maybe South America or South East Asia?
| emteycz wrote:
| South East Asia is big on government-led venture capital and
| state-run business incubators/accelerators and other kinds of
| business development activities. Even the communist countries.
| toyg wrote:
| There is no escape.
|
| The only way out of this is to build better ways to keep the
| powerful accountable.
| kergonath wrote:
| > exempt from FOI
|
| That's a terrible precedent.
| gandalfian wrote:
| We did this already and then privatised it as Qinetiq. Round and
| round we go again.
| londons_explore wrote:
| QinetiQ wouldn't be profit making if it hadn't been given tens
| of thousands of acres of land for free. Some of its sites are
| prime city center real estate too, and it's making a lot of
| money by selling them off for development...
| turbinerneiter wrote:
| * let universities and public research starve for money
|
| * drown them in documentation paperwork for the little money they
| get
|
| * give money to private companies for free and without
| transparency
|
| Corruption.
| throwawinsider wrote:
| Congratulations on fathering the dumbest comment of the
| internet today
| iamacyborg wrote:
| Okay Dominic Cummings.
| nicoburns wrote:
| Yep. It's just blatant with this government. And it's not just
| the universities. They're doing it with schools. They're doing
| with the NHS. Councils even.
| hkt wrote:
| They've been doing it to councils since the 80s. There isn't
| much of local government left
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Tories*
|
| When the tories give out money to their friends, it's for the
| greater good, remember?
| BTinfinity wrote:
| Politicians as a whole are known for lies, deciet and
| corruption. It's not limited to one specific party nor
| country. The visibility of corruption may change, but its
| presence never will.
| hkt wrote:
| There is a giant pile of contracts that have been
| scrutinised that very clearly show the absolutely
| incestuous nature of procurement since covid and long
| before too. It isn't "all politicians", it is conservative
| politicians in the last eleven years.
|
| The Good Law Project is a great example of the kind of
| organisation that investigates this. The Guardian does good
| work here too. I'm surprised to say it, but even Labour are
| making noise about it in Parliament. This is historically
| unusual and a sign of the return of the Old Boys' network.
| It is a bad sign for democracy.
|
| https://goodlawproject.org/case/end-to-cronyism/ is a good
| start to read from.
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| "even Labour..." - of course Labour make a noise about
| it, that's their job. The opposition obviously criticise
| at any opportunity. Your faith in organisations (the Good
| Law Project, The Guardian, undoubtedly big left
| government too) is misplaced given that they're composed
| of individuals, and small groups within will sieze
| opportunity. The Guardian journalists show plenty of
| bias. Clearly the tories are dodgy, but no effort is
| required to spot the large fly in the anti-tory ointment:
| Tony Blair - weapons of mass destruction, net worth up to
| PS100m. The narrative of the left being morally superior
| is absurd. Politicians are low, and I look forward to
| tech based governance without them. /optimism
| hkt wrote:
| "Politicians are low, and I look forward to tech based
| governance without them"
|
| Jeeee-zus.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| If its our answer to DARPA then good. I only hope the money will
| be disbursed in ways similar to the DARPA challenges and not in
| the usual chronyist way of the UK
|
| There's a shocking number of people high up in UK tech influence
| circles who got there solely by networking, holding events and
| being on the peripheries of successful startups
| nivenkos wrote:
| > There's a shocking number of people high up in UK tech
| influence circles who got there solely by networking, holding
| events and being on the peripheries of successful startups
|
| Like Boris Johnson's lover.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Oh yes I also forgot to add sexual favours to the key
| criteria!
| hkt wrote:
| Jennifer Arcuri isn't in tech is she?
|
| (Apologies if I just ruined the joke and you didn't really
| mean Carrie Symonds)
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Ah yes, she set up a co-working space, held some events and
| launched (although presumably not heavily involved) in
| launching a White Hat consultancy
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Arcuri
|
| Similar to Rohan Silva who advised Cameron; set up a co-
| working space, is on many boards, speaks at a lot of events
| lbriner wrote:
| Everyone is impressive to those who are less impressive!
| [deleted]
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Yes, it's a good thing the US in general, it's government more
| specifically, and it's defense establishment particularly are
| completely free of cronyism, and there aren't huge numbers of
| people influential in every field even loosely associated with
| the US's vast military-industrial complex that have gotten
| their by networking rather than any other form of merit.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Do you have any concrete points or just snark?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Kind of an odd response, given that the preceding post was
| at the same level of generality.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| No I mentioned something very specific i.e. DARPAs
| challenges
| Loughla wrote:
| This is the only report I know about, but I'm 100% certain
| there are many more just a google search away:
|
| https://fas.org/man/eprint/contract-fraud.pdf
|
| Highlights: from 2013-2017, there were 1,059 criminal
| convictions of defense contracting fraud (1087 defendants
| total), including 678 individuals and 409 separate
| businesses. Further, there were 443 fraud-related civil
| cases.
|
| These are just the ones who got caught. It's not that much
| of a stretch to think that _this much money_ is going to be
| super tempting to well-connected cronies of our
| representatives.
| [deleted]
| jack_riminton wrote:
| What does this have to do with DAPRA? I tried searching
| the document but couldn't find any references
| Loughla wrote:
| The grandparent made a snarky comment about defense
| spending in general. Which is what that document is
| about.
|
| >it's a good thing the US in general, it's government
| more specifically, and it's defense establishment
| particularly
|
| That's what they said.
| jarmitage wrote:
| The FOI part means this is dead on arrival and will be abused all
| ends up.
|
| For this to work you need the public to understand why DARPA
| worked. Hiding details of failures makes that impossible (and
| again, completely open to corruption).
| LinuxBender wrote:
| In the U.S. everything is technically exempt from FOIA to a
| degree. Having gone through that process while I was in the
| military, I found many of the loopholes. The obvious ones are
| that the answer can be "Classified" or "Decline to answer" or
| in my case, the answer can be boxes and boxes of paperwork that
| is worded so vague that it may as well not have existed. No
| idea if this is the same in the U.K. Is there anyone from the
| U.K. here that has gone through the process?
| g_p wrote:
| There are many ways to prevent material being subject to FOI.
| Commercial confidence is one, classification/generic national
| security grounds is another. There are also some good reasons
| for this - in many cases, there are genuine commercial
| concerns.
|
| This might be controversial, but it's very hard to have
| negotiations in good-faith with a company for services, and
| drive a hard bargain, if the company knows that the pricing
| offered to government can be FOI'd by a rival or other
| customer, to get granular price offered.
|
| If you want to get the best value for money, and get below
| list price, you need the ability to have a commercial
| negotiation, with the confidence that granular pricing
| information (i.e. emails with discounted price lists for
| government customers) aren't becoming public.
|
| That's not to say the total amount spent should be kept
| secret, but if exact breakdowns of unit pricing were going to
| be made public, it would likely cost the public more in the
| inability of government to negotiate around price with
| suppliers (or rather their unwillingness to enter into such
| negotiations)
|
| Similarly, any kind of serious negotiation needs to have
| secrecy - it's very hard in a practical sense to have a
| negotiation with a party that has to (or might be forced to)
| publish everything. The number of startups (and even larger
| companies) that do everything as price-on-request should show
| industry's willingness to see the kind of price tarnsparency
| that FOI would expose. And that would give the taxpayer
| poorer value for money in the long term.
| OJFord wrote:
| I haven't submitted one personally, but from knowing someone
| who has (and has received them) and reading Private Eye
| (satirical & investigative magazine here) I gather a more
| common/easily usable excuse this side of the pond is
| 'commercial sensitivity'.
| rusk wrote:
| and heavy redaction
|
| I've also seen fees being used which is technically legal
| and is supposed to be a reasonable administrative charge
| but can be multiplied by the number of subjects involved
| for instance.
| uncledave wrote:
| I dunno. Sounds like a fun environment to work in and
| accidentally leave an S3 bucket open :)
| kurthr wrote:
| Yep, seems more like a way to keep scandals like Cummings no-
| bid contract to his friends from coming to light. If it can be
| used as a slush fund, it probably will be, and eventually
| probably exclusively.
|
| https://www.theweek.co.uk/951989/what-next-for-dominic-cummi...
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It seems unreasonably charitable to assume that it'll be used
| exclusively as a personal slush fund "eventually" and not
| "immediately".
| samizdis wrote:
| The data visualisation exercise My Little Crony [1] was
| featured in some UK media in November. It is described on the
| site as: _A visualization of the connections between Tory
| politicians and companies being awarded government contracts
| during the pandemic based on a wide range of investigative
| reporting._
|
| Perhaps it hit a raw nerve or two.
|
| [1] https://www.sophie-e-hill.com/post/my-little-crony/
| 45ure wrote:
| >My Little Crony [1] was featured in some UK media in
| November.
|
| It wasn't widely reported in the mainstream media, but it
| drew attention via Byline Times. Similarly, the Tufton
| Street gang, with the same cast of characters, whose
| tentacles also reach across the Atlantic, will never be
| featured as comprehensively by the MSM; far too many
| incestuous relationships.
|
| https://www.desmog.co.uk/2020/02/13/mapped-boris-johnson-
| s-g...
| omginternets wrote:
| Genuine question: why did DARPA work?
| rusk wrote:
| Blank cheques
| suyash wrote:
| good move, more countries should have such entrepreneurial
| agencies!
| raverbashing wrote:
| Sounds like those "good on paper" things. But in practice, we
| know how it usually goes...
|
| Though of course all government will have secret projects in one
| way or another
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| That's great.
|
| Removing a platform for people that say, in hindsight, 'it was
| obvious that was going to fail' is a step in the right direction.
|
| If western societies insist on outsourcing R&D through misguided
| tax laws, they have no idea the amount of harm they are doing to
| the next generation of young people (who will be subservient to
| the innovating countries that were smarter in their policies).
| Jochim wrote:
| I have massive support for government funded research but I
| think this is a terrible idea.
|
| Government should absolutely have to justify how it allocates
| funds and which projects are taken on. This is a transparent
| attempt at avoiding the need to justify what is done with
| public money.
|
| > Removing a platform for people that say, in hindsight, 'it
| was obvious that was going to fail' is a step in the right
| direction.
|
| It really isn't. Covering failures up only makes the problem
| worse. Anything that does eventually leak will be blown much
| further out of proportion than if it has been clearly stated
| that it will probably fail from the start, but the benefits
| should it succeed outweigh the risks.
|
| You would do even better to build a culture tolerant of
| failure. But the emergence of that culture depends on improving
| people's standard of living.
|
| That this secret spending is coming from the same party that
| just months ago insisted there was no money to continue feeding
| children during a pandemic and who are also mired in corruption
| scandals regarding nepotism in government contracts just makes
| the idea look even more grotesque. Trying to do it during a
| pandemic you've just majorly fucked up the handling of makes it
| even less endearing.
|
| Incidentally I happen to be in the middle of reading "The Dark
| Forest" by Liu Cixin. A core element of the book is how
| humanity is affected when standard of living is reduced and
| basic needs are unmet in order to meet technological research
| goals that will curtail an "undefeatable" foe. It generally
| leads to discontent towards the projects that are supposed to
| "save" them.
|
| If the goal was to prevent the outsourcing of R&D then the
| government would be much better off taking a greater stake in
| universities and making sure both parties are compensated more
| from companies who go on to exploit that research.
| toyg wrote:
| I'm not so positive. There is potential for this to become just
| another way to channel pork to friends and cronies. Which,
| considering the track record of the current executive, is
| probably the most likely scenario.
|
| I'm all for DARPA-like initiatives, but when it comes to
| taxpayers' money we should have decent accountability
| mechanisms.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Accountability and obligation to disclose information on
| demand to the public are two different things.
|
| Not all of DARPA's work is public, yet I'm sure that DARPA is
| fully accountable.
|
| By excluding this new agency from FOI the UK government
| simply wants to be able to decide which projects to publicise
| and when, and which projects to keep secret, in the same way
| as DARPA operates.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| The current UK government has a blacklist of left wing
| journalists who they won't respond to freedom of information
| act requests and they are fighting a culture war about
| bullshit while Dominic Cummings has the gall to claim his
| friends happen to be the only marketing company in the UK who
| are trustworthy!
| andy_ppp wrote:
| References:
|
| Jornalists FOI clearing house:
| https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/01/an-important-victory-
| in-t...
|
| Culture war: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics
| /universities-...
|
| Dominic Cummings claims:
|
| Cummings described Frayne and Wolf as his "friends", but
| added: "Obviously I did not request Public First be brought
| in because they were my friends. I would never do such a
| thing." He said he "requested" civil servants hire the firm
| because, in his experience, it was the only company with
| the expertise to carry out the required focus groups
| urgently.
|
| From:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/15/revealed-
| cummi...
|
| Not sure why I've been down voted?
| [deleted]
| dohnuts1919 wrote:
| > The current UK government has a blacklist of left wing
| journalists who they won't respond to freedom of
| information act requests
|
| Source?
|
| Also, isn't it illegal to not respond to valid FOI
| requests? Otherwise wouldn't that defy the whole point of
| FOI?
| andy_ppp wrote:
| https://bylinetimes.com/2021/02/01/an-important-victory-
| in-t...
| libertine wrote:
| Usually these initiatives should be extremely transparent,
| and they're the exact opposite. That's not good.
|
| A current example is the covid 19 vaccine contracts, which
| were multi billion dollar/euro/pound deals, with accelerated
| research and approvals, and so far only one contract was made
| public.
|
| It is specially concerning when some vaccines were developed
| with public funding.
| dageshi wrote:
| It doesn't matter.
|
| Genuinely, the only thing that mattered was working, safe
| vaccines as quickly as possible. Whatever government paid
| is absolute peanuts compared to the costs associated with
| locking down economies let alone the lives potentially
| saved.
|
| Covid19 was and is a crisis, you may well have a point in
| terms of other initiatives in this space, but with covid
| all that mattered was finding a solution as quickly as
| possible.
| lordnacho wrote:
| > all that mattered was finding a solution as quickly as
| possible
|
| What's to stop someone spending a bunch of money on a
| dead-end project that benefits them and no-one else, and
| then saying "hey, it's risky, bummer we couldn't make a
| vaccine"?
|
| We can be generous to make sure it gets done by someone,
| but we should also make sure that people actually try.
|
| The current UK government has a lot of stories about
| procurement, and it gives the impression that they mainly
| benefitted their friends, with the procurement of PPE and
| vaccines being a nice side-effect.
| dageshi wrote:
| In the context of shutting down significant percentages
| of economies for months, in the context of the government
| (in the UK) providing furlough schemes where they pay
| peoples salaries, in the context of essentially banning
| most social interaction and the population slowly going a
| bit mad, what the hell does it matter if we fund some dud
| vaccines? What does it even matter if some are outright
| corrupt and do nothing?
|
| It's the worst kind of bike shedding, it's "well we can't
| do much about the most life changing event since WW2 but
| we sure can argue about the transparency of contracts!"
| lbriner wrote:
| What stops it is 1) Not awarding money to people who
| might be able to do it, only to those who can demonstrate
| that they can do it 2) Caveating the bulk of the payment
| to the successful production.
|
| In most cases, the money was for a pre-order of vaccines
| afaik and if they don't produce, they don't get paid.
|
| PPE contracts was another cock-up all together!
| libertine wrote:
| Well, I disagree.
|
| It matters a lot, because who the hell knows what else is
| going on those contracts. It's not like any
| pharmaceutical company was gonna sit this one out.
|
| Some of these companies were into shady shit in the past,
| and while they are playing a role in this pandemic, I'd
| be way more comfortable know exactly what they are
| getting out of this and at what cost to the tax payers.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >Usually these initiatives should be extremely transparent,
| and they're the exact opposite
|
| The downside is that when they're too transparent politics
| gets involved and you can't study touchy things because
| people don't want the risk of conclusions they don't like.
|
| Imagine the uproar if the navy said they think asbestos PPE
| might be less lethal than what it's protecting you from in
| some circumstances so they were planning on researching it.
| Congressmen would get involved. They'd grandstand and make
| all sorts of sound bites for the cameras. And the research
| wouldn't get done or it would have to be neutered in order
| to get done. Look at the political football that is women's
| PT requirements for the armed forces for a more mild real
| world example.
|
| Of course, if there's no transparency involved the risk is
| MK-Ultra type crap which is bad too.
| libertine wrote:
| Well then maybe that's the cost of it, the public
| scrutiny of touchy things and political responsibility to
| justify such endeavors. It's like accountability is a bad
| thing.
|
| If politicians would refused that, then that's a problem
| of politics, not of transparency.
|
| I do understand that some subject might be too difficult
| to explain to the public, but that's more of an annoyance
| and extra work then anything else. Also could be a
| symptom of a education system with a lot of problems.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > the innovating countries that were smarter in their policies
|
| Such as? Are "we" now going to say the state is better at
| innovating than the private sector? Under what conditions?
|
| (I'm inclined to believe that it _could_ work - it was after
| all the model that gave us Concorde - but there are also a
| _lot_ of ways in which it could go wrong and I absolutely do
| not trust the government with a track record of bunging corrupt
| money at shell companies.)
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I mean incentivizing private companies to do R&D...
| rkangel wrote:
| I think you are going to want a mix of both.
|
| The miniaturisation and cost reduction of electronics
| achieved as a result of continual investment by the phone
| industry is almost miraculous. A lot of innovation has
| happened to fit a supercomputer into your pocket.
|
| The WWW example in a sibling comment is a great example of
| the contrasting sort. It benefits humanity as a whole, and
| would be very unlikely to be invented privately. We want more
| decentralised technology solutions - really standards rather
| than products - and government research have a different set
| of incentives that might make them better placed to deliver
| that sort of innovation.
|
| That said, I work in telecomms. A large number of self
| interested telecomms companies have got together and agreed
| standard over the years (this is obviously not unique to
| telecomms), including making patents available
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-
| discriminat...). The technology is not decentralised, but it
| is interoperable.
| paganel wrote:
| > Are "we" now going to say the state is better at innovating
| than the private sector? Under what conditions?
|
| At greater scale the State is definitely better at innovating
| compared to the private sector. Look at the internet itself
| and at www (CERN is basically a state project), and if we
| want to go even larger look at the war industry.
|
| There's no way a "private entity" would have had the gall to
| build some rockets in order to bomb out London and its
| environs, and without the V2 rockets we probably wouldn't
| have had NASA and we wouldn't have had two private persons
| ~70 years later (Musk and Bezos) trying to build and innovate
| in private and with lots and lots of money what the Nazi
| regime did in 1943-1945 while being bombed out to hell and
| back by the Allies.
|
| And then there's the entire nuclear industry which wouldn't
| have happened without Nagasaki and Hiroshima, both state-run
| (killing) projects.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| IMHO, the exemption from the freedom of information act is more
| in fact aimed at protecting investment in sensitive new tech by
| in effect making it secret until the government decides
| otherwise.
|
| That's why the title of the article is actually " _Secrecy for
| high-risk tech research_ ". It's 'high risk' but also aimed at
| being high rewards and potentially targeting sensitive domains
| so they don't want others to know what they are doing until
| after they have reaped the benefits.
|
| I cannot read the whole article because of the paywall but the
| freedom of information laws do not prevent anything in terms of
| what to invest into. They only create a legal duty to provide
| information on demand.
|
| The aim of this new agency has never been altruistic. It has
| always been discussed as a tool to further the UK's interests
| in the global competition. Clearly the government thinks that a
| level of secrecy, or at leat government control, is required.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| I see my comment above is going down well...
|
| Just for reference, the FOI already provides for the
| following exemptions:
|
| 22A Information obtained in the course of, or derived from, a
| programme of research.
|
| 24 Information for the purpose of safeguarding national
| security.
|
| 26 Information that would, or would be likely to, prejudice
| defence of the realm.
|
| 29 Information that would, or would be likely to, prejudice
| the economic or financial interests of the United Kingdom or
| of any part of it.
|
| 43 Information that constitutes a trade secret or would, or
| would be likely to, prejudice commercial interests.
|
| I think that pretty much 100% of that new agency's work will
| fall within one of these exemptions so IMHO it makes sense to
| exempt it altogether and avoid having to deal with FOI
| requests in the first place. The agency along with the
| government will then have full discretion to make research
| and results public as they deemed useful and that will also
| allow them to work with private companies to
| license/commercialise stuff.
|
| (Note that a lot of DARPA's work is also secret.)
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