Excerpt from Testimony given by former Speaker Gingrich before a House Armed Services Committee Hearing on U.S. National Security Strategy

GINGRICH:

…Second, the commission unanimously agreed that the
challenge to us in scientific research and in math and
science education is a greater national security
problem than any likely conventional war in the
foreseeable future.

And I really want to emphasize this. It’s something
Eisenhower said in the ’50s under the impetus of
Sputnik. I think we’re right back at the samestand.
The revolution in science requires larger investments
in basic research. We are not getting the money today.

Second, the inability of the United States today to
produce enough high-school graduates who can do math
and science is a long- term national security issue.
We cannot assume that we will be able to import enough
people to meet our science and technology demands in
the next generation.

The report’s pretty clear that it’s a very major
challenge for us. And I would hope that this committee
would look at the National Science Foundation budget,
the NASA budget, the Department of Energy labs, as
integral national security investments, over and above
the Department of Defense, but as literally integral
to our ability a decade from now to produce
high-technology capabilities…

… there is a true revolution in scientific affairs,
starting with nano-scale science and technology,
quantum mechanics and physics and biology, which will
swamp the current revolution in military affairs. And
I
think it’s very important for this committee to work
with DARPA to understand the basic research level and
to get briefed by the National Science Foundation on
the scale of the change which is coming, which, in my
judgment, after 2.5 years of being out of this body
and going out and listening to people, is probably as
much change in the next 25 years as in
the entire 20th century.

And I particularly commend to the committee to go the Ames NASA laboratory and just spend a half day getting briefed on what they’re doing, combining supercomputing nano-scale science and technology and biology, which is, I think, the most interesting single facility in the United States. It’s at Moffett Field near Stanford.