UK to launch taxpayer-funded high-risk tech research agency exempt from FOI

The FOI part means this is dead on arrival and will be abused all ends up.<p>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).

The USA&#x27;s DARPA program funded important research into<p>- The internet<p>- GPS<p>- Graphical user interface and mouse<p>- Onion routing<p>- Voice assistant<p>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.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itpro.co.uk&#x2F;technology&#x2F;34730&#x2F;10-amazing-darpa-inventions" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.itpro.co.uk&#x2F;technology&#x2F;34730&#x2F;10-amazing-darpa-in...</a>

I still don&#x27;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&#x27;t scale to compete with a healthy investment community.<p>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 &quot;making something people want,&quot; in the venture model, it means, &quot;find things nobody else understands well enough to care about.&quot; To people outside of it, it will look a lot like corruption.

Ah yes, another way for the tories and their rich friends to siphon public funds to private pockets with zero transparency.

It&#x27;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<p>For me the issue is they intend to invest into &#x27;projects&#x27;, why phrase it like that? If it&#x27;s research, then you&#x27;re finding out new information, proving theories etc, so to deem it as high risk project is strange, just treat it as research, it&#x27;s allowed to fail!<p>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&#x27;t have to be the costings down to how much a tea bag costs. Just the top level stuff. I&#x27;m happy for top secret projects to be exempt if there is serious national security concerns. But if the public aren&#x27;t allowed to see it, then who is getting the benefit? Could very well be private companies (which isn&#x27;t a bad thing, but we&#x27;ve paid for them to gain advantage...)<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Defence_Evaluation_and_Research_Agency" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Defence_Evaluation_and_Researc...</a> <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Qinetiq" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Qinetiq</a>

I mean darpa worked out pretty well.<p>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.

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?<p>Who is going to benefit from any discovered new tech? Are the benefits going to be socialised, or is it just the risk?<p>If it was supporting pure research - finding great researchers and freeing them from the grant treadmill - I&#x27;d be supportive, but this doesn&#x27;t sound like that.

OK so the British HNers commenting seem to be unimpressed. :)<p>Leaving this specific agency&#x2F;project aside, what <i>would</i> be the right way to do this? How do we do public investment in high risk projects well?

That’s great.<p>Removing a platform for people that say, in hindsight, ‘it was obvious that was going to fail’ is a step in the right direction.<p>If western societies insist on outsourcing R&amp;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).

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.

We did this already and then privatised it as Qinetiq. Round and round we go again.

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<p>There&#x27;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

Related recent official report on advanced research:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;committees.parliament.uk&#x2F;publications&#x2F;4665&#x2F;documents&#x2F;47032&#x2F;default&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;committees.parliament.uk&#x2F;publications&#x2F;4665&#x2F;documents...</a>

What on earth could possibly go wrong with this.

So immediately this is where people will go to hide their pork?

I&#x27;m going to make a prediction, the leadership of this agency will be in hot water within 5 years. And the whole thing will be abandoned after frittering away billions of tax-payer Pounds within 6 to 7 years. Matt Ridley, author of How Innovation Works, is right, governments are poor drivers of innovation - and this little &#x27;distraction&#x27; is going to be another case to prove his point.

* let universities and public research starve for money<p>* drown them in documentation paperwork for the little money they get<p>* give money to private companies for free and without transparency<p>Corruption.

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.<p>It makes me furious, and it should make you furious too, reader.

Basic research (IE things that are not monetizable in the near(ish) term) don&#x27;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.<p>A solution is definitely needed for that, I don&#x27;t think a government funded agency will do it though.

First the European fund and now this.<p>The last thing I want is for my taxes is to go into venture capital. Especially if it&#x27;s run by the government.<p>I wonder what&#x27;s the best place where to run to, to escape this trend. Maybe South America or South East Asia?

What’s stopping this money going to friends of Tory MPs or, worse, to Deloitte?

In my opinion, there should still be an oversight board of non-govt people to stop abuse, and maybe still abide by ethical standards.

&gt; exempt from FOI<p>That&#x27;s a terrible precedent.

It&#x27;s absolutely hilarious to watch a Prime Minister, who has previously given £100k 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 £100k in Tech funding to his mistresses in the future I guess?

What could possibly go wrong?

good move, more countries should have such entrepreneurial agencies!

Exempt from foi = is a vehicle for putting taxpayer cash in our mates pockets.

Non-paywall article: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;2021&#x2F;feb&#x2F;17&#x2F;defence-research-agency-for-high-risk-projects-on-cards-for-uk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theguardian.com&#x2F;politics&#x2F;2021&#x2F;feb&#x2F;17&#x2F;defence-res...</a>

We have truly entered the state capitalist era. (Collectively funded research is great, secrecy about it isn&#x27;t.)

Sounds like those &quot;good on paper&quot; things. But in practice, we know how it usually goes...<p>Though of course all government will have secret projects in one way or another