OPINION:
President Trump has unveiled his vision for the Golden Age for America, building a government that works more efficiently for the American people, unleashes the private sector to grow and innovate, and enables our nation to protect and defend its interests worldwide with a Peace through strength approach. This is the vision that a majority of Americans voted for in November.
As the new Trump team continues to be announced, confirmed, and settled into place, there has been much discussion about the challenging work of how to accomplish the goal of making government more efficient while at the same time focusing on key national strategic priorities such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), quantum computing and energy leadership. At MITRE Corporation, the organization I lead, we are excited about the focus and attention given to these topics and to be partners in progress, as we have for nearly a century of service to the American people.
Fast Company once described MITRE as “most important company you’ve never heard of.” I actually think that applies to the community of federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs) writ large. These include our national laboratory and research institutions that have put America first, dating to their inception during World War II. FFRDCs supported the war effort by mobilizing scientists, engineers, mathematicians and other experts who contributed to groundbreaking developments in radar, aircraft, computing and the development of nuclear weapons through the Manhattan Project.
Over time, the missions of the FFRDC community expanded beyond the defense sector. Today, they work across many agencies, helping to solve complex problems ranging from airline safety to tackling the complex challenges of our health care system.
By law, FFRDCs cannot manufacture products or compete directly with industry, but they can attract and retain talent that brings expertise to serve the public interest and combines world-class research and entrepreneurial solutions and know-how to support the mission of the agencies they serve. By assembling teams of experts from various fields, FFRDCs offer important capabilities that neither the public nor private sectors could do alone. Some FFRDCs have narrow missions geared to specific fields of research and agencies. Others, such as MITRE, take a systems engineering approach to solving complex system-to-systems issues.
Americans feel the benefits of MITRE initiatives every day. An example is our collaboration with sponsors to implement important Congressional legislation such as the “No Surprises Act,” a law passed by Congress that ensures that patients seeking medical care are not surprised after treatment by coverage gaps that could result in life-altering medical claims.
MITRE’s work in cyber security includes creating the ATT&CK framework, which is currently used by over 80% of companies and the government to share research and information about cyber-attacks on our private and public IT systems.
And, during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan MITRE worked with the Department of Defense to identify, test and expedite the distribution of workable off-the-shelf solutions to defeat Improvised Explosive Devices that could be rapidly deployed to American warfighters in the field.
While there is healthy and needed debate about the role of government, the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors in our country, often many of the significant advances in our society has come about through some mix of achievements that have come from these different communities. Over the past 75 years the nation’s FFRDCs have served as the glue for many of these achievements, a role that we are eager to continue to perform.
• Mark Peters, Ph.D, is the president and chief executive officer of MITRE Corporation, the global not-for-profit technology company that operates R&D centers around the world.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.