Transcripts For CSPAN2 Key Capitol Hill Hearings 20140321

Economics. My question really has to do with the relationship between the Gates Foundation and the world they. When i started to think about questions for you, i looked at the world banks budget and i saw a bed with a layout in between 40 billion exceed billion dollars a year on a wide range of topics. So when you entered this field, did you believe, you probably did, but how did you think about approaching a . Would you be catalytic with respect to the world bank . In other words, to do things yourself that they are not doing . For example, the reduction in infant mortality, which is certainly a big success dori really was not underway for a lot of the time the world bank had substantial resources. Was that something that attracted you . Do you think that you can be more flexible than the world bank in terms of moving from one priority to another . How do you match the world they . Thanks. We do a lot with the world bank. I had dinner with john cannon come a long dinner last night because we overlapped a lot in health and agriculture. In areas we dont overlap, or Agricultural Program works a lot better when there is a road. You want to get the inputs in any output file. The road is a very clever way to do that. Its tragic. Africa, both in terms of Power Infrastructure we need in roses way way behind. That really is bumping up on levels that wont go up unless they solve those infrastructure problems. Theyve got to solve this health problems. I got to solve agricultural product dvd. Unfortunately, economic advance requires a lot of things that come together including education and government as well. The World Bank Numbers though, you cant really compare them directly to her numbers because those are low numbers. So you have a ibrd bonesetter market rates loans. Do they tend to be pretty competitive, but its the idp some sort of the forgiveness part of that Loan Portfolio that is the really significant overlap with what our foundation does. And there are a number of factors that are coming unicefs in the states. The agency that did the most for Child Mortality was a guy named jim grant during the 1980s where he convinced countries they need to raise vaccination rates. They were below 30 when he started and they went to up to 80 in a decade or so he probably saved more childrens lives than anyone. Theres deng xiaoping, various people that saved a lot of childrens lives. But he would be certainly high on the list. There is an area we operate that the world that doesnt operate and promote. The invention of malaria vaccine, world bank does not put any money into that. They dont have people who know about that. The other big funder of god is the National Institute of health, particularly the Infectious Diseases, the part of nih. Over 80 of the Infectious Disease Research Funding comes either from us or from them. So they are d. Collaborated there. With world bank, the thing we are super excited about, two things are super excited about doing together. One is fixing primary health care because some have done that well, a lot of thought and its basically personnel system. Redoing a report card that the world bank doing business and were going to do that in the agricultural space, which is really about how do you turn your Agricultural Sector to make it as marketdriven as possible . Are you taking the latest these . Are you educating farmers . Are your pricing policies, storage policies such that your farmers are being uplifted that the product davidian incomes are going up. So we have Ambitious Goals for things we want to do. A lot of funding reduced through the bank. It shows is the creator polio account gets created through the bank. So they end up facilitating things. They have a lot of i. Q. Engine can have stated a goal that they unlock that i. Q. Not just connected to the loans. Thats an ambitious goal. Now hes trying to drive that even further. So theres a very good partner, unicef, theres a lot of partnering involved in the developing world. We are out of time. Before we finish, i just want to say it is an honor on behalf of all my colleagues to share the objective of a better world, particularly on behalf of those who cant write for themselves or menarche representing today, but we are their intellectual and action representatives. What you are doing is truly important. We embrace endorse it. Before mr. Gates is come i ask safeco mysql stacy is that he can get out. But of course join me in thanking him for joining us. [applause] a recent hearing studying brain injuries in sports like football and hockey, nfl and nhl officials and athletes about the excitement had related industries on what is being done to prevent them. Here is a preview. American football is an inherently violent sport. Thats one of the reasons we love it. The forces encountered in football can be huge. Consider a big hit between a running back and a linebacker at full speed. We can show using newtons second law that the force each player exerts on the other exceeds three quarters of the time. This is why football is called a contact sport. Two players who collated full speed, to comment are experiencing the same force to their heads that one of them would feel if he had a 16pound bowling ball dropped on his helmet from a height of eight feet. Medical knowledge of concussions is in its infancy. But we know one thing for sure, forces to the head and neck results and how big the sources can be. Heres another problem. Theyre getting bigger. Since 1920, the average pay has increased almost 60 to just over 300 pounds. At the same time players have gotten about 10 faster. Combining factors as we do not calculate Kinetic Energy, Energy Available to cause energy, we found the amount of Energy Jumped into the pit the line of scrimmage on any given play has almost doubled since 1920. An exact opposition to this trend is the fact that players are shedding their protective gear. I need kneepads resemble teacup doilies. For scholars, public climate of my generation have gone with the flying wedge. Modern football helmets or technological marvels that players choose and not for their coalition pushing ability, but for how cool they look. Another problem is the poor state of our medical knowledge. I am not calm me to explain these issues, i think it is safe to say a roomful of head trauma physicians will not agree on the details of a concussion are or what causes them. This means the diagnosis and treatment of concussions have a long way to go. As our understanding of these issues improve, we may find energy race to the increasing of the game and the whole associate in of equipment have increased faster than we thought. A portion of the hearing that will be showing you in its entirety to make sure 8 00 eastern on our companion up work on a cspan. Here on cspan2, booktv in prime time with a series of programs. At the end of the day, the economy is going to continue to need an enormous monetary stimulus. The fed will not be raising rates for quite some time. But i am optimistic that the u. S. Economy is going to accelerate. One of the chorus sings here, one of the core dimensions is the fact that last year the u. S. Economy grew 1. 9 with fiscal drag from higher taxes and spending cuts reducing growth by 1. 3 percentage points. So without that fiscal tightening, the u. S. Economy wouldve been growing over 3 . As you know, cbo does not make policy recommendations and that is very important because policy choices depend not just on analysis of the consequences of difference courses of actions, but also how unwaged those consequences about what values one applies. Theres nothing special about our values. It is up to our elected leaders. To make this policy judgments. Our job is to Hope Congress understand the action. Piece in the u. S. Economy with the cbo director and experts from td bank, the financial times, mic and the university of maryland. That is followed by the First Press Conference by new fed chair janet yellin. Saturday morning at 10 00 eastern. Sec chom whaler and Jessica Rosenworcel said it is crucial that the congress is the rate Program Provides School Access to the internet undergo a major improvement. Both the chair and commissioner were featured at the chiefs a School Officers legislative Conference Held earlier this week in washington. This is just over an hour. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for being here. We have a really exciting our scheduled here where we are going to be discussing key rate reform and the work underway at the federal communications commission. And peter zamora, director of federal relations here and i am really just here to introduce superintendent luna and kick off the discussion today. Tom luna has been a twoterm superintendent in the state of idaho and that capacity has shown tremendous leadership and courage in pursuing major improvements on accountability and particularly innovation in the use of technology in the classroom. And for a benefit here at the National Stage cummings also been a Real National voice to major in education. In addition to being the president of ccsso last year, hes also led three task forces for us in recent years. He let the Teacher Preparation Task force improving systems they are. We heard about that yesterday. He also chaired our tsca Reauthorization Task force were redeveloped legislative language to support congressional action on elementary and secondary education act. And now he is here in his capacity as one of the cochairs along with tom in california of our Digital Learning task force. So tom has announced that he will not be seeking reelection this fall and i just wanted to thank you for all youve done for us, for students in this country and that we look forward to working with you in the future. Tumble introduced commissioner rosenworcel. I just want to thank her and chairman wheeler for all of their support of educators in the context of erate reform and particularly coming out today on a snow day. With that, superintendent luna from idaho. [applause] thank you. Thank you, peter for setting up this session. I think its very timely. It wasnt very many years ago when we used to hear phrases like it took 20 years to get the overhead projector out of the Bowling Alley and into the classroom. The comment was in reference to just how slow education was to adopting and embracing the opportunities that technology provides. I think that is all changed. I think there is a growing demand and desire for more and more technology and recognize the power of that. I was honored to serve with tom for looks and a california, seven other states working on Digital Learning task force, trying to find ways we can better assist every state in leveraging the to elegy to improve student achievement. Ive been asked to share some of the things ive done in idaho. Whether youre an urban School District or you have a very diverse geography, like idaho, we all know well never truly meet the needs of all students until we close the Digital Divide and provide Classroom Teachers the 21st century tools that they need to individualized instruction for every student. In the 21st century, the classroom and learning is not limited by walls. Its not limited by bell schedules. Something of a School Calendars or local staff endorsements or certificates and most importantly cannot be limited by geography. About every child lives, they deserve the same equal access and opportunity than any other child has access to. In idaho weve been working to close the Digital Divide so we can provide equal access and opportunity no matter where child lives and weve accomplished this through the miracle of technology. In idaho, majority of schools and districts that are located in remote isolated parts of our state. Where large states on the basics of the states in one country and reserve 300,000 students. So as we work to close the Digital Divide with dennis in many ways. For me just highlight to you because they think they illustrate how once you provide access, students will take advantage of it. One of the ways i want to talk about his idaho has a very comprehensive Math Initiative. It has many parts to it, but one of the parts of the Math Initiative is a webbased map my next program that is called think through mass. Teachers can supplement their instruction by allowing students to login from any computer and solve complex math problems in a game like environment. Students earned points of the software difficult problems and if necessary can even talk to a life tutor if they wanted to trouble and need help. So with this opportunity and an environment that children enjoy being in, last year more than 30,000 students in idaho logged on and saw the nearly 13 million complex math problems. Of those, 4 million dennis said the traditional classroom. At home, on the weekends, over spring break, christmas break him at thanksgiving. Not because students are compelled to. None of this is done as a result of homework assignments. It was done because they wanted to them if they had access to take advantage of that. So far this year students of salt 18. 3 million problems in the third of those have been solved outside the traditional classroom day. Once we give students access to not only did my math, they wanted to do more math as they enjoyed it and it very good at it and wanted to do more of it. Teachers of all raised events about how their students have come in during recess, worked over thanksgiving break and on and on and the amazing impact on student achievement. Another great thing be done in idaho to expand learning opportunities as if we built the Idaho Education Network where erate played a Critical Role in order to make this happen. The iem is a highspeed rod and secure intranet. It connects to every Public High School together in colleges and universities through a private owned intranet that we manage the content on a pier for some communities weather brought this to their communities, was the first time communities have access to broadband. The idea to set up on the classroom every high school has a flatscreen tvs and microphones and cameras in order to handle virtual teleconferencing sister not only have access to the Great Teachers in their schools, but every other great teacher across the state. One of the benefits the students have access to dual credit courses they never had access to before. Its because of the Education Network and providing access to the number of College Credits and students participating in learning College Credits has exploded in our state. Two years ago 17,000 High School Students have taken dual credit classes. Last year, the number further 24,000. Im sorry, 28,000 our deepest of the first master, 24,000 students in idaho are enrolled in advanced courses. Again, what we have found is if we provide equal access and opportunity, it is for a students to opportunities they didnt have before and take full advantage of them. These two examples come to think through math in the Idaho Education Network show if we do provide access students will participate in it will improve their student achievement. We need is access. That is why we have to modernize the key rate funding. The commissioners here to address us today well talk to us about that. If were going to modernize every other part of our education and a lot of us here have been focusing on now for many, many years, it is critical we also modernize erate or erate 2. 0. In the 21st century learning isnt going to be limited by walls. Its not by bell schedules or geography or School Calendars. We must make sure that erate is not limited by the same barriers also. Students no longer just learned in the traditional sense. We need to make sure that erate shifts its focus not to just learning, but where learning occurs. This would help every state, every community, every Public School to improve student achievement in idaho in other states are heading in this direction. Because of the Idaho Education Network that we build connecting our high schools, today 80 are now a full Wireless Environment. With a capacity that provides simultaneous access for every student and so its a very robust, every classroom, every hallway, everywhere warming could occur to the chimneys to the lunchroom is a Wireless Environment. The Wireless Environment is not currently funded through erate, but we hope in the near future this kind of flexibility is made possible. Once we have a Wireless Environment in every school, the opportunity to move to a one to one Computing Device in every childs hands is the next step in idaho is already piloting that in many schools across the state and some of our schools are frustrated because of the slow pace. They want the onetoone technology now and what they were Wireless Environment, many are experimenting with to bring your device type environment. Until they have full wireless that dvd in every school from grade school to middleschool to high school, the conductivity becomes the stumbling block. So we have to make this possible for every school, every pastor and in every student. Not some, not most, but all in modernizing key rate is an essential way to making this happen. At the end of the day, we have to measure implementation of technology against higher student achievement. If we go through all this effort is spending and investment and it does not improve student achievement, all weve done is really Cool Technology project and that is not what we are about. Were about improving student achievement and we think weve shown by using the miracle of technology, providing students access it does increase student achievement in nevada were child lives, even in remote parts of idaho or any part of the country that those students then have the same opportunities that others didnt already enjoy. The transition of more and more technology in the classroom, giving students access to learning opportunities outside of the classroom are critical. Link fencing instruction time, which is something were all looking looking to do. So we are excited about the steps the fcc is taking in modernizing the Erate Program. We have two people to talk to us about that today. We are first going to hear from commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel rosenworcel did i get that right . You did. Okay great. How bout i just call you just go . And they tell you about jessica. She was nominated for a seat on the sec by barack obama and was sworn into office on may 11, 2012. The commissioner brings a decade and a half a Public Sector and private Sector Communications experience to her position at the fcc. Part 2 germany agency, commissioner rosenworcel served as senior litigation counsel for the United States and the committee on commerce, science and transportation under the leadership of senator john d. Rockefeller. Jessica had been a National Leader in efforts to upgrade and update erate for the 21st century. Repeated calls or erate 2. 0 have been instrumental in promoting federal action to supporting Digital Learning. So what not, we welcome you to the podium. Thank you for joining us. [applause] thank you, tom. Good morning. We really rolled out the white carpet for you here in washington today. Somehow the federal government disclosed. My childrens schools are closed and we are all still here and you get the opportunity to hear from folks like i dont know, secretary duncan and fcc fcc chairman, tom wheeler. I think that suggest something important is going on. From my perspective, the important thing is erate. And heres a littleknown fact. Erate is the nations largest Education Technology program and is run by the agency where i work. The federal communications commission. And so, building on what tom just said, i want to talk to this morning about what we can do at the fcc to reboot, recharge and reinvigorate the Erate Program. What i like to call a erate 2. 0. But before heading boldly into that future, i want to head back a few more years than i care to count. I want to talk about when i was in school. When i went to school, there was only the black board. This is our common medium, our shared platform for knowledge. New ideas above no graphics, no demystification commando video, just a swipe of an eraser in some dusty chalk. There is also the mimeograph or ditto machine. Tests in math sets were printed out in a blotchy purple ink and that ink had a smile that i could recognize in them instead. There is also a great test of biology text books and study guides covering grammar. They weigh down your back packs and cluttered your locker. Multimedia that grainy filmstrips within that means that it really valued production value. So, fast forward to the here and now. My children are not going to know the finer the clapping together erasers. And for me, that purple ink and the physical crank of the mimeograph machine was a practical cap on copying and sharing information. But for my kids, all they are going to know is the infinite capacity of digital distribution. And content for them, lets hope, will mean a lot more than the printed page or a dusty set a film well. Because educational text are being remade, tablets changed the way we access all forms of media and information. In short, broadband and connected devices are changing every aspect of our lives because we live in an age of always on comic dvd. Increased broadband capacity and decreased passive Cloud Computing are changing the way of we access and create content. So many of our social spaces are now virtual. Mobility means we can take the content we can create into field and take it with us wherever we go. In fact, for my purchase at the sec, i can tell you are a nation with our mobile phones than people, which is a curious thing. One in three adults has a tablet computer and that number is growing fast. But the most stunning changes are happening with schoolage children. I know because i see it in my own home. Three quarters of all children now have access to a mobile device, like a smartphone or tablet. 72 of children under the age of 80 have used those devices for for some kind of media activity. Almost one in five now do so on a daily basis. Among teenagers, half owner of smartphones. Nine in 10 have used social media and 95 use the internet regularly. We do our students no favors if we strand our schools and classrooms in the industrial age. After all, we live in the broadband age. Other nations recognize this. Countries around the world are wiring their schools with highspeed broadband. In south korea all schools are already connecting to highspeed broadband so much so that they will be converting to digital textbooks by 2016. Ireland will have all schools connected to 100 megabits this year. Finland will have all schools connected to 100 megabits the year after that. Meanwhile, in both turkey and thailand the government is seeking a vendor to supply Tablet Computers to millions of students for a new era of Digital Learning. I dont think there is any reason for us to settle with the status quo. There is no reason for us to let other nations lead. We can do this. We can make sure all American Students have access to the highspeed broadband they need no matter who they are, no matter where they live and no matter where they go to school. So let me step off that soapbox for a moment and let the move to the details. I want to talk a little bit about the mechanics of erate. Erate as i mentioned at the outset is run by the fcc and is the nations largest Education Technology program. It helps connect all of our schools and libraries to modern communications and the internet. Erate support is based on need. More funding is available for those schools and libraries serving low income students and for those in rural areas. The rate is almost the product of the law called the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Now think back to 1996. Big broadband was in its infancy. Dialup was our on line destiny and everyone here probably called the internet the information superhighway. I know i did. It was a long time ago. And back in 1996 only 14 of our schools were connected to the internet. Today, thanks to the support of Erate Program more than 95 are connected which sounds pretty good. In fact it sounds like the job is done but nothing could be further from the truth. Because the challenge today is not connection. Its capacity. Too many of our schools that rely on erate access the internet at speeds as low as three megabits. Thats lower than the speed of the average American Home but think about it. Thats a school which has 200 times as many users. Then think about what that means it means to too many of our schools are unable to even use highdefinition streaming video. It means too many of our schools are unable to use the most uptodate Educational Software and teaching tools. And it means too many of our students are unable to get the education they need in science, Technology Engineering and math, or stem and we all know stem skills are so essential to the future. All right, heres the good news. We are doing something about it. At the fcc we started reform effort to modernize our erate system, what i like to call the rate 2. 0. Just like the alludes of any operating system we need to take the good we have put in place, we need to build on it and we need to upgrade it for the future. So at the fcc and in washington this means we have a public rulemaking. Starting last summer we propose changes to erate and asked for ideas from stakeholders of every stripe. Right now we are processing these ideas. There are a lot and it has taken some time but when we finish we need to take a look at this program that congress authorized almost two decades ago and put it in good shape for the broadband era. Because if we just keep on keeping on with the existing Erate Program we have, we are going to miss a big opportunity. The opportunity to bring digital age learning to all of our schools. So i think we can do it and let me talk about how. You are probably familiar with the 3rs, reading, writing and arithmetic so let me move down the line and introduce you to the essence of erate reform. Speed, simplify and spending smart. Maybe thats four. But again the three r. s were never really ours. That aside i want to talk about the three things we need to focus on at a high level if we want to put you ray tube. 0 in place. The first is speed. If you are school and you want to run the most uptodate Educational Software you need highspeed highcapacity brought in. A little while back there was a survey from project tomorrow and they found that only 15 of schools surveyed the leads they had the bandwidth they needed for their current instructional needs. Think about that. 15 . 85 of our schools believe they do not have the bandwidth they need for current instructional needs. That is a problem because we have moved from an era where a connected computer lab down the hall is nice to have two or world where highspeed broadband in the classroom is a need to have. So let me put some numbers on it and tell you what i mean about really highspeed broadband. In the near term i think we should have 100 megabits per thousand students to all of our schools and in the longterm, by the end of the decade i think we should have one gigabit per 1000 students to all of our schools. Now i call those goals dream likely and then dream big and i think we can do it in more than that i think if we adopt this kind of capacity we are going to send a strong signal to educational markets because by making more bandwidth available at nationwide scale we can foster new opportunities for creative content, services, teaching tools and devices at lower cost everywhere. Plus, the spillover effect from bringing broadband to institutions like schools is huge. Because simply bringing these kinds of speeds to schools makes it incrementally less expensive to deploy highspeed broadband to homes and businesses nearby. But to meet these goals we are going to have to do some things differently. And i think the fcc needs to collect better data from each of our erate applicants about what capacity they have and what capacity they need. That way we can finetune our efforts to better achieve our goals. Now the second s is simplified. The Erate Program is too complicated. This is a program that can be about blazing a path for broadband and digital age so why does it have such a messy paper trail . It has become too difficult and expensive for schools to navigate our process especially for the low income in rural schools that are most in need and thats just not right. So i think we need to reduce the bureaucracy associated with the erate. To this end, i think it would be a good idea for we have multiyear applications. Now that might sound small but the impact is big. If applications were due every other year that would cut the administrative cost in half. I would also like to see us use more incentives for consortia in the application process. One schools Work Together, they can navigate the process together and benefit through more costeffective bulk purchasing. Moreover by encouraging consortia to include nearby schools and districts that lack highspeed connections we can use local forces to help bring everyone along. Now that respects the local tradition of education in our country, but it also helps us reach a national goal. Getting 99 of our schools connected to highspeed broadband over the next five years. I think we can do it and i think greater use of consortia is the ticket. Now a simpler process also should dean Greater Transparency during the review process for erate applicants. Critics have charged that are existing process takes too long and is more than a bit okay and they have a point. Beyond that, we are going to have to welcome other ideas for erate applicants that simplify the process and reduce the bureaucracy of the program. Now the last s is spending smart. We have to use our limited erate dollars intelligently. Now spending smart means Better Business Accounting Practices that the sec fcc chairman has already identified will free up more broadband support over the next two years. But it has to go beyond that. Because on a longterm basis we need to make sure that all erate support is focused on highspeed broadband. To that and, at the time has come to face down the roughly 600 million that this program spent annually on outdated and oldfashioned services. If we reduce this expense over time we can help free up more support for highcapacity services. But spending smart has to go even further. I think it means owning up to the fact that inflation has cut the purchasing power of this program. The Erate Program was sized that 2. 250 yen dollars annually back in 1998. 1998 was when less than of households had broadband at home at any speed above dialogue dialogue. 1998 was when gas was 1 dollar a gallon. We need to fix this now. A minimum we need to restore the purchasing power of this program by bringing back what inflation has taken away. Between when this cap was put in place in some other adjustments were made in 2010, that is nearly 1 billion but we should go beyond this and frankly identify what more we need to meet the goal of connecting 99 of schools in five years. Because when it comes to bringing broadband to schools the rest of the world is on course to do this. We can let them outspend us, out educate us and out to achieve us or we can do something courageous and do something about it right now. Now one further thought. About equity and opportunity. Beyond the ss of speed and spending smart i think a form erate reform speaks to access and education. Today three out of 10 households do not have Broadband Access and that is a stubborn number. It hasnt budged much overtime. Think about what it means to be a student in one of those households. Typically low income and often rural. It means just getting homework done is hard. It means applying for a scholarship is challenging especially if you are forced to do it on a mobile phone. But by bringing broadband to all of our schools we will be making digital age opportunities available for all and i think that matters. So, there you have it. You will hear a lot or from my colleague the fcc chairman tom wheeler in a few minutes. I think the Erate Program has done a lot of good. But we can do so much more. With the reformed erate, erate 2. 0 we can extend the reach of broadband in our schools. We can expand the range of educational content. We can harness digital and mobile platforms and teach in exciting new ways. And we can seize the good of new technology and prepare all of our children were success in the 21st century. And as a policymaker and apparent i think thats something worth fighting for. Thank you. [applause] thank you so much and i think you can see the passion she brings to this and what a great supporter she has been to the education community. I know she is a scheduling constraint am only to leave shortly but ill was wondering if we can ask you one question and superintendent luna has a question. How about relevance to this group i will ask you the second question that i have. My question is i dont know how familiar you are with ccs so that is the association of steve state chiefs and we have led a number of ever said a bad impact on a National Level and common core standards is one level. We created the principles of accountability that led to the waiver process in no child left behind so my question is what can a group like this do to help you and the commission in their efforts to see erate 2. 0 come to pass . A terrific question, just the kind i like to answer. You know we can have this kind of proceeding in watching 10 with all the local suspects who could tell us how we should update broadband in education or we can actually go to those who work every day to make sure that students and in schools have the access they need to update their classrooms and update their schools. So what i would like most is to hear from all of you. We have an open docket which means you can write letters to us. You can tell us what you think. What has been important to you about the rate and what you think should be important Going Forward and its really important to me that we develop the kind of reform that speaks to your needs on the front lines so you should write us, you should pick up the phone. You should email us and you can call me directly because i work at the fcc in my phone usually works. [laughter] to the stress of my staff i have a habit of answering it. So i couldnt say more. Please participate. Lease tell us what you need, what you think. What has troubled you about this program and how you think it could be improved. Thank you gray much commissioner rosenworcel. If we could have a round of applause for her. [applause] thanks so much. Now we will be welcoming cherlin chairman wheeler to the stage. Let me tell you a little bit about chairman wheeler. Tom wheeler began the 31st chairman of the federal indications commission on november 4, 2013. Chairman wheeler was appointed by president barack obama unanimously confirmed by the United States senate. A moment of bipartisan success. Over three, four were three decades chairman wheeler has been involved with Telecommunications Networks and services experiencing a revolution in telecommunications as a policy expert and an advocate and a businessman. As an entrepreneur he started and helped start multiple Companies Offering innovative Cable Wireless and video communication services. He is the only person to be selected to both the Cable Television hall of fame and the wireless hall of fame a fact that president obama choked and referred to him as the boat jackson of telecom. Chairman wheeler who was at the fcc and congress created erate is deeply and forcefully engaged in the erate reform under sleet sleet or ship. Fcc has begun an administrative process to collect provided additional money and erate administration so we are grateful for his leadership in support of Digital Learning and his participation in the discussion today. Chairman wheeler. [applause] thank you tom both for your introduction and to the wonderful leadership that you have been providing in education and Education Technology sectors for so many years and thank you to see ccs so for welcoming me today. I know secretary arne duncan was here earlier this morning and boy do we need to acknowledge his leadership in this important field of ringing technology into the classroom. He and his team have done a tremendous resource for us at the commission as we work through the kinds of things that just because rosenworcel was just talking about. I dont know whether you had a chance to talk him about it this morning but the secretary also has a pretty mean blind pass. I dont know if any of you saw it on the espn highlights but he has given that kind of a pass to us at the fcc to deal with erate and i just hope we can make the layup as well as the person that he said in the game. You just heard from commissioner rosenworcel. What an incredible leader she has been in this whole field for well over a dozen years. Tom i think the term that you use used when you talked about her passion for this is the right and apt term. The cause of Digital Learning is fortunate to have jessica as a champion and im fortunate to have her as a colleague. You have already heard from commissioner rosenworcel a lot of the broader issues so let me see if i can begin to drill down a bit on to some of the things that stand between here and there are on modernizing the Erate Program. The first obviously that needs to be made is, this is a big deal, that everyone agrees that Education Technology can better prepare Young Americans to succeed in a Global Digital economy but that we have got to get what jessica referred to correctly as americas biggest Education Development program right. That is why president obama has set as a goal for this country that we have 99 of American Students connected to highspeed which is at least 100 meg per 1000 students golding to a gate and we accomplish that within five years to which i amend or less. That is why 50 of americas corporate chiefs from mike delta Mark Zuckerberg wrote me a letter calling a revitalized erate o. Graham essential to u. S. Competitiveness. That is why more than two dozen members of congress sent me a bipartisan letter urging swift action to bring transformational learning opportunities to every school in america through erate modernization and that is why we are having this discussion here today. I wont belabor it. Its a big deal. And that leads us to the core issue and that is that technology has changed, the needs of schools have changed but the Erate Program has not changed. Now i am not a stranger to new technology or the use of technology in schools and by that i am referring to my time as an av when i was in school. But in the 1990s preerate i was in the mobile phone business i helped create class like a program that gave mobile phones and free airtime to teachers. At jl Wilson Elementary School not too far from here we experimented with taking the idea one step further and installing modems hooked up to wireless phones and a crude effort to connect that school to the internet. It may have been crude, but it worked and we installed it throughout the country in many schools. Back in those days you could connect a computer to the internet. It usually took place in a designated space like the computer lab or a library where the connected computer was nice to have and down the hall. A couple of months ago at a middle school in oakland i saw the difference between what erate originally supported and the original vision and what it needs to support for today and tomorrow. In each classroom and im sure you have seen it all in your classrooms, each classroom it was running around the wall about a fourinch conduit that contained the electricity and the cat 5 cable and about every six to 8 feet there were ports where you could plugin for electricity and plugin for the ethernet. It was dark testimony to the fact that when computers were first installed with erate funds they were still something over there. Maybe no longer down the hall but still something that students went to as an adjunct at 70 rather than coming to them as a core component of their curriculum. The interesting thing is that Edna Brewer Middle School those plugs and ethernet ports were unused except for one which was connected to a wifi router. The internet had moved from over there along the wall to sitting on each students desk and here is the point. The nature of educational connectivity has changed dramatically over the life of the rate. How erate funds are distributed however has not. We are in the midst of a rulemaking to address and correct that reality and just how we do it leads me to my third. While the details of erate modernization are in flux the goals are clear for erate modernization to be successful the updated program must be the one, focused on delivering faster speeds to schools and libraries and wifi throughout. Two, funding is futureproof three fiscally responsible and factbased, four friendly to use. Let me unpack each of those. First, speed. According to a 2013 survey 72 of schools reported broadband speeds that are inadequate to their teaching needs. I visited one school where the network would crash if too many students pushed enter simultaneously. I recently saw an article in the detroit news about a michigan Elementary School in which students were midway through a 45 minute on line math test when the system crashed as a result of inadequate and width. Most of the students lost all of their work and had to retake the test. In california i heard of a school that had to bus students to another school in order to take on line tests. I learned how students that havent had the opportunity to practice in an on line test often performed worse than those from schools that are already on line. But the need for speed is only about half of the erates funding. Let me rephrase that. Despite the need for speed, only about half of the erates funds go to Broadband Connectivity. And far less than half of the erate funds go for the kind of 100 megabit and higher speeds that are necessary for todays learning environment. Most disturbing in an era where wifi is available in every burger joints and coffee shop is how the Erate Program is not helping to put wifi in all classrooms. This past year for the first time ever, after supporting Priority One Services no funding was available for wifi. So for the most recent funding year, americas Largest Program for connecting schools spent less than half of its 2. 4 billion providing 100 megabit per second capacity and nothing on wifi. Why does this happen . Why do we spend over a billion dollars per year on things that dont enhance the highspeed Broadband Connectivity that our teachers and students need . With that said, i do understand that erate is a program relied upon and well said by the education community. But lets look at some examples. As commissioner rosenworcel i said, we spend 600 manually unallocated services. Lets start with the lowhanging fruit and nut expenditure. Narrowband pagers may have fit into a planned 18 years ago, but we need to question their role in a broadband future. Similarly, legacy pbx systems are at historic relic. Then theres a collection of supported activities that fall into the nice to have category, but certainly are not must have if our priority is brought in deployment. Mobile phones are now ubiquitous in our nation. Erate support does not mean the difference between teachers have a mobile phone and not having them. We spend over 175 million a year of erate funds to pay for mobile funds. Similarly, we spend over 260 million annually on Services Including email, text messaging, slows speed connectivity, domain name registration, web hosting and 800 number services. I have no doubt that the schools and libraries make use of these capabilities. But are they more important than paying for the highspeed, brought and con activity to those facilities and wifi throughout . The challenge we face is to make choices. Should we take money away from assuring broad and in every classroom to pay for these legacy activities . Its hard to walk away from such subsidies, i know. But we need to keep our eye on the prize. A 21st century Erate Program needs to focus on 21st entry needs. I recognize this means hard decisions, hosting erate administration and school administration. How we evolved from analog to digital Voice Services in schools is one of those tough decisions. We at the fcc are in the midst of a regulatory transition that will result in the nations dialup telephone lines converting to internet protocol. Remaster member that would broad incomes of a school, so does the opportunity for a digital voice. Yet today, we spend a quarter of our annual erate budget on voice service. Our schools and libraries need to evolve from Alexander Graham bells technology to internet protocol technology. Notice how i purposely use towards evolve. It cant be cold turkey. But if we are going to connect 99 of americans tune in to highspeed broad and in five years or faster, we must reorient our thinking, even about voice calls to broadband. We will modernize was a Wonderful Program for meeting 20th century mean into what is a Great Program for meeting 21st century con activity into and throughout our schools and libraries. The next issue we have to deal with its funding and future proofing the program in a way that enhances Digital Learning opportunities for all schools and libraries. The statute under which we operate is clear that congress intended the principle of universal conductivity to be applied to schools and libraries in all parts of the country. Unfortunate on it, it is not so today and it will not be so tomorrow without rethinking how we allocate funds. As i stated earlier, for the 23rd teen funding year, no funds were available for wifi. Even in the most recent years, when funding is available, the distribution of erate dollars for that purpose was far from equitable. Thats over 80 of the funds from wifi went to urban districts. Let me be clear, i am not saying that those chiefly urban schools shouldnt have reached deeply support. I am simply observing that we need to recognize the universal service mandates of the program. Future proofing erate requires that we challenge ourselves, just as our teachers challenger students to think and mail. When we get back to the administration of the Erate Program earlier this year, we are able to identify 2 billion of additional erate Funds Available for speedy deployment over the next two years. As a businessperson, i described this as applied business logic to erate administration. In reality, it is the question every teacher asks. Is this the best you can do . In addition to this down payment amount we need to think long term to ensure that sufficient resources will always be available to meet our goals. The future security to Erate Program requires our decisions about the program must be fiscally responsible and factbased. Many are asking us to simply raise the contribution rate and spend more money to schools and libraries. I will not hesitate to recommend not if it is warranted. But the fcc has a fiduciary response ability to both the ratepayers who contribute to the program and the students who rely on it. So first assure that every erate dollar is tightening its highest and best use. Sincerely must deal with the key reality. Simply spending more money to the Erate Program to keep doing business as it has been for the last 18 years is not a sustainable strategy. Again, i will recommend this to my colleagues appointed. But my colleagues and i just cannot pour more money into the program as it presently is dance. The first step in expansionist introspection. The best web of making sure sufficient versus to continuing Erate Program begins at management of the program. As a member of the universal Service Administrative corporation and that board, when erate was first implemented, we are currently in search of a new ceo and we solicit your input and not search for a new usac ceo. We are working with usac management to observe how the administrative process works. Suffice it to say as a businessman i found that such reviews produce significant improvement in carrying out the task. Within the fcc, i will soon be announcing a special task force for the entire universal service fund of which erate is the power, to make certain there is adherence to the rules and the people money has been widely spent. In order to get that new 2 billion to work for highspeed broadband, usac is instituting the process to accelerate the speed in which all applications are processed. In particular, we are emphasizing the need to move more quickly to process those applications that we utilize funds for scalable highspeed driving contact david e. And make sure that consortiumbased applications, those most likely to get the lowest cost or acted upon first instead of last as is now the situation. Beyond management, we must address how to increase the efficiency with which our funds are spent. This is a key component of the recent Public Notice and a priority as we head through the late spring decision by the commission. Here we are looking at three issues. First and the why is that the prices paid by lake schools in like circumstances vary so widely . What can we do to help all of goals pay the lowest price for the best service . How do we look at creative ways to make up a go further . For instance, this program is called erate. Not eat block grant ortiz said city. It is our responsibility to make sure schools and libraries are getting access to conductivity at an affordable rate. Second, how do we have a program that has a growth path in terms of the broad end of the bandwidth enables and how do we get a growth path working for all schools, including our most rural schools who have always benefit under the current rules . We want a program that looked to me to grow highspeed access capabilities and speeds over time. Today, 100 megabits may seem like a stretch, but we need Stability Program that can grow that capacity to a gigabit as needs increase in Technology Grows and to do it at a low recurring cost that reflects her crucial, and National Interest and 21st century Digital Learning. Third, we need to be smart with schools and how they interact with the program. I have heard enough about Administrative Burden and encrusted processes to know that we can do better. I believe once weve addressed these deficiency issues coupled with the ongoing next areas to determine cost, will be in a position to identify just how much is required to achieve our goals. Should the evidence substantiating need to increase the permanent funding levels for the Erate Program we will do what is appropriate. The last point i want to make is that we need your help. Maybe its the first point i should have made. We need your help. As commissioner rosenworcel said, we recently put out a notice on some of the thornier questions the commission is now facing. We need data on that information. Not in goats, data. And let me get specific on some of the tougher questions that have to be answered that we passed in this Public Notice. How do we establish predict the bow and widespread funding for internal wifi connections in the which today as you know rnp two and therefore dont get dealt with. Should we, and if so how, provide onetime support for schools that dont currently have highspeed connections . What is the best way to face down support for Legacy Services like voice so that we can face up highspeed or ibm and what are the ways to maximize cost effect admits of purchases to lower recurring costs . Those are tough questions. Those are thorny questions. Those are questions that upset a lot of people who are used to dealing with the Erate Program as it has existed for the last 18 years. We need your datadriven input to help us answer those questions. This is a watershed moment in the Erate Program. I know there are strongly held views on many topics that i just outlined. But only a united front will move to Erate Program forward. If those of us who believe highspeed connectivity of schools and libraries as a National Priority do not coalesce around the new structure for erate, we will have shamefully lost a great opportunity. If we dont emerge from this exercise ,com,com ma this spring with a clear vision that looks forward, not at work, we will put the advancement of Digital Learning opportunities at risk. After 18 years in schools, students traditionally go on to a new stage in their lives. We need to view erate is having reached a similar state of maturity. Just Like High School graduates, this is a time of great promise and not a little bit of apprehension. Often times the individuals future is determined by how they handle that promise and that apprehension. All of us who support erate are in a similar position. It is time for real change that opens the door to expanded opportunity, working together, we look it ran through modernization right and more important, we will harness the power of Digital Learning to open new worlds of opportunity for students. Thank you. [applause] i believe thats all the time. Thank you so much, chairman wheeler. Since he was confirmed in november he faced a wide range of issues that have come across his desk into but this emphasis upon erate reform, we appreciate that. And as you noted comet muchneeded good there is nothing of a higher priority. I know where that a bit over time. Can we maybe ask a couple questions . I dont know what youre scheduling a slight, i think we all want to know who is still using pagers. It is really kind of shocking and revealing. Like i said, thats the lowhanging fruit. It gets tougher from there. Did we have any questions . I know you wanted to ask when potentially because we often have some over here. Thank you, chairman wheeler for being here today with us and for your passion about erate reform. He talked about the opportunity for Public Notice gives us an opportunity to go beyond just erate reform and do more. How would you describe how the process will take place, what takes place after it and please know that all of us who appreciate the efforts, but wed really like to see erate reform get done first and then Everything Else come into place. Were biased in that area. Youd like to see erate reform take precedence . Data, we would like to see what happens in our schools first. For a little biased in that regard. I think were with you im not. Sniggers overthinking, that died im always hesitant to name specific dates. But by spring, early spring, april, may esch, we should have collected responses on this tough questions that ive indicated in our Public Notice. Our goal then is to have an orderly decision and a new set of rules out before the students go back to school and the reason we want to have a good way that is because we wanted to be in effect for the 2015 program. So what we do then as we say okay for 2014, the rules are the same period in the fall of 2014, will come up with a new set of rules will govern 2015 and Going Forward. Maybe one more question. [inaudible] go box. I do not i understand the point entirely. This is one of the things that we have to wrestle with. This is not set up as a block grant program. The instructions from congress are pretty clear on that. So its not the kind of thing we can just ship it to you and you another folks figure out what you want to do with it. On the other hand, i understand entirely and agree with the need for flexibility. Ive been really impressed with some of the statewide activities that have been done. Whats been done with facilitating connections with arnie on the kind of thing tom was talking about, the kind of things done in North Carolina and elsewhere. Ohio has a great rna network and we need to allow the kinds of flexibility that allow you to build off of that while still recognizing that this is a Erate Program. We are working on each of those, so i dont know thats necessarily a dichotomy. We have definitely been emphasizing in our comments are streamlining, but then also meeting the needs. Ill be quick. I know in a shot, thank you for being here. A quick question and maybe a statement is something you just said. First of all comerford repeatedly about conductivity for 99 of the students. Of course im curious who gets to be the 1 of them always worried that south dakotas population that is going to be my entire state. One of the interesting things youve done well with the vtec program has done in south dakota, again, to build a statewide, highspeed Fiber Network that creates a kind of back bone that isnt present in all states. We are very fortunate because that was said many years ago. I believe im just reiterating something you said earlier about the important, the value would be to pool resources and be able to use that for this assurance particularly for rural schools who dont have the expertise and being able to do purchases wisely, that the incentive would be those decisions weve made quickly for districts to do budgeting appropriately in advance as well. The sort of answered my question with that. That is the concern about incentivizing them to do that. You know, those priorities are given. Ea has barely. Heres the so we came in and took a look at whats going on and nothing, no bad intentions or any thing at usac. But it is human nature that the really simple things will get done first in the testing such as felt this kind of weight over here. The tough ones to make decisions on are the consortium. Because its not cookiecutter. And so what we have saddam were starting with this 2 billion of new found money that we are releasing, what weve said is consortia jumps to the top of the line. Its not the last one. Its the first one because we just have to make sure that the point from the gentleman from ohio that were allowing flexibility. This same point in time, we are giving the tools that they can get the best possible return on their dollar. Thank you very much, chairman wheeler and everyone. Thank you. [applause] american football is an inherently violent sport. Thats one of the reasons we love it. Thats one of the forces encountered in football can be huge. Consider a big hit between a running back and a linebacker at full speed. We can show using second while at the force each player exerts on the other axes three quarters of a ton. This is why football is called a contact sport. Two players who collide at full speed helmet to helmet are experiencing the same force to their heads that one of them at olympia to 16pound bowling ball dropped on his helmet from a height of eight feet. Medical knowledge of concussions is in its infancy, but we know one thing for sure. Forces to the head and neck cause concussions and we just heard how big these forces can be. Theres another problem. They are getting bigger. Since 1920, the average weight of a pro lineman has increased almost 60 to just over 300 pounds. The same time, players have gotten a 10 faster. Combining speed and math to calculate Kinetic Energy come in the Energy Available to cause injury, we found the amount of energy dumped into the pit at the line of scrimmage on any given play has almost doubled since 1920. And exact opposition is the fact that players are shedding their project it dear. The pad used to be centimeters thick now very remarkable semblance to keep it really is. For scholars, papuas lineman of my generation have gone the way of the flying wedge. Modern football helmets or technological marvels, but players choose them out for collision cushioning ability, but for how cool they look. Another problem is the poor state of medical knowledge. Zero im not confident to explain these issues, it is safe to say a room full of head trauma physicians will not agree on the details of what concussions are or what causes them. This is the diagnosis or treatment of concussions has a long way to go. Other understand that these issues improve come out and we injury root and the wholesale shed shedding of equipment has increased faster than we thought. A portion of the hearing will be showing you in its entirety tonight starting at 8 00 eastern on our companion network on the cspan. Here on cspan2, booktv in prime time at a series of afterwards programs. At the end of the day, the economy will continue to need enormous monetary stimulus. The fed will not be raising rates for quite some time. But i am optimistic the u. S. Economy is going to accelerate. One of the core things here, one of the core dimensions of the fact that laster the u. S. Economy grew 1. 9 with fiscal drag from higher taxes and government threats reducing growth by 1. 3 percentage rates. Without that fiscal tightening, the economy wouldve been growing over 3 . Cbo does not make quality recommendations and thats important because policy choices depend not just on analysis of the consequences of different courses of action, but also how one ways those consequences, what values one applies. Nothing special about our values. Its up to our elected leaders. Youre in my elected leaders to make this policy judgments. Our job is so congress made the consequence of action. This is about an hour. [applause] that wasnt overly generous introduction. Thank you again for the hospitality here at the baker center and the university of tennessee has been remarkable. Its a wonderful place and im happy to be here. You know as an academic in washington ending up in washington for some reason i want to give you my personal take on computational science, what we do and the kind of how i view this. I think its an interesting story and i hope you will find it interesting. As a beta tester i guess this can fail and still be successful as part of your learning so we could look at it that way. So i have i guess some framing thoughts on computational science. I guess i should project this. So there are just a few topics i would like to talk to today and tell you a little bit how i think about it, where i see the challenges, some examples of what we have done and how we use it and where we are headed. Depending on time, i will cover some of these in different ways. I think there is no even or simple way to explain how we applied simulation these days. Certainly from Popular Culture we have a sense that simulation can do remarkable things. You only have to go to the theater or look at all the content out there where we are are where virtualization as part of almost anything you see these days but when you have to temper it in reality and make decisions and there are consequences to those decisions its a little bit different and i wanted to tell you a little bit about that the degree of trust in simulation is still emergent. There is not a unique way to characterize how well we think we are predicting something and how much we trust it. Theres a lot of work to be done there. There are some places we do it by statute and there are other places where we really need champions and advocates at the right time to say hey these tools could be right to bear. Here are some experts that could help and i hope to give you a few examples of that. Really, trust, there is an easy way to explain why you trust a simulation or why you dont. I think for everybody its somewhat experiential and there is a personal aspect to see it among scientists and i see it amongst scientists in washington and there are some that believe that in some that dont read it again you can trace this back in many ways. You can trace it back 500 years to deductive and inductive reasoning in different ways to approach the world. E. U. Believed empirically that until you test it and do the experiment you cant take the next step or you believe that you can deduce things and set up some type of intuitively derived set of premises and from that you can build your understanding those are two lines of thought that exist today. You will find a collection of scientists. Some will say unless you do the experiments i dont believe you on anything you predict. So its again the whole idea of trust and when you call upon simulation to help you is still deeplyrooted in personal issues that are hard to capture and i hope you keep that in mind as we go through some of the examples today. I will try and cover a collection of different topics and try and show you some of the commonality of whats behind these and i hope you will find it interesting. Prediction is really part of our everyday life. You deal with that whether you are trying to figure out what scully to happen in march and the ncaa tournament or the world cup in rio or the gold medal count in the sochi olympics. You know prediction comes in many places. You predict things by yourself. I would say that among all the predictions you do, the consequences are probably fairly limited. The consequences of making a bad prediction are typically not severe. Maybe you didnt expect it to rain. Maybe you didnt fill out your bracket in march very well and he didnt win the pool but i would say that is not a high consequence type of decision. But today we are turning to simulation quite a bit more to help us. Sorry about that. In understanding a number of types of more serious problems. More societal problems and i view them as being in two categories. As an academic i resonate and certainly i resonated in my previous career on a class of let me call it for no better named output based simulations. This is the kind of problem a scientist poses. It is typically well defined. You know what to measure. You know in scientific parlance you know the degrees of freedom. You know what to measure. You have a hamiltonian. You have a theory and you are trying to solve the theory and its an exercise in mathematics and in controlling your approximations to solve that. And you have something you want to measure. Maybe you are studying protein confirmation or maybe you want to measure the mass of the proton. You can pick your quantity that is scientifically precise. You know the degrees of freedom and typically its a matter of simply controlling the approximation when you put it on the computer. It also has the benefit that you are the specialist and you saw that kind of problem. You are the master of that domain and you control it. The other class of problems that i see let me call outcome based are the ones that i find more interesting these days. These are the ones that are technically imprecise. They are ill posed. They are typically societally based. They there are things that impact people. You want to know why things are going to happen and why they are important to you. Often you dont know what the degrees of freedom are. You dont know where to start. You might not able to control the models or the approximations. You dont know how precise your answer is that thats the place where we need the most help. Typically these are multidisciplinary type problems where you have to work with other people. You have to ask questions outside your comfort zone and they are hard. I think discovery lies there in general and this is the class of problems i would like to illustrate today. In the second class of outcome based problems we dont ask scientifically precise questions but the things we care about are what do you have to do and when . What is your confidence that you can actually help. What does it mean . What does it mean to you . What are the risks and what are the risks that might happen again . And the question is how do you bring science into answering questions that are not scientifically precise . Where do you start and how do you do that quickly and what tools do you have at your disposal to help inform that . Often you dont know if you are even asking the right questions and its often you have to ask are the right people asking the right questions . In any case are you even position to answer them . When you think about societal issues and i will talk a little bit about the underwear bomber, the satellite shootdown, the oil spill, collections of things that impact people where science help inform decisions to be made again real problems, real issues often time urgent that the kind of quality of the question you want to answer through simulation is like that. So that is not precise. What is the measure of what does it mean . The average person wants to know what it means to them. How it will impact their life and whether they will have electricity, whether you can get gasoline or groceries or is your lifestyle impacted. That is really the societal issue that you are concerned about so how do how do you manage the interface of science which is typically precise questions smith this with the imprecise needs of questions of this quality. I want to mention maybe one additional quick digression that you know at the same time we are interested in solving these problems we simply have a changing world. There was a nice little piece a couple of years ago in comparing the ipad2 to the cray supercomputers. These days with the iphone and the amount of computing you carry in your pocket its remarkable that you project that 10 or 15 years the kind of timescales that departments have to think about in planning the infrastructure. We are thinking about what are the tools we have to have and how do we work through those so that the country can be responsive to answer these kinds of questions. Today is a growing set of issues we worry about whether his Energy Security or climate, health, Critical Infrastructure there are more and more places where we think that there is a role for computational science to inform us in decisions. Many of these things cant be tested or instrumented or done before it happens and so these are places where virtualization is an important step in characterizing the risks and decisions that we might have to make. Among the kinds of problems we have there again two categories data rich and data poor. I just want to distinguish those to keep that in the back of your mind. There are some problems with sensor data, weather data and places where you have nothing but data and your problem with simulation is to figure out what are the causes and effects, what are simply just correlated signals or what are causative. That is not always easy. Solving the inverse problem from the inverse set of data is a very hard problem than trying to figure out what really impacts what. Their problems better data poor. Certainly Nuclear Weapons program is an example but i will give other. I would say this supernova work is the data poor place. Tony would certainly love to instrument the next supernova beforehand and get all the data you want but you cant do that. If you have detonated you will be happy but you can only get very limited set of measurements and making sense of that is really model dependent. Among the classes its not just simulation broadly. There are different qualities of questions we ask. There are different kinds of data in different assumptions we have to make on the models we need. So you know a sense of some of the things that we have turned to simulation for in the past few years. Certainly while i have been in washington i thought it might be a little illuminating. I would be remiss being in oak ridge also the place were certainly the department invests heavily in Nuclear Security mission not to say a little bit of a Nuclear Weapons program. I think its an interesting Tour De Force of simulation and i just want to capture a couple of things for you. Just for that reason. In the bottom corner there are its just kind of a cartoon illustration of the kind of complexities. In understanding how we understand weapons now without. We stopped testing in 1992 and a record year that this country did 98 nuclear tests, the integrated amount is 1054 tests so over our history kind of our legacy. But the problem scientifically is really multiscale. It starts with a nuclear scale, the scale of Nuclear Interactions for fission and process and its fans besides, the major sites and even beyond. Its more than a 15 order of magnitude problem. For those of in washington would i say as you can think of it in terms of the federal budget which is about 3. 5 trillion. Its like managing the federal budget the. 3 cents level. Making sense of the scales in understanding cause and effect across 15 orders of magnitude is nontrivial and there have to be assumptions in there. The question is how do you qualify the trust in the predictions you make in the different scales at the threepoint sense scale at the 100 dollars scale and all the way to the trillion dollar scale. You say i have confidence that i know where the federal budget is going that i can tell you where its going to be next year. Its a very tough and challenging problem but it is a place where the laboratories are certainly doing that. Anyway there are a lot of questions we ask these days just at the bottom of that slide. We want to know whether they are safer if we have more options to make they are more secure. We need to know what other people are doing. We worry about terrorism and proliferation and they are very broad questions that we are starting to turn these tools to. I think in view of time let me go perhaps to more interesting things that at least we might find more interesting. I remember february 1, 2003 i hadnt been in government very long. It was a saturday morning. I was returning from a conference in san diego and i was at the terminal there are on a saturday morning. At the end of the terminal is a little round area and in the middle was a bar. I kind of looked over at the Television Sets and i was watching the reentry of the reentry of the space shuttle. I was looking at that knowing that the shuttle was passing overhead at the time and there were three or so bright lights coming down. I couldnt tell what that was. It was the shuttle breaking up on reentry but it was kind of a moment that is etched in my mine you think you know what youre looking at any really have no idea what you are seeing. On the monday after that Sandia National laboratory was already in touch with nasa to ask what is it that we can do to help with the kinds of tools that are available . Is there something we can do to assist in understanding this problem . It is posthoc fish but nevertheless is a useful thing to do. Nasa understood as you can see in the video the phone had come off. So they took some High Resolution movies. And they were able to see the phone coming up and if you calculate the relative speed its about 700 feet per second that this block of foam, maybe a cubic foot or so, came off and struck the shuttle. At the time they had a tool. They had a tool called crater and you can read about it. Theres a very good report from that columbia investigation board, the commission that went through this. As very thoughtful and detailed report. One of the things they found in the tool that they had, crater, which was really had its genesis in micrometeorite impact in the 60s crew into their tool of choice in the late 70s and early 80s but it was used outside of its domain of validity and no one knew. Again one of these legacy codes where people had retired. Those who understood where you could use it were no longer there. There wasnt a sense of how predictivpredictiv e it was. It was viewed as a conservative tool and a told you that there wasnt a problem. The shuttle was on its 28th flight and so it was known that the foam hit it and it was viewed that this was not a problem. We had a look at the problem. Nasa certainly reached out to a number of places to do the analysis. One of the things that they found that sandia is that the Strength Properties of the front end to wing and what i have there is in blue. Its a picture of the simulation of the reinforced carboncarbon front ends of the wings that were used to understand what happened. Anyway a sandia started a Detailed Analysis of Failure Modes. The question here was what went wrong. What is the failure mode . You are reentering the atmosphere and going from the continua modeling. Its a challenging place to understand and you are trying to figure out what could have happened. An important part of the analysis was to get a piece of aged reinforced carboncarbon material and what they found the properties depend on the number for entries but the strength is degraded each time you ranter. This one i think 41 of the 44 tiles on the shuttle were originally and each time they ranter oxygen enters the oxygen and reduces the Strength Properties. Sandia started to characterize and they managed to get small amounts of aged reinforced carboncarbon and characterize the stress and Strength Properties and started to do some analysis of what Failure Modes could have happened. In and what they found was a cubic foot of foam roughly hitting at 700 feet per second would rate through and cause these to fail. They discovered this finally in march so march of 2003 and it wasnt until july of 2003 that the experiments were done at Southwestern Research institute which demonstrated that. I remember seeing this on cnn. At my mind we saw this a few months ago but for those who are empirically driven this is when the answer was obtained by the demonstrated that and you can see a picture of the simulation at the same time of the foam hitting the wing and the experiment. It demonstrated that this was a failure mode and is the shuttle started to reenter the hot gas certainly entered the wheel well and started to melt the inside of the wing and caused a catastrophic failure of the shuttle. It was a place again where the simulation test of the different scenarios and it showed that it wasnt the wheel well problem which was originally thought is the primary cause of failure that happened through the foam hitting the wings. You had to characterize the material. It was a complex set of situations because again what youre asking is how did it fail and you are not sure exactly what to measure. In 2006 we launched a satellite and it basically never made orbit. It was in kind of a cold tumbling state for a couple of years. We were approached to try and understand what we could do about this. It was a classified project, now declassified. The codename was called burned for us. The issue was with what confidence could we provide the president that one could shoot this thing down . What were the modeling confidences of the scenario in which you could shoot this out of the sky. The issue here was a large hydrazine tank. Its a one meter tank that was frozen and this is not a hard calculation to see just from the thermal considerations it wouldnt melt upon reentry. It would pass through reentry and being uncontrolled you cant steer it into the ocean. It goes wherever it goes. So we were asked to try and understand this and it was an interesting project over a couple of months. There was a movie here i will run. I am not playing the music because i dont like it. The team put this together as a kind of end all mosh i guess to their effort that it has a couple of nice pictures in their so i clip it and put it in there. You might recall that in 2007 i think the chinese shot down or hit one of their own satellites and it wasnt a fairly high orbit and as a consequence there were still over 2000 pieces of debris in orbit about 540 miles of that we worry about three the question here is whether we could shoot down the satellite at a low enough point so they wouldnt be debris left that you would hit the tank and the problem is just the satellite is coming in an uncontrolled way it kind of skips over the atmosphere and you dont know where its finally going to hit. As if it hits and starts to change its trajectory and accelerates dramatically. If you wait too long its going to fast and you will never hit it. If you hit it too high you will leave the debris in orbit. Theres a small window that you have to guess that, do more than guess, to try to understand whether theres a kill shot from the satellite. It was finally decided 153 miles up that one could do that. At first the simulations gave 80 confidence that this could be done in the window of time. The satellite made 16 revolutions per day and so you had a couple of tries to do it before it was too late. Basically the satellite looked like a hydra scene tank and something that looks like a coke can and then it has its solar panels. If you hit the coke can part it would be like a bullet. You have no impact so you really have to hit the tank and you have to predict the telemetry that was done when the shot was done and it matched exactly with the predictions were. It was known to be a kill shot. It was a place where again the initial estimate was 80 confidence. The decision at the time at the top was it isnt good enough. Lets continue working on this and when it can be done with 95 confidence then it was done. It was really a remarkable missile shot from this aegis cruiser. Again it was kind of a time urgent problem. He came out by surprise. We have tools. We have people who understand satellites. We have people who understand the thermal mechanics and understand failure and characterization of codes and you have to grab all of this and put it together and try and see can you actually address this question . Fukushima was again a problem of this quality. I remember again this pretty vividly. I was watching it on tv in the office that morning trying to figure out what this meant without having a sense of reactor facilities get. It was simply about the tsunami itself which was just devastating. One of the things that the department does is nuclear with Emergency Response. It is a place where we have the ability to send things, robots into very harsh radioactive environments. Its a place where we can do air sampling. Something born out of the old Nuclear Testing testing days is atmospheric model because we cared quite a bit about where radiation goes so there are still many residents skills and the Merrick Center is one of those that can be used to monitor. We were brought into this in a couple of ways. One for Emergency Response including teams here at oak ridge who were called at task to help but the questions that arose that came to us in part were the following. What is the danger . How bad can he it get . At any given time there are five or 6000 u. S. Students in japan. Every year there are i think five or 600 u. S. Tourists there. There are u. S. Military on basis of there is a large u. S. Population. And a question that comes up is do we evacuate u. S. Citizens . There was going to be a midday meeting in tokyo which meant a meeting in the middle of the night. We had a little more than an hour to figure out what can we add to this conversation . Paul went out in the middle of the night to deliver more director to mobilize the center and one of the issues is what are the initial conditions . You could say you want to model it and you have great atmospheric models perhaps but you still have to try and capture what is coming out of it and how much. The initial conditions i would say were not wellknown at the time but the questions were significant. If you decide to evacuate u. S. Citizens its a logistics problem. How do he get get all the people out of marina . How many airplanes and whose airplanes . Its not a simple thing to do if you decide that there are citizens at risk. People also wanted to know what does it mean to people on the west coast of the United States . For specific u. S. Interests there were a lot of questions that we cared about quite a bit. What are dose rates . Which isotopes and things of higher degree refinement. The initial estimate was from the simulations that were done were that tokyo was not at risk and we did not have to worry about that. I had to say its not easy to do these kinds of scientific problems to the conventional way of peer review. You cant pull together the team of your best people in the middle of the night in say hey you havent met each other before but one of you Work Together and answer this question in an hour. The question is how do we do that . How do we become more responsive to harvesting the skills we have in this country in a way that can address these