About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

JASON Defense Advisory Group

Encyclopedia : J : JA : JAS : JASON Defense Advisory Group

JASON is an independent group of scientists that advises the U.S. government on matters of science and technology. The group was first created as a way to get a younger generation of scientists — that is, not the older Los Alamos and MIT Radiation Laboratory alumni — involved in advising the government. It was established in 1960 and has somewhere between 30 and 60 members.

For administrative purposes, Jason's activities are run through the MITRE Corporation, a non-profit corporation in McLean, Virginia that contracts with the defense department.

Jason typically performs most of its work during an annual summer study. Its sponsors include the Department of Defense (frequently DARPA and the U.S. Navy), the Department of Energy, and the U.S. intelligence community. Most of the resulting Jason reports are classified.

The name "JASON" is sometimes explained as an acryonym, standing either for "July-August-September-October-November", the months in which the group would typically meet; or, tongue-in-cheek, for "Junior Achiever, Somewhat Older Now". But neither explanation is right and in fact, the name is not an acronym at all. It's simply a reference to the Greek myth, Jason. The wife of one of the founders thought the name given by the defense department, Project Sunrise, was unimaginative and suggested the group be named for a hero and his search.

Jason studies have included a now-mothballed system for communicating with submarines using extremely long radio waves (Project Seafarer, Project Sanguine); an astronomical technique for overcoming the atmosphere's distortion; the many problems of missile defense; technologies for verifying compliance with treaties banning nuclear tests; and most controversially, during the Vietnam War, a system of computer-linked sensors that became the precursor to the electronic battlefield.

Contents

Membership

Jason members all have security clearances and consist of physicists, biologists, chemists, oceanographers, mathematicians, and computer scientists. They are selected for their scientific brilliance, and over the years, have included eleven Nobel Prize laureates and several dozen members of the National Academy of Science.

The following is a list of members, past and present, who have been publicly identified as Jasons or whose names appear as authors on Jason studies. Since not all study authors are members of Jason, and since Jason does not give out its membership list, the only way to verify the following list is to ask the individual Jasons.

Controversy

In 2002, Democratic Congressman Rush Holt of New Jersey sent letters to key members of the House of Representatives to protest DARPA's decision to fire Jason.

DARPA not only sponsored many of Jason's studies, it was also the channel through which Jason's other sponsors funded Jason. DARPA's decision came after Jason's refusal to allow DARPA to select three new Jason members, none of whom fit the membership criterion of academic excellence. Since Jason's birth, its current members have selected its new members. "This selection process maintains Jason's autonomy," Holt wrote, "and ensures that their decisions are not based on any obligation to the Department of Defense. Allowing the Department of Defense to choose JASON's members would compromise the objectivity and independence of the group's advice." Since 2002, funding has been secured from an office higher in the defense hierarchy, the office of the Director of Defence Research and Engineering.

Research

A selection of recent Jason studies is offered below. They can be found in an online archive at the Federation of American Scientists [link].

See also

Further reading

External links

The Federation of American Scientists link has reliable information: Also reliable is this site from the Nautilus Institute: Online version of booklet written 1972 by physicist and anti-war activist, Charles Schwartz, and the Berkeley-based Scientists and Engineers for Social and Political Action: NB: Much of the rest of what's on the internet about Jason is a mix of fact, conjecture, and pure fantasy.

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: