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

thetimes.co.uk

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

#61

Post by Loughla »

jack_riminton wrote: post #51
dragonwriter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a good thing the US in general, it's government more specifically, and it's defense establishment particularly are completely free of cronyism, and there aren't huge numbers of people influential in every field even loosely associated with the US’s vast military-industrial complex that have gotten their by networking rather than any other form of merit.

Do you have any concrete points or just snark?

This is the only report I know about, but I'm 100% certain there are many more just a google search away:

https://fas.org/man/eprint/contract-fraud.pdf

Highlights: from 2013-2017, there were 1,059 criminal convictions of defense contracting fraud (1087 defendants total), including 678 individuals and 409 separate businesses. Further, there were 443 fraud-related civil cases.

These are just the ones who got caught. It's not that much of a stretch to think that this much money is going to be super tempting to well-connected cronies of our representatives.

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

#62

Post by hkt »

Traster wrote: post #54

It's absolutely hilarious to watch a Prime Minister, who has previously given £100k in Tech funding to his mistress, now establishing an even bigger tech fund without the FOIA requirements so that he can... get away with giving £100k in Tech funding to his mistresses in the future I guess?

And people say he can't plan!

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

#64

Post by jack_riminton »

Loughla wrote: post #61
jack_riminton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any concrete points or just snark?

This is the only report I know about, but I'm 100% certain there are many more just a google search away: https://fas.org/man/eprint/contract-fraud.pdf Highlights: from 2013-2017, there were 1,059 criminal convictions of defense contracting fraud (1087 defendants total), including 678 individuals and 409 separate businesses. Further, there were 443 fraud-related civil cases. These are just the ones who got caught. It…

What does this have to do with DAPRA? I tried searching the document but couldn't find any references

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

#65

Post by Loughla »

jack_riminton wrote: post #64
Loughla wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the only report I know about, but I'm 100% certain there are many more just a google search away: https://fas.org/man/eprint/contract-fraud.pdf Highlights: from 2013-2017, there were 1,059 criminal convictions of defense contracting fraud (1087 defendants total), including 678 individuals and 409 separate businesses. Further, there were 443 fraud-related civil cases. These are just the ones who got caught. It…

What does this have to do with DAPRA? I tried searching the document but couldn't find any references

The grandparent made a snarky comment about defense spending in general. Which is what that document is about.

>it's a good thing the US in general, it's government more specifically, and it's defense establishment particularly

That's what they said.

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

#66

Post by [deleted] »

Loughla wrote: post #61
jack_riminton wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any concrete points or just snark?

This is the only report I know about, but I'm 100% certain there are many more just a google search away: https://fas.org/man/eprint/contract-fraud.pdf Highlights: from 2013-2017, there were 1,059 criminal convictions of defense contracting fraud (1087 defendants total), including 678 individuals and 409 separate businesses. Further, there were 443 fraud-related civil cases. These are just the ones who got caught. It…

[deleted]

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

#67

Post by notahacker »

motohagiography wrote: post #12

I still don't see how any government granting committee can outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy investment community. As described, the risks I see are that, it has the incentives for a patronage slush fund, there will be selection bias to hedge political risk around pe…

VC has quite specific expectations for an opportunity: the company that develops the service enjoying massive growth (or a massive strategic acquisition) within a decade or so. VCs weren't competing to fund Apollo missions or poverty reduction and not because nobody wanted them.

Government can invest in projects which have different types of return: projects which are only beneficial or more beneficial if given away for free, projects which will take a lot longer than a decade to come to fruition, projects which are important to government social objectives but just not big enough commercial markets to be interesting to VC and projects which the government will be the only customer for so might as well cut the VC middleman out. Even on a purely financial return basis, the VC captures only captures the part of the return the portfolio company can charge for: the government collects the tax receipts from everyone who benefits in the sector including competitors who copy, and doles out resources to the entire supply chain and consumers too/

Sure, making it secret certainly increases patronage slush fund potential but it's not like that isn't already there, or like VCs are perfectly efficient investment machines who never consider their network or biases before spending LP funds, or had much role in many of last century's significant inventions.

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

#68

Post by tinktank »

motohagiography wrote: post #12

I still don't see how any government granting committee can outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy investment community. As described, the risks I see are that, it has the incentives for a patronage slush fund, there will be selection bias to hedge political risk around pe…

> I still don't see how any government granting committee can outperform hundreds of private venture funds competing for exposure to new opportunities. Even if you have a government dept. of 10x geniuses, they don't scale to compete with a healthy investment community.

Isn't the difference that VCs are looking for short-to-medium term opportunities as they want a return on capital? Presumably gvt funding means riskier projects can be undertaken.

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

#69

Post by parkersweb »

richrichardsson wrote: post #55
mcny wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If it was supporting pure research - finding great researchers and freeing them from the grant treadmill - I'd be supportive, but this doesn't sound like that. Same here. I am all for more research but we want more transparency, not less. > Ministers will announce plans tomorrow for an £800 million scientific research agency legally entitled to invest in projects that are likely to fail and which will be exempted f…

> Why would they need to be exempt from freedom of information? So no-one can find out where the best part of a billion pounds went?

And specifically no-one can tie that billion pounds to the business interests of ministers or their family members...
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