Defense Science Board

He was a member of the Army Science Board, why he's the head of creative technology for Disney.

And he was on the Defense Science Board, advisory stuff for DHS, the Department of Homeland Security, the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel.

I don't know, pretty weird.

So he's really involved in this world of like intelligence military stuff.

We briefed DoD.

We briefed the Defense Science Board.

We briefed everybody that we could brief on, uh, you know, up to the secretary on what happened, and we- Presented a report that had lots of recommendations, um, on how to get after it.

But-

They're a full-fledged peer in many areas, and they are a super peer in some very mission-critical areas that should concern us a bunch.

Now, I had the opportunity to serve on the Defense Science Board industrial base study, and there were essentially three insights that came from that.

One, that the US defense industrial base is subscale compared to the Chinese industrial base, but we do have these anecdotes, like China builds 200 times the displacement in ships that the US does every year.

That's something that's gotta be fixed.

What is Project Peel and who is building it? Project Peel is a prototype transportable microreactor program run by the Strategic Capabilities Office, and BWXT Advanced Technologies of Lynchburg, Virginia, serves as prime contractor and builder.

The program began in two thousand sixteen after a Defense Science Board study.

The Strategic Capabilities Office issued a notice of intent for environmental review in March two thousand twenty and opened a two-year design competition among BWXT, Westinghouse, and X-energy.

BWXT won the prototype contract in June two thousand twenty-two in an award reported at about dollar three hundred million, with two years allotted to deliver a prototype to Idaho.

The grave, right.

[laughs] And so I'm just, you know, I, I often get, you know, critiqued, I guess, for being kind of like something between a steward and an advocate of, of the Pentagon, but like what exactly is, is like the, the successor of the Defense Science Board for, if not to do this? What exactly is ONA, if not to do this? What exactly are the service fives, if not to do this? What exactly is CAPE, if not to do this? What exactly is like the policy forces force development organization if not to do this.

What are FFRDCs for? I think there's like a legitimate critique.

Brian McGrath had this critique where like, you know, industry has a lot of ideas and, you know, often in the an-analytic processes department, what happens, especially at the joint level, right, whether it's joint staff or OSD-led processes, industry perspectives are often like appended or not appropriately incorporated.

Both of them have defense backgrounds.

President Caramello was on the Defense Science Board.

Dr. Diaz de la Rubia worked at Lawrence Livermore for much of his early career, as well as then at Purdue University is where they met.

When they came to Arizona, they both saw the capability that the university had to support national security, although it hadn't been a focus for the university in the past.

And people are finally awakening to that situation.

I had the privilege to serve on the Defense Science Board Industrial Base Study, which was a more than two-year effort that ended a little over a year ago, that really assessed the US industrial base and its application towards national security, but in particular, juxtaposed against the industrial base of China.

And it was through that study that we really had three findings.

One is that the US industrial base, particularly for national security, is subscale compared to China's.

I mean, obviously that's behind my r-

Yeah

... my area of expertise, but, um, as we looked at this very deliberately in the Defense Science Board, what we found was the Department of Defense, and there's a marvelous GAO report, General Accounting Office report, from July of 2025 that lays this all out.

Mm-hmm.

They were called the supermen of science.

And then things shifted from my understanding, and now the Defense Science Board, the DSB, inside the Pentagon, has kind of replaced the Jason scientists in relevance.

That's what I understand.

So probably the reason why the Jasons don't have a lot online is because where they were really most powerful was like during the Vietnam War.