Is DHS too focused on short-term R & D?

Business Week, as part of a series on Homeland Security, focused on whether DHS’s R & D budget is too focused on short-term threats rather than funding long-term basic research?

I’m not convinced that’s the right question: IMHO, if the Pentagon is now more focused on fighting insurgencies worldwide (which are sorta the terrorists’ lab for new techniques that might be applied in Peoria) shouldn’t DARPA, which focuses solely on R & D, has a budget that will always eclipse DHS’s, has a much-better established approach, and which already tackles long-range issues, be the focus of this kind of over-the-horizon r & d?

Seems to me that if DARPA’s mission also explicitly includes homeland security (PS: can’t we, as a New Year’s resolution, determine to come up with a less Third-Reichy type name for this field and the department? domestic security??) applications, that would be more appropriate for the long-term, basic research.

Be that as it may, the article mentioned one short-term application that hits my sweet spot, and will definitely win mention in this year’s highly-coveted Homies for the most promising homeland security apps for 2008, is Cell-All.It would create a ubiquitous, location-based chemical and biological threat warning system by building a sensor chip into cell phones. One developer of Cell-All technology, Gentag, claims it could have the reader for the sensors ready for market in as little as 18 months.Gentag’s corporate mission statement, BTW, is right on the mark:

“Gentag’s mission is built on the certainty (my emphasis) that consumers will increasingly turn to cell phones and other wireless devices for immediate, vital information (again, my emphasis) from product safety to medical diagnostics.”

Notice that, as with the other applications I’ve mentioned, the public would already be familiar with the technology during an emergency because it would also have day-to-day applications that improve their lives.

While still subject to the immediate objections that the cell network might be disrupted in an attack, it meets my stamp of the champ by making the cell phones that you and I already carry daily an integral part of threat detection and response. Cool!

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