The New York Times, reported Sunday, Hiding Details of Dubious Deal, U.S. Invokes National Security extraordinary fraud in defense contracting.
Gen. Victor E. Renuart, Jr. of the Air Force, former commander of the Northern Command is quoted as saying:
We’ve seen so many folks with a really great idea, who truly believe their technology is a breakthrough, but it turns out not to be.
OK, but the technology in question was alleged to detect messages in broadcasts from Al Jazeera. (I suppose something more than playing them backwards and hearing, “number 9, number 9, number 9, ….”)
The fact that some nut-job wraps up in a flag and proclaim they want to save American lives should not short circuit routine sanity checks.
Here’s one where topic maps would be handy:
Build a topic map interface to the Internet Movie Database that has extracted all the technologies used in all the movies listed.
Give each of those technologies a set of attributes so a contracting officer can check them off while reading contract proposals.
For example, in this case:
- hidden messages
- TV broadcasts
- by enemy
Which would return (along with possibly others): Independence Day.
That should terminate the funding review with a referral to the U.S. Attorney for attempted fraud or the local district attorney for competency hearings.
New technologies are developed all the time but non-fraudulent proposals based upon them can be independently verified before funding.
If it works only for the inventor or in their lab, pass on the opportunity.
BTW, a topic map of who was being funded for what efforts could have made the Air Force aware other departments were terminating funding with this applicant.
Caution: It is always possible to construct topic maps (or other analysis) in hindsight, that avoid problems that have already happened. That said, topic maps can be used to navigate existing information systems, providing a low impact/risk way to evaluate the utility of topic maps in addressing particular problems.