UK clone Darpa faces tough test as government considers funding The Register

The UK's ambitious efforts to emulate the runaway success of US research and security company DARPA have just months to prove their worth, a parliamentary committee heard yesterday.

The Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or AIRA, was announced in 2021, but was not officially established until January 2023. A product of Conservative Boris Johnson's post-Brexit government, the agency is designed to funding transformational research, with a so-called high-risk, high-reward approach.

However, Lord Drayson, aka Paul Drayson, world electric land speed record holder and member of the Lords Science and Technology Committee, pointed out this week that although Aria's initial $800 million in funding would allow it to reach its target until the end of 2025/ In its 26th financial year, the Labor government is expected to decide on future spending next spring, when it announces the multi-year spending review, setting out plans for 202627 to at least 202829.

Drayson said the committee supported Aria and wanted it to succeed, but he questioned how it could further ensure its success when the government is set to decide its future well ahead of its parliamentary review, due in 2033.

Speaking to the Committee, Matt Clifford, Chairman of the ARIA, said: “The multi-year spending review will be a really important moment for the ARIA. I think we are starting from a position of strength with broad cross-party support from the start. “.

Clifford highlighted that Labor Sciences Minister Patrick Vallance was one of the founding members of ARIA's board of directors.

But last month, Britain's finance minister, Rachel Reeves, was forced to raise taxes and consider spending cuts in her budget as she struggled to balance the government's books, boost the economy and minimize public debt.

In such a climate, political leaders must weigh the public's willingness to fund high-risk research with no immediate return.

Speaking before the Lords committee, Clifford said: “We recognize that Aria, in the long term, must deliver excellent value for money, as any use of public funds must, but that value for money will be obviously measured in a different way, with a different risk appetite and over a different time period than many other uses of public funds. This is why we are so keen to establish fundamental ideas about what failure and success mean for ARIA, what proportion of them. we hope that our programs will be successful, because what we don't want is to find ourselves in a situation in a few years where people will say, “When [the] The ARIA program has failed, does this mean Aria is failing? »

ARIA CEO Ilan Gur outlined to the Lords committee plans the organization hopes will come to fruition.

They included a planned biology platform built on the UK’s “extremely forward-thinking” expertise in synthetic biology.

“The power of plants as a technology platform is simply incredible. What really sets this program apart is its boldness in goal. It aims to create, for the first time, a synthetic organelle [subcellular structure] within a plant system that can be maintained and transferred within species. There is related research, but the community seems to believe it actually exists,” he said.

Another project of note is a system that interacts with neural circuits to treat neurological disorders. “There is potential to develop a technology, a single technology insertion point, that could address this broad range of disorders that, in an integrated way, account for about three times as much heart disease in terms of burden,” he declared.

Aria is often considered the brainchild of Dominic Cummings, director of the Conservative “Vote for Brexit” campaign and, later, chief adviser to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Reports suggest that his WhatsApp handle once said: “Get Brexit Done, then Arpa (Darpa's predecessor).”

The Lords are not the first to examine Aria's funding pipeline. Even before Aria's launch, Sir John Kingman, former chairman of UK Research and Innovation, told the Commons Science and Technology Committee that Aria was a good example of departmental research spending that could be cut, put aside. or delayed.

“A high-profile example would be ARIA, which has been this big project of Boris Johnson's government, and yet we've been here for a few years under the Johnson government and it still hasn't started to happen,” he said. he declared to the deputies. in 2021.