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Rising to a new plateau

The future is never what you expect it to be

I keep thinking this is a super, extraordinary, exceptional place. A place that was created for a reason: to make a difference. A place that holds some really core inherent values that it can demonstrate to the country and truly be a place of unquestioned excellence in science and engineering. A place that’s a foundation for national security and a place where we have this impeccable way in which we operate, leading an enterprise that’s a model for the world.

The path to the future has to be one of change and transformation because the world is truly in a state of transformation.

Would we ever have thought:

• that natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina would have such a big economic and political impact as they have had?
• that the nation would adopt an energy policy embraced by both houses of Congress and signed at Sandia Labs by the President of the United States?
• that the nuclear weapons complex would come under such very intense scrutiny?
• that the national debt would be approaching nine trillion dollars and that the federal government would be operating in large part on what is money borrowed from our children and grandchildren?
• that the conflict in Iraq would be approaching the duration of World War II and would have an accumulated incremental cost to the defense budget alone of more than 300 billion dollars?

Would we ever have thought that the supremacy of our nation in science and engineering would be challenged? Yet it is, and today we face competition from workers who live just a mouse-click away in India, China, and dozens of other nations with well-trained, productive citizens and growing economies. We are fast losing our technological edge. To reverse that trend we will need to transform.

Recognizing the challenge, we at Sandia have begun a very deliberate journey to transform our operations to better support our missions. We are going to take it up a notch, to a new plateau of excellence. In the pages that follow, you will have the opportunity to learn what we’ve been doing this year to pave the way for these next steps. I have a sense that we can take all the things facing us and turn them into real opportunities and make a difference for our country. It’s probably a time like few others this laboratory has had where we can make a real contribution.

Thomas O. Hunter
Sandia National Laboratories
President and Director