What to Cut and How to Cut? Historical Lessons from Past Reductions in the Intelligence Community

Under what conditions can the Intelligence Community cut its resources while still maintaining their effectiveness? What do past eras of reduction suggest about what to cut and how best to cut? The United States Government faces pressure to reduce its overall expenditures. This will likely spur calls to reduce the country’s foreign policy and defense budget. Under the current fiscal environment, these cuts will surely include the Intelligence Community, which grew rapidly over the last ten year’s. Prudent policymakers, therefore, should start thinking now about what they can cut and how they should implement these changes while still carrying out their missions effectively. This project will help the Intelligence Community think about these problems by examining the lessons learned from previous eras of reduction. The project will produce an article-length report as well as a briefing. Team members will brief the sponsor in their Washington, DC office.Rand Corporation's Intelligence Policy Cente

Laser Direct Write Synthesis of Lead Halide Perovskites

Lead halide perovskites are increasingly considered for applications beyond photovoltaics, for example, light emission and detection, where an ability to pattern and prototype microscale geometries can facilitate the incorporation of this class of materials into devices. Here we demonstrate laser direct write of lead halide perovskites, a remarkably simple procedure that takes advantage of the inverse dependence between perovskite solubility and temperature by using a laser to induce localized heating of an absorbing substrate. We demonstrate arbitrary pattern formation of crystalline CH₃NH₃PbBr₃ on a range of substrates and fabricate and characterize a microscale photodetector using this approach. This direct write methodology provides a path forward for the prototyping and production of perovskite-based devices