Laban Coblentz

For the Renaissance philosopher, the perfect language would be that in which knowing the name of a thing equated to knowledge of the thing’s essential nature. This idea, however, did not result in precise writing (in the way that we think of preciseness), but in lavishly connotative language (as if the writer were trying to light up the essence of the idea from all sides). For the modern linear thinker, scientific prose of the time seems convoluted and obscure. Alchemical recipe books, in their description of unfamiliar processes, are nearly impossible to follow.

If God is one with Nature, but above man’s comprehension, then Nature is a mystery, and science will always be imperfect. If God has placed man over Nature, and objective investigation holds the key, then Nature is accessible, and science will eventually figure it out. It is as simple as that.

The distress that Relativism causes the classical physicist lies in its ambiguity; it does not deny that truth exists, but it does deny that truth can be comprehended (which, for the scientist, amounts to the same thing). The scientist’s white lab-coat is soiled; he is part of the experiment. Just as he was reaching shore (or so he thought), he is tossed back into the primeval soup.

We had identified passages from the Quran, the Talmud, the New Testament, the Bhagavad-Gita, etcetera, dealing with universal values such as integrity, charity, and faith. And that day we received news of the shooting of Amish schoolchildren in West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. Mohamed called me in to express his horror and his sympathy. He asked me how I thought the Amish would respond. The difference we would witness, I told him, was that the Amish would immediately forgive the shooter and demonstrate that forgiveness to the shooter’s family. In that moment, we both realized the importance of highlighting another universal value: forgiveness. I felt as if my Amish Mennonite background was reaching out to me again, this time in the nuclear context of the IAEA.

In a discussion with the Albany Business Review, Coblentz explained the design of the Center of Gravity's hybrid incubator-makerspace model as an economic development measure intended to counteract the “exodus” of young innovators from the regional economy. “We’re great at attracting them to our universities. We get them addicted to state-of-the-art equipment and laboratories and intellectual discourse. Then we watch them leave the region. It's economic lunacy.”

Fusion, the mass-to-energy conversion created by the high-speed collision of atomic nuclei, is the engine that powers the sun and stars. As Coblentz said to CNN, “What we’re really doing here [at ITER] is trying to build a star on Earth.” The technological approach, known as magnetic confinement fusion, has been demonstrated in hundreds of experimental machines over the past six decades, usually in the form of a tokamak or a stellarator. By constructing and demonstrating a full-scale facility, the ITER Tokamak will, as Coblentz puts it, “make the C.A.S.E. for fusion” as a Clean (carbon-free, minimal waste), Abundant (millions of years of fuel), Safe (inherently safe physics, no possibility of meltdown), and Economic (competitive cost per kilowatt-hour; elimination of the costs of conflict and competition that go with a petroleum-based energy economy) source of energy.

By mid-2016, project critics were becoming cautiously optimistic, noting the rejuvenated pace of ITER construction onsite and component manufacturing worldwide. Additional countries were expressing interest in joining the newly revitalized project, including, notably, Iran – which, as Coblentz noted to the Associated Press, highlights the exclusively peaceful nature of ITER and magnetic confinement fusion. By the end of 2016, ITER reported that all of the 19 major project milestones for 2016 had been met, on schedule and on budget.

In 2014, based in part on a $550,000 grant from the Empire State Development Corporation, Coblentz and the Center of Gravity launched a $4 million renovation of the Quackenbush, a long-vacant Victorian-era building in the heart of downtown Troy. In January 2015, the Quackenbush was approved for Start-Up New York designation with Hudson Valley Community College. On August 19, 2015, New York Governor Cuomo announced the opening of the new facility, characterizing the Center of Gravity as playing “a vital role in helping the Capital Region’s tech industry flourish.” In less than four years, the Center of Gravity had grown to support a broad range of companies, most focused on high-tech innovation, such as “a 3D printer manufacturer, a team of RPI grads making bacteria-killing light fixtures, and a company designing aquaponics systems for the Caribbean island of Dominica.” The Quackenbush would provide a new home for many of those companies.

In September 2015, shortly after the opening of the new Center of Gravity facility, Coblentz took a new position as head of communication at ITER, the full-scale nuclear fusion facility in Saint-Paul-lez-Durance, France. The largest, most complex multinational science and technology project in history, ITER is designed to demonstrate a self-heating or “burning” plasma, paving the way for the first commercial electricity plants powered by fusion.

Coblentz's research systematically traces the interplay between scientific reasoning and literary movements – particularly the use of symbol, myth, and language – from the mid-16th century to the present.

To illustrate this assertion, Coblentz examines the symbolism and pseudo-science applied to the archetypal “Other” – particularly to blacks and women – as England entered the 17th century:

Moving from the historical to the postmodern, Coblentz argues that similar irrational motivations continue to plague contemporary science, scientists, and science policy – irrationality traceable, in part, to an ongoing battle between science and religion or faith.

This epistemological struggle is also, for the individual scientist, a psychological (even a Freudian) battleground – a threat to the scientist’s view of himself. The Einsteinian’s insistent refusal to accept Bohr’s ambiguities is an insistence born of panic – the panic of the dispassionate objectivist (who is neither dispassionate nor objective except by his inherited white male tradition) forced to face a Void (or, if you like, a Womb) he cannot penetrate, forced to accept truth without explanation, a ‘non-material’ ‘non-thing’ ‘non-inhabiting’ ‘non-space’ that nevertheless demands acknowledgement (notice that language necessarily breaks down; there are no words, and therefore no tools of discovery).

These theories – drawing on Coblentz's divergent early background in communication, psychology, and nuclear physics – became the lens through which he came to view advanced science and technology. They would increasingly shape his career and particularly his public policy contributions in areas ranging from sustainable development and nuclear non-proliferation to higher education, technology transfer, and entrepreneurship.

For well over a decade, each nuclear power plant had been required to conduct a comprehensive probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) of their facility, but these assessments had largely remained on the shelf, as no method had been devised of incorporating them formally into nuclear regulation, operation, or maintenance. The “risk-informed, performance-based” approach, while still emphasizing safety performance as the bottom line, provided a system for prioritizing regulatory inspection and enforcement – as well as rulemaking and licensing – in accordance with the relative degree of risk of the associated nuclear systems, structures, components, and activities. The goal was two-fold: to provide a defensible basis for regulatory oversight, and to encourage nuclear power plant operators to focus their greatest attention and resources in areas of greatest safety significance.

The transition in regulatory oversight was slow to take hold and went through multiple iterations. But the incorporation of PRA made sense – not only to regulators but to their licensees, the nuclear operators – who found it consistent with the best industrial management practices. The longstanding mantra of making safety the highest priority now had a qualitative and quantitative basis. Maintenance scheduling and budgets now had a framework to ensure measurable improvements in safety performance. A “risk-informed, performance-based” system made it possible to improve safety while simultaneously increasing economic competitiveness.

I think what that represented for him – having been in Baghdad myself … finding many of the allegations, the points on which the U.S. and the U.K. were making their case to be inaccurate, it seemed very clear to [ElBaradei] that he was building the case for why there was … no imminent threat. And to have that overridden … was a real turning point. His backbone had always been very stiff; but I think this was the occasion on which he basically said, “Never again on my watch.”

Everything that you have seen and worked for over the past 30 years – how do you compress that into 20 minutes? What is really the message you want to send [to a global audience]? And we came back to the Iraq War because he had begun to think that the two twin themes of the UN, security and development, really were a single theme. … We were sitting in his office and [ElBaradei] said … “What the Iraq War should have taught us is that security and development are inextricably intertwined.” Where you have poverty and abrogation of human rights, you also often have inept governance, you have a circumstance in which people, as they see the inequity, and are not allowed to express their views, the result is a natural situation for fomenting not only humiliation and injustice but anger, and a sense of wanting to redress wrongs. So from that you have violence of multiple sorts: you have civil strife; you have a breeding ground for extremism; and ultimately, if the seeds are sown deeply enough, that is where we are seeing the pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.

In June 2013, Coblentz and the Center of Gravity were recognized by New York's Center for Economic Growth (CEG) with their 2013 Technology Innovation Award. Coblentz spoke to the CEG about his motivation for creating the COG:

There was a Facebook page that had been put out there by really a 20s-30s crowd in Egypt – “ElBaradei for President” – or something of that title…. And he realized that … he had something unique to offer, that he had this international credibility, that he had been accustomed to very high tension situations, that he had had this experience of standing in the gap with pressure from the US or the UK on the one hand, or from Iran or North Korea on the other hand, and managed to chart [an independent route]. This was something the young people found very appealing.”

The ITER machine is extraordinarily complex, designed to comprise more than 1 million components. This complexity is compounded further by the intricate funding and in-kind contribution of those components by the seven ITER Members – China, India, Japan, Korea, Russia, the United States, and the European Union – under the 2006 ITER Agreement. The benefit of this arrangement is that the major powers pool their best expertise, share the costs, and receive equal access to the intellectual property and technology spin-offs, much like CERN. The challenge, on the other hand, is managing such an arrangement. It is perhaps not surprising that the ITER project had encountered management shortcomings, cost overruns and delays. A sharply critical 2013 audit, leaked to Raffi Katchadourian at The New Yorker, called for urgent reform.

In 2012, Coblentz founded the Tech Valley Center of Gravity (CoG), an award-winning New York not-for-profit focused explicitly on the retention and growth of post-university professionals in New York's Capital District. With the support of a local group of inventors and entrepreneurs, Coblentz transformed an abandoned 5000 square-foot off-track betting facility into a MakerSpace, a member-governed "idea factory" outfitted for metalworking, woodworking, 3D printing, optics, biotech, robotics, electronics, welding, and textile work. The CoG welcomed artists, engineers, scientists, and "creators" from any discipline. It has experienced rapid growth in its first two years, acquiring more than 200 members and serving nearly 50 companies, and experiencing substantial support from municipal and State government agencies, private sector donors, academic institutions, and local NGOs.

Coblentz has frequently drawn attention to the degree to which non-technological factors, ranging from cultural nuance to geopolitics, have contributed to these crises. He collaborated with ElBaradei on The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times, a behind-the-scenes account of these nuclear crises, published by Henry Holt in 2011. The most eye-opening revelations in The Age of Deception, according to Coblentz, highlight “the degree to which political considerations by various governments trumped real avenues for diplomatic solutions.” Coblentz has described touring a munitions factory near Baghdad in the lead-up to the Iraq War, during which he observed Iraqi engineers forging 80-millimeter rocket shells. “The operator was using gloves and tongs to handle red-hot metal, but had no safety goggles; he was wearing sandals instead of safety shoes. Throughout the plant, the most sophisticated pieces of equipment, with labels from Siemens and other hi-tech manufacturers, were layered with dust.” The operators admitted that most of the equipment had not worked in years. There was no equipment maintenance program, nor were there spare parts. These engineering deficiencies were characteristic across Iraq. “The inference was clear: it was highly unlikely that Iraq had retained the necessary degree of engineering sophistication to build centrifuge cascades for uranium enrichment.”

Coblentz left RPI in September 2011 without public explanation, leading to speculation on the reasons for his departure. The Albany Times Union suggested that he had been “forced out for questioning Jackson’s leadership.”

While at the IAEA, Coblentz had continued to collaborate with his former boss, Shirley Ann Jackson, on science policy concepts and speeches. During Jackson's tenure as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, for example, she had worked with Coblentz on the theme of the “Nexus of Science and Society,” tracing the historical development of science policy and the role of scientists as authoritative sources in society. In late 2007, Coblentz left the IAEA to work with Jackson again as Chief of Staff and Associate Vice President of Policy and Planning at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), a research university in upstate New York where Jackson was the university president.

In 2005, the IAEA and its Director-General were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Coblentz has described working with ElBaradei on the Nobel speech:

According to Coblentz, the nuclear inspections in Iraq represented a turning point for ElBaradei and the IAEA. On the day that the IAEA was asked by the U.S. to pull its inspectors out of Iraq, in advance of the March 2003 bombing, ElBaradei altered the draft of a speech he was about to deliver to the IAEA Board of Governors, adding a quote from Adlai Stevenson: “There is no evil in the atom; only in men’s souls.”

Coblentz continued to work closely with his former boss, Mohamed ElBaradei, during his time at RPI. In addition to collaboration on The Age of Deception, Coblentz assisted ElBaradei on op-eds and articles criticizing the Mubarak regime in Egypt. During the early days of the Egyptian Revolution, Coblentz and other IAEA colleagues of ElBaradei contradicted the notion that ElBaradei had only recently become engaged in Egyptian politics, saying he had never relinquished his focus on human rights deficiencies in his home country. Coblentz noted that ElBaradei had first confronted Mubarak in early 2003, during the lead-up to the Iraq War, as well as on subsequent encounters.

Coblentz and Landy worked with Lieberman as well as with Senator Fred Thompson (the Committee Chairman) and his colleagues to distil the ideas into a coherent framework. Coblentz then prepared the initial draft legislation. By this time, Lieberman had been recruited by Vice President Al Gore as his running mate in the U.S. Presidential election, and the e-Government initiative was temporarily set aside; however, after the unsuccessful bid for the presidency, Lieberman introduced the legislation. The result was the E-Government Act of 2002, a transformative mandate for using information technology to improve the accessibility and cost-effectiveness of U.S. government services.

In August 2000, at the recommendation of his friend and mentor, E. Gail de Planque, Coblentz moved to Vienna to become an international civil servant at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). At the IAEA, he was the speechwriter and communication adviser to Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. He contributed to pivotal policy decisions, such as: ElBaradei's push to revive the international nuclear fuel bank (envisioned in Eisenhower's original “Atoms for Peace” initiative), as first articulated in an article in The Economist in late 2003; ElBaradei's support for the 2006 U.S.-India deal to revive exchange of nuclear technology, which was heavily criticized by the traditional safeguards establishment but strongly pushed by the Bush administration; and a series of high-stakes nuclear nonproliferation crises in Iraq, Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

The latter of these was the most significant for its long-term impact on the nuclear power industry. By this time, Coblentz's work had come to the attention of the new NRC Chairman, Shirley Ann Jackson, appointed by President Clinton in 1995, and he was working as Jackson's speechwriter and external relations adviser. A major challenge confronting the Commission was the counterproductive economic and safety impact of burdensome regulations that had accumulated over decades, coupled with continuing inconsistent safety performance at some nuclear facilities – which inevitably led to additional regulations. Under Jackson's leadership, Coblentz and his colleagues developed a methodology for incorporating risk into regulation, inspection, and enforcement. Jackson would come to call this “risk-informed, performance-based regulation.”

While citizens polled in the 1990s may be uneasy about Bill Clinton’s morals, few would articulate a belief that his extramarital activities would directly impact on the nation’s security. Not so in Renaissance England: the force and resonance of symbol demanded that Elizabeth I remain a Virgin Queen, her publicized chastity a virtual guarantee that the island kingdom would remain inviolate, her borders impenetrable to foreign armadas and other unworthy suitors.

Shortly after leaving Malone, Coblentz took another “forbidden” path, enlisting in the United States Navy, a decision that led to excommunication from his Amish Mennonite congregation. From 1983 to 1985 he studied reactor physics, nuclear propulsion engineering and radiochemistry at the Naval Nuclear Power School in Orlando and a small reactor prototype in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. This was his first exposure to advanced technology, a shift in focus that would impact his subsequent research and career. He then spent four years aboard the USS Aspro, a Sturgeon-class nuclear submarine. Coblentz has said that his first acquaintance with a nuclear weapon came via sleeping on one, referring to the makeshift bunks arranged atop the submarine's torpedo racking system where nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles were stored.

Despite pressure from his church leaders to be content with a high-school education, Coblentz pushed to attend Malone University, a nearby Quaker college, earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Psychology in 1982. At Malone, Coblentz took up journalism and fiction, becoming the editor of the campus newspaper and the literary magazine. He also dabbled in theater – a creative outlet that had been forbidden during his early years – taking leading roles in four consecutive university productions, and writing and directing his first play, The Playground.

Laban L. Coblentz (born July 21, 1961) is a writer, educator, science policy adviser, international civil servant, and entrepreneur. He is an avid proponent of the use of advanced technology for sustainable development.

Coblentz was raised in a pacifistic and insular Amish Mennonite community in Hartville, Ohio. Although the community as a whole was skeptical of higher education and advanced technology, Coblentz has described his father, Alvin S. Coblentz, as a "self-taught researcher, educator, and 'technologist' of sorts: a watch and clock repairman." A biography of Alvin describes his design of a mechanical device that enabled the operation of an automobile accelerator and brake with a single pedal, compensating for his physical disability and allowing him to get a driver's license. Coblentz has also spoken of his father's creation, in the mid-1960s, of a functioning radio in a wrist-watch case, an invention that was never brought to market because of Alvin's lack of familiarity with the US patent process. The family of eight subsisted on the $200 per month Alvin earned from publishing a conservative Mennonite periodical, The Fellowship Messenger.