The Optimization Trap: Efficiency, Complexity, and Systemic Resilience
This interdisciplinary conference examines when advances in efficiency, automation, and coordination strengthen systemic resilience and when they instead create complexity, hidden dependencies, or the loss of structural margins. The inquiry grew out of spectrum-management concerns, draws lessons from other technical and institutional domains, and returns those insights to the spectrum community.
The conference is intended to frame an important and insufficiently examined problem, test it against experience, and identify questions that deserve further research and policy attention. It is not premised on the view that efficiency is inherently hostile to resilience or that a single institutional remedy is already known.
The “working conference” format is designed to empower all participants with an opportunity to shape both the discussion and the forthcoming agenda – which will be reflected in future Silicon Flatirons events and programming, such as the annual Flagship Conference in February 2027, follow-up roundtable discussions, interdisciplinary opportunities, and/or our next Spectrum Initiative conference.
Confirmed speakers include:
- Eric Burger – CTO, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative & Research Professor of ECE and Public Policy, Virginia Tech
- L. Jean Camp – Bank of America Distinguished Professor in Security Analytics, University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- John Chapin – Senior Fellow, Silicon Flatirons
- David Clark – Senior Research Scientist, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
- Monisha Ghosh – Professor, University of Notre Dame
- Dale Hatfield – Senior Fellow and Distinguished Advisor, Silicon Flatirons
- William Lehr – Research Affiliate, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
…with additional speakers to be announced soon.
Sessions
Welcome and Intellectual Framing
@ Wolf Law Building, Wittemyer Courtroom & Livestream
Keynote: Architectural Foundations for Resilient Systems
Senior Research Scientist, MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab
Testing the Proposition Against Real Systems
Discussion will shift focus from architectural principles to evidence and experience. Which efficiency improvements have also strengthened resilience? When have optimization or tighter coupling introduced hidden dependencies or brittle failure modes? How do designers account for incomplete models, uncertain operating conditions, and unanticipated stress? What makes a useful comparison to spectrum systems, and where do analogies break down?
Break
Keynote: Reflections Across Three Eras of Wireless Technology
Senior Fellow and Distinguished Advisor, Silicon Flatirons
Why Systems Optimize the Way They Do
Discussion examines the incentives and measures that shape architectural and institutional choices. Which forms of efficiency are measured and rewarded, and which resilience benefits remain largely invisible? When does removing friction improve a system, and when does it eliminate useful options or safeguards? How do law, economics, organizational incentives, and technical metrics shape these tradeoffs? Can resilience be valued without turning every protective margin into another rigid optimization target?
Social Reception
@ Wolf Law Building, Foyer and Boettcher Hall
After the plenary sessions of the conference conclude, attendees and speakers are invited to Boettcher Hall for hors d’oeuvres, refreshments, and conversation.
Morning Remarks: From Diagnosis to Resilient Design
@ Wolf Law Building, Wittemyer Courtroom & Livestream
These remarks will connect the day-one architectural and institutional analysis to mission consequences and governance choices. How should decision makers act when dependencies and failure pathways cannot be modeled completely? What forms of decentralization, redundancy, diversity, or reconstitution are genuinely protective? How can institutions preserve resilience while continuing to pursue innovation and efficiency?
Mission Assurance Hidden Dependencies and Cascading Failure
This panel will consider the operational consequences of tightly coupled and shared-fate systems. Where do apparently independent systems share infrastructure, state, suppliers, timing, or control? When does commercial efficiency create mission-assurance risk for government or national-security users? What enables graceful degradation and rapid reconstitution? How can digital twins and other models improve preparation without concealing unmodeled dependencies?
Break
Concluding Discussion: Seeing What Is Next for Spectrum Management
Discussion will translate the interdisciplinary discussion into a forward-looking research and policy agenda. What should be measured to make resilience and emerging stress more observable? Which structural margins, forms of diversity, and recovery options matter in spectrum-dependent systems? How should resilience inform allocation, sharing, equipment authorization, receiver design, monitoring, and enforcement? What concrete cases should be documented and compared after the conference? Which questions are ready for policy attention, and which require additional research?
Networking Lunch
@ Wolf Law Building, Foyer and Boettcher Hall
Boxed lunches will be provided for registered attendees.