WEBVTT NOTE This file was generated by Descript 00:00:12.483 --> 00:00:16.353 Avdi: This is the Cash Flush, a programmer's audio scrapbook. 00:00:17.073 --> 00:00:22.203 This is episode 11, recorded Sunday, April 30th, 2023. 00:00:24.033 --> 00:00:29.073 Today I have some selections from chapter two of the Closed World 00:00:29.433 --> 00:00:34.933 Computers and the Politics of Discourse in Cold War America by Paul N. 00:00:34.983 --> 00:00:35.523 Edwards. 00:00:44.380 --> 00:00:48.700 For two decades, from the early 1940s until the early 1960s, the armed 00:00:48.700 --> 00:00:51.460 forces of the United States were the single most important driver 00:00:51.460 --> 00:00:53.020 of digital computer development. 00:00:53.755 --> 00:00:56.305 Though most of the research work would take place at universities 00:00:56.305 --> 00:00:59.785 and in commercial firms, military research organizations such as 00:00:59.785 --> 00:01:03.925 the Office of Naval Research, the communications security group, and the 00:01:03.925 --> 00:01:05.845 air comptroller's office paid for it. 00:01:06.295 --> 00:01:08.545 Military users became the proving ground for initial 00:01:08.545 --> 00:01:10.165 concepts and prototype machines. 00:01:10.765 --> 00:01:13.765 As the commercial computer industry began to take shape, the armed 00:01:13.765 --> 00:01:16.735 forces and the defense industry served as the major marketplace. 00:01:17.335 --> 00:01:20.335 Most historical accounts recognize the financial importance of this 00:01:20.335 --> 00:01:22.165 backing in early work on computers. 00:01:22.660 --> 00:01:27.130 But few to date have grasped the deeper significance of this military involvement. 00:01:27.789 --> 00:01:31.299 I will argue that military support for computer research was rarely benign 00:01:31.299 --> 00:01:35.019 or disinterested as many historians taking at face value, the public 00:01:35.019 --> 00:01:38.919 postures of funding agencies and the reports of project leaders have assumed. 00:01:39.249 --> 00:01:43.509 Instead, practical military objectives, guided technological development down 00:01:43.509 --> 00:01:47.469 particular channels increased its speed and helped shape the structure 00:01:47.469 --> 00:01:48.879 of the emerging computer industry. 00:01:49.479 --> 00:01:52.899 I will also argue, however, that the social relations between military 00:01:52.904 --> 00:01:55.959 agencies and civilian researchers were by no means one-sided. 00:01:56.439 --> 00:01:59.409 More often than not, it was civilians, not military planners 00:01:59.529 --> 00:02:02.529 who pushed the application of computers to military problems. 00:02:03.204 --> 00:02:06.984 Together in the context of the Cold War, they enrolled computers as 00:02:06.984 --> 00:02:11.574 supports for a far-reaching discourse of centralized command and control as 00:02:11.574 --> 00:02:15.564 an enabling infrastructural technology for the closed world political vision. 00:02:15.800 --> 00:02:18.770 Contracts with universities varied, but under most of them, the university 00:02:18.770 --> 00:02:22.070 provided laboratory space management and some of the scientific personnel 00:02:22.280 --> 00:02:24.050 for large multidisciplinary efforts. 00:02:24.560 --> 00:02:27.020 The radio research laboratory at Harvard employed 600 people, 00:02:27.290 --> 00:02:30.410 more of them from California institutions than from Harvard itself. 00:02:31.010 --> 00:02:34.550 MIT's Radiation laboratory, the largest of the university research programs. 00:02:34.940 --> 00:02:38.810 Ultimately employed about 4,000 people from 69 different academic institutions. 00:02:39.470 --> 00:02:42.380 Academic scientists went to work for industrial and military research 00:02:42.380 --> 00:02:45.734 groups, industrial scientists, assisted universities, the 00:02:45.734 --> 00:02:49.184 military's weapons and logistics experts and liaison officers were 00:02:49.184 --> 00:02:50.924 frequent visitors to every laboratory. 00:02:51.404 --> 00:02:54.614 The war effort thus brought about the most radical disciplinary, mixing, 00:02:54.704 --> 00:02:59.384 administrative centralization, and social reorganization of science and engineering 00:02:59.414 --> 00:03:01.094 ever attempted in the United States. 00:03:02.084 --> 00:03:04.844 It would be almost impossible to overstate the long-term effects 00:03:04.844 --> 00:03:07.934 of this enormous undertaking on American science and engineering. 00:03:08.474 --> 00:03:11.794 The vast interdisciplinary effort, profoundly restructured 00:03:11.794 --> 00:03:13.234 scientific research communities. 00:03:13.774 --> 00:03:17.614 It solidified the trend to science-based industry already entrenched in the 00:03:17.614 --> 00:03:21.064 inter-war years, but it added the new ingredient of massive government 00:03:21.064 --> 00:03:22.474 funding and military direction. 00:03:22.984 --> 00:03:26.824 M I t, for example, emerged from the war with a staff twice as large as 00:03:26.829 --> 00:03:30.754 it had before the war, a budget in current dollars, four times as large, 00:03:30.784 --> 00:03:35.734 and a research budget 10 times as large, 85% from the military services 00:03:35.734 --> 00:03:37.694 and their nuclear weaponeer, the AEC. 00:03:38.344 --> 00:03:42.484 Eisenhower famously named this new form the military industrial complex. 00:03:42.814 --> 00:03:46.294 The nexus of institutions is better captured by the concept of the iron 00:03:46.294 --> 00:03:51.454 triangle of self-perpetuating academic, industrial, and military collaboration. 00:03:53.104 --> 00:03:56.554 Almost as important as the institutional restructuring was the creation of an 00:03:56.554 --> 00:04:00.244 unprecedented experience of community among scientists and engineers. 00:04:00.494 --> 00:04:04.414 Boundaries between scientific and engineering disciplines were routinely 00:04:04.414 --> 00:04:07.894 transgressed in the wartime labs, and scientists found the chance 00:04:07.894 --> 00:04:11.134 to apply their abilities to create useful devices profoundly exciting. 00:04:11.569 --> 00:04:14.839 Connections formed during the war became the basis, as we will see 00:04:14.844 --> 00:04:18.829 over and over again for enduring relationships between individuals, 00:04:19.069 --> 00:04:21.649 institutions, and intellectual areas. 00:04:23.014 --> 00:04:27.094 With the war's end, some corporate funding became available for computer research. 00:04:27.274 --> 00:04:30.934 A few of the wartime computer pioneers such as ENIAC engineers, Mauchly and 00:04:30.934 --> 00:04:33.154 Eckert, raised commercial banners. 00:04:33.484 --> 00:04:36.904 The company they formed developed the BINAC, the first American stored program, 00:04:36.904 --> 00:04:40.714 electronic computer, and then the univac, the first American commercial computer. 00:04:41.299 --> 00:04:43.789 But military agencies continued in one way or another to 00:04:43.789 --> 00:04:45.079 provide the majority of support. 00:04:45.439 --> 00:04:48.349 How much military money went to post-war computer development? 00:04:48.799 --> 00:04:52.369 Because budgets did not yet contain categories for computing, an exact 00:04:52.369 --> 00:04:53.719 accounting is nearly impossible. 00:04:54.064 --> 00:04:56.374 Kenneth Flamm has nevertheless managed to calculate rough 00:04:56.374 --> 00:04:59.164 comparative figures for the scale of corporate and military support. 00:04:59.724 --> 00:05:02.734 Flamm estimates that in 1950, the federal government provided between 00:05:02.734 --> 00:05:06.844 15 and 20 million current per year, while industry contributed less than 00:05:06.844 --> 00:05:09.664 5 million, 20 to 25% of the total. 00:05:10.024 --> 00:05:13.624 The vast bulk of federal research funds at that time came from military agencies. 00:05:14.509 --> 00:05:17.419 In the early 1950s, the company funded share of r and d began to 00:05:17.419 --> 00:05:20.239 rise to about 15 million by 1954. 00:05:20.509 --> 00:05:24.709 But between 1949 and 1959, the major corporations developing computer 00:05:24.709 --> 00:05:28.819 equipment, ibm General Electric, bell Telephone, Sperry Rand, Raytheon, and 00:05:28.819 --> 00:05:32.929 RCA still received an average of 59% of their funding from the government. 00:05:33.289 --> 00:05:35.239 Again, primarily from military sources. 00:05:35.599 --> 00:05:39.799 The first commercial production computer, Remington Rand's UNIVAC I embodied the 00:05:39.804 --> 00:05:42.649 knowledge Eckart and Mauchly had gained from working on the military funded 00:05:42.679 --> 00:05:46.119 ENIAC and later on their BINAC, which had been built as a guidance computer 00:05:46.119 --> 00:05:48.609 for Northrop Aircraft's Snark Missile. 00:05:48.969 --> 00:05:51.879 Though much of the funding for Eckart and Mauchley's project was channeled through 00:05:51.879 --> 00:05:55.559 the census department, which purchased the first UNIVAC one, the funds were 00:05:55.559 --> 00:05:57.729 transferred to census from the Army. 00:05:57.948 --> 00:06:01.398 Flam also concludes that even when R&D support came primarily from 00:06:01.398 --> 00:06:04.848 company sources, it was often the expectation of military procurements 00:06:04.908 --> 00:06:06.888 that provided the incentive to invest. 00:06:07.158 --> 00:06:10.578 For instance, IBM's first production computer, the 7 0 1, also known as 00:06:10.578 --> 00:06:15.558 the Defense Calculator, first sold in 1953, was developed at IBM's expense, 00:06:15.558 --> 00:06:19.668 but only with letters of intent in hand from 18 Department of Defense customers. 00:06:20.164 --> 00:06:23.374 Despite the extraordinary vitality of commercial r and d after the early 00:06:23.374 --> 00:06:27.604 1960s, the Pentagon continued to dominate research funding in certain areas. 00:06:27.964 --> 00:06:31.504 For example, almost half of the cost of semiconductor R&D between 00:06:31.504 --> 00:06:35.644 the late 1950s and the early 1970s was paid by military sources. 00:06:36.244 --> 00:06:39.484 Another instance was the nurturance of artificial intelligence by the 00:06:39.489 --> 00:06:44.134 Advanced Research Projects Agency arpa, later called darpa, the Defense 00:06:44.134 --> 00:06:48.064 Advanced Research Projects Agency, which extended from the early 1960s 00:06:48.064 --> 00:06:49.154 until the end of the Cold War. 00:06:49.819 --> 00:06:53.179 AI for over two decades, almost exclusively a pure research area 00:06:53.179 --> 00:06:56.479 of no immediate commercial interest received as much as 80% of its 00:06:56.479 --> 00:06:58.129 total annual funding from arpa. 00:06:58.609 --> 00:07:01.429 ARPA also supported such other important innovations as time 00:07:01.429 --> 00:07:02.779 sharing and computer networking. 00:07:03.109 --> 00:07:07.929 In 1983, with its strategic computing initiative, DARPA led a concerted Pentagon 00:07:07.929 --> 00:07:11.299 effort to guide certain critical fields of leading edge computer research, 00:07:11.629 --> 00:07:15.169 such as artificial intelligence, semiconductor manufacturer, and parallel 00:07:15.169 --> 00:07:19.279 processing architectures in particular directions favorable to military goals. 00:07:19.768 --> 00:07:23.608 The automation theory alone explains neither the urgency, the magnitude, 00:07:23.638 --> 00:07:26.818 nor the specific direction of the US military effort in computing. 00:07:27.328 --> 00:07:30.238 Rather than explain how contests over the nature and potential 00:07:30.243 --> 00:07:33.328 of computers were resolved, the utilitarian view writes history 00:07:33.333 --> 00:07:37.198 backwards using the results of those contests to account for their origins. 00:07:37.873 --> 00:07:41.053 Nor does the utilitarian view explain the pervasive military 00:07:41.053 --> 00:07:45.103 fascination with computers epitomized by general Westmoreland's speech 00:07:45.103 --> 00:07:46.543 in the aftermath of Vietnam. 00:07:47.053 --> 00:07:51.073 "I see ", he proclaimed, "an army built into and around an integrated 00:07:51.073 --> 00:07:55.363 area control system that exploits the advanced technology of communications, 00:07:55.513 --> 00:07:59.593 sensors, fire direction, and the required automatic data processing, a 00:07:59.598 --> 00:08:03.063 system that is sensitive to the dynamics of the ever changing battlefield. 00:08:03.303 --> 00:08:06.843 A system that materially assists the tactical commander in making 00:08:06.843 --> 00:08:08.313 sound and timely decisions." 00:08:08.958 --> 00:08:11.988 This is the language of vision and technological utopia, 00:08:12.198 --> 00:08:13.548 not practical necessity. 00:08:13.788 --> 00:08:17.778 It represents a dream of victory that is bloodless for the victor of battle 00:08:17.778 --> 00:08:22.098 by remote control of speed, approaching the instantaneous and of certainty 00:08:22.098 --> 00:08:23.538 in decision making and command. 00:08:23.838 --> 00:08:27.588 It is a vision of a closed world, a chaotic and dangerous space rendered 00:08:27.593 --> 00:08:32.388 orderly and controllable by the powers of rationality and technology. 00:08:42.179 --> 00:08:46.529 Again, that was from the Closed World Computers and the Politics of Discourse 00:08:46.529 --> 00:08:49.589 in Cold War America by Paul and Edwards. 00:08:51.239 --> 00:08:52.739 This has been the Cache Flush. 00:08:53.309 --> 00:08:54.029 Thanks for listening. 00:08:55.289 --> 00:08:59.079 You can find the show online at avdi.codes/cacheflush. 00:08:59.924 --> 00:09:03.554 And if you'd like to support this project, you can find my Patreon 00:09:04.234 --> 00:09:10.124 patreon.com/avdigrimm, or get yourself a graceful.dev membership. 00:09:10.424 --> 00:09:14.684 You can get two weeks free by using the coupon code cash flush. 00:09:15.434 --> 00:09:17.834 Once again, thanks for listening and don't forget to flush.