Cyberneticizing the American war machine: science and computers in the Cold War

Abstract

American victory in World War II was perceived to be due in large part to its scientific and technological superiority, best exemplified by the development of the atom bomb. Throughout the Cold War, scientific theories and methodologies were recruited even more extensively to weigh on military and strategic affairs. Cybernetics, along with operations research and systems analysis, sought to impose order and predictability on warfare through the collection, processing, and distribution of information. The emergence of the notion of command-and-control epitomized a centralizing approach which saw military organization purely as a vast techno-social machine to be integrated and directed on the basis of the predictions of mathematical models and the deployment of cybernetic technologies. Preparation for a nuclear conflict with the Soviet Union was the primary focus of this conception of warfare but it failed spectacularly the test of Vietnam, thereby dramatically revealing its theoretical and practical bankruptcy. Indeed, cybernetic warfare was deeply flawed in its restrictive assumptions about conflict, its exclusive focus on quantitative elements, its dismissal of any views that did not conform to its norms of scientificity, and its neglect of the risks of information inaccuracy and overload.

Notes

 [1] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers, 127–8.

 [2] Robin, The Making of the Cold War; Light, From Warfare to Welfare; Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon; Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn.

 [3] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers.

 [4] Wiener, Cybernetics, 55.

 [5] Wiener, Cybernetics, 55.

 [6] Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 95.

 [7] Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 8.

 [8] Heylighen and Joslyn, Cybernetics and Second-Order Cybernetics, http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/Papers/Cybernetics-EPST.pdf, 18.

 [9] Heims, Von Neumann and Wiener, 184.

[10] Dechert, The Social Impact of Cybernetics, 20.

[11] Quoted in Heims, The Cybernetics Group, 22.

[12] Quoted in Capra, The Web of Life, 62.

[13] Easton, A Framework for Political Analysis, 112, 128; Easton, A Systems Analysis of Political Life; Deutsch, The Nerves of Government.

[14] Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings, 185–6.

[15] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers, 12.

[16] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers, 15.

[17] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers, 15.

[18] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers, 7.

[19] Edwards, “The Closed World: Systems Discourse,” 138–9.

[20] Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 128.

[21] Edwards, “The Closed World: Systems Discourse,” 139.

[22] Levidow and Robins, “Towards a Military Information Society?,” 173.

[23] Westmoreland, “Address.”

[24] Edwards, “Why Build Computers?”

[25] Gray, Postmodern War, 95.

[26] Van Creveld, Technology and War, 239.

[27] Gibson, Perfect War, 23.

[28] Rochlin, Trapped in the Net, 204.

[29] Ghamari-Tabrizi, “U.S. Wargaming Grows Up.”

[30] Edwards, “The Closed World: Systems Discourse,” 143.

[31] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers, 206.

[32] Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 149.

[33] United States Army, Operations Research/Systems Analysis.

[34] Cummings, “How The World of OR Societies Began.”

[35] De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, 5.

[36] Rochlin, Trapped in the Net, 59.

[37] Beer, “What Has Cybernetics to Do with Operational Research?”

[38] Martin and Norman, The Computerised Society, 569.

[39] Clayton and Sheldon, Air Force Operations Analysis.

[40] Van Creveld, Technology and War, 194.

[41] Clayton and Sheldon, Military Operations Analysis.

[42] Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, 43.

[43] Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, 87.

[44] Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, 87.

[45] Thinking about the Unthinkable was the title of a book by notorious nuclear strategist Herman Kahn.

[46] Wohlstetter, The Delicate Balance of Terror.

[47] Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 138.

[48] Holley, The Evolution of Operations Research, 101.

[49] Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 166.

[50] De Landa, War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, 103.

[51] Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 169.

[52] Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, 254.

[53] Ghamari-Tabrizi, The Worlds of Herman Kahn, 48. Kahn echoed Enthoven's sentiment when he asked officers who were critical of his approach, ‘how many thermonuclear wars have you fought recently?’

[54] At http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/secdef_histories/bios/mcnamara.htm.

[55] Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon, 254.

[56] Edwards, The Closed World: Computers, 5.

[57] Eisenhower, Farewell Address.

[58] Van Creveld, Technology and War, 246.

[59] Van Creveld, Technology and War, 246.

[60] Perry, “Commentary,” 117.

[61] Wilson, The Bomb and the Computer, 114.

[62] Morris, The Fog of War.

[63] Gibson, The Perfect War, 156.

[64] Edwards, “Cyberpunks in Cyberspace.”

[65] Gibson, The Perfect War, 80.

[66] Kissinger, American Foreign Policy, 51–97.

[67] Gibson, The Perfect War, 22.

[68] Gibson, The Perfect War, 23.

[69] Mustin, “Flesh and Blood.”

[70] Van Creveld, Command in War, 239.

[71] Arquilla and Ronfeldt, “Cyberwar is Coming!”

[72] Gibson, The Perfect War, 367.

[73] Van Creveld, Command in War, 259.

[74] Herken, Counsels of War, 220.

[75] Clausewitz, On War, 140.

[76] Heuser, Reading Clausewitz, 170.

[77] Gaddis, Strategies of Containment, 84.

[78] Gibson, The Perfect War, 467.

[79] Foucault, Power/Knowledge, 82.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antoine Bousquet

Antoine Bousquet is a Lecturer in International Relations at Birkbeck, University of London, currently researching the relationship of science and technology to warfare. His latest publication is “Time Zero: Hiroshima, September 11 and Apocalyptic Revelations in Historical Consciousness,” Millennium Journal of International Studies 34, no. 3 (2006). Forthcoming is The Scientific Way of Warfare (Hurst, 2008).