rand.it.summer04

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TO SOME FIRST-RATE ANALYTICAL MINDS, HAVING INTELLEC-tual elbow room in which to carry out advanced research canbe a greater lure than money, power, or position. Academicinstitutions understand this, as do certain sectors of the cor-porate world. But military organizations, with their emphasison hierarchy, discipline, and protocol, have traditionally beenthe least likely to provide the necessary freedom.

During World War II, however, the Commanding Generalof the U.S. Army Air Forces, H. H. (Hap) Arnold, saw crea-tive engineers and scientists come up with key inventions suchas radar, the proximity fuze, and, of course, the atomic bomb.He knew that research and development would be even moreimportant in the battles of the future. So before the war end-ed, he began taking steps to ensure that the wartime spirit ofinnovation would continue after it was overand made sureto put a premium on creating a flexible and innovative intel-lectual environment.

5 0 I N V E N T I O N & T E C H N O L O G Y S U M M E R 2 0 0 4

That was the genesis of the originalthink tank, Project RAND, the namebeing short for Research and Develop-ment. (The term think tank was coinedin Britain during World War II andthen imported to the United States to

describe RANDs mission.) The project officially got under way

in December 1945, and in March 1946 RAND was launched asa freestanding division within the Douglas Aircraft Com-pany of Santa Monica, California (whose founder, David Doug-las, was a longtime close friend of Hap Arnold). A number ofother aeronautical enterprises had sprung up or flourished inSouthern California during the war, turning the region intoa hotbed of aircraft, space, and missile development, so itwas a natural location. Arnold made sure that RANDs agree-ment with the Air Force gave it two remarkable freedoms: Itcould initiate its own research as well as respond to Air Force

SATELLITES, SYSTEMS ANALYSIS, COMPUTING, THE INTERNETALMOST ALL THE DEFINING FEATURES

OF THE INFORMATION AGE WERE SHAPED IN PART AT THE RAND CORPORATION BY VIRGINIA CAMPBELL

How RAND Invented the Postwar World

Centralized,decentralized, anddistributed networks,from Paul Baransprescient 1964 book.


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Exemplifying RANDsmix of seriousness andinformality, scientistsin suits and ties siton the floor discussingpostnuclear strategywith Albert Wohlstette(center foreground) athis home in 1958.


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As a result, a certain mystique has always surrounded theRAND Corporation, with both supporters and detractors attrib-uting to it virtually limitless influence and achievements. Whatis undeniable is that RAND has played a central role in the crea-tion of critical technological developments since World War II,most prominently during the nail-biting era of the Cold War.

The extraordinary feature ofRAND that emerged quicklyafter its creation was its interdisciplinary approach to identify-ing, evaluating, and applying technology. The organization wasstructured along conventional academic lines, with departmentsof mathematics, physics, engineering, economics, psychology,chemistry, and aerodynamics. But under the leadership of Frank

Collbohm, a former Douglas test pilot and engineer, and excep-tional division heads like John Williams of the mathematicsdepartment, RAND sought to cross those lines at every oppor-tunity. Its mathematicians and physicists were urged to be con-

versant with the concepts its engineers andeconomists were pursuing, and vice versa.

As Arthur Raymond, the chief engineerof Douglas Aircraft, said in 1947, RANDstudied systems and ways of doing things,rather than particular devices, particularinstrumentalities, particular weapons, andwe are concerned not merely with the phys-ical aspects of these systems but with the

human behavior side as well. The result-ing intellectual crossbreeding bore epochalresults. And the fact that all ideas were fo-cused on concrete military challenges puta firmly pragmatic tug on RANDs creativeintellectual freedom.

The organizations very first report, Pre-liminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship, was issued in May of1946, within months ofRANDs creation.It set an immediate precedent, serving asa model of how orchestrated ideas couldforcefully shape the development of tech-

nology in several different areas. The reportwas a detailed engineering feasibility studyfor a proposed satellite. It spelled out whysuch a vehicle should be developed: Spacewas the future; the Air Force should con-sider space its natural habitat; space offeredtremendous advantages in reconnaissance,communications, and weather forecasting.It noted that technologies for launching intospace, conducting activities in space, and de-orbiting were within reach.


Franklin R. Collbohm, aformer Douglas engineerand RANDs firstpresident, in his office.

A MYSTIQUE HAS ALWAYS SURROUNDED RAND, WITH VIRTUALLY LIMITL

requests, and it could turn down Air Force proposals that itbelieved were inappropriate to the strengths of its 200 staffresearchers.

Today the RAND Corporation, as it has been known sinceit became independent of Douglas in May 1948, is a nonprofitorganization with more than 800 researchers. It performs re-search for many sponsors besides the Air Force, most of themnonmilitary. Throughout its history it has conducted innu-merable studies, often with world-changing results, involvingtechnologies both military and civilian. Some of its most ex-ceptional work, though, has gone unsung, for a number of rea-sons. First, RANDs work consists of ideas and assessments,

rather than inventions or manufactured goods. Second, a goodpart of its most technologically interesting research has beendone under secret classification. And third, RANDs preferredpublic stance has always been one of understatement.


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The report was solid in its engineering,recommending parallel studies on alcoholliquid oxygen and liquid hydrogenliquidoxygen as propellants, specifying a max-imum desirable acceleration rate, andmaking a case for multiple-stage rockets.It was prophetic in other respects aswell: It specifically defined areas of utilityand speculated, for example, that in thefuture, satellites would be used to guide missiles to targets.

Preliminary Design for a World-Circling Spaceship wasso direct and clear that it jump-started the minds of those

within the Air Force who would, in the crucial years to come,push a host of space initiatives through the natural resistancethat radical and expensive proposals engender. In a follow-uppaper, the RAND analyst James Lipp remarked: Since mas-tery of the elements is a reliable index of material progress,the nation which first makes significant achievements in spacetravel will be acknowledged as the world leader in both mili-tary and scientific techniques. To visualize the impact on theworld, one can imagine the consternation and admiration thatwould be felt here if the United States were to discover sud-denly that some other nation had already put up a success-ful satellite. This is, of course, what happened a decade later,when the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik satellites. Fortu-

nately, RANDs first report had provoked the developments thatlet the United States respond quickly after the Soviet Unionsinitial success in space.

RANDS INTERDISCIPLINARY PHILOSOPHY WAS SO ESSEN-tial to its functioning that it became the driving concernin the architecture of the purpose-built facility RAND

moved into in 1953. John Williams had planned the layout ofthe building to heighten the probability that researchers fromdifferent fields would come face-to-face in the course of theirdaily activities. From the outside, RANDs headquarters had afunctional, unremarkable mid-century look. Inside, however,the small, quiet offices in which analysts worked (there wereno traditional laboratories, since RAND was devoted to pencil-and-paper research) were arranged in a two-floor grid arounda set of square outdoor courtyards. It was impossible for anyeconomist or psychologist to go far without encountering aphysicist or engineer, which meant that theoretical constructsgot steadily confronted with the shaping forces of economicreality, human behavior, and utilitarian concerns.

Meanwhile, the interdisciplinary approach was yielding con-crete results. A researcher named Ed Paxson used the term sys-tems analysis to describe the process of analyzing not just amilitary operation but the entire complex of activities in which

S U M M E R 2 0 0 4 I N V E N T I O N & T E C H N O L O G Y 5

INFLUENCE ATTRIB UTED TO IT.

the operation occurs. Its widely takenfor granted today, but until the concepof systems analysis was defined and re

peatedly demonstrated, people didnthink that way, especially people in

military institutions. The mathematical logician who would become RANDs most influential analyst, Albert Wohlstetter, pusystems analysis to work in a study that realigned U.S. defenspolicy and determined the direction in which defense-driventechnological inquiry would turn.

The Air Force had asked RAND to define the best possiblbasing scheme for the planes that would drop nuclear bombon the Soviet Union in the event of war. In its request, the AiForce was assuming that its bombers would be striking preemptively in response to an extremely imminent threat. But suppose, said Wohlstetter, you start by looking at how you would

survive a first strike from the Soviet Union and then see whathat means for bombers, bases, and the long list of other factors that suddenly come into play. Americas overwhelmingbut short-livednuclear superiority was probably part of threason the Air Force had ignored the danger of a surprise attackso soon after Pearl Harbor. In any case, Wohlstetter (whoswife, Roberta, was a RAND researcher and historian workinon what would be a classic early study of Pearl Harbor) wrota report that provoked a huge change, affecting everything fromspecific mechanical procedures to the entire orientation ostrategic policy.

On the simplest level, it established aerial refueling of thstrategic bomber force as a routine practice. Wohlstetterstudy made clear that strategic bombers should be based securely within the continental United States and not in Europewhere they would be vulnerable to attack themselves. Thimade in-flight refueling a must. Wohlstetters work also gavhigh-profile urgency to technologies that enhanced the survivability of military assets, including communications.

In work that ran parallel to Wohlstetters, the RAND analysBruno Augenstein, who had come to Santa Monica in 1949 fromPurdue University, established the technical foundation for thAir Forces accelerated development of intercontinental ballistimissiles (ICBMs). Essentially, he joined the idea of the nuclea

RANDs Santa Monicaheadquarters, designedto promote interaction

between disciplines.


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UST BUY WHAT THEY WANTED.


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The technologies involved in bringing this offincludingrocket propulsion, television cameras, and electronic trans-missionwere in various stages of development, some suffi-ciently short of maturity to give the Air Force pause. In gen-eral the Pentagon put far greater trust in spy planes, but theAir Force allowed RAND to continue its work on space re-connaissance.

ONE IM PO RTA NT E LEMEN T THAT PRO JECT FEED BA CK

envisioned was the use of magnetic-tape storage to holdvideo images until the satellite flew over a point where

they could be transmitted back to earth. As part of the study,

RAND contracted with a small California company calledAmpex Corporation that was doing groundbreaking work onvideo recording and magnetic tape. RANDs support spurredon Ampexs efforts, which proved crucial to the developmentof the commercial video-recording industry we have today.

The RAND researchers Amrom Katz and Merton Davies tire-lessly briefed decision makers on Project Feed Back, continu-

ing to argue in favor of space as a recon-naissance arena for the Air Force. RANDs1954 Project Feed Back report becamethe blueprint for the development of anAir Force space reconnaissance vehicle,

and the contract for the vehicle,

identified as WS-117L, went toLockheed in 1956.

Back at RAND, Katz and Da-vies watched as electronic trans-mission difficulties began to bogdown progress on WS-117L. Buttheir colleague Richard Raymondhad suggested a design that didnot use a video camera and hencedid not require video storage ortransmission. It used conventionalphotography and depended ona re-entry vehicle that would be

deorbited to bring film back formidair retrieval. As outlandish asthe idea sounded, it required onlytechnologies that were already de-veloped. Re-entry technologybasically the search for an ade-quate heat shieldhad progressedquickly under the impetus ofICBM research. And the midairfilm-retrieval procedure had al-ready been shown to work in the

Million Random Digits With 100,000 Normal Deviates .(According to RAND legend, the latter half of the title causedthe book to be catalogued under Psychology by the New YorkPublic Library.)

RAND developed its collection of random numbers by firstbuilding a machine, basically an electronic roulette wheel, togenerate them and then subjecting the results to rerandom-ization and severe testing to weed out any unintentional pat-terns. RAND needed the numbers for the vast assortment ofprobability procedures that its research called for. The restof the world needed them too, for everything from pollingto sociological surveys. In a slightly more esoteric application,

there is the story of the submarine commander who kept A Mil-lion Random Digits next to him when his sub was on patrolduty for use in setting his evasion courses. The book wentthrough three printings by 1971, stood the test of time as astandardized text, and was reprinted anew in 2001. WithinRAND, the joke about this surprise classic is that it is perhapsthe only case in which a random misprint would not be con-sidered an error.

RANDs work on reconnaissance, which began in its earli-est years and continued for decades, resulted in some of itsmost impressive accomplishments. The organizations stud-ies in infrared detection in the early 1950s led directly to thespace-based early-warning sys-

tem against Soviet attack. RANDresearchers verified by calcula-tion that sensors could detectthe exhaust plume of a rocketsitting on a launch pad.

Only since the mid-1990s, withthe declassification of work fromthe 1950s, has RANDs most in-teresting work in space reconnais-sance been put in perspective.Back in 1946 RAND was avidlytouting the importance of spacevehicles when the rest of the

world looked upon such notionsas mere fodder for Hollywood.In the early 1950s the RAND re-searcher James Lipp led ProjectFeed Back, which made a pas-sionate case for the feasibility ofa reconnaissance system in whichorbiting television cameras wouldtransmit back to earth electronicdata, giving the Air Force real-time images of enemy assets.

COLD WAR CONSIDERATIONS PLAYED DIRECTLY INTO RANDS ROLE IN D


An illustration fromRANDs first report,on a world-circlingspaceship, in 1946.


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on ARPA projects in 1969, and over the following decades itgradually shed its military orientation to become the Internetwe know today.

Just as consequential as RANDs contributions to the Inter-net were its accomplishments in computer software, particu-larly the software it developed for linear programming. Linearprogramming (withprogrammingused in the sense of plan-ning or allocation, not as a reference to computing) basicallyinvolves finding the optimum value for a multivariable func-tion governed by a system of linear equations. One classic prob-lem involves designing a diet that will contain specified mini-mum levels of certain nutrients. Given an assortment of pos-

sible foods, along with their prices and a list of what nutrientsthey contain, what is the cheapest way to satisfy the constraint?

Many problems of this type comeup in management. The inputs maybe raw materials, personnel, or me-chanical parts, for example, and theconstraints may involve cost, time,

weight, or some other limiting factor.Linear-programming problems can be expressed using ma-

trices and vectors and handled with the techniques of linearalgebra, but since they are usually underdetermined (that is,there are fewer constraints than variables), the standard meth-ods of solving exact systems of equations do not apply. In thelate 1940s George Dantzig ofRAND developed the simplexmethod for solving linear-programming problems. In essence,it involves expressing the set of all allowable solutions as a poly-hedron and going from one vertex to another until the opti-mum solution appears.

The simplex method was indeed simple, and it was brilliant.Industrial processes, management planning, and many othercomplex situations that could be formulated as linear-program-

and tell the node it had just come from to avoid sending anyfurther blocks that way. When all the blocks reached their des-tination, they were reconstituted into a message.

Barans idea was a brilliant inspiration to those who under-stood the concept of digital technology. But 40-odd yearsago the digital universe was little more than fantasy to a worldimmersed in analogue reality. The people in charge of the na-tions largest, farthest-reaching communication system, the tele-phone monopoly of AT&T, were analogue folk. AT&T evenrefused to listen to its own innovative research division, BellLabs, and turned down the Air Forces request for a study ofdigital network possibilities. Prodded by RAND, the Air Force

decided to do the work itself. Then the Department of Defenseintervened to decree that work of this type belonged exclusively

under the purview of the Defense Communications Agency, notthe Air Force. But the DCA wasnt interested in digital tech-nology, so nothing happened.

The instigation for the Internet ultimately came in 1966,when Robert Taylor, director of the Information Process-ing Techniques Office of the Defense Departments AdvancedResearch Projects Agency (ARPA, now known as DARPA), waslooking for a way to exchange computer files among research-ers around the country. Although Baran had briefed ARPAmany times on his network concept, the architecture that re-searchers settled on for the ARPANET was that proposed bythe British physicist Donald Davies, who in 1965 had indepen-dently reinvented the same technology.

Davies had coined the termpacket switchingfor his networkconcept and had presented briefings in the United States in1967. This turned out to be the right time for his ideas to geta hearing; Baran had come up with his own version of a net-work before the communications world was ready to thinkin digital terms. ARPANET began linking scientists at work


FROM A STRICTLYTECHNOLOGICAL STANDPOINT, THE RAND CORPORAT

RAND has published manybooks over the years,aimed at widely varyinggroups of readers.


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ming problems could suddenly be solved in a hurry with theaid of a computer. In a 1963 RAND report, Dantzig describedthe simplex method in action: To solve [the problem earlierdescribed] by brute force . . . would require solar systems fullof nano-second electronic computers running from the time ofthe big bang until the time the Universe grows cold to scan allthe permutations in order to be certain which is best. Yet ittakes only a second using an IBM-370-168 and standard sim-plex method software.

P

R EC IS ION AND ACC UR AC Y ARE D IFFERENT T HING S, OF

course, and any analytical solution, no matter how clever,

is only as good as the model used to derive it. In theexcitement that attended RANDs advances, some enthusi-asts got carried away and forgot this important truth. In anecho of Jeremy Benthams felicific calculus of the eigh-teenth century, ambitious social scientists tried to express ahost of amorphously defined social benefits and costswith mathematical equations and use them to makescientific policy decisions on economic, budgetary,and natural-resource issues. Robert McNamara, whohad been an enthusiast of RAND-style analysis as ahigh-ranking executive at the Ford Motor Company,tried to run the Vietnam War with models and com-puters, learning too late that unanticipated factors

without a variable in the equation can greatly alter theoutcome.

From a strictly technological standpoint, RANDsglory days ended sometime in the late 1960s. By then theAir Force had drawn significant benefits from RANDsemphasis on free inquiry, cross-fertilization, and systemsanalysis, and its own research activities had incorpo-rated these techniques. Other organizations and busi-nesses saw that RANDs research could be useful tothem, and they began offering subsidies for projects thathad nothing to do with the military. As the 1970s woreon, RAND shifted more and more from actively creat-ing the frontiers of technology to concentrating on pol-

icy analysis, military and nonmilitary. These studies haveranged far afield. One mid-1970s report, for example,suggested that some recovering alcoholics could safelydrink in moderation instead of abstaining completely.Another set of studies evaluated cost, safety, and envi-ronmental impact for a proposed set of storm barriersalong the Netherlands northern coast. More recent pub-lications have run the gamut from the arts to counter-terrorism.

RANDs policy-centered work has been impressiveand influential, but most of it has not occurred at the

GLORY DAYS CAN BE SAID TO HAVE ENDED SOMETIME IN THE LATE 1960S.

An Air Force officerpeers out from a room

used by umpires inRANDs war games.

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active frontier of technological advance. Both Willis Warand Bruno Augenstein have suggested that the time and plac(postWorld War II Southern California) in which RAND wacreated had a great deal to do with the intellectual leaps came up with. RANDs early reconnaissance research not onlprompted technological innovations in the military but alsspurred private-sector developments like video recording. Thawork was declassified only in the mid-1990s, and the nexdecades may well reveal other consequential research that caonly be hinted at now. In the meantime, the advances thacan be discussed, such as the work that Paul Baran did leading to the Internet, make a persuasive case that an organ

zation whose sole job is to generate ideas can promote thadvance of technologies with the power to change the life oan entire culture.

VIRGINIA CAMPBELL is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.

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