[HN Gopher] When RAND made magic in Santa Monica
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When RAND made magic in Santa Monica
Author : mitchbob
Score : 33 points
Date : 2024-07-01 19:48 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (asteriskmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (asteriskmag.com)
| Animats wrote:
| Gen. LeMay was in charge of RAND? Didn't know that. He was the
| "bomb them back to the Stone Age" general.
|
| The USAF was insanely well funded in the 1950's. The military got
| about 40% of the US government budget back then. The USAF bought
| most of the world's transistors. They ran several ICBM programs,
| a bomber program, SAGE, and accumulated huge fleets of aircraft.
| Even the mediocre airplanes where produced in large quantity. The
| B-47, the first good jet bomber, was built in quantity 2,042. In
| comparison, only 744 B-52 bombers were ever built, and many of
| those are still in use.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| I recall that one of Rand's area of research was how a nation
| could survive a nuclear attack. They definitely nuclear hawks.
|
| The USAF may get less of the budget as percentage of GDP but
| I'd wager the budget might equivalent in absolute terms since
| US economy is larger.
|
| I think the real reason they have far fewer planes deployed is
| this: "The cost of acquiring and maintaining major posture
| components has tended to grow in real terms over time" [1] as a
| Rand Corporation report circa 1990 observed.
|
| [1]
| https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R380...
| p. 7
| BJones12 wrote:
| >The USAF may get less of the budget as percentage of GDP but
| I'd wager the budget might equivalent in absolute terms since
| US economy is larger.
|
| In 1952 the military budget was 41.4 billion. A CPI
| calculator [1] puts that at 486.98 billion today. The current
| budget is 910 billion [2]. So the military budget has doubled
| since 1952.
|
| [0] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-budget-
| mess...
|
| [1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-
| bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=41.40&year1=19...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_Unit
| ed_...
| moandcompany wrote:
| While people may like to call the RAND Corporation as an
| entity of "nuclear hawks," it seems a bit dismissive of the
| mission and nature of what the RAND Corporation was chartered
| to do.
|
| They were tasked, and encouraged, to apply their creativity,
| brain power, quantitative skills, to study decision spaces,
| future possibilities and analyze these to arrive at
| recommendations and methods for best achieving desired
| outcomes, as well as identifying and understanding blind
| spots in thinking. In the above context of nuclear war, I
| don't believe nuclear war was an organizationally desired
| outcome, however they had to contemplate it and its
| implications. This is the organization that concluded based
| on application of quantitative methods (e.g. game theory)
| that for example, pursuing a credible strategy of mutually
| assured destruction was objectively the best way to avoid a
| nuclear war.
|
| I recommend looking for references to the phrase "Thinking
| the Unthinkable" to get additional insight to some of RAND's
| studies.
| jdougan wrote:
| LeMay was a pussycat compared to General Thomas Power.
|
| > Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives?
| The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war
| if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I had an offer from them. Thankfully, I turned it down for Xerox.
|
| (this was much later than most of the events described in here(
| b20000 wrote:
| what was the reason?
| moandcompany wrote:
| (Disclosure: I once worked at RAND, but at a much later time in
| its history)
|
| RAND's heydays were during the period of WW-II and post-war
| period including the so-called Cold-war era.
|
| From my point of view, RAND during its golden days was very much
| like Google or Bell Labs during their peaks, with many
| historically prominent computer scientists and mathematicians
| having worked at RAND in some capacity. Several people I had
| worked with were there during the golden days and would reflect
| on them with great nostalgia...
|
| Back then, special names we use today like "computer science" or
| "data science" were not commonly used. In this era, this field
| was simply called "Operations Research" (i.e. the application of
| quantitative methods and data analysis to improve operational and
| strategic decision making). - Without going off course too much,
| I previously made the case that places like the RAND Corporation
| for all practical purposed invented the field of what we call
| data science today, but may so-called data science practitioners
| would not know what the RAND Corporation was, nor would many
| people at the RAND Corporation in modern times have connected the
| dots to recognize that they had pioneered this field.
|
| For anyone interested in reading more on the theme of applying
| quantitative methods / operations research in the area of US
| public policy, it's reading about the "Whiz Kids": -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen...
| relaxing wrote:
| _> One of my favorite past-times, particularly when conversation
| got too multi-voiced in the office, was to wander the corridors
| of the abandoned basement. The firm, it transpires, was in the
| process of constructing a brand spankin' new office building,
| right next door. The old one was going to be torn down. So it was
| in a state of, shall we say, disrepair. In fact, it looked as
| though they'd stopped doing anything with it, several years
| earlier.
|
| > But I found the basement irresistible. It drew me in like a
| tractor beam. Long, stale, sunless corridors, cracked linoleum at
| your feet, illumined by flickering fluorescent light-fixtures.
| Like something out of (or inspired by) Last Year at Marienbad.
| Nary a footstep now treads down those halls, which had overheard
| such secrets, hushed whispers, momentous occasions and portentous
| events.
|
| > One day, to my surprise, I turned the corner, and there,
| sitting in his cell, was none other than Manuel Noriega, the ex-
| dictator of Panama. Seeing as how I did not know him personally,
| but recognized him from his many media appearances, I hastened to
| introduce myself. "How are they treating you?" I asked. "Si si,
| not so bad. Every now and then some junior CIA type comes in and
| we do some more - what is it, water-surfing? Boogie-boarding? No,
| no, water-boarding. But it is more for his pleasure, than mine."
| I told him that the U.S. actually had given Panama the canal.
| "Yeah, I heard about that," he replied. "But how about all of the
| new peoples who are there now, think of all of the opportunities
| for a little friendly mordida!" I said I was gonna mosey on, but
| I'd be back. "Please bring me some of the CDs by the band Pink
| Floyd," he said. "They are like the thinking man's AC/DC - I got
| so sick of all that puerile metal crap they were blasting at me
| when I was in the compound." "Better than Sadam Hussein," I
| replied. "They got him in a spider hole, and it didn't look as
| though he was enjoying any music!" "They got Sadam, too?" he
| replied, querulously._
|
| - David Kronemyer, _My Days at RAND Corporation_
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080815050205/http://kronemyer....
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