CHAPTER I - SCIENCE, DEFENSE AND THE AMERICAN ECONOMY

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of science, defense, and the American economy. By any measure, defense is a major claimant on American resources, both of money and of men. For most of the past two decades, defense expenditures have constituted more than half of the Federal Budget. Increasingly, the purchase of goods and services for defense has come to rely upon scientific and technical research and development to underpin the design and production of weapons. Through the mechanisms of contracts and grants to private institutions—corporations and universities—the Federal Government has underwritten the cost of most of this research and development needed for defense purposes. The result has been intense mutual involvement between the Federal Government and American scientists and engineers in which the procurement of research and development for national security purposes plays a major role. While the statistics indicate the magnitude of this mutual dependence, they must be heavily qualified to be properly understood. Motivations other than defense and sources of sponsorship other than the defense agencies of the Federal Government stand ready to absorb at least a significant part of the slack resources of scientific and engineering talent freed by an arms cutback in the light of the magnitude of accumulated unsatisfied needs in American society that research and development resources could serve.