From secret bombs to hearts and minds

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

‘distorted’ the practice of American science; but her book Audra J. Wolfe’s Competing with the Soviets is a good sign for scholarship on American science in the Cold War: the field is mature enough to warrant an introductory synthe sis. And this particular synthesis is a pleasure to read. It i a trim, elegantly written, masterly, and accessible bun dling of what has become, over the last twenty-five years, a big and complex literature. The book should serve multiple purposes and audiences: as a teaching text, a prolegome non to deeper investigations of the literature (aided by a handy commentary on sources), and a smart summary fo the graduate student facing general exams. ‘The fundamental characteristic of Cold War science,’ in Wolfe’s judgment, ‘is the central role that the scientifi enterprise came to play in the maintenance of the nation state’ (6). The belief that America’s global leadership would spring from superior science and technology found wide acceptance during the Cold War era, and a staggering array of natural and social sciences were conscripted in the effort. How to capture a bird’s eye view of this compli cated scene? Wolfe does so thematically and more or les chronologically, with individual chapters devoted to majo topics of Cold War science. As she discusses in an opening chapter on atomic weaponry and secrecy, and a subsequen one on the military-industrial complex, the astounding success of the Second World War’s crash programs carved deep ambiguities into the postwar political economy o science. Everyone agreed that the federal governmen would be the major patron of American science – but who would sign the paychecks? The answer came unambiguous ly when military dollars almost immediately overwhelmed all competitors, a situation that would only intensify in the coming years. The already blurry line between civilian and military funding, and basic and applied research, wa increasingly smudged by the emergence of ‘hybrid institu tions’ (as Wolfe calls them). These included think-tanks lik the RAND Corporation, military-industrial-academic insti tutions like Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physic Laboratory, the Atomic Energy Commission’s system o National Laboratories, and numerous others. Three terrific chapters discuss the place of science in the wider American Cold War project – particularly after the Soviet launch of Sputnik mocked bland assumptions about the unchallenged preeminence of U.S. science. Wolfe claims ‘ideological differences’ (55) drove the Cold War, helping to explain the immense power that the image and prestige of science, and the spectacle of grandiose technological accomplishments, held within contemporaries’