1607 



research and education in the sciences would automatically reward society — • 

 would .stimulate innovation, and develop opportunities for an expanding econ- 

 omy — in addition to its having military implications. When their a{)peal was 

 heeded, beginning about 1950, a veritable explosion, scientific and technological, 

 took place. '2* 



ELEMENTS OF U.S. TECHNOLOGICAL STRUCTURE 



By 1970 the United States, combining a higli-consumption economy 

 with a heavy emphasis on scientific innovation, had built a techno- 

 logical structure that included the following principal elements: 



A large number of very large, efficient, highly productive, geographically 

 extended business enterprises with families of satellite suppliers of materials, 

 components, and specialized services, comprising complex, interconnected, 

 production-distribution-service enterprises; separation of business ownership 

 from business management; and a great increase in policy, planning, and admin- 

 istrative staff in the management of enterprises of all kinds. ^^^ 



The two decades foUowing the outbreak of the Korean War were a 

 period of great ferment, with intensive U.S. efforts in both military 

 and nonmilitary research and development. In his book about Amer- 

 ican technological dominance, The American Challenge (1968), French 

 writer J. J. Servan-Schreiber observes that from the launching of the 

 first Sputnik (October 1957): 



American power has made an unprecedented leap forward. It has undergone a 

 violent and productive internal revolution. Technological innovation has now 

 become the basic objective of economic policy. In America today the government 

 official, the industrial manager, the economics professor, the engineer, and the 

 scientist have joined forces to develop coordinated techniques for integrating 

 factors of production. These techniques have stimulated what amounts to a 

 permanent industrial revolution.'-" 



But accompanying the "leap forward" were some fumbling back- 

 ward and sideways steps, at least in the area of technological inputs 

 into American diplomacy. With the outstanding e.xceptions of the 

 highly successful Marshall Plan to restore European industry after 

 World War II and the U.S. role in the emergence of a new Japan, 

 and except also for the technological coup of the Berlin airlift, U.S. 

 employment of technology as an instrument of foreign policy enjoyed 

 limited success. The Korean War, and the Vietnamese conflict later 

 on, demonstrated "the serious, painful, and frustrating limitations of 

 technology in waging a limited war against a highly organized and 

 resourceful, if technologically unsophisticated, adversary." ^" The 

 Soviet Union achieved brilliant if temporary diplomatic advantages 

 with its unexpectedly fast development of fission and then fusion 

 weapons, and with the launching of Sputnik I. Subsequent world 

 admiration for U.S. space achievements "was tempered by reserva- 

 tions over U.S. inability to solve such domestic problems as pollution, 

 crime, and highway accidents . . ." i^s gome constructive interna- 

 tional applications of U.S. technology proved to have awkward side 

 effects: for example, the insecticide DDT pla^^ed an important part 

 in malarial control but came to be recognized as ecologically un- 

 desirable. Various nations, both developed and developing, became 

 concerned over the "brain drain" to the United States. (See Issue 



1-' Ibid., p. 023. 

 1" Ibid. 



'26 Ibid., p. (i2-l. 

 '■-' Ibid., p. (i2(). 

 12S Ibid., p. 027. 



