677 



supported by the United States are still in military, atomic, and space 

 developments, and all are motivated by events outside the United 

 States or else support for them wanes. 



Professor Harvey Brooks of Harvard declares that national defense 

 is too often used as justification for doing what is needed to be done for 

 the good of American society. It was a "convenient route for doing the 

 things that needed to be done without the necessity of engineering the 

 large scale democratic consensus that would have been necessary had 

 the same things been done under civilian auspices." For example, 



"We backed into federal support of higher education while stoutly insisting 

 that we were only buying necessary military research results. We entered upon 

 school curriculum reform, long overdue, on the grounds that it was needed to 

 make our engineers and scientists better than their Soviet counterparts. We 

 laimched a gigantic interstate highway program on the grounds that it was needed 

 for national defense. We fostered the study of international affairs and the 

 development of foreign area research on the grounds that a great power needed 

 this knowledge to maintain its power position.^*^ 



It seems paradoxical that the United States, best equipped to apply 

 science and technology to the solution of man's global problems, and 

 credited with the highest development of managerial skills, has been 

 reluctant to devise and implement a positive technological strategy 

 of its own. There would seem to be no lack of opportimities : earth re- 

 sources satellites, ocean and ocean floor development, urban improve- 

 ment, recovery of resources from all forms of waste, the Oak Ridge pro- 

 posal for large agricultural-industrial-nuclear complexes, and many 

 more. 



One of the consequences of this "Other-Directed" syndrome in na- 

 tional technological strategy is that the United States has concentrated 

 its efforts on technologies characteristically remote from everyday 

 experience. It has supported the laser but not the science of processing 

 garbage. There are lags in the technological levels of a number of in- 

 dustries in the United States; such lags may in time impair the 

 credibility of the U.S. posture of world technological leadership. On 

 this point, one issue of U.S. technological strategy would seem to be 

 a conscious set of decisions as to the domestic technological gaps to be 

 closed or ignored. Wliat older technologies might be revitalized by an 

 infusion of fresh technological effort, such as the railroads, glass and 

 ceramics, coal, lumber, and textiles? "What would be the diplomatic 

 consequences of a vigorous technological effort in one, several, or all 

 of these fields ? 



And more generally, how strong or superior should the United 

 States aspire to be in technology ? It has been shown repeatedly in the 

 recent past that enormous outlays of public funds by the United 

 States to support a new field of research brought only a short-lived 

 technological advantage that quickly disappeared. Other nations came 

 into the act and duplicated the U.S. successes, wliile avoiding the fail- 

 ures and blind alleys that are an inescapable part of pioneering. 

 Clearly, there are added costs as well as benefits in the hard-earned role 

 of technological leader. The various fields of science and technology 

 may offer their own version of national "comparative advantage" such 



1*^ Harvey Brooks. "Appendix E. Impact of the Defense Establishment on Science and 

 Education, October 1970." In U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Science and Astronautics. 

 "National Science Policy, H. Con. Res. 666." Hearings before the Subcommittee on Science, 

 Research, and Development of the . . . 91st Cong. 2d sess. July, August, September, 1970. 

 (Washington, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970), page 962i. 



