Military and defense-related procurement has been an important
source of technology development across a broad spectrum of
industries that account for an important share of United States
industrial production. In this book, the author focuses on six
general-purpose technologies: interchangeable parts and mass
production; military and commercial aircraft; nuclear energy and
electric power; computers and semiconductors; the INTERNET; and the
space industries. In each of these industries, technology
development would have occurred more slowly, and in some case much
more slowly or not at all, in the absence of military and
defense-related procurement.
The book addresses three questions that have significant
implications for the future growth of the United States economy.
One is whether changes in the structure of the United States
economy and of the defense-industrial base preclude military and
defense-related procurement from playing the role in the
development of advanced technology in the future, comparable to the
role it has played in the past. A second question is whether public
support for commercially oriented research and development will
become an important source of new general-purpose technologies. A
third and more disturbing question is whether a major war, or the
threat of major war, will be necessary to mobilize the scientific,
technical, and financial resources necessary to induce the
development of new general-purpose technologies.
When the history of United States technology development in the
next half century is written, it will focus on incremental rather
than revolutionary changes in both military and commercial
technology. It will also be written within thecontext of slower
productivity growth than of the relatively high rates that
prevailed in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s or during the
information technology bubble that began in the early 1990s. These
will impose severe constraints on the capacity of the United States
to sustain a global-class military posture and a position of
leadership in the global economy.
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