cuban missile crisis

305 results back to index

One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War by Michael Dobbs

air freight, Alan Greenspan, Berlin Wall, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, global village, Google Earth, Herman Kahn, kremlinology, Marshall McLuhan, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, profit motive, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Seymour Hersh, stakhanovite, Suez crisis 1956, Ted Sorensen, yellow journalism

The most sensible approach for the researcher is to find multiple sources, and use documentary evidence to corroborate oral history, and vice versa. The starting point for my archival research was the extensive Cuban missile crisis documentation assembled by the National Security Archive, an indispensable reference source for contemporary historians. The Archive, under the direction of Tom Blanton, has taken the lead in aggressively using the Freedom of Information Act to pry historical documents out of a frequently recalcitrant U.S. bureaucracy. In the case of the Cuban missile crisis, it fought a landmark court battle in 1988 to obtain access to a collection compiled by the State Department historian.

…

Sergei Karlov, official historian, Peter the Great Military Academy of Strategic Rocket Forces (RSVN), May 2006. 28 Military statisticians later estimated: Ibid. 28 "barreled gas oil": NSA Cuban missile crisis release, October 1998. 28 McNamara estimated Soviet troop: JFK2, 606. The CIA had estimated 3,000 Soviet "technicians" in Cuba on September 4. By November 19, they increased the estimate to 12,000–16,000. In January 1963, they concluded retrospectively that there were 22,000 Soviet troops in Cuba at the peak of the crisis. See Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1989), 35. 28 "For the sake of the revolution": Author's interview with Capt.

…

: WP, October 23, 1962, A1; Beschloss, 482. 42 "This is not a war": Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War, 474. 42 "We've saved Cuba": Oleg Troyanovsky, Cherez Gody y Rastoyaniya (Moscow: Vagrius, 1997), 244–5. 42 The 11,000-ton Yuri Gagarin: I have reconstructed the positions of Soviet ships on October 23 from CIA daily memorandums for October 24 and 25, NSA intercepts, plus research in Moscow by Karlov. See also Statsenko report. 43 Her cargo included:Yesin et al., Strategicheskaya Operatsiya Anadyr', 114. 43 After a sixteen-day voyage: For the positions of the Aleksandrovsk and Almetyevsk, see NSA Cuban missile crisis release, vol. 2, October 1998. 43 In addition to the surface ships: Svetlana Savranskaya, "New Sources on the Role of Soviet Submarines in the Cuban Missile Crisis," Journal of Strategic Studies (April 2005). 44 The vessels closest to Cuba:The ships that continued to Cuba were the Aleksandrovsk, Almetyevsk, Divnogorsk, Dubno, and Nikolaevsk, according to CIA logs and Karlov research. 44 "In connection with": Havana 2002, vol. 2, Document 16, author's trans. 44 "Order the return": Fursenko, Prezidium Ts.

Winds of Change by Peter Hennessy

anti-communist, Beeching cuts, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Bretton Woods, British Empire, centre right, Corn Laws, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Dr. Strangelove, Etonian, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, full employment, government statistician, Great Leap Forward, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, land tenure, liberal capitalism, meritocracy, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, Norman Macrae, North Sea oil, oil shock, reserve currency, rising living standards, Robert Gordon, Scramble for Africa, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, Ted Sorensen, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, total factor productivity, upwardly mobile, uranium enrichment

Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew with Annette Lawrence Drew, Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of Cold War Submarine Espionage (Arrow, 1998), p. 45. 194. Scott, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War, p. 85. 195. May and Zelikow (eds.), The Kennedy Tapes, p. 519. 196. Ted Sorensen, Kennedy (Hodder, 1965), p. 789. 197. May and Zelikow (eds.), The Kennedy Tapes, p. 571. 198. Scott, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War, pp. 91–2. 199. Ibid., p. 101. 200. Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War, pp. 478–80. 201. Scott, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War, p. 104. 202. Quoted in Scott, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War, p. 105. 203.

…

TNA, PRO, CAB 158/47, JIC (62) 70 (Final) (E), ‘Escalation’, 14 November 1962. 185. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 159. 186. Catterall (ed.), The Macmillan Diaries, vol. 2, p. 513, diary entry for 28 October 1962; Macmillan diaries (unpublished), diary entry for 26 October 1962. 187. Tuchman, The Guns of August, p. 74. 188. Kennedy letter to Khrushchev, 29 October 1962, reproduced in May and Zelikow (eds.), The Kennedy Tapes, pp. 636–7. 189. Scott, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War, p. 71. 190. Ibid., pp. 71, 80, 100, 120, 147–8. 191. Scott, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War, p. 134. 192. Ibid., pp. 1–2. 193.

…

TNA, PRO, CAB 158/47, JIC (62) 104. 319. Extract from David Bruce’s diary for 23 and 24 October 1962, reproduced in Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, pp. 87–8. 320. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, p. 333. 321. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 88. 322. Richard Taylor, Against the Bomb: The British Peace Movement, 1958–65 (Oxford University Press, 1988); Grant, After the Bomb, pp. 173–4, 175–6, 185–6, 187, 191. 323. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, p. 88. 324. Driver, The Disarmers, p. 146. 325. Ibid., p. 120. 326. Ibid., p. 143. 327. May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes, p. 369. 328.

Risk: A User's Guide by Stanley McChrystal, Anna Butrico

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Abraham Maslow, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, airport security, Albert Einstein, Apollo 13, banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, Boeing 737 MAX, business process, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, computer vision, coronavirus, corporate governance, cotton gin, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, disinformation, don't be evil, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, fear of failure, George Floyd, Glass-Steagall Act, global pandemic, Googley, Greta Thunberg, hindsight bias, inflight wifi, invisible hand, iterative process, late fees, lockdown, Paul Buchheit, Ponzi scheme, QWERTY keyboard, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, School Strike for Climate, Scientific racism, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, Skype, social distancing, source of truth, Stanislav Petrov, Steve Jobs, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, Travis Kalanick, wikimedia commons, work culture

intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) sites: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 76. discuss and debate options: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 109–137. settles on the “blockade-ultimatum”: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 136–138. formally convenes ExComm: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 151. informs Congress of his decision: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 163–183. addresses the American people: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 183–189.

…

addresses the American people: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 183–189. letter to Chairman Khrushchev: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 189–190. expressing grievance and frustration: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 242–243. continue to ready their missile sites: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 269. Soviet ships headed to Cuba: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 297–99. seemingly contradictory letter: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 311–14.

…

seemingly contradictory letter: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 311–14. American U-2 plane: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 356–61. remove and dismantle their missiles: May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 402–404, 436–37. Executive Committee of the National Security Council: Kennedy, Thirteen Days, Section 1; May and Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, 151. “the new chairman of the joint chiefs”: Josh Zeitz, “When Daily Intelligence Briefings Prevented a Nuclear War,” Politico Magazine, December 12, 2016, https://politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/trump-daily-intelligence-briefings-history-jfk-cuban-missile-crisis-214521.

Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H. R. McMaster

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, classic study, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, guns versus butter model, RAND corporation, risk tolerance, South China Sea

He surrounded himself with people who “knew a hell of a lot more” than he did about national security issues and learned from them. He was a good student, however, and “by the time of the Cuban missile crisis [his] views were pretty well fixed and [hadn’t] changed to this day.”29 McNamara was proud of what he portrayed as a personal triumph during the Cuban missile crisis. When he turned his attention to Southeast Asia, he exuded confidence that he had gained in the Caribbean. The defense secretary was determined to remove obstacles that might prevent him from assuming the role of chief strategist in the Pentagon. During the Cuban missile crisis, McNamara kept tight control over the ships, submarines, and aircraft enforcing the quarantine around Cuba to ensure that the demonstration of American resolve sent the proper message to the Soviets.

…

He would become Lyndon Johnson’s “oracle” for Vietnam. 4 Graduated Pressure January–March 1964 We had seen the gradual application of force applied in the Cuban Missile Crisis and had seen a very successful result. We believed that, if this same gradual and restrained application of force were applied in South Vietnam, that one could expect the same result. –CYRUS VANCE, 19701 Robert S. McNamara and his principal assistants in the Department of Defense, convinced that traditional military conceptions of the use of force were irrelevant to contemporary strategic and political realities, developed courses of action for Vietnam that reflected their experience during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis (which molded their thinking on strategy) and their predisposition toward quantitative analysis.

…

In keeping with McNamara’s views, Taylor told the Chiefs on March 2 that the White House intended to use South Vietnam as a “laboratory, not only for this war, but for any insurgency.”49 McNamara became the principal architect of the new strategy of graduated pressure, which he would test in Vietnam.50 While in his estimation military experience was irrelevant to the new kind of war, McNamara drew heavily upon his personal experience during the Cuban missile crisis. The rejection of JCS advice in October 1962 had led to the withdrawal of the offensive weapons without war. He acknowledged that the missile crisis “was very influential in [his] decisions relating to Vietnam.”51 Indeed, U.S. Military Action Against North Viet Nam—An Analysis, Annex A to the report that McNamara drafted for the president in early March 1964, contained several direct references to the Cuban missile crisis.52 Although McNamara believed that JCS advice was inapplicable, he thought that the use of American military force was integral to the foreign policy of the Cold War period.

Red November: Inside the Secret U.S.-Soviet Submarine War by W. Craig Reed

Albert Einstein, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, cable laying ship, centre right, cuban missile crisis, en.wikipedia.org, fixed-gear, nuclear winter, operation paperclip, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, Silicon Valley, undersea cable, upwardly mobile

RESOURCES Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, James Bamford, Anchor, April 30, 2002, offered information regarding John Arnold and Cuban SIGINT missions conducted by the USS Nautilus and Oxford, as well as details about the USS Pueblo. Jeffrey G. Barlow, “Some Aspects of the U.S. Navy’s Participation in the Cuban Missile Crisis,” in A New Look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, Colloquium on Contemporary History, June 18, 1992, No. 7, Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy Command in Crisis: Four Case Studies, Joseph F. Bouchard, Columbia University Press, 1991 The Cuban Missile Crisis, ed. Laurence Chang, National Security Archive, 1992 “The Naval Quarantine of Cuba, 1962,” Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, 1963, http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq90-5.html October Fury, Peter Huchthausen, John Wiley & Sons, 2002 Presidential Recordings: John F.

…

Orlov, Captain Second Rank, Russian Navy (retired; unpublished memoir) CINCLANT SOSUS contact reports during the Cuban Missile Crisis “Khrushchev, Castro and Kennedy: Motivation, Intention, and the Creation of a Crisis,” Robin R. Pickering, thesis presented to the faculty of Humboldt State University, May 2006 Deck logs obtained for various naval platforms during the Cuban Missile Crisis Eyeball to Eyeball, The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Dino A. Brugioni, Random House, 1991 Soviet Naval Developments, third edition, foreword by Norman Polmar, The Nautical and Aviation Publishing Co. of America, 1984 Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert F. Kennedy, W. W. Norton & Co., 1969 Submarines of the Russian and Soviet Navies, 1718–1990, Norman Polmar and Jurrien Noot, Naval Institute Press, 1991 Combat Fleets of the World 1980/81, Jean Labayle Couhat, Naval Institute Press, 1980 U.S.

…

Courtesy of Ryurik Ketov But they also forced three of the Foxtrot submarines, including Captain Savitsky’s B-59 (above) to the surface during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States did not know at the time that each Foxtrot carried a nuclear-tipped torpedo capable of destroying everything within a ten-mile radius, and all four Soviet subs came within minutes of firing. U.S. Navy photograph The U.S. Navy was primarily focused on blocking Soviet merchant ships from bringing more nuclear missiles to Cuba. U.S. Government photograph Living conditions aboard the Soviet Foxtrot-class submarines involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis were deplorable, and crews suffered from heat exhaustion.

Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, company town, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, equal pay for equal work, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francisco Pizarro, Great Leap Forward, Hernando de Soto, hiring and firing, Howard Zinn, Joan Didion, land reform, land tenure, mass immigration, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, rent control, Ronald Reagan, trade route, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Washington Consensus, wikimedia commons, women in the workforce, yellow journalism, young professional

Photograph in Harpers, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/; Alexa Kapsimalis interview, Storycorps, https://archive.storycorps.org/interviews/grandpa-cuban-missile-crisis/. 15. Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, 380; Dobbs, One Minute, 84–85. 16. Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, 380; Fidel Castro speech, October 23, 1962; Adolfo Gilly, “A la luz del relámpago: Cuba en Octubre,” Viento Sur 102 (March 2009), 82. 17. Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell, 265–67; Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, doc. 42 and p. 387. 18. James Blight and janet M.

…

Kennedy Library, https://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/oct26/doc2.html: See also NSA, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, doc. 46, and p. 387; Wilson Digital Archive, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/114501; Diez Acosta, Octubre, 177–78; Blight and Lang, Dark, 39–40. 21. Khrushchev to Kennedy, October 26, 1962 and October 27, 1962 (Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, docs. 45 and 49); Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell, 273–74. 22. Transcript of ExComm meetings, October 27, 1962, DNSA, Cuban Missile Crisis Collection; Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, doc. 50. 23. Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell, 282. 24. Transcript of ExComm meetings, October 27, 1962, Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, doc. 50; Dobbs, One Minute, 309, 312–13; Jack Raymond, “Airmen Called Up,” New York Times, October 28, 1962. 25.

…

Permanent Representative of Cuba to the UN Secretary General, October 28, 1962, in Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, doc. 57. 30. Khrushchev to Castro, October 28, 1962, and Castro to Khrushchev, October 28, 1962, Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, docs. 55 and 56. 31. Kennedy to Khrushchev, October 27, 1962, in https://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/oct27/; Khrushchev to JFK, October 27, 1962, https://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/oct27/doc4.html. 32. Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, 402–3; Naftali and Fursenko, One Hell, 304–9. 33. Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, 405. 34. Kennedy, transcript of November 20, 1962 press conference, https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-press-conferences/news-conference-45; Kennedy to Khrushchev, November 21, 1962, in Chang and Kornbluh, Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, doc. 79. 35.

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms by Amy B. Zegart

2021 United States Capitol attack, 4chan, active measures, air gap, airport security, Apollo 13, Bellingcat, Bernie Sanders, Bletchley Park, Chelsea Manning, classic study, cloud computing, cognitive bias, commoditize, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, dual-use technology, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end-to-end encryption, failed state, feminist movement, framing effect, fundamental attribution error, Gene Kranz, global pandemic, global supply chain, Google Earth, index card, information asymmetry, information security, Internet of things, job automation, John Markoff, lockdown, Lyft, Mark Zuckerberg, Nate Silver, Network effects, off-the-grid, openstreetmap, operational security, Parler "social media", post-truth, power law, principal–agent problem, QAnon, RAND corporation, Richard Feynman, risk tolerance, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Rubik’s Cube, Russian election interference, Saturday Night Live, selection bias, seminal paper, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, synthetic biology, uber lyft, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks, zero day, zero-sum game

Fursenko and Naftali, “Soviet intelligence and the Cuban missile crisis,” Intelligence and National Security 13, no. 3 (2008): 64–87. 80. Fursenko and Naftali; Renshon, “Mirroring risk”; James G. Blight and David A. Welch, eds., Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Frank Cass, 1999); Allison and Zelikow, Essence of Decision. 81. Raymond L. Garthoff, “U.S. intelligence in the Cuban missile crisis,” Intelligence and National Security 13, no. 3 (1998): 47. 82. Quoted in Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 705. 83. Arthur Schlesinger, remarks at “On the Brink: The Cuban Missile Crisis,” John F.

…

Kessel, and Melissa Chan, “Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State,” New York Times, April 24, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html (accessed September 24, 2020). 23. Zegart and Morell, “Spies, lies, and algorithms.” 24. Amy Zegart, “The Cuban missile crisis as intelligence failure,” Policy Review, Hoover Institution, October 2, 2012, https://www.hoover.org/research/cuban-missile-crisis-intelligence-failure (accessed September 20, 2020). 25. Jeff Jardins, “How much data is generated each day?” World Economic Forum, April 17, 2019, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/how-much-data-is-generated-each-day-cf4bddf29f/ (accessed September 24, 2020). 26.

…

Walter Pincus, “Spy Agencies Faulted for Missing Indian Tests,” Washington Post, June 3, 1998. 74. Central Intelligence Agency, “Jeremiah News Conference.” 75. Ovodenko, “(Mis)interpreting threats,” 277. 76. Amy Zegart, “The Cuban missile crisis as intelligence failure,” Policy Review, Hoover Institution, October 2, 2012, https://www.hoover.org/research/cuban-missile-crisis-intelligence-failure (accessed September 20, 2020); U.S. Department of State, Office of the Historian, “SNIE 80-62: The Threat to U.S. Security Interests in the Caribbean Area,” January 17, 1962, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963 [FRUS], Vol. 12: American Republics, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v12/d91 (accessed September 2, 2020); U.S.

The Cold War by Robert Cowley

Able Archer 83, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, British Empire, cuban missile crisis, defense in depth, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, friendly fire, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, launch on warning, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, RAND corporation, refrigerator car, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, transcontinental railway

Few people there, he once told me, were aware of the Cuban Missile Crisis; the Soviet media had blacked out all mention of it. “But they knew something big was up,” he added, “even if we didn't know precisely what until Khrushchev made a talk at the end, hiding lots of things and twisting others into a Soviet victory. I knew much more than most people, because while the crisis was on, I happened to bump into a friend from the American embassy staff on a busy street. He told me. Still, I knew too little to be scared that I might be killed by an American nuclear bomb at any moment.” The precarious two weeks of the Cuban Missile Crisis came close to overshadowing the emergency in Europe of a year earlier, the erection of the Berlin Wall.

…

LeMay was eventually made chief of staff of the air force, the position he held during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Privately, he believed that JFK behaved like a coward, that we should have exercised a first-strike option. The Sunday morning after the two Ks cemented their deal, the president summoned his military chiefs to the Cabinet Room to inform them. LeMay pounded the table, his cigar no doubt clenched in his teeth. “It's the greatest defeat in our history, Mr. President…. We should invade today!” For the rest of his life, he remained convinced that we had “lost” the Cuban Missile Crisis—and, indeed, the entire Cold War. VICTOR DAVIS HANSON retired last year as a professor of classics at California State University, Fresno, and is now a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.

…

A large crash shattered the window and threw the pieces into the four corners of the room. Sirens screeched. I had difficulty trying to breathe in the fog that now filled the room. We got to our feet and made our way through the crowded halls to the air raid shelter.” Life, for the narrator, would never be the same. A year after the Cuban Missile Crisis, apocalypse was still on our minds. We were not quite halfway through the Cold War, and the Bomb—Bombs, rather—seemed to be our undeserved future. As I read my wife's story, written in her properly neat schoolgirl script, the memory of the nuclear clock resurfaced, its hands perpetually stuck at one minute to midnight.

Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth by Frederick Kempe

Berlin Wall, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, desegregation, disinformation, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, index card, Kitchen Debate, Mikhail Gorbachev, open borders, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Ted Sorensen, trade liberalization, traveling salesman, zero-sum game

In the words of William Kaufman, a Kennedy administration strategist who worked both Berlin and Cuba from the Pentagon, “Berlin was the worst moment of the Cold War. Although I was deeply involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis, I personally thought that the Berlin confrontation, especially after the wall went up, where you had Soviet and U.S. tanks literally facing one another with guns pointed, was a more dangerous situation. We had very clear indications mid-week of the Cuban Missile Crisis that the Russians were not really going to push us to the edge…. “You didn’t get that sense in Berlin.” Fred Kempe’s contribution to our crucial understanding of that time is that he combines the “You are there” storytelling skills of a journalist, the analytical skills of the political scientist, and the historian’s use of declassified U.S., Soviet, and German documents to provide unique insight into the forces and individuals behind the construction of the Berlin Wall—the iconic barrier that came to symbolize the Cold War’s divisions.

…

Most surprised of all by Kennedy’s demonstration of strength was Khrushchev himself, who had bet so much against it. General Clay suggested to diplomat William Smyser that the Cuban Missile Crisis never would have occurred had it not been for Khrushchev’s perception of Kennedy’s weakness, and Clay believed as well that the threat to Berlin only receded once Kennedy made it clear he would no longer tolerate Moscow’s bullying. West Berliners celebrated the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis more enthusiastically than any others. They concluded that the Soviet threat to them had passed. RATHAUS SCHÖNEBERG, CITY HALL OF WEST BERLIN WEDNESDAY, JUNE 26, 1963 Kennedy would make his first and last presidential trip to Berlin eight months after the Cuban crisis, on June 26, 1963.

…

At the same time…Soviet ships: Beschloss, Crisis Years, 412–415; Taubman, Khrushchev, 549–551; Fursenko and Naftali, Khrushchev’s Cold War, 451; Raymond L. Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis. Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1987, 18–22, 208 (table showing type and numbers of missiles). Fechter’s murder snapped something: “City’s Mood: Anger and Frustration,” New York Times, 08/26/1962. Meanwhile, over Cuba: Anatoli I. Gribkov and William Y. Smith, “Operation Anadyr”: U.S. and Soviet Generals Recount the Cuban Missile Crisis. Chicago: Edition Q, 1994, 5–7, 24, 26–57; Taubman, Khrushchev, 550; Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 188–189, 191–193.

Who Rules the World? by Noam Chomsky

Able Archer 83, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, classic study, corporate governance, corporate personhood, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Garrett Hardin, high-speed rail, Howard Zinn, illegal immigration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, liberation theology, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, nuclear winter, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, one-state solution, Plutonomy: Buying Luxury, Explaining Global Imbalances, precariat, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, structural adjustment programs, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trade route, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, uranium enrichment, wage slave, WikiLeaks, working-age population

Domínguez, “The @#$%& Missile Crisis (Or, What Was ‘Cuban’ About U.S. Decisions During the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 5 (Spring 2000): 305–15. 20. Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, concise edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 47. 21. Jon Mitchell, “Okinawa’s First Nuclear Missile Men Break Silence,” Japan Times, 8 July 2012. 22. Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight, 309. 23. Sheldon M. Stern, Averting “The Final Failure”: John F. Kennedy and the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis Meetings (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 273. 24.

…

Stern, Averting “The Final Failure.” 30. Ibid., 406. 31. Raymond L. Garthoff, “Documenting the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Diplomatic History 24, no. 2 (Spring 2000): 297–303. 32. Papers of John F. Kennedy, Presidential Papers, National Security Files, Meetings and Memoranda, National Security Action Memoranda [NSAM]: NSAM 181, Re: Action to be taken in response to new Bloc activity in Cuba (B), September 1962, JFKNSF-338-009, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston, Massachusetts. 33. Garthoff, “Documenting the Cuban Missile Crisis.” 34. Keith Bolender, Voices From the Other Side: An Oral History of Terrorism Against Cuba (London: Pluto Press, 2010). 35.

…

Chomsky, Hegemony or Survival, 78–83. 41. Stern, The Week the World Stood Still, 2. 42. Desmond Ball, Politics and Force Levels: The Strategic Missile Program of the Kennedy Administration (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 97. 43. Garthoff, “Documenting the Cuban Missile Crisis.” 44. Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight, 342. 45. Allison, “The Cuban Missile Crisis at 50.” 46. Sean M. Lynn-Jones, Steven E. Miller, and Stephen Van Evera, Nuclear Diplomacy and Crisis Management: An International Security Reader (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1990), 304. 47. William Burr, ed., “The October War and U.S. Policy,” National Security Archive, published 7 October 2003, http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB98/. 48.

The Cold War: A New History by John Lewis Gaddis

Able Archer 83, American ideology, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, British Empire, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, European colonialism, full employment, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, land reform, long peace, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Potemkin village, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sinatra Doctrine, Strategic Defense Initiative

Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, translated and edited by Strobe Talbott (New York: Bantam, 1971), p. 546. 59 Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 537. 60 See the transcripts of conversations between American and Soviet veterans of the crisis in Blight, Allyn, and Welch, Cuba on the Brink; and in James G. Blight and David A. Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989). 61 Kennedy meeting with advisers, October 22, 1962, in Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1997), p. 235. 62 Taubman, Khrushchev, p. 552. 63 Blight, Allyn, and Welch, Cuba on the Brink, p. 259. 64 Ibid., p. 203. 65 Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 262; “NRDC Nuclear Notebook: Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–2002,” p. 104. 66 Blight, Allyn, and Welch, Cuba on the Brink, p. 360. 67 Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St.

…

Great Society programs of Vietnam War and Johnson administration Joint Chiefs of Staff, U.S. Justice Department, U.S. Kádár, János Kant, Immanuel Katyn Wood massacre Kazakhstan Kennan, George F. “long telegram” of on role of C.I.A. on U.N. Kennedy, John F. Cuban missile crisis and U.S.-Soviet relations and Kennedy, Robert F. Kent State incident K.G.B. Khmer Rouge Khomeini, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khrushchev, Nikita background and personality of Berlin Wall and Cuban missile crisis and East German alliance and Eisenhower’s meetings with Hungarian uprising and nuclear weapons policy of ouster of rise of Sino-Soviet relations and Stalin denounced by Suez crisis and Tito visited by U.S. visited by U-2 incident and “We will bury you” remark of Khrushchev, Sergei Kim Il-sung King, Martin Luther, Jr.

…

But my students sign up for this course with very little sense of how the Cold War started, what it was about, or why it ended in the way that it did. For them it’s history: not all that different from the Peloponnesian War. And yet, as they learn more about the great rivalry that dominated the last half of the last century, most of my students are fascinated, many are appalled, and a few—usually after the lecture on the Cuban missile crisis—leave class trembling. “Yikes!” they exclaim (I sanitize somewhat). “We had no idea that we came that close!” And then they invariably add: “Awesome!” For this first post–Cold War generation, then, the Cold War is at once distant and dangerous. What could anyone ever have had to fear, they wonder, from a state that turned out to be as weak, as bumbling, and as temporary as the Soviet Union?

This Is Only a Test: How Washington D.C. Prepared for Nuclear War by David F. Krugler

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Berlin Wall, City Beautiful movement, colonial rule, company town, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Dr. Strangelove, Frank Gehry, full employment, glass ceiling, index card, launch on warning, Lewis Mumford, nuclear winter, RAND corporation, Silicon Valley, urban planning, Victor Gruen, white flight, Works Progress Administration

Fursenko, One Hell, 188–9 (the quote is on 189); “Chronologies of the Crisis,” compiled for Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh, eds., The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader (New York: The New Press, 1992), accessed June 23, 2005 at the National Security Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/chron.htm.. 22. “Chronologies of the Crisis”; Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, eds., The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban Missile Crisis (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1997), 45–76, 189–203. Furensko, One Hell, 242–3; “Chronologies of the Crisis”; “Radio and Television Report to the American People,” October 22, 1962, PPP: John F.

…

., 115, 139–41, 173 Rodericks, George, 172, 175, 178, 184 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 13–14 Roosevelt, Franklin civil defense and, 13–14 death of, 16 Pentagon and, 17–18, 67 White House and, 15, 70–1 Schwartz, Max, 52, 54, 87 shelters see fallout shelters Sherry, Michael, 90 Silvers, Hal, 131, 133–4 Site R, 64–5, 67–8, 95, 126–7, 132, 158, 162, 165–6, 180, 183, 185–6 see also Raven Rock Mountain Smith, Howard, 62–3 Social Science Research Council, 22, 89 Soviet Union aircraft of, 1, 5, 10, 82, 87, 90, 111, 113, 116, 132 Cold War and, 18–20, 48, 59 Cuban Missile Crisis and, 174–9 deterrence of, 91–2, 98 espionage of, 6, 18, 104 nuclear weapons of, 1, 10, 131–2, 136, 142, 169, 182, 235 n.44 propaganda of, 25, 85, 87 striking capability of, 10, 108, 116, 120–1, 158–60, 166 test of atomic bomb, 32, 35–6, 41, 64, 171 test of hydrogen bomb, 75, 99–100 War Scare of 1948 and, 23–5 see also Washington, D.C., imagined attacks on Spencer, Samuel, 121, 132 Springfield, Va., 34 Stalin, Joseph, 6, 18 State Department Cuban Missile Crisis and, 177, 180–1 offices in Washington, D.C., 17, 21, 50, 61, 101, 144 participation in exercises, 109, 121, 127–8, 161 relocation site of, 93–6, 109, 121, 128, 155, 165–6, 180, 183 Steelman, John, 32 Stein, Clarence, 28, 60, 147 Stewart Air Force Base, 112, 150 Stowe, David, 49–50, 75, 96 Strategic Air Command (SAC), 111, 114, 179 Strauss, Lewis, 102, 133 submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBM) see ballistic missiles Suitland, Md., 34 Supreme Court continuity of, 7, 168, 177–8 during Cuban Missile Crisis, 177–8, 181 participation in exercises, 129 rulings on racial segregation, 145–6 Symington, Stuart, 55–7, 59, 91, 171 Takoma Park, Md., 48, 122 Teague, Olin, 122–3 ‘tempos’ on National Mall, 17, 21, 26, 31, 38–9, 43, 50–1, 61–2, 103–4 proposed construction of, 34–6 Treasury Department continuity of, 106, 180 participation in exercises, 81, 109, 117, 127–8, 161 relocation sites of, 183 tunnel to White House, 69, 73 Truman, Harry S. authorization of Conelrad, 112 authorization of development of hydrogen bomb, 6 continuity of government planning of, 5, 64, 75, 96, 105 Doctrine of, 23, 171 end of World War II and, 16–18 Korean War and, 48–9, 59 reaction to Soviet atomic test, 35, 171 reelection of, 31 support for civil defense, 23–4, 46, 55–6, 81, 86, 90–2, 170 support for desegregation of Washington, D.C., 3, 145 support for dispersal, 4, 49–52, 59, 61–3, 104 treatment of NSRB, 25, 31–2 use of the Bureau of the Budget, 37 White House renovation and, 69–71, 73–4 Tuve, Dr.

…

., 95–6, 183 War Scare of 1948, 24–6 wartime essential agencies defined, 4–5, 196 n.16 dispersal of, 30, 38, 40–1, 101–2, 147 participation in exercises, 108–9, 121, 124–9, 156–63, 160, 182 responsibilities of, 105–6, 164, 186 vulnerability of, 105 wartime essential personnel advance evacuation of, 113–14, 120, 124, 155, 163, 177–8, 181 cadres of at Mount Weather, 7, 106, 159, 163, 165, 176 during Cuban Missile Crisis, 176, 178–9 expected actions during crisis, 115, 129, 134, 162–3, 181–2 Washington Area Survival Plan committee (WASP), 132, 135, 138, 141 Washington and Lee University, 15, 95, 157, 165 Washington Board of Trade, 46, 81 Washington, D.C. on 9/11, 185–7 Alert America in, 77–80 attack warning system of, 14, 111–15, 150–5 civil defense in see under D.C. Office of Civil Defense civil defense during World War II, 14–16 during Cuban Missile Crisis, 175–6 difficulty of evacuating, 109, 115, 121–4, 132–5 effects of World War II on, 11–12, 14, 16–17 exercises staged in, 116–17, 119–21, 124–30 government of, 3, 45–6 ground observer posts in, 82–5, 138–9 imagined attacks on, 1–2, 23, 36, 47, 67, 111–14, 117, 136, 158–60, 179–81 see also Operation Alert lack of home rule, 3, 93 national security state in, 21 planning for civil defense office in, 45–7 population of, 12, 26, 122, 145 present–day emergency plans of, 187–9 segregation of, 2–3, 14–15, 54, 84, 145–7 slavery in, 3 symbolic importance of, 3–4, 8, 49, 122–3, 135 UFO scare in, 85–6 see also dispersal, plans for metropolitan Washington, D.C.

Atomic Obsession: Nuclear Alarmism From Hiroshima to Al-Qaeda by John Mueller

airport security, Albert Einstein, Black Swan, Cass Sunstein, classic study, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, Doomsday Clock, energy security, F. W. de Klerk, failed state, guns versus butter model, Herman Kahn, long peace, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, oil shock, Oklahoma City bombing, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, side project, Strategic Defense Initiative, Suez crisis 1956, Timothy McVeigh, uranium enrichment, William Langewiesche, Yom Kippur War

, 81 Chinese nuclear test, 96 Cuban missile crisis, 40, 248n.33 missile trade, 248n.33 proliferation problem, 90, 93, 94, 98 test ban treaty, 76 UN as only true alternative to war, 75 war and mankind, 25 Kenney, Michael, Islamic militants, 223 Kerry, John, nuclear weapon worry, 163 Khan, A. Q. bin Laden’s interest in, network, 213 intelligence agencies closing operation, 164–165 selling secrets, 169–170, 207 Khattab, Ibn, connection to bin Laden, 202–203 Khrushchev, Nikita Britain and France reversing invasion at Suez, 249n.12 Cuban missile crisis, 39–40 struggle against capitalism, 34–35 supporting Shevchenko, 248n.31 world war, 33 Korean War, 38, 47–48, 50 Kornienko, Georgy, world war and Soviets, 33 Kosko, Bart, government overestimating threat, 220 Kramer, Stanley, On the Beach, 57 Krauthammer, Charles, Arab world, 261n.1, 261n.4 Kremlin, 246n.15, 247n.22 Kristof, Nicholas, Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, 181 Kristol, William, 261n.4 Langewiesche, William Atomic Bazaar, 183, 268n.5 book jacket flap, 268n.5 constructing bomb, 111, 173 obtaining nuclear weapons, 105 odds against terrorists, 184 passed “point of no return,” 93 Lapp, Ralph, A-bombs, 242n.19 Laqueur, Walter, proliferation of WMD, 228 Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 266–267n.43 leadership, nuclear weapons programs, 113 Lenin, Vladimir, 34 Levi, Michael, 165, 171, 175, 184, 187, 189, 213, 264n.6 Lewis, Jeffrey, 178, 191 Libya, 124–126, 145, 258n.31 likelihood acceptable risk, 197–198 acquisition scenarios, 190–191 arraying barriers, 184, 186 assessing, 186–191 assigning and calculating probabilities, 187–189 comparisons of improbable events, 191–193 multiple attempts, 189–190 policy for reducing, 193–197 probability of nuclear fission bomb, 267n.48 terrorist bomb, 183, 238 World at Risk, 182 Lockerbie bombing, 125, 258n.32 London, image of destruction, 24 longer-term effects, nuclear attack, 8 The Looming Tower, Wright, 201 “loose nukes,”165–168, 208–210, 238 Los Alamos National Laboratory, 267n.48 Los Alamos scientists bomb design, 173–174 difficulties of making nuclear weapons, 174–175 sensitive detection equipment, 176 Los Angeles, port security, 141 Los Angeles International Airport, 19 lottery tickets, terrorism comparison, 191 Lugar, Senator Richard, 20, 171, 181, 194 McCain, Senator John, 130–131, 230 McCarthyism, Communist menace, 49 McCone, CIA Director John, Chinese threat, 91, 96 McNamara, Robert, 66–67, 68, 248n.33 McNaugher, Thomas, missiles, 116 McPhee, John, sense of urgency, 162 Mahmood, Sultan Bachiruddin, 203–205, 271n.16 Majid, Abdul, Pakistani nuclear scientist, 203–204 marijuana bale, smuggling atomic device, 177 Martin, Susan, 232 measured ambiguity, catchphrase, 86 melancholy thought, Winston Churchill, 35 Middle East, 225, 261n.4 Milhollin, Gary, 174, 175 military, Canada, 106 military attacks, appeal of nuclear weapons, 147 military planning, nuclear weapons, 14–15 military strategy, stabilizing or destabilizing, 66 military value, nuclear weapons, 108–110, 236, 237–238 Mir, Hamid, 164, 210–211, 264n.7 credibility of, 273n.36 missile capacity, 153, 154 missile crisis, Cuba, 40 The Missiles of October, Cuba, 40 Mohammed, Khalid Sheikh, 9/11 attack, 206 morality, Canada without weapons, 112–113 Morison, Samuel Eliot, 269n.23 Morrison, Phillip, chance for working peace, 26 Mowatt–Larssen, Rolf, xi, 20 Mueller, Robert, xi, 228, 274n.16, 276n.37 Mukhatzhanova, Gaukhar, points of no return, 94–95 Muller, Richard, 146, 172, 192 multiple groups, likelihood, 189–190 Musharraf, General Pervez, criticism, 260n.24 Muslim extremists, publications of violence, 223 mustard gas, calculation for causalties, 12 mutual assured destruction (MAD), deterrence, 64 Myers, General Richard, 20, 22 Naftali, Timothy, 76, 249n.12, 263n.29 Nagasaki atomic bomb, 9–10 human costs, 141 military value of atomic bomb, 10 surrender of Japanese, 43 taboo of nuclear weapons, 61–63 napalm, 243n.30 National Intelligence Estimate (1958), 119 National Intelligence Estimate (2007), 274n.16 National Planning Association, diffusion, 104 national security threat, terrorism and U.S., 233 NATO missiles, European demonstrations, 60 “naughty child” effect, Russia, 108 neglect, cold war, 86 Negroponte, John, probability of attack, 181 nerve gas, calculation for causalties, 12 Netanyahu, Benjamin, 264n.33 Neufeld, Michael, missiles, 116 neutron bomb, 4, 14, 81 New Jersey Lottery, 270n.6 Nimitz, Admiral Chester W., 269n.23 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), nuclear, 119–121 North Korea American-led forced invading, 247n.27 attention, 108, 238 axis of evil, 144 calm policy discussion, 151, 152–153 deterrence, 262n.19 “eating problem,” 152 hysteria, 263n.25 invasion of South Korea, 49 nuclear weapon, x proliferation, 93 proliferation fixation, 135–137 sanctions, 136, 145 “supreme priority” of, 149–150 Nth country problem, nuclear weapons, 91 nuclear age, verge of new, x nuclear arsenals, 64–65, 145, 237 nuclear bomb, 17, 269n.16 “The Nuclear Bomb of Islam,” bin Laden, 211–212 nuclear crisis, Cuba, 39 nuclear diffusion, 237 nuclear energy, security, 139–140 “nuclear era,” Hiroshima, ix nuclear explosion, 61–62, 181, 243n.9 nuclear fears classic cold war, 56–57 declining again, 60–61 On the Beach, 57 reviving in early 1980s, 58–60 subsiding in 1960s and 1970s, 57–58 nuclear fission bomb, probability of attack, 267n.48 nuclear forensics, 155, 164, 190, 194, 264n.6 nuclear fuel, cartelization, 260n.28 nuclear metaphysics, deterrence, 63–67 nuclear proliferation, xiii, 89 nuclear radiation, dirty bomb, 18 nuclear reactor meltdown, Chernobyl, 7 Nuclear Regulatory Agency, radiation, 7 The Nuclear Revolution, Mandelbaum, 246n.7 nuclear sting operation, 194 Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, Kristof, 181 nuclear tipping point, Brookings Institution, 93–94 nuclear virginity, Canada, 112 nuclear war, x, 64 nuclear weapons.

…

He had been greatly impressed by Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August and concluded that in 1914 the Europeans “somehow seemed to tumble into war … through stupidity, individual idiosyncrasies, misunderstandings, and personal complexes of inferiority and grandeur.” He had no intention, he made clear, of becoming a central character in a “comparable book about this time, The Missiles of October.”33 Of course the Cuban missile crisis would not have happened, at least in the same way, had there been no nuclear weapons for the Soviets to deploy to the island. The point here, however, is that even with the image of nuclear war staring at them, Kennedy and Khrushchev were referencing horrors remembered from prenuclear wars to warrant their intense concern about escalation.

…

Snow was publishing his alarmist broadside proclaiming it to be a “certainty” that, if the nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union were to continue and accelerate, a nuclear bomb would go off “within, at the most, ten years.”4 Nuclear Fear Subsides: The 1960s and 1970s None did, as it happened. Indeed, within, at the most, four years after Snow’s urgent pronouncement, anxiety about nuclear cataclysm began to subside. In the aftermath of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union signed some arms control agreements and, although these agreements did not reduce either side’s nuclear capacity in the slightest, the generally improved diplomatic atmosphere engendered a considerable relaxation in fear that they would actually use their weapons against each other.

Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion ofSafety by Eric Schlosser

Able Archer 83, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, cuban missile crisis, Dr. Strangelove, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Haight Ashbury, Herman Kahn, impulse control, interchangeable parts, Isaac Newton, launch on warning, life extension, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, packet switching, prompt engineering, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Stanislav Petrov, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, tacit knowledge, technological determinism, too big to fail, two and twenty, uranium enrichment, William Langewiesche

“To get the population used to the idea”: Ibid. If Khrushchev’s scheme worked: Dozens of books have been written about the Cuban missile crisis. I found these to be the most interesting and compelling: Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997); Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Longman, 1999); Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002); Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cold War (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005); and Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Knopf, 2008).

…

Minuteman missiles became operational for the first time during the Cuban Missile Crisis. To err on the side of safety, the explosive bolts were removed from their silo doors. If one of the missiles were launched by accident, it would explode inside the silo. And if President Kennedy decided to launch one, some poor enlisted man would have to kneel over the silo door, reconnect the explosive bolts by hand, and leave the area in a hurry. • • • WHILE THE DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE publicly dismissed fears of an accidental nuclear war, the Cuban Missile Crisis left McNamara more concerned than ever about the danger.

…

“The Madman Nuclear Alert,” International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4, 2003, 150–83. Scott, Len, and S. Smith. “Lessons of October: Historians, Political Scientists, Policy Makers and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” International Affairs, Vol. 70, No. 4, October 1994, 659–84. Searle, Thomas R. “‘It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers’: The Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 1, January 2002, 103–33. Seckel, Al. “Russell and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Russell: Journal of the Bertrand Russell Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2, 253–61. Skidmore, David. “Carter and the Failure of Foreign Policy Reform,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 108, No. 4, 1993, 699–729.

Bomb Scare by Joseph Cirincione

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Dr. Strangelove, dual-use technology, energy security, Ernest Rutherford, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, technological determinism, uranium enrichment, Yogi Berra

He created the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency to pursue his vision and to provide some balance in national policy discussions. If he had any doubts about the urgency of reducing nuclear dangers, these were dispelled by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The discovery that the Soviet Union had placed missiles in Cuba capable of hitting the United States set off a diplomatic and military confrontation that terrified the world. Former Kennedy speech writer Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalled the crisis in 2006: The Cuban missile crisis was not only the most dangerous moment of the Cold War. It was the most dangerous moment in all human history. Never before had two contending powers possessed between them the technical capacity to destroy the planet.

…

chemical weapons Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) Cheney, Richard China: and India, and Japan, and national security model, and nuclear arms race, nuclear arsenal extent, and regional tensions, U.S. policies Chirac, Jacques Christopher, Warren Churchill, Winston civilian nuclear stockpiles Clinton, Bill: and domestic political model, and nonproliferation regime, and Ukraine Cohen, Avner Cold War: and Atoms for Peace program, Cuban Missile Crisis, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing, and nuclear risk, and regional tensions. See also nuclear arms race; U.S. nuclear guarantees Committee on Assurances of Supply Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT) Compton, Arthur Conan, Neal Conant, James Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) core counter-proliferation. See also Bush administration policies Coyle, Philip critical mass cruise missiles CTBT (Comprehensive Test-Ban Treaty) CTR (Cooperative Threat Reduction) Cuban Missile Crisis cultural responses: Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing, nuclear arms race CWC (Chemical Weapons Convention) Czech Republic Davis, Zachary Davy Crockett de Gaulle, Charles DeGroot, Gerard Democritus deterrence.

…

From 1951 to 2000, only some twenty million people suffered that same fate.2 “Well-managed proliferation,” some say, with perhaps double the number of today’s nuclear-armed states, would extend the benefits of nuclear deterrence to many areas of the world, helping to keep the peace in Europe, Asia, and elsewhere.3 The pessimists disagree. They believe that “we lucked out” during the Cold War, when the two nuclear superpowers stood “eyeball to eyeball,” in former secretary of state Dean Rusk’s famous description of the Cuban Missile Crisis.4 The spread of nuclear weapons, they argue, reduces real security. States are not always rational actors, for example. State leaders may act irrationally and initiate a nuclear strike. Nor are states monolithic. Substate actors with their own agendas, such as military commanders, may ignore orders and trigger a nuclear attack.

1983: Reagan, Andropov, and a World on the Brink by Taylor Downing

Able Archer 83, active measures, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, Herman Kahn, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, kremlinology, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, nuclear paranoia, nuclear winter, RAND corporation, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Seymour Hersh, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, Yom Kippur War

Finally, as it was American policy not to launch nuclear weapons in a first strike, a system had to be devised by which the United States had sufficient nuclear capability held back so that it could survive a pre-emptive attack and still be able to retaliate. All of this was contained within Kennedy’s new Single Integrated Operational Plan. The new SIOP had only just come in when the scariest confrontation of the Cold War to date came with the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. When the US discovered that Khrushchev was siting missiles in Fidel Castro’s Cuba only a few miles from the Florida coast, it was clear that much of the US mainland would soon be within range of Soviet nuclear weapons. The military wanted to bomb the missile sites before they were finished but Kennedy insisted on restraint and launched a naval blockade of Cuba instead.

…

In addition new radar systems were created to give early warning of the launch of missiles by the other side. Over the years, every innovation within the United States was matched by an equivalent development in the Soviet Union. A vast arsenal of nuclear weapons was created with the capacity to destroy all forms of life on planet Earth. Something had to give. In the wake of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union had signed a Partial Test Ban Treaty to stop further atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons. This was a small first step on the long road of slowing up the arms race. In 1968 the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was signed by the US, the USSR and Britain, which had its own small nuclear capability, prohibiting the export of nuclear technology to other countries (France and China by this time also possessed nuclear weapons but did not sign).

…

And of course also to the maverick Khrushchev, who liked to lead foreign affairs from the front, often deciding on initiatives without consulting his colleagues. These were momentous years in the Cold War that saw a growing split between Moscow and Beijing, the building of the Wall to divide Berlin, the test explosion of a new generation of thermonuclear weapons, and the Cuban missile crisis. Throughout these years Andropov took a moderate position, arguing against a complete falling out with China and in favour of modest reforms in the client states. But he was no liberal, and Khrushchev’s fall in 1964 did not deflect his progress up the political ladder. He stayed loyal to the conventional orthodoxy of Marxism-Leninism, writing a series of articles for party publications with such catchy titles as ‘Leninism Lights Our Way’, ‘Friendship of the Soviet Peoples: The Inexhaustible Source of Our Victories’ and ‘Proletarian Internationalism: The Communists’ Battle Banner.’9 In May 1967 Andropov was appointed head of the KGB, and the following month he became a non-voting member of the Politburo.

The Brilliant Disaster: JFK, Castro, and America's Doomed Invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs by Jim Rasenberger

affirmative action, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Gunnar Myrdal, Kitchen Debate, land reform, Neil Armstrong, Seymour Hersh, Ted Sorensen, Torches of Freedom, William of Occam

He also draws compelling portraits of the other figures who played key roles in the drama: Fidel Castro, who shortly after achieving power visited New York City and was cheered by thousands (just months before the United States began plotting his demise); Dwight Eisenhower, who originally ordered the secret program, then later disavowed it; Allen Dulles, the CIA director who may have told Kennedy about the plan before he was elected president (or so Richard Nixon suspected); and Richard Bissell, the famously brilliant “deus ex machina” who ran the operation for the CIA—and took the blame when it failed. Beyond the short-term fallout, Rasenberger demonstrates, the Bay of Pigs gave rise to further and greater woes, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War, and even, possibly, the assassination of John Kennedy. Written with elegant clarity and narrative verve, The Brilliant Disaster is the most complete account of this event to date, providing not only a fast-paced chronicle of the disaster but an analysis of how it occurred—a question as relevant today as then—and how it profoundly altered the course of modern American history.

…

—Washingtonian magazine “Rasenberger provides an outstanding chronological day-by-day, nearly minute-by-minute, account of the operation that was first planned during the Eisenhower administration and inherited by JFK.… In the end, Rasenberger makes the case for the large impact that the Bay of Pigs had on historic events that followed, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin Wall, the involvement in Vietnam, and the election of President Nixon and Watergate, among others.” —Idaho Statesman “A brilliant book … Students of history too young to remember the events of that April in 1961 will appreciate the thoroughness. For those who lived through that chilling time, it is a page-turner.

…

—Studies in Intelligence “A gripping narrative … Rasenberger provides interesting details about the aftermath, including the Christmas-time release of the captured fighters several years later, his attorney father’s role in that episode, and sums up how the Bay of Pigs continued to reverberate from the Cuban Missile Crisis to Watergate.” —Publishers Weekly “What I love about Jim Rasenberger’s richly detailed, startlingly revisionist account of the Bay of Pigs invasion is his sheer storytelling ability, the wonderful, steady march of plot and counterplot, of heroes and foils. His tale is chock-full of larger-than-life characters—from JFK to Castro, mafia bosses, and the steely-eyed, hypersmart men of the New Frontier.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President by Bandy X. Lee

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Anthropocene, Carl Icahn, cuban missile crisis, dark triade / dark tetrad, David Brooks, declining real wages, delayed gratification, demand response, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, facts on the ground, fake news, false flag, fear of failure, illegal immigration, impulse control, meta-analysis, national security letter, Neil Armstrong, Ronald Reagan, seminal paper, Skype, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, The Chicago School

As he was reaching to phone the president, a third call came in announcing that the report of the incoming missiles was a false alarm caused by a computer glitch. It is extremely disconcerting to note that false alarms and accidents are by no means a rare occurrence. The Cuban Missile Crisis: President Kennedy Unlike the nightmarish false alarm of 1979, lasting five minutes, which few were aware of, the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 lasted thirteen white-knuckle days, played out before the entire world in a series of very real, terrifying actions and reactions between America and the USSR. At several junctures, the world was within an eyelash of all-out nuclear holocaust.

…

Mika explains how tyrannies are “toxic triangles,” as political scientists call them, necessitating that the tyrant, his supporters, and the society at large bind around narcissism; while the three factors animate for a while, the characteristic oppression, dehumanization, and violence inevitably bring on downfall. In “The Loneliness of Fateful Decisions,” Fisher recounts the Cuban Missile Crisis and notes how, even though President Kennedy surrounded himself with the “best and the brightest,” they disagreed greatly, leaving him alone to make the decisions—which illustrates how the future of our country and the world hang on a president’s mental clarity. In “He’s Got the World in His Hands and His Finger on the Trigger,” Gartrell and Mosbacher note how, while military personnel must undergo rigorous evaluations to assess their mental and medical fitness for duty, there is no such requirement for their commander in chief; they propose a nonpartisan panel of neuropsychiatrists for annual screening.

…

Returning to our historical examples of nuclear emergencies, is there anyone who could possibly believe DT would have shown Brzezinski’s grace under pressure had he himself received that 3:00 a.m. call? If, indeed, Trump harbors grandiose and paranoid delusions (for which there is mounting evidence), he would have launched missiles faster than he fires off paranoid tweets on a Saturday morning. Given the thirteen days of excruciating tension during the very real nuclear threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis, is there anyone who possibly believes that DT could have demonstrated JFK’s composure, wisdom, and judgment, especially in the face of unanimous pressure from his military advisers? If DT were indeed merely “crazy like a fox,” it would still be a huge stretch—but, increasingly, that appears not to be the case.

If Then: How Simulmatics Corporation Invented the Future by Jill Lepore

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Buckminster Fuller, Cambridge Analytica, company town, computer age, coronavirus, cuban missile crisis, data science, desegregation, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Elon Musk, fake news, game design, George Gilder, Grace Hopper, Hacker Ethic, Howard Zinn, index card, information retrieval, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, Jeffrey Epstein, job automation, John Perry Barlow, land reform, linear programming, Mahatma Gandhi, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, mass incarceration, Maui Hawaii, Menlo Park, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, New Urbanism, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, packet switching, Peter Thiel, profit motive, punch-card reader, RAND corporation, Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, SimCity, smart cities, social distancing, South China Sea, Stewart Brand, technoutopianism, Ted Sorensen, Telecommunications Act of 1996, urban renewal, War on Poverty, white flight, Whole Earth Catalog

Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World, 719–21. “U.S. Imposes Arms Blockade,” NYT, October 23, 1962. Aldous, Schlesinger, 292–93. See also “The World on the Brink: John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis—Day 10,” Kennedy Library, https://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/oct25/. Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World, 728–37. “The World on the Brink: John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis—Department of State Telegram,” Kennedy Library, https://microsites.jfklibrary.org/cmc/oct26/doc4.html. Aldous, Schlesinger, 290. Martin, Adlai Stevenson and the World, 728–37. Paine Knickerbocker, “Gene Burdick Attacks a ‘Lie’ on ‘Fail-Safe,’ ” San Francisco Chronicle, October 9, 1964.

…

Stevenson, echoing warnings issued by the Kennedy administration, said that the United States would consider the establishment of a missile site as an act of aggression. On October 14, Stevenson met with Kennedy in New York. That same day, a CIA-run U-2 flying a secret surveillance mission over Cuba took photographs that revealed the existence of a launching pad and at least one nuclear missile in San Cristóbal.33 The Cuban Missile Crisis had begun. Over the next thirteen days, the United States—and the world—would come closer to nuclear war than at any other point during the Cold War. On Tuesday, October 16, Kennedy called for the first of a series of secret meetings in the White House of a group that came to be called “ExComm”—the Executive Committee of the National Security Council.

…

By the time it had been read in the White House, Khrushchev, not having received any reply, had already sent a second, harder-line message. The delay might have been fatal. In Fail-Safe, Burdick and Wheeler had argued that a failure of communications, even just a small computer glitch, could lead to Armageddon. After the Cuban Missile Crisis ended, representatives of the United States and the USSR met in Geneva to sign a “Memorandum of Understanding . . . Regarding the Establishment of a Direct Communications Link”: they set up a hotline between the Kremlin and the Pentagon, a link by teletype. Eugene Burdick took credit for that idea, since this very hotline links Moscow and Washington in Fail-Safe.

I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict by Kenneth Payne

Abraham Maslow, AI winter, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, AlphaGo, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, artificial general intelligence, Asperger Syndrome, augmented reality, Automated Insights, autonomous vehicles, backpropagation, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, Boston Dynamics, classic study, combinatorial explosion, computer age, computer vision, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, coronavirus, COVID-19, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, data science, deep learning, deepfake, DeepMind, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, disinformation, driverless car, drone strike, dual-use technology, Elon Musk, functional programming, Geoffrey Hinton, Google X / Alphabet X, Internet of things, job automation, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kickstarter, language acquisition, loss aversion, machine translation, military-industrial complex, move 37, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, OpenAI, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, RAND corporation, ransomware, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, semantic web, side project, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, strong AI, Stuxnet, technological determinism, TED Talk, theory of mind, TikTok, Turing machine, Turing test, uranium enrichment, urban sprawl, V2 rocket, Von Neumann architecture, Wall-E, zero-sum game

Why would they favour the offence? Speed is certainly important, but there’s more at work than that. First a caveat—the distinction between offence and defence can be rather subjective, and sometimes depends on the intent with which the weapon is used, rather than its physical capabilities. In the famous Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, for example, President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev fell to debating whether the missiles that the USSR had secretly sent to their Cuban ally Fidel Castro were offensive weapons.17 Yes, said Kennedy, arguing that they posed a direct threat to the security of the United States, and were a dangerous escalation in the already febrile Cold War.

…

You could model them formally, via game theory, using probabilities and payoffs. But the big question with both metaphors was how to translate them into international politics. Was there a real-world version of chicken? Some genuine crises did have elements of Schelling’s logic to them, whether or not that was intentional. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, there was plenty of randomness to contend with, like the accidental U2 surveillance flight that strayed into Soviet airspace in the middle of the drama. And sometimes leaders deliberately cultivated the erratic, even unhinged, behaviour of Schelling’s man on a clifftop. President Nixon became the arch exponent of what he termed the ‘madman theory’ of statecraft—crafting an image of an irascible leader who might take dangerous escalatory steps unless the enemy backed down.

…

‘Merkel Is “Outraged” by Russian Hack but Struggling to Respond’, The New York Times, 13 May 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/13/world/europe/merkel-russia-cyberattack.html. 17. See especially, Beschloss, Michael R. Kennedy v. Khrushchev: The Crisis Years, 1960–63. London: Faber and Faber, 1991; and Fursenko, A. A., and Timothy J. Naftali. One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, Kennedy, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1958–1964. London: Pimlico, 1999. 18. Elsewhere I argue for the offence, Payne, Kenneth. ‘Artificial intelligence: a revolution in strategic affairs?’ Survival 60, no. 5 (2018): 7–32. Agreement comes from Altmann, Jürgen and Frank Sauer, ‘Autonomous Weapon Systems and Strategic Stability’, Survival 59, no. 5 (2017): 117–142; one argument about defence dominance not yet in print but much discussed among theorists has to do with the vulnerability of AI platforms to electronic warfare.

The Age of Radiance: The Epic Rise and Dramatic Fall of the Atomic Era by Craig Nelson

Albert Einstein, Brownian motion, Charles Lindbergh, clean tech, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, continuation of politics by other means, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, El Camino Real, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, Herman Kahn, hive mind, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John von Neumann, Louis Pasteur, low earth orbit, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, music of the spheres, mutually assured destruction, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, oil shale / tar sands, Project Plowshare, Ralph Nader, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Skype, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, technoutopianism, Ted Sorensen, TED Talk, too big to fail, uranium enrichment, William Langewiesche, éminence grise

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Crowell, William P. “Remembrances of Venona.” CIA Headquarters, July 11, 1995. http://www.nsa.gov/public_info/declass/venona/remembrances.shtml. “Cuban Missile Crisis.” AtomicArchive.com. http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Cuba/index.shtml. “Cuban Missile Crisis.” Wilson Center Digital Archive. http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/31/Cuban-Missile-Crisis. Cumings, Bruce. “Korea: Forgotten Nuclear Threats.” Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2004. Curie, Ève. Madame Curie. New York: Doubleday, 1937. Curie, Marie. Cher Pierre que je ne reverrai plus (Journal 1906–1907).

…

., 265 arms race and, 276–77, 282, 289, 376 atomic satellite programs and, 305–06 Bay of Pigs invasion and, 286, 293–94 Cuban Missile Crisis and, 294–99 fallout shelters and, 286 joint moon mission proposal and, 284 Khrushchev and, 285–86 missile gap and, 282, 285–86, 293–94 nuclear air power programs and, 305 nuclear defense strategies and, 288–89 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and, 374 presidential campaign against Nixon by, 282, 284–85 Kennedy, Robert, 297 KGB, 172, 238, 240, 292, 293, 327 Khan, Abdul Qadeer, 338 Khrushchev, Nikita, 370–71 arms race and¸ 245, 254, 267, 276–77, 284–85, 373 Bay of Pigs invasion and, 286, 293–94 Cold War and, 300 Cuban Missile Crisis and, 294–95, 296–97, 298, 299 joint moon mission proposal and, 284 rise to power by, 254 Szilard’s meeting with, 267 US perception of threats from, 256 Khrushchev, Sergei, 246, 256, 284, 290, 294–95, 297, 298 Killing a Nation defense strategy, 277, 292, 293, 372 Kim Il Sung, 243, 373 King, Ernest, 221–22 Kissinger, Henry A., 282, 335 Kistiakowsky, George (Kisty), 169, 171, 173, 196, 197–98, 199, 202, 228 Klaproth, Martin, 25 Knuth, August, 130 Kolbert, Elizabeth, 360–61 Korea.

…

Szilard was promised fifteen minutes but unsurprisingly to any of his friends, the talk went on for two hours, with Khrushchev finally agreeing to the possibility of an international agency that would limit arms escalation and a communications hotline between the Soviet premier and the American president in case of nuclear crisis. That hotline would also appear in Dr. Strangelove, but would not exist in the real world until the Cuban Missile Crisis and its series of delayed telegrams made it clear to both sides that this was worthwhile. In April 1958, the USSR unilaterally suspended nuclear testing, and after the AEC’s Strauss warned Eisenhower that a reciprocal American test ban would turn Los Alamos and Livermore into “ghost towns,” the president growled that he “thought scientists, like other people, have a strong interest in avoiding nuclear war.”

The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity by Toby Ord

3D printing, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, availability heuristic, biodiversity loss, Columbian Exchange, computer vision, cosmological constant, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, defense in depth, delayed gratification, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Drosophila, effective altruism, Elon Musk, Ernest Rutherford, global pandemic, Goodhart's law, Hans Moravec, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, Large Hadron Collider, launch on warning, Mark Zuckerberg, Mars Society, mass immigration, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Nick Bostrom, Norbert Wiener, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, OpenAI, p-value, Peter Singer: altruism, planetary scale, power law, public intellectual, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, seminal paper, social discount rate, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, supervolcano, survivorship bias, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, the scientific method, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, William MacAskill

A key difference between the two framings is that the pacing problem refers to the speed of technological change, rather than to its growing power to change the world. 58 Sagan (1994), pp. 316–17. 59 Barack Obama, Remarks at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (2016). Consider also the words of John F. Kennedy on the twentieth anniversary of the nuclear chain reaction (just a month after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis): “our progress in the use of science has been great, but our progress in ordering our relations small” (Kennedy, 1962). 60 In his quest for peace after the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy (1963) put it so: “Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.” Of course one could have some human-made problems that have gone past a point of no return, but that is not yet the case for any of those being considered in this book.

…

His name was Valentin Savitsky. He was captain of the submarine B-59—one of four submarines the Soviet Union had sent to support its military operations in Cuba. Each was armed with a secret weapon: a nuclear torpedo with explosive power comparable to the Hiroshima bomb. It was the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Two weeks earlier, US aerial reconnaissance had produced photographic evidence that the Soviet Union was installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, from which they could strike directly at the mainland United States. In response, the US blockaded the seas around Cuba, drew up plans for an invasion and brought its nuclear forces to the unprecedented alert level of DEFCON 2 (“Next step to nuclear war”).

…

But as more and more behind-the-scenes evidence from the Cold War has become public, it has become increasingly clear that we have only barely avoided full-scale nuclear war. We saw how the intervention of a single person, Captain Vasili Arkhipov, may have prevented an all-out nuclear war at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. But even more shocking is just how many times in those few days we came close to disaster, only to be pulled back by the decisions of a few individuals. The principal events of the crisis took place over a single week. On Monday, October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy gave a television address, informing his nation that the Soviets had begun installing strategic nuclear missiles in Cuba—directly threatening the United States.

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance by Noam Chomsky

"World Economic Forum" Davos, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, cuban missile crisis, declining real wages, disinformation, Doomsday Clock, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, invisible hand, launch on warning, liberation theology, long peace, market fundamentalism, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Strategic Defense Initiative, uranium enrichment

With different threats in mind, strategic analyst Michael Krepon regarded the final days of 2002 as “the most dangerous time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.” A high-level task force concluded that “we are entering a time of especially grave danger [as we] are preparing to attack a ruthless adversary [Iraq] who may well have access to [weapons of mass destruction].” Such dangers are likely to become even more grave in the longer term as a consequence of the easy resort to violence, as many have pointed out.1 The reasons behind these concerns merit close attention, but too narrow a focus can be misleading. We can gain a more realistic perspective on them by asking why the Cuban missile crisis was such a “dangerous time.”

…

Rather, they were spoken by the respected liberal elder statesman Dean Acheson in 1963. He was justifying US actions against Cuba in full knowledge that Washington’s international terrorist campaign aimed at “regime change” had been a significant factor in bringing the world close to nuclear war only a few months earlier, and that it was resumed immediately after the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. Nevertheless, he instructed the American Society of International Law that no “legal issue” arises when the US responds to a challenge to its “power, position, and prestige.” Acheson’s doctrine was subsequently invoked by the Reagan administration, at the other end of the political spectrum, when it rejected World Court jurisdiction over its attack on Nicaragua, dismissed the court order to terminate its crimes, and then vetoed two Security Council resolutions affirming the court judgment and calling on all states to observe international law.

…

The word noise connotes “discordant, unintelligent clamor,” Costigliola adds.11 Perhaps many Europeans might not be too happy about the significance accorded their survival, even if respected US commentators are confident that their reluctance to “come along” is a sign of “paranoid anti-Americanism,” “ignorance and avarice,” and other “cultural deficiencies.” International terrorism dominated the headlines as the retrospective conference took place; so did Washington’s allegedly novel doctrine of regime change. But there is little novel here: The Cuban missile crisis grew directly out of a campaign of international terrorism aimed at forceful regime change. Historian Thomas Paterson concludes, quite plausibly, that “the origins of the October 1962 crisis derived largely from the concerted U.S. campaign to quash the Cuban revolution” by violence and economic warfare.12 We can gain a better insight into current implications by looking at how the crisis evolved, and the guiding principles that motivated policy.

Destined for War: America, China, and Thucydides's Trap by Graham Allison

9 dash line, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, borderless world, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, escalation ladder, facts on the ground, false flag, Flash crash, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, game design, George Santayana, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, Haber-Bosch Process, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, industrial robot, Internet of things, Kenneth Rogoff, liberal world order, long peace, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, megaproject, middle-income trap, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, one-China policy, Paul Samuelson, Peace of Westphalia, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Scramble for Africa, selection bias, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, special economic zone, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, synthetic biology, TED Talk, the rule of 72, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade route, UNCLOS, Washington Consensus, zero-sum game

Reflecting on his own responsibilities, Kennedy pledged that if he ever found himself facing choices that could make the difference between catastrophic war and peace, he would be able to give history a better answer than Bethmann Hollweg’s. Kennedy had no inkling of what lay ahead. In October 1962, just two months after he read Tuchman’s book, he faced off against Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in the most dangerous confrontation in human history. The Cuban Missile Crisis began when the United States discovered the Soviets attempting to sneak nuclear-tipped missiles into Cuba, a mere ninety miles from Florida. The situation quickly escalated from diplomatic threats to an American blockade of the island, military mobilizations in both the US and USSR, and several high-stakes clashes, including the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Cuba.

…

In analyzing how wars break out, historians focus primarily on proximate, or immediate, causes. In the case of World War I, these include the assassination of the Hapsburg archduke Franz Ferdinand and the decision by Tsar Nicholas II to mobilize Russian forces against the Central Powers. If the Cuban Missile Crisis had resulted in war, the proximate causes could have been the Soviet submarine captain’s decision to fire his torpedoes rather than allow his submarine to sink, or a Turkish pilot’s errant choice to fly his nuclear payload to Moscow. Proximate causes for war are undeniably important. But the founder of history believed that the most obvious causes for bloodshed mask even more significant ones.

…

Think again about the game of chicken discussed in chapter 8. Consider each clause of the paradox. On the one hand, if war occurs, both nations lose. There is no value for which rational leaders could reasonably choose the deaths of hundreds of millions of their own citizens. In that sense, in the Cuban Missile Crisis President Kennedy and Chairman Khrushchev were partners in a struggle to prevent mutual disaster. But this is the condition for both nations, and the leaders of both nations know it. Thus, on the other hand, if either nation is unwilling to risk waging (losing) a nuclear war, its opponent can win any objective by creating conditions that force the more responsible power to choose between yielding and risking escalation to war.

The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading: Tales of the Computer as Culture Machine by Peter Lunenfeld

Albert Einstein, Andrew Keen, anti-globalists, Apple II, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Brownian motion, Buckminster Fuller, Burning Man, business cycle, business logic, butterfly effect, Charles Babbage, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, don't be evil, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dynabook, East Village, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Fairchild Semiconductor, Fall of the Berlin Wall, folksonomy, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, Free Software Foundation, Grace Hopper, gravity well, Guggenheim Bilbao, Herman Kahn, Honoré de Balzac, Howard Rheingold, Ian Bogost, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, Ivan Sutherland, Jacquard loom, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Jon Ronson, Kickstarter, Mark Zuckerberg, Marshall McLuhan, Mercator projection, Metcalfe’s law, Mother of all demos, mutually assured destruction, Neal Stephenson, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, new economy, Norbert Wiener, PageRank, pattern recognition, peer-to-peer, planetary scale, plutocrats, post-materialism, Potemkin village, RFID, Richard Feynman, Richard Stallman, Robert Metcalfe, Robert X Cringely, Schrödinger's Cat, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, seminal paper, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, Skype, social bookmarking, social software, spaced repetition, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, technological determinism, Ted Nelson, the built environment, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the medium is the message, Thomas L Friedman, Turing machine, Turing test, urban planning, urban renewal, Vannevar Bush, walkable city, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, William Shockley: the traitorous eight

The bomb has been cited as the catalyst for everything from the rise of existentialism in the 1950s to the rebirth of religiosity in the West, from atomic age googie diners in Southern California to the kawai/cuteness of contemporary Japanese Superflat art. I was a baby when President John F. Kennedy appeared on all three major television networks to announce that the Soviets were stationing ballistic missiles just ninety miles off the Florida coast, and that what was later to be called the Cuban Missile Crisis was at hand. Kennedy used the medium of television to talk about the bomb, not only to the American people, but also to the leadership in Havana and Moscow, bypassing the customary diplomatic notification procedures entirely. The family lore is that my parents stayed up all that night in terror for themselves and for me.

…

All hyperlinks current as of October 1, 2010 197 INDEX Adobe Systems, 55 Adstar, 177 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), 152, 158 Advertisement, 184nn12,15 bespoke futures and, 107 culture machine and, 175–177 stickiness and, 23, 31 unimodernism and, 52, 57, 59 Affordances, 183n4 bespoke futures and, 121, 124, 129, 136 stickiness and, 16–17, 24, 28–35 unimodernism and, 68, 75 Web n.0 and, 80–82, 90 Afghanistan, 100 African National Congress, 113 AfterSherrieLevine.com, 41–42 Agee, James, 40–42 Age of Aquarius, 159 Agribusiness, 4, 10 Airplanes, xiii Alessi, 64 Algorithms, 46, 144, 174–177 Allen, Paul, 164 “All You Need Is Love” (Beatles), 62 Al-Muhajiroun, 134 Al-Qaeda, 134 Altair personal computer, 161, 164 Alto personal computer, 162 Amazing Stories (comic book), 108–110 Amazon, 68, 99, 145 Amis, Kinsley, 32 Animation, 55–56, 58, 110, 118 Antiglobalization activists, 98 AOL, 9, 53, 99 Apartheid, 112–113 Apple, 144, 163–167, 172, 186n12 Appropriate scale, 57 Aquarians, 24, 152, 159, 168–169 description of term, xv Engelbart and, 144, 157–167 Kay and, 144, 157, 160–167, 195nn16,17 Nelson and, 168 networked computers and, xv Sutherland and, 160–161 Arcades, 15, 71 Architectural Forum magazine, 84 Ariadne, 11 Arnold, Matthew, 14 Ars Electronica, 169–170 Art nouveau, 44, 66 “As We May Think” (Bush), 149, 157 AT&T, 144, 195n10 Atari, 165 Atlantic Monthly, 149 Atomic age, 146 as catalyst, xi Cuban Missile Crisis and, xi description of, xv emergence of, xi–xii 198 Atomic age (continued) Hiroshima and, 100–101 Manhattan Project and, 150 mutually assured destruction and, xi terrorism and, 100–101 Avant-gardism, 31, 44, 61, 117–120, 133 Babbage, Charles, 149 Bakri Muhammad, Omar, 134–135 Bali, 100 Ballmer, Steve, 164 Balzac, Honoré de, 44 Banham, Reyner, 10 Barr, Alfred, 117–118 Bauhaus, 117 BBC, 10 Beatles, 54–55, 62 Bebop, 25–27 Beirut, Michael, 102 Bellamy, Edward, 108 Benjamin, Walter, 88 Berg, Alban, 45 Berlin Wall, xvi, 85, 97, 99, 104 Bernays, Edward L., 123–124 Berners-Lee, Tim, 144, 167–169, 175 Bespoke futures adopting future as client and, 110–113 anticipated technology and, 108–110 crafting, 113–116 design and, 102, 105–106, 110–111, 115–116, 119–120, 124–125, 137 downloading and, 97, 123, 132, 138 dynamic equilibrium and, 117–120 89/11 and, xvi, 97, 100–102, 105, 130 Enlightenment and, xvi, 129–139 information and, 98, 100–101, 124–126 lack of vision and, 106–108 markets and, 97–104, 118, 120, 127, 131–132, 137–138 MaSAI (Massively Synchronous Applications of the Imagination) and, xvi, 112, 120–123, 127, 193n32 199 modernists and, 105–108 mutants and, 105–108 networks and, 98–101, 108, 112–113, 116, 119–126, 133, 137 New Economy and, 97, 99, 104, 131, 138, 144–145, 190n3 participation and, 98–99, 120–121, 129 plutopian meliorism and, xvi, 127–129, 133, 137–138 prosumers and, 120–121 reperceiving and, 112–113 R-PR (Really Public Relations) and, 123–127 scenario planning and, 111–119, 191n19, 192n20 simulation and, 98, 121, 124, 126–127 strange attractors and, xvi, 117–120, 192n27 technology and, 98–104, 107–113, 116, 119, 125–127, 131–133, 136–139 television and, 101, 108, 124, 127–129, 133–137 unfinish and, 127–129, 136 uploading and, 97, 120–123, 128–129, 132 Best use, 10, 13–15, 138 Bezos, Jeff, 145 Bible, 28, 137 BitTorrent, 92 Black Album, The (Jay Z), 55 Blade Runner (Scott), 107 Blogger, 177 Blogosphere, xvii bespoke futures and, 101 culture machine and, 175, 177 Facebook and, 81, 145, 180n2 stickiness and, 30, 34 Twitter and, 34, 180n2 unimodernism and, 49, 68 Web n.0 and, 80, 92–93 INDEX Bohème, La (Puccini), 61 Boing Boing magazine, 68–69 Bollywood, 62 Bourgeoisie, 31 Bowie, David, 62 Braque, Georges, 93 Breuer, Marcel, 45 Brillat-Savarin, Jean Anthèlme, 3 Brin, Sergey, 144, 174–176 Broadband technology, 9, 57 Brownian motion, 49 Burroughs, Allie Mae, 40–42 Burroughs, William, 52 Bush, Vannevar, 52, 194n6 culture machine and, 144, 147–152, 157 Engelbart and, 157 Memex and, 108, 149–151 Oppenheimer and, 150 systems theory and, 151 war effort and, 150–151 Business 2.0 magazine, 145 C3I , 146–147 Cabrini Green, 85 Calypso, 25–27 Cambodia, 107 Cambridge, 17, 36 “Can-Can” (“Orpheus in the Underworld”) (Offenbach), 62 Capitalism, 4, 13 bespoke futures and, 97–100, 103–105 Sears and, 103–105 stickiness and, 13 unimodernism and, 66, 75 Web n.0 and, 90 Capitulationism, 7, 24, 30, 182n1 Carnegie, Andrew, 166 Casablanca (film), 90 Cassette tapes, 2 CATIA 3–D software, 39 Cell phones, xiii, xvii, 17, 23, 42, 53, 56, 76, 101 Chaos theory, 117–120 Chaplin, Charlie, 45 Cheney, Dick, 99 China, 104, 107 Christians, 135 Cicero, 47 Cinema, 8, 10 micro, 56–60 stickiness and, 15 unimodernism and, 47, 52, 56–60, 63, 71 Clarke, Arthur C., 174 CNN, 58 Cobain, Kurt, 62 Code breaking, 17–18 Cold war, 101 Cole, Nat King, 62 Commercial culture, 4–5, 8 bespoke futures and, 98, 102, 108, 120, 132–134 culture machine and, 153–156, 167, 170, 172, 175–177 copyright and, 54, 88–95, 123, 164, 166, 173, 177 Mickey Mouse Protection Act and, 90 open source and, 36, 61, 69, 74–75, 91–92, 116, 121–126, 144, 170– 173, 177, 189n12 propaganda and, 124 scenario planning and, 111–119 stickiness and, 23, 28–31, 37 unimodernism and, 41, 69 Web n.0 and, 82–86 Commercial syndrome, 85–86 Communism, 97–98, 103 Compact discs (CDs), 2, 48, 53 Complex City (Simon), 39 “Computable Numbers, On” (Turing), 18 Computer Data Systems, 145 Computers, xi.

…

Congress and, 90 violations of, 92–93, 95 Web n.0 and, 88–95 Corian, 64 Creative Commons, 173, 189n12 bespoke futures and, 123 Mickey Mouse Protection Act and, 90 Computers (continued) Aquarians and, xv, 24, 144, 152, 157, 159–169 challenge to television of, 2 as culture machine, xiv, xvi, xv–xvi, 5 (see also Culture machine) distribution and, xiii dominance of, xii–xiii, xiv as dream machines, xiii emergence of, xii–xiii first, 146 hackers and, 22–23, 54, 67, 69, 162, 170–173 historical perspective on, 143–178 Hosts and, xv, 144, 167, 175 Hustlers and, xv, 144, 156, 162–167 intelligence test for, 19 as “Man of the Year,” xii Moore’s law and, 156, 195n13 mouse for, 158–159 participation and, xvi, 15–17, 27–35, 54, 66–67, 74–80, 98–99, 120– 121, 129, 143–147, 151, 156–165, 170, 175–178 Patriarchs and, xv, 143–144, 147–153, 156–157, 162–163, 166–168 personal, 152, 161–167 Plutocrats and, xv, 144, 152–159, 163–166, 170 production and, xiii relationship with data and, 32 Searchers and, xv–xvi, 144, 167, 174–178 simulation and, xvi, 2 (see also Simulation) Sterling on, 101–102 symbiosis and, 151–152 systems theory and, 151 ubiquity and, xiii, 22–23, 39, 57–59, 62, 74, 81–82, 87, 92–93, 125, 128, 144, 166, 177–178 Universal Turing Machine and, 18–19 201 INDEX Creative Commons (continued) open source and, 90–93, 123, 173 purpose of, 91 Web n.0 and, 90–93 Creatives, 30 Credit cards, 76 Crenshaw district, 105 Critical inquiry, 14 Cuban Missile Crisis, xi Cubism, 44, 79, 117 Cultural issues commercialism and, 4–5, 8 (see also Commercial culture) diabetic technologies and, 3–5 dominance of television and, xii, 2–5, 7–10 fan culture and, 28–32, 48, 49, 87 free culture and, 75, 92, 98–99 Freud and, 43–44 hierarchies and, 1, 24, 29, 93, 114 junk culture and, 5–10 mass/pop culture and, 13, 31, 39–40, 47–48, 53, 56–58, 61–63, 107, 109, 184n16 mechanization and, 44–45 open source and, 36, 61, 69, 74–75, 91–92, 116, 121–126, 144, 170– 173, 177, 189n12 psychology and, 16, 21–22, 42–44, 56, 151, 161 secular culture and, 133–139 Slow Food and, 5–7 stickiness and, 28–32 (see also Stickiness) Culture machine, 5 Aquarians and, xv, 24, 144, 152, 157, 159–169 bespoke futures and, 97–101, 116, 123–133, 137–138 design and, 139, 150, 160, 165, 167, 171–172, 176 development of, 143–178 downloading and, 143, 168 gaming and, 70–74 Hosts and, xv, 144, 167, 175 Hustlers and, xv, 144, 156, 162–167 information and, 46, 143–149, 152– 153, 163, 167–168, 172, 176–178 networks and, 143–144, 152, 167– 168, 172–175, 178 participation and, 15–17, 143–147, 151, 156–165, 170, 175–178 Patriarchs and, xv, 143–144, 147–153, 156–157, 162–163, 166–168 Plutocrats and, xv, 144, 152–159, 163–166, 170 postmodernism and, 39–40 Searchers and, xv–xvi, 144, 167, 174–178 simulation and, 15–17, 143–144, 147– 152, 156–160, 166–168, 175–178 stickiness and, 15–19, 27, 32, 35 technology and, 143–163, 173–174 unimodernism and, 39, 42, 46–60, 67–76 uploading and, 143, 168, 173, 175 Warriors and, 146–147 Web n.0 and, 79–85, 90–93 Cut-up fiction, 52 Cyberpunk, 68, 87, 110 Czechoslovakia, 104 Dada, 79, 186n8 Danger Mouse, 54–55 Dare, Dan, 108 Darth Vader, 90 Darwin, Charles, 133 Davis, Miles, 25–26 Dawkins, Richard, 143 Death and Life of Great American Cities, The (Jacobs), 84–85 Deconstruction, 29–31 DeLanda, Manuel, 189n8 De.lic.ious, 75 202 INDEX Design bespoke futures and, 102, 105–106, 110–111, 115–116, 119–120, 124–125, 137 control over form and, 111 culture machine and, 139, 150, 160, 165, 167, 171–172, 176 future as client and, 110–113 futurists on, 101–102 graphic, 31, 45, 64, 102, 181n7 Gropius and, 36–37 isotypes and, 44, 125, 193n34 mechanization and, 44–45 Moore’s law and, 156 open source, 36, 61, 69, 74–75, 91–92, 116, 121–126, 144, 170– 173, 177, 189n12 play and, 32–34 postmodernism and, 29–30, 39–41, 74, 79, 130, 135 power and, 32–34 tweaking and, 32–35 unimodernism and, 39, 43–46, 49, 55–56, 60, 64–8, 71–74 Design of Everyday Things, The (Norman), 16 Design Within Reach, 46 Desk jobs, 3 Dewey, John, 129 Dewey, Melvil, 80 Diabetes, 3–5, 8 “Diamond Dogs” (Bowie), 62 Dick, Philip K., 9 Difference engine, 149 Digg, 34 Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), 71, 149, 153, 163, 170 Digital video discs (DVDs), 2, 7–8, 15, 58 Digital video recorders (DVRs), 2, 7, 15, 23, 181n3 Disco, 63 Disney Concert Hall, 39 DIY (do-it-yourself) movements, 67–70 203 Dot-com bubble, 79, 145, 174 Doubleclick, 177 Downloading, xiii–xiv, 180nn1,2 animal kingdom and, 1 bespoke futures and, 97, 123, 132, 138 best use and, 13–14 commercial networks and, 4–5 communication devices and, 15–16 cultural hierarchy of, 1–2 culture machine and, 143, 168 dangers of overabundance and, 7–10 defined, 1 diabetic responses to, 3–5 disrupting flow and, 23–24 figure/ground and, xvi, 42–43, 46, 102 Freedom software and, 22–23 habits of mind and, 9–10 humans and, 1–2 information overload and, 22, 149 info-triage and, xvi, 20–23, 121, 132, 143 as intake, 5 mindfulness and, xvi, 14, 17, 20–24, 27–29, 42, 77, 79, 123, 129, 183n6 patio potato and, 9–10, 13 peer-to-peer networks and, 15, 54, 92, 116, 126 stickiness and, 13–17, 20–23, 27–29, 184n15 surfing and, 20, 80, 180n2 television and, 2 unimodernism and, 41–42, 49, 54–57, 66–67, 76–77 viral distribution and, 30, 56, 169 wants vs. needs and, 13, 37, 57 Web n.0 and, 79, 82–83, 86–87 Duchamp, Marcel, 44, 48, 94 Dymaxion map, 73 Dynabook, 161–162, 196n17 Dynamic equilibrium, 117–120 EBay, 68 Eckert, J.

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War by Paul Scharre

"World Economic Forum" Davos, active measures, Air France Flight 447, air gap, algorithmic trading, AlphaGo, Apollo 13, artificial general intelligence, augmented reality, automated trading system, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, brain emulation, Brian Krebs, cognitive bias, computer vision, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, DARPA: Urban Challenge, data science, deep learning, DeepMind, DevOps, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, facts on the ground, fail fast, fault tolerance, Flash crash, Freestyle chess, friendly fire, Herman Kahn, IFF: identification friend or foe, ImageNet competition, information security, Internet of things, Jeff Hawkins, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Loebner Prize, loose coupling, Mark Zuckerberg, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, move 37, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, Nick Bostrom, PalmPilot, paperclip maximiser, pattern recognition, Rodney Brooks, Rubik’s Cube, self-driving car, sensor fusion, South China Sea, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Steve Ballmer, Steve Wozniak, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, superintelligent machines, Tesla Model S, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, theory of mind, Turing test, Tyler Cowen, universal basic income, Valery Gerasimov, Wall-E, warehouse robotics, William Langewiesche, Y2K, zero day

In recent years, the U.S. military has jockeyed for position with Russian warplanes in Syria and the Black Sea, Iranian fast boats in the Straits of Hormuz, and Chinese ships and air defenses in the South China Sea. Periods of brinksmanship, where nations flex their militaries to assert dominance but without actually firing weapons, are common in international relations. Sometimes tensions escalate to full-blown crises in which war appears imminent, such as the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In such situations, even the tiniest incident can trigger war. In 1914, a lone gunman assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, sparking a chain of events that led to World War I. Miscalculation and ambiguity are common in these tense situations, and confusion and accidents can generate momentum toward war.

…

Command-and-control refers to the ability of leaders to effectively marshal their military forces for a common goal and is a frequent concern in crises. National leaders do not have perfect control over their forces, and warfighters can and sometimes do take actions inconsistent with their national leadership’s intent, whether out of ignorance, negligence, or deliberate attempts to defy authorities. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was rife with such incidents. On October 26, ten days into the crisis, authorities at Vandenberg Air Force Base carried out a scheduled test launch of an Atlas ICBM without first checking with the White House. The next morning, on October 27, an American U-2 surveillance plane was shot down while flying over Cuba, despite orders by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev not to fire on U.S. surveillance aircraft.

…

Even if we could ensure that the autonomous weapon would flawlessly carry out political leaders’ directions, with no malfunctions or manipulation by the enemy, “you still have the problem that that’s a snapshot of the preferences and desires at that moment in time,” he said. Danks explained that people generally do a good job of predicting their own future preferences for situations they have experience with, but for “a completely novel situation . . . there’s real risks that we’re going to have pretty significant projection biases.” Again, the Cuban Missile Crisis illustrates the problem. Robert McNamara, who was secretary of defense at the time, later explained that the president’s senior advisors believed that if the U-2 they sent to fly over Cuba were shot down, it would have signaled a deliberate move by the Soviets to escalate. They had decided ahead of time, therefore, that if the U-2 was shot down, the United States would attack: [B]efore we sent the U-2 out, we agreed that if it was shot down we wouldn’t meet, we’d simply attack.

Because We Say So by Noam Chomsky

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, American Legislative Exchange Council, Anthropocene, Chelsea Manning, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Garrett Hardin, gentrification, high-speed rail, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Julian Assange, Malacca Straits, Martin Wolf, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, no-fly zone, Occupy movement, oil shale / tar sands, Powell Memorandum, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Slavoj Žižek, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, Tragedy of the Commons, uranium enrichment, WikiLeaks

IN HIROSHIMA’S SHADOW August 1, 2012 August 6, the anniversary of Hiroshima, should be a day of somber reflection, not only on the terrible events of that day in 1945, but also on what they revealed: that humans, in their dedicated quest to extend their capacities for destruction, had finally found a way to approach the ultimate limit. This year’s August 6 memorials have special significance. They take place shortly before the 50th anniversary of “the most dangerous moment in human history,” in the words of the historian and John F. Kennedy adviser Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., referring to the Cuban missile crisis. Graham Allison writes in the current issue of FOREIGN AFFAIRS that Kennedy “ordered actions that he knew would increase the risk not only of conventional war but also nuclear war,” with a likelihood of perhaps 50 percent, he believed, an estimate that Allison regards as realistic. Kennedy declared a high-level nuclear alert that authorized “NATO aircraft with Turkish pilots . . .

…

There have been innumerable cases when human intervention aborted nuclear attack only moments before launch after false reports by automated systems. There is much to think about on August 6. Allison joins many others in regarding Iran’s nuclear programs as the most severe current crisis, “an even more complex challenge for American policymakers than the Cuban missile crisis” because of the threat of Israeli bombing. The war against Iran is already well under way, including assassination of scientists and economic pressures that have reached the level of “undeclared war,” in the judgment of the Iran specialist Gary Sick. Great pride is taken in the sophisticated cyberwar directed against Iran.

…

But the achievements of those who have struggled for centuries for greater freedom and justice leave a legacy that can be taken up and carried forward—and must be, and soon, if hopes for decent survival are to be sustained. And nothing can tell us more eloquently what kind of creatures we are. RED LINES IN UKRAINE AND ELSEWHERE April 30, 2014 The current Ukraine crisis is serious and threatening, so much so that some commentators even compare it to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Columnist Thanassis Cambanis summarizes the core issue succinctly in the BOSTON GLOBE: “[President Vladimir V.] Putin’s annexation of the Crimea is a break in the order that America and its allies have come to rely on since the end of the Cold War— namely, one in which major powers only intervene militarily when they have an international consensus on their side, or failing that, when they’re not crossing a rival power’s red lines.”

Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction by Philip Tetlock, Dan Gardner

Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Black Swan, butterfly effect, buy and hold, cloud computing, cognitive load, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, desegregation, drone strike, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, forward guidance, Freestyle chess, fundamental attribution error, germ theory of disease, hindsight bias, How many piano tuners are there in Chicago?, index fund, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, Kenneth Arrow, Laplace demon, longitudinal study, Mikhail Gorbachev, Mohammed Bouazizi, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, Nelson Mandela, obamacare, operational security, pattern recognition, performance metric, Pierre-Simon Laplace, place-making, placebo effect, precautionary principle, prediction markets, quantitative easing, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, scientific worldview, Silicon Valley, Skype, statistical model, stem cell, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, tacit knowledge, tail risk, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!

Finally an agreement was reached, war was averted, and the world exhaled. If the Bay of Pigs was the Kennedy administration’s nadir, the Cuban missile crisis was its zenith, a moment when Kennedy and his team creatively engineered a positive result under extreme pressure. Knowing this, we might assume Kennedy cleaned house after the Bay of Pigs and surrounded himself with far superior advisers in time for the missile crisis. But he didn’t. The cast of characters in both dramas is mostly the same: the team that bungled the Bay of Pigs was the team that performed brilliantly during the Cuban missile crisis. In his 1972 classic, Victims of Groupthink, the psychologist Irving Janis—one of my PhD advisers at Yale long ago—explored the decision making that went into both the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis.

…

Within eighteen months, an island off the coast of Florida was a base for five thousand Soviet soldiers and an array of Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles that could destroy Washington, DC, and New York City, and the two global superpowers were locked in a crisis that Kennedy estimated, in retrospect, had between a one-third and one-half chance of escalating into nuclear war. The story of the Cuban missile crisis that followed from the Bay of Pigs fiasco is equally familiar, but the similarities end there. Over thirteen terrifying days in October 1962, the Kennedy administration considered a range of dangerous options to counter the Soviet threat—including outright invasion—before settling on a naval blockade.

…

In his 1972 classic, Victims of Groupthink, the psychologist Irving Janis—one of my PhD advisers at Yale long ago—explored the decision making that went into both the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. Today, everyone has heard of groupthink, although few have read the book that coined the term or know that Janis meant something more precise than the vague catchphrase groupthink has become today. In Janis’s hypothesis, “members of any small cohesive group tend to maintain esprit de corps by unconsciously developing a number of shared illusions and related norms that interfere with critical thinking and reality testing.”3 Groups that get along too well don’t question assumptions or confront uncomfortable facts.

Animal Spirits by Jackson Lears

1960s counterculture, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, behavioural economics, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, clockwork universe, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Doomsday Clock, double entry bookkeeping, epigenetics, escalation ladder, feminist movement, financial innovation, Frederick Winslow Taylor, George Akerlof, George Santayana, heat death of the universe, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Ida Tarbell, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Lewis Mumford, lifelogging, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Norman Mailer, plutocrats, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Scientific racism, short selling, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, source of truth, South Sea Bubble, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Strategic Defense Initiative, surveillance capitalism, the market place, the scientific method, The Soul of a New Machine, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, W. E. B. Du Bois, Whole Earth Catalog, zero-sum game

“It was a hero”: Mailer, “Superman Comes to the Supermarket,” Esquire, Nov. 1960. Kennedy’s aggressive nuclear policy: My interpretation of the Cuban Missile Crisis is based on Sheldon M. Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory (2012), which is ably summarized by Benjamin Schwarz, “The Real Cuban Missile Crisis,” The Atlantic (2013), www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190/. “would learn just”: Khrushchev to Strobe Talbott, cited in Schwarz, “Real Cuban Missile Crisis,” 3. “the peace and security”: Kennedy, television address to the nation, Oct. 22, 1962, cited in ibid. “The furnishings are functional”: Norman Mailer, The Armies of the Night (Signet Books ed., 1968), 25–26, 27.

…

Despite their commitment to abstract thought, they were “husky, wiry, physically attractive men who, by and large, are married to exceptionally pretty women.” The most prominent action intellectuals clustered at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California. Among them was Albert Wohlstetter, who coined the phrase “the delicate balance of terror” in a RAND policy paper of 1958, and who consulted with John F. Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The man who most fully elaborated the balance of terror was the RAND analyst Herman Kahn. His enormous girth made him anything but “wiry,” and he remained uncharacteristically confident (even among Cold War rationalists) about using rationality to manage the run-up to nuclear war—with the avowed purpose of ultimately preventing it.

…

There were many problems with using this formalist fantasy as a guide to policy, but the most potentially disastrous was its tendency to encourage escalating a nuclear confrontation by making it seem like cool and clearheaded strategy. A year after Verba wrote those words, Cold War rationality legitimated Kennedy’s public confrontation with Khrushchev over Soviet missiles in Cuba. What was striking about the American response to the Cuban Missile Crisis was the broad acceptance of Kennedy’s brinkmanship—even, or perhaps especially, among intellectuals. The absence of critical views was partly due to the chattering classes’ infatuation with JFK but also to changes in the tenor of political discourse since World War II. The triumph of technocratic rationality had transformed much political debate into disagreements over technique, easing the shift of formerly radical critics into a more appreciative stance toward American politics and society.

Interventions by Noam Chomsky

Albert Einstein, Ayatollah Khomeini, cuban missile crisis, Dr. Strangelove, energy security, facts on the ground, failed state, Monroe Doctrine, no-fly zone, nuremberg principles, old-boy network, Ralph Nader, Thorstein Veblen, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, éminence grise

A large part of the opposition to Bush’s war is based on recognition that Iraq is only a special case of the “imperial ambition” declared forcefully in last September’s (2002) National Security Strategy. For perspective on our current situation, it may be useful to attend to very recent history. Last October (2002) the nature of threats to peace was dramatically underscored at the summit meeting in Havana on the fortieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, attended by key participants from Cuba, Russia, and the United States. The fact that we survived the crisis was a miracle. We learned that the world was saved from possible nuclear devastation by one Russian submarine captain, Vasily Arkhipov, who countermanded an order to fire nuclear-tipped torpedos when Russian submarines were attacked by U.S. destroyers near Kennedy’s “quarantine” line.

…

And the campaign opened for the midterm congressional elections, which would determine whether the administration would be able to carry out its radical international and domestic agenda. The final days of 2002, foreign-policy specialist Michael Krepon wrote, were “the most dangerous since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis,” which Arthur Schlesinger described, reasonably, as “the most dangerous moment in human history.” Krepon’s concern was nuclear proliferation in “Iran, Iraq, North Korea and the Indian subcontinent,” an “unstable nuclear-proliferation belt stretching from Pyongyang to Baghdad.” Bush administration initiatives in 2002–2003 have only increased the threats in and near this unstable belt.

…

The troops are scheduled to be withdrawn, outside of artillery range, arousing concerns in North and South Korea about U.S. intentions. In October 2002, the United States charged that North Korea had secretly begun a program to enrich uranium, in violation of a 1994 agreement. The nuclear brinkmanship since then has reminded some observers of the Cuban Missile Crisis. This year (2003), Washington has taught an ugly lesson to the world: If you want to defend yourself from us, you had better mimic North Korea and pose a credible military threat.1 North Korea also failed a second criterion for a U.S. target: It is one of the poorest and most miserable countries in the world.

Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion: Rhetoric in the Peer-To-Peer Debates by John Logie

1960s counterculture, Berlin Wall, book scanning, cuban missile crisis, dual-use technology, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Free Software Foundation, Hacker Ethic, Isaac Newton, Marshall McLuhan, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, peer-to-peer, plutocrats, pre–internet, publication bias, Richard Stallman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, search inside the book, SETI@home, Silicon Valley, slashdot, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog

We will die, but we will sink them all. We will not disgrace our navy!” (Gonzalez) The Cuban Missile Crisis functions as a generally recognized “flashpoint” within the history of the Cold War. It is the point at which the confrontation between the then-extant superpowers was most pitched, most pointed, and potentially, most destructive. Within the context of the peer-to-peer debates, the showdown between the RIAA and Napster that culminated in the injunction that closed Napster parallels the Cuban Missile Crisis, featuring similarly intransigent parties mixing secret tactical exchanges with aggres- Pa r l orPr e s s 116 wwwww. p a r l or p r e s s . c om Peers, Pirates, and Persuasion sive public posturing.

…

This nuclear threat persisted until the inauguration of a mutually acknowledged period of détente in 1968. For years, no one was certain how close the two superpowers had come to what was then referred to as a “tactical nuclear exchange.” But a recent conference on the 40th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis pointed up how real the danger had been. The New York Times’s coverage of the conference contained a harrowing account of the peak of the crisis, in which a Soviet submarine commander, responding to depth charges dropped by an American destroyer, ordered the preparation of the submarine’s nuclear torpedo.

…

The period immediately following the Napster “crisis,” recalled the pitched period in the 1960s when the U.S. and the Soviet Union heated up the nuclear rhetoric while confining themselves to indirect confrontations via espionage and “little wars” against small nations positioned as emblematic of “the enemy.” Skirmishes between the record industry (and industry-supporting performers) and file-traders became increasingly common, and some of these battles had the jittery energy of the spy culture celebrated in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 2003, Madonna, fresh from having recorded the theme for the latest installment in the James Bond series, completed an album enti- Pa r l orPr e s s Peer-to-Peer as Combat wwwww. p a r l or p r e s s . c om 119 tled American Life to surround the Bond theme (formally listed on the album as “‘Die Another Day’ from the MGM motion picture Die Another Day”).

America in the World by Robert B. Zoellick

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, banking crisis, battle of ideas, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, British Empire, classic study, Corn Laws, coronavirus, cuban missile crisis, defense in depth, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, energy security, European colonialism, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, foreign exchange controls, Great Leap Forward, guns versus butter model, hypertext link, Ida Tarbell, illegal immigration, immigration reform, imperial preference, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, land reform, linear model of innovation, Mikhail Gorbachev, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Norbert Wiener, Paul Samuelson, public intellectual, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, scientific management, Scramble for Africa, Silicon Valley, Strategic Defense Initiative, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, transcontinental railway, undersea cable, Vannevar Bush, War on Poverty

Stern, The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Don Munton and David A. Welch, The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Concise History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); James G. Hershberg, “The Cuban Missile Crisis,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 2, eds. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). The Berlin-Cuba connection is forcefully made by May and Zelikow in Kennedy Tapes, based on JFK’s tapes and recent studies of Soviet sources. Freedman also points to the strategic balance and Berlin in Kennedy’s Wars at 172–73.

…

Of course, he will not want war; he will concede.” In October, Gromyko delivered a matching, but less blunt, message directly to the president about the “rotten tooth” of West Berlin, “which must be pulled out.”52 The Cuban Missile Crisis In October, the threats to Berlin came to a head in an unusual spot—the Caribbean Sea. Although at one time historians studied the Cuban Missile Crisis as a separate event, many now suspect that Khrushchev viewed Berlin as a key, maybe even the major, objective of the plan to put intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Cuba.53 Soviet diplomacy demonstrated that the United States needs to keep in mind its traditional priority of continental security, including the nation’s southern flank, and to recognize the new connections between North America and the projection of power globally.

…

For “rotten tooth,” see “Memorandum of Conversation,” FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 15, Berlin Crisis, 1962–1963, Doc. 135. 53. The literature on the Cuban Missile Crisis is enormous. See, most important, Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Knopf, 2008); Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1997); Mark J. White, Missiles in Cuba (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1997); Max Frankel, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Ballantine Books, 2005); Sheldon M. Stern, The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2007); Don Munton and David A.

John F. Kennedy and the Race to the Moon (Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology) by John M. Logsdon

Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Berlin Wall, cuban missile crisis, military-industrial complex, Neil Armstrong, Ted Sorensen

There was a very real chance we were even with the Soviets in this effort. In addition, our relations with the Soviets, following the Cuban missile crisis and the test ban treaty, were much improved—so the President felt that, without harming any of those three goals, we now were in a position to ask the Soviets to join us and make it efficient and economical for both countries.7 T O T H E M O O N T O G E T H E R : P U R S U I T O F A N I L L U S I O N? 177 A New “Strategy of Peace” In the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy sought ways of lessening the U.S.-Russian tensions and mistrust that had led to that situation.

…

O’Donnell will not feel it wise to schedule the President’s time and that the President will confirm this judgment.”10 As Webb wrote his October 24 letter, President Kennedy was totally involved with dealing with the problem of Soviet missiles in Cuba, and most certainly was not going to take time to referee the NASA dispute with his science adviser. Webb and Wiesner talked by telephone on October 29, the Monday after the weekend during which the Cuban missile crisis was resolved. Wiesner said that his message to the president would not be to overrule any decision NASA might reach, but rather to be sure that a full and honest assessment had been made of all the options; Wiesner still questioned whether this was the case. Webb told Wiesner he “thought it better not to go to a formal hearing or involve the President personally in the decision,” but Wiesner thought that “involving the President couldn’t be avoided” because someone was sure to ask Kennedy whether the decision was made after the best possible analysis.

…

Like many communications to the president from government agencies, this letter had been referred to one of the staff agencies of the executive office, in this case BOB, for review and a decision of whether it needed direct presidential attention. Kennedy may well have wondered why he had not heard from Webb after asking him about this possibility on his September tour, and that could have added to his concern about the accuracy of the Time article. Of course, Kennedy had also been immersed with the Cuban missile crisis and the midterm congressional elections in the interim. Budget director Bell prepared a November 13 memorandum on the NASA budget situation that incorporated the schedule and budget estimates in Webb’s October letter; this memorandum was distributed to all participants in the meeting. In his memorandum, Bell identified two policy issues on which presidential guidance was needed: 1.

Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base by Annie Jacobsen

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Berlin Wall, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, disinformation, drone strike, Jim Simons, Maui Hawaii, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, operation paperclip, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Project Plowshare, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, South China Sea, Strategic Defense Initiative, uranium enrichment, urban sprawl, zero day

Sherman Kent thanked Wheelon for his advice but explained that the board was going to present President Kennedy with the opposite conclusion—that there were no Soviet missiles in Cuba. The Cuban missile crisis is a story of conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the drama that culminated in a ten-day standoff between two superpowers on the brink of thermonuclear war. But it is also the story of two powerful rivals within the American services, the CIA and the U.S. Air Force, and how they set aside historical differences to work together to save the world from near nuclear annihilation. Like so many international crises of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis had its link to Area 51—through the U-2. During the crisis, the CIA and the Air Force worked together to conduct the U-2 spy mission that caused the Soviet Union to back down.

…

They dropped the man through the nose of the wheel well; Captain Ledford followed, delaying opening his own parachute so he could be next to Sergeant Miller when he landed. Miller would be unconscious when he hit the earth, and without Ledford’s help he would likely have broken his back. The medic, not far behind, later recounted how amazing it was that Ledford’s daring and dangerous plan had actually worked. Now, two decades later, at the Cuban missile crisis round table, Ledford showed the same foresight in preempting a potentially deadly situation. The first thing General Ledford did was present the CIA and the Air Force with a shoot-down analysis, detailing the odds for losing a U-2 on another overflight. The chances were one in six, Ledford said.

…

On October 14, an Air Force pilot flying a CIA U-2 brought home film footage of Cuba that the White House needed to see. Photographs showing nuclear missiles supplied by the Soviet Union and set up on missile stands in Cuba. Those eight canisters of film brought back by the CIA’s U-2 set in motion the Cuban missile crisis, bringing the world closer than it had ever come to all-out nuclear war. They would also give the work going on at Area 51 a shot in the arm. The Pentagon told the CIA they wanted the Oxcart operations ready immediately so the aircraft could be used to overfly Cuba. A CIA review of Oxcart, declassified in 2007, said it flatly: “The Oxcart program suddenly assumed greater significance than ever, and its achievement of operational status became one of the highest national priorities.”

Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed by Ben R. Rich, Leo Janos

affirmative action, Berlin Wall, business climate, cuban missile crisis, friendly fire, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, no-fly zone, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, Strategic Defense Initiative, upwardly mobile, Yom Kippur War

I flew over the Plain of Jars and watched the French get their butts kicked by Uncle Ho. Then, in ’62, the Russians took a few shots at me with SA-2s during the Cuban missile crisis. Didn’t come close thanks to my black box in the tail that jammed effectively. So I’m a believer. But that was inconsequential compared to another blue-suiter U-2 pilot, Major Chuck Maultsby, who was flying out of Alaska on a routine sampling mission right at the height of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. His mission took him over the North Pole in the middle of the night, and when he turned to return to Alaska, he took the wrong south heading and wound up flying deep into Soviet territory.

…

All they told me was “How would you like to fly at very high altitude in a pressure suit?” I immediately thought, Rocket ships! Buck Rogers! Count me in. I was shipped down to Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas, on the Mexican border, way out of sight, which is how the Air Force wanted it, because it wasn’t until the 1962 Cuban missile crisis that the world learned the Air Force was flying U-2s. We had twenty airplanes there and Air Force instructors to check us out, but we had a lot of fatalities. The U-2 was strictly a one-seater. The first time you flew it, you soloed, ready or not. We did a lot of landing pattern and takeoff practicing, and got up to sixty thousand feet to get the feel of our pressure suits.

…

The gliders carried tiny transmitters that fooled the North Vietnamese missile batteries into thinking they were actually B-52 bombers or fighter-bombers. So for $500 a decoy we forced them to launch missiles costing thousands of dollars. Other Voices James R. Schlesinger (Director of the CIA 1973; Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975) As secretary of defense, I confronted my own version of a Cuban missile crisis scenario in the mid-1970s, when I suddenly found myself under enormous political pressure and the U-2 came to my rescue and bailed me out. This happened during the Ford administration, in the spring of 1975, a period during which the Soviets were aggressively establishing bases and influence in northeastern Africa, in places like Somalia, Angola, and Uganda.

The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics by Ben Buchanan

active measures, air gap, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, blockchain, borderless world, Brian Krebs, British Empire, Cass Sunstein, citizen journalism, Citizen Lab, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, family office, Hacker News, hive mind, information security, Internet Archive, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Julian Assange, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, kremlinology, Laura Poitras, MITM: man-in-the-middle, Nate Silver, operational security, post-truth, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, risk tolerance, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Russian election interference, seminal paper, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, technoutopianism, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, Wargames Reagan, WikiLeaks, zero day

Some senior foreign policy decision-makers fancied themselves Kremlinologists who could interpret the signals of Soviet leaders and deduce how best to respond. Presidents and premiers signaled to each other, too: the most iconic moments of statecraft in the Cold War were Kennedy and Khrushchev’s battle of wills in the Cuban Missile Crisis and Reagan and Gorbachev’s tense negotiations at Reykjavik. Thousands of history books give weight to this kind of statecraft.8 Many scholars ignored how clandestine activities subtly shaped the global environment. These operations were hard to spot and harder still to study, but they mattered.

…

Soviet military planners wrote extensively about the practice of maskirovka, or “little masquerade”—multifaceted deception campaigns to mislead the enemy’s political and military leadership.10 While it is true that the adversary sometimes spotted these efforts, they were not designed to act as geopolitical signals and compel a change in behavior by threatening harm. They were operational and strategic tricks meant to gain an edge. Without maskirovka, the Cuban Missile Crisis with all its drama and signaling would not have unfolded as it did. Deception helped get the missiles to Cuba. The Soviets began with code-names that made it seem to anyone listening to their communications as if the missiles were bound for the Bering Sea. When the time came to load the ships that would instead travel to Cuba, the Soviets covered the missiles in farm equipment to fool observers, and in metal sheets to block infrared photography.

…

First, visibility enhances signaling, but cyber capabilities often benefit from or require secrecy. For decades, canonical international relations scholarship and policymaking has focused on those activities that all can see. Presidential summits and international diplomacy are fixtures in the minds of scholars and the public. Widely examined cases such as the Cuban Missile Crisis center on the capacity of leaders to walk up to—and then back from—the geopolitical brink in a way that shows resolve, benefits their own interests, and ultimately averts a war. For decades, this has been the art of modern statecraft. Conventional military activities are often far more oriented toward visible signaling than toward direct combat.

How Democracy Ends by David Runciman

barriers to entry, basic income, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Brexit referendum, Cambridge Analytica, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, centre right, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Dominic Cummings, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Internet of things, Jeremy Corbyn, Jon Ronson, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, Norman Mailer, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Paris climate accords, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, quantitative easing, Russell Brand, self-driving car, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, the long tail, The Wisdom of Crowds, Travis Kalanick, universal basic income, Yogi Berra

In the UK the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) had more than two million members at its peak, making it one of the largest civil society organisations in Europe. Mass participation coincided with the ratcheting up of nuclear tensions between the superpowers – it happened in the early 1960s, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and again in the early 1980s, when the Reagan administration was trying to win the arms race. It hasn’t happened since. Today, CND is a shell of what it was, with only a few thousand members and almost no public profile. The irony is that one of its most committed supporters, Jeremy Corbyn, was elected leader of the Labour Party in 2015 and could yet find himself as British prime minister.

…

It doesn’t matter so much what is at stake. It could be a question of nuclear apocalypse or it could be a question of the price of bread. In October 1962, between the publication of ‘Silent Spring’ and ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’, the world came as close as it ever has to nuclear catastrophe. During the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis the two nuclear superpowers looked set to unleash the unimaginable. As the climax approached, with Russian and American ships apparently set on a collision course, the fate of human civilisation hung in the balance. At the last, Kennedy and Khrushchev found a path back from the edge of the abyss, through a mixture of skill and luck.

…

., 12, 55 C Cambridge Analytica (firm), 156, 157, 159 capitalism, 196, 199 Carson, Rachel, 85, 87–8 Silent Spring, 82–3, 89, 90–91, 93 catastrophes, 6, 7, 85–6 environmental, 82–3, 85, 87–93; see also climate change nuclear, 83–4, 97 total, 100 Chicago: violence, 211 China and climate change, 174 Communist Party, 172–3 economy, 172, 208 foreign policy, 30–31 government model, 174 as a meritocracy, 175–6 nationalism, 172 pollution, 89 view of Trump, 173 Churchill, Winston, 8, 75–6, 168–9, 177 civil service, 41, 55–6; see also bureaucracies Clark, Christopher: The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914, 115 Clemenceau, Georges, 71, 75–6 climate change, 90–93 China and, 174 consciousness raising, 89, 92–93 conspiracy theories, 91–92 incremental nature of, 97 and risk, 101 support for, 108 and uncertainty, 96 see also global warming Clinton, President Bill, 54–5 Clinton, Hillary, 13–15, 16, 198 Cold War, 28–9, 67, 94, 95–6, 106–7, 108–9 communism 194; see also China: Communist Party; Marxism-Leninism; Stalinism consciousness raising, 85, 89, 92–3, 106 conspiracy theories, 60–71 climate change, 91–2 and division, 99 and fake news, 75 France, 69 India, 65–6 nuclear weapons, 96 Poland, 65, 66 and totalitarianism, 98 Turkey, 65, 66 United Kingdom, 62–3 United States, 62, 64–5, 67 and war, 77 conspiracy theorists, 153 Constantine I, king of Greece, 27, 28 consumerism, 166 Corbyn, Jeremy, 58, 94–5, 148–9, 150, 209 corporations, 129–32, 139, 166 coups, 3, 217 Algeria, 41–3 and catastrophes, 85 and clarity, 59 and conspiracies, 7, 60 and counter-coups, 56–7 Cyprus, 33, 38–9 economic conditions for, 31 in fiction, 57–8 Greece, 26–30, 27, 32, 33, 34–5, 38, 40, 45 Luttwak on, 41–2, 46 Turkey, 50–52, 53, 66 varieties of, 44–5 election-day vote fraud, 44 executive, 44 executive aggrandisement, 44, 52, 55 promissory, 44, 47, 50–51 strategic election manipulation, 44 Zimbabwe, 48 crises, 5–6 Cuban missile Crisis (1962), 107–8 mid-life, 5, 8, 169, 218 Cummings, Dominic, 179 currencies, 135 digital, 136 Cyprus: coups, 33, 38–9 D databases, 123 de Gaulle, General Charles, 41, 42 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 142, 187 death, 23–4, 204, 216–17 democracy appeal of, 6, 169–71 audience, 47, 117 direct, 35, 48, 143, 161, 162, 163 failure of, 50 obsolescence, 167–8 plebiscitary, 47 spectator, 47 spread of, 3 strong and weak, 59–60 threats to 6–7, 53–4, 108, 112; see also coups digital revolution, 152, 164, 200–201, 215, 219 dignity collective, 172, 173, 177 and elections, 170, 177 and loss, 175 disruption, 198–9 Dorsey, Jack, 137 Dreyfus, Alfred, 69 dystopias, 90–91, 113, 114, 118–19, 126, 220 E East India Company, 130–31 economic growth, 172, 192 accelerationists and, 200 and populism, 192 United States, 175 Western Europe, 175 Economist (journal), 133 Edgerton, David, 122 education, 109–10, 163–4, 183–4, 185 Eggers, David: The Circle, 139, 140, 141–2, 144 Egypt, 48–50 Eichmann, Adolf, 84, 85–6 elections 4, 218 and advertising, 158–9 computers and, 125 and coups, 44, 45 decision-making process, 188–9 and dignity, 170, 177 and disinformation, 156–7 Egypt, 48–9 France, 148 fraud, 44 Greece, 28, 29, 39, 40, 148 Italy, 148 manipulation of, 44 Netherlands, 148 online, 162 Turkey, 51 United Kingdom, 95 United States see under United States see also vote, right to elites, 75 and climate change, 91–2 corporate, 139 and nuclear disarmament, 95 and populism, 65 power of, 61 see also wealth environmentalists, 200 epistocracy, 178–9, 180, 181–8, 191, 205 equality, 202–3; see also inequality Erdogan, President Recep, 51–3, 66, 149, 213 Estlund, David: Democratic Authority, 185 Ethiopia, 154–5 European Central Bank (ECB), 33, 39, 116–17 European Union (EU) and corporations, 132 and Greece, 30, 32, 116–17 executive aggrandisement, 45–6 military, 55, 56 United States presidents, 92 experts see epistocracy; technocracy ExxonMobil, 92 F Facebook, 131, 132–3, 134–5, 136, 138–9, 140, 141, 145, 150, 157 fascism, 169 financial crash (2008), 79, 110, 116 Forster, E.

Prisoner's Dilemma: John Von Neumann, Game Theory, and the Puzzle of the Bomb by William Poundstone

90 percent rule, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, cuban missile crisis, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Frank Gehry, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Herman Kahn, Jacquard loom, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, RAND corporation, Richard Feynman, seminal paper, statistical model, the market place, zero-sum game

Coda 8 GAME THEORY AND ITS DISCONTENTS Criticism of Game Theory Utility and Machiavelli Are People Rational? The Ohio State Studies 9 VON NEUMANN’S LAST YEARS The H-Bomb A Very Fine Tiger The Commissioner The Moment of Hope Illness Death 10 CHICKEN AND THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS Chicken Volunteer’s Dilemma Volunteer’s Dilemma Experiments The Cuban Missile Crisis The Madman Theory 11 MORE ON SOCIAL DILEMMAS Deadlock Stag Hunt Asymmetric Games Justifying Cooperation Howard’s Meta-Game Backward Induction Paradox 12 SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST Stable Strategies Is Defection in the Genes? Robert Axelrod TIT FOR TAT The Trouble With TIT FOR TAT Artificial Selection The Fish in the Mirror Cooperation and Civilization TIT FOR TAT in the Real World 13 THE DOLLAR AUCTION Escalation Shubik’s Dollar Auction Dollar Auctions in Real Life Strategies Rational Bidding Where Game Theory Fails The Largest-Number Game Feather in a Vacuum Bibliography About the Author Copyright 1 DILEMMAS A man was crossing a river with his wife and mother.

…

The screenplay by Kubrick, Peter George, and Terry Southern was loosely based on George’s novel Red Alert. Peter Sellers, who played Strangelove, said in interviews that he based his portrayal on observations of Henry Kissinger. The wavy hair and glasses resemble Kissinger, not the balding von Neumann. 10 CHICKEN AND THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS In late 1950 the Cambridge University Labour Club passed a resolution censoring its own president, Bertrand Russell. The resolution criticized Russell sharply for his advocacy of a nuclear war against the Soviet Union. Russell responded curtly, “I have never advocated a preventive war, as your members would know if they took the trouble to ascertain facts.”

…

One defector quoted Blanche DuBois: “I’ve always depended on the kindness of strangers.” A total of $1,610,860 was requested. Had everyone who entered asked for $20, the payout would have been $670,220. The maximum that 33,511 people could have won, assuming that just under 20 percent asked for $100, is $1,206,380. THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS The Kennedy administration was receptive to the RAND Corporation’s circle of strategists. Herman Kahn and Daniel Ellsberg (who later came to public attention for his role in releasing the Pentagon Papers) championed the notion that U.S.-Soviet conflicts were chicken dilemmas. Why? By the early 1960s, leaders of both nations agreed that a nuclear war was the worst possible outcome of any situation.

A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon by Neil Sheehan

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, double helix, Dr. Strangelove, European colonialism, it's over 9,000, John von Neumann, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Norman Macrae, nuclear winter, operation paperclip, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, social contagion, undersea cable, uranium enrichment

Chapters 72–77: Neufeld, Ballistic Missiles in the United States Air Force, 1945–1960; Heppenheimer’s Countdown; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War; Taubman’s Khrushchev; Robert Kennedy’s 1968 Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis; Fred Kaplan’s 1983 The Wizards of Armageddon; Anatoly Dobrynin’s 1995 In Confidence; Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali’s 1997 One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964; The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Ernest May and Philip Zelikow’s 1997 editing of the tapes of the White House meetings during the crisis; Max Frankel’s 2004 High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Cuban Missile Crisis; Fursenko and Naftali’s 2006 Khrushchev’s Cold War; Michael Dobbs’s 2008 One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War; the official SAC history, The Development of Strategic Air Command; Wynn’s RAF Nuclear Deterrent Forces.

…

All that remained of Nedelin, he writes, was “a marshal’s shoulder strap and half-melted keys to his office safe.” The calamity did not stop test launches of the R-16 and the ICBM was deployed in 1962. The Soviets were, however, still having trouble with the weapon in October 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred and Khrushchev had a total of twenty operational ICBMs to the 160 Kennedy possessed. Preparations to fire the R-16 continued to require several hours rather than the thirty minutes Yangel had posited and that was eventually achieved. “Before we get it ready to launch,” Kirill Moskalenko, a ranking Red Army marshal and friend of Khrushchev from Second World War days, warned in the midst of the crisis, “there won’t even be a wet spot left of any of us.” 66.

…

Kennedy, who had been out of town, got the news on the morning of the 16th, when he was shown the photographs at the White House and they were interpreted for him. “He can’t do that to me!” he exclaimed in his rage at Khrushchev. According to Max Frankel in his first-rate account of the drama, High Noon in the Cold War: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, Robert Kennedy’s reaction was more earthy. “Oh shit! shit! shit! Those sons of bitches Russians.” The president quickly got his anger against Khrushchev under control. He was also able to put himself in Khrushchev’s place and see the situation from the Soviet leader’s perspective. In the opening sessions of the ad hoc Executive Committee of the National Security Council, or ExCom as it came to be known, which he convened in secret session, he said it was clear that the sixteen Jupiters in Turkey would have to be one of the bargaining chips in any deal they made with the Soviet dictator to lever his missiles out of Cuba.

Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil by Kenneth Cukier, Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Francis de Véricourt

Albert Einstein, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, autonomous vehicles, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, blockchain, Blue Ocean Strategy, circular economy, Claude Shannon: information theory, cognitive dissonance, cognitive load, contact tracing, coronavirus, correlation does not imply causation, COVID-19, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deep learning, DeepMind, defund the police, Demis Hassabis, discovery of DNA, Donald Trump, double helix, Douglas Hofstadter, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, fake news, fiat currency, framing effect, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Frank Gehry, game design, George Floyd, George Gilder, global pandemic, global village, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Higgs boson, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, informal economy, Isaac Newton, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job-hopping, knowledge economy, Large Hadron Collider, lockdown, Louis Pasteur, Mark Zuckerberg, Mercator projection, meta-analysis, microaggression, Mustafa Suleyman, Neil Armstrong, nudge unit, OpenAI, packet switching, pattern recognition, Peter Thiel, public intellectual, quantitative easing, Ray Kurzweil, Richard Florida, Schrödinger's Cat, scientific management, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, TikTok, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, transaction costs, Tyler Cowen

David Mandel, Denis J. Hilton, and Patrizia Catellani (London: Routledge, 2005); Ruth Byrne, The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis: Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). Also: Ernest May, “John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” BBC, November 18, 2013, http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/kennedy_cuban_missile_01.shtml. The term groupthink comes from George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Some social scientists have challenged the idea that “groupthink” was a main factor in the Bay of Pigs disaster.

…

They are the antidote to jumping to a particular causal conclusion too quickly (and save our cherub from an unnecessary scolding). They remind us that things may be different than first thought. They make us more open-minded to see a world beyond our first causal hypothesis. During the Cuban missile crisis, President John F. Kennedy put counterfactuals to work in this way. On the morning of October 16, 1962, the president and his advisers were presented with aerial photographs that showed the Soviet Union was placing nuclear missiles in Cuba, just ninety miles off Florida. The military immediately urged a massive strike to knock out the installations.

…

., 135 carbon dioxide and climate, 74–76, 168 “carbon sinks,” 76 Carcraft, 93 Carter, Jimmy, 116 Cassandras, 167–168 Cassirer, Ernst, 25 Catmull, Ed, 167–168 “causal determinism,” 88–89 causality ability to abstract from direct observation and, 53–54 agency and, 65 AI’s failure to see, 45 children and, 80–82 coincidence and, 66–67 correlation and, 68 counterfactuals and, 77, 79, 90 enables comprehension and explainability of reality, 52, 60 as foundation of human cognition, 12 in framing, 88–90 input of humans needed for technology to outperform humans, 70 needed for application of mental models, 62 predictability with, 52 reactions resulting from, 53 as result of being part of society, 58 scientific methodology prevents wrong inferences made from, 12 skepticism about, 68 statisticians and, 68 ultra-emotionalists and, 68–69 causal reasoning, 55 Cerf, Bennett, 101–102 Charging Bull statue, 198–199 Charpentier, Emmanuelle, 137 Chollet, François, 211 Churchill, Winston, 41 “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays” (Foote), 73–74 clean-slate strategy, 158–160, 241 climate and carbon dioxide, 74–76, 168 Coconet, 118–119 cognitive complexity, 161 “cognitive effort,” 110 “cognitive foraging,” 156–158, 160 cognitive niche, 57, 58, 59, 230 “Cognitive Wheels” (Dennett), 44–45 coincidence and causality, 66–67 Collins, Jim, 2–3 Collison, Patrick, 185 Computers as Theatre (Laurel), 85 consistency principle, 110–114 constraints agency and number of, 118, 141 application method, 120–121 application of too many, 45 as boundaries on alternative realities, 100–103 changing, 201–202 consistency of, 104, 110–114 current reality as impacted by, 117–118 enable identification of viable options, 117 goal of, 114 hard, described, 104 imagination and, 47, 220 importance to counterfactuals of, 13, 115 increase agency, 118 as liberating, 100–103 minimal, 104 minimal-change principle and, 108–110 mutability of, 104–107, 110 space exploration and, 105 technology cannot conjure, 118 control, 64, 65–66 Cook, Tim, 151 Cooper, Sarah, 201–202 correlation and causality, 68 counterfactuals agency and, 91 alternative realities and, 12–13, 79, 82–86, 94 causality and, 77, 79, 90 causal link between carbon dioxide and climate and, 74–75 children and, 80–82 cognitive homogeneity as death of, 207 as counterbalance to “causal determinism,” 88–89 as crucial to progress by enabling what-if questions, 12–13 described, 12 in education, 86–88 finding relevant, 45 focused and goal-oriented nature of, 76 as form of evolution, 93–94 functionality of, 94 imagination and, 76, 79, 90 implicit knowledge and, 90–91 literature and art, 82–85 minimal-change principle and, 109–110 mutable constraints and, 106 omitting versus adding mutable action and, 110 thinking in, as natural for humans, 77 Coupland, Douglas, 112 Covid-19, framing of, 31–33 Craik, Kenneth, 226 creativity. See imagination Crick, Francis, 132 CRISPR, 137 Cuban missile crisis, 89–90 “cultural niche,” 58 Cuusoo, 165–166 “Cyclopedia of Puzzles,” 46 Dabiq, 213 Darwin, Charles, 7, 131 data, effect of frame applied to, 6 Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (Hedges and Sacco), 135 decision-making framing as fundamental to, 5, 8 influence of different characterizations of outcomes, 10 mental models reduce cognitive load by focusing mind, 11–12 values in, 39–40 “deep reinforcement learning,” 70 Defense of the Ancients 2 (Dota 2), 69–70 Dennett, Daniel, 44–45 Descartes, René, 16 DeVore, Irven, 230 Diamond, Jared, 183–184 Dick, Philip K., 111 “diversity dividend,” 161–166 Donham, Wallace, 87, 156, 240 Doudna, Jennifer, 137 Earhart, Amelia, 160 Easy Solar, 203–204 Ebola, misframing of, 30–31, 32 economy.

The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam by Max Boot

American ideology, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, Charles Lindbergh, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, Day of the Dead, desegregation, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, drone strike, electricity market, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Golden Gate Park, Herman Kahn, jitney, land reform, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Potemkin village, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, South China Sea, Steve Jobs, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, War on Poverty, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration

RG 84: State Department. RG 226: OSS. RG 263: CIA. RG 330: Secretary of Defense. RG 541: Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. NSA: National Security Archives, George Washington University, Washington, D.C. CMC: Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962. EGL: EGL Papers. EGL/SMM: Saigon Military Mission report. RGD: Raymond Garthoff Donation Relating to the Cuban Missile Crisis. NWC: Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. EGL: EGL Interview. RASP: Raymond A. Spruance Papers. NYP: New York Public Library, New York, New York. ASP: Arthur Schlesinger Jr. Papers. PCLPP: Peter and Carolyn Lansdale Personal Papers, Ponte Verde Beach, Florida.

…

Although Kennedy proceeded with the previously scheduled Mongoose meeting that afternoon, it was obvious that Lansdale’s project would have to wait while the president and his advisers tried to figure out how to avert Armageddon.92 JOHN F. KENNEDY has been applauded by historians for his coolness under pressure during what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The president wisely rejected advice from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his more hard-line civilian advisers in the NSC’s ExComm (Executive Committee), including Robert McNamara and Robert Kennedy, to undertake military action against Cuba. The president rightly called this option “one hell of a gamble.”93 Unbeknownst to the CIA, the Soviets had already shipped tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, along with 42,000 Red Army troops, and given their commanders authority to launch the weapons in the event of an American assault.94 An American attack on Cuba could have precipitated World War III, which is why the attorney general and the defense secretary later adjusted their recollections to excise their hawkish proposals.

…

Castro later said, “Six months before these missiles were installed in Cuba, we had received an accumulation of information that a new invasion was being prepared under the sponsorship of the Central Intelligence Agency.”96 “It was clear to me,” Khrushchev said, “that we might very well lose Cuba if we didn’t take some decisive steps in her defense.”97 Although Mongoose helped to precipitate the Cuban Missile Crisis, it also made possible its peaceful resolution by providing the intelligence that allowed Kennedy to act before the Soviet missiles were operational. “That’s the only decent thing Mongoose ever did . . . because we turned it into a decent collection operation,” concluded the CIA officer Sam Halpern.98 OPERATION MONGOOSE was not revived after the end of the crisis.

Project Azorian: The CIA and the Raising of the K-129 by Norman Polmar, Michael White

cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Maui Hawaii, no-fly zone, Seymour Hersh

And, the design of the Project 667A/Yankee SSBN, similar in several respects to the 16-missile U.S. Polaris submarines, was put on hold. Project 629/Golf II ballistic missile submarine. (© A.C. Baker III, from Cold War Submarines) The next-generation Soviet SSBN would not appear until the late 1960s, when the effects of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 led to a further acceleration of Soviet nuclear strike forces. The first Project 667A/Yankee was completed in 1967 with large-scale production following. The older, far-less-capable Golf SSB and Hotel SSBN missile submarines continued to have a role. As Yankee SSBNs became available, the older missile submarines were employed as theater nuclear strike platforms and some were employed as missile test platforms, or were converted to communication relay ships.

…

As Yankee SSBNs became available, the older missile submarines were employed as theater nuclear strike platforms and some were employed as missile test platforms, or were converted to communication relay ships. However, the Golf-class submarines had important political-military roles. Following the Cuban missile crisis in the fall of 1962 that brought the United States and Soviet Union closer to nuclear conflict than at any other time during the Cold War, the Soviet government agreed not to introduce nuclear weapons into Cuba. On May 2, 1972—a little less than a decade after the crisis—a U.S. Defense Department spokesman stated that a Soviet Golf missile submarine had entered the port of Bahía de Nipe on Cuba’s northern coast.

…

Navy believed that the Soviets were working on just such a breakthrough in anti-submarine warfare. The early 1960s were violent, with several confrontations between the Soviet Union and the United States: the shootdown of a U-2 spyplane over the USSR in 1960, the Berlin crisis of 1961 that saw U.S. and Soviet tanks facing off, the nuclear confrontation during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, the ongoing Vietnam War with Soviet weapons (including jet fighters) being supplied to the forces fighting the United States, and the North Korean capture of the U.S. spy ship Pueblo in January 1968, an act that many Americans believed was encouraged if not directly supported by the Soviet Union.

Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis by Jared Diamond

anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, carbon tax, clean water, correlation coefficient, cuban missile crisis, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Gini coefficient, high-speed rail, illegal immigration, interchangeable parts, invention of writing, Jeff Bezos, low interest rates, medical malpractice, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, oil shale / tar sands, peak oil, post-work, purchasing power parity, rising living standards, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, The Spirit Level, Timothy McVeigh, traffic fines, transcontinental railway, women in the workforce, World Values Survey

Subsequent to the crisis, the gradual release of formerly classified information by both the U.S. and the Soviet Union made clear that we had been even closer to destruction than had been appreciated at the time. Unbeknownst to America’s military leaders then, who knew that at least 162 missiles had already been stationed in Cuba but who thought that the missiles’ nuclear warheads had not yet arrived, many of the warheads had actually already reached Cuba. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet Union responded by accelerating its programs to develop more powerful nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The U.S. responded with the determination that never again would it tolerate the installation of a communist government in the Western Hemisphere. Any American president who failed to prevent such an installation would have been immediately impeached and removed from office for gross neglect of American interests, just as President Kennedy was warned that he would be impeached if he failed to get Soviet missiles out of Cuba.

…

On the one hand, throughout my life, in each decade there have been reasons to consider that particular decade as posing the toughest problems that we Americans have ever faced—whether it was the 1940’s with World War Two against Japan and Nazi Germany, the 1950’s with the Cold War, the 1960’s with the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War that lacerated American society, and so on. But even when I tell myself that we should be suspicious because every decade has seemed at the time to be the one offering the most cause for anxiety, I still have to agree: the current decade of the 2010’s really is the one offering the most cause for anxiety.

…

My account that follows relies on information provided by William Perry in conversation and in his book My Journey at the Nuclear Brink (2015). Perry’s career underlying his expertise about nuclear issues includes his analyses of Soviet nuclear capabilities in Cuba for President Kennedy each day during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis; serving as U.S. secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997; negotiating nuclear and other issues with North Korea, the Soviet Union / Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq; negotiating the dismantling of the former Soviet nuclear facilities in Ukraine and Kazakhstan after the dissolution of the Soviet Union; and much else.

A Short History of Russia by Mark Galeotti

cuban missile crisis, disinformation, fake news, hypertext link, mega-rich, Mikhail Gorbachev, trade route

(While Stalin’s body was suitably embalmed and moved into Lenin’s mausoleum after his death, he was turfed out in 1961.) Khrushchev certainly had no qualms brutally crushing an anti-Soviet rising in Hungary in 1956, for example. More to the point, the Party elite began to see him as dangerous: his brinkmanship almost led to nuclear war during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and he had so mishandled the economy that there were widespread food shortages. © Helen Stirling Khrushchev had been a product of the Stalinist system and tried to rule as autocrat, not realizing that power had shifted to the wider Party elite—the boyars of the new order. In 1964, he was ousted in a bloodless political coup, and his eventual successor, Leonid Brezhnev, adapted to these new political realities.

…

absolutism, 65, 66, 128 Afghanistan, 185 agriculture, 42, 85, 119–120, 173, 177, 184–185 Alexander I, Tsar, 135, 138, 139, 140, 141–144 Alexander II, Tsar, 138, 139, 154, 176 Alexander III, Tsar, 159–160, 206 Ambassadorial Office, 77 America, attitude toward, 15. see also West, the Ancient Russia (map), 27 Andropov, Yuri, 186 An Imperial Stride, 117 Anna (daughter of Ivan V), 121–122 anticorruption, 202. see also corruption and extortion appanage, 49, 58 Arakcheyev, Alexei, 142 army, Peter the Great and the, 112–113 Arrival of Ryurik to Ladoga, 22 Askold (Viking adventurer), 26 Assembly of the Land, 78 Astrakhan Khanate, 80 authoritarian rule, 65–66, 111, 133 autocracy, 68–91, 126, 145–146 Banditry Office, 77 Basil II (emperor), 32 baskaks, 55 Batu Khan, 53, 54 Belskies, the, 74, 87 Benckendorff, Alexander, 147 Biron, Ernst, 122 Black Death, the, 58 black markets, 185, 191 Blue Sky Tengri, 52 Bohemians, the, 25 Bolesław (count), 33, 34 Bolsheviks, 168, 171–174, 178 Bonaparte, Napoleon, 119, 138, 139, 140–143 Boretskaya, Marfa, 72 Boris (brother of Yaroslav), 35 Boyar Council, 83 Brezhnev, Leonid, 184–185 Briacheslav of Polotsk, 33 Bulgars, the, 24, 29 Byzantine Orthodox Christianity, 31–32, 71, 99–100 Byzantium, 15, 23–25, 29, 30, 32, 34, 39, 72, 99 Cap of Monomakh, 75–76, 103 Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, 138, 138–139 Catherine I, 120–121 Catherine the Great, 115, 117, 121–133, 135, 176 mocking of, 117–118 presentation of Russia to the world, 118–119 Catholicism, Roman, 30 censorship, 147, 156 Charles XII, 114 Charter to the Gentry, 130 Chechnya, 197, 199–200 Cheka, the, 174 Chernenko, Konstantin, 186 Chernobyl, 187 China, 40, 209, 211 Christianity arise of in Russia, 14–15, 30–31 in Novgorod, 50 Orthodox, 31, 37, 56, 58, 64, 71, 72, 76, 78, 89, 98, 145–146, 152, 205 Russian state and, 30, 47, 77–78, 108 Chud, the, 22 church, reformation of, 77–78, 99–102, 108 cities and fortifications, early growth of, 23–30 civil service, 77, 157 Civil War (1918–22), 174, 190 civil wars, eleventh century, 35 Code of Laws (Sudebnik), 72–73 collectivization, 42, 177 Communist Party, 165, 174, 177, 188, 189, 191, 197 Congress of Soviets, 173 conservatism, 72, 133, 160, 167, 205 Constantine IX Monomachus, 75–76 Constantinople, 24–26, 28, 30, 34, 39, 40, 71, 117–118 Constituent Assembly, 173 Constitutional Democrat Party (Kadets), 166, 170–171 Contarini, Ambrogio, 85 corruption and extortion, 78, 83, 130, 184–186, 188, 191, 196, 198–199, 200, 202, 204, 213 Cossacks, 97–98, 127, 128, 141 Council of a Hundred Chapters, 77–78 coups and wars, see wars and coups Crimea, annexation of, 16, 44, 132, 195, 202 Crimean Khanate, 84, 104 Crimean Tatars, threat of, 89 Crimean War, 150, 152–154, 153 Cuban Missile Crisis, 182 Cumans, the, 38, 51–53 Decembrist Revolt of 1825, 145 Defenders of the Russian Soil, The, 193 democracy, as pretense, 200–201 democratization, 188 Derevliane, the, 28 despotism, 54–55, 66, 95–96, 126, 146 Dir (Viking adventurer), 26 disease and illness, 82, 97, 123, 127, 141, 174 diversity of population, 80 Dmitry I, Prince of Moscow, 46, 46–47, 58–63, 71 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 147 double tsars, 103 Dual Power, 171 dvoyetsarstvenniki, 103 economy, see also serfs during 1700s, 119–120 during 1890s, 160–161 during 1970s, 184–185 during 1990s and 2000s, 197, 200, 204, 209 artisanal, 65 collectivization and, 177 early cities and, 34–35 Gorbachev and, 186–188 Ivan IV and, 84–87 Khrushchev and, 182 Lenin’s New Economic Policy, 174 Stalin and, 180–181 trade routes, 25–26, 28, 32–33, 37, 39, 41, 51, 65, 81, 151 during World War I, 169–170, 173 education, 102, 127, 143, 150, 156, 157, 158 egalitarianism, 76, 129, 165, 186 Elizabeth (daughter of Peter the Great), 122–123 Elizabeth, Empress, 123 Elizabeth, Queen of England, 69–70 Emancipation Decree, 156 embezzlement, see corruption and extortion Emergency Committee, 189 Emir Mamai of the Jochids, 60–62 emperors, as rulers, 76 English Muscovy Company, 82–83 enlightened despotism, 118, 126 Enlightenment Russia, 119 Eternal Peace Treaty, 104 ethnicity, 80, 195–196 Expansion of Russia, The (map) 131 extortion and corruption, 78, 83, 130, 184–186, 188, 191, 196, 198–199, 200, 202, 204, 213 fake news, 88. see also propaganda False Dmitries, 88, 132 farming, 85, 119–120, 173, 177, 184 fascism, 179 Federal Security Service (FSB), 198 feudalism, birth of, 37 Filaret, Patriarch, 91, 97 First Northern War, 100 First World War, 168–172, 190 foreign rule, myth of the end of, 63–67 France, influence of, 143–144 Frederick II of Prussia, 124 French Revolution, 134, 136, 142–143 Fundamental Laws, 166 Fyodor (son of Ivan IV), 70, 85, 87 Fyodor II (son of Godunov), 88 Fyodor III, 102–103 Gardariki, 25 Gathering of the Russian Lands, 63, 70–73 gender roles, women’s, 72, 120–121, 124, 127, 158, 175, 178 Genghis Khan, 52 geography Ancient Russia (map), 27 Crimean War, The (map), 153 early geographical divisions, 12–13 Expansion of Russia, The (map), 131 Golden Horde Russia (map), 59 Peter’s Great Embassy (map), 109 Putin’s Wars (map), 203 Soviet Union, The (map), 183 Time of Troubles, The (map), 86 trade routes, 25–26, 28, 32–33, 37, 39, 41, 51, 65, 81, 151 geopolitics, 39, 41, 88–89 Germany Germans as threat, 40 glasnost, 187–188 Glinskaya, Yelena, 74 Glinskies, the, 74 Global War on Terror, 201 Godunov, Boris, 87–88 Golden Horde, 46, 47, 54, 55–58, 59, 60–62, 64, 66–67 Golitsyn, Dmitry, 122 Golitsyn, Vasily (prince), 104 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 186–190, 194, 207 Gordon, Patrick, 98–99, 109 Grand Duchy of Lithuania, 60 Great Embassy, 110 Great Moscow Synod of 1666, 101 Great Northern War, 112, 113 Great Patriotic War, 179–182, 190 Great Silk Road, the, 58 Great Stand on the Ugra River, 63 Gulag, the, 177, 180, 181, 182 History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (Stalin), 206–207 Hitler, Adolf, 13, 179–180, 205 Horsey, Jerome, 82–83 hybrid wars, 202 Igor (son of Ryurik), 26, 28 illness and disease, 82, 97, 123, 127, 141, 174 Imperial Academy of Arts, 158 industrialization, 42, 154, 177, 180, 181, 185, 194 inheritance by primogeniture, 57–58 intelligentsia radicalism, 158–159 Interior Ministry, 77 internet, Russian usage of, 209–210 invasions, early, 13–14 Islam, 14–15, 30–31, 40, 55 isolation of Russia, 64–65 Ivan (son of Alexei Romanov), 102–105 Ivan I, Prince, 57–58, 71 Ivan II, 58 Ivan III, Grand Prince, 63, 70, 71, 78 Ivan III the Great, 67 Ivan IV the Terrible, 69, 69, 70–87, 90, 112–113 Ivan V, 121, 122–123 Ivan VI, 122 Japan, 161–162 Jochi Khan, 53 Judaism, 13, 30, 36, 159 Kadets (Constitutional Democrat Party), 166, 170–171 KGB, 186, 194, 198 Khanate of Kazan, 74, 80 Khazars, the, 24 Khodorkovsky, Mikhail, 199 Khrushchev, Nikita, 182–184 Kiev fall to the Mongols, 53–54 family lineage and, 49 Grand Princes and, 30, 36–37, 41 growth of, 28, 32, 37 as heart of Rus’, 48–49 political fragmentation of, 34–37 princes of, 32–34 siege of, 34 Kipchaks, the, 38 Konstantin, Grand Duke, 144–145 Kriviches, the, 22 Kulikovo, 46, 63 Kurbsky, Andrei (prince), 83 Ladoga, 22–25 land grants, 78, 79 landholdings, patrimonial, 34–35 language, 13–14, 19, 31, 65 Lefort, Franz, 109–110 legal systems, 72–73 Lenin, Valdimir, 168, 171, 172–176, 190 Lenin-Stalin Mausoleum, 165 Leopold, Karl, 121 Life and Death of Grand Prince Dmitry Ivanovich, The, 47 linguistic autonomy, 19 literacy, 118, 136, 185 Livonian War of 1558-83, 81, 83, 85 Louis the Pious, King of the Franks, 23 Luzhkov, Yuri, 93–94 Lysenko, Trofim, 194 Lyubech, 1097 summit, 37 Magyars, the, 25 Majoritarians, see Bolsheviks Manifesto of the Freedom of the Nobility, 129 maps Ancient Russia, 27 Crimean War, The, 153 Expansion of Russia, The, 131 Golden Horde Russia, 59 Peter’s Great Embassy, 109 Putin’s Wars, 203 Soviet Union, The, 183 Time of Troubles, The, 86 Marx, Karl, 15, 64, 152, 168, 172, 212 Marxism, 136 Marxist-Leninist egalitarianism, 165 mass media, 200–201, 204–205, 208–211 Matveyev, Artamon, 106 Medvedev, Dmitry, 201 Mensheviks, 168, 170 Menshikov, Alexander, 121 merchant class, rise of, 157–158 Merias, the, 22 mestnichestvo, 73, 102, 107, 108 Mikhail I, 90–91, 97 military, see also soldiers; wars and coups feudal vs. monarchical, 79 growth of under Ivan IV, 79–80 inadequacies of, 106–107 Nicholas I and, 148–151 Paul I and, 134 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 77 missionaries, 31, 64, 97 modernization attempts, 102, 114–115, 135–136, 139–140, 155, 160–162, 165, 182, 187 Monastery of the Caves, 38 Mongols, 13, 15, 38, 48, 51–57, 66–67 Mongol style of rule, 64, 65 Mongol Yoke, 46, 48, 55–58, 64 Monomakh, Vladimir, 36, 38, 75 Mons, Anna, 110 Moscow Golden Horde and, 60 rise of, 48, 51, 72, 76–79 as spiritual capital, 58 Muslims, 14, 25, 56, 80, 150, 209 Mstislav of Chernigov, 33 Muscovite state, rise of, 56, 58, 65, 70 myths, national and political, 14, 15, 43–44, 47–48, 62–63, 75, 117–119, 139–140, 178–179, 190, 194, 207, 210 Nagoi, the, 87 Nakaz, the, 127, 132–133, 135 namestniks, 77 Narodnaya Volya, 159 Naryshkin, Ivan, 106 navy, Russian, 94, 110–111, 112, 113 Nevsky, Alexander, 56–57 New Economic Policy, 174 New Maidens’ Monastery, 105 Nicholas I (son of Alexander I), 138, 139, 144–151 Nicholas II (son of Alexander III), 160, 166–168, 170 Nikon, Patriarch, 99–101, 108, 208 Normanist conquest, 38–44 Novgorod about, 11, 24, 26, 49–51 demise of, 71 as geopolitical power, 64 rise of Christianity in, 50 veches and, 36 Official Nationality, 145–146, 206 Ogedei (uncle of Batu Khan), 54 Old Believers, 101 Oleg (son of Sviatoslav), 29 Oleg (successor to Ryurik), 26 Operation Barbarossa, 179–180 Oprichnina, Oprichniks, 83, 84 Orthodox Christianity, 31–32, 37, 56, 58, 64, 71, 72, 76, 78, 89, 98–100, 145–146, 152, 205 Ottoman Empire alliance with France, 134 conflicts with, 80–81, 89, 113, 152 Nicholas I and, 150–151 overthrow of Constantinople, 71 pagan culture, 26, 30–31, 41, 50, 89 Paleologue, Sophia, 71 palimpsest, Russia as, 11–15, 17, 43, 196, 207, 208–214 patrimonial landholdings, 34–35 patrimonial rulers, succession of, 35 Patriotic War, 140 Paul I (son of Catherine the Great), 133–135 Pauline Laws, 134 Pechenegs, the, 28, 29, 34, 39, 51, 52 perestroika, 187 Peresvet, 46–47 Pereyaslavl Accords, 98 Persia, as threat, 98 Persian Campaign, 1722-3, 112 Perun the Thunderer, 26 Peter II, 121 Peter III (Peter of Holstein-Gottorp), 123, 124–125, 129 Peter the Great, 15, 93, 94–95, 103–105, 105–115, 109, 120–121, 135, 176 Petrograd Soviet, the, 170–171 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, 159 pogroms, 36 Poland Poles as threat, 40, 89, 98 Polovtsians, the, 38, 51–53 Polyane, the, 24 pomeshchiks, 73, 78 pomestiye, 78 Populists, 158 posadniks, 35, 36, 49 Potemkin, Grigory, 119 Preobrazhensky Regiment, 123 primogeniture, inheritance by, 57–58 princes, role of, 35, 55 propaganda, 42, 88, 178, 187, 191, 204–205 Provisional Government, 170–171 Pugachev, Yemelyan, 132 Pushkin, Alexander, 147 Putin, Vladimir, 16, 40–42, 195, 198–201, 201–205, 203, 205–208 radicalism, European, 143 radicalism, intelligentsia, 158–159 Radimiches, the, 22 Raskol, the, 101 Rasputin, Grigory, 170 Redemption Dues, 156–157 religion, Russian state and, 30, 47, 77–78, 108 Renaissance culture, 51, 64, 65 revisionism, 193–195. see also myths, national and political contemporary, 40 history of, 15–17 of history of power and authority, 76 over the centuries, 43 Putin and, 210–211 Russia—My History, 204 revolutions, 148–151, 161 1848, 149 1905, 162, 166–168 1917, 170, 171 French, 134, 136, 142–143 revolutions, concerns about, 143 Roman Catholicism, 30 Romanov, Alexei, 98–101 Romanov, Mikhail, 90–91, 97 Romanovna, Anastasia, 82 Romanov dynasty, 70, 95, 96 Romodanovsky, Fyodor, 111 Rorik of Dorestad, 23, 24 Rus’, about, 26 Russia expansion of, 79–82, 97 future of, 212–213 Russia, Romanov, 70, 95, 96 Russian Empire, origins of, 96 Russian Federation, 195–196 Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), map of, 183 Russian state, roots of, 77 Russification, 146 Russo-Persian War, 1722-3, 114 Russo-Turkish War, 128 Ryazan, 47, 57, 60 Ryurik, about, 22–23, 26 Ryurikid dynasty, about, 22–26, 56–58, 87 Ryurikids, arrival of, 23–29 Sacred Council, 77 Sarai, 47–48, 55–57, 60–63, 65–66 Scandinavian raider-traders, 23, 24 Second Rome, 15, 150 Second World War, 179–182, 190, 194 serfs Catherine the Great and, 130 egalitarianism and, 129 emancipation of, 148, 154, 155–158 as percentage of population, 119 Peter the Great and, 107, 108, 112 as soldiers, 156 St.

…

Petersburg, 94, 96, 112 streltsy, the, 79, 97, 104, 105–106, 111 Stroganovs, the, 81–82 Supreme Privy Council, 121–122 Sviatopolk (brother of Yaroslav), 33 Sviatoslav, Prince, 28–29 Sweden, as threat, 89, 98 Swedish Empire, loss to Russia, 113–114 Syrian Civil War (2015–), 202 Table of Ranks, 107–108 Tale of Igor’s Campaign, The, 41–42 Tatars, see Mongols taxation, 35, 56, 82, 85, 107, 130, 157 technology, 13, 96–97, 106, 136, 149, 176–177 terem, the, 72 Teutonic Knights, 56 Third Rome, 14–15, 71, 210 Third Section, 147, 159 Thor, 26 timelines 862–1113, 21 1223–1480, 45 1462–1613, 68 1613–1725, 92 1725–1796, 116 1812–1905, 137 1905–1991, 164 1991–2024, 192 Time of Troubles, 70, 82, 86, 88–89, 90, 97, 99, 207 Tokhtamysh, 61, 62–63 trade routes, 25–26, 28, 32–33, 37, 39, 41, 51, 65, 81, 151 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, 173 Treaty of Nerchinsk, 104 Treaty of Tyavzino, 87 Tsargrad, see Byzantium tsars, role of, 72, 90 Tsereteli, Zurab, 94 Tver, 57, 60, 62 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) dissolution of, 190–191, 195, 207 formation of, 174 Union Treaty, 189 unipolar world order, 201, 204 universities, 102, 119, 127, 150, 156, 157, 159. see also education uprisings, see wars and coups urbanization, 65 Uvarov, Sergei, 145 Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde, 57 Varangian Guard, the, 23 Varangians, the, 22, 39 Vasily III (son of Ivan III), 73–74 Vasnetsov, Viktor, 22, 23 veche, the, 35–36, 49 Vikings, 13–14, 16, 22–23, 26, 29, 89 Viskovaty, Ivan, 77 Vladimir (son of Sviatoslav), 29 Vladimir the Great, 29–33 Vsevolod, Prince, 49, 50 Vyacheslav (brother of Yaroslav), 35 Vyshnegradsky, Ivan, 160 War Communism, 173–174 wars and coups, see also military; soldiers of 1991, 189 Civil War (1918–22), 174, 190 Cuban Missile Crisis, 182 First Northern War, 100 Great Northern War, 112, 113 Great Patriotic War (see World War II) hybrid wars, 202 Patriotic War, 140 Persian Campaign, 1722-3, 112 Peter the Great and, 112–115 Putin and, 202, 203 Russo-Persian War, 1722-3, 114 Russo-Turkish War, 128 Seven Years War, 123 with Sweden, 87 Syrian Civil War (2015–), 202 War of Spanish Succession, 110 World War I, 168–172, 190 World War II, 179–182, 190, 194 West, the Alexei Romanov and, 98–99 arms race with, 185 Catherine the Great and, 126 farming methods, 119–120 mass media and, 200–201, 204–205, 208–209 modernization and, 139–140 Nicholas I and, 149–150 influences of, 15–16 1990s and, 195 paranoia of, 194 Peter the Great and, 95, 110–112, 114 Putin and, 40–41 technological, 96–97, 176–177 2000s, during, 209–212 unipolar world order and, 201, 204 Western rationalism, 146 Witte, Sergei, 160 women, roles of, 72, 120–121, 127, 158, 175, 178 World War I, 168–172, 190 World War II, 179–182, 190, 194 Yalta Conference (1945), 181 Yaropolk (son of Sviatoslav), 29 Yaroslav the Wise, 33, 34, 35, 36, 50 Yeltsin, Boris, 188–190, 196–198, 199 Yuri (brother of Ivan IV), 74 Yuri Dolgoruky (Long-Armed Yuri), 51 Zaliznyak, Andrei, 11 Zemshchina (the Land), 83, 84 Zemsky Sobor (Assembly of the Land), 78, 87, 90–91 ISBN-13: 9781488076107 A Short History of Russia Copyright © 2020 by Mark Galeotti First published in 2020 in the United Kingdom by Ebury Press, part of the Penguin Random House group of companies.

The Pentagon's Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency by Annie Jacobsen

Albert Einstein, Berlin Wall, Boston Dynamics, colonial rule, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Dean Kamen, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Fall of the Berlin Wall, game design, GPS: selective availability, Herman Kahn, Ivan Sutherland, John Markoff, John von Neumann, license plate recognition, Livingstone, I presume, low earth orbit, megacity, Menlo Park, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Murray Gell-Mann, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Norman Mailer, operation paperclip, place-making, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, social intelligence, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Strategic Defense Initiative, traumatic brain injury, zero-sum game

And yet new information from ARPA’s history has recently come to light that paints an even more dramatic Cuban Missile Crisis than was previously understood. “Guess how many nuclear missiles were detonated during the Cuban Missile Crisis?” asks Paul Kozemchak, special assistant to DARPA director Arati Prabhakar, during an interview for this book. Kozemchak is a thirty-year veteran of DARPA, which makes him the longest-serving employee in its history. “I can tell you that the answer is not ‘none,’” said Kozemchak. “The answer is ‘several.’” In this case, “several” refers to four. By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Eisenhower’s test ban had failed, and the United States and the Soviet Union had both returned to nuclear weapons testing.

…

By the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Eisenhower’s test ban had failed, and the United States and the Soviet Union had both returned to nuclear weapons testing. Twice during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on October 20 and October 26, 1962, the United States detonated two nuclear weapons—code-named Checkmate and Bluegill Triple Prime—in space. These tests, which sought to advance knowledge in ARPA’s pursuit of the Christofilos effect, are on the record and are known. What is not known outside Defense Department circles is that in response, on October 22 and October 28, 1962, the Soviets also detonated two nuclear weapons in space, also in pursuit of the Christofilos effect.

…

“They were testing elements of an antimissile system in a nuclear burst environment.” It is hard to determine what is more shocking, that this information, which was made public by Russian scientists in the early 1990s, is not generally known, or that four nuclear weapons were detonated in space, in a DEFCON 2 environment, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Firing off nuclear weapons in the middle of a nuclear standoff is tempting fate. The BMEWS system, at J-Site in Thule, could easily have misidentified the Soviet missile launches as a nuclear first strike. “The danger of the situation simply getting out of control, from developments or accidents or incidents that neither side—leaders on either side—were even aware of, much less in control of, could have led to war,” says the former CIA officer Dr.

Licence to be Bad by Jonathan Aldred

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, Charles Babbage, clean water, cognitive dissonance, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Donald Trump, Douglas Engelbart, Douglas Engelbart, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Snowden, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, framing effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, full employment, Gary Kildall, George Akerlof, glass ceiling, Glass-Steagall Act, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, mandelbrot fractal, meta-analysis, Mont Pelerin Society, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Nash equilibrium, Norbert Wiener, nudge unit, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Pareto efficiency, Paul Samuelson, plutocrats, positional goods, power law, precautionary principle, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, Richard Thaler, ride hailing / ride sharing, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Skinner box, Skype, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, spectrum auction, The Nature of the Firm, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, trickle-down economics, Vilfredo Pareto, wealth creators, zero-sum game

But when the game is played by eminent statesmen … it is thought that the statesmen on one side are displaying a high degree of wisdom and courage, and only the statesmen on the other side are reprehensible.14 In any case, Chicken was not a helpful bit of game-theoretic analysis, because it has two Nash equilibria, the first being ‘your opponent does not swerve, you do’ and the second being ‘you do not swerve, your opponent does’. Game theory here makes no prediction about what will happen, or what should. The importance of this limitation was clear in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis two years later when, in October 1962, both the US and the USSR refused to back down in their confrontation over the placing of Russian nuclear missiles on Cuba. It was obvious to both sides that Chicken was the game being played. However, what they both wanted to know was: which Nash equilibrium?

…

He discovered that, astonishingly, there was no means of speedy, reliable communication with the Kremlin: ‘I could direct dial my mother three thousand miles away to wish her happy birthday [but] Kennedy had no way to get in touch with Khrushchev.’22 Schelling persuaded President Kennedy to install what became known as ‘the hotline’ to solve the problem. With this single, simple act, Schelling may have made more difference to humanity than all the other thinkers in this book put together – although, with disturbing hindsight, the hotline was not fully operational until after the nuclear near-miss that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. It took until 1963 to persuade Soviet diplomats that the hotline was their idea, and to get special Cyrillic teletypewriters installed in the White House. As for Schelling’s economics, much of his work has a realism missing from Gary Becker’s world. Like Becker, Schelling studied discrimination.

…

By the time ‘Risk, Ambiguity and the Savage Axioms’ was published, Ellsberg was a consultant to the US Defense Department and the White House. In 1961 he drafted the guidance to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the operational plans for general nuclear war; the following year, unsurprisingly, saw him preoccupied with the Cuban Missile Crisis. As for promoting his ideas in academic circles, Ellsberg had effectively gone AWOL. He had, in one way or another, become obsessed with the Vietnam War. After working on plans to escalate US involvement in Vietnam, Ellsberg spent two years in Saigon, and then returned to RAND to work on a top-secret review of US decision-making regarding Vietnam.

The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made by Walter Isaacson, Evan Thomas

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, Charles Lindbergh, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cuban missile crisis, George Santayana, guns versus butter model, kremlinology, land reform, liberal world order, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, old-boy network, Ronald Reagan, Steve Jobs, Suez crisis 1956, Ted Sorensen, uranium enrichment, éminence grise

And yet, it turns out, it was Bundy who wrote a memo for Lyndon Johnson entitled “Backing from the Establishment,” which set the stage for the formation of the group that became known as the Wise Men. “The key to these people,” Bundy advised, “is McCloy.” When Bundy was seeking Lovett’s advice during the Cuban missile crisis, the elder statesman nodded toward a photograph near Bundy’s desk and intoned that “the best service we can perform for the President is to try to approach this as Colonel Stimson would.” That, in fact, might be the truest touchstone of Establishment credentials: reverence for the tradition exemplified by Henry Lewis Stimson, the consummate American statesman and Wall Street lawyer who served as Secretary of War under both William Howard Taft and Franklin Roosevelt and as Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover.

…

The North Vietnamese had somewhat reduced the level of fighting in the South. Was this a gesture of good faith by Hanoi? Harriman proposed to treat it as such. In return, he suggested, the U.S. should impose a total bombing halt. In effect he was suggesting the same ploy that had worked during the Cuban missile crisis: ignore the harsh rhetoric and respond to the hopeful hints; assume the enemy wants peace and help him achieve it. The first hurdle was not Hanoi, but Lyndon Johnson. And the timing was unfortunate. While HARVAN was concocting peace initiatives in Paris, Johnson had been in Honolulu promising his unyielding support to South Vietnamese President Thieu.

…

HARRIMAN AT GENEVA: Harriman Oral History, 1969, Columbia University; Harriman Oral History, 1964, Kennedy Library; authors’ interviews with William Sullivan, Michael Forrestal, Chester Cooper, Paul Nitze; Sullivan Oral History, 1970, Kennedy Library; Cooper Oral History, 1966, Kennedy Library; Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 384; Rust, Kennedy in Vietnam, 71; McGeorge Bundy memo to President Kennedy, Nov. 15, 1961, Bundy notes of White House meeting on Laos, Aug. 29, 1961, Kennedy Library; Cooper, The Lost Crusade: America in Vietnam, 182–191; Hilsman, To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy, 138, 142–55. OVERVIEW OF CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS: Abel, The Missile Crisis; Detzer, The Brink; Kennedy, Thirteen Days; Alsop and Bartlett, “In Time of Crisis”; Schlesinger, Robert Kennedy and His Times, 499–532; Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 794–819; Sorensen, Kennedy, 667–718; Minutes of ExCom meetings, Kennedy Library. McCLOY INVOLVEMENT IN MISSILE CRISIS: Authors’ interviews with John McCloy, Andrea Giles, Robert Lovett; McCloy interview with Eric Sevareid, Part II, CBS News, July 20, 1975; Wershba, “U.S.

A Short History of Progress by Ronald Wright

Albert Einstein, Atahualpa, Bretton Woods, British Empire, clean water, Columbian Exchange, cuban missile crisis, Easter island, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Haber-Bosch Process, Hernando de Soto, invention of agriculture, It's morning again in America, James Watt: steam engine, Jane Jacobs, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, mass immigration, nuclear winter, out of africa, Parkinson's law, post-war consensus, precautionary principle, Ronald Reagan, technological determinism, Thomas Malthus, urban sprawl

They may have been wrong on the details they imagined for our times, but they were right to foresee trouble. Just ahead lay the Great War and 12 million dead,42 the Russian Revolution, the Great Slump — leading to Hitler, the death camps, the Second World War (with 50 million dead), the atom bomb. And these in turn to the Korean War, the Cold War, the near-fatal Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Cambodia, Rwanda. Even the most pessimistic Victorian might have been surprised to learn that the twentieth century would slaughter more than 100 million in its wars — twice the entire population of the Roman Empire.43 The price of history does indeed go up. The Victorian scientific romances had two modern descendants: mainstream science fiction, and profound social satire set in nightmare futures.

…

As an astronomer, he advocates establishing a small human colony in space as soon as possible, to give intelligent life a second chance if things go wrong. But if we ruin the earth, are we intelligent? And why should we deserve another chance? 55. Declassification of American and Soviet sources from the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and statements by those involved, show that the world came much closer to nuclear war than had been thought. Robert McNamara, then U.S. defence secretary, has written “we came within a hairbreadth without realising it.” See ibid., pp. 25–28. 56. Following controversial legal rulings in the United States, biotech and agribusiness companies have taken out patents on crops (and even animals) they claim to have “invented.”

…

See also progress traps violence, 33–34, 71–73, 126, 139n5, 140n6 worldwide, 55–56 classes, 33, 56, 63–64, 71, 108, 109 climate change, 23, 37–38, 51–53, 125, 130, 148n53, 182n53 Cold War, 121, 133n7, 181n50 collapse of civilization, 8, 92–93 literary portrayals, 119–20, 122–23 natural or social, 56, 84 scientists’ warnings, 125–26, 181n52 three aspects, 107–8, 128 typical behaviour before, 129 worldwide, 125, 181n52 colonialism, 33, 139n5 communism, 124 Coningsby (Disraeli), 119 consumption and reserves, 148n52 Cook, James (Captain Cook), 58, 62 Copan, 98, 100, 101, 169n66 Cortés, Hernando, 51 “cosmic bombshells,” 139n2 Critias (Plato), 87–88 Cro-Magnons, 18, 20–22, 23–24, 26, 36, 37, 38, 66, 137n31, 137n35 genetic studies, 21, 137n32 and Neanderthals, see Neanderthals crops, 42, 44, 47, 114, 144n30, 144n31, 144n33, 152n22 failures, 130 see also farming; food production Crosby, Alfred, 130 Cuban Missile Crisis, 121, 182n55 cultures adaptations, 29–30 dangers, 30 defined, 32–33 outrunning evolution, 35 transmissible through speech, 13 cuneiform script, 65 Curie, Marie, 12 Darwin, Charles, 11, 12 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Gibbon), 85–86 democracy, 6 “deregulation,” 127, 184n63 Descent of Man (Darwin), 12 Devil, 49, 147n46 Dickens, Charles, 119 dinosaurs, extinction, 31, 139n2 disease of twentieth century, 122, 123, 180n44 future concern, 130 Old World, in America, 112, 113, 116–17, 173n10, 173n11 dogs, 43 domestication, 33, 149n1 animals, 43–44 plants, 42, 44, 47 Dos Pilas, 99 drought, 101, 167n63, 168n64 dystopias, 122, 123 Easter Island, 57–64 collapse, 61–63, 82, 83, 129, 132 contact with Europe, 57–58, 62, 151n17 Easter Island, Earth Island (Bahn & Flenley), 63, 149n9 Ecological Imperialism (Crosby), 141n17 Eden, 9, 66, 67, 68 Egypt civilization, emergence, 33, 149n1 conservatism, 85, 103 disease, 104, 170n73 environment, 103, 109–10, 169n70 farming, 103 population growth, 103–4, 170n71 restraint in technology, 46 Einstein, Albert, 5, 118 Eiseley, Loren, 17 El Mirador, 95, 164n42 Enemy of the People (Ibsen), 180n41 Engels, Friedrich, 181n50 entrenched behaviour, 79, 102 Epic of Gilgamesh, 65–66, 70, 75–77, 152n24, 156n56, 157n59 epidemics, see Black Death in Europe Erewhon (Butler), 119, 122 European conquest of Americas, 37 Spanish, see Spanish conquests evolutionary theory, 9, 12 extinctions, 31, 37–40, 63, 141n18, 142n21 famines, 74, 105, 156n51, 171n76.

The Secret World: A History of Intelligence by Christopher Andrew

Able Archer 83, active measures, Admiral Zheng, airport security, anti-communist, Atahualpa, Ayatollah Khomeini, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Chelsea Manning, classic study, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, Etonian, Fellow of the Royal Society, Francisco Pizarro, Google Earth, information security, invention of movable type, invention of the telegraph, Julian Assange, Khyber Pass, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Murano, Venice glass, RAND corporation, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Skype, South Sea Bubble, spice trade, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, the market place, trade route, two and twenty, union organizing, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, WikiLeaks, éminence grise

The U-2 missions, wrote Eisenhower, ‘provided proof that the horrors of the alleged “bomber gap” and “missile gap” were nothing more than the imaginative creations of irresponsibility’.50 Without the IMINT revolution, US policy towards the Soviet Union would doubtless have continued to be confused by other destabilizing myths about the extent of Soviet nuclear capability. The course of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis would also have been quite different. But for IMINT from U-2s (whose interpretation owed much to top-secret documents supplied by a British–American agent in the GRU, Oleg Penkovsky),* Khrushchev would almost certainly have achieved his ambition of concealing the construction of the missile bases until they were fully operational.

…

When the US fleet began dropping practice depth charges in an attempt to force the Soviet Foxtrot-class submarine B59 to come to the surface for identification, the submarine captain wanted to launch a nuclear torpedo. He would have done so but for the presence on board of the flotilla commander, who refused to permit the launch.52 After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the intelligence available to both East and West on the extent and deployment of their opponents’ nuclear strike force became an essential element in stabilizing the Cold War. According to Robert Gates, whose quarter-century career in the CIA and the White House staff culminated in his appointment as DCI from 1991 to 1993: The great continuing strength and success of the analysts of CIA and the intelligence community was in describing with amazing accuracy from the late 1960s until the Soviet collapse the actual military strength and capabilities of the Soviet Union . . .

…

Bush was widely expected to win a second term at the November elections and to take a personal interest in post-Cold War changes to the intelligence community. The American intelligence community had greater confidence in Bush than in any President for the previous generation. The US triumph in the Cuban Missile Crisis and the phenomenal technological achievements of American spy satellites and SIGINT collection (known in much greater detail to the White House than to the public) had given Cold War presidents inflated expectations of what their intelligence communities could achieve. ‘Of all the presidents I worked for [from 1968 to 1993]’, recalls Robert Gates, ‘only [George H.

Into the Black: The Extraordinary Untold Story of the First Flight of the Space Shuttle Columbia and the Astronauts Who Flew Her by Rowland White, Richard Truly

Albert Einstein, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apollo Guidance Computer, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, Easter island, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Gene Kranz, Isaac Newton, it's over 9,000, John von Neumann, low earth orbit, Maui Hawaii, Mercator projection, Neil Armstrong, orbital mechanics / astrodynamics, Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, William Langewiesche

In the early 1950s Collier’s magazine laid out German rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun’s vision for space, serving as an inspiration for many who later became part of the space program. Last of the gunfighters. During the Cuban Missile Crisis Dick Truly flew Vought F-8 Crusaders from the USS Enterprise, the Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. With dreams of becoming a test pilot, Bob Crippen earned his wings of gold as a naval aviator before flying A-4 Skyhawks off the deck of the USS Independence during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Crip is kneeling third from the right. Bob Crippen trained as a test pilot at Chuck Yeager’s Aerospace Research Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in 1965.

…

In the end, though, “Slats” didn’t stick. Everyone just knew the tan, brown-eyed Texan with the crewcut as Crip. After his first night landing aboard an aircraft carrier he thought, I can do just about anything. For a while, as he flew from the deck of the Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, USS Enterprise, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, it looked like that might include war. Test flying, though, remained his goal, and he filled in the application form in 1964. It offered him a choice: Do you want to go to the Navy’s test pilot school at Patuxent River? Or would you be prepared to go to the Empire Test Pilots School in the UK, or train with the Air Force instead?

…

When his orders came through telling him he’d been posted to Edwards Air Force Base, he was surprised to discover he’d be a student at an outfit called the Aerospace Research Pilot School—I thought I was going to test pilot school. The syllabus, he learned, included spaceflight. And his instructor on the space dynamics and control course was a young Navy pilot who, like Crip, had only just over a year before been flying off carriers during the Cuban Missile Crisis. His name was Lieutenant Dick Truly. THREE Edwards Air Force Base, 1963 When Dick Truly arrived at Edwards with his wife, Cody, two young sons and the family dog after a long cross-country drive, he felt like a cowboy just arrived at IBM. There were few places in the world that were more glamorous than Edwards.

The Cold War: Stories From the Big Freeze by Bridget Kendall

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, British Empire, collective bargaining, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, European colonialism, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Great Leap Forward, Howard Zinn, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, land reform, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, open borders, Prenzlauer Berg, Ronald Reagan, Suez canal 1869, white flight

In those days, West Berliners who wanted to see relatives in the East had only one way of doing this, and that was to stand at a vantage point in West Berlin where they could be seen by their relatives in the East. They could wave to each other. My fiancée saw her parents only as tiny little dots about 500 metres away. ‘The world was going to end any time now’ The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) THE CONFRONTATION KNOWN as the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in Russia as the Caribbean Crisis, took place over 13 days in October 1962. It was the closest the United States and the Soviet Union came during the Cold War to triggering nuclear apocalypse. The starting point went back to more than three years earlier and the moment, in January 1959, when a band of rebels on the Caribbean island of Cuba, led by the young revolutionaries Fidel Castro, his brother Raúl and Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, succeeded in ousting the unpopular, corrupt dictatorship of Colonel Fulgencio Batista, following a two-year guerrilla campaign.

…

Contents Cover About the Book About the Author Title Page Introduction ‘Then all hell broke loose’ The Greek Civil War (1944–9) ‘The Iron Curtain was in place’ The Communist Coup in Czechoslovakia (1948) ‘There were no weapons, only arguments, ideas’ The Italian Election of 1948 ‘We were suddenly shut off’ The Berlin Blockade (1948–9) ‘Then fear replaced pride’ The Fall of Shanghai (1949) ‘The trap shut’ The Korean War (1950–3) ‘The world became a hostile place’ McCarthyism (1950–4) ‘When I saw the light, I had no idea what was happening’ The H-Bomb (1950s) ‘Now it was going to be different’ The East German Uprising (1953) ‘Democracy and freedom became a memory only’ The Iranian Coup (1953) ‘It was the beginning of freedom’ Khrushchev’s Secret Speech (1956) ‘We are not your comrades’ The Hungarian Revolution (1956) ‘They were leaving with only their suitcases, they lost everything’ The Congo Crisis (1960–1) ‘If one went, one couldn’t return’ The Berlin Wall (1961) ‘The world was going to end any time now’ The Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) ‘There was no future’ The Fall of Khrushchev and the Rise of Brezhnev (1964–82) ‘They could accuse you of anything’ The Outbreak of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–7) ‘They didn’t want to live in the dark any more’ The Prague Spring (1968) ‘I can’t wash that stain away’ America’s Vietnam War (1965–73) ‘Everything that you thought is not true any more’ The Coup in Chile (1973) ‘These were just ordinary men marching in the street’ The Fall of Saigon and the Aftermath of the Vietnam War (1975–9) ‘We fell into each other’s arms’ The Cold Peace and Ostpolitik (1969–79) ‘The country was left with no protection at all’ The Angolan Civil War (1975–2002) ‘The newcomer holding a weapon is the enemy’ The Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan (1979–89) ‘We came out victorious’ The Birth of Solidarity in Poland (1980) ‘A threat to our mutual humanity’ The Nuclear Arms Race and CND (1981–7) ‘Everyone wanted change’ Gorbachev’s Perestroika (1985–91) ‘They are not so different from us’ The Fall of the Berlin Wall and German Reunification (1989–90) ‘The greatest value of mankind is their freedom’ The Baltic Republics Leave the Soviet Union (1988–91) ‘The last nail in the coffin’ The Collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) Contributor Biographies Picture Section Further Reading: Contributors’ Publications Further Reading Index of Contributors Index Acknowledgements Picture Credits Copyright About the Book Accompanying a landmark BBC Radio 4 series, The Cold War is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how the tensions of the last century have shaped the modern world, and what it was like to live through them.

…

‘We fell into each other’s arms’ The Cold Peace and Ostpolitik (1969–79) AS THE COLD War wore on through the 1960s and 1970s, positions on both sides became entrenched, but at the same time governments in both East and West were keen to avoid unnecessary escalations. Neither Moscow nor Washington wanted to repeat the experience of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, when the world had teetered on the brink of nuclear destruction. The implication of the West’s passive response to the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 was that while the United States and its allies might not like what had happened, they were reluctantly prepared to live with a divided Europe.

Rise of the Rocket Girls: The Women Who Propelled Us, From Missiles to the Moon to Mars by Nathalia Holt

Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Bill Gates: Altair 8800, British Empire, computer age, cuban missile crisis, Dennis Tito, desegregation, financial independence, Grace Hopper, Isaac Newton, labor-force participation, low earth orbit, Mars Rover, music of the spheres, Neil Armstrong, new economy, operation paperclip, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, space junk, Steve Jobs, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Works Progress Administration, Yogi Berra

Material about the Mercury 7 and the Saturn rocket can be found in Richard W. Orloff and David M. Harland, Apollo: The Definitive Sourcebook (New York: Springer, 2006). The Cuban missile crisis is described in Sheldon M. Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths Versus Reality (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). Both this book and the Kennedy Presidential Library website (http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Cuban-Missile-Crisis.aspx) describe the presence of Jupiter missiles in Turkey. However, the role that the missiles played in the crisis wasn’t revealed to the American public until 1987.

…

Addressing the nation on October 22, Kennedy said, “My fellow citizens: let no one doubt that this is a difficult and dangerous effort on which we have set out. No one can foresee precisely what course it will take or what costs or casualties will be incurred.” It seemed the world was accelerating toward nuclear war. The roots of the Cuban missile crisis were tangled up in American rocketry. In 1961, Americans had deployed Jupiter nuclear missiles to Turkey, adjacent to the Soviet Union. And these medium-range ballistic missiles were developed by none other than Wernher von Braun at the Army Ballistic Missile Agency. At last, Kennedy brokered a deal with the Soviets.

Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want by Nicholas Epley

affirmative action, airport security, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autism spectrum disorder, behavioural economics, Cass Sunstein, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, drone strike, friendly fire, invisible hand, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, payday loans, Peter Singer: altruism, pirate software, Richard Thaler, school choice, social intelligence, the scientific method, theory of mind

Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/health/19chen.html?pagewanted=all. AFTERWORD: BEING MINDWISE 1. Much of this information comes from Arthur Schlesinger’s foreword to Kennedy’s autobiographical account of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Thirteen Days. Many other books cover the crisis in considerably more detail. 2. The full set of letters sent between Khrushchev and Kennedy, from both before and after the Cuban Missile Crisis, can be found here: http://www.state.gov/www/about_state/history/volume_vi/exchanges.html. The opening letter I’m referring to is from October 26, 1962. 3. Kislyakov, A. (2003). Hotline: 40 years of building up trust.

…

How to Break a Terrorist (Alexander) How to Win Friends and Influence People (Carnegie), Principle 8 of, 8.1, 8.2 human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) human rights, dehumanization and Hume, David hummingbirds humor, sense of, experiments on perception of hunters, anthropomorphism and hurricanes, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 7.1, 7.2 Hussein, Saddam, 1.1, 8.1 Hutus Hyde, Janet Ickes, William, 1.1, 8.1 illusion of courage, 5.1, nts.1n immigration, immigrants, dehumanization and Indian Territory, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3 inference, prf.1, 3.1 MPFC and, 3.1, 3.2 neuroimaging experiments and, 3.1, nts.1n inhibition hypothesis intelligence, experiments on perception of, 1.1, 1.2 intentions, prf.1, prf.2 interrogations intrinsic motivators, 3.1, nts.1n introspection, prf.1, 1.1 bigotry and, 2.1, 2.2 limitations to understanding of self through planning fallacy and shoppers’ preferences and Invisible Gorilla, The: and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us (Simons and Chabris), nts.1n Iraq Al Qaeda in U.S. invasion and occupation of, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1 Islam, Muslims Israel, 6.1, 8.1, 8.2 Jahoda, Gustav James, William, 2.1, 2.2 Japan, U.S. firebombing of, n job interviews Johnson, Todd Jolie, Angelina Jung, Carl juries inadmissible evidence instructions and personal attendance of witnesses before Katrina, Hurricane, 4.1, 7.1, 7.2 Keaton, Diane Keller, Helen Keller, Maryann Kennedy, John F. Cuban missile crisis and, aft.1, aft.2 Khrushchev, Nikita S., aft.1, aft.2 kidnappings, n King, B. B. King, Martin Luther, Jr., n assassination of Kismet (MIT robot) knowledge “curse” of egocentrism and, 5.1, nts.1n others as main source of self and, prf.1, 1.1, 2.1, 8.1 stereotypes and, 6.1, 6.2 Koop, C.

…

.), 7.1, 7.2 sports, context of success in spotlight effect, 5.1, 5.2, 8.1, nts.1n Standing Bear, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5 Stanford University, 2.1, 3.1 Star Trek Steffel, Mary stereotypes, prf.1, 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 8.1, 8.2, aft.1, nts.1n accuracy and error of African Americans and, 6.1, 6.2 aging and, 6.1, 6.2 Asians and circle test experiment and, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 conflict resolution and differences and, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, 8.1, nts.1n, nts.2n expectations and self-fulfillment of explanation and, 6.1, 6.2 gender and, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, nts.1n, nts.2n groups and, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5, nts.1n knowledge and, 6.1, 6.2 line length experiment and, 6.1, 6.2 politics and, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4 race and ethnicity and reality and visible facts versus invisible states and, 6.1, 6.2, nts.1n wealth inequality and, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, nts.1n Stevens, Martin Stevenson, DeShawn, n stock market, anthropomorphism and, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 students, stereotype study of, 6.1, nts.1n Stumbling on Happiness (Gilbert) Stutesman, John suicide bombers, 3.1, 3.2 Sunstein, Cass Super Bowl Supreme Court, Canadian Sweden, Vasa disaster and, 5.1, nts.1n synapses “Take Five to Live Light” campaign Taliban talking stick Talking to the Enemy (Atran), nts.1n Target taxes, taxation taxicabs Taylor, Elizabeth teasing telepathy telephones, 4.1, 5.1, 8.1, nts.1n egocentrism and, 5.1, 5.2 television, anthropomorphism and terrorism, terrorists, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 8.1, nts.1n, nts.2n parochial altruism and, 3.1, nts.1n Tesh, John, n Tevatron, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3 texting, 5.1, 6.1 Thaler, Richard Theory of Moral Sentiments, The (Smith) Titchener, Edward tobacco Todd, Ashley, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 toddlers, social testing of, prf.1, nts.1n Tools of the Mind, n torture issue, 5.1, nts.1n Tour de France Toyota, GM intrinsic motivation experiment and Transportation Security Administration (TSA), U.S., 8.1, 8.2 travel, social engagement versus solitude and Trigger (guitar) T-shirt experiment, 5.1, nts.1n Tutsis Twitter, 2.1, 5.1, 5.2, 6.1, aft.1 typecasting ubuntu concept United Nations (UN) United States of America Afghan war and, 3.1, 8.1 Cuban missile crisis and, aft.1, aft.2 Iraq invasion and, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1 September 11, 2001 terror attacks and, 3.1, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 5.1, nts.1n, nts.2n stereotyping of aging in World War II and, 3.1, nts.1n Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) University of Michigan Hospitals vacuum cleaners Vance, Walter, 7.1, 7.2 Vanilla Ice, n Vasa, 5.1, nts.1n Vaughan, Stevie Ray vegetarianism, anthropomorphism and, 4.1, 4.2 Velveteen Rabbit, The (Williams) Vermont Vietnam War vision brain function and, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3 color perception and deafness compared with loss of, 8.1, nts.1n defining groups and, 6.1, 6.2 saccades and visual cortex Wahlberg, Mark, 5.1, nts.1n Wallace, David Foster Wall Street Journal, nts.1n Walt Disney Company, 4.1, 4.2 Wansink, Brian wants warbots, 4.1, 4.2, nts.1n Washington, D.C.

Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, airport security, Albert Einstein, bank run, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, call centre, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, en.wikipedia.org, epigenetics, food desert, high-speed rail, Housing First, illegal immigration, Internet of things, mandatory minimum, millennium bug, move fast and break things, Nick Bostrom, payday loans, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, randomized controlled trial, self-driving car, Skype, Snapchat, subscription business, systems thinking, urban planning, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, Y2K

It was the era of the Cold War: Nuclear fallout shelters: Robert Klara, “Nuclear Fallout Shelters Were Never Going to Work,” History, October 16, 2017, updated September 1, 2018, https://www.history.com/news/nuclear-fallout-shelters-were-never-going-to-work; biological warfare: Joshua Lederberg, “The Infamous Black Death May Return to Haunt Us,” Washington Post, August 31, 1968, https://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/lederberg/pdf/bbabtv.pdf; Cuban Missile Crisis: “Cuban Missile Crisis,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis; duck and cover in schools: Sarah Pruitt, “How ‘Duck-and-Cover’ Drills Channeled America’s Cold War Anxiety,” March 26, 2019, https://www.history.com/news/duck-cover-drills-cold-war-arms-race. The Andromeda Strain: Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain (New York: Centesis Corporation, 1969).

…

“Thousands of concerned citizens wrote NASA letters, worried that they were at risk from Moon germs,” wrote Michael Meltzer in his fascinating book When Biospheres Collide. It might be tempting to mock these fears now, with the infallibility of hindsight, but this concern was no joke. We simply did not know what was on the Moon. And existential risk was in the air. It was the era of the Cold War, nuclear fallout shelters, biological warfare agents, the Cuban missile crisis, “duck and cover” exercises in schools. (Feeding the fears was a 1969 bestseller by Michael Crichton, The Andromeda Strain—released about two months before the Moon landing—which concerned a deadly alien organism brought back to earth by a fallen satellite.) In the 1950s, just before the launch of the USSR’s Sputnik program, a group of scientists began to warn of the dangers of contamination from space exploration.

Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-Connected World by Bruce Schneier

23andMe, 3D printing, air gap, algorithmic bias, autonomous vehicles, barriers to entry, Big Tech, bitcoin, blockchain, Brian Krebs, business process, Citizen Lab, cloud computing, cognitive bias, computer vision, connected car, corporate governance, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Heinemeier Hansson, disinformation, Donald Trump, driverless car, drone strike, Edward Snowden, Elon Musk, end-to-end encryption, fault tolerance, Firefox, Flash crash, George Akerlof, incognito mode, industrial robot, information asymmetry, information security, Internet of things, invention of radio, job automation, job satisfaction, John Gilmore, John Markoff, Kevin Kelly, license plate recognition, loose coupling, market design, medical malpractice, Minecraft, MITM: man-in-the-middle, move fast and break things, national security letter, Network effects, Nick Bostrom, NSO Group, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, printed gun, profit maximization, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, ransomware, real-name policy, Rodney Brooks, Ross Ulbricht, security theater, self-driving car, Seymour Hersh, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, smart cities, smart transportation, Snapchat, sparse data, Stanislav Petrov, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, supply-chain attack, surveillance capitalism, The Market for Lemons, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, Uber for X, Unsafe at Any Speed, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, Wayback Machine, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day

Beardslee (Mar–Apr 1983), “Adolescents and the threat of nuclear war: The evolution of a perspective,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 56, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC 2589708/pdf/yjbm00104-0020.pdf. 95Over the years, there were plenty: Union of Concerned Scientists (20 Apr 2015), “Close calls with nuclear weapons,” http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/attach/2015/04/Close%20Calls%20with%20Nuclear%20Weapons.pdf. Future of Life Institute (1 Feb 2016), “Accidental nuclear war: A timeline,” https://futureoflife.org/background/nuclear-close-calls-a-timeline. 95The Cuban Missile Crisis is probably: Benjamin Schwarz (1 Jan 2013), “The real Cuban missile crisis,” Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/01/the-real-cuban-missile-crisis/309190. 95although the 1983 false alarm is a close second: Sewell Chan (18 Sep 2017), “Stanislav Petrov, Soviet officer who helped avert nuclear war,” New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/18/world/europe/stanislav-petrov-nuclear-war-dead.html. 95although much less damaging than: Laura Geggel (9 Feb 2016), “The odds of dying,” Live Science, https://www.livescience.com/3780-odds-dying.html. 95But instead of regarding it as: As amazing as it seems today, immediately after 9/11, people actually believed that terrorist attacks of that magnitude would happen every few months.

…

Partly, it turned out our world’s leaders weren’t as fanatical as we thought they were. Over the years, there were plenty of technical glitches in both the US’s and the USSR’s missile detection systems—instances where the equipment clearly showed that the country was under nuclear attack—and in neither instance did the country retaliate. The Cuban Missile Crisis is probably the closest we came politically to a nuclear war, although the 1983 false alarm is a good close second. Yet it didn’t happen. Our collective fears after the 9/11 terrorist attacks were similar. That singular event, with its 3,000-person death toll and $10 billion cost in property and infrastructure damage, was way out of proportion to every other terrorist attack we have experienced in the history of our planet (although much less damaging than the annual death toll from automobiles, heart disease, or malaria).

…

Abbott Labs, 38, 41 Access Now, 214 accountability, 112, 128, 147 ACLU, 223 ad blockers, 16 African Union, 89 airline safety, 144 airplanes: bugs in, 41 remote control of, 1–2, 16 air traffic control, 210 Alexa (Amazon’s virtual assistant), 4, 61 Alexander, Keith, 118 algorithms: accurate inputs required by, 84 autonomous, 7, 82–87 data needed by, 84 hacking of, 83–84 machine learning, 82–83, 85, 111–12 physical agency of, 83 and robots, 86–87 security standards for, 111–12, 148 speed of, 84–85 Alibaba website, 169 Alphabet (Google’s parent company), 57 Alphonso, 58 Amazon, 57, 61, 62 Amnesia IoT botnet, 37 Amnesty International, 223 Anderson, Ross, 185 Andromeda botnet, 52 Angry Birds, 58 anonymity, 52, 53, 110, 199–200 Apple, 57, 60, 78, 174, 196 Applied Cryptography (Schneier), 32 Arab Spring, 67 arbitration agreements, 129 Arthur Andersen, 127 artificial intelligence (AI), 7, 86–87, 95, 148, 149, 219 Ashley Madison, hacking of, 78 AT&T, 113 Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 149 attack vs. defense, 160–79 attack as US priority in, 73 attack easier than defense, 219 attacks changing in, 32–33 “defense dominant” strategy, 160 design for security vs. surveillance, 167–70 fixing vulnerabilities in, 162–67 in law enforcement, 173–76 offensive autonomous attack software, 85 and relationship between government and industry, 176–79 security as, 10, 16, 26–28 zero days in, 162, 163, 165 attribution, 52–55 in cyberattacks, 72, 203 detection evasion, 55 main points of, 54 authentication, 45–51 continuous, 47 differential, 47, 49 hub-and-spoke model of, 50 and identification, 51 and identity theft, 50–51, 171 and impersonation, 51 in Internet+, 49–51 methods of, 46 standards of, 109, 169 trade-off between security and usability in, 47 two-factor, 47, 49, 200 automobiles: aging, 39–40 bugs in, 41 driverless, 4, 205 industry regulation of, 182, 186 international markets for, 186, 187 Internet connection in, 6 manufacturer support of, 39–40 remote hacking of, 1, 3, 16 repair manuals for, 139 safety of, 139, 182 security standards for, 151 availability, attacks on, 78–82 Azimuth, 162 baby monitors, 133–35 backdoors, 26, 87, 88, 172, 174, 193–98, 220 Baker, Stewart, 204 balkanization, 157 banks, data manipulation attacks on, 81–82 Baratov, Karim, 30 Beckstrom, Rod, 19 Belan, Alexsey, 30 Bell, Alexander Graham, 152 best efforts, 122 Beyond Fear (Schneier), 211 “big data,” 57 biometrics, authentication via, 46, 47 Bismarck, Otto von, 220 bitcoin, 15, 74, 75, 77, 198, 218 blackouts, 29, 90 Blade Runner (film), 218 Blaster worm, 94 Bluetooth, 50, 58, 79 Bohm, Nick, 220 Border Gateway Protocol (BGP), 22, 23, 24, 115 Boston Marathon bombing (2013), 95, 202 Boston MBTA, 42 botnets, 26, 75, 77, 95, 139 Bowman Dam, Rye, New York, 79 breach disclosure laws, 137–38 bribery, 183 Brightest Flashlight, 58 BT, 113 Buckshot Yankee, 66 Budapest Convention on Cybercrime, 157 buffer overflow bug, 21 bug bounties, 36 bugs, 20–21, 41 CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act) [1994], 168, 170 California, “Teddy Bears and Toasters” bill in, 187–88 Calo, Ryan, 149 Cameron, David, 197 Campos, Hugo, 63 CAN-SPAM Act (2003), 154 Caproni, Valerie, 193 “Capture the Flag” (hacking sport), 85 Carbon Black, 74 Carson, Rachel, Silent Spring, 183 caveat emptor, 131 Cellebrite, 174 cell towers, 32–33 fake, 168–70 Center on Privacy and Technology, 224 CEO fraud, 75 Challenger, 29 Check Point (Israeli company), 87 Cheney, Dick, 76, 93, 94 Chertoff, Michael, 198 Child Online Protection Act (1998), 154, 192–93 child porn, 183 China: and African Union headquarters, 89 censorship in, 67–68 and cybercrime law, 156, 158 cyberespionage by, 66, 67, 81 eavesdropping on communications, 195–96 hacking by, 45 intellectual property theft by, 66, 72–73 social control in, 67–68 China Telecom, 113 chips: general-purpose, 6 vulnerabilities in, 21 CIA, 73, 77, 165–67 Cisco Internet switches, 170 cities, smart sensors in, 4, 6 Citizen Lab, 64 Clapper, James, 66, 81 Clark, David, 23 class-action lawsuits, 129 class breaks: hacking via, 33, 95 use of term, 31–32 click fraud, 16, 75 cloud computing, 7, 190 Code for America, 223 Cogent ISP, 115 Cohen, Julie, 154 Comcast, 62, 113 Comey, James, 193–94 Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, 180–81 complexity, 11, 27 and accidents, 80 theory of, 210 and unpredictability, 211 Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (1986), 42 computers: extensibility of, 24–26 as ubiquitous, 1–5, 19 vulnerabilities in, 30–32 confidentiality, threats to, 78–81 Consumers Union, 136, 145 copy protection, 25, 41, 62, 131, 154, 155, 205 Core Infrastructure Initiative, 115 corporations: CEO fraud in, 75 consumers controlled by, 59–64 data sought by, 57 infrastructure controlled by, 117 insecurity favored by, 56 profit maximization by, 118 regulation evaded by, 154–55 surveillance capitalism in, 57–59, 65, 209 CrashOverride, 2, 4–5 credential stealing, 45–47 credit card fraud, 16, 100 crime rate, public toleration of, 92 crimeware-as-a-service (CaaS), 76 cryptanalysis, differential, 33 cryptocurrencies, 172, 198 Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), 95 “cyber,” as umbrella term, 183–84 cyberattacks, 68–74, 116, 203, 217 Cyberbit (Israel), 65 cybercrime, 74–77, 156, 158 cyberdefense: “active,” 203 national agency for, 148 cyberespionage, see espionage Cyber Grand Challenge, 85 cyber incident data repository, 177 cyber peace, 213–14 cyberphysical systems, 7 cyber resilience, 211–12 cybersecurity, see Internet+ security Cybersecurity Improvement Act (2017), 180, 208 Cyber Shield Act (2017), 136 cyberstalking, 76 Cyber Threat Alliance, 177 cyberwar, 68–74 arms race in, 73, 116, 212–14 attribution in, 72 autonomous weapons in, 86 cyberespionage vs., 72 cyber mercenaries in, 70 limited response in, 71 “preparing the battlefield,” 69 and unpeace, 71–74 cyberweapons: in armed conflict, 72 autonomous, 86 instability of, 72, 212 manufacturers, 65 nonproliferation standards for, 158 theft of, 73 Daniel, Michael, 164 Darknet, 198 DARPA (US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 85 data: accuracy of, 84 in adversarial machine learning, 84 anonymity of, 110 as byproduct, 57 “Collect it all,” 118 deletion of, 110 encryption of, 109, 171 integrity of, 80, 81, 109 jurisdiction over, 146 limits on collection of, 109 metadata, 174 natural bias of, 84 ownership of, 109 personal, control of, 62–63, 64, 109–11 sharing of, 177–79 storage and processing of, 174 Data and Goliath (Schneier), 110, 172 databases: encryption of, 171 threats to, 79, 80, 81 data brokers, 58 Data Encryption Standard (DES), 32, 33 DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack, 29, 130, 202 Deepwater Horizon disaster, 124 “defense dominance,” 160 see also attack vs. defense Democratic National Committee, Russian attacks on (2016), 30, 45, 78, 80 denial of service, 29, 79, 81, 130, 202 Department of Homeland Security, 117, 138 Derechos Digitales, Chile, 214 detection evasion, 55 Digital HKS, Harvard, 224 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), 41–42, 62, 154, 193, 205–6, 220 digital rights management (DRM), 25, 62, 205 Digital Security Helpline, 214 DNSChanger malware, 37 Doctorow, Cory, 163 Dodd-Frank Act (2010), 126 Domain Name Service, 24, 115 security (DNSSEC), 24 domino effect, 210 “Don’t Panic,” 174 drones, 7, 80, 91, 95, 151, 200 Dyn, botnet attack against, 94, 202 Edgehill program (UK), 168 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (1986), 153 Electronic Frontier Foundation, 32, 223 Who Has Your Back?

Inviting Disaster by James R. Chiles

air gap, Airbus A320, airline deregulation, Alignment Problem, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Boeing 747, crew resource management, cuban missile crisis, Exxon Valdez, flying shuttle, Gene Kranz, Maui Hawaii, megaproject, Milgram experiment, Neil Armstrong, North Sea oil, Piper Alpha, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Ted Sorensen, time dilation

Said the final report on the disaster, which cost 298 lives: “It was the collective faults of average individuals, ignorant of or indifferent to the need of precautionary measures, where they cannot, in their lack of knowledge, visualize a danger or hazard.” MINUTEMEN ON THE HIGH PLAINS During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, apparently there was no time to visualize, either, about something that could have gone terribly wrong for the world at Malmstrom Air Force Base. During the showdown with the USSR, defense contractors and air force personnel rushed to get the new solid-fueled Minuteman 1 missiles up and working in case the president wanted to fire them at the Soviet Union.

…

The men did their routine jobs well enough, but no one had much energy for tackling the difficult tasks, which needed protracted troubleshooting. Fortunately our endurance run ended soon afterward when reinforcement workers arrived via helicopter. But some workers don’t have that luxury. Recalling the brutally long days and nights of the Cuban Missile Crisis, presidential adviser Ted Sorensen said one of the most worrisome revelations was how sleeplessness eroded the powers of judgment. THE CAN-DO MAN Early-morning fatigue played a part in a very close call with a British airliner in June 1990. The central actor was a hardworking maintenance manager for British Airways; we don’t know his name, but we’ll call him Jones.

…

“Steaming the hold” was a traditional fire-fighting solution for the unusual emergency that had befallen them. Steaming was the worst thing they could have done, short of lighting up a flamethrower and dropping it down on the fertilizer bags before battening down the hatches. The words of John F. Kennedy come to mind, describing an incident during the Cuban missile crisis: “Always there’s some son of a bitch who doesn’t get the word.” The ones who had the word were the Army Ordnance Bureau’s Emergency Export Corporation, which was overseeing the manufacture of the fertilizer, and the U.S. Coast Guard, which had written regulations stating that the chemical was a “dangerous substance.”

Transcending the Cold War: Summits, Statecraft, and the Dissolution of Bipolarity in Europe, 1970–1990 by Kristina Spohr, David Reynolds

anti-communist, bank run, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, computer age, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, guns versus butter model, Kickstarter, Kitchen Debate, liberal capitalism, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Nixon shock, oil shock, open borders, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, shared worldview, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thomas L Friedman, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

The next ‘Big Four’ meeting, in 1960 in Paris, was aborted and the Kennedy-Khrushchev encounter in Vienna the following year was a dialogue of the deaf. The Soviet leader returned home believing that he could bully the green, young American president by placing nuclear missiles in Cuba—a gamble that took the world to the brink of nuclear war in 1962. Mutual shock about the Cuban Missile Crisis, however, pushed the superpowers into dialogue to restrain their spiralling nuclear arms race. To advance this process of negotiation and cut through the bureaucratic obstacles, summitry became the prime instrument of diplomacy, starting with the meeting between President Richard Nixon and General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow 1972.

…

His experience of Stalinism and the Great Patriotic War had made him staunchly conservative domestically but he also believed that war should be avoided at all costs. Brezhnev rejected the adventurism of his predecessor, Nikita Khrushchev, who, he thought, had brought the world to the brink of nuclear war with his reckless actions during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Instead of using nuclear weapons as a means to secure a dramatic realignment in global politics through audacious gambits, he ‘wanted’, according to historian Vladislav Zubok, ‘to convert the growing power of the Soviet Union into the coin of international diplomacy and prestige’.10 Brezhnev appears to have shared Nixon’s overall sense that the ‘correlation of forces’ was shifting in favour of the Soviet Union.

…

With the implementation of all these steps, Brezhnev hoped to rejuvenate the Soviet bloc and present himself as the architect of a new era of peace and stability, confirming his personal grip on power. Moscow’s new strategy coincided with a parallel crisis of the Western alliance. During the 1960s, NATO also lost cohesion and legitimacy. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War had stabilized and fears of war with the Warsaw Pact declined. If these trends continued, Western political leaders feared, voters might conclude that NATO served no purpose or, worse, stood in the way of peace.14 Further, some Western European leaders chafed at American leadership.

Roller-Coaster: Europe, 1950-2017 by Ian Kershaw

airport security, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Ayatollah Khomeini, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business cycle, centre right, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Donald Trump, European colonialism, eurozone crisis, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, falling living standards, feminist movement, first-past-the-post, fixed income, floating exchange rates, foreign exchange controls, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, full employment, Herbert Marcuse, illegal immigration, income inequality, Jeremy Corbyn, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, labour market flexibility, land reform, late capitalism, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, liberation theology, low interest rates, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, open borders, post-war consensus, precariat, price stability, public intellectual, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sinatra Doctrine, Suez crisis 1956, The Chicago School, trade liberalization, union organizing, upwardly mobile, washing machines reduced drudgery, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, young professional

Fear of imminent nuclear war was never as acute as during the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962.fn1 It marked for nearly twenty years the high point of the CND’s protest. The Test Ban Treaty the following year saw its support slump. The CND had always been a minority movement – significant certainly, but never gaining the backing of the majority, even in the Labour Party. Most people recognized the fallacy of the notion that possession of the bomb gave Britain any genuine autonomy from the United States should it come to nuclear war. It was plain during the anxiety at the time of the Cuban missile crisis that, should it come to nuclear war, Britain would most likely be attacked whether it had the bomb or not.

…

And the threat of nuclear war, hanging over Europe like the sword of Damocles, did not depend solely upon events in Europe itself. For Europe was now fully exposed to the global confrontation between the nuclear superpowers. Events far from European shores, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, mark the beginning and end of the most dangerous phase of the Cold War for Europe (though a second, briefer period of heightened threat occurred in the early 1980s). The children, products of the post-war ‘baby boom’, born into this new era would live to see changes that their parents could not have imagined.

…

And in Moscow on 5 August 1963 the United States, the Soviet Union and Great Britain agreed to a limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, prohibiting other than underground testing. (France did not sign.) It was a modest step, but it amounted at least to a start. Little over a year later, in October 1964, Khrushchev was removed from power in a ‘palace coup’ in the Kremlin. His action in provoking the Cuban missile crisis, seen to have damaged the Soviet Union’s international standing, was among the reasons for his deposition. So was his authorization of the building of the Berlin Wall. With Khrushchev’s departure, the Cold War lost an erratic, blustering, unpredictable component. Two new Soviet leaders replaced him: Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the Communist Party and Alexei Kosygin as Prime Minister.

The Future of War by Lawrence Freedman

Albert Einstein, autonomous vehicles, Berlin Wall, Black Swan, Boeing 747, British Empire, colonial rule, conceptual framework, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Donald Trump, Dr. Strangelove, driverless car, drone strike, en.wikipedia.org, energy security, Ernest Rutherford, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, global village, Google Glasses, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), John Markoff, long peace, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, Norbert Wiener, nuclear taboo, open economy, pattern recognition, Peace of Westphalia, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, speech recognition, Steven Pinker, Strategic Defense Initiative, Stuxnet, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, systematic bias, the scientific method, uranium enrichment, urban sprawl, Valery Gerasimov, Wargames Reagan, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, zero day

Even when the jamming ended, the aircraft crew decided that their protocols required them to continue with the mission. As in Red Alert, the president offered to trade one city for another, in this case New York for Moscow.19 Somewhat chillingly the novel appeared as a three-part serial in the Saturday Evening Post in October 1962, coinciding with the Cuban Missile Crisis, before being published the next year as a book. The authors introduced the book saying: ‘Men, machines, and mathematics being what they are, this is, unfortunately, a “true” story. The accident may not occur in the way we describe but the laws of probability assure us that ultimately it will occur.’

…

These went from reducing the vulnerability of populations, less dependence upon nuclear weapons or else their abolition, to a variety of political possibilities, including accommodation with the Soviet Union and even world federalism.22 In looking at the workings of the ‘crystal ball effect’ during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, James Blight argued that the effect worked when combined with a ‘visceral fear’ that this might actually come to pass. Without the emotion that made the dangers seem so real and immediate, the knowledge would just fall into the ‘trash heap of received wisdom’, accepted ‘by rote and not from conviction’.

…

Speech to Economic Club of Chicago. PBS, 22 April 1999. Available: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international-jan-june99-blair_doctrine4-23/. Blattman, Christopher, and Edward Miguel. ‘Civil War’. Journal of Economic Literature 48.1 (2010): 3–57. Blight, James. The Shattered Crystal Ball: Fear and Learning in the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 1990. Bloch, I. S. Is War Now Impossible? Being an Abridgment of The War of the Future in Its Technical Economic and Political Relations. London: Grant Richard, 1899. Available: https://archive.org/details/iswarnowimpossib00bloc. . ‘The Wars of the Future’.

Year 501 by Noam Chomsky

air traffic controllers' union, anti-communist, Bartolomé de las Casas, Berlin Wall, Bolshevik threat, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Caribbean Basin Initiative, classic study, colonial rule, corporate governance, cuban missile crisis, declining real wages, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, European colonialism, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Howard Zinn, invisible hand, land reform, land tenure, long peace, mass incarceration, means of production, Monroe Doctrine, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, non-tariff barriers, offshore financial centre, plutocrats, price stability, Ralph Nader, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, scientific management, Simon Kuznets, strikebreaker, structural adjustment programs, the scientific method, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, trade liberalization, trickle-down economics, union organizing, War on Poverty, working poor

A 1980 study of the Center for Defense Information (CDI), tracing Russian influence on a country-by-country basis since World War II, concluded reasonably that Soviet power had declined from that peak to the point where by 1979, “the Soviets were influencing only 6 percent of the world’s population and 5 percent of the world’s GNP, exclusive of the Soviet Union.” By the mid-1960s, the Soviet economy was stagnating or even declining; there was an accompanying decline in housing, commerce, and life expectancy, while infant mortality increased by a third from 1970 to 1975.13 The Cuban missile crisis of 1962, revealing extreme Soviet vulnerability, led to a huge increase in military spending, levelling off by the late 1970s. The economy was then visibly stagnating and the autocracy unable to control rising dissidence. The command economy had carried out basic industrial development but was unable to proceed to more advanced stages, and also suffered from the global recession that devastated much of the South.

…

Between Life and Economics (1990 Boyer lectures of the Australian Broadcasting Company, ABC, 1990) Franklin, Bruce. M.I.A., or Mythmaking in America (Lawrence Hill, 1992) Gaddis, John Lewis. Strategies of Containment (Oxford, 1982) —The Long Peace (Oxford, 1987) Garthoff, Raymond. Détente and Confrontation (Brookings, 1985) —Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Brookings, 1987) George, Alexander, ed. Westem State Terrorism (Polity, 1991) Gerschenkron, Alexander. Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Harvard, 1962) Ginger, Ann Pagan, and David Christiano, eds. The Cold War Against Labor (Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, 1987), two vols.

…

., 18 class war, 61, 70, 74, 78, 156, 379, 384, 386 Cleveland, Grover, 392 Clinton, Bill, 320 Clive, Robert, 10, 16 Cobban, Alfred, 28 Cockburn, Alexander, 372 Colby, William, 40–41, 182 Cold War, 46, 60, 93, 101–06, 220 end of, 52, 112, 121–25, 130–31, 141, 147, 291, 294, 349 relation to North-South conflict, 91, 98, 212 US policy in, 64, 223, 234, 251–53, 269, 331, 340 Collins, Joseph, 261 Collor de Mello, Fernando, 111, 256 Colombia, 119–22, 244 colonialism, 48, 91–92, 101, 216, 307, 343 British colonialism, vii–viii, 4–6, 8–22, 26–28, 274–75, 314, 361–62 Dutch colonialism, 7, 9–11, 13–14, 19, 26, 168, 362 Flemish colonialism, 28 French colonialism, 28, 95, 271–75, 281, 341, 345, 369, 374 Japanese colonialism, 4, 341, 343 neocolonialism, 3, 60–61, 76, 130, 172, 219 Portuguese colonialism, 6–7, 9, 11, 19, 180 settler colonialism, viii Spanish colonialism, 6–7, 9–10, 17, 42–44, 195, 273–74 US colonialism, ix, 14, 30–38, 43, 105, 197, 276–82, 314–19, 328, 334–38, 372 See also imperialism Columbus, Christopher, 6, 271–74 Colombian era, 3, 42, 215 Native American policy, 44, 364–65 Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, 339 Communism, 49–50 in Brazil, 220, 223–24, 230 in Chile, 50 in China, 143, 341 in Cuba, 199, 203–05 in Indonesia, 168–170, 174–75, 177–86 in Italy, 56 in Japan, 142 in Poland, 108 in Soviet Union, 111–13 in Spain, 101 US policy toward, 54, 66, 81, 93–98, 131, 150, 217, 235, 320, 331, 381, 388 in Vietnam, 346, 359–60, 366–70 See also Marxism; Soviet Union Conniff, Ruth, 384 Constable, Pamela, 205, 263, 295 Conyers, John, 300 Cooper, Marc, 269 Cortés, Hernán, 9, 15 Costa Rica, 119–20, 208, 245–48 Costigliola, Frank, 65 Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), 272, 288, 293, 299 counterinsurgency, 40, 235, 247, 331, 372 Cowell, Alan, 126 Cromer, Lord. See Baring, Evelyn Crossette, Barbara, 195, 251, 301, 346–48 Cuba, ix–xii, 49, 105, 122, 214, 235, 257, 329 racialization in, 274 South Africa policy, 100, 129 US policy toward, 67, 124, 196–212, 284, 296, 336–37, 344 Cuban missile crisis, xi, 102, 157, 203, 206 Cumings, Bruce, 47–48 Curzon, Lord George, 26, 48 Czechoslovakia, 68, 113 Daly, Herman, 82 Davidson, Basil, 6 Dawes, Henry, 318 Debo, Angie, 317 Debs, Eugene, 392 de Gaulle, Charles, 65 Delfim Neto, Antonio, 226–27 Democratic Republic of the Congo, 28, 129, 141 denialism, vii–x disability, 355–57, 356–57 Dole, Sanford, 337 Dominican Republic, 253, 272, 275, 278–79, 282, 295, 304 Donovan, William, 98 Dower, John, 334 Drake, Francis, 8 Dreier, John, 58–59 drug war, 42, 80, 83, 116–17, 119–22, 154, 232 Du Boff, Richard, 71, 83, 309 Duggan, Laurence, 47 Dulles, John Foster, 48, 51, 54, 98, 217, 220 DuPont, Samuel, 335 Dutch East India Company (VOC), 7, 26 Duvalier, François (“Papa Doc”), 278, 281 Duvalier, Jean-Claude (“Baby Doc”), 272, 283–292, 294, 299, 305 Economic Policy Institute, 387 Economist, 44, 86, 88, 151, 152, 161, 180, 381 Ecuador, 242–43 education, 227, 309, 312, 317 in New World Order, 118, 153–56, 231–32, 256, 258, 262, 268, 285, 353–54, 383 See also universities Egypt, 26, 126, 148, 150, 164 Eisenhower, Dwight, 98–99, 310, 368 Brazil policy, 218 Cuba policy, 199–200, 204 Latin America policy, 47, 51, 54, 234 Ellacuría, Ignacio, 209 El Salvador, 120–21, 211, 308 in New World Order, 247, 249, 251, 266, 269 Rio Sumpul massacre, 362 US policy toward, 51 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 36 Engelberg, Stephen, 108–109 England, 64, 277, 389, 394 British colonialism, vii–viii, 4–6, 5, 7–10, 8–22, 26–28, 26–29, 48, 274–75, 313–15, 314, 361–62 economy of, 11–24, 72, 92–94, 110, 144–46, 343–44 in New World Order, 56, 62, 69, 73, 76–77, 97, 188–90, 214, 217, 219, 234 slavery in, x, 193, 311 US-British relations, 31–37, 193–97, 334, 337, 392 environmental crisis, 79–83, 88, 150–52, 161, 239, 245, 259, 262, 398 Episcopal Council of Latin America, 243 European Community (EC), 86, 113–14, 133, 145, 195 Evans, Gareth, 187–88 Evans, Peter, 213, 228, 230 Fagoth, Steadman, 120 Fairbank, John King, 339 Fall, Bernard, 346 Far Eastern Economic Review, 350, 370 Farmer, Paul, 272, 275 fascism, 55–57, 95, 96, 97, 222, 226–28, 254, 281, 331, 342–43 left-fascists, 69, 75–76, 81, 365 Federspiel, Howard, 182 Felix, David, 145, 228, 254–55, 258, 261 Fields, Richard, 37 Figueres, José, 57 Financial Times, 77, 84, 86, 107, 109, 358 Fitch, John, 393 Food for Peace program, 150 Foreign Affairs, 294 France, 12, 19, 23, 29, 34, 92, 93, 187, 279, 287, 340 French colonialism, 28, 95, 271–75, 281, 341, 345, 369, 374 in New World Order, 58, 65–66, 68, 86, 217, 234, 348 Francis, David, 143 Frankel, Max, 177 Franklin, Bruce, 366, 369 Fraser, Doug, 384 Freed, Kenneth, 41 Freedom House, 51, 175, 367 Freedom Support Act, 115 French, Howard, 204, 293, 295, 301–302 Frick, Henry Clay, 390 Friedman, Thomas, 52–53, 125, 127, 251–53, 262 G-7, 3–4, 41, 84–85, 115 Gaidar, Yegor, 108 Gaillard, Roger, 278 Gama, Vasco da, 3, 42 García Moreno, Victor Carlos, 243 Garrett, G.T., 15 Garthoff, Raymond, 66, 105, 350, 407n12 Gelb, Leslie, 68 General Agreement on Tarrifs and Trade (GATT), 80, 85, 88, 132, 161 Geneva Convention, 332, 369, 375 genocide, vii, 37–40, 42, 99, 140, 165–66, 180, 238–39, 252, 349, 361 George, Lloyd, 32 Germany, 5, 24, 91, 114, 219, 228, 275 in New World Order, 55, 63–65, 68, 70, 77–78, 84, 101–02, 143–145, 149, 163 in postwar period, 62–65 in WWII, 96, 167, 170, 245, 257, 328, 332, 364 Gerschenkron, Alexander, 94, 141 Gibb, Tom, 247 Gibraltar, 97 Gilpatric, Roswell, 202 Glaser, Gabrielle, 110–11 Gleijeses, Piero, 194–96 Golden, Tim, 251 Gómez, Juan Vicente, 214, 234 Gómez Lizarazo, Jorge, 121 Goodman, Amy, 189 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 100, 102, 210–11, 407n12 Gordon, Lincoln, 223–25 Gott, Richard, 401n1 Goulart, João, 223–25, 252 Gowan, Peter, 113 Gramajo, Héctor, 40–41, 181, 209, 404n39 Grant, Charles (Lord Glenelg), 311 Grau San Martín, Ramón, 197–98 Greece, 55–56 Green, David, 198, 216, 218 Green, Marshall, 171, 173–74, 176–77, 183 Greenberger, Robert, 296, 345 Greenway, H.D.S., 351–353 Grenada, xii, 93, 105, 116–17, 122, 201 Grew, Joseph, 329 Gromyko, Andrei, 203 Grotius, Hugo, 29 Guatemala, 93, 211, 242–243, 278 genocide by military, 39–41, 252 in New World Order, 81, 117, 120–21, 237–40, 243, 250, 266, 280, 296, 319 US policy toward, 51, 96, 183 Guaymí Indians, 245 Guinea-Bissau, 231 Gulf War (first), 31, 52, 69, 189, 296, 313, 339–40, 397 New World Order and, 61, 147–48 Gutman, Herbert, 389 Haberman, Clyde, 53 Hagopian, Frances, 255 Haines, Gerald, 215–21, 229–30, 254, 255 Haiti, 124, 237, 319, 330 colonial history of, 271–76 US policy toward, 124, 196, 252–53, 276–305, 307–08, 311 Haitian-American Company for Agricultural Development (SHADA), 304 Halliday, Fred, 187 Hamilton, Alexander, 194 hansei, 253, 326, 361, 373 Hanson, Simon, 218 Harberger, Arnold, 254 Hartung, William, 149 Harvard International Review, 40 Hassett, John, 43 Hatfield, Mark, 159 Haugaard, Lisa, 267 Hawaii, 334–38 Hawke, Bob, 188 Hayden, Bill, 188 Haynes, Michael, 108 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 5, 153, 166–67, 311, 320 Henwood, Doug, 84 Herman, Edward, 166, 262 Hewlett, Sylvia Ann, 225 Higgenbotham, Leon, 194 Hitler, Adolf, 95, 99, 185, 211, 257, 278, 331 Ho Chi Minh, 95, 279, 368 Hockstader, Lee, 250, 298 Hoerr, John, 386 Hollings, Ernest, 327 Holroyd, John Baker (Lord Sheffield), 7 Holt, Thomas, 311 Holzman, Franklyn, 105, 408n17 Honduras, 51, 127, 206, 248, 266, 362 Hong Kong, 257 Honorat, Jean-Jacques, 289, 290, 292, 299 Huelshoff, Michael, 144 Hull, Cordell, 198, 329–30, 336, 343 human rights, 131, 139, 237–50, 257, 296, 301, 346, 398 in Colombia, 121 in Cuba, 207 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 141 in East Timor, 182–90 in El Salvador, 268 in Guatemala, 39, 404n39 in Haiti, 286–293 in Honduras, 128 in Indonesia, 168–81 in liberalism, 79 in Panama, 118–19 US policy toward, x, 42, 46, 124–25, 165–67, 298 Human Rights Watch, 290 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 25–26 Hungary, 68, 81, 251, 396 Hunter, John, 37 Huntington, Samuel, 228–29 Hurtado, Carlos, 121 Hurtado, Maria Elena, 162 Hussein, Saddam, 37–38, 52, 54, 58, 99, 122, 124–27, 186, 209, 253 Hyland, William, 294 imperialism, xiii, 3, 22, 222, 276, 340, 343 in New World Order, 84–98, 135, 164, 172, 207, 215, 233, 238, 340, 379, 397 See also colonialism Incas, 5, 9 India, 7, 15, 329 colonialism in, 7, 8–10, 14–20, 26–27 in New World Order, 47, 163, 241, 250 textile industry, 13 See also Bengal indigenous communities, viii in the Americas, 5–6, 39, 162, 164, 238, 240–41, 273, 311, 319 in Liberia, 306–07 See also Native Americans; individual tribes Indochina, 185, 341, 367–69, 395 French policy toward, 65 Indochinese wars, 32, 175 US policy toward, 51, 98, 374–77 See also individual countries Indonesia, 225, 252, 296, 329, 349, 369 colonialism in, 7, 10 US policy toward, 51, 168–90 Industrial Biotechnology Association, 159 Inter-American Advisory Commission, 218 International Court of Justice.

The Signal: Watch Out for the Darkness by Nick Cook

Carrington event, cuban missile crisis, low earth orbit, zero-sum game

Graham blinked fast and took his glasses off to wipe them on his jumper. ‘Please tell me that doesn’t mean what I think it does?’ Kiera gave him a thin smile. ‘I wish I could, Graham. However, over the last thirty minutes, the world has been propelled towards the equivalent of a modern-day Cuban Missile Crisis.’ I let out a small gasp. ‘You’re not seriously saying this signal could be the prelude to all-out nuclear war?’ She gave me a straight look. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’ It felt as if the air had emptied from the meeting room for a moment as the implications of her words sunk in. Graham scraped his seat backwards and stood up.

…

‘I’m afraid the security situation has just been raised to DEFCON 3.’ Graham stared at him. ‘Isn’t that just a couple of steps below all-out nuclear war?’ ‘It is,’ Kiera replied. ‘How the hell could things have escalated this quickly?’ ‘Unfortunately it’s a sign of the accelerated times we live in. You see, in the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they had plenty of time for a huge amount of behind-the-scenes diplomacy to avert armagedon. However, in today’s interconnected world, where computers automate many of our military’s responses, things can escalate far more rapidly.’ ‘So you’re saying that some trigger-happy computers are propelling us towards a potential Armageddon?’

Rethinking Camelot by Noam Chomsky

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, cuban missile crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fear of failure, Howard Zinn, land reform, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Norman Mailer, Paul Samuelson, Ronald Reagan

Another was bringing “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba, in the words of Kennedy’s close associate historian Arthur Schlesinger. Kennedy’s terrorist war against Cuba, which was no small affair, was a major factor in bringing about what Schlesinger described accurately as “the most dangerous moment in history,” the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy is much lauded for his cool courage in bringing the crisis to an end. The truth, now well established by scholarship,4 sheds little glory on the Camelot image. At the peak moment of the crisis, when Kennedy’s subjective assessment was that the probability of nuclear war was 1/3 to 1/2, he decided to reject Khrushchev’s offer to end the crisis by simultaneous public withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and US missiles from Turkey—obsolete missiles for which a withdrawal order had already been given because they were being replaced by far more lethal and threatening Polaris submarines.

…

Chomsky, For Reasons of State, Pantheon, 1973. 2. Marc Selverstone, “It’s a Date: Kennedy and the Timetable for a Vietnam Troop Withdrawal,” Diplomatic History 34.3, June 2010. 3. See N. Chomsky, “Murdering History,” in Year 501: The Conquest Continues, South End, 1993. 4. See particularly Sheldon Stern, The Cuban Missile Crisis in American Memory: Myths versus Reality, Stanford, 2012. 5. John H. Coatsworth, “The Cold War in Central America, 1975–1991,” The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. III, 2010. Notes to the Introduction 1. See 501 for much further discussion and sources. Also DD, and earlier work cited there. 2.

…

Informed Dissent (Vietnam Generation, Burning Cities Press, 1992) Duncanson, Denis. Government and Revolution in Vietnam (Oxford, 1968) Fall, Bernard. Last Reflections on War (Doubleday, 1967) ———, and Marcus Raskin, eds. Vietnam Reader (Vintage, 1965) Garthoff, Raymond. Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Brookings, 1987) Gibbon, William Conrad, ed. The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, part II, 1961-1964 (Princeton, 1986) Giglio, James. The Presidency of John F. Kennedy (Kansas, 1991) Griffen, William, and John Marciano. Lessons of the Vietnam War: A Critical Examination of School Texts (Rowman and Allanheld, 1979) Herman, Edward.

The Cold War: A World History by Odd Arne Westad

Able Archer 83, Albert Einstein, American ideology, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bolshevik threat, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, collective bargaining, colonial rule, continuous integration, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, energy security, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, full employment, Great Leap Forward, household responsibility system, imperial preference, Internet Archive, land reform, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, long peace, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, oil shock, out of africa, post-industrial society, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, South China Sea, special economic zone, Strategic Defense Initiative, Suez crisis 1956, union organizing, urban planning, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, Yom Kippur War, young professional, zero-sum game

To JFK, the 1960s was a decade of enormous danger and enormous opportunity. The world was plastic, and it was up to the United States to mold it into a new shape. Over time, Kennedy’s belligerent approach would be tempered by events. In a presidency tragically cut short, the defining moment was the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union and the United States got closer to nuclear war than at any other point during the Cold War. In the time that was left to him after that crisis in October 1962, Kennedy was more serious about seeking compromise and therefore a lasting peace. But he always remained strongly ideological.

…

The president and all of Washington viewed Soviet actions as preparations for an attack on the United States and a means through which (legitimate) US control of the Western Hemisphere could be thwarted. At the start of the crisis, they would rather risk war than accept compromise. Kennedy’s main strength throughout the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was that, in spite of his hard line overall, he still gave diplomacy a chance. As the world held its breath on 23 October, waiting to see what would happen when Soviet ships bound for Cuba were intercepted by the US Navy, Kennedy secretly explored how the crisis could be resolved and nuclear war avoided.

…

Khrushchev, who knew the world was teetering on the brink of war, decided to accept. Conscious that time was running out, he had his acceptance read out on the open airwaves of Radio Moscow. He even had the broadcast repeated twice. On the morning of 28 October the immediate crisis was over. The Cuban missile crisis was the most dangerous nuclear confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War (though not the only one). Historians have been battling over who won and who lost. The real answer is, of course, that everyone won, since nuclear war was avoided. But it is also clear that, by being forced to take his missiles out of Cuba in such an open and visible fashion, Khrushchev lost the most.

The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government by David Talbot

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Charles Lindbergh, colonial rule, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, independent contractor, information retrieval, Internet Archive, land reform, means of production, Naomi Klein, Norman Mailer, operation paperclip, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Ted Sorensen

Rumsfeld arranged for Dulles to speak about the CIA and Cuba to the 88th Congressional Club in March 1963, an event the ambitious congressman declared a “tremendous success.” Cuba remained the source of greatest friction within the Kennedy government. In October 1962, these tensions came close to exploding during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when virtually the entire national security circle around the president urged him to take aggressive actions that would have triggered a nuclear conflagration. JFK’s lonely stand—which was supported only by his brother and McNamara within his inner council—was a virtuoso act of leadership.

…

By 1963, the military and espionage officials in Kennedy’s government were all too aware of their commander in chief’s dedication to peace—a growing commitment to détente with the Communist world that, in the minds of the national security high command, demonstrated JFK’s naïveté and weakness and put the country at risk. The leadership ranks in the Pentagon and the CIA were convinced that the Cuban Missile Crisis had been the ideal opportunity for Kennedy to finally knock out the Castro regime by launching a full-scale military invasion or even a nuclear broadside. The peaceful resolution of the crisis left Kennedy’s warriors in an ugly mood. Daniel Ellsberg, who later became famous for leaking the Pentagon Papers, observed the seething fury among uniformed officers when he was serving as a young defense analyst: “There was virtually a coup atmosphere in Pentagon circles.

…

“The Kennedy administration,” LeMay growled, “thought that being as strong as we were was provocative to the Russians and likely to start a war. We in the Air Force, and I personally, believed the exact opposite.” LeMay and his generals continued to angrily replay the “lost opportunity” of the Cuban Missile Crisis: it was the moment “we could have gotten the Communists out of Cuba,” LeMay declared. “We walked Khrushchev up to the brink of nuclear war, he looked over the edge, and had no stomach for it,” said General David Burchinal, who served as LeMay’s deputy during the crisis. “We would have written our own book at that time, but our politicians did not understand what happens when you have such a degree of superiority as we had, or they simply didn’t know how to use it.

How Not to Network a Nation: The Uneasy History of the Soviet Internet (Information Policy) by Benjamin Peters

Albert Einstein, American ideology, Andrei Shleifer, Anthropocene, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Brownian motion, Charles Babbage, Claude Shannon: information theory, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, commons-based peer production, computer age, conceptual framework, continuation of politics by other means, crony capitalism, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Davies, double helix, Drosophila, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, From Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death, Gabriella Coleman, hive mind, index card, informal economy, information asymmetry, invisible hand, Jacquard loom, John von Neumann, Kevin Kelly, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Lewis Mumford, linear programming, mandelbrot fractal, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, megaproject, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, Norbert Wiener, packet switching, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, power law, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Coase, scientific mainstream, scientific management, Steve Jobs, Stewart Brand, stochastic process, surveillance capitalism, systems thinking, technoutopianism, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, the strength of weak ties, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, transaction costs, Turing machine, work culture , Yochai Benkler

Kennedy’s top men to discuss the impending peril of Soviet cybernetics, only to have his meeting interrupted by the announcement that surveillance satellites had just uncovered photos of Soviet missiles in Cuba.109 By the time the dust settled after the Cuban missile crisis, Soviet cybernetics no longer agitated the administration, which had reviewed the science and did not deem it an urgent threat. It is a strange twist of history, then, that the international crisis that is considered the zenith of cold war hostility (the Cuban missile crisis) also defused and derailed mounting American anxieties about the “Soviet cybernetic menace.”110 Although U.S. and Soviet intelligence officers alternately fretted about or enthused over the possibilities of a cybernetically coordinated Soviet power, the facts about the practical debates among Soviet scientists point in a very different direction.

…

The next chapter extends and complicates this theme in its history and analysis of the central and longest-lasting attempt to network the Soviet Union. 4 Staging the OGAS, 1962 to 1969 The year 1962 proved to be a tumultuous one for the world. Khrushchev’s grasp on the reigns of the Soviet state began to slip in the face of mounting criticism, and Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs invasion metastasized into the Cuban missile crisis, probably the closest the world has yet come to a nuclear world war.1 Behind the scenes to these potentially cataclysmic situations, a small team of Soviet cyberneticists who were located in Kiev and Moscow were committed to building “electronic socialism” under the guise of the All-State Automated System, or OGAS.

…

See also ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network); ASU (avtomatizirovannaya sistema upravleniya); OGAS (obshche-gosudarstvennaya avtomatizirovannya sistema) project aborted attempts, 12 beliefs and debate about, 8, 169 and chess, 176, 178–180 civilian, 91, 94, 97 and closed cultures, 192 definitions of, 10 distributed, 55, 94, 96, 100, 120 EASU (Economic Automatic Management System), 81, 86–87, 91, 103–104 global-local, 121–122 heterarchical, 57, 96, 175 and human condition, 203–204 literature on, 8–9 military, 7, 12, 83, 86–89, 93–94, 144 national, 54–56, 97–98, 100, 119–120 packet-switching, 94–96, 198, 200 and private interests, 200, 202–203 rational system for economic control, 101–105 and social change, 171–172 survivable, 95, 97 Unified Communication System (ESS), 81, 97–101, 103–104 Computers brain-computer analogy, 18, 27, 95–96, 100, 118–119 chess programs, 179 and cybernetic sciences, 16, 37 and economic calculations, 84–85 first electronic computers, 126 and military innovations, 83 minds as, 18, 37–38, 53–54, 119 and nuclear bombs, 25 personal, 186 Soviet term for, 10 Soviet terms for, 38 Computers, Chess, and Long-Range Planning, 177 Computer technology, 3, 8, 104–105 Conditioned reflexes, 34, 40 Cooley, Charles Horton, 55, 202 Council for Cybernetics, 44 Council of Ministers, 214 CSA (tsentral’noe statisticheskoe upravleniye). See Central Statistical Administration (CSA) Cuban missile crisis, 45 Cybernetic Revolutionaries: Technology and Politics in Allende’s Chile, 9 Cybernetics, 3, 11–12. See also Economic cybernetics; Soviet cybernetics American consolidation of, 17–24 brain-computer analogy, 18, 27, 95–96, 100, 118–119 Chile, 27–28 as communication science, 21 and computers, 16, 37 contemporary scholarship, 7–9 defining, 15–16, 45–46 eastern Europe, 28 England, 26–27 feedback loops, 21–22 France, 25–26 heterarchy, 22–24 and information/game theory, 20 Macy Conferences on Cybernetics, 18–19 methodology, 20 and models of mind, 29 origin of term, 17 as postwar systems science, 15, 24 Soviet criticism of, 30–32 vocabulary of, 16, 19 Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine, 17–18, 30, 35–37, 47, 50, 82, 198 Cybernetics: In the Service of Communism, 44, 46 Cybersyn network, 9, 27–28, 54, 197, 199 Cybertonia, 130–136 Danil’chenko, I.

Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus by Rick Perlstein

"there is no alternative" (TINA), affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Alvin Toffler, anti-communist, anti-work, antiwork, Berlin Wall, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, business climate, card file, collective bargaining, company town, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, distributed generation, Dr. Strangelove, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, ending welfare as we know it, George Gilder, haute couture, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, Herman Kahn, index card, indoor plumbing, invisible hand, Joan Didion, liberal capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, military-industrial complex, mortgage debt, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, plutocrats, Project Plowshare, road to serfdom, Robert Bork, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, school vouchers, the medium is the message, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, transcontinental railway, union organizing, Upton Sinclair, upwardly mobile, urban renewal, War on Poverty, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, white picket fence, Works Progress Administration

Senior officers who had been loyal to the military through the lean years of the 1920s and the 1930s, when it was small, insular, and unpopular, now found their beloved institution overrun with “computer types,” as Strategic Air Command chief Thomas Power put it, who “didn’t know their ass from a hole in the ground”—who demanded that Defense Department staff race hither and yon to collect statistics to justify policies and programs that had existed since Adam. When Kennedy had cruelly scapegoated his Joint Chiefs of Staff for the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the distrust had become almost total. The following fall, when Kennedy called in the Joint Chiefs to tell them of the deal that settled the Cuban Missile Crisis and to congratulate them for their assistance, Navy chief George W. Anderson shouted, “We have been had!” and Air Force chief Curtis LeMay—who was inordinately proud of commanding an operation that rained down more destruction on Tokyo in one day than Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined—thought the American naval blockade was “almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.”

…

Once upon a time—in August of 1961, perhaps, when Gallup found that 71 percent of Americans supported going to war over Berlin shortly after Kennedy warned that such an engagement could mean “more devastation in several hours than has been wrought in all the wars of human history”; when hardly an eyebrow was raised when President Kennedy told Stewart Alsop, “In some circumstances we must be prepared to use the nuclear weapon at the start, come what may”—Goldwater might have gotten away with it. Not after the Cuban Missile Crisis. Not after the test-ban treaty. Now, raising terrifying doubts about the entire nuclear program, alone, on the fly, with no more cover than vague promises of “classified information,” was enough to make it sound like Goldwater was courting either political or planetary suicide. Goldwater’s friends could only defend him by revealing classified information or by defying their civilian leader, McNamara.

…

Kubrick could not have known that McGeorge Bundy had warned Kennedy in January of 1961 that “a subordinate commander, faced with a substantial Russian military action, could start the thermonuclear holocaust on his own initiative if he could not reach you (by failure of communication at either end of the line).” Kubrick understood nuclear war’s built-in absurdities well enough to be able to imagine it. Cut to the cavernous War Room, where the President’s top military and civilian advisers are gathered around a giant table (just like the conclave President Kennedy convened to defuse the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, where Strategic Air Command chief Tommy Power’s advice was to preempt the problem by—in the words of his alter ego in Strangelove, General Buck Turgidson—“hitting them with everything we’ve got”). As the simpering President (he looks like Adlai Stevenson) fervidly negotiates with the Soviet premier over the phone to convince him not to unleash his arsenal in retaliation, the Soviet ambassador steps into the room to explain the futility of the entire discussion: Any nuclear explosion over the Motherland, he dryly explains, will automatically set off a new, top secret “doomsday machine” with the power to destroy all life on earth.

Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making for an Unknowable Future by Mervyn King, John Kay

Airbus A320, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, Albert Michelson, algorithmic trading, anti-fragile, Antoine Gombaud: Chevalier de Méré, Arthur Eddington, autonomous vehicles, availability heuristic, banking crisis, Barry Marshall: ulcers, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, bitcoin, Black Swan, Boeing 737 MAX, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, Brownian motion, business cycle, business process, capital asset pricing model, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, correlation does not imply causation, credit crunch, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, DeepMind, demographic transition, discounted cash flows, disruptive innovation, diversification, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Dutch auction, easy for humans, difficult for computers, eat what you kill, Eddington experiment, Edmond Halley, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, Edward Thorp, Elon Musk, Ethereum, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, experimental economics, experimental subject, fear of failure, feminist movement, financial deregulation, George Akerlof, germ theory of disease, Goodhart's law, Hans Rosling, Helicobacter pylori, high-speed rail, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income per capita, incomplete markets, inflation targeting, information asymmetry, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, Johannes Kepler, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Snow's cholera map, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, Kōnosuke Matsushita, Linda problem, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, Louis Pasteur, mandelbrot fractal, market bubble, market fundamentalism, military-industrial complex, Money creation, Moneyball by Michael Lewis explains big data, Monty Hall problem, Nash equilibrium, Nate Silver, new economy, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, nudge theory, oil shock, PalmPilot, Paul Samuelson, peak oil, Peter Thiel, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, Pierre-Simon Laplace, popular electronics, power law, price mechanism, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, railway mania, RAND corporation, reality distortion field, rent-seeking, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, risk-adjusted returns, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Coase, sealed-bid auction, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Simon Kuznets, Socratic dialogue, South Sea Bubble, spectrum auction, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Suez crisis 1956, Tacoma Narrows Bridge, Thales and the olive presses, Thales of Miletus, The Chicago School, the map is not the territory, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Malthus, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, ultimatum game, urban planning, value at risk, world market for maybe five computers, World Values Survey, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

On Tuesday, 16 October 1962, Kennedy was informed that a U-2 reconnaissance flight had produced evidence of Russian missile sites under construction in Cuba. The photographs were presented to a meeting in the White House by the CIA. Those present formed a group of senior Cabinet members and officials, later to be called the Ex-Comm, which met almost continuously for the thirteen days of what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The prospect of nuclear missiles based so close to the US mainland was unacceptable. How should the President respond? Rather quickly, the choices were narrowed down to two: a naval quarantine that would intercept further Russian ships en route to Cuba, or an airstrike on all military installations in Cuba followed by an invasion.

…

The mistakes made by people who enjoyed the flattery of supportive sycophants – George W. Bush planning the Iraq war, or Dick Fuld leading Lehman to self-destruction – contrast with the achievements of those who were not afraid of honest critique: Alfred Sloan building the world’s most successful corporation, the chastened John F. Kennedy responding to the challenge of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A narrative was in the minds of the Republican ideologues in the George W. Bush administration who believed that the rapid establishment of a stock exchange in Iraq was a central building block of stability and democracy, but it was a narrative constructed from a priori assertions rather than from specific – or any – knowledge of Iraqi politics and culture.

…

., ‘USS Crisis: Can the Pension System be Reformed?’, Times Higher Education (6 Sept 2018) Keating, J., ‘In his Heart, Rick Santorum Knows that Dutch People are Forcibly Euthanized’, Foreign Policy (12 Mar 2012) Kennedy, G., The Art of Persuasion in Greece (London: Routledge, 1963) Kennedy, R. F., Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Norton, 1999) Kennes, R. and Smets, P., ‘The Transferable Belief Model’, Artificial Intelligence , Vol. 66, No. 2 (1994), 191–234 Keren, G., ‘A Tale of Two Systems: A Scientific Advance or a Theoretical Stone Soup? Commentary on Evans and Stanovich (2013)’, Perspectives on Psychological Science , Vol. 8, No. 3 (2013), 257–62 Keren, G. and Schul, Y., ‘Two Is Not Always Better than One: A Critical Evaluation of Two-System Theories’, Perspectives on Psychological Science , Vol. 4, No. 6 (2009), 533–50 Keynes, G. and Keynes, J.

Lords of the Desert: The Battle Between the US and Great Britain for Supremacy in the Modern Middle East by James Barr

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Bretton Woods, British Empire, capital controls, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, false flag, illegal immigration, imperial preference, Khartoum Gordon, land reform, Mahatma Gandhi, Suez crisis 1956, trade route

The Russians rapidly agreed to Nasser’s request and on 1 October 1962 the Soviet Union followed Egypt in recognising the new Yemeni Arab Republic. Within a few days the first of many Egyptian reinforcements started arriving. ‘I sent a company to Yemen and had to reinforce it with 70,000 soldiers,’ Nasser would complain in 1967. He would eventually call Yemen his ‘Vietnam’.6 * * * In a White House caught up in the Cuban Missile Crisis and Vietnam, Yemen was never a priority. ‘I don’t even know where it is,’ John F. Kennedy confessed, when he and Macmillan first discussed the country in November. But the news from Sanaa was nonetheless unwelcome in Washington, because the president was trying to mend fences with Nasser following a National Intelligence Estimate that described the outlook for ‘conservative and western aligned regimes’ in the Middle East as ‘bleak’.

…

Failure to recognise the new regime would antagonise Nasser, while its royalist opponents were so grotesque that active support for them would, as Macmillan was now forced to admit, be ‘politically repugnant’. Following news of further setbacks for the royalists and Yemeni claims that they would not interfere in Aden, on 23 October (in the middle of the Cuban missile crisis) the cabinet agreed to recognise the new government in Sanaa ‘in principle’. But tellingly, it did not set a date when it would do so.12 There was an important reason for that vagueness. A day earlier Macmillan had met the governor of Aden, Charles Johnston, and the cabinet’s main advocates for and against recognition, Lord Home and Duncan Sandys, now secretary of state for the colonies.

…

Macmillan argued that there was a ‘strong case’ for delaying recognition, at least until after a parliamentary debate on the merger of the colony and the protectorate, due to take place in a week’s time.20 * * * While Macmillan procrastinated, the Americans tried to come up with a compromise that might simultaneously please Nasser and the Saudis. Once the Cuban Missile Crisis was over, Kennedy sent a message to Crown Prince Faisal in Riyadh to tell him that he would publish a message restating American support for Saudi Arabia ahead of recognising the new government in Sanaa. Before Kennedy’s message reached Riyadh, however, it was undone by events on the ground in Yemen.

The Great Mental Models: General Thinking Concepts by Shane Parrish

Albert Einstein, anti-fragile, Atul Gawande, Barry Marshall: ulcers, bitcoin, Black Swan, colonial rule, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, delayed gratification, feminist movement, Garrett Hardin, if you see hoof prints, think horses—not zebras, index fund, Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, John Bogle, Linda problem, mandelbrot fractal, Pepsi Challenge, Philippa Foot, Pierre-Simon Laplace, Ponzi scheme, Richard Feynman, statistical model, stem cell, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the map is not the territory, the scientific method, Thomas Bayes, Torches of Freedom, Tragedy of the Commons, trolley problem

It’s harder to take advantage of, or even see, opportunities while in this defensive mode because our priority is saving ourselves—which tends to reduce our vision to dealing with the perceived threat instead of examining the bigger picture. _ By not assuming the worst, Vasili Arkhipov single-handedly avoided nuclear war with the Americans. The man who saved the world On October 27, 1962, Vasili Arkhipov stayed calm, didn’t assume malice, and saved the world. Seriously. This was the height of the Cuban missile crisis. Tensions were high between the United States and the Soviet Union. The world felt on the verge of nuclear war, a catastrophic outcome for all. American destroyers and Soviet subs were in a standoff in the waters off Cuba. Although they were technically in International waters, the Americans had informed the Soviets that they would be dropping blank depth charges to force the Soviet submarines to surface.

…

London: Heinemann and Balestier, 1891. 4 Heather, Peter. The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 5 Gibbon, Edward. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, New York: Everyman’s Library, 1910. 6 Roberts, Priscilla. Cuban Missile Crisis: The Essential Reference Guide. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2012.

The Defence of the Realm by Christopher Andrew

Able Archer 83, active measures, anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Boeing 747, British Empire, classic study, Clive Stafford Smith, collective bargaining, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, Desert Island Discs, disinformation, Etonian, Fall of the Berlin Wall, false flag, G4S, glass ceiling, illegal immigration, information security, job satisfaction, large denomination, liquidationism / Banker’s doctrine / the Treasury view, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Kinnock, North Sea oil, operational security, post-work, Red Clydeside, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, sexual politics, strikebreaker, Suez crisis 1956, Torches of Freedom, traveling salesman, union organizing, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, Winter of Discontent, work culture

One recalls Mitchell as a ‘civilised, humane man’, considerate in his treatment of junior colleagues. 55 See below, p. 509. 56 Security Service Archives. 57 Security Service Archives. 58 Security Service Archives. 59 Security Service Archives. 60 Interview with Ward by Warwick Charlton, Today, 11 May 1963. 61 Security Service Archives. 62 Security Service Archives. 63 Security Service Archives. 64 Security Service Archives. 65 Security Service Archives. 66 Security Service Archives. 67 Security Service Archives. 68 Security Service Archives. 69 Security Service Archives. 70 Security Service Archives. 71 Security Service Archives. Ward later gave a similarly inflated account of his role during the Cuban Missile Crisis to the writer Warwick Charlton, who published it in Today on 11 May 1963. 72 Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis, pp. 104–7. 73 Security Service Archives. 74 Security Service Archives. 75 Knightley and Kennedy, Affair of State, ch. 1. 76 Introduction by Lord Denning to 1992 reissue of The Denning Report. 77 Security Service Archives. 78 Security Service Archives. 79 Christopher Andrew, interview with Sir Dick White, 1984. 80 Security Service Archives. 81 Security Service Archives. 82 Security Service Archives. 83 Security Service Archives. 84 Pearson, Profession of Violence, pp. 115–16, 120, 122.

…

Hollis, who is Sir Dick White’s deputy.’46 At the time White gave Hollis his enthusiastic support.47 He later changed his mind, writing in a sympathetic obituary that, though respected within the Service during his nine years as DG, Hollis ‘did not enjoy easy personal relations with its ordinary members who tended to find him reserved and aloof’.48 Some, probably many, did not meet him at all. One staff member who encountered Hollis in the lift and failed to recognize him, said: ‘Oh, we haven’t met. What section are you?’ ‘I am the DG,’ replied Hollis.49 Perhaps the ultimate example of Hollis’s remote management style came during the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, the most dangerous moment in British history. Though the crisis was caused by the American discovery of Soviet nuclear missile bases under construction in Cuba, the threat to Britain, the United States’ chief ally, was even greater than to America itself. There must have seemed to many Service staff, as to much of the British population, a real danger that the crisis would end in thermonuclear warfare and the obliteration of the United Kingdom.

…

At a meeting with Ward on 28 May 1962, ‘Wood’ discovered that ‘Without our knowledge Ward was used by the Foreign Office . . . to pass off-the-record information to the Russian embassy.’66 A fortnight later D1, Arthur Martin, wrote to Philip Adams of the Foreign Office Security Department to check the truth of Ward’s claim that he and Sir Godfrey Nicholson MP (a distant relative) had ‘assisted the Foreign Office by passing official reports to Ivanov’.67 Adams confirmed that suitably tailored FO material had been channelled to Ivanov via Ward.68 Ward had been used as an intermediary with the Soviet embassy with the personal approval of both the Foreign Secretary, Lord Home, and the PUS, Sir Harold Caccia. The Security Service warned the Foreign Office that Ward was ‘both naive and indiscreet’,69 thus implying that the FO had also been naive to use him. The Foreign Office paid little, if any, attention to the warning. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, Ward was used once again, this time on the initiative of the Russians, as a confidential channel for communications between Moscow and London. MI5 ‘again drew the attention of the Foreign Office to the dangers of using Ward for such purposes’.70 Already fond of boasting about his close contacts with the highest in the land, Ward interpreted his use as a back-channel between Moscow and London at the most dangerous moment of the Cold War as proof that Whitehall had assigned him a major role as an intermediary between East and West.

GCHQ by Richard Aldrich

belly landing, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Charles Babbage, colonial exploitation, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, friendly fire, illegal immigration, index card, it's over 9,000, lateral thinking, machine translation, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, Neil Kinnock, New Journalism, operational security, packet switching, private military company, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, social intelligence, South China Sea, Suez crisis 1956, undersea cable, unit 8200, University of East Anglia, Yom Kippur War, Zimmermann PGP

Indeed, NSA staff who listened in to Soviet radars and fighter controllers during the Gary Powers flight argued that he had only been shot down because, quite inexplicably, he was flying at only thirty-five thousand feet and was heading in the wrong direction (British intelligence sources seem to confirm this story).5 In late June 1960 the CIA’s Director, Allen Dulles, confided to a friend that he was sure Powers ‘was not shot down at normal altitude’, but later the CIA and NSA fell into a bitter dispute over exactly how the U-2 had been intercepted by the Soviets.6 The Gary Powers shootdown triggered a major diplomatic confrontation between Moscow, Washington and London. The incident encapsulated many of the wider international trends of the 1960s. During the decade there were major flashpoints such as the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. There were also serious confrontations in the Third World, the largest being the Vietnam War, which kept the temperature at boiling point. Although engaged in an arms race, East and West had achieved nuclear parity, signalled by the deployment of Soviet missiles which could reach the American homeland.

…

After all, deterrence was supposed to ensure that the north German plains would remain the Cold War’s frozen front, with little likelihood of real conflict. In fact, by the early 1960s a number of crises had created a climate of growing anxiety. Confrontations over Berlin and Cuba, together with the escalating conflict in Vietnam, made war seem somewhat closer. Alarmingly, American sigint had failed to give much warning about the emerging Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The Six-Day War in 1967 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 were also unsettling for commanders. More generally, throughout the 1960s there was a growing awareness that NATO’s conventional inferiority in numbers, especially in northern Germany, might call for the early use of nuclear weapons to stem the tide of a Warsaw Pact attack.

…

The first vessel in NSA’s Technical Research Ship programme was the USS Oxford, a converted Liberty ship which put to sea in 1961. Its flexibility was immediately apparent as it floated from one trouble spot to another, admittedly at an ambulatory pace of just eleven knots. It proved especially successful during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Accordingly, during the 1960s four more ships in the Oxford class were launched: the Georgetown, the Jamestown, the Belmont and the Liberty. Three smaller ships joined the listening fleet, based on converted military transports: the Valdez, the Muller and finally the Pueblo, which entered service in 1968.

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World (Politics of Place) by Tim Marshall

9 dash line, Admiral Zheng, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, British Empire, California gold rush, Charlie Hebdo massacre, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, drone strike, European colonialism, facts on the ground, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Hans Island, Kickstarter, LNG terminal, market fragmentation, megacity, Mercator projection distort size, especially Greenland and Africa, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, oil shale / tar sands, Scramble for Africa, South China Sea, Suez canal 1869, Suez crisis 1956, trade route, transcontinental railway, Transnistria, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, zero-sum game

For most of the nineteenth century, foreign policy was dominated by expanding trade and avoiding entanglements outside the neighborhood, but it was time to push out and protect the approaches to the coastlines. The only real threat was from Spain—it may have been persuaded to leave the mainland, but it still controlled the islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and part of what is now the Dominican Republic. Cuba in particular kept American presidents awake at night, as it would again in 1962 during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The island sits just off Florida, giving it access to and potential control of the Straits of Florida and the Yucatán Channel in the Gulf of Mexico. This is the exit and entry route for the port of New Orleans. Spain’s power may have been diminishing toward the end of the nineteenth century, but it was still a formidable military force.

…

The English language even has two sayings that demonstrate how deeply ingrained the idea is: “Give them an inch and they’ll take a mile,” and President Theodore Roosevelt’s maxim of 1900, which has now entered the political lexicon: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” The deadly game in this century will be how the Chinese, Americans, and others in the region manage each crisis that arises without losing face and without building up a deep well of resentment and anger on both sides. The Cuban Missile Crisis is generally considered an American victory; what is less publicized is that several months after Russia removed its missiles from Cuba, the United States removed its Jupiter missiles (which could reach Moscow) from Turkey. It was actually a compromise, with both sides, eventually, able to tell their respective publics that they had not capitulated.

…

Geological Survey, 248 Ural Mountains, 8–9, 11–13, 15–17, 28, 92 Uruguay, 215, 230–31, 232, 233–34, 236 Ürümqi, 36–37, 50, 57 USSR, 13–14, 16, 199, 212. See also Russia Afghanistan invasion (1979), 18–19, 177, 181 Cold War, 81, 94, 107, 118, 198–200, 205, 221, 235, 251–53 collapse of, 17, 19–21, 28, 30, 95, 253 Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), 72–73 space exploration, 261–62 Utah, 62–63, 71 Uzbekistan, 8–9, 20, 133 Vaca Muerta shale formation, 236–37, 238 Venezuela, 34, 215, 218, 220, 221, 227, 229, 230–31, 233–34, 235 Victoria Island, 240–41 Vietnam, 36–37, 45–46, 55, 57–58, 76, 78–79, 191 Vladivostok, 8–9, 19, 36–37, 45, 194 Wang Jing, 227–28 War of the Pacific (1879), 220–21 Warsaw Pact, 13–14, 20–21, 97 Washington, George, 74 water supplies, 47, 120–22, 125, 131–32, 179–80, 191, 207, 218, 228, 232, 261 West Bank, 142, 153, 153–56 Western Europe, 86–87, 88–108.

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order by Richard Haass

access to a mobile phone, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, carbon tax, central bank independence, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deindustrialization, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, energy security, European colonialism, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, floating exchange rates, global pandemic, global reserve currency, guns versus butter model, hiring and firing, immigration reform, invisible hand, low interest rates, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, no-fly zone, open economy, quantitative easing, RAND corporation, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, South China Sea, special drawing rights, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, UNCLOS, UNCLOS, uranium enrichment, Yom Kippur War

See weapons of mass destruction Chemical Weapons Convention, 61 China, 79–92, 223–24 and Africa, 194 and Asia-Pacific region, 9, 89, 90–91, 180–81, 182–83, 263–64, 328n12 and Cold War, 47, 50, 80, 84–85 and cyberspace, 143 and Gulf War, 87–88 and humanitarian concerns, 82–84, 229–30 and Libya intervention, 162 and North Korea, 88–89, 241, 263–64 and South Asia, 125, 128–29, 265 and Taiwan, 58, 84–87, 90 and trade, 80–82, 87, 89, 90, 146 and U.S. debt, 295–96 U.S. relations with, 79–92, 216–24 Chou En-lai, 80 Churchill, Winston, 95 civil conflict, 110–22 in Haiti, 113 in Iraq, 111–12, 154–55, 173–75, 231 in Libya, 163 and Responsibility to Protect, 115–17 Rwanda crisis, 113–15, 116–17 in Somalia, 112–13 and terrorism, 119–22 See also Arab Spring; Responsibility to Protect; Syrian crisis climate change, 10, 89, 138–40, 244–45 Clinton (William J.) administration, 93, 109, 112–13, 128, 177 coalitions of the willing, 200 Cold War, 37–54, 210 and arms control, 42–44, 50 and balance of power, 38–39, 41, 50 and bipolarity, 46–47, 202 and China, 47, 50, 80, 84–85 and Cuban missile crisis, 48–50 end of, 2–3, 51–54, 72, 93, 103, 210 and Europe, 50–51, 70, 188–89 and nuclear weapons, 41–42 and South Asia, 183, 184 and sovereignty, 45–46, 51 spheres of influence, 47–48 World War II origins of, 37–38 Concert of Europe, 24–25, 26 Conference of Parties (COP21), 139–40 confidence-building measures (CBMs), 262 containment, 46, 53, 218, 289 Crimea. See Ukraine Cuban missile crisis, 48–50 cyberspace, 10, 140–44, 245–47 Czechoslovakia, 106, 108 decolonization, 61–63, 67–68, 71, 72 détente, 49 deterrence, 42, 43–44, 217, 240 development, 56, 65 See also economics diplomacy, 26–27, 81, 132–33, 219–20, 251, 261, 282–83 Cold War, 44 post–World War II, 57, 65, 67 and South Asia, 184–85 and Syrian crisis, 171–72 and weapons of mass destruction, 132–33 See also United Nations Doha (Development) Round, 146–47 East China Sea dispute, 90, 181 economics, 9–11, 90, 248–49 and post–Cold War global cooperation, 145–49 post–World War II, 56–57, 65–66 and U.S. policy, 251, 290–92, 329n4 See also monetary systems; trade education, 291, 300–302 Egypt, 63, 69, 157–58, 167, 230, 278 ethnic cleansing, 109 Europe, 188–91, 284–86 Cold War, 50–51, 70 Helsinki Accords, 50–51, 261–62 Partnership for Peace, 95, 96 post–World War II, 61, 69–70 See also European integration; European Union; Yugoslav transition European integration, 35, 61, 73, 188–91 European Union, 97, 108, 143, 188–89, 285–86 Brexit, 1–2, 9, 12, 191 failed states, 111 G-7/G-8, 199 G-20, 199–200 Gadhafi, Muammar, 136, 161 Gates, Robert, 185 GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade), 57, 65, 145 Genocide Convention, 64, 66–67, 116, 234 Georgia, 96–97, 222 Germany, 32–35, 231 global health, 10, 144–45, 247–48 globalization, 11, 148, 226, 233–34, 244 See also trade Gorbachev, Mikhail, 52–53 Great Depression, 32 great-power relations.

…

There is no end to the literature that examines foreign policy decision making. Some of the best books include Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers (New York: Free Press, 1986); Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Addison Wesley, 1999); Morton H. Halperin and Priscilla A. Clapp with Arnold Kanter, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2006); and Gordon Goldstein, Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 2008).

Speed by Bob Gilliland, Keith Dunnavant

Airbus A320, An Inconvenient Truth, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, belly landing, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Captain Sullenberger Hudson, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Neil Armstrong, Silicon Valley, South China Sea, US Airways Flight 1549, work culture

(Wounded by the Bay of Pigs disaster, which pushed his boss Allen Dulles into an early retirement, Bissell left the agency in early 1962, while the first A-12 was still being assembled.) On December 27, 1962, two months after a U-2 piloted by Major Rudolph Anderson and dispatched by President Kennedy was shot out of the sky during the Cuban Missile Crisis, proving the loss of Powers’s plane was no fluke, the air force placed an initial order for six aircraft under the new RS-71 designation. In time this development would be recognized as the birth of Kelly Johnson’s most iconic aircraft. With the election looming and the White House feeling the need for a preemptive strike against hawkish Republican nominee Barry Goldwater, President Johnson made a conscious decision to once again use the country’s most advanced aircraft program to his political advantage.

…

Air Force, 135, 161, 190; and Skunk Works security, 115, 185–86; U-2 reconnaissance program of, 116–19, 139 Civil War, 9 CL-400 “Project Suntan” (Lockheed), 142 coffin corner, 139 Cold War: aerial reconnaissance during, 115–19; and Berlin Airlift resupply mission, 54–56; and the Blackbird program, 133–35, 161; impact of, on aircraft development, 91; and the Korean War, 71; and Soviet capabilities, 75–76; and the space race, 91, 122–24; SR-71 missions during, 202–7; tensions during, 54–55, 66–67, 75–76, 116, 121; and U-2 incident, 118; and U.S. bomber capabilities, 58 Collins, Eileen, 213 Collins, Ken, 190 commercial aviation, 34, 97–98, 140 compressibility, 138 Connally, John, 128 Conquest I (F8F-2 Bearcat), 225 Constellation airliner (Lockheed), 98, 120 Convair, 58, 116, 127, 146 Cook, Everett, 95 Cooper, Gordon, 123 Coors, Giles “Bull,” 18, 172 Copenhagen (Denmark), 46–47, 54 Crew, Jerry, 192 Crickmore, Paul, 144, 152, 202–4, 206 Cross, Carl S., 164 Crossfield, Scott, 91, 131, 199 Cuban Missile Crisis, 135 D-21 drone, 134, 171 Daley, Richard M., 219 d’Angleterre, Hotel (Copenhagen), 47 Daniel, Walt, 133, 164 David Clark Company, 122 Davis, Glenn, 45 Davis, Mel, 35–37, 40, 43–44, 47 DC-8 airliner (Douglas), 140 dead-stick landings, 104, 105–6, 130 Desoto Oil and Gas Trust, 201–2 Detroit Aircraft Corporation, 97 Doolittle, Jimmy, 60 Douglas Aircraft: C-47 “Gooney Bird,” 56; D-558-11 Skyrocket, 91; DC-4 airliner, 34; DC-8 airliner, 140; as defense contractor, 91; start of, 101 drone program, 134, 170–71 Dulles, Allen W., 116, 135 Earhart, Amelia, 86, 98 East Berlin (Germany), 55, 208 Eastham, Jim: as A-12 test pilot, 127, 132; awards and honors of, 132; at Hughes, 127; during SR-71’s maiden flight, 163–64, 169, 171; as SR-71 test pilot, 149; and YF-12A maiden flight, 131 Edwards, Glen, 88, 89 Edwards Air Force Base: naming of, 89; RJG’s work out of, 105; SR-71 testing at, 1–2; X-1 program at, 91; YF-12As testing at, 133.

…

Army), 3, 5–7 36th Fighter-Bomber Wing, 66 Thompson, Warren, 204 three-point landings, 59 Thrust supersonic car, 218 Thunderhead, Operation, 193 titanium, 144–45 Torick, Ray, 107–71 Torino (Italy), 108 Trans World Airlines, 34, 98 Trippe, Juan, 34 Truman, Harry, 41–42, 44, 47, 71, 88 Tymczyszyn, Joe, 131–32 Tyson, Mike, 173 U-2 (Lockheed): challenges flying, 116, 139; CIA’s program of, 116, 117–19; compared to the A-12 Blackbird, 125–26; during the Cuban Missile Crisis, 135; design challenges of, 139; development of, 116–17, 120; Kelly Johnson’s design for, 116, 139; Kelly Johnson’s interview regarding, 125; limitations of, 139, 142–43; and Powers incident, 118–19, 125, 190, 204–5; Tony LeVier as test pilot of, 117 Udvar-Hazy Center (Smithsonian), 210, 225 University Club (Memphis TN), 12 University of Michigan, 98 University of Tennessee, 104 unstarts, 130, 150, 183 V5 program (naval aviator training), 27–28 Vanderbilt University, 5, 32–33, 36, 50 Varney, Walter, 97 Vida, J.

What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View by William MacAskill

Ada Lovelace, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alignment Problem, AlphaGo, artificial general intelligence, Bartolomé de las Casas, Bletchley Park, British Empire, Brownian motion, carbon footprint, carbon tax, charter city, clean tech, coronavirus, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, deep learning, DeepMind, Deng Xiaoping, different worldview, effective altruism, endogenous growth, European colonialism, experimental subject, feminist movement, framing effect, friendly AI, global pandemic, GPT-3, hedonic treadmill, Higgs boson, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Islamic Golden Age, iterative process, Jeff Bezos, job satisfaction, lab leak, Lao Tzu, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, lockdown, long peace, low skilled workers, machine translation, Mars Rover, negative emissions, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, OpenAI, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, QWERTY keyboard, Robert Gordon, Rutger Bregman, Sam Altman, seminal paper, Shenzhen special economic zone , Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, special economic zone, speech recognition, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Steven Pinker, strong AI, synthetic biology, total factor productivity, transatlantic slave trade, Tyler Cowen, William MacAskill, women in the workforce, working-age population, World Values Survey, Y Combinator

And there are several reasons to think that the risk of great-power war in the next hundred years remains unacceptably high. First, it seems plausible that maintaining the Long Peace has involved a healthy dose of luck in addition to structural factors like economic growth and international cooperation. We know that the United States and the Soviet Union came close to war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example. But this was hardly the Cold War’s only moment of danger. Tensions were also high during the Berlin crises, the Suez Crisis, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, multiple crises in the Taiwan Strait, and proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as on several occasions when early-warning systems failed and sent false alarms of incoming nuclear attacks.61 World War II has been characterized in part as hugely unlucky, due to Hitler’s unlikely rise.62 But the peace that followed has also been partly the result of chance.63 Second, changes in the distribution of global economic and military power may increase the risk of conflict.

…

The overall destructive power of explosive weapons therefore increased enormously over the course of just two decades, with the vast majority of those weapons built by the United States and the Soviet Union.50 It would be a mistake to infer that, because an all-out nuclear war never occurred, it was very unlikely to have occurred. Indeed, there were several close calls. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, John F. Kennedy put the chance of all-out nuclear war at “somewhere between one in three and even.”51 In 1979, US command centres detected a large number of incoming nuclear missiles, causing them to begin preparing for their own counterstrike. But when senior commanders checked the raw data to confirm the strike, they saw no evidence of incoming missiles.

…

., 105–106 Clarkson, Thomas, 52 clean energy, long-term benefits of, 24–26 Clear Air Task Force, 232 climate change addressing neglected problems, 230–231 agricultural recovery from extreme catastrophe, 133 averting civilisational collapse, 161–162 the benefit of future generations, 10–11 civilisational collapse resulting from, 134–138 deforestation and megafauna extinction, 30–31 effects of the intuition of neutrality, 175–176 evaluating future interventions, 228 expected value theory as decisionmaking tool, 39–40 fossil fuel depletion, 138–141 the impact of vegetarianism, 231–232 long-term consequences, 24–25 nuclear winter, 129 rigidity following early plasticity, 42–43 See also environmental destruction climate sensitivity, 42 cloning, 62, 156 coal use, 134–135, 139–140 Cold Takes (Karnofsky), 253 Cold War crises threatening the Long Peace, 114 division of Korea, 41 effect on the quality of life, 116 engineered pathogens, 114 governing nuclear weapons, 41–42 collapse, civilisational defining, 124 global nuclear war, 128–131 Parfit’s population ethics, 168–169 the Roman Empire, 122–124 through climate change, 134–138 through fossil fuel depletion, 138–141 through long-term stagnation, 161–163 colonialism, 3 evolutionary divergence and reconvergence, 96 projecting future trends, 21 slavery and, 48 comet, risk of collision with, 106, 113 communication building career capital, 238–239 connectedness of people, 27–28 rapid technological progress in, 147–148 communism: cultural and values conquest, 92 competition: cultural evolution, 58–59 Condorcet, Nicolas de, 66–67 Confucianism, 75–79 connectedness of people, 27–28 consciousness, the evolution of, 191–192 consequentialists, 76, 241 conservation: preventing values lock-in, 99 Constitution, US, 23–24, 41 consumption decisions, the impact of, 231–233 contingency of the abolition of slavery, 49, 62–70 economic growth, 149 evolution of moral norms, 70–71, 84 expected contingency of values, 55–62 historical, 224 surviving a global catastrophe, 133 See also significance, persistence, contingency (SPC) framework convergent evolution, 56–57 corporal punishment, 53, 67–68 Cotra, Ajeya, 86, 90 cotton cultivation, 64 COVID-19 pandemic building career capital during, 238 culturally diverse responses to, 96–97 death and economic tolls, 107 engineered pathogens and, 113 vaccine development, 96, 238 Cowen, Tyler, 147–148 critical level view of wellbeing, 185–186 cryopreservation, 85 Cuba: societal resilience, 127 Cuban Missile Crisis, 114, 128 Cugoano, Ottobah, 52 cultural diversity charter cities, 100 COVID-19 response, 96–97 cultural experimentation and the abolition of slavery, 99 predicting the duration of civilisational stagnation, 157–158 cultural evolution building a morally improved world, 100 contingency and persistence of moral changes, 84 cultural conquest and values lock-in, 92–95 cultural divergence and reconvergence, 95–97 the effects of long-term stagnation, 161 fitness landscape, 58–62 Daniell, Marcus, 239 Daoism (China), 76–77 Dartnell, Lewis, 138–140 dead hand problem, 54 death the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 126–127 COVID-19, 107 effects of fossil fuel consumption, 24–25 electricity production, 25(fig.)

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century by Fiona Hill

2021 United States Capitol attack, active measures, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, algorithmic bias, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, blue-collar work, Boris Johnson, Brexit referendum, British Empire, business climate, call centre, collective bargaining, company town, coronavirus, COVID-19, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, desegregation, digital divide, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial independence, first-past-the-post, food desert, gender pay gap, gentrification, George Floyd, glass ceiling, global pandemic, Great Leap Forward, housing crisis, illegal immigration, imposter syndrome, income inequality, indoor plumbing, industrial cluster, industrial research laboratory, informal economy, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Kickstarter, knowledge economy, lockdown, low skilled workers, Lyft, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, meme stock, Mikhail Gorbachev, new economy, oil shock, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Own Your Own Home, Paris climate accords, pension reform, QAnon, ransomware, restrictive zoning, ride hailing / ride sharing, Right to Buy, Ronald Reagan, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, single-payer health, statistical model, Steve Bannon, The Chicago School, TikTok, transatlantic slave trade, Uber and Lyft, uber lyft, University of East Anglia, urban decay, urban planning, Washington Consensus, WikiLeaks, Winter of Discontent, women in the workforce, working poor, Yom Kippur War, young professional

Taking notes helped commit things to memory as well as providing material to refer back to later in my finished writing. My notes were an invaluable source. They assisted my career development, even though they seemed to define me. Graham Allison himself had launched his career as the notetaker for a series of seminars at Harvard about the Cuban missile crisis when he was a graduate student working on his PhD in the Government Department. He turned those notes into his dissertation and then a best-selling political science book, Essence of Decision. The notetaking and the subsequent book launched his career as a Harvard professor and later as the youngest Harvard dean and founder of the Kennedy School.

…

Back in the 1980s, Trump had proffered himself as Reagan’s arms control negotiator in magazine interviews. He had bragged that he could easily reach a deal if he just got the chance to sit down with Gorbachev. In 1990 he told Playboy Magazine that nuclear war was the “ultimate catastrophe” and he personally wanted to do something about it. He had been sixteen during the trauma of the Cuban missile crisis in the 1960s and had then had to contemplate the rerun of a war scare in the 1980s. Trump had an uncle who was a nuclear physicist at MIT, so by some process of family and genetic osmosis, he believed he already fully understood the issue. And he was convinced that his business experience and personal charisma would sway Gorbachev and any subsequent Soviet or Russian leader into agreeing to reduce or even eliminate weapons.

…

(Caracas: UNESCO International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2021), 45, https://www.iesalc.unesco.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Women-Report-EN-080321.pdf. 60 percent of schoolgirls: Denise Hamilton, “Changing Lifestyles: Prostitution Rising as Tough Times Wear on Soviet People,” Los Angeles Times, November 12, 1991, https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-11-12-wr-1528-story.html. Essence of Decision: Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971). push the bank: Elena Fabrichnaya, “How Russia’s central bank chief held the line,” Reuters, September 26, 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-cenbank-nabiullina-insight-idUSKCN11W166. “combat the strong stereotypes”: Hill and Gaddy, Mr. Putin, 462–463.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker

3D printing, Abraham Maslow, access to a mobile phone, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, agricultural Revolution, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Alignment Problem, An Inconvenient Truth, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Arthur Eddington, artificial general intelligence, availability heuristic, Ayatollah Khomeini, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, biodiversity loss, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, Brexit referendum, business cycle, capital controls, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Charlie Hebdo massacre, classic study, clean water, clockwork universe, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, Columbine, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, dark matter, data science, decarbonisation, degrowth, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, demographic transition, Deng Xiaoping, distributed generation, diversified portfolio, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, double helix, Eddington experiment, Edward Jenner, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, end world poverty, endogenous growth, energy transition, European colonialism, experimental subject, Exxon Valdez, facts on the ground, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, frictionless, frictionless market, Garrett Hardin, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Great Leap Forward, Hacker Conference 1984, Hans Rosling, hedonic treadmill, helicopter parent, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, income inequality, income per capita, Indoor air pollution, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of writing, Jaron Lanier, Joan Didion, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Snow's cholera map, Kevin Kelly, Khan Academy, knowledge economy, l'esprit de l'escalier, Laplace demon, launch on warning, life extension, long peace, longitudinal study, Louis Pasteur, Mahbub ul Haq, Martin Wolf, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, Michael Shellenberger, microaggression, Mikhail Gorbachev, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nate Silver, Nathan Meyer Rothschild: antibiotics, negative emissions, Nelson Mandela, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, nuclear taboo, nuclear winter, obamacare, ocean acidification, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, paperclip maximiser, Paris climate accords, Paul Graham, peak oil, Peter Singer: altruism, Peter Thiel, post-truth, power law, precautionary principle, precision agriculture, prediction markets, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, radical life extension, Ralph Nader, randomized controlled trial, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, Republic of Letters, Richard Feynman, road to serfdom, Robert Gordon, Rodney Brooks, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rory Sutherland, Saturday Night Live, science of happiness, Scientific racism, Second Machine Age, secular stagnation, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Simon Kuznets, Skype, smart grid, Social Justice Warrior, sovereign wealth fund, sparse data, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steve Bannon, Steven Pinker, Stewart Brand, Stuxnet, supervolcano, synthetic biology, tech billionaire, technological determinism, technological singularity, Ted Kaczynski, Ted Nordhaus, TED Talk, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, total factor productivity, Tragedy of the Commons, union organizing, universal basic income, University of East Anglia, Unsafe at Any Speed, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, urban renewal, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, women in the workforce, working poor, World Values Survey, Y2K

The Doomsday Clock, despite adorning a journal with “Scientists” in its title, does not track objective indicators of nuclear security; rather, it’s a propaganda stunt intended, in the words of its founder, “to preserve civilization by scaring men into rationality.”70 The clock’s minute hand was farther from midnight in 1962, the year of the Cuban Missile Crisis, than it was in the far calmer 2007, in part because the editors, worried that the public had become too complacent, redefined “doomsday” to include climate change.71 And in their campaign to shake people out of their apathy, scientific experts have made some not-so-prescient predictions: Only the creation of a world government can prevent the impending self-destruction of mankind.

…

Much of the credit for the absence of nuclear war between great powers must go to the forces behind the decline of war between great powers (chapter 11). Anything that reduces the risk of war reduces the risk of nuclear war. The close calls, too, may not depend on a supernatural streak of good luck. Several political scientists and historians who have analyzed documents from the Cuban Missile Crisis, particularly transcripts of John F. Kennedy’s meetings with his security advisors, have argued that despite the participants’ recollections about having pulled the world back from the brink of Armageddon, “the odds that the Americans would have gone to war were next to zero.”92 The records show that Khrushchev and Kennedy remained in firm control of their governments, and that each sought a peaceful end to the crisis, ignoring provocations and leaving themselves several options for backing down.

…

Nuclear safety features prevent accidents: Mueller 2010a, pp. 100–102; Evans, Ogilvie-White, & Thakur 2014, p. 56; J. Mueller, “Fire, Fire (Review of E. Schlosser’s ‘Command and Control’),” Times Literary Supplement, March 7, 2014. Note that the common claim that the Soviet navy officer Vasili Arkhipov “saved the world” during the Cuban Missile Crisis by overruling an embattled submarine captain who was about to fire a nuclear-tipped torpedo at American ships is cast in doubt by Aleksandr Mozgovoi’s 2002 book Kubinskaya Samba Kvarteta Fokstrotov (Cuban Samba of the Quartet of Foxtrots), in which Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, a communications officer who took part in the events, reports that the captain had spontaneously backed off from his impulse: Mozgovoi 2002.

The Pentagon: A History by Steve Vogel

Berlin Wall, Charles Lindbergh, City Beautiful movement, cuban missile crisis, Dr. Strangelove, East Village, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Ford Model T, military-industrial complex, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, Oklahoma City bombing, pneumatic tube, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Strategic Defense Initiative, Works Progress Administration

Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 415, 398; Raymond, Power at the Pentagon, 10–12. A private elevator Ibid.; Goldberg, The Pentagon, 144; National Military Command Center System history draft, NMCC, 18 Aug. 1986, OSD HO. The reality was strange enough George C. Wilson, “From Strangelovian to Prosaic,” WP, 10 July 1976; Raymond, Power at the Pentagon, 10–12. Yet the National Military Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball, 399–400. “It was a means” Transcript, forum on Fortieth Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, 18 Oct. 2002, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government, www.iop.harvard.edu/pdfs/transcripts/cuban_missile_crisis_10.18.02.pdf, (hereafter fortieth anniversary transcript, Harvard).

…

“You had to be scared. A mob is an uncontrollable force.” The true and high church It had been almost exactly twenty-five years since George Marshall and Henry Stimson had moved into the Pentagon in November 1942, but no celebrations were planned in the fall of 1967. In the five years since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the tiny American presence in Vietnam had escalated with the introduction of ground forces in 1965 and would soon reach 500,000 troops, with no end in sight. By October, more than 13,000 Americans had been killed and 86,000 wounded. Public opinion was turning against the war, fired both by the growing number of casualties and by reports on great suffering in Vietnam.

…

Five elements of the building were given historic status: the five outer façades; the center courtyard and surrounding façades; the Mall terrace; the River terrace; and the distinctive five-sided shape. Finally, the figures who had strode along its corridors—from Marshall and Stimson, to Forrestal, Eisenhower, McNamara, Powell, and many others—and the decisions they made, for better or worse, in its command centers and executive suites—about the atomic bomb, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, and beyond—pointed irrefutably to the extraordinary role the building had played in American history since World War II. The Pentagon, the nomination concluded, “is of an exceptional level of historic significance.” The Pentagon was now officially a landmark. There was no choice but to fix it.

Accessory to War: The Unspoken Alliance Between Astrophysics and the Military by Neil Degrasse Tyson, Avis Lang

active measures, Admiral Zheng, airport security, anti-communist, Apollo 11, Arthur Eddington, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, Carrington event, Charles Lindbergh, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, commoditize, corporate governance, cosmic microwave background, credit crunch, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, Dava Sobel, disinformation, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, dual-use technology, Eddington experiment, Edward Snowden, energy security, Eratosthenes, European colonialism, fake news, Fellow of the Royal Society, Ford Model T, global value chain, Google Earth, GPS: selective availability, Great Leap Forward, Herman Kahn, Higgs boson, invention of movable type, invention of the printing press, invention of the telescope, Isaac Newton, James Webb Space Telescope, Johannes Kepler, John Harrison: Longitude, Karl Jansky, Kuiper Belt, Large Hadron Collider, Late Heavy Bombardment, Laura Poitras, Lewis Mumford, lone genius, low earth orbit, mandelbrot fractal, Maui Hawaii, Mercator projection, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Northpointe / Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions, operation paperclip, pattern recognition, Pierre-Simon Laplace, precision agriculture, prediction markets, profit motive, Project Plowshare, purchasing power parity, quantum entanglement, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, skunkworks, South China Sea, space junk, Stephen Hawking, Strategic Defense Initiative, subprime mortgage crisis, the long tail, time dilation, trade route, War on Poverty, wikimedia commons, zero-sum game

Thirteen months later, in December 1958, the General Assembly proposed and adopted its first resolution devoted specifically to space, Res. 1348—“Question on the Peaceful Use of Outer Space”—followed by more resolutions in 1959, 1961, 1962, 1963, 1965, and 1966.93 From the viewpoint of a US diplomat deeply involved in disarmament and space policy at the time, the two-year lead-up to the 1963 UN resolution was the breakthrough, setting the terms under which peace might be preserved in space.94 Although a resolution is less potent than a treaty, it may have been the more achievable option, given the prevailing political climate: hot on the heels of the terrifying superpower standoff known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the fall of 1962, and the Senate’s 80–19 approval in September 1963 of the groundbreaking Limited Test Ban Treaty, the very existence of which could be substantially chalked up to the near-catastrophe over Cuba.95 At long last, in October 1967, during the presidency of Lyndon Baines Johnson, the United Nations’ pioneering Outer Space Treaty (full title: Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, Including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) became international law.

…

Among them were the worsening prospects of the Vietnam War; the attempted invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961; two atmospheric US nuclear tests in July 1962 that interfered with radio transmissions, disabled several satellites, and contaminated four Midwestern states with radioactive iodine; and a plan by the Atomic Energy Commission to detonate up to six hydrogen bombs at the mouth of a valley on Alaska’s seacoast in order to create an instant artificial harbor.124 Add the humiliation of a Soviet citizen becoming the first human to orbit Earth. Add, too, the growing awareness that space debris and nuclear radiation posed enormous dangers to astronaut flights and orbiting satellites. Soon after the Cuban Missile Crisis pushed the USA and USSR alarmingly close to nuclear war in the fall of 1962,125 the Soviet Union increased its retaliatory arsenal. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara glimpsed the possibility of “a more stable balance of terror.”126 Diplomatic work to address at least the testing of nuclear weapons—work that had been creeping along since the end of World War II—now rocketed ahead.

…

As Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara said in 1992 upon learning this information, “It meant that had a U.S. invasion been carried out . . . there was a 99 percent probability that nuclear war would have been initiated.” See LaFeber, America, Russia, 221, 231–37. See also the detailed account by the Central Intelligence Agency, “Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962, Value of Photo Intelligence,” May 8, 2007, www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/docs/v44i4a09p_0002.htm to –0015.htm (accessed Sept. 13, 2016; by Apr. 23, 2017, photos had been removed). 96.See, e.g., Edward R. Finch Jr., “Outer Space for ‘Peaceful Purposes,’ ” American Bar Association Journal 54:4 (Apr. 1968), 365–67.

Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World by Noam Chomsky, David Barsamian

British Empire, collective bargaining, cuban missile crisis, declining real wages, failed state, feminist movement, Howard Zinn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Joseph Schumpeter, launch on warning, liberation theology, Monroe Doctrine, Nelson Mandela, offshore financial centre, public intellectual, Ronald Reagan, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Upton Sinclair, uranium enrichment, Westphalian system

Dean Acheson, a respected elder statesman and a senior adviser to the Kennedy administration, delivered a lecture to the American Society of International Law in which he stated that no “legal issue” arises if the United States responds to any challenge to its “power, position, and prestige.”5 The timing of his statement is quite significant. He made it shortly after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, which virtually drove the world to the edge of nuclear war. The Cuban missile crisis was largely a result of a major campaign of international terrorism aimed at overthrowing Castro—what’s now called regime change, which spurred Cuba to bring in Russian missiles as a defensive measure. Acheson argued that the United States had the right of preventive war against a mere challenge to our position and prestige, not even a threat to our existence.

Distrust That Particular Flavor by William Gibson

AltaVista, Alvin Toffler, Bletchley Park, British Empire, cognitive dissonance, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Disneyland with the Death Penalty, edge city, Future Shock, imposter syndrome, informal economy, Joi Ito, means of production, megastructure, military-industrial complex, Neal Stephenson, pattern recognition, proxy bid, restrictive zoning, Snow Crash, space junk, technological determinism, telepresence, Vannevar Bush, Whole Earth Catalog

Once, a stove-sized, florally ornate cast-iron fragment that might have been a leftover part of the Brooklyn Bridge. Once, a lovingly crafted plywood box containing exquisitely painted models of every ballistic missile in the arsenals of the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. at the time of its making. This last, redolent of both the Cold War and the Cuban Missile Crisis, had particularly held my attention. It was obviously a military learning aid, and I wondered what sort of lectures it had illustrated. It seemed, then, a relic from a dark and terrible time that I remembered increasingly as a dream, a very bad dream, of childhood. But the image that kept coming to me, last week, was of the dust that must be settling on the ledge of E.

…

They are the italics of the perpetually impatient and somehow perpetually unworldly futurist, seeing his model going terminally wrong in the hands of the less clever, the less evolved. And they are with us today, those italics, though I’ve long since learned to run shy of science fiction that employs them. I suspect that I began to distrust that particular flavor of italics when the world didn’t end in October of 1962. I can’t recall the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis at all. My anxiety, and the world’s, reached some absolute peak. And then declined, history moving on, so much of it, and sometimes today the world of my own childhood strikes me as scarcely less remote than the world of Wells’s childhood, so much has changed in the meantime. I may actually have begun to distrust science fiction, then, or rather to trust it differently, as my initial passion for it began to decline, around that time.

Near and Distant Neighbors: A New History of Soviet Intelligence by Jonathan Haslam

active measures, Albert Einstein, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Bolshevik threat, Bretton Woods, British Empire, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, falling living standards, false flag, John von Neumann, lateral thinking, military-industrial complex, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, Ronald Reagan, Strategic Defense Initiative, Valery Gerasimov, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, éminence grise

The burglars found what they were looking for: three Minox cameras, dictaphones, cipher tables, instructions on communications, and money. Fearing he might flee, and with Khrushchev’s permission, they arrested Pen’kovskii (by then handled by the Americans) on October 22, 1962, the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Since all the evidence was in, and he was a weak man in an impossible situation, it was not hard to find Pen’kovskii guilty of having passed to CIA and MI5 more than five thousand photographs of secret information. After standing trial, he was shot on May 18, 1963.75 Serov, too, was punished for being duped so easily.

…

From de la Salle, Moscow secured NATO’s plans for war, including the entire list of targets and the payload destined for the destruction of Warsaw Pact forces.76 Crisis over Missiles in Cuba: Operation Anadyr Lagging behind in the strategic nuclear arms race as the Americans extended their advantage with every passing year, Khrushchev sought a short cut. This was how the Cuban Missile Crisis erupted in October 1962. The Russians always called this the Caribbean crisis—that is to say, it had little to do with Cuba itself. At this point, Georgii Bol’shakov found a place in history. Trained for military intelligence in 1943, Bol’shakov was soon fluent in English. In 1951 he was despatched to the United States under cover as the TASS correspondent in Washington, D.C.

…

Under Khrushchev, the moments of relief from constant confrontation proved fleeting. The pressure exerted on the West in Europe and the Third World was persistent and probing. The détente that the European democracies, in particular, had dreamed of under Khrushchev faded all too rapidly with the Berlin crisis between 1958 and 1961, capped by the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. However much both sides in the Cold War wished to avoid open conflict, the search for marginal advantage proved unending. There would therefore be no relief from the ongoing Cold War, in spite of treaties on the banning of atomic tests and a treaty on the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons.

First Friends: The Powerful, Unsung (And Unelected) People Who Shaped Our Presidents by Gary Ginsberg

affirmative action, anti-communist, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, forensic accounting, gentleman farmer, invisible hand, Kitchen Debate, Ralph Waldo Emerson, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Seymour Hersh, SoftBank, Ted Sorensen, traveling salesman, two and twenty, urban planning

John Fitzgerald Kennedy was sitting in the dining room of “the Suite of Presidents” in Chicago’s historic Blackstone Hotel, eating a bowl of the hotel’s famous Boston clam chowder while he scanned the local newspapers. It was Saturday, October 20, 1962, what would later be known as Day 5 of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The night before, he had headlined a fund-raiser for the Cook County Democratic Party. Now he would fly off for a day of vigorous campaigning for Democratic candidates in the upcoming midterm elections. As Kennedy began reviewing the day’s schedule—which would take him to five states, starting in Milwaukee and ending in Seattle—a phone call came in from his brother Bobby, the attorney general.

…

That Kennedy would choose Ormsby-Gore as one of his key confidants is testament to the fullness of a bond forged at the outset of World War II and deepened over the ensuing two decades. More remarkable still is the fact that the man the president entrusted with such sensitive information during the Cuban Missile Crisis was neither a member of his government nor even a citizen of the country he led. He was the British ambassador to the United States, a lord-in-waiting, a cousin by marriage to a sibling, and a man of exquisite social grace and fierce intellectual firepower (Kennedy often told friends that next to McGeorge Bundy, Ormsby-Gore was the most brilliant man he had ever met).

…

.… He was part of the family, really.” If anyone doubted that claim, they need only notice the black ambassadorial Rolls-Royce parked most days at the White House. By the time Ormsby-Gore walked into the White House “unseen” on Sunday morning, October 21, 1962, Kennedy was six days into the Cuban Missile Crisis, with the United States and the Soviet Union eyeball-to-eyeball in a standoff that seemed to be inching terrifyingly close to nuclear engagement. The night before, Kennedy had finally decided on a blockade as the military approach he would take, overruling generals like Curtis LeMay who favored bombing Cuba.

Pirates and Emperors, Old and New by Noam Chomsky

American ideology, anti-communist, Berlin Wall, collective bargaining, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, drone strike, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, land reform, liberation theology, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nelson Mandela, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, union organizing, urban planning

President Kennedy launched a campaign to bring “the terrors of the earth” to Cuba, his close confidant historian Arthur Schlesinger writes in his biography of Robert Kennedy, who was assigned the task as his highest priority. The terrorist atrocities were extreme, and as is well known, played a part in what Schlesinger called “the most dangerous moment in history,” the Cuban missile crisis. The terrorist attacks were resumed when the crisis abated, and continued for many years. In Angola, the Reagan Administration—the last holdouts in backing apartheid South Africa—supported the vicious and brutal UNITA army, and continued to do so even its leader, Jonas Savimbi, had been roundly defeated in a carefully monitored free election and even after South Africa had withdrawn support from this “monster whose lust for power had brought appalling misery to his people,” in the words of Marrack Goulding, British ambassador to Angola, who was seconded by the CIA station chief in nearby Kinshasa, who warned that “it wasn’t a good idea” to support the monster “because of the extent of Savimbi’s crimes.

…

Anti-Cuban terrorism was directed by a secret Special Group established in November 1961 under the code name “Mongoose,” involving 400 Americans, 2,000 Cubans, a private navy of fast boats, and a $50 million annual budget, run in part by a Miami CIA station functioning in violation of the Neutrality Act and, presumably, the law banning CIA operations in the United States.18 These operations included bombing of hotels and industrial installations, sinking of fishing boats, poisoning of crops and livestock, contamination of sugar exports, etc. Not all of these actions were specifically authorized by the CIA, but no such considerations absolve official enemies. Several of these terrorist operations took place at the time of the Cuban missile crisis of October–November 1962. In the weeks before, Garthoff reports, a Cuban terrorist group operating from Florida with U.S. government authorization carried out “a daring speedboat strafing attack on a Cuban seaside hotel near Havana where Soviet military technicians were known to congregate, killing a score of Russians and Cubans”; and shortly after, attacked British and Cuban cargo ships and again raided Cuba among other actions that were stepped up in early October.

…

Torture in Latin America, LADOC (Latin American Documentation), Lima, 1987, the report of the First International Seminar on Torture in Latin America (Buenos Aires, December 1985), devoted to “the repressive system” that “has at its disposal knowledge and a multinational technology of terror, developed in specialized centers whose purpose is to perfect methods of exploitation, oppression and dependence of individuals and entire peoples” by the use of “state terrorism inspired by the Doctrine of National Security.” This doctrine can be traced to the historic decision of the Kennedy Administration to shift the mission of the Latin American military to “internal security,” with far-reaching consequences. 18. Raymond Garthoff, Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Brookings Institution, 1987), 17. 19. Ibid., 16f., 78f., 89f., 98. See the references of note 1. Also Bradley Earl Ayers, The War that Never Was (Bobbs-Merrill, 1976); Warren Hinckle and William Turner, The Fish is Red (Harper & Row, 1981); William Blum, The CIA (Zed, 1986); Morris Morley, Imperial State and Revolution (Cambridge, 1987); Taylor Branch and George Crile, “The Kennedy Vendetta: Our Secret War on Cuba,” Harper’s, August 1975. 20.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker

1960s counterculture, affirmative action, Alan Turing: On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem, Albert Einstein, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Bonfire of the Vanities, book value, bread and circuses, British Empire, Broken windows theory, business cycle, California gold rush, Cass Sunstein, citation needed, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, colonial rule, Columbine, computer age, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, conceptual framework, confounding variable, correlation coefficient, correlation does not imply causation, crack epidemic, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Brooks, delayed gratification, demographic transition, desegregation, Doomsday Clock, Douglas Hofstadter, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, European colonialism, experimental subject, facts on the ground, failed state, first-past-the-post, Flynn Effect, food miles, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fudge factor, full employment, Garrett Hardin, George Santayana, ghettoisation, Gini coefficient, global village, Golden arches theory, Great Leap Forward, Henri Poincaré, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, high-speed rail, Hobbesian trap, humanitarian revolution, impulse control, income inequality, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the printing press, Isaac Newton, lake wobegon effect, libertarian paternalism, long peace, longitudinal study, loss aversion, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, McMansion, means of production, mental accounting, meta-analysis, Mikhail Gorbachev, mirror neurons, moral panic, mutually assured destruction, Nelson Mandela, nuclear taboo, Oklahoma City bombing, open economy, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Singer: altruism, power law, QWERTY keyboard, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, Republic of Letters, Richard Thaler, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, security theater, Skinner box, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, South China Sea, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanford prison experiment, statistical model, stem cell, Steven Levy, Steven Pinker, sunk-cost fallacy, technological determinism, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, the long tail, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, Tragedy of the Commons, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, Turing machine, twin studies, ultimatum game, uranium enrichment, Vilfredo Pareto, Walter Mischel, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, WikiLeaks, women in the workforce, zero-sum game

Cognitive landmarks in positive-sum negotiation: Schelling, 1960. 171. Higher value on life: Luard, 1986, p. 268. 172. Khrushchev: Quoted in Mueller, 2004a, p. 74. 173. Carter’s restraint: “Carter defends handling of hostage crisis,” Boston Globe, Nov. 17, 2009. 174. Saving face during the Cuban Missile Crisis: Glover, 1999, p. 202. 175. RFK on Cuban Missile Crisis: Kennedy, 1969/1999, p. 49. 176. Khrushchev and Kennedy pulling on a knot: Quoted in Glover, 1999, p. 202. 177. Cold War as ladder versus escalator: Mueller, 1989. 178. Military aversion to gratuitous killing: Hoban, 2007; Jack Hoban, personal communication, Nov. 14, 2009. 179.

…

The 2004 train bombing in Madrid by an Islamist terrorist group, far from whipping the Spanish into an anti-Islamic lather, prompted them to vote out the government that had involved them in the Iraq War, an involvement many felt had brought the attack upon them. The most consequential discounting of honor in the history of the world was the resolution of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Though the pursuit of national prestige may have precipitated the crisis, once Khrushchev and Kennedy were in it, they reflected on their mutual need to save face and set that up as a problem for the two of them to solve.174 Kennedy had read Tuchman’s The Guns of August, a history of World War I, and knew that an international game of chicken driven by “personal complexes of inferiority and grandeur” could lead to a cataclysm.

…

Demonstrations and petitions attracted millions of citizens, together with public figures such as Linus Pauling, Bertrand Russell, and Albert Schweitzer. The mounting pressure helped nudge the superpowers to a moratorium and then a ban on atmospheric nuclear testing, and then to a string of arms-control agreements. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 was a tipping point. Lyndon Johnson capitalized on the change to demonize Goldwater in the Daisy ad and called attention to the categorical boundary in a 1964 public statement: “Make no mistake. There is no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon. For nineteen peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom against another.

On the Future: Prospects for Humanity by Martin J. Rees

23andMe, 3D printing, air freight, Alfred Russel Wallace, AlphaGo, Anthropocene, Asilomar, autonomous vehicles, Benoit Mandelbrot, biodiversity loss, blockchain, Boston Dynamics, carbon tax, circular economy, CRISPR, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, decarbonisation, DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, demographic transition, Dennis Tito, distributed ledger, double helix, driverless car, effective altruism, Elon Musk, en.wikipedia.org, Geoffrey Hinton, global village, Great Leap Forward, Higgs boson, Hyperloop, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, James Webb Space Telescope, Jeff Bezos, job automation, Johannes Kepler, John Conway, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, mandelbrot fractal, mass immigration, megacity, Neil Armstrong, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, ocean acidification, off-the-grid, pattern recognition, precautionary principle, quantitative hedge fund, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Rodney Brooks, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, smart grid, speech recognition, Stanford marshmallow experiment, Stanislav Petrov, stem cell, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, supervolcano, technological singularity, the scientific method, Tunguska event, uranium enrichment, Walter Mischel, William MacAskill, Yogi Berra

These now loom far larger, and they are becoming more probable, and potentially more catastrophic, with each decade that passes. We’ve had one lucky escape already. 1.2. NUCLEAR THREATS In the Cold War era—when armament levels escalated beyond all reason—the superpowers could have stumbled towards Armageddon through muddle and miscalculation. It was the era of ‘fallout shelters’. During the Cuban missile crisis, my fellow students and I participated in vigils and demonstrations—our mood lightened only by the ‘protest songs’, such as Tom Lehrer’s lyrics: ‘We’ll all go together when we go, all suffused with an incandescent glow’. But we would have been even more scared had we truly realised just how close we were to catastrophe.

…

See also self-awareness consumerism, 36 Conway, John, 166–68, 170, 174 Copenhagen Consensus, 42 Copernican revolution, 184, 204, 205 cosmic exploration, 121, 123–24. See also spaceflight cosmic inflation theory, 187, 188 cosmology: as vital part of common culture, 214. See also big bang Coursera, 98 creationism, 195, 196 Crick, Francis, 204–5 CRISPR/Cas9, 66–67, 73–74 Crutzen, Paul, 31 cryonics, 81–82 Cuba, environmental plan of, 45 Cuban missile crisis, 17–18, 20 Curiosity rover, 127–28, 143 cyberattack, threat of, 20–21, 94–95 cybertech, benefits and vulnerabilities of, 5, 6–7, 63, 109–10 cyborg technologies, 7, 151 dark matter, 179 Dartnell, Lewis, 217 Darwin, Charles, 121–22, 175, 194, 195, 196, 214. See also evolution Dasgupta, Partha, 34 death: assisted dying, 70–71; organ transplants and, 71 Deep Blue, 86 DeepMind, 86–87, 106 demographic transition, 30 Dengue virus, 74 designer babies, 68–69 Deutsch, David, 192 developing countries: clean energy for, 48–49, 51; effective redeployment of existing resources for, 224; genetically modified (GM) crops and, 66; impact of information technology on, 83–84; megacities of, 22, 29, 77, 109; need for good governance in, 28–29; need to bypass high-consumption stage, 27, 36; population trends in, 30–31.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World by Adam Grant

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, Bluma Zeigarnik, business process, business process outsourcing, Cass Sunstein, classic study, clean water, cognitive dissonance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dean Kamen, double helix, Elon Musk, emotional labour, fear of failure, Firefox, George Santayana, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, information security, Jeff Bezos, Jeff Hawkins, job satisfaction, job-hopping, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Roose, Kickstarter, Lean Startup, Louis Pasteur, Mahatma Gandhi, Mark Zuckerberg, meta-analysis, minimum viable product, Neil Armstrong, Nelson Mandela, Network effects, off-the-grid, PalmPilot, pattern recognition, Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, Ralph Waldo Emerson, random walk, risk tolerance, Rosa Parks, Saturday Night Live, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Skype, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Steven Pinker, TED Talk, The Wisdom of Crowds, women in the workforce

Subsequent studies have also demonstrated that cohesion takes time to develop: A group without stable membership has no opportunity to form a sense of closeness and camaraderie. University of Toronto researcher Glen Whyte points out that in the year after the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy led a cohesive group of mostly the same advisers to an effective resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. We now know that the consensus to launch the Cuban invasion “was not the result of a desire to maintain the group’s cohesiveness or esprit de corps,” explains Stanford psychologist Roderick Kramer. Cohesion doesn’t cause groupthink anywhere else, either. There was another fatal flaw in Janis’s analysis: He studied mostly cohesive groups making bad choices.

…

At IDEO, the design consulting firm that created the mouse for Apple, managers throw cultural fit out the window, focusing instead on how potential candidates can improve the culture. * In light of this evidence that authentic dissent works best, I asked Nemeth what she thought of Robert Kennedy’s assigned devil’s advocate role in the Cuban missile crisis. “I think Bobby Kennedy’s role there was to ensure a process of questioning each possibility,” she replied. “What he did was at least make them go through the motions of reconsidering positions—at least defending them. I still don’t think this has the same effect as authentic dissent but it was certainly an improvement over a rush to judgment.”

…

As a Bridgewater employee, if you talk behind someone’s back, they’ll call you a slimy weasel to your face. If you do it more than once, you might be sent packing. * The futility of democratic voting as a decision-making process has been clear since the Bay of Pigs debacle, when President Kennedy’s straw poll silenced the opposition. Having learned from that experience, in the Cuban missile crisis, Kennedy sought to bring more dissenting opinions to the table. To prevent the committee from favoring for political reasons the option that pleased him, he started by limiting his own role in the decision-making process, which forced the group to make a more balanced assessment of a broader range of possibilities.

Origin Story: A Big History of Everything by David Christian

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Albert Einstein, Anthropocene, Arthur Eddington, butterfly effect, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cepheid variable, colonial rule, Colonization of Mars, Columbian Exchange, complexity theory, cosmic microwave background, cosmological constant, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, dark matter, demographic transition, double helix, Easter island, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, Ernest Rutherford, European colonialism, Francisco Pizarro, Haber-Bosch Process, Harvard Computers: women astronomers, Isaac Newton, James Watt: steam engine, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kim Stanley Robinson, Large Hadron Collider, Late Heavy Bombardment, Marshall McLuhan, microbiome, nuclear winter, Paris climate accords, planetary scale, rising living standards, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Stephen Hawking, Steven Pinker, Stuart Kauffman, TED Talk, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, trade route, Yogi Berra

But I worried that teaching a national or imperial history (Russia was both nation and empire) conveyed the subliminal message that humans are divided, at the most fundamental level, into competing tribes. Was that a helpful message to teach in a world with nuclear weapons? As a schoolboy during the Cuban missile crisis, I vividly remember thinking we were on the verge of an apocalypse. Everything was about to be destroyed. And I remember wondering if there were kids “over there” in the Soviet Union who were equally scared. After all, they, too, were humans. As a child, I had lived in Nigeria. That gave me a strong sense of a single, extraordinarily diverse human community, a feeling that was confirmed when, as a teenager, I went to Atlantic College, an international school in South Wales.

…

From the bloodbath of the world wars, the United States and the Soviet Union emerged as the first global superpowers. There were many local wars, most aimed at overthrowing European colonial rule. But there were no more major international wars during the era of the Cold War. By now, all powers understood that there would be no victors in a nuclear war. But there were some close shaves. Soon after the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, President John Kennedy admitted that the odds of an all-out nuclear war had been “between one out of three and even.”1 The four decades after World War II witnessed the most remarkable spurt of economic growth in human history. This was the period of the Great Acceleration. Global exchanges were renewed and intensified.

…

Wrigley, Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, loc. 2112, Kindle. 18. Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power (New York: Free Press, 1991), chapter 1. 19. Ibid., 16. Chapter 11. The Anthropocene: Threshold 8 1. Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 271. 2. Angus Maddison, The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development, 2001), 127. 3. Tim Lenton, Earth Systems Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 82. 4.

Can Democracy Work?: A Short History of a Radical Idea, From Ancient Athens to Our World by James Miller

Berlin Wall, Black Lives Matter, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Cass Sunstein, classic study, colonial rule, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, disinformation, Donald Trump, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, income inequality, Joseph Schumpeter, mass incarceration, means of production, Occupy movement, Plato's cave, public intellectual, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republic of Letters, Steve Bannon, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, transatlantic slave trade, union organizing, upwardly mobile, Vilfredo Pareto

Both sides stockpiled a growing number of ever more sophisticated nuclear weapons. Both sides maneuvered for advantage, in part through proxy wars that engulfed distant lands in death and destruction, and in part through hair-raising episodes of “nuclear brinksmanship.” The most memorable example of the latter came during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, when, as declassified documents show, Soviet and American leaders came dangerously close to irradiating a large portion of the Northern Hemisphere. Meanwhile, a series of newly independent nations appeared, claiming their right to self-determination, starting with the partitioning of British India into the new nations of the Republic of India and the Dominion of Pakistan in 1947.

…

In the course of doing my job, I came to see from the inside—especially with the sympathetic mentorship of Daniel Bell, who was still intellectually active in the Academy in those days—how the country’s self-selected intellectual ruling class understood itself and its political obligations and prerogatives. “hierarchy, coercion, secrecy and deception”: Huntington, in Crozier, Huntington, and Watanuki, The Crisis of Democracy, 93. “nuclear brinksmanship”: Alexandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958–1964: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997). Cf. Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth (New York: Knopf, 1982). A lifelong supporter of America’s Democratic Party: Robert D. Kaplan, “Looking the World in the Eye,” The Atlantic, December 2001. This sensitive profile of Huntington, along with the appreciation of Robert Putnam cited above, is my source for the biographical details that follow.

…

.; Madison as chief architect of; viewed as democratic instrument; voting restrictions in Constitution of Athens, The (Aristotle, attributed) Continental Army Continental Congress Creek nation Crisis of Democracy, The Critias Croly, Herbert Crossley, Archibald Crystallizing Public Opinion Cuban missile crisis (1962) culture, American, see American culture Czechoslovakia; Velvet Revolution in Dahl, Robert Danton, Georges David, Jacques-Louis Davidson, Carl Debs, Eugene V. Declaration of Independence; as moral challenge Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, French Delphi demagogues democracy: in American republic, see American democracy; in ancient Greece, see Athenian democracy; anxieties about; capitalism and; Cole’s conception of; communism and; conflicting views of; Dahl’s definition of; dangers of; demagogues and; Dewey’s conception of; dictatorial; direct, see direct democracy; Economist index of; eighteenth-century rebirth of; as enduring ideal; as European invention; forced export of; Freedom House index of; future of; as “government by popular opinion” (Wilson); Havel on; Huntington’s view of; inherent instability of; internationalism and; labor unions and; Lenin’s conception of; liberalism and; liberalism vs.; limits on; Lincoln on; Lippmann’s conception of; Marx’s ambivalence about; Mazzini’s view of; Michels’s faith in; misleading accounts of; modern conception of; as most often honored in the breach; nationalist movements and; in nineteenth-century Europe, see Europe, struggle for equality in; as pandering to desire; participatory (see also direct democracy); psychological limits on; public opinion and; representative, see representative democracy; revolt as recurrent feature of; Rice’s view of; Rousseau on; Schumpeter’s view of; slavery and; social, see social democracy; totalitarian; V-Dem Institute report on; Wallas on; Weber on; Whitman on; Wilson’s conception of; World War II and democracy, as ideal: in popular opinion; as shared belief system democracy, in twentieth century; American vs.

Model Thinker: What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You by Scott E. Page

Airbnb, Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, algorithmic trading, Alvin Roth, assortative mating, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Black Swan, blockchain, business cycle, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, Checklist Manifesto, computer age, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, cuban missile crisis, data science, deep learning, deliberate practice, discrete time, distributed ledger, Easter island, en.wikipedia.org, Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science, Everything should be made as simple as possible, experimental economics, first-price auction, Flash crash, Ford Model T, Geoffrey West, Santa Fe Institute, germ theory of disease, Gini coefficient, Higgs boson, High speed trading, impulse control, income inequality, Isaac Newton, John von Neumann, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, knowledge worker, Long Term Capital Management, loss aversion, low skilled workers, Mark Zuckerberg, market design, meta-analysis, money market fund, multi-armed bandit, Nash equilibrium, natural language processing, Network effects, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, p-value, Pareto efficiency, pattern recognition, Paul Erdős, Paul Samuelson, phenotype, Phillips curve, power law, pre–internet, prisoner's dilemma, race to the bottom, random walk, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Robert Solow, school choice, scientific management, sealed-bid auction, second-price auction, selection bias, six sigma, social graph, spectrum auction, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Supply of New York City Cabdrivers, systems thinking, tacit knowledge, The Bell Curve by Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, The Great Moderation, the long tail, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, the rule of 72, the scientific method, The Spirit Level, the strength of weak ties, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, Tragedy of the Commons, urban sprawl, value at risk, web application, winner-take-all economy, zero-sum game

We next show how to create a dialogue among multiple models by reconsidering two historical events: the 2008 global financial market collapse, which reduced total wealth (or what had been thought to be wealth) by trillions of dollars, resulting in a four-year global recession, and the 1961 Cuban missile crisis, which nearly resulted in nuclear war. The 2008 financial collapse has multiple explanations: too much foreign investment, over-leveraged investment banks, lack of oversight in the mortgage approval process, blissful optimism among home-flipping consumers, the complexity of financial instruments, a misunderstanding of risk, and greedy bankers who knew the bubble existed and expected a bailout.

…

As Lo summarizes: “We should strive at the outset to entertain as many interpretations of the same set of objective facts as we can, and hope that a more nuanced and internally consistent understanding of the crisis emerges in the fullness of time.” He goes on to say, “Only by collecting a diverse and often mutually contradictory set of narratives can we eventually develop a more complete understanding of the crisis.” No single model suffices.11 In Essence of Decision, Graham Allison undertakes a many-model approach to explain the Cuban missile crisis. On April 17, 1961, a CIA-trained paramilitary group landed on the shores of Cuba in a failed attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s communist regime, increasing tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, Cuba’s ally. In response, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev moved short-range nuclear missiles to Cuba.

…

“Structural Vulnerability of the North American Power Grid.” Physical Review E 69: 025103. Allesina, Stefano, and Mercedes Pascual. 2009. “Googling Food Webs: Can an Eigenvector Measure Species’ Importance for Coextinctions?” PLOS: Computational Biology 9, no. 4. Allison, Graham. 1971. Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Little, Brown. Alvaredo, Facundo, Anthony B. Atkinson, Thomas Piketty, and Emmanuel Saez. 2013. “The World Top Incomes Database.” https://www.inet.ox.ac.uk/projects/view/149. Anderson, Chris. 2008a. “The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete.” Wired 16, no. 7.

The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce

"World Economic Forum" Davos, 3D printing, affirmative action, Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, bread and circuses, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, business cycle, call centre, carried interest, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, cognitive dissonance, colonial exploitation, colonial rule, computer age, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Doha Development Round, Donald Trump, double entry bookkeeping, driverless car, Erik Brynjolfsson, European colonialism, everywhere but in the productivity statistics, Evgeny Morozov, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, future of work, gentrification, George Santayana, gig economy, Gini coefficient, global pandemic, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, imperial preference, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jaron Lanier, knowledge economy, lateral thinking, Les Trente Glorieuses, liberal capitalism, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, means of production, meritocracy, microaggression, Monroe Doctrine, moral panic, more computing power than Apollo, mutually assured destruction, new economy, New Urbanism, Norman Mailer, offshore financial centre, one-China policy, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Peace of Westphalia, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, precariat, purchasing power parity, reserve currency, reshoring, Richard Florida, Robert Gordon, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, sharing economy, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Skype, Snapchat, software is eating the world, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, superstar cities, telepresence, The Rise and Fall of American Growth, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas L Friedman, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, universal basic income, unpaid internship, Washington Consensus, We are the 99%, We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters, white flight, World Values Survey, Yogi Berra

Each feeds off and reinforces the other. The biggest duty of any state is to protect the nation from enemies. In the pre-nuclear age, this was accomplished with large-scale armies. During the nuclear era, it moved increasingly to weapons of mass destruction. Although the Cold War involved near-misses, most notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the Americans and the Soviets gradually came to understand each other’s signals. Eventually each was able to read the other’s nuclear grammar fluently. After 1962 the two sides set up a nuclear hotline and even agreed to exchanges of personnel so that they could minimise the risk they would stumble into war.

…

., 31, 73, 79–81, 103, 156, 157, 163, 165, 182 Bush Republicans, 189 Cameron, David, 15, 92, 98, 99–100 Carnegie, Andrew, 42–3 Cherokee Indians, 114, 134 Chicago, 48 China: as autocracy, 78, 80, 83–6, 159–60, 165, 201; circular view of history, 11; colonial exploitation of, 20, 22–3, 55; decoupling of economy from West (2008), 29–30, 83–4; democracy activists in, 86, 140; entry to WTO (2001), 26; exceptionalism, 166; expulsion of Western NGOs, 85; future importance of, 200–1; and global trading system, 19–20, 26–7; Great Firewall in, 129; handover of Hong Kong (1997), 163–4; history in popular imagination, 163–4; hostility to Western liberalism, 84–6, 159–60, 162; and hydrogen bomb, 163; and Industrial Revolution, 22, 23–4; internal migration in, 41; investment in developing countries, 32, 84; military expansion, 157, 158; as nuclear power, 175; Obama’s trip to (2009), 159–60; political future of, 168–9, 202; pragmatic development route, 28, 29–30; pre-Industrial Revolution economy, 22; rapid expansion of, 13, 20–2, 25–8, 30, 35, 58, 157, 159; and robot economy, 62; Shanghai Cooperation Organization, 80; Trump’s promised trade war, 135, 145, 149; and Trump’s victory, 85–6, 140; US naval patrols in seas off, 148, 158, 165; US policy towards, 25–6, 145–6, 157–61, 165; US–China war scenario, 145–53, 161; in Western thought, 161–2; Xi’s crackdown on internal dissent, 168; Zheng He’s naval fleet, 165–6 China Central Television (CCTV), 84, 85 Christianity, 10, 105 Churchill, Winston, 98, 117, 128, 169 cities, 47–51, 130 class: creeping gentrification, 46, 48, 50–1; emerging middle classes, 21, 31, 39, 159; in Didier Eribon’s France, 104–10; Golden Age for Western middle class, 33–4, 43; Hillaryland in USA, 87–8; ‘meritocracy’, 43, 44–6; mobility as vanishing in West, 43–6; move rightwards of blue-collar whites, 95–9, 102, 108–10, 189–91, 194–5; poor whites in USA, 95–6, 112–13; populism in late nineteenth century, 110–11; and post-war centre-left politics, 89–92, 99; ‘precariat’ (‘left-behinds’), 12, 13, 43–8, 50, 91, 98–9, 110, 111, 131; and Trump’s agenda, 111, 151, 169, 190; urban liberal elites, 47, 49–51, 71, 87–9, 91–5, 110, 204; West’s middle-income problem, 13, 31–2, 34–41 Clausewitz, Carl von, 161 Clinton, Bill, 26, 71, 73, 90, 97–8, 157–9 Clinton, Hillary, 15, 16, 47, 67, 79, 160, 188; 2016 election campaign, 87–8, 91–4, 95–6, 119, 133; reasons for defeat of, 94–5, 96–8 Cold War: end of, 3–5, 6, 7, 74, 77, 78, 117, 121; nuclear near misses, 174; in US popular imagination, 163; and Western democracy, 115–16, 117, 183 Colombia, 72 colonialism, European, 11, 13, 20, 22–3; anti-colonial movements, 9–10; and Industrial Revolution, 13, 23–5, 55–6 Comey, James, 133 communism, 3–4, 5, 6, 105–8, 115 Confucius Institutes, 84 Congress, US, 133–4 Copenhagen summit (2009), 160 Coughlin, Father, 113 Cowen, Tyler, 40, 50, 57 Crick, Bernard, 138 crime, 47 Crimea, annexation of (2014), 8, 173 Cuba, 165 Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), 165, 174 cyber warfare, 176–8 Cyborg, 54 D’Alema, Massimo, 90 Daley, Richard, 189 Danish People’s Party, 102 Davos Forum, 19–20, 27, 68–71, 72–3, 91, 121 de Blasio, Bill, 49 de Gaulle, Charles, 106, 116 de Tocqueville, Alexis, 38, 112, 126–7 democracy, liberal: as an adaptive organism, 87; and America’s Founding Fathers, 9, 112–13, 123, 126, 138; and Arab Spring, 82; Chinese view of US system, 85–6; communism replaces as bête noire, 115; concept of ‘the people’, 87, 116, 119–20; damaged by responses to 9/11 attacks, 79–81, 86, 140, 165; and Davos elite, 68–71; de Tocqueville on, 126–7; declining faith in, 8–9, 12, 14, 88–9, 98–100, 103–4, 119–23, 202–3; demophobia, 111, 114, 119–23; economic growth as strongest glue, 13, 37, 103, 201–2; efforts to suppress franchise, 104, 123; elite disenchantment with, 121; elite fear of public opinion, 69, 111, 118; failing democracies (since 2000), 12, 82–3, 138–9; and ‘folk theory of democracy’, 119, 120; Fukuyama’s ‘End of History’, 5, 14, 181; and global trilemma, 72–3; and Great Recession, 83–4; and Hong Kong, 164; idealism of Rousseau and Kant, 126; illiberal democracy concept, 119, 120, 136–7, 138–9, 204; in India, 201; individual rights and liberty, 14, 97, 120; late twentieth century democratic wave, 77–8, 83; and mass distraction, 127, 128–30; need for regaining of optimism, 202–3; need to abandon deep globalisation, 73–4; nineteenth-century fear of, 114–15; and plural society, 139; popular will concept, 87, 118, 119–20, 126, 137–8; post-Cold War triumphalism, 5, 6, 71; post-war golden era, 33–4, 43, 89, 116, 117; post-WW2 European constitutions, 116; and ‘precariat’ (‘left-behinds’), 12, 13, 43–8, 50, 91, 98–9, 110, 111, 131; the rich as losing faith in, 122–3; Russia’s hostility to, 6–8, 79, 85; space for as shrinking, 72–3; technocratic mindset of elites, 88–9, 92–5, 111; Trump as mortal threat to, 97, 104, 111, 126, 133–6, 138, 139, 161, 169–70, 178–84, 203–4; and US-led invasion of Iraq (2003), 8, 81, 85; Western toolkit for, 77–9; see also politics in West Diamond, Larry, 83 digital revolution, 51–5, 59–66, 67–8, 174; cyber-utopians, 52, 60, 65; debate over future impact, 56; and education, 197, 198; exponential rate of change, 170, 172, 197; internet, 34, 35, 127, 128, 129–30, 131, 163; internet boom (1990s), 34, 59; and low productivity growth, 34, 59, 60; as one-sided exchange, 66–7; and risk-averse/conformist mindset, 40 diplomacy and global politics: annexation of Crimea (2014), 8, 173; China’s increased prestige, 19–20, 26–8, 29–30, 35, 83–5, 159; declining US/Western hegemony, 14, 21–2, 26–8, 140–1, 200–1; existential challenges in years ahead, 174–84; multipolarity concept, 6–8, 70; and nation’s popular imagination, 162–3; parallels with 1914 period, 155–61; and US ‘war on terror’, 80–1, 140, 183; US–China relations, 25–6, 145–6, 157–61, 165; US–China war scenario, 145–53, 161; US–Russia relations under Obama, 79 Doha Round, 73 drugs and narcotics, 37–8 Drutman, Lee, 68 Dubai, 48 Durkheim, Émile, 37 Duterte, Rodrigo, 136–7, 138 economists, 27 economy, global see global economy; globalisation, economic; growth, economic Edison, Thomas, 59 education, 42, 44–5, 53, 55, 197, 198 Egypt, 82, 175 electricity, 58, 59 Elephant Chart, 31–3 Enlightenment, 24, 104 entrepreneurialism, decline of in West, 39–40 Erdoğan, Recep Tayyip, 137 Eribon, Didier, 104–10, 111 Ethiopia, 82 Europe: ‘complacent classes’ in, 40; decline of established parties, 89; geopolitical loss, 141; growth of inequality in modern era, 43; identity politics in, 139–40; migration crisis, 70, 100, 140, 180–1; nationalism in, 10–11, 102, 108–9; nineteenth-century diplomacy, 7–8, 155–6, 171–2; post-war constitutions in, 116; Putin’s interference in, 179, 180; as turning inwards, 14 European Commission, 118, 120 European Union, 72, 117–19, 139–40, 179–80, 181, 201; see also Brexit Facebook, 39, 54, 67, 178 fake news, 130, 148, 178–9 Farage, Nigel, 98–9, 100, 184 fascism, 5, 77, 97, 100, 117 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 131–2, 133 Felt, Mark, 131–2, 134 financial crisis, global (2008), 27, 29, 30, 91; Atlantic recession following, 30, 63–4, 83–4 financial services, 54 Financial Times, 136, 200 Finland, 139 First World War, 115, 154–5 Flake, Jeff, 134 Florida, Richard, 47, 49, 50, 51 Flynn, Michael, 148, 149 Foa, Roberto Stefan, 123 Ford, Henry, 66–7 Foucault, Michel, 107 France, 15, 37, 63, 102, 104–10, 116; 1968 Paris demonstrations, 188; French Revolution, 3 Franco, General Francisco, 77 Franco-German War (1870–1), 155–6 Frank, Robert H., 30, 35–6, 44 Franklin, Benjamin, 204 Freelancer.com, 63 Friedman, Ben, The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth, 38 Friedman, Thomas, 74 Frontex (border agency), 181 FSB, 6 Fukuyama, Francis, 12, 83, 101, 139, 193–4; ‘The End of History?’

America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy by Francis Fukuyama

affirmative action, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, European colonialism, failed state, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, information security, Internet Archive, John Perry Barlow, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, mutually assured destruction, New Journalism, no-fly zone, oil-for-food scandal, race to the bottom, RAND corporation, rent-seeking, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, transaction costs, uranium enrichment, War on Poverty, Washington Consensus

John Lewis Gaddis has shown that preemption (often unilateral preemption) has been used by American administrations since the early nineteenth century; it was seriously considered at several points during the Cold War. 12 The Eisenhower administration debated a preemptive "rollback" strategy in the early 1950s, and the Kennedy administration considered preempting the Soviet medium-range missiles deployed to Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. What was revolutionary about the NSS was its expansion of traditional notions of preemption to include what amounted to preventive war. Preemption is usually understood to be an effort to break up an imminent military attack; preventive war is a military operation designed to head off a threat that is months or years away from materializing.

…

See also nuclear deterrence; Soviet Union Commentary, 17 communism: collapse of, 52-53, 59, 60; differing views of, 50-51; opposition to, 15-17, 50-51 Community of Democracies, 176-77, 187 competition: and political development, 129 conditionality: and structural adjustment loans, 145-47 conservatism, traditional: as compared with neoconservatism, 38-39 2l8 counterinsurgency, 76, 184 crime: and social policy, 19-20 Cuban Missile Crisis, 83 cultural relativism, 22, 23-24 Czechoslovakia, 29 Darfur, 173 Dayton Accords, 98 Dean, Howard, 12 Declaration of Independence, 23 decolonization, 118 democracy, Western: assumptions about, 30-31, 116; as by-product of modernization, 54, 57; and economic development, 128; expansion of, 55-58, in; in Germany, 132; in Japan, 132; and liberal authoritarianism, 140-41; and political development, 125; promotion of, 46-47, 114, 115, 117, 131-38, 140, 150-51, 177, 178, 206m; role of institutions in, 116-18; as solution to terrorism, 74; sources of weakness of, 24 Democratic Party, 61 democratic transitions, 117, 127-30, 176; role of United States in, 131-32, 133,134-38 deterrence.

Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure by Tim Harford

An Inconvenient Truth, Andrew Wiles, banking crisis, Basel III, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Black Swan, Boeing 747, business logic, car-free, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Cass Sunstein, charter city, Clayton Christensen, clean water, cloud computing, cognitive dissonance, complexity theory, corporate governance, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Dava Sobel, Deep Water Horizon, Deng Xiaoping, disruptive innovation, double entry bookkeeping, Edmond Halley, en.wikipedia.org, Erik Brynjolfsson, experimental subject, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Fermat's Last Theorem, financial engineering, Firefox, food miles, Gerolamo Cardano, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, Herman Kahn, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, Jane Jacobs, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, Jarndyce and Jarndyce, John Harrison: Longitude, knowledge worker, loose coupling, Martin Wolf, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, Netflix Prize, New Urbanism, Nick Leeson, PageRank, Piper Alpha, profit motive, Richard Florida, Richard Thaler, rolodex, Shenzhen was a fishing village, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, SpaceShipOne, special economic zone, spectrum auction, Steve Jobs, supply-chain management, tacit knowledge, the market place, The Wisdom of Crowds, too big to fail, trade route, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, Virgin Galactic, web application, X Prize, zero-sum game

But while this is how we instinctively think about how leadership works and how organisations should operate, it’s a dangerously misleading view. The problem is that no leader can make the right decision every time. Napoleon, perhaps the finest general in history, invaded Russia with half a million men and lost over 90 per cent of them to death and desertion. John F. Kennedy forced Khrushchev to back down during the Cuban missile crisis. Yet he will also be remembered for the of Pigs fiasco, when he somehow persuaded himself both that 1400 US-trained Cuban exiles might defeat 200,000 troops and topple Fidel Castro, and that nobody would suspect that the US was involved. Mao Zedong was the greatest of all insurgent commanders, but a catastrophic peacetime leader whose blundering arrogance killed tens of millions of his own people.

…

Irving Janis’s classic analysis of the Bay of Pigs and other foreign policy fiascos, Victims of Group Think, explains that a strong team – a ‘kind of family’ – can quickly fall into the habit of reinforcing each other’s prejudices out of simple team spirit and a desire to bolster the group. Janis details the way in which John F. Kennedy fooled himself into thinking that he was gathering a range of views and critical comments. All the while his team of advisers were unconsciously giving each other a false sense of infallibility. Later, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy was far more aggressive about demanding alternative options, exhaustively exploring risks, and breaking up his advisory groups to ensure that they didn’t become too comfortable. It was a lesson that David Petraeus – another historian – had grasped. Once Petraeus had a robust, usable doctrine, properly tested by a range of contrasting views, he launched his own guerrilla campaign to get the US Army to pay attention to it.

…

., 55, 59, 71 catastrophe experts, 184–6, 191, 194–5, 208 Cave-Brown-Cave, Air Commodore Henry, 81, 83, 85, 88, 114 centralised decision making, 70, 74–5, 226, 227, 228; warfare and, 46–7, 67–8, 69, 71, 76, 78–9 centrally planned economies, 11, 21, 23–6, 68–9, 70 Challenger shuttle disaster, 184 Charles, Prince, 154 Chernobyl disaster, 185 Chile, 3, 69–72, 76, 148 China, 11, 94, 131, 143, 147, 150, 152 Christensen, Clayton, 239–40, 242, 245 Chuquicamata mine (Chile), 3 Churchill, Winston, 41–2, 82, 85 Citigroup, 205131 Clay Mathematics Institute, 110 climate change, 4, 20; carbon dioxide emissions and, 132, 156, 159–65, 166–9, 173, 176, 178–80; ‘carbon footprinting’, 159–66; carbon tax/price idea, 167–9, 178–80, 222; environmental regulations and, 169–74, 176, 177; ‘food miles’ and, 159, 160–1, 168; governments/politics and, 157–8, 163, 169–74, 176, 180; greenhouse effect and, 154–6; individual behaviour and, 158–63, 164, 165–6; innovation prizes and, 109, 179; methane and, 155, 156, 157, 159–60, 173, 179, 180; new technologies and, 94–5; simplicity/complexity paradox, 156, 157–8; Thaler-Sunstein nudge, 177–8; uncertainty and, 156 Coca-Cola, 28, 243 Cochrane, Archie, 123–7, 129, 130, 140, 238, 256 cognitive dissonance, 251–2 Cold War, 6, 41, 62–3 Colombia, 117, 147 complexity theory, 3–4, 13, 16, 49, 72103, 237 computer games, 92–3 computer industry, 11–12, 69, 70–1, 239–42 corporations and companies: disruptive technologies and, 239–44, 245–6; environmental issues and, 157–8, 159, 161, 165, 170–1, 172–3; flattening of hierarchies, 75, 224–5, 226–31; fraud and, 208, 210, 212–13, 214; innovation and, 17, 81–2, 87–9, 90, 93–4, 95–7, 108–11, 112, 114, 224–30, 232–4; limited liability, 244; patents and, 95–7, 110, 111, 114; randomised experiments and, 235–9; skunk works model and, 89, 91, 93, 152, 224, 242–3, 245; strategy and, 16, 18, 27–8, 36, 223, 224–34; see also business world; economics and finance cot-death, 120–1 credit-rating agencies, 188, 189, 190 Criner, Roy, 252 Crosby, Sir James, 211, 214, 250, 256 Cuban Missile Crisis, 41, 63 Cudahy Packing, 9 dairy products, 158, 159–60, 164–5, 166 Darwin, Charles, 86 Dayton Hudson, 243 de Montyon, Baron, 107–8 Deal or No Deal (TV game show), 33–5, 253 decentralisation, 73, 74–8, 222, 224–5, 226–31; Iraq war and, 76–8, 79; trial and error and, 31, 174–5, 232, 234 decision making: big picture thinking, 41, 42, 46, 55; consistent standards and, 28–9; diversity of opinions, 31, 44–5, 46, 48–50, 59–63; doctrine of unanimous advice, 30–1, 47–50, 62–3, 64, 78; grandiosity and, 27–8; idealized hierarchy, 40–1, 42, 46–7, 49–50, 55, 78; learning from mistakes, 31–5, 78, 119, 250–1, 256–9, 261–2; local/on the ground, 73, 74, 75, 76–8, 79, 224–5, 226–31; reporting lines/chain of command, 41, 42, 46, 49–50, 55–6, 58, 59–60, 64, 77–8; supportive team with shared vision, 41, 42, 46, 56, 62–3; unsuccessful, 19, 32, 34–5, 41–2; see also centralised decision making Deepwater Horizon disaster (April 2010), 36, 216–19, 220 Democratic Republic of Congo, 139–40 Deng Xiaoping, 1 Denmark, 148 Department for International Development (DFID), 133, 137–8 development aid: charter cities movement, 150–3; community-driven reconstruction (CDR), 137–40; corruption and, 133–5, 142–3; economic ‘big push’ and, 143–5, 148–9; feedback loops, 141–3; fundamentally unidentified questions (FUQs), 132, 133; governments and, 118, 120, 143, 144, 148–9; identification strategies, 132–5; microfinance, 116, 117–18, 120; Millennium Development Villages, 129–30, 131; product space concept, 145–8; randomised trials and, 127–9, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135–6, 137–40, 141; randomistas, 127–9, 132, 133, 135–40, 258; selection principle and, 117, 140–3, 149; SouthWest project in China, 131; success and failure, 116, 118–20, 130–1; Muhammad Yunus and, 116, 117–18 digital photography, 240–1, 242 Dirks, Ray, 211–12, 213 disk-drive industry, 239–40, 242 Djankov, Simeon, 135 domino-toppling displays, 185, 200–1 Don Basin (Russia), 21–2, 24, 27 dot-com bubble, 10, 92 Dubai, 147, 150 Duflo, Esther, 127, 131, 135, 136 Dyck, Alexander, 210, 213 eBay, 95, 230 econometrics, 132–5 economics and finance: banking system as complex and tightly coupled, 185, 186, 187–90, 200, 201, 207–8, 220; bankruptcy contingency plans, 204; Basel III regulations, 195; bond insurance business, 189–90; bridge bank/rump bank approach, 205–6; capital requirements, 203, 204; centrally planned economiepos=0000032004 >11, 21, 23–6, 68–9, 70; CoCos (contingent convertible bonds), 203–4; complexity and, 3–4; decoupling of financial system, 202, 203–8, 215–16, 220; Dodd-Frank reform act (2010), 195; employees as error/fraud spotters, 210, 211, 212, 213, 215; energy crisis (1970s), 179; evolutionary theory and, 14–17, 18–19, 174–5; improvements since 1960s, 215; inter-bank payments systems, 207; latent errors and, 209–10, 215; ‘LMX spiral’, 183–4, 189; narrow banking approach, 206–7, 215; need for systemic heat maps, 195–6; reinsurance markets, 183; zombie banks, 201–2; see also business world; corporations and companies; financial crisis (from 2007) Edison, Thomas, 236, 238 Eliot, T.S., 260 Elizabeth House (Waterloo), 170–1, 172 Endler, John, 221–2, 223, 234, 239 Engineers Without Borders, 119 Enron, 197–8, 200, 208, 210 environmental issues: biofuels, 84, 173, 176; clean energy, 91, 94, 96, 245–6; corporations/companies and, 159, 161, 165, 170–1, 172–3; renewable energy technology, 84, 91, 96, 130, 168, 169–73, 179, 245; see also climate change Equity Funding Corporation, 212 Ernst and Young, 199 errors and mistakes, types of, 208–10; latent errors, 209–10, 215, 218, 220 European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), 188 European Union, 169, 173 Evans, Martin, 100 evolutionary theory, 6, 12–13, 15–17, 174, 258; business world and, 14–17, 174–5, 233–4; Darwin and, 86; digital world and, 13–14, 259–60; economics and, 14–17, 174–5; Endler’s guppy experiments, 221–2, 223, 239; fitness landscapes, 14–15, 259; Leslie Orgel’s law, 174, 175, 176, 177, 178, 180; problem solving and, 14–15, 16; selective breeding and, 175–6 expertise, limits of, 6–8, 16, 17, 19, 66 extinction events, biological, 18–19 Exxon (formerly Jersey Standard), 9, 12, 188, 245 F-22 stealth fighter, 93 Facebook, 90, 91 failure: in business, 8–10, 11–12, 18–19, 36, 148–9, 224, 239–46; chasing of losses, 32–5, 253–4, 256; in complex and tightly coupled systems, 185–90, 191–2, 200, 201, 207–8, 219, 220; corporate extinctions, 18–19; denial and, 32, 34–5, 250–3, 255–6; disruptive technologies, 239–44, 245–6; of established industries, 8–10; government funding and, 148–9; hedonic editing and, 254; honest advice from others and, 256–7, 258, 259; learning from, 31–5, 78, 119, 250–1, 256–9, 261–2; modern computer industry and, 11–12, 239–42; as natural in market system, 10, 11, 12, 244, 245–6; niche markets and, 240–2; normal accident theory, 219; recognition of, 36, 224; reinterpreted as success, 254–5, 256; shifts in competitive landscape, 239–46; ‘Swiss cheese model’ of safety systems, 186–7, 190, 209, 218; types of error and mistake, 208–10; willingness to fail, 249–50, 261–2; of young industries, 10 Fearon, James, 137, Federal Aviation Administration, 210 Federal Reserve Bank, 193–4 feedback, 25, 26, 42, 178, 240; in bureaucratic hierarchies, 30–1; development and, 141–3; dictatorships’ immunity to, 27; Iraq war and, 43–5, 46, 57–8, 59–62; market system and, 141; praise sandwich, 254; public services and, 141; self-employment and, 258; yes-men and, 30 Feith, Douglas, 44, 45 Ferguson, Chris ‘Jesus’, 32 Fermi nuclear reactor (near Detroit), 187 Festinger, Leon, 251 financial crisis (from 2007), 5, 11, 25; AIG and, 189, 193–5, 215–16, 228; bankers’ bonuses, 198; banking system as complex and tightly coupled, 185, 186, 187–90, 200, 201, 207–8, 220; bond insurance business and, 189–90; collateralised debt obligations (CDOs), 190, 209; credit default swaps (CDSs), 187–9, 190, 194; derivatives deals and, 198, 220; faulty information systems and, 193–5; fees paid to administrators, 197; government bail-outs/guarantees, 202, 214, 223; Lehman Brothers and, 193, 194, 196–200, 204–5, 208, 215–16; ‘LMX spiral’ comparisons, 183–4, 189; Repo 105 accounting trick, 199 Financial Services Authority (FSA), 214 Firefox, 221, 230 Fleming, Alexander, 83 Food Preservation prize, 107, 108 Ford Motor Company, 46–7 fossil record, 18 Fourier, Joseph, 155 fraud, corporate, 208, 210, 212–13, 214 Friedel, Robert, 80 Frost, Robert, 260 A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (musical), 248 Gage, Phineas, 21, 27 Galapagos Islands, 86, 87 Gale (US developer), 152 Galenson, David, 260 Galileo, 187 Galland, Adolf, 81 Gallipoli campaign (1915), 41–2 Galvin, Major General Jack, 62, 256 game theory, 138, 205 Gates, Bill, 110, 115 Gates, Robert, 59, 64, 78 Gates Foundation, 110 Geithner, Tim, 193–5, 196 GenArts, 13 General Electric, 9, 12, 95 Gilbert, Daniel, 255, 256 GlaxoSmithKline, 95 Glewwe, Paul, 127–8 Global Positioning System (GPS), 113 globalisation, 75 Google, 12, 15, 90, 91, 239, 245, 261; corporate strategy, 36, 231–4; Gmail, 233, 234, 241, 242; peer monitoring at, 229–30 Gore, Al, An Inconvenient Truth, 158 Göring, Hermann, 81 government and politics: climate change and, 157–8, 163, 169–74, 176, 180; development aid and, 118, 120, 143, 144, 148–9; financial crisis (from 2007) and, 193–5, 198–9, 202, 214, 215–16, 223; grandiosity and, 27–8; ideal hierarchies and, 46pos=00002pos=0000022558 >7, 49–50, 62–3, 78; innovation funding, 82, 88, 93, 97, 99–101, 102–3, 104, 113; lack of adaptability rewarded, 20; pilot schemes and, 29, 30; rigorous evaluation methods and, 29* Graham, Loren, 26 Grameen Bank, 116, 117 Greece, 147 Green, Donald, 29* greenhouse effect, 154–6 Gulf War, first, 44, 53, 65, 66, 67, 71; Battle of 73 Easting, 72–3, 74, 79 Gutenberg, Johannes, 10 Haldane, Andrew, 195, 258 Halifax (HBOS subsidiary), 211 Halley, Edmund, 105 Halliburton, 217 Hamel, Gary, 221, 226, 233, 234 Hanna, Rema, 135 Hannah, Leslie, 8–10, 18 Hanseatic League, 150 Harrison, John, 106–7, 108, 110, 111 Harvard University, 98–9, 185 Hastings, Reed, 108 Hausmann, Ricardo, 145 Hayek, Friedrich von, 1, 72, 74–5, 227 HBOS, 211, 213, 214 healthcare sector, US, 213–14 Heckler, Margaret, 90–1 Henry the Lion, 149, 150, 151–2, 153 Hewitt, Adrian, 169 Hidalgo, César, 144–7, 148 Higginson, Peter, 230 Hinkley Point B power station, 192–3, 230–1 Hitachi, 11 Hitler, Adolf, 41, 82, 83, 150 HIV-AIDS, 90–1, 96, 111, 113 Holland, John, 16, 103 Hong Kong, 150 Houston, Dame Fanny, 88–9, 114 Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), 101–3, 112 Hughes (computer company), 11 Humphreys, Macartan, 136, 137, 138–40 Hurricane aircraft, 82* IBM, 11, 90, 95–6 In Search of Excellence (Peters and Waterman, 1982), 8, 10 India, 135, 136, 143, 147, 169 individuals: adaptation and, 223–4, 248–62; climate change and, 158–63, 164, 165–6; experimentation and, 260–2; trial and error and, 31–5 Indonesia, 133–4, 142, 143 Innocentive, 109 innovation: corporations and, 17, 81–2, 87–9, 90, 93–4, 95–7, 108–11, 112, 114, 224–30, 232–4; costs/funding of, 90–4, 99–105; failure as price worth paying, 101–3, 104, 184, 215, 236; government funding, 82, 88, 93, 97, 99–101, 102–3, 104, 113; grants and, 108; in health field, 90–1, 96; large teams and specialisation, 91–4; market system and, 17, 95–7, 104; new technologies and, 89–90, 91, 94–5; parallel possibilities and, 86–9, 104; prize methodology, 106–11, 112, 113–14, 179, 222–3; randomistas and, 127–9, 132, 133, 135–40, 258; return on investment and, 83–4; skunk works model, 89, 91, 93, 152, 224, 242–3, 245; slowing down of, 90–5, 97; small steps and, 16, 24, 29, 36, 99, 103, 143, 149, 153, 224, 259–60; space tourism, 112–13, 114; specialisation and, 91–2; speculative leaps and, 16, 36, 91, 99–100, 103–4, 259–60; unpredictability and, 84–5 Intel, 11, 90, 95 International Christelijk Steunfonds (ICS), 127–9, 131 International Harvester, 9 International Rescue Committee (IRC), 137–8, 139 internet, 12, 15, 63, 90, 113, 144, 223, 233, 238, 241; randomised experiments and, 235–6, 237; see also Google Iraq war: al Anbar province, 56–7, 58, 64, 76–7; civil war (2006), 39–40; Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP), 77; counterinsurgency strategy, 43, 45, 55–6, 58, 60–1, 63–4, 65; decentralisation and, 76–8, 79; feedback and, 43–5, 46, 57–8, 59–62; FM 3–24 (counter-insurgency manual), 63; Forward Operating Bases (FOBs), 51–3, 57, 65; Haditha killings (19 November 2005), 37–9, 40, 42, 43, 52; new technologies and, 71, 72, 74, 78–9, 196; Samarra bombing (22 February 2006), 39; Tal Afar, 51, 52, 53–5, 61, 64, 74, 77, 79; trial and error and, 64–5, 66–7; US turnaround in, 35, 40, 46, 50–1, 53–6, 57–8, 59–61, 63–5, 78; US/allied incompetence and, 38, 39–40, 42–5, 46, 50, 64, 67, 79, 223; Vietnam parallels, 46 J&P Coats, 9 Jacobs, Jane, 87 James, Jonathan, 30 Jamet, Philippe, 192 Janis, Irving, 62 Japan, 11, 143, 176, 204, 208 Jay-Z, 119 Jo-Ann Fabrics, 235 Jobs, Steve, 19 Joel, Billy, 247–8, 249 Johnson, President Lyndon, 46, 47, 49–50, 60, 62, 64, 78 Jones, Benjamin F., 91–2 Joyce, James, 260 JP Morgan, 188 Kahn, Herman, 93 Kahneman, Daniel, 32, 253 Kantorovich, Leonid, 68–9, 76 Kaplan, Fred, 77 Karlan, Dean, 135 Kauffmann, Stuart, 16, 103 Kay, John, 206–7, 208, 215, 259 Keller, Sharon, 252 Kelly, Terri, 230 Kennedy, President John F., 41, 47, 62–3, 84, 113 Kenya, 127–9, 131 Kerry, John, 20 Keynes, John Maynard, 181 Kilcullen, David, 57, 60–1 Klemperer, Paul, 96, 205 Klinger, Bailey, 145 Kotkin, Stephen, 25 Kremer, Michael, 127–8, 129 Krepinevich, Andy, 45 Lanchester, John, 188 leaders: decision making and, 40–2; failure of feedback and, 30–1, 62; grandiosity and, 27–8; ignoring of failure, 36; mistakes by, 41–2, 56, 67; need to believe in, 5–6; new leader as solution, 59 Leamer, Ed, 132* Leeson, Nick, 184–5, 208 Lehman Brothers, 193, 194, 196–200, 204–5, 208, 215–16 Lenin Dam (Dnieper River), 24 Levine, John, 48–9 Levitt, Steven, 132–3 Liberia, 136–9 light bulbs, 162, 177 Lind, James, 122–3 Lindzen, Richard, 156 Livingstone, Ken, 169 Lloyd’s insurance, 183 Lloyds TSB, 214 Local Motors, 90 Lockheed, Skunk Works division, 89, 93, 224, 242 Lomas, Tony, 196, 197–200, 204, 205, 208, 219 Lomborg, Bjorn, 94 longitude problem, 105–7, 108 Lu Hong, 49 Lübeck, 149–50, 151–2, 153 Luftwaffe, 81–2 MacFarland, Colonel Sean, 56–7, 64, 74, 76–7, 78 Mackay, General Andrew, 67–8, 74 Mackey, John, 227, 234 Madoff, Bernard, 208212–13 Magnitogorsk steel mills, 24–5, 26, 153 Malawi, 119 Mallaby, Sebastian, 150, 151 management gurus, 8, 233 Manhattan Project, 82, 84 Manso, Gustavo, 102 Mao Zedong, 11, 41 market system: competition, 10–11, 17, 19, 75, 95, 170, 239–46; ‘disciplined pluralism’, 259; evolutionary theory and, 17; failure in as natural, 10, 11, 12, 244, 245–6; feedback loops, 141; innovation and, 17, 95–7, 104; patents and, 95–7; trial and error, 20; validation and, 257–8 Markopolos, Harry, 212–13 Marmite, 124 Maskelyne, Nevil, 106 mathematics, 18–19, 83, 146, 247; financial crisis (from 2007) and, 209, 213; prizes, 110, 114 Mayer, Marissa, 232, 234 McDonald’s, 15, 28 McDougal, Michael, 252 McGrath, Michael, 252 McMaster, H.R.

The Future of Fusion Energy by Jason Parisi, Justin Ball

Albert Einstein, Arthur Eddington, Boeing 747, carbon footprint, carbon tax, Colonization of Mars, cuban missile crisis, decarbonisation, electricity market, energy security, energy transition, heat death of the universe, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invention of the steam engine, ITER tokamak, Kickstarter, Large Hadron Collider, megaproject, Mikhail Gorbachev, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, performance metric, profit motive, random walk, Richard Feynman, Ronald Reagan, Stuxnet, the scientific method, time dilation, uranium enrichment

As of 2018, nine countries have nuclear arsenals.2 While a nuclear weapon has not been used since World War II, there have been many incidents when nuclear war appeared imminent or nuclear accidents nearly occurred (which could have been easily interpreted as acts of aggression). The closest we came to nuclear war may have been on October 27, 1962 — the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Earlier that day, a U.S. U-2F spy plane had been shot down over Cuba, killing the pilot. In response, the U.S.S. Beale, an American destroyer, dropped depth charges on a Soviet submarine, the B-59, as warning shots to make it surface. Unbeknownst to the Americans, the B-59 was armed with nuclear torpedoes!

…

Index A agriculturalists energy sources, 4 air conditioners, 12 Al-Qaeda, 308 Alcator C-Mod, 231, 280, 301, 361 Alpha Centauri, 348 aneutronic see p-B, 292 ARC, 248 Argentina see Ronald, 179 Arkhipov, Vasili, 305 arsenals by country nuclear weapons, 304 ASDEX-U, 129, 193, 277 Aston, Francis, 177 atmospheric pollution, 238 B B-59 submarine, 305 bald spot, 103 banana orbits see super-bananas, 118, 190 baseload sources, 46 bell curve, 39, 83 Bell Telephone Laboratory, 184 Beria, Lavrenti, 189 beryllium, 162, 224, 324 Bethe, Hans, 178 Big Bang, 12 binding energy, 70–71 biomass, 35 Boeing 747 airplane, 353 Boltzmann constant, 69 bootstrap current, 189 bootstrap multiplication see bootstrap current, 254 brains, 59 bravery, 59, 335 brawn, 59 breakeven, 135 Breakthrough Starshot, 353 breeder reactors, 26, 330 fuelling proliferation, 333 bremsstrahlung see p-B, 293 burning plasma see ignition, breakeven, triple product, Lawson criteria, 136, 214 C C-2U, 278 Californium, 316 CANDU reactors, 327 capital cost, 240 carbon capture and storage, 39 Carnot limit, 31 catalyzed D–D fuel cycle, 85, 355 central solenoid, 145, 283 chain reaction, 314 chemical propulsion, 352 Chernobyl, 24 Chicago Pile-1, 311 classical transport, 123 climate change, 238–239 CNO cycle see stars, Bethe, Hans, 178 cold fusion, 77 Commonwealth Fusion Systems, 301 confinement, 82 electrostatic, 112 empirical scaling laws, 251 energy confinement time, 90 toroidal magnetic, 109 volume to surface area ratio argument, 256 conservation of momentum, 349 frozen lake argument, 350 convective eddies, 32 conventional spacecraft, 350 Coriolis force, 32 cost of electricity, 239 critical mass, 315 cross-section, 77–78 Cuban Missile Crisis, 304 current drive, 144 electron cyclotron, 152 electromagnetic wave, 150 inductive, 145 neutral beam, 148 cusp geometry see Lockheed Martin, 288 D D–3He fusion, 85, 300, 354 D–D fusion, 20, 85, 202, 301, 354 D–T fusion, 20, 83, 161, 202, 269, 281, 287, 292, 337 Darwin, Charles, 175 Debye length, 99 dense plasma focus see Lawrenceville plasma physics, 297 deuterium abundance on Earth, 22 diagnostics, 164–165 diffusion see random walk diffusion, 123 DIII-D, 277 direct drive see indirect drive, inertial confinement fusion, 272 dirty bombs, 321 dispatchable sources, 46 disruptions, 153–154, 222, 244, 267 mitigating, 155 divertor, 157, 194, 220, 256 double-edged sword nuclear energy as blueprint, 345 nuclear physics, 310 technologies, 311 E early hominids, 3 Earth–Moon system, 16, 41 Eddington, Arthur, 178 edge localized modes see ELMs, 194 Edison, Thomas, 6 electric field, 94, 150 electromagnetic force, 74 electromagnetic induction, 5, 12 electromagnetic repulsion, 67 electromagnetic waves, 269 electromagnetism, 90 electromagnets, 93 electrons, 65 in light bulbs, 6 electrostatic, 95 ELMs, 194, 222 ELMO bumpy torus, 114 empirical scaling law, 130, 251 enrichment, 333 energy conservation of, 11 flows of, 13 energy hierarchy, 58 energy storage, 50 Enola Gay, 305 entropy, 11 EPED, 197 exhaust velocity, 350 expanding electrical grids, 54 external power, 249 F Faraday, Michael, 5 Fat Man, 305 fissiled percent, 322 fertile material, 330 field-reversed configuration, 290 first wall, 153, 222 fission proliferation, 333 fission reactors, 325 climate versus nuclear security tradeoff, 335 fission–fusion hybrids, 332 flow, 197, 245 Fokker–Planck simulations see gyrokinetics, 209 formation of fossil fuels, 37 Forrest, Michael, 188–189 fossil fuels, 37 Fukushima, 24 fusion, 13, 16, 19 enrichment in fusion blanket, 337 proliferation, 336 fusion fuels, 83 fusion power density, 243 fusion reactor design, 237 disabling a proliferator, 338 small fusion system, 339 smallest planned, 159 timescale for blanket proliferation ramp-up, 340 fusion thruster, 354 G gas centrifuges, 318 gaseous diffusion, 317 General Atomics, 198, 279 General Fusion, 284 geopolitics, 343 geothermal, 16, 27 global zero, 343 gravitational confinement, 89 gravity, 13, 89 gravity-assist, 351 Greenwald limit, 251 gun-type bomb, 323 gyrokinetic simulations, 252 gyrokinetics, 206, 252 scale separation, 207 gyroradius, 92 H H-mode, 130, 193, 206, 252 hairy ball theorem, 103 Halite-Centurion, 274 half-life, 20 Harwell, 187 heat death of the Universe, 12 heat flux, 221 heating, 14, 218 electron cyclotron, 152 ion cyclotron, 152 heavy element synthesis, 15 heavy elements, 16 heavy water reactors, 327 Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, 79 Helion Energy, 300 heliotron, 114 helium-3 abundance, 354 hex, 317 Hiroshima, 322, 336 hohlraum see inertial confinement fusion, 272 hydroelectric, 39 hydrogen bomb, 89, 304, 324 hydropower, 17 I IAEA, 334, 339 ignition, 131, 250, 269 MCF and ICF ignition differences, 274 implosion bomb, 323 inboard see torus terminology, 110 indirect drive see direct drive, inertial confinement fusion, 272 inductive heating, 147 Industrial Revolution, 4 inertial confinement fusion, 269 weaponization propspects, 271 intercontinental ballistic missiles see ICBM, 309 intercontinental electrical grids, 55 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 9 internal transport barriers see pedestal, 196 intermittency, 30, 46 INTOR, 225 IPA, 278 Iron Curtain, 181 isotopes, 20, 73 isotope effect, 204 isotopic semantics, 73 ITER, 137, 203, 211, 237, 248, 257, 273, 302, 353, 361 ignition, 214 Q, 213 strategy, 216 Ivy Mike, 304 J JET, 140, 155, 169, 198, 200, 260, 273, 277 jet engine, 349 JT-60, 260 JT-60SA, 140, 169, 361 JT-60U, 140, 277, 361 Juno spacecraft, 347 K K-DEMO, 361 Kelvin, Lord, 177 Khrushchev, Nikita, 187 kink limit, 246 Kremlin, 186 Kurchatov, Igor, 188 Kurchatov Institute, 185 L L-mode, 193, 252 Lamb, Horace, 127 Landau energy levels, 298 Landau damping, 151 Landau, Lev, 151 Langmuir, Irving, 165 Langmuir probes, 165 laser enrichment, 320 lattice structure, 156 Lavrentyev, Oleg, 186 Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, 296 Lawson criterion see triple product, 131, 324 Lawson, John, 131 levitated dipole, 114 limiter see divertor, 157, 194 linear magnetic, 100 lithium, 21, 242 lithium pebbles, 163 lithium-6, 84, 161 lithium-7, 161 lithium-ion batteries, 22, 51 Little Boy fissiled percent, 322 Lockheed Martin, 287 Lufthansa Flight 181, 199 M magnet(s), 139 permanent, 93 magnetic confinement fusion, 247 magnetic field, 91, 150, 247 magnetic islands, 117, 265 magnetic mirror, 100, 355 magnetic surfaces, 114, 144, 158, 191, 265 open versus closed, 158 magnetized target fusion see MTF, 284 magnetohydrodynamics see MHD, 121 Manhattan Project, 318 Mars, 347 mass–energy equivalence, 77 material survivability, 255 matter–antimatter annihilation, 352 mechanical stress, 142, 283 Mercury, 181 Mercury laser see NIF, 276 messy engineering endeavor, 259 MHD, 209, 246 MHD stability, 153 mini-golf, 68 Mini-Sphere, 278 MIT, 301 Model C stellarator, 189 moderator, 326 Moore’s Law see triple product, 136, 205 MRI machines, 140 MTF, 284, 300 Munich, 199 N Nagasaki, 305, 322 neoclassical transport, 126, 265 net electric power, 241–242 net electricity, 169 neutral beam, 220 negative ion acceleration, 220 neutral beams, 291 efficiency, 149 neutron capture cross-section, 331 neutron flux, 156 neutron multiplication, 224 neutron multiplication factor, 162 neutron multipliers, 162 neutron shielding, 292 New York Times, 180 NIF, 273, 336 niobium–titanium, 184 niobium–tin, 184, 248 Nixon, Richard, 224 Nobel Peace Prize, 186 Nobel Prize, 183 non-inductive see current drive; neutral beam, 149 non-renewable, 19 North Korea, 339 nucleons, 65 nuclear energy transition, 341 nuclear fission, 16, 23 nuclear proliferation, 238, 359 nuclear potential, 66 nuclear security, 336 nuclear weapon, 303 boosted implosion bomb, 323 defenses, 309 gun-type bomb, 322 hydrogen bomb, 323 implosion bomb, 322 inspectors, 340 neutron initiator, 324 proliferation with increased tritium availability, 342 significant quantity, 334 tamper, 322 Teller–Ulam design, 325 weapon designs, 321 yield, 303 nuclear winter, 308 O ocean waves, 44 Onnes, Heike, 181 outboard see torus terminology, 110 Oxford, 199 P p-B fusion, 290 particle drifts, 104 E × B drift, 106, 128 B drift, 106, 194 curvature drift, 106 Pauli exclusion principle, 183 pedestal, 193 Pelamis, 46 Perhapsatron, 114, 181, 285 photosynthesis, 35 plasma, 86 plasma current, 114, 264 maximization, 246 plasma flow, 197, 245 plasma gain, 169 plasma heating, 144 plasma power engineering multiplication factor, 170 plasma power multiplication factor, 135 plasma pressure, 244 plasma shaping, 198 Pluto, 321, 347 plutonium, 90 plutonium-239, 25 production, 320 reactor-grade, 329 weapons-grade, 321 poloidal field coils, 144 poloidal see torus terminology, 110 polonium-210, 162 power multiplication, 170 Princeton, 189, 198 Princeton University, 180 profits, 238 proliferation, 333 propellant, 349 proton–proton chain see CNO cycle, stars, Bethe, Hans, 179 proton–proton fusion, 28 public relations, 359 pure fission weapons, 325 Q quasineutrality, 97–98, 150 R radioactive waste, 167 random walk diffusion, 123 rate of energy consumption, 18 Rayleigh–Taylor instability, 271, 285 remote maintenance system, 204 renewable, 19, 57 resistivity, 141 Richter, Ronald, 179, 187 right-hand rule, 93 robotic maintenance, 169, 257 rocket equation, 351 role model effect of fusion technology, 344 S safety factor, 115 Sakharov, Andrei, 186 Saturn, 347 scattering collision, 67 scientific notation, 26 seasonal energy storage, 52 Seebeck effect, 6 seeds, 35 shaping, 198 D-shape, 198 shattered pellet injection see disruptions, 156 significant quantity, 340 solar, 16, 28 Solar System, 17, 348 energy flows, 15 space capsules see divertor, 160 space colonization, 349 SPARC, 301 spent fuel current world production, 334 spherical tokamaks, 281 spheromak, 114, 287 Spitzer, Lyman, 113, 180, 263 ST40, 278 Stalin, Joseph, 187 stars, 175 possible fusion reactions, 178 red giant phase, 15 steam engine, 4 steam turbine, 6 stellarator(s), 114, 263 ignited, 267 stochastic regions, 117, 265 strong nuclear force, 66 Sun, 347 lifetime of, 176 super-bananas see banana orbits, 118 super-duper H-mode, 259 supercomputers, 204 superconductivity, 141, 181, 248 Cooper pairs, 183 type I, 184 type II, 184 superconductor, 283 high-temperature, 185, 283, 301 REBCO, 186 materials, 182 problem with neutrons, 163 supernovae, 14–15 surface-to-air missiles, 309 Sword of Damocles, 306 Symmetric Tokamak, 189 T T-1, 188 T-3, 113, 189, 263, 278 T-7, 185 T4, 278 TAE Technologies, 280, 290 Tamm, Igor, 186 TCV, 201, 280 technetium, 24 temperature, 83 TFTR, 203, 277 tritium detection, 339 thermal equilibrium, 82 thermodynamic efficiency, 31 thermonuclear bomb see nuclear weapons — hydrogen bomb, 324 thermotron, 180 Thor, 110 Thomson scattering, 166 thorium, 321 Three Mile Island, 24 tidal, 16, 41 TNT, 304 toast making of, 7 tokamak, 113 Tokamak Energy Ltd., 281 Tore Supra, 141 toroidal torus terminology, 110 toroidal field, 140 toroidal field coils, 198 toroidal symmetry, 264 torsatron, 114 torus, 104 torus terminology, 110 trapped particles, 118 TRIAM-1M, 185 Trinity, 303, 344 triple product, 135, 267 tritium, 20, 161, 338 cost, 202 current reserves, 341 detecting use in fusion reactor, 339 increased availability proliferation risk, 342 tritium breeding, 215 tritium breeding blanket, 160, 247 Troyon limit, 243, 282 game of chicken, 244 violation, 245 Tsar Bomba, 304 Tuck, James, 181 tungsten, 224 turbulence, 206, 255 turbulent eddy, 128, 197 turbulent transport, 126 U U.S.S.

…

., 281 Tore Supra, 141 toroidal torus terminology, 110 toroidal field, 140 toroidal field coils, 198 toroidal symmetry, 264 torsatron, 114 torus, 104 torus terminology, 110 trapped particles, 118 TRIAM-1M, 185 Trinity, 303, 344 triple product, 135, 267 tritium, 20, 161, 338 cost, 202 current reserves, 341 detecting use in fusion reactor, 339 increased availability proliferation risk, 342 tritium breeding, 215 tritium breeding blanket, 160, 247 Troyon limit, 243, 282 game of chicken, 244 violation, 245 Tsar Bomba, 304 Tuck, James, 181 tungsten, 224 turbulence, 206, 255 turbulent eddy, 128, 197 turbulent transport, 126 U U.S.S. Beale see Cuban Missile Crisis, 305 units of energy and power, 18 units of nuclear energy, 69 uranium, 90 enrichment of U-238, 315 fission reaction, 312 uranium deposits, 25 uranium-235, 23 uranium-238, 24 US Energy Research and Development Administration, 360 US Geological Survey, 21 V vacuum vessel, 164 W W7-X, 265, 280 Wagner, Fritz, 193 waste repository, 168 wave, 44 WEST, 141 wind, 17, 30 work, 4 World War II energy release, 304 X X-point, 158, 194, 256 X-rays, 272 Y yellowcake, 317 Yeltsin, Boris, 307 Z ZETA, 165, 187, 297

The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century by Rodrigo Aguilera

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, activist fund / activist shareholder / activist investor, Alan Greenspan, Anthropocene, availability heuristic, barriers to entry, basic income, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Boris Johnson, Branko Milanovic, Bretton Woods, Brexit referendum, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, capitalist realism, carbon footprint, Carmen Reinhart, centre right, clean water, cognitive bias, collapse of Lehman Brothers, Colonization of Mars, computer age, Corn Laws, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, death from overwork, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, Deng Xiaoping, Doha Development Round, don't be evil, Donald Trump, Doomsday Clock, Dunning–Kruger effect, Elon Musk, European colonialism, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, first-past-the-post, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, fundamental attribution error, gig economy, Gini coefficient, Glass-Steagall Act, Great Leap Forward, green new deal, Hans Rosling, housing crisis, income inequality, income per capita, index fund, intangible asset, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, Jean Tirole, Jeff Bezos, Jeremy Corbyn, Jevons paradox, job automation, job satisfaction, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, karōshi / gwarosa / guolaosi, Kenneth Rogoff, Kickstarter, lake wobegon effect, land value tax, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, long peace, loss aversion, low interest rates, Mark Zuckerberg, market fundamentalism, means of production, meta-analysis, military-industrial complex, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, moral panic, neoliberal agenda, Network effects, North Sea oil, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Overton Window, Pareto efficiency, passive investing, Peter Thiel, plutocrats, principal–agent problem, profit motive, public intellectual, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, rent-seeking, risk tolerance, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, savings glut, Scientific racism, secular stagnation, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Slavoj Žižek, Social Justice Warrior, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, sovereign wealth fund, Stanislav Petrov, Steven Pinker, structural adjustment programs, surveillance capitalism, tail risk, tech bro, TED Talk, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transatlantic slave trade, trolley problem, unbiased observer, universal basic income, Vilfredo Pareto, Washington Consensus, Winter of Discontent, Y2K, young professional, zero-sum game

PART III: THE END OF THE END OF HISTORY CHAPTER SEVEN: THE EVIL THAT MEN DO Two Minutes to Midnight “The only people who should be allowed to govern countries with nuclear weapons are mothers, those who are still breastfeeding their babies.” — Tsutomu Yamaguchi, Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivor If art imitates life, then no single day in the history of humankind has outdone the best Tom Clancy techno-thriller better than October 27th, 1962. At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet diesel-powered submarine B-59 found itself ringfenced by a task force of US surface ships enforcing a naval blockade of the island in order to prevent further missiles from being transported from the USSR. The B-59, along with three other submarines in its flotilla, was tasked with protecting the Soviet ships that intended to defy the blockade, a standoff which carried apocalyptic consequences: one wrong move by either side could set off a chain reaction of events leading to a nuclear exchange between the two superpowers.

…

But fortunately for the human species, the decision to use nuclear weapons depended on a consensus of three people, which also included the boat’s second officer, Vasily Alexandrovich Arkhipov. Arkhipov vetoed the motion and persuaded the captain to surface. We may think, as Pinker does, that the Cuban Missile Crisis was ultimately resolved by cooler heads in Washington and Moscow drowning out the calls for war: “The records show that Khrushchev and Kennedy remained in firm control of their governments and that each sought a peaceful end to the crisis, ignoring provocations and leaving themselves several options for backing down.”2 Reality, however, played out quite differently.

…

But this precludes the likelihood of either unilateral full disarmaments or a coordinated move towards the ultimate objective of global nuclear disarmament.43 The temptation of one or more countries going rogue and retaining some of their stockpiles would simply be too huge. In situations of brinkmanship like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the behavior of the opposing sides is more akin to the Chicken Game, made famous in a scene in the movie Rebel Without A Cause, where two people drive a car into a direct collision with the other unless one swerves at the last minute (the loser becomes the “chicken” despite being unequivocally the more reasonable of the two).

Cuba Travel Guide by Lonely Planet

Bartolomé de las Casas, battle of ideas, business climate, car-free, carbon footprint, company town, cuban missile crisis, G4S, glass ceiling, haute cuisine, Hernando de Soto, Kickstarter, Monroe Doctrine, new economy, off-the-grid, ride hailing / ride sharing, Ronald Reagan, transatlantic slave trade, transcontinental railway, transfer pricing, urban planning

Parque Histórico Militar Morro-Cabaña Top Sights 1Fortaleza de San Carlos de la CabañaC2 Sights 2Área Expositiva Crisis de OctubreC2 3 Cañonazo Ceremony C3 4 Castillo de los Tres Santos Reyes Magnos del Morro A1 5 Maritime Museum A1 6 Museo de Comandancia del Che C3 7 Museo de Fortificaciones y Armas C2 Eating 8 Paladar Doña Carmela C1 9Restaurante la Divina PastoraB2 10Restaurante los Doce ApóstolesA2 Drinking Nightlife 11 Bar el Polvorín A1 Área Expositiva Crisis de Octubre MONUMENT OFFLINE MAP GOOGLE MAP (admission CUC$1) Looking surprisingly innocuous today, the missiles that nearly caused World War III are laid out on a grassy knoll behind the Cabaña fort put there on the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 2012. Here you can ponder the Soviet R-12 nuclear rocket with a range of 2100km that was stationed in Pinar del Río in 1962 and caused the Kennedy administration and the rest of the world plenty of sleepless nights. Also on show is the wing of an American U2 spy plane shot down over Holguín province on October 27, 1962.

…

There are nine holes with 18 tees to allow 18-hole rounds. Green fees start at CUC$20 for nine holes and CUC$30 for 18 holes, with extra for clubs, cart and caddie. In addition, the club has five tennis courts and a bowling alley. Fidel and Che Guevara played a round here once as a publicity stunt soon after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. The photos of the event are still popular. Che won – apparently. Eating Restaurante el Bambú VEGETARIAN $ (Jardín Botánico Nacional; meals CUC$1; noon-5pm, closed Mon; ) This is the first and finest example of vegetarian dining in Havana, and has been a leading advocate for the benefits of a meatless diet (a tough call in the ration-card economy of Cuba).

…

Mount a horse and take a ride with the guajiros into the Valle de Palmarito in Parque Nacional Viñales (Click here). Get gobsmacked by the grottos and caves of Gran Caverna de Santo Tomás (Click here), one of Latin America’s largest subterranean systems. Recharge your batteries on dreamy Cayo Jutías (Click here). See where Che Guevara played chess during the Cuban Missile Crisis in Cueva de los Portales (Click here). History The pre-Columbian history of western Cuba is synonymous with the Guanahatabeys, a group of nomadic Indians who lived in caves and procured their livelihood largely from the sea. Less advanced than the other indigenous peoples who lived on the island, the Guanahatabeys were a peaceful and passive race whose culture had developed more or less independently of the Taíno and Siboney cultures further east.

On Power and Ideology by Noam Chomsky

anti-communist, Ayatollah Khomeini, Berlin Wall, British Empire, Cornelius Vanderbilt, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, feminist movement, guns versus butter model, imperial preference, land reform, launch on warning, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, union organizing

The officer on duty, Stanislav Petrov, decided to disobey orders and not report the warnings to his superiors. Thanks to his dereliction of duty, we are alive to reflect on the black swan we prefer not to see. Other studies reveal a shocking array of close calls, even apart from the “most dangerous moment in history” during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. An enormous gap in these lectures, not appreciated at the time, was that another and even more ominous threat was inexorably advancing: environmental catastrophe. By now no reasonable person can doubt that we are marching resolutely toward a grim fate, and not far in the future, unless the course we are following is radically altered.

…

These were “the good old days,” when the country was still available as a base for U.S. terrorism, subversion and aggression and there was therefore no need for Western humanists to agonize over democracy and human rights in Nicaragua or to conduct a terrorist war in order “to fit Nicaragua back into a Central American mode” and to “demand reasonable conduct by a regional standard,” the proper goal of U.S. policy, the editors of the Washington Post declare—the “regional standard” and “Central American mode” being exemplified by El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Somoza regime. The most famous of the 19 incidents was the Cuban missile crisis, when U.S. planners estimated the probability of war at one-third to one-half as they rejected Khrushchev’s offer to end the crisis by the simultaneous withdrawal of Soviet missiles from Cuba and American missiles from Turkey—obsolete missiles in the latter case (they were being replaced by Polaris submarines), for which a withdrawal order had already been issued but not yet executed.

Marx at the Arcade: Consoles, Controllers, and Class Struggle by Jamie Woodcock

4chan, Alexey Pajitnov wrote Tetris, anti-work, antiwork, augmented reality, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, Boris Johnson, Build a better mousetrap, butterfly effect, call centre, capitalist realism, collective bargaining, Columbine, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, David Graeber, deindustrialization, deskilling, Donald Trump, emotional labour, game design, gamification, gentrification, gig economy, glass ceiling, global supply chain, global value chain, Hacker Ethic, Howard Zinn, Ian Bogost, independent contractor, Jeremy Corbyn, John Conway, Kickstarter, Landlord’s Game, late capitalism, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, microaggression, military-industrial complex, Minecraft, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Oculus Rift, pink-collar, planned obsolescence, scientific management, sexual politics, Silicon Valley, SimCity, Steve Bannon, systems thinking, tech worker, union organizing, unpaid internship, V2 rocket, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War

Returning to work in 1961, he ran the statistics-heavy program on an IBM 1620. The same year, Raytheon developed a simulation of the Cold War for the US military. The simulation was too complex for most users, so an alternative analog version was developed.29 In 1962, two major events in the early history of videogames took place. The first followed the Cuban Missile Crisis, which saw the launch of the computer war game STAGE (Simulation of Total Atomic Global Exchange) by the US Department of Defense. Rather than ending in mutually assured destruction, the simulation predicted that the United States would defeat the Soviet Union in a thermonuclear war.30 Unfortunately, unlike in WarGames, there is no record of the simulation playing tic-tac-toe to show otherwise (luckily, this has never been tested in practice; otherwise the history of videogames—and the rest of the world—would be much shorter.)

…

., 115 Blizzard, 28 Bogost, Ian, 51, 152 Bond, James, 115 Borderlands, 30 Brazil, 98 Brecht, Bertolt, 142–43 Breitbart News, 154–55 Brentano’s Bookstore, 139 Brexit, 145 British Army, 54, 57 British Petroleum, 25 Broderick, Matthew, 19–20 Bungie, 47 Burgeson, John, 20 C Caillois, Roger, 16–17, 125, 139, 151 California, 39 Call of Duty, 30, 55, 58, 117, 123 Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, 118 Call of Duty: Black Ops, 119 Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, 118 Call of Duty: WWII, 39 Cambridge, 19 Campbell, Colin, 131 Canada, 98 Capital (Marx), 8, 53, 67–69, 74 Carbo-Mascarell, Rosa, 145 Carleton College, 22 Castells, Manuel, 75 Chapman, Adam, 118 China, 35, 37–39, 46–47, 53, 73, 140, 155 Chomp, 23 CIA, 119 Civilization, 2, 31, 129–33 CivilizationEDU, 132 Civilization VI, 131 Clancy, Tom, 120 Clash of Clans, 32 Class Struggle, 139, 145 Cleaver, Harry, 67 Cold War, 20, 28, 119 Columbine, 116 Commander Keen, 1 Communism, 131 Condition of the Working Class in England, 67 Congo, 140 Conservative Party, 40, 42, 145 Conviction, 121 Cook, Mike, 137 Corbyn, Jeremy, 145 Corbyn Run, 145 Counter-Strike, 2, 31, 39, 52, 70, 122, 150, 154, 156–57 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, 39, 122 Crash Bandicoot, 152 Creative Skillset, 87 Croft, Lara, 29, 152 CrossFire, 32, 38 Crusades, 4 Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 114 Cuban Missile Crisis, 20 D DARPA. See Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Dartmouth College, 22 Deep Blue, 29 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, 54 Delightful Murder (Mandel), 106–7 Deliveroo, 102 Destiny, 47, 81 Deus Ex, 126 Didžgalvytė, Marijam, 144–46 Digital Equipment PDP-8, 23 Discord, 99 Dizzy, 2 DMA Design Limited, 40 Donkey Kong, 25 Doom, 29 Doom II, 54 Dota 2, 32, 70, 150 Douglas, A.

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age by David E. Sanger

active measures, air gap, autonomous vehicles, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, bitcoin, Black Lives Matter, Bletchley Park, British Empire, call centre, Cambridge Analytica, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, computer age, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Donald Trump, drone strike, Edward Snowden, fake news, Google Chrome, Google Earth, information security, Jacob Appelbaum, John Markoff, Kevin Roose, Laura Poitras, Mark Zuckerberg, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, off-the-grid, RAND corporation, ransomware, Sand Hill Road, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, Skype, South China Sea, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, Steven Levy, Stuxnet, Tim Cook: Apple, too big to fail, Twitter Arab Spring, undersea cable, unit 8200, uranium enrichment, Valery Gerasimov, WikiLeaks, zero day

“The temptation is always to seek to integrate it into familiar doctrine: to deny a revolution is taking place.” It was time, he said, “to attempt an assessment of the technological revolution which we have witnessed in the past decade” and to understand how it affected everything we once thought we understood. The Cuban Missile Crisis erupted only five years later, the closest the world came in the Cold War to annihilation by miscalculation. That crisis was followed by the first efforts to control the spread of nuclear weapons before they dictated our fate. While most nuclear analogies do not translate well to the new world of cyber conflict, this one does: We all live in a state of fear of how our digital dependencies can be hijacked by nations that in the past decade have discovered a new way to pursue old struggles.

…

Some said it was the Chinese. Or the Russians. Or a disgruntled insider. Even Wired magazine, usually pretty careful about such topics, characterized the case as “flimsy.” The truth was that the Obama administration had done a poor job of making its case against North Korea. There was no “Cuban Missile Crisis moment,” in which Obama, like Kennedy fifty-two years before, presented his evidence. And what would he have shown? Everyone could recognize the Soviet missiles in Kennedy’s spy-satellite photographs. But computer code was not made for vivid visuals. “The best you can say is that there isn’t a shred of evidence that anyone else was behind the hack,” Kevin Mandia said to me at the time, after being called in to Sony to help.

…

There were exceptions, of course, moments of national terror: the British burned Washington in the War of 1812, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and al Qaeda brought down the Twin Towers and struck the Pentagon. But we knew the only attack that could threaten the existence of the country would come at the tip of a Soviet or Chinese intercontinental missile, or in the form of terrorists with access to nuclear weapons. And after some terrifying close calls, notably the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, we found an uneasy balance of power with our primary adversaries—mutually assured destruction—to deter the worst. It worked, or has so far, because the cost of failure is so high. In the cyber age, we have not found that balance, and probably never will. Cyberweapons are entirely different from nuclear arms, and their effects have so far remained relatively modest.

Chasing the Moon: The People, the Politics, and the Promise That Launched America Into the Space Age by Robert Stone, Alan Andres

affirmative action, Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, Apollo 11, Apollo 13, Apollo Guidance Computer, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, Easter island, feminist movement, Gene Kranz, General Motors Futurama, invention of the telephone, Lewis Mumford, low earth orbit, military-industrial complex, more computing power than Apollo, Neil Armstrong, New Journalism, Norman Mailer, operation paperclip, out of africa, overview effect, RAND corporation, Ronald Reagan, the scientific method, traveling salesman, Works Progress Administration

* * * — THE KENNEDY ADMINISTRATION’S problems with Cuba and the Soviet Union reached a climax when American intelligence aircraft flying over the Caribbean island discovered photographic evidence of the deployment of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles. For thirteen days during October 1962, the fate of the world hung in the balance as the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a nerve-racking battle of wills, which subsided only when the Soviets announced they would dismantle and remove the missiles. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than any other moment in the history of the planet and served as a cautionary lesson to both superpowers. For those who experienced those days in October of 1962, life would never be quite the same. As the crisis developed, the Pentagon distributed a list of likely missile targets in the United States.

…

After sitting through some of the White House strategy meetings, Minow had come to believe the Third World War was likely, and he confided to his wife that he’d already decided not to go if he received an order to evacuate; instead, he would return home to be with his family. In Minow’s estimation, Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis was his greatest legacy. He recalls attending meetings in which the president’s military advisers pushed Kennedy to bomb Cuba. Had it not been for the previous mistake of the Bay of Pigs, Minow believes, Kennedy wouldn’t have had the courage to overrule his military. When he chose to address the General Assembly of the United Nations a year after the crisis, President Kennedy wondered if perhaps space might serve as the diplomatic bridge between the two superpowers.

…

Just to be safe, Kraft called Borman at the White House and asked if he could use his new connections in the USSR to obtain details about Luna 15’s trajectory. From his small White House office, Borman sent a teletype message to the head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, using the now-famous hotline set up by President Kennedy in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In his message, Borman requested Luna 15’s orbital parameters, in accordance with the rules of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Within hours Borman received a response, revealing that Luna 15’s trajectory would not intersect Apollo 11’s orbit, as well as an assurance that should anything change he would be notified promptly.

Siege: Trump Under Fire by Michael Wolff

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", Bernie Madoff, Boris Johnson, Cambridge Analytica, conceptual framework, cuban missile crisis, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, disinformation, Donald Trump, fake news, forensic accounting, gig economy, Great Leap Forward, high net worth, hiring and firing, illegal immigration, immigration reform, impulse control, Jeffrey Epstein, Julian Assange, junk bonds, Michael Milken, oil shale / tar sands, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, Potemkin village, Quicken Loans, Saturday Night Live, sovereign wealth fund, Steve Bannon, Steve Jobs, WikiLeaks

(Bannon knew Cambridge well: he and Halper walked the same streets as members of the back-office staff of Cambridge Analytica, the shady tech company with which Bannon was associated that had more or less unscrupulously acquired vast amounts of election metadata.) Indeed, Stefan Halper was a spy, a heavy hitter in the U.S.-UK spy world, who had been married to the daughter of a legendary CIA figure, Ray Cline, who was on the case during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And Halper was also a professional spy recruiter—a flytrap in Cambridge. Now, Halper conveniently bubbled up from the deep state to recruit several Trump stumblebums. In Bannon’s view, the Obama White House and the intelligence community would of course have had close eyes on Trump during the campaign.

…

He warned against both the format and the venue, and said Trump would be judged—and not favorably—against his presidential peers, each memorialized by the Oval Office proscenium. But that, of course, was why Trump was so insistent about announcing it this way: he wanted to show everybody that he was one of them. The border crisis, he declared, was like the Cuban Missile Crisis, when John F. Kennedy faced down the Russians and addressed the nation from the Oval Office. Well, Bannon thought, at least the president was trying to seize the day. Even if Trump sniffed oddly, as he tended to do when he read from a teleprompter, and even if, in a formal setting, he could never quite match his expression to his words, and even if the stage lights magnified the orange of his hair, the declaration of a national emergency would, Bannon hoped, help him appear to be presidential.

…

Gore Calamari, Matt Calley, Brian Cambridge Analytica Cameron, Ron campaign finance laws Camp of the Saints, The (Raspail) Canada Car & Driver caravan Carlson, Tucker Carter, Sara Catholics CBS Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Chao, Elaine Charles, Prince of Wales China North Korea and tariffs and China Club Christie, Chris Churchill, Winston Cipollone, Pat Citibank Citizens United Clapper, James Clifford, Clark Cline, Ray Clinton, Bill impeachment and Rich pardon and Clinton, Hillary Clinton Cash (Schweizer) Clinton Foundation CNBC CNN Coats, Dan Cobb, Ty Cohen, Michael Daniels and FBI raid and guilty plea and McDougal and Trump Tower Moscow and Cohen, Samantha Cohn, Gary Cohn, Roy Colbert, Stephen Comey, James Ashcroft and Clinton’s emails and deep state and elections of 2016 and Flynn and Giuliani and publishes Higher Loyalty Comstock, Barbara Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF) Conway, George Conway, Kellyanne Corsi, Jerome Costa, Robert Coulter, Ann Council for the American Worker Crimea criminal justice reform Cruz, Ted Cuban Missile Crisis Cummings, Elijah Cuomo, Andrew Daily Beast Daily Caller Daily Mail Daniels, Stormy Davidson, Keith M. Davos in the Desert Dean, John de Blasio, Bill debt ceiling “deep state” Defending Democracy Together Defense Department Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Delgado, A.

King Richard: Nixon and Watergate--An American Tragedy by Michael Dobbs

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, coronavirus, COVID-19, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donald Trump, MITM: man-in-the-middle, RAND corporation, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Ted Sorensen, éminence grise

Truman and Eisenhower both experimented with recording press conferences and scraps of private conversations but soon abandoned the practice. The first president to tape himself extensively was John F. Kennedy, who made a copious record of the anguished debates with his advisers during the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy’s successor, LBJ, routinely recorded his telephone conversations, accumulating more than eight hundred hours of material he intended to use for his memoirs. Like his predecessors, Nixon assumed that the tapes were his private property. After being shown the newly installed microphones in the Oval Office, he again demanded assurances that no one be allowed to listen to the recordings without his authorization.

…

For many years, the personalized license plate on his vintage Rolls-Royce read “H20GATE.” Manolo Sanchez and his wife, Fina, retired to their native Spain after serving the Nixon family in New York, the White House, and California. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have long been interested in hinge moments in history. My book on the Cuban missile crisis, One Minute to Midnight, described our closest ever brush with nuclear apocalypse. Another book, Down with Big Brother, told the astonishing story of the collapse of communism and the fall of the Soviet empire. The hundred days that followed Richard Nixon’s second inaugural in 1973 is replete with similar drama.

…

Kennedy Library 4Richard Nixon Library 5Richard Nixon Library 6National Archives 7Everett Collection 8Richard Nixon Library 9Richard Nixon Library 10Richard Nixon Library 11Richard Nixon Library 12Richard Nixon Library 13Lyndon Johnson Library 14(left) Richard Nixon Library; (right) Everett Collection 15Richard Nixon Library 16Richard Nixon Library 17David Hume Kennerly, Getty / Hulton Archive 18Richard Nixon Library 19Richard Nixon Library 20Richard Nixon Library 21Richard Nixon Library 22Richard Nixon Library 23Richard Nixon Library 24Richard Nixon Library 25Richard Nixon Library 26Richard Nixon Library 27Richard Nixon Library 28Richard Nixon Library 29National Archives 30Richard Nixon Library 31Richard Nixon Library 32Richard Nixon Library 33Richard Nixon Library 34Richard Nixon Library 35Wally McNamee, Getty / Corbis Historical A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR Michael Dobbs was born and educated in the U.K. but is now a U.S. citizen. He was a longtime reporter for The Washington Post where he covered the collapse of communism as a foreign correspondent and founded the Fact Checker column. His previous books include the bestselling One Minute to Midnight on the Cuban missile crisis, which was part of an acclaimed Cold War trilogy. He lives outside Washington, D.C. What’s next on your reading list? Discover your next great read! Get personalized book picks and up-to-date news about this author. Sign up now.

Exponential: How Accelerating Technology Is Leaving Us Behind and What to Do About It by Azeem Azhar

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", "World Economic Forum" Davos, 23andMe, 3D printing, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, Ada Lovelace, additive manufacturing, air traffic controllers' union, Airbnb, algorithmic management, algorithmic trading, Amazon Mechanical Turk, autonomous vehicles, basic income, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Bletchley Park, Blitzscaling, Boeing 737 MAX, book value, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, carbon footprint, Chris Urmson, Citizen Lab, Clayton Christensen, cloud computing, collective bargaining, computer age, computer vision, contact tracing, contact tracing app, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, crowdsourcing, cryptocurrency, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, data science, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deep learning, deglobalization, deindustrialization, dematerialisation, Demis Hassabis, Diane Coyle, digital map, digital rights, disinformation, Dissolution of the Soviet Union, Donald Trump, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, drone strike, Elon Musk, emotional labour, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Firefox, Frederick Winslow Taylor, fulfillment center, future of work, Garrett Hardin, gender pay gap, general purpose technology, Geoffrey Hinton, gig economy, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, global value chain, global village, GPT-3, Hans Moravec, happiness index / gross national happiness, hiring and firing, hockey-stick growth, ImageNet competition, income inequality, independent contractor, industrial robot, intangible asset, Jane Jacobs, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, John Maynard Keynes: technological unemployment, John Perry Barlow, Just-in-time delivery, Kickstarter, Kiva Systems, knowledge worker, Kodak vs Instagram, Law of Accelerating Returns, lockdown, low skilled workers, lump of labour, Lyft, manufacturing employment, Marc Benioff, Mark Zuckerberg, megacity, Mitch Kapor, Mustafa Suleyman, Network effects, new economy, NSO Group, Ocado, offshore financial centre, OpenAI, PalmPilot, Panopticon Jeremy Bentham, Peter Thiel, Planet Labs, price anchoring, RAND corporation, ransomware, Ray Kurzweil, remote working, RFC: Request For Comment, Richard Florida, ride hailing / ride sharing, Robert Bork, Ronald Coase, Ronald Reagan, Salesforce, Sam Altman, scientific management, Second Machine Age, self-driving car, Shoshana Zuboff, Silicon Valley, Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits, software as a service, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, subscription business, synthetic biology, tacit knowledge, TaskRabbit, tech worker, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, The Future of Employment, The Nature of the Firm, Thomas Malthus, TikTok, Tragedy of the Commons, Turing machine, Uber and Lyft, Uber for X, uber lyft, universal basic income, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, warehouse automation, winner-take-all economy, workplace surveillance , Yom Kippur War

Lotus produced more spreadsheet applications, like 1-2-3, which was the dominant office staple through the 1980s and much of the 1990s. They also made an exotic spreadsheet program called Improv, which I was partial to, as well as Ami Pro, the word processor on which I typed up my undergraduate thesis on the Cuban missile crisis. And Lotus was not alone. Firms like WordPerfect and WordStar also created word-processing software. Some of these companies were dominant until relatively late: WordPerfect was the market leader in word processing in 1995, when it had 50 per cent market share. But once Microsoft had established dominance in the operating system market, it became increasingly hard to take on.

…

While there were some fraught moments, the twentieth century did not, fortunately enough, end with nuclear oblivion. And this was in part down to the communication and de-escalation tactics adopted by some of the more sensible officials in Washington and Moscow. For one thing, the two superpowers ultimately learnt to interact effectively. After the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, the United States and Soviet Union established a hotline – the famous ‘red telephone’ – so the superpowers’ leaders could talk to each other directly. It was an important measure in building trust between the two rivals, particularly at times when a small miscommunication could spell disaster.

…

Abu Dhabi, UAE, 250 Acemoglu, Daron, 139 Acorn Computers, 16, 21 Ada Lovelace Institute, 8 additive manufacturing, 43–4, 46, 48, 88, 166, 169, 175–9 Adidas, 176 advertising, 94, 112–13, 116, 117, 227–8 AdWords, 227 aeroponics, 171 Afghanistan, 38, 205 Africa, 177–8, 182–3 Aftenposten, 216 Age of Spiritual Machines, The (Kurzweil), 77 agglomeration, 181 Air Jordan sneakers, 102 Airbnb, 102, 188 aircraft, 49–50 Alexandria, Egypt, 180 AlexNet, 33 Algeciras, HMM 61 Alibaba, 48, 102, 108, 111, 122 Alipay, 111 Allen, Robert, 80 Alphabet, 65, 113–14, 131, 163 aluminium, 170 Amazon, 65, 67–8, 94, 104, 108, 112, 122, 135–6 Alexa, 25, 117 automation, 135–6, 137, 139, 154 collective bargaining and, 163 Covid-19 pandemic (2020–21), 135–6 drone sales, 206 Ecobee and, 117 Go stores, 136 Kiva Systems acquisition (2012), 136 management, 154 Mechanical Turk, 142–3, 144, 145 monopoly, 115, 117, 122 Prime, 136, 154 R&D, 67–8, 113 Ami Pro, 99 Amiga, 16 Anarkali, Lahore, 102 anchoring bias, 74 Android, 85, 94, 117, 120 Angola, 186 Ant Brain, 111 Ant Financial, 111–12 antitrust laws, 114, 119–20 Apache HTTP Server, 242 Appelbaum, Binyamin, 63 Apple, 47, 62, 65, 85, 94, 104, 108, 112, 122 App Store, 105, 112, 115 chip production, 113 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 222–3 data collection, 228 iOS, 85 iPhone, 47, 62, 85, 94, 105 media subscription, 112 watches, 112 APT33 hacker group, 198 Aral, Sinan, 238 Aramco, 108, 198 Armenia, 206–7 Arthur, William Brian, 110, 123 artificial intelligence, 4, 8, 31–4, 54, 88, 113, 249 academic brain drain, 118 automation, 125–42 data and, 31–2, 142 data network effect, 106–7 drone technology and, 208, 214 education and, 88 employment and, 126–7 healthcare and, 88, 103 job interviews and, 153 regulation of, 187, 188 arXiv, 59 Asana, 151 Asian Development Bank, 193 Aslam, Yaseen, 148 Assembly Bill 5 (California, 2019), 148 asymmetric conflict, 206 AT&T, 76, 100 Atari, 16 attack surfaces, 192–3, 196, 209, 210 Aurora, 141 Australia, 102, 197 automation, 125–42 autonomous weapons, 208, 214 Azerbaijan, 173, 206–7 Ballmer, Steve, 85 Bangladesh, 175 banking, 122, 237 Barcelona, Catalonia, 188 Barlow, John Perry, 184 Barrons, Richard, 195, 211 Bartlett, Albert, 73 batteries, 40, 51, 53–4, 250, 251 Battle of the Overpass (1937), 162 Bayraktar TB2 drone, 206 Bee Gees, 72 Bekar, Clifford, 45 Bell Labs, 18 Bell Telephone Company, 100 Benioff, Marc, 108–9 Bentham, Jeremy, 152 Berlin Wall, fall of (1989), 4 Bermuda, 119 Berners-Lee, Timothy, 55, 100, 160, 239 Bessen, James, 46 Bezos, Jeffrey, 135–6 BGI, 41 Biden, Joseph, 225 Bing, 107 biological weapons, 207, 213 biology, 10, 39, 40–42, 44, 46 genome sequencing, 40–41, 90, 229, 234, 245–7, 250, 252 synthetic biology, 42, 46, 69, 174, 245, 250 biopolymers, 42 bits, 18 Black Death (1346–53), 12 BlackBerry, 120 Blair, Tony, 81 Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire, 22 blitzscaling, 110 Blockbuster, 138 BMW, 177 Boeing, 51, 236 Bol.com, 103 Bollywood, 181 Boole, George, 18 Bork, Robert, 114–15, 117, 119 Bosworth, Andrew, 233 Boyer, Pascal, 75 Boyle, James, 234 BP, 92, 158 brain, 77 Braudel, Fernand, 75 Brave, 242 Brazil, 202 Bremmer, Ian, 187 Bretton Woods Conference (1944), 87 Brexit (2016–20), 6, 168 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 87, 129, 191 Brookings Institution, 130 BT, 123 Bulgaria, 145 Bundy, Willard Legrand, 149 Busan, South Korea, 56 business, 82, 92–124 diminishing returns to scale, 93, 108 economic dynamism and, 117 economies of scale, 50, 92 growth, 110–13 increasing returns to scale, 108–10 intangible economy, 104–7, 118, 156, 175, 180 linear value chains, 101 market share, 93–6, 111 monopolies, 10, 71, 94, 95, 114–24 network effect, 96–101 platform model, 101–3, 219 re-localisation, 11, 166–79, 187, 252, 255 state-sized companies, 11, 67 superstar companies, 10, 94–6 supply chains, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175, 187, 252, 255 taxation of, 96, 118–19 Butler, Nick, 179 ByteDance, 28 C40 initiative, 189 Cambridge University, 127, 188 cancer, 57–8, 127 Capitol building storming (2021), 225 car industry, 93 carbon emissions, 35, 90, 251 Carlaw, Kenneth, 45 Carnegie, Andrew, 112 Carnegie Mellon University, 131 Catholic Church, 83, 88 censorship, 216–17, 224–6, 236 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), 194 Cerebras, 34 cervical smears, 57–8 chemical weapons, 207, 213 Chen, Brian, 228 chewing gum, 78 Chicago Pile-1 reactor, 64 Chile, 170 China automation in, 127, 137 brainwave reading in, 152 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 245 drone technology in, 207 Great Firewall, 186, 201 Greater Bay Area, 182 horizontal expansion in, 111–12 manufacturing in, 176 misinformation campaigns, 203 raw materials, demand for, 178 Singles’ Day, 48 social credit systems, 230 superstar companies in, 95 US, relations with, 166 chips, 19–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 Christchurch massacre (2019), 236 Christensen, Clayton, 24 CIPD, 153 cities, 11, 75, 169, 179–84, 188, 255 Clegg, Nick, 225–6, 235 climate change, 90, 169, 187, 189, 251, 252 cloud computing, 85, 112 Cloudflare, 200 cluster bombs, 213 CNN, 185, 190 coal, 40, 65, 172 Coase, Ronald, 92 Coca-Cola, 93 code is law, 220–22, 235 cold fusion, 113–14 Cold War (1947–91), 194, 212, 213 collective bargaining, 147, 149, 154, 156, 162–5 Colombia, 145 colonialism, 167 Columbus, Christopher, 4 combination, 53–7 Comical Ali, 201 commons, 234–5, 241–3, 256 companies, see business comparative advantage, 170 complex systems, 2 compounding, 22–3, 28 CompuServe, 100 computing, 4, 10, 15–36, 44, 46, 249 artificial intelligence, 4, 8, 31–4, 54, 88 cloud computing, 85, 112 internet, 47–8, 55, 65, 84 Law of Accelerating Returns, 30–31, 33, 35 machining, 43 Moore’s Law, see Moore’s Law quantum computing, 35 transistors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52 conflict, 87, 189, 190–215 attack surfaces, 192–3, 196, 209, 210 cyberattacks, 11, 114, 140, 181, 187, 190–200, 209–14, 256 de-escalation, 212–13 drone technology, 11, 192, 204–9, 214, 256 institutional change and, 87 misinformation, 11, 191, 192, 200–204, 209, 212, 217, 225 new wars, 194 non-proliferation, 213–14 re-localisation and, 189, 193, 194, 209 consent of the networked, 223 Costco, 67 Coursera, 58 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 12–13, 59, 78–9, 131, 245–9 automation and, 127, 135, 136 cities and, 183 contact-tracing apps, 222–3 gig economy and, 146 lockdowns, 12, 152, 176, 183, 246 manufacturing and, 176 misinformation and, 202–4, 247–8 preprint servers and, 60 recession (2020–21), 178 remote working and, 146, 151, 153 supply chains and, 169, 246 vaccines, 12, 202, 211, 245–7 workplace cultures and, 151, 152 cranks, 54 credit ratings, 162, 229 critical thinking skills, 212 Croatia, 145 Crocker, David, 55 crowdsourcing, 143–4 Cuba, 203 Cuban missile crisis (1962), 99, 212 cultural lag, 85 cyberattacks, 11, 114, 140, 181, 187, 190–200, 209–14, 256 CyberPeace Institute, 214 Daniel, Simon, 173–4 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, 183 Darktrace, 197 data, 8, 11, 71, 217–19, 226–31, 235, 237–42, 256 AI and, 8, 32, 33, 58, 106 compensation for, 239 commons, 242 cyberattacks and, 196 doppelgängers, 219, 226, 228, 239 interoperability and, 237–9 network effects, 106–7, 111 protection laws, 186, 226 rights, 240 Daugherty, Paul, 141 DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroe thane), 253 death benefits, 151 Dediu, Horace, 24, 30 deep learning, 32–4, 54, 58, 127 deforestation, 251 dehumanisation, 71, 154, 158 deindustrialisation, 168 Deliveroo, 154, 163 Delphi, 100 dematerialised techniques, 166, 175 Denmark, 58, 160, 199–200, 257 Deutsche Bank, 130 Diamandis, Peter, 5 Dickens, Charles, 80 digital cameras, 83–4 Digital Geneva Convention, 211 Digital Markets Act (EU, 2020), 122 digital minilateralism, 188 Digital Nations group, 188 Digital Services Act (EU, 2020), 123 diminishing returns, 93, 108 disinformation, see misinformation DoorDash, 147, 148, 248 dot-com bubble (1995–2000), 8, 108, 150 Double Irish tax loophole, 119 DoubleClick, 117 drone technology, 11, 192, 204–9, 214, 256 Dubai, UAE, 43 Duke University, 234 dystopia, 208, 230, 253 Eagan, Nicole, 197 eBay, 98, 121 Ecobee, 120 economies of scale, 50, 92 Economist, The, 8, 65, 119, 183, 239 economists, 63 Edelman, 3 education artificial intelligence and, 88 media literacy, 211–12 Egypt, 145, 186 Elance, 144 electric cars, 51, 69, 75, 173–4, 177, 250 electricity, 26, 45, 46, 54, 157, 249–50 see also energy Electronic Frontier Foundation, 184 email, 6, 55 embodied institutions, 82 employment, 10, 71, 125–65 automation, 125–42 collective bargaining, 147, 149, 154, 156, 162–5 dehumanisation and, 71, 154, 158 flexicurity, 160–61, 257 gig economy, 10, 71, 142–9, 153, 162, 164, 239, 252, 255 income inequality, 155–8, 161, 168 lump of labour fallacy, 139 management, 149–54, 158–9 protections, 85–6, 147–9 reskilling, 159–60 universal basic income (UBI), 160, 189 Enclosure, 234–5, 241 energy, 11, 37–8, 39–40, 44, 46, 172–4, 250 cold fusion, 113–14 fossil fuels, 40, 159, 172, 250 gravitational potential, 53 solar power, 37–8, 53, 65, 77, 82, 90, 171, 172, 173, 249, 250, 251 storage, 40, 53, 114, 173–4, 250, 251 wind power, 39–40, 52 Energy Vault, 53–4, 173 Engels, Friedrich, 81 Engels’ pause, 80, 81 environmental movement, 73 Epic Games, 116 estate agents, 100 Estonia, 188, 190–91, 200, 211 Etzion Airbase, Sinai Peninsula, 195 European Commission, 116, 122, 123 European Space Agency, 56 European Union, 6, 82, 147, 186, 226 Excel, 99 exogeny, 2 exponential gap, 9, 10, 67–91, 70, 89, 253 cyber security and, 193 institutions and, 9, 10, 79–88, 90 mathematical understanding and, 71–5 predictions and, 75–9 price declines and, 68–9 superstar companies and, 10, 94–124 exponential growth bias, 73 Exponential View, 8–9 externalities, 97 extremism, 232–4 ExxonMobil, 65, 92 Facebook, 27, 28, 65, 94, 104, 108, 122, 216–17, 218, 219, 221–2, 223 advertising business, 94, 228 censorship on, 216–17, 224–6, 236 collective bargaining and, 164 data collection on, 228, 239–40 extremism and, 233–4 Instagram acquisition (2012), 117, 120 integrity teams, 234 interoperability, 237–8 Kenosha unrest shooting (2020), 224 misinformation on, 201, 225 network effect and, 98, 223 Oculus acquisition (2014), 117 pay at, 156–7 Phan photo controversy (2016), 216–17, 224, 225 platform model, 101 polarisation and, 233 relationship status on, 221–2 Rohingya ethnic cleansing (2018), 224, 225 US presidential election (2016), 217 WhatsApp acquisition (2014), 117 facial recognition, 152, 208 Factory Act (UK, 1833), 81 Fairchild Semiconductor, 19, 21 fake news, 201–4 family dinners, 86 farming, 170–72, 251 Farrar, James, 148 fax machines, 97 Federal Aviation Administration (US), 236 feedback loops, 3, 13 fertilizers, 35, 90 5G, 203 Financial Conduct Authority, 122 Financial Times, 183 Finland, 160, 211–12 Fitbit, 158 Fiverr, 144 flashing of headlights, 83 flexicurity, 160, 257 flints, 42 flywheels, 54 Ford, 54, 92, 162 Ford, Gerald, 114 Ford, Henry, 54, 162 Ford, Martin, 125 Fortnite, 116 fossil fuels, 40, 159, 172 France, 100, 138, 139, 147, 163 free-market economics, 63–4 freelance work, 10, 71, 142–9 Frey, Carl, 129, 134, 141 Friedman, Milton, 63–4, 241 Friedman, Thomas, 167 FriendFeed, 238 Friendster, 26 Fudan University, 245 fund management, 132 Galilei, Galileo, 83 gaming, 86 Gates, Bill, 17, 25, 84 gender, 6 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, 87 General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), 226 General Electric, 52 General Motors, 92, 125, 130 general purpose technologies, 10, 45–8 generative adversarial networks (GANs), 58 Geneva Conventions, 193, 199, 209 Genghis Khan, 44 GEnie, 100 genome sequencing, 40–41, 90, 229, 234, 245–7, 250, 252 Germany, 75, 134, 147 Giddens, Anthony, 82 gig economy, 10, 71, 142–9, 153, 162, 164, 239, 252, 255 Gilbreth, Lillian, 150 Ginsparg, Paul, 59 GitHub, 58, 60 GlaxoSmithKline, 229–30 global financial crisis (2007–9), 168 Global Hawk drones, 206 global positioning systems (GPS), 197 globalisation, 11, 62, 64, 156, 166, 167–71, 177, 179, 187, 193 internet and, 185 conflict and, 189, 193, 194 Glocer, Thomas, 56 Go (game), 132 GOAT, 102 Gojek, 103 Golden Triangle, 170 Goldman Sachs, 151 Goodfellow, Ian, 58 Google, 5, 35, 36, 94, 98, 104, 108, 115, 122 advertising business, 94, 112–13, 116, 117, 227 Android, 85, 94, 117, 120 chip production, 113 Covid-19 pandemic (2019–21), 222–3 data network effect, 106–7 death benefits, 151 Double Irish tax loophole, 119 Maps, 113 quantum computing, 35 R&D, 114, 118 vertical integration, 112–13, 116 X, 114 YouTube acquisition (2006), 112, 117 Gopher, 59, 100 GPT-3, 33 Graeber, David, 133–4 Grand Bazaar, Istanbul, 102 Graphcore, 34, 35 graphics chips, 34 Grateful Dead, The, 184 gravitational potential energy, 53 gravity bombs, 195 Greater Bay Area, China, 182 Greenberg, Andy, 199 Gross, Bill, 53 Grove, Andrew, 17 GRU (Glavnoje Razvedyvatel’noje Upravlenije), 199 Guangzhou, Guangdong, 182 Guardian, 8, 125, 154, 226, 227 Guiyang, Guizhou, 166 H1N1 virus, 75 Habermas, Jürgen, 218 Hard Times (Dickens), 80 Hardin, Garrett, 241 Harop drones, 207–8 Harpy drones, 207–8 Harvard University, 150, 218, 220, 221, 253 healthcare artificial intelligence and, 57–8, 88, 103 data and, 230, 239, 250–51 wearable devices and, 158, 251 Helsinki, Finland, 160 Herlev Hospital, Denmark, 58 Hinton, Geoffrey, 32, 126–7 HIPA Act (US, 1996), 230 Hitachi, 152 Hobbes, Thomas, 210 Hoffman, Josh, 174 Hoffman, Reid, 110, 111 Holmes, Edward, 245 homophily, 231–4 Hong Kong, 182 horizontal expansion, 111–12, 218 Houston Islam protests (2016), 203 Houthis, 206 Howe, Jeff, 143 Hsinchu, Taiwan, 181 Hughes, Chris, 217 Hull, Charles, 43 Human + Machine (Daugherty), 141 human brain, 77 human genome, 40–41, 90, 229, 234, 250 human resources, 150 Hussein, Saddam, 195 Hyaline, 174 hydroponics, 171 hyperinflation, 75 IBM, 17, 21, 47, 98 IDC, 219 Ideal-X, 61 Ikea, 144 Illumina, 41 Ilves, Toomas Hendrik, 190 ImageNet, 32 immigration, 139, 168, 183–4 Impossible Foods, 69 Improv, 99 income inequality, 155–8, 161, 168 India, 103, 145, 181, 186, 224, 253, 254 Indonesia, 103 Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), 79–81, 157, 235 informational networks, 59–60 ING, 178 innovation, 14, 117 Innovator’s Dilemma, The (Christensen), 24 Instagram, 84, 117, 120, 121, 237 institutions, 9, 10, 79–88, 90–91 path dependence, 86–7 punctuated equilibrium, 87–8 intangible economy, 104–7, 118, 156, 175, 180 integrated circuits, 19 Intel, 16–17, 19, 163 intellectual property law, 82 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (1987), 237 International Alliance of App-Based Transport Workers, 164 International Court of Justice, 224 International Criminal Court, 208 International Energy Agency, 77, 82 International Labour Organization, 131 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 87, 167, 187 international organisations, 82 International Organization for Standardization, 55, 61 International Rescue Committee, 184 International Telecommunication Union, 55 internet, 7, 47–8, 55, 65, 72, 75, 84–5, 88, 115, 184–6 code is law, 220–22, 235 data and, 11, 32, 71 informational networks, 59–60 localisation, 185–6 lockdowns and, 12 network effect, 100–101 online shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 platform model and, 102 public sphere and, 223 standardisation, 55 Wi-Fi, 151 interoperability, 55, 120–22, 237–9, 241, 243, 256–7 iPhone, 47, 62, 85, 94, 115, 175 Iran, 186, 196, 198, 203, 206 Iraq, 195–6, 201, 209 Ireland, 57–8, 119 Islamic State, 194, 233 Israel, 37, 188, 195–6, 198, 206, 207–8 Istanbul, Turkey, 102 Jacobs, Jane, 182 Japan, 37, 152, 171, 174 Jasanoff, Sheila, 253 JD.com, 137 Jena, Rajesh, 127 Jio, 103 job interviews, 153, 156 John Paul II, Pope, 83 Johnson, Boris, 79 Jumia, 103 just in time supply chains, 61–2 Kahneman, Daniel, 74 KakaoTalk, 27 Kaldor, Mary, 194 Kapor, Mitchell, 99 Karunaratne, Sid, 140–41, 151 Kenosha unrest shooting (2020), 224 Keynes, John Maynard, 126, 158 Khan, Lina, 119 Khartoum, Sudan, 183 Kim Jong-un, 198 King’s College London, 179 Kiva Systems, 136 Kobo360, 145 Kodak, 83–4, 88 Kranzberg, Melvin, 254 Krizhevsky, Alex, 32–3, 34 Kubursi, Atif, 178 Kurdistan Workers’ Party, 206 Kurzweil, Ray, 29–31, 33, 35, 77 Lagos, Nigeria, 182 Lahore, Pakistan, 102 landmines, 213 Law of Accelerating Returns, 30–31, 33, 35 Laws of Motion, 20 learning by doing, 48, 53 Leggatt, George, 148 Lemonade, 56 Lessig, Larry, 220–21 Leviathan (Hobbes), 210 Li Fei-Fei, 32 life expectancy, 25, 26 light bulbs, 44, 157 Lime, 27 Limits to Growth, The (Meadows et al.), 73 linear value chains, 101 LinkedIn, 26, 110, 121, 237, 238 Linkos Group, 197 Linux OS, 242 Lipsey, Richard, 45 lithium-ion batteries, 40, 51 lithium, 170 localism, 11, 166–90, 252, 255 log files, 227 logarithmic scales, 20 logic gates, 18 logistic curve, 25, 30, 51, 52, 69–70 London, England, 180, 181, 183 London Underground, 133–4 looms, 157 Lordstown Strike (1972), 125 Lotus Development Corporation, 99 Luddites, 125, 253 Lufa Farms, 171–2 Luminate, 240 lump of labour fallacy, 139 Lusaka, Zambia, 15 Lyft, 146, 148 machine learning, 31–4, 54, 58, 88, 127, 129, 143 MacKinnon, Rebecca, 223 Maersk, 197, 199, 211 malaria, 253 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shootdown (2014), 199 Malta, 114 Malthus, Thomas, 72–3 malware, 197 Man with the Golden Gun, The (1974 film), 37 manufacturing, 10, 39, 42–4, 46, 166–7, 175–9 additive, 43–4, 46, 48, 88, 166, 169, 175–9 automation and, 130 re-localisation, 175–9 subtractive, 42–3 market saturation, 25–8, 51, 52 market share, 93–6, 111 Marshall, Alfred, 97 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 18, 147, 202, 238 Mastercard, 98 May, Theresa, 183 Mayors for a Guaranteed Income, 189 McCarthy, John, 31 McKinsey, 76, 94 McMaster University, 178 measles, 246 Mechanical Turk, 142–3, 144, 145 media literacy, 211–12 meningitis, 246 Mexico, 202 microorganisms, 42, 46, 69 Microsoft, 16–17, 65, 84–5, 88, 98–9, 100, 105, 108, 122, 221 Bing, 107 cloud computing, 85 data collection, 228 Excel, 99 internet and, 84–5, 100 network effect and, 99 Office software, 98–9, 110, 152 Windows, 85, 98–9 Workplace Productivity scores, 152 Mill, John Stuart, 193 miniaturisation, 34–5 minimum wage, 147, 161 misinformation, 11, 191, 192, 200–204, 209, 212, 217, 225, 247–8 mobile phones, 76, 121 see also smartphones; telecom companies Moderna, 245, 247 Moixa, 174 Mondelez, 197, 211 Mongol Empire (1206–1368), 44 monopolies, 10, 71, 94, 95, 114–24, 218, 255 Monopoly (board game), 82 Montreal, Quebec, 171 mood detection systems, 152 Moore, Gordon, 19, 48 Moore’s Law, 19–22, 26, 28–9, 31, 34, 63, 64, 74 artificial intelligence and, 32, 33–4 Kodak and, 83 price and, 41–2, 51, 68–9 as social fact, 29, 49 superstar companies and, 95 time, relationship with, 48–9 Moravec, Hans, 131 Moravec’s paradox, 131–2 Motorola, 76 Mount Mercy College, Cork, 57 Mozilla Firefox, 242 Mumbai, India, 181 mumps, 246 muskets, 54–5 MySpace, 26–7 Nadella, Satya, 85 Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020), 206–7 napalm, 216 NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), 56 Natanz nuclear site, Iran, 196 National Health Service (NHS), 87 nationalism, 168, 186 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), 191, 213 Netflix, 104, 107, 109, 136, 137, 138, 139, 151, 248 Netherlands, 103 Netscape Communicator, 6 networks, 58–62 network effects, 96–101, 106, 110, 121, 223 neural networks, 32–4 neutral, technology as, 5, 220–21, 254 new wars, 194 New York City, New York, 180, 183 New York Times, 3, 125, 190, 228 New Zealand, 188, 236 Newton, Isaac, 20 Nigeria, 103, 145, 182, 254 Niinistö, Sauli, 212 Nike, 102 nitrogen fertilizers, 35 Nixon, Richard, 25, 114 Nobel Prize, 64, 74, 241 Nokia, 120 non-state actors, 194, 213 North Korea, 198 North Macedonia, 200–201 Norway, 173, 216 NotPetya malware, 197, 199–200, 211, 213 Novell, 98 Noyce, Robert, 19 NSO Group, 214 nuclear weapons, 193, 195–6, 212, 237 Nuremberg Trials (1945–6), 208 O’Reilly, Tim, 107 O’Sullivan, Laura, 57–8, 60 Obama, Barack, 205, 214, 225 Ocado, 137 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 239 Oculus, 117 oDesk, 144 Ofcom, 8 Ofoto, 84 Ogburn, William, 85 oil industry, 172, 250 Houthi drone attacks (2019), 206 OAPEC crisis (1973–4), 37, 258 Shamoon attack (2012), 198 Standard Oil breakup (1911), 93–4 Olduvai, Tanzania, 42 online shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 open-source software, 242 Openreach, 123 Operation Opera (1981), 195–6, 209 opium, 38 Orange, 121 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 119, 167 Osborne Computer Corporation, 16 Osborne, Michael, 129 Osirak nuclear reactor, Iraq, 195–6, 209 Ostrom, Elinor, 241 Oxford University, 129, 134, 203, 226 pace of change, 3 pagers, 87 Pakistan, 145, 205 palladium, 170 PalmPilot, 173 panopticon, 152 Paris, France, 181, 183 path dependence, 86 PayPal, 98, 110 PC clones, 17 PeerIndex, 8, 201, 237 Pegasus, 214 PeoplePerHour, 144 PepsiCo, 93 Perez, Carlota, 46–7 pernicious polarization, 232 perpetual motion, 95, 106, 107, 182 Petersen, Michael Bang, 75 Phan Thi Kim Phuc, 216–17, 224, 225 pharmaceutical industry, 6, 93, 250 phase transitions, 4 Philippines, 186, 203 Phillips Exeter Academy, 150 phishing scams, 211 Phoenix, Arizona, 134 photolithography, 19 Pigou, Arthur Cecil, 97 Piketty, Thomas, 160 Ping An Good Doctor, 103, 250 Pix Moving, 166, 169, 175 PKK (Partîya Karkerên Kurdistanê), 206 Planet Labs, 69 platforms, 101–3, 219 PlayStation, 86 plough, 157 Polanyi, Michael, 133 polarisation, 231–4 polio, 246 population, 72–3 Portify, 162 Postel, Jon, 55 Postings, Robert, 233 Predator drones, 205, 206 preprints, 59–60 price gouging, 93 price of technology, 22, 68–9 computing, 68–9, 191, 249 cyber-weapons, 191–2 drones, 192 genome sequencing, 41–2, 252 renewable energy, 39–40, 250 printing press, 45 public sphere, 218, 221, 223 Pulitzer Prize, 216 punctuated equilibrium, 87–8 al-Qaeda, 205, 210–11 Qatar, 198 quantum computing, 35 quantum physics, 29 quarantines, 12, 152, 176, 183, 246 R&D (research and development), 67–8, 113, 118 racial bias, 231 racism, 225, 231, 234 radicalisation pathways, 233 radiologists, 126 Raford, Noah, 43 Raz, Ze’ev, 195, 209 RB, 197 re-localisation, 11, 166–90, 253, 255 conflict and, 189, 193, 194, 209 Reagan, Ronald, 64, 163 religion, 6, 82, 83 resilience, 257 reskilling, 159–60 responsibility gap, 209 Restrepo, Pascual, 139 Reuters, 8, 56, 132 revolutions, 87 Ricardo, David, 169–70, 177 rights, 240–41 Rise of the Robots, The (Ford), 125 Rittenhouse, Kyle, 224 Roche, 67 Rockefeller, John, 93 Rohingyas, 224 Rome, ancient, 180 Rose, Carol, 243 Rotterdam, Netherlands, 56 Rule of Law, 82 running shoes, 102, 175–6 Russell, Stuart, 31, 118 Russian Federation, 122 disinformation campaigns, 203 Estonia cyberattacks (2007), 190–91, 200 Finland, relations with, 212 Nagorno-Karabakh War (2020), 206 nuclear weapons, 237 Ukraine cyberattacks (2017), 197, 199–200 US election interference (2016), 217 Yandex, 122 S-curve, 25, 30, 51, 52, 69–70 al-Sahhaf, Muhammad Saeed, 201 Salesforce, 108–9 Saliba, Samer, 184 salt, 114 Samsung, 93, 228 San Francisco, California, 181 Sandel, Michael, 218 Sanders, Bernard, 163 Sandworm, 197, 199–200, 211 Santander, 95 Sasson, Steve, 83 satellites, 56–7, 69 Saturday Night Fever (1977 soundtrack), 72 Saudi Arabia, 108, 178, 198, 203, 206 Schmidt, Eric, 5 Schwarz Gruppe, 67 Second Machine Age, The (Brynjolfsson and McAfee), 129 self-driving vehicles, 78, 134–5, 141 semiconductors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 September 11 attacks (2001), 205, 210–11 Shamoon virus, 198 Shanghai, China, 56 Shannon, Claude, 18 Sharp, 16 Shenzhen, Guangdong, 182 shipping containers, 61–2, 63 shopping, 48, 61, 62, 75, 94, 102, 135 Siemens, 196 silicon chips, see chips Silicon Valley, 5, 7, 15, 24, 65, 110, 129, 223 Sinai Peninsula, 195 Sinclair ZX81, 15, 17, 21, 36 Singapore, 56 Singles’ Day, 48 Singularity University, 5 SixDegrees, 26 Skydio R1 drone, 208 smartphones, 22, 26, 46, 47–8, 65, 86, 88, 105, 111, 222 Smith, Adam, 169–70 sneakers, 102, 175–6 Snow, Charles Percy, 7 social credit systems, 230 social media, 26–8 censorship on, 216–17, 224–6, 236 collective bargaining and, 164 data collection on, 228 interoperability, 121, 237–8 market saturation, 25–8 misinformation on, 192, 201–4, 217, 247–8 network effect, 98, 223 polarisation and, 231–4 software as a service, 109 solar power, 37–8, 53, 65, 77, 82, 90, 171, 172, 173, 249, 250, 251 SolarWinds, 200 Solberg, Erna, 216 South Africa, 170 South Korea, 188, 198, 202 Southey, Robert, 80 sovereignty, 185, 199, 214 Soviet Union (1922–91), 185, 190, 194, 212 Spain, 170, 188 Spanish flu pandemic (1918–20), 75 Speedfactory, Ansbach, 176 Spire, 69 Spotify, 69 Sputnik 1 orbit (1957), 64, 83 stagflation, 63 Standard and Poor, 104 Standard Oil, 93–4 standardisation, 54–7, 61, 62 Stanford University, 32, 58 Star Wars franchise, 99 state-sized companies, 11, 67 see also superstar companies states, 82 stirrups, 44 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 208 Stockton, California, 160 strategic snowflakes, 211 stress tests, 237 Stuxnet, 196, 214 Sudan, 183 superstar companies, 10, 11, 67, 94–124, 218–26, 252, 255 blitzscaling, 110 collective bargaining and, 163 horizontal expansion, 111–12, 218 increasing returns to scale, 108–10 innovation and, 117–18 intangible economy, 104–7, 118, 156 interoperability and, 120–22, 237–9 monopolies, 114–24, 218 network effect, 96–101, 121 platform model, 101–3, 219 taxation of, 118–19 vertical expansion, 112–13 workplace cultures, 151 supply chains, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175, 187, 252 surveillance, 152–3, 158 Surviving AI (Chace), 129 Sutskever, Ilya, 32 synthetic biology, 42, 46, 69, 174, 245, 250 Syria, 186 Taiwan, 181, 212 Talkspace, 144 Tallinn, Estonia, 190 Tang, Audrey, 212 Tanzania, 42, 183 TaskRabbit, 144 Tasmania, Australia, 197 taxation, 10, 63, 96, 118–19 gig economy and, 146 superstar companies and, 118–19 Taylor, Frederick Winslow, 150, 152, 153, 154 Tel Aviv, Israel, 181 telecom companies, 122–3 Tencent, 65, 104, 108, 122 territorial sovereignty, 185, 199, 214 Tesco, 67, 93 Tesla, 69, 78, 113 Thailand, 176, 203 Thatcher, Margaret, 64, 163 Thelen, Kathleen, 87 Thiel, Peter, 110–11 3D printing, see additive manufacturing TikTok, 28, 69, 159–60, 219 Tisné, Martin, 240 Tomahawk missiles, 207 Toyota, 95 trade networks, 61–2, 166–7, 169, 175 trade unions, see collective bargaining Trading Places (1983 film), 132 Tragedy of the Commons, The (Hardin), 241 transistors, 18–22, 28–9, 48–9, 52, 113, 251 transparency, 236 Treaty of Westphalia (1648), 199 TRS-80, 16 Trump, Donald, 79, 119, 166, 201, 225, 237 Tufekci, Zeynep, 233 Turing, Alan, 18, 22 Turkey, 102, 176, 186, 198, 202, 206, 231 Tversky, Amos, 74 23andMe, 229–30 Twilio, 151 Twitch, 225 Twitter, 65, 201, 202, 219, 223, 225, 237 two cultures, 7, 8 Uber, 69, 94, 102, 103, 106, 142, 144, 145 Assembly Bill 5 (California, 2019), 148 engineering jobs, 156 London ban (2019), 183, 188 London protest (2016), 153 pay at, 147, 156 satisfaction levels at, 146 Uber BV v Aslam (2021), 148 UiPath, 130 Ukraine, 197, 199 Unilever, 153 Union of Concerned Scientists, 56 unions, see collective bargaining United Arab Emirates, 43, 198, 250 United Autoworkers Union, 162 United Kingdom BBC, 87 Biobank, 242 Brexit (2016–20), 6, 168 collective bargaining in, 163 Covid-19 epidemic (2020–21), 79, 203 DDT in, 253 digital minilateralism, 188 drone technology in, 207 flashing of headlights in, 83 Golden Triangle, 170 Google and, 116 Industrial Revolution (1760–1840), 79–81 Luddite rebellion (1811–16), 125, 253 misinformation in, 203, 204 National Cyber Force, 200 NHS, 87 self-employment in, 148 telecom companies in, 123 Thatcher government (1979–90), 64, 163 United Nations, 87, 88, 188 United States antitrust law in, 114 automation in, 127 Battle of the Overpass (1937), 162 Capitol building storming (2021), 225 China, relations with, 166 Cold War (1947–91), 194, 212, 213 collective bargaining in, 163 Covid-19 epidemic (2020–21), 79, 202–4 Cyber Command, 200, 210 DDT in, 253 drone technology in, 205, 214 economists in, 63 HIPA Act (1996), 230 Kenosha unrest shooting (2020), 224 Lordstown Strike (1972), 125 manufacturing in, 130 misinformation in, 202–4 mobile phones in, 76 nuclear weapons, 237 Obama administration (2009–17), 205, 214 polarisation in, 232 presidential election (2016), 199, 201, 217 presidential election (2020), 202–3 Reagan administration (1981–9), 64, 163 self-employment in, 148 September 11 attacks (2001), 205, 210–11 shipping containers in, 61 shopping in, 48 solar energy research, 37 Standard Oil breakup (1911), 93–4 taxation in, 63, 119 Trump administration (2017–21), 79, 119, 166, 168, 201, 225, 237 Vietnam War (1955–75), 216 War on Terror (2001–), 205 universal basic income (UBI), 160, 189 universal service obligation, 122 University of Cambridge, 127, 188 University of Chicago, 63 University of Colorado, 73 University of Delaware, 55 University of Oxford, 129, 134, 203, 226 University of Southern California, 55 unwritten rules, 82 Uppsala Conflict Data Program, 194 UpWork, 145–6 USB (Universal Serial Bus), 51 Ut, Nick, 216 utility providers, 122–3 vaccines, 12, 202, 211, 245–7 Vail, Theodore, 100 value-free, technology as, 5, 220–21, 254 Veles, North Macedonia, 200–201 Véliz, Carissa, 226 Venezuela, 75 venture capitalists, 117 vertical expansion, 112–13, 116 vertical farms, 171–2, 251 video games, 86 Vietnam, 61, 175, 216 Virological, 245 Visa, 98 VisiCalc, 99 Vodafone, 121 Vogels, Werner, 68 Wag!

The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry by Jon Ronson

Abraham Maslow, Adam Curtis, Albert Einstein, Ascot racecourse, Carl Icahn, corporate raider, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, Donald Trump, Douglas Hofstadter, false flag, Gödel, Escher, Bach, impulse control, Jon Ronson, Norman Mailer, Ronald Reagan, Skype

Al shrugged and glanced at the floor for a moment. “I was stationed on a nuclear missile site,” he said. “You’re dealing with nuclear weapons. I was there during the Cuban missile crisis. The job’s very serious. You’ve got a mission. If you fail the mission, a lot of people could be seriously hurt. And does that commitment conflict with your family life? Of course it does. . . .” Al was referring to the time during the Cuban missile crisis that he left his five-months-pregnant wife home alone with no food or access to money and in desperation she had to call her mother and sister for help. “Oh!” I said.

How PowerPoint Makes You Stupid by Franck Frommer

Abraham Maslow, Albert Einstein, An Inconvenient Truth, business continuity plan, cuban missile crisis, dematerialisation, disinformation, hypertext link, invention of writing, inventory management, invisible hand, Just-in-time delivery, knowledge worker, Larry Ellison, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, new economy, oil shock, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, union organizing

On the subject of “information culture” more generally, it is worth consulting Armand Mattelart, Histoire de la société de l’information (Paris: La Découverte, 2001), 35–41, where one discovers the essential role of the former mathematician, Harvard professor, and president of Ford, Robert McNamara, in the rationalization of management in the Kennedy administration, where he was secretary of defense during the Cuban missile crisis and the beginnings of the Vietnam War. The American sociologist Daniel Bell names in the pantheon of figures inspiring technocracy Henri de Saint-Simon, Frederick Taylor, and Robert McNamara. 9. See, for example, www.slideshare.net, http://presentationload.com, http://thepowerpointtemplates.com. 10.

…

See illustration The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint (Tufte), xiii–xiv, 201 on graphs, 89–90 on lists, 60, 64 Commodore, 9 communication normalized, 224 and screen, 79 societal foundation, 225 and work, 33–34 Compaq, 9 competencies, 210–14 employment, 213–14 school, 211 work, 212 computer home ownership, 220 use in higher education, 199, 220 See also microcomputer computer science, 134 consultants, 130–35, 141–51, 181–82, 188 Anglo versus European, 146–48 company slides, 145–46 computer science, 134 formalization, 132 Minto pyramid principle, 145 models, 131–33 Taylor & Fayol, 131 reductionism, 132, 135 content versus form, 42–43 form dominates, 126, 222 control education, 221 and PowerPoint, 46–48 Conway, Melvin, 63 Craig, Russell, 201 critical thinking, 165, 228 cryptography, 19 Cuban missile crisis, 155–56 Darcos, Xavier, 181, 218, 220 Debord, Guy, 223, 226 Del Rey, Angélique, 211 Deming, William Edwards, 136 Deming’s wheel, 136 diagrams and graphs, 86–92, 135–41 BCG matrix, 137 Deming’s wheel, 136 flow chart, 140 Porter matrix, 137–38 SWOT matrix, 139 See also illustration Diffie, Whitfield, 19–20 digital natives, 214, 224 digital workplace, 217–21 Duarte, Nancy, 86 DuPont and graphic presentations, 2–3 econometrics, 133 economization, 168–75, 181–82 education, 199–209 business, 192, 211–12 competencies, 210–14 computer use, 199, 220 digitalization, 216–22 digital workplace, 217–21 divisions by discipline, 200, 208–9 employment, 206–7, 213–14 expenditures for training, 192–93 France versus Anglo-Saxon, 208, 216 humanities and social sciences, 205–7 employability, 206–7 images and animation, 203 note taking abandoned, 204 outcomes, 201, 220 PowerPoint, 214–15 versus learning, 197–99, 201–2, 227–28 versus teaching, 204–5 privatization, 219 sell yourself, 222 whiteboards, 215–17 See also readability employee adaptability, 32, 41 autonomous, 8–9, 12, 28, 48 and employer relations, 212 See also Taylorism; workplace English, 53, 208 See also language Enjeux–Les Échos, 224 Eurotunnel, 70–71 Facebook, 65 Fallows, James, 159, 161 Farkas, David, 51, 200 Fayol, Henri, 131 Fiasco (Ricks), 163–64 Le Figaro, 205 flow chart, 140 Forethought, 21 France economization, 168–75, 181–82 education, 209 versus Anglo-Saxon, 208, 216 France Telecom, 180–89 jobs, 182, 189 slides, 183–89 Franks, Tommy, 163 Friedman, Milton, 191 Gaglio, Gérard, 34, 39, 102, 105 Gallo, Carmine, 117–18 The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, 117 Gardiner, Sam, 159–60 Gaskins, Robert, 15–25, 39 background, 17–18 Bell Northern to Forethought, 20–21 criticizes PowerPoint, 24–25 first PowerPoint presentation, 15–16 Microsoft acquires PowerPoint, 21–22 Gates, Bill, 21, 115–16 Gaulejac, Vincent de, 223 globalization, 173–74 See also economization Godin, Seth, 86 Goody, Jack, 57–58 Google, 65, 94, 97 Gore, Al, 227 An Inconvenient Truth, 73, 118–24 Apple Macintosh, 120 awards and ticket sales, 119 biographical details, 121 graphic presentation.

The End of the Free Market: Who Wins the War Between States and Corporations? by Ian Bremmer

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, BRICs, British Empire, centre right, collective bargaining, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Doha Development Round, Exxon Valdez, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, global supply chain, household responsibility system, invisible hand, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, laissez-faire capitalism, low skilled workers, mass immigration, means of production, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, Naomi Klein, Nelson Mandela, new economy, offshore financial centre, open economy, race to the bottom, reserve currency, risk tolerance, Savings and loan crisis, shareholder value, Shenzhen special economic zone , South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special economic zone, spice trade, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, trade route, tulip mania, uranium enrichment, Washington Consensus, Yom Kippur War, zero-sum game

For the projection of power around the world, no weapon is more valuable than an aircraft carrier. The United States has eleven carrier groups; China has none. In short, the gap between the U.S. and Chinese militaries is considerable, and widening in America’s favor. But though state capitalism’s challenge to free markets won’t generate the drama of the Berlin airlift or the Cuban missile crisis, it can compromise a country’s security and the future of the global economy. With mercantilism a thing of the past, few now doubt that commerce can generate new wealth and expand more than one economy at a time. The end of the Cold War and the growth of emerging-market states like China, India, Russia, Brazil, and others have created new opportunities for precisely that kind of mutually profitable exchange.

…

Calderón, Felipe Camara, Moussa Dadis Canada capitalism, free market better government produced by different models of mixed skepticism of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (Schumpeter) capitalism, state, see state capitalism Caribbean Community (Caricom) Castro, Fidel CEDIGAZ Chávez, Hugo Chayefsky, Paddy Check Point Software Chemezov, Sergei Chen Yun child-labor laws Chile China African commercial ties with banks in decoupling and in economic crisis economic growth in economic reforms in foreign direct investment in Internet in IPR violations by military of oil demand in sovereign wealth funds in Soviet split with “special economic zones” in state-owned enterprises in stimulus package in trade by China Development Bank China Investment Corporation (CIC) China Mobile China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) Christian Science Monitor Citgo Petroleum Corporation Citigroup Clinton, Bill Clinton, Hillary Coca-Cola Colbert, Jean-Baptiste Cold War collateralized debt options Commercial International Merchant Bankers Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) communism Communist Party, Chinese Communist Party, India Companhia Vale do Rio Doce companies, privately owned see also specific companies companies, state-owned see also national oil and gas corporations consumer sovereignty Conté, Lansana Correa, Rafael Costa Rica Council on Foreign Relations credit-default swaps Cuba Cuban missile crisis Daimler/Chrysler Davidson, Christopher Declaration of Independence decoupling Defense Department, U.S. democracy Democratic Party, U.S. Deng Xiaoping Denmark Deripaska, Oleg derivatives Deutsche Bank dictatorship dirigisme dollar, U.S. Dongfeng Motor Corporation dot-com bubble Drake, Francis Dubai Dubai Ports World Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success (Davidson) Dubai World Dutch East India Company Dutch tulip mania East Siberian Gas Company Economist Intelligence Unit’s (EIU) Democracy Index Ecuador Egypt Egyptian General Petroleum Company Eisenhower, Dwight D.

The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory by Andrew J. Bacevich

affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, clean water, Columbian Exchange, Credit Default Swap, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, deindustrialization, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama: the end of history, friendly fire, gig economy, Glass-Steagall Act, global village, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, illegal immigration, income inequality, Jeff Bezos, Kickstarter, Marshall McLuhan, mass incarceration, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, Monroe Doctrine, Norman Mailer, obamacare, Occupy movement, opioid epidemic / opioid crisis, planetary scale, plutocrats, Potemkin village, price stability, Project for a New American Century, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Saturday Night Live, school choice, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Steve Bannon, Thomas L Friedman, too big to fail, traumatic brain injury, trickle-down economics, We are all Keynesians now, WikiLeaks

So once beyond its sobering initial phases, highlighted by dangerous confrontations centering on Berlin and the Korean peninsula, the Cold War was not so much waged as managed. Dramatic rhetorical flourishes notwithstanding, both sides came to recognize that they shared a mutual interest in avoiding Armageddon, a point definitively driven home in 1962 by the Cuban Missile Crisis. The challenges inherent in achieving even that limited objective appeared likely to continue far into the future, as would the rivalry pitting the United States against the Soviet Union, the Free World against the Communist Bloc, the West against the East. Presidents might express ritualistic hopes of achieving world peace, but the immediate task was simply to prevent the superpower competition from getting out of hand.

…

See also post–Cold War (Emerald City) consensus Bush Jr. and Bush Sr. and citizens vs. soldiers and consequences of containment and critics and defined democracy and Dulles and end of, with fall of Berlin Wall freedom and geopolitics and globalization and Hillary Clinton and ideology and limits and materialism and morality and Nixon and president as leader of Free World and Reagan and religion and Trump and Vietnam and Collins, Gail Columbian Exchange Comey, James common good Communism capitalism vs. collapse of Nixon in China and Wallace and conservatives consumerism and materialism consumer protection containment Coolidge, Calvin Council on Foreign Relations credit card debt crime criminal justice reform Cruz, Ted Cuba invasion of 1898 Obama and Cuban Missile Crisis culture wars Culture Wars (Hunter) Cyrus the Great death penalty Declaration of Independence Defense Department Defense of Marriage Act (1996) deindustrialization Deliberate Force, Operation demagogues democracy Democratic Party primaries of 2016 “deplorables” depression and anxiety Desert Storm, Operation Dewey, Commodore Dewey, Thomas discrimination diversity military and Obama and divorce Donaldson, Sam Doonesbury (Trudeau) Douthat, Ross Dowd, Maureen drugs and substance abuse Dukakis, Michael Duke University Dulles, John Foster Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) Eastern Europe economy.

Cybersecurity: What Everyone Needs to Know by P. W. Singer, Allan Friedman

4chan, A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace, air gap, Apple's 1984 Super Bowl advert, barriers to entry, Berlin Wall, bitcoin, blood diamond, borderless world, Brian Krebs, business continuity plan, Chelsea Manning, cloud computing, cognitive load, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, do-ocracy, Dr. Strangelove, drone strike, Edward Snowden, energy security, failed state, fake news, Fall of the Berlin Wall, fault tolerance, Free Software Foundation, global supply chain, Google Earth, information security, Internet of things, invention of the telegraph, John Markoff, John Perry Barlow, Julian Assange, Khan Academy, M-Pesa, military-industrial complex, MITM: man-in-the-middle, mutually assured destruction, Network effects, packet switching, Peace of Westphalia, pre–internet, profit motive, RAND corporation, ransomware, RFC: Request For Comment, risk tolerance, rolodex, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, Skype, smart grid, SQL injection, Steve Jobs, Stuxnet, Twitter Arab Spring, uranium enrichment, vertical integration, We are Anonymous. We are Legion, web application, WikiLeaks, Yochai Benkler, zero day, zero-sum game

For instance, when General Curtis LeMay headed the new Strategic Air Command in the 1950s, he surprised civilian leaders when they finally got around to asking what he planned for American nuclear bomber forces, if there ever were a crisis with the Soviets. LeMay explained that he was not too concerned, because he’d just order a preemptive nuclear attack. “I’m going to knock the s**t out of them before they take off the ground.” It’s a good thing they asked and shut down such plans before the Cuban Missile Crisis just a few years later. Today’s leaders might want to ask if there are any cyber equivalents. Focus: What Is the Chinese Approach to Cyberwar? “The most threatening actor in cyberspace.” So who won this not-so-prized description? Not al-Qaeda. Not the US military’s Cyber Command. Not Facebook’s privacy policy.

…

With the two superpowers at loggerheads, the Baruch plan fell apart. Instead, a nuclear arms race would shape the next 50 years of global politics, a time in which over one hundred thousand atomic bombs would be built and the world would almost be destroyed several times over, as during close calls like the Cuban Missile Crisis. While today’s emerging cyber arms races are far from identical to the Cold War, there are still lessons that can be learned from it. Or, to paraphrase Mark Twain, while history may not always repeat itself, “It does rhyme.” One of the most instructive lessons is that the initial periods of a burgeoning arms race are often the most dangerous.

…

The possessors of the new technology see themselves as having a unique advantage but one that is fleeting, creating a “use it or lose it” mentality. It is also the period in which the technology and its consequences are least understood, especially by senior leaders. In the Cold War, for example, probably the scariest time was not the Cuban Missile Crisis, but the late 1940s and 1950s when the real-world versions of Dr. Strangelove were taken seriously, arguing that nuclear war was something that was not only survivable but winnable. This was a period that saw everything from General Douglas Macarthur’s 1951 demand to be given sole discretion to drop atomic bombs on mainland China to perhaps one of the most outrageous nuclear concepts of all, Project A-119.

Democracy Incorporated by Sheldon S. Wolin

affirmative action, Berlin Wall, British Empire, centre right, coherent worldview, collective bargaining, colonial rule, corporate governance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, dematerialisation, Donald Trump, Fall of the Berlin Wall, full employment, illegal immigration, invisible hand, It's morning again in America, mass incarceration, money market fund, mutually assured destruction, new economy, offshore financial centre, Plato's cave, public intellectual, radical decentralization, Ralph Nader, Ronald Reagan, school vouchers, single-payer health, stem cell, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thorstein Veblen

As then Vice President Nixon explained, “tactical atomic explosives are now conventional.”52 When the Cold War threatened to become too normal and abstract, déjà vu all over again, there would be “war scares,” including air raid drills during which children practiced protecting themselves from nuclear attacks by huddling under their schoolroom desks.53 Perhaps the most unnerving example of the mentality at work constructing a Cold War power imaginary was the doctrine of “Mutual Assured Destruction” formulated in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Instead of targeting an enemy’s military facilities “each side should target the other’s cities” in order to cause the most casualties possible. “The assumption behind it,” according to one historian, “was that if no one could be sure of surviving a nuclear war, there would not be one.”54 If there had been one, incinerated parents could die comforted with the knowledge that, thanks to school desks, their children would have been spared.

…

Foreign affairs, like military affairs, were about power politics, unpredictable dangers—including threats to the very existence of the nation—complex strategies, and “the” national interest, subjects about which average citizens lacked the experience and competence to judge. The models for the kind of experienced expertise qualified to deal with high matters of state were the “wise men” assembled by President Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis and later by President Johnson for Vietnam strategies.11 Although the one was a near nuclear disaster (averted because in the end JFK followed his own judgment) and the other a clear disaster (plunged into because LBJ did follow his more hawkish advisers), neither resulted in discrediting the status of elitism or its claims.

…

Bush administration, 94, 109, 143 and government, 111, 136, 137, 138–41, 144, 145–47, 160, 169 and health care, 109 Huntington on, 180, 181 and inequalities, 157, 269 and instability, 128, 129 and inverted totalitarianism, xviii, xxi, 44, 45, 47, 56–57, 61, 139, 185, 238–39 and Iraqi economy, 88 and Iraq War, 93, 193–94 and liberalism, 220 lobbying by, 51 and low-wage workers, 196 and managed citizenry, 107 and Mansfield, 173 and military, 45, 135, 136, 199–200 and myth, 13 and opinion manipulation, 60 political incorporation of, 91 political influence of, 66–67 and political parties, 201 and presidency, 102, 103 and Reagan, 272 and religion, 46, 116, 127, 128–29 and Republican Party, 63, 127, 150, 187, 201 rise of, xxii and Rumsfeld, 169 and science, 126, 132 and Smith, 123 and social programs, 111 and state, xxiii, 58, 63, 67, 87, 92, 112–13, 131, 135, 143, 195, 200, 220, 238–39, 284, 287 and Straussians, 168 and Superpower, 62, 102–3, 131, 132, 133, 139, 143 and taxation, 274 and technology, 132 and wartime sacrifice, 109–10. See also business Corwin, Edward, Total War and the Constitution, 16–17, 41–42, 50 Coughlin, Charles, 23 criminal justice system, 57, 58. See also judiciary/courts Cromwell, Oliver, 251 Cuba, 190 Cuban Missile Crisis, 33, 165 culture, xviii, 61, 63, 157 culture wars, 111–12, 224 Dahl, Robert, 51 Darwin, Charles, xxii Dean, Howard, 205, 216, 324n14 defendants, rights of, 78, 108, 182, 235. See also judiciary/courts deficits, 157, 270 Delay, Tom, 119 democracy: and American colonies, 150–51, 254, 255 and antidemocracy, xx–xxi and archaism, 121 Athenian, 95, 150, 151, 242–48, 256 as breaking with past, 273, 274, 275 and capitalism, 34, 267, 268–69 and citizens, 290–91 citizens as agents in, 60 citizens as source of power in, 90–91 and citizens’ participation, 121, 186–87 citizens’ responsibility in, 138 and classic totalitarianism, 50 and Cold War, 26, 36 and Cold War liberals, 27 conditional basis of authority in, 173 and consent, 76, 77, 79 consolidation of American, xix and Constitution, 219, 225–30, 242, 254 constitutional, 104 as contributing to Nazism and Fascism, 52–54 and corporations, 139–40, 187, 258 corruption in, 245 decline of, 107 and despotism, 79–80 development of American, 255–58 and education, 161 and election of 2000, 102 and elections, 147–48 and elites, 55, 159, 160, 166, 173, 234, 245–46 and empire, 20, 52, 70, 97, 100, 189, 191, 194, 244–45, 247–48, 267, 273 and equality, 61, 186, 268–69 essentials of, 212–13 and everyday vs. virtual reality, 268 exclusion of, 134 and extraordinary majority, 156 as failing, 259–60 and foreign policy, 165 and Founding Fathers, 155, 225–30, 229 and free enterprise, 91, 92 fugitive, 23, 227, 254, 255, 277, 278, 287, 288, 290 and government regulation, 195 and grievances, 255 Huntington on, 179, 181 and inequalities through capitalism, 157 and Internet, 233 and inverted totalitarianism, xxiv, 46, 47, 49, 52, 61, 259 in Iraq, 141–42 and Iraq War, 50 and irrationality, 280 Jefferson on, 256–57 and liberalism, 270 limited role of, 257 local character of, 291 Machiavelli on, 151–52 managed, xxiv, 47, 97, 102, 136–37, 140, 141, 142, 143, 149, 150, 155, 156, 157, 159, 166, 213, 229, 240, 257, 273, 280, 287 and managers, 145 Mansfield’s contempt for, 172 and military, 147 and The National Security Strategy of the United States, 85 Negroponte on, 134 and New Deal, 273 and NSC-68, 31 nurturance of, 81 and the people, 243 and Plato, 266 plebiscitary, 54 and postclassical Europe, 248–49 and privatization, 213 and public service, 146 and Putney debates, 250–53 and redress, 227 and religion, 2–3, 119 and Republican Party, 187, 224 revival of, 259, 273–75, 287–92 sacrifice under, 108 self-distrust of, 110 shareholder, 65 Smith on, 21 and Strauss, 167, 171 and Superpower, 51, 100, 101, 107, 233, 237, 260, 267 Tocqueville on, 79 and totalitarianism, 42–43, 54 and truth, 260–67 Turner on, 232–33 values of, 269 Zakaria’s attack on, 174–77, 178 Democratic Convention of 1968, 216 Democratic Party: centrism of, 206, 325n24 and Cold War, 27 in Congress, 111, 202–3 conservatism of, 206–7 constituency of, 149 and corporations, 207 and election of 2000, 166 and election of 2004, 205–6 and elimination of social programs, 156 and environment, 206, 207–8 financing of, 195 and government as enemy, 157 as inauthentic opposition, 201 and Iraq War, 103–4, 110 as majority party, 286, 287 and small government, 136 demos: and American colonies, 254 Athenian, 243, 246, 247, 250 decline of power of, 194 defined, 278 development of, 289–90 and elites, 290 and evolving American democracy, 258 fragmented, 277 as fugitive, 288 grievances of, 255 as irrational, 282 modern, 250 and past, 276 power of, 249–50.

Warnings by Richard A. Clarke

"Hurricane Katrina" Superdome, active measures, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, anti-communist, artificial general intelligence, Asilomar, Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, carbon tax, cognitive bias, collateralized debt obligation, complexity theory, corporate governance, CRISPR, cuban missile crisis, data acquisition, deep learning, DeepMind, discovery of penicillin, double helix, Elon Musk, failed state, financial thriller, fixed income, Flash crash, forensic accounting, friendly AI, Hacker News, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Internet of things, James Watt: steam engine, Jeff Bezos, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, knowledge worker, Maui Hawaii, megacity, Mikhail Gorbachev, money market fund, mouse model, Nate Silver, new economy, Nicholas Carr, Nick Bostrom, nuclear winter, OpenAI, pattern recognition, personalized medicine, phenotype, Ponzi scheme, Ray Kurzweil, Recombinant DNA, Richard Feynman, Richard Feynman: Challenger O-ring, risk tolerance, Ronald Reagan, Sam Altman, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, self-driving car, Silicon Valley, smart grid, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Stuxnet, subprime mortgage crisis, tacit knowledge, technological singularity, The Future of Employment, the scientific method, The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver, Tunguska event, uranium enrichment, Vernor Vinge, WarGames: Global Thermonuclear War, Watson beat the top human players on Jeopardy!, women in the workforce, Y2K

They ordered the Red Army to nuclear alert, sending submarines to sea, putting bombers in the air, and fueling missiles. When the NATO exercise ended, the Soviet Union gradually backed down too, but the incident brought the United States and Soviet Union closer to war than they had been since the Cuban Missile Crisis twenty years earlier. Certain tells had been identified by Charlie Allen and his staff to monitor the situation between Iraq and Kuwait. Months before, in January, he ordered his staff to review the Iraqi I&W target list. They refined the list and increased the priority of photographing the key units.

…

In retrospect it seems inexplicable that almost forty years after the first nuclear weapon was used, after the two superpowers had built tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, that the world’s most powerful nations did not really understand the implications of using them against one another. After all, they had come perilously close to fighting such a war several times, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 being the most famous. Both nations had nuclear-armed missiles on alert, capable of launching at a moment’s notice. On a normal day, the United States had B-52 bombers armed with nuclear weapons flying patrols just outside of Russian airspace, each with predetermined targets, waiting for the “go code.”

…

See also Upper Big Branch Mine disaster Cassandra system, 122, 125, 133, 137–38, 140–41 fatality rate, 123–24, 125–28 federal regulations, 124–30, 137–39 federal research program, 124–25 history of, 122–23 institutional refusal and, 137–42 Coastal wetlands, 41, 42–44 Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection, and Restoration Act (CWPPRA), 43–44 Coding errors, 366–67 Cognitive biases, 34–35, 171–72 heuristics and, 189–91 Cognitive style, 14–15 Cold and the Dark, The: The World after Nuclear War (Sagan, Ehrlich, and Kennedy), 273–74 Cold Start doctrine, 264–65, 267, 270 Cold War, 25–26, 267–68, 271–74, 277–78 Collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), 147–48 Columbia University, 237, 238 Coming Plague, The (Garrett), 232 Complexity, and vulnerabilities, 366–67 Complexity Mismatch, 116, 178–79, 215, 299 Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), 266 Computers in Crisis (Murray), 193–94 Conference on the Long-Term Worldwide Biological Consequences of Nuclear War (1983), 273 Congressional oversight committees, 355 Consensus science, 172–73 Continuous miners, 131–32 Conventional wisdom, 28, 355 Coplan, Jeremy, 186 Corvette hacks, 297–98 Cosmic Catastrophes (Morrison and Chapman), 302, 303, 304–5, 308–9, 312, 314–15, 319 Cost-benefit analysis, 361–62 Countervalue strike, 275, 278–79 Cowardice, 180 Cox, Jeff, 150 Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, 307–9 Crichton, Michael, 172–73 Crick, Francis, 328 Crimea, 285 CRISPR, 231–32, 326, 327, 329–49 CRISPR/Cas9, 326, 330–49, 360, 366–67 CRISPR Therapeutics, 333 Critical infrastructure protection (CIP), 287 Critics, 168, 170, 186–88 Crittenden, Gary, 143–44, 156 Crocker, Ryan, 73 Crocker’s Rules, 208–9 Cuban Missile Crisis, 26, 274 Cybersecurity, 283–300 Cynomolgus monkeys, 334–35 Daniel, 2 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 210, 382n Darwin, Charles, 325 Data, 36–37, 184 “Decay heat,” 85 Decision makers (the audience), 168, 170, 176–82, 380n false Cassandras and, 191–98 making the same mistakes, 189–91 responses, 358–64 scanning for problems, 354–56 Deep Impact (movie), 313–14 Deep learning, 210, 212 Demon core, 83 Deutsche Bank, 157 Devil’s advocates, 359, 379n DiBartolomeo, Dan, 105–6 Diffusion of responsibility, 176–77, 215, 235, 321, 348 Dinosaurs, 307–9 DiPascali, Frank, 107 Disembodied AI, 207 DNA, 326, 327–28, 336–37 Dole, Bob, 28–29 Dot-com bubble, 147 Doudna, Jennifer, 326–30, 335–36, 338–41, 343, 345, 346–49, 360 Drijfhout, Sybren, 253 Duchenne muscular dystrophy, 332 Duelfer, Charles, 30–31 Eagles, the (band), 305 Earth Institute, 238 Earthquake preparedness, 352–53 Ebola virus, 3, 219–20 Edwards, Edwin, 43 Eemian interglacial, 249, 250 Eggers, Dave, 39 Egypt, 59, 63, 66–67 Ehrlich, Paul, 192–93 Ein-Dor, Tsachi, 13, 186, 380n Einstein, Albert, 185 Eisman, Steve, 149, 152 Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center (E-ISAC), 287 Electric Power Research Institute, 286 Electromagnetic pulse (EMP), 274, 352 Embodied AI, 206 EMCON (emissions control), 29–30 Empire State Building, 260 Empirical method, 36, 184, 185 Energy policy, 243–44 Enron, 152 Enthoven, Alain, 361 Epidemic Intelligence Service, 354–55 Epidemic That Never Was, The (Neustadt), 196–97 EQ (emotional quotient), 183 Erasmus Medical Center, 222 Ermarth, Fritz, 27 Erroneous Consensus, 172–73 Ethics of AI growth, 205–6 of gene editing, 334, 339–40, 343 Eugenics, 342, 344 Evolution, 329–33 Expert Political Judgment (Tetlock), 13–15 Explainable AI, 210 Fairfield Greenwich Group, 108, 113 Fallujah, 68, 69 False Cassandras, 191–98 Famines, 192 Farmington Mine disaster, 127–28 Farson, Richard, 175 “Fast-failure” review, 357 Fatalism, 2 Fate of the States (Whitney), 153 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), 8, 100, 112, 115 Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), 160 Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), 40, 46–48, 51, 53–54, 323–24 Hurricane Pam exercise, 40, 47–49 Federal Reserve Bank, 159 Feedback loops, 16, 192–93 Fermi, Enrico, 373n Feynman, Richard, 240 Figueres, Christiana, 247 Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, 162 Financial crisis of 2008, 143–65 Madoff fraud and SEC, 118–19 primary cause of, 147–48 Whitney and, 143–46, 148–50, 156–60 Flash Crash of 2010, 211 Fletcher, Charles, 256–57 Flood Control Act of 1928, 42 Flood Control Act of 1965, 46 Flu pandemic of 1918, 195, 198, 217, 221–24 Flu pandemic of 2009, 217–18, 221–22 Forbes, 154 Ford, Gerald, 196–97 Ford, Robert, 57–74 aid to Syrian opposition, 62–63, 64–65 ambassadorship in Egypt, 67 ambassadorship in Syria, 57–58 departure from Syria, 60–62 warning and prediction of, 64–74 Foreign Service, U.S., 57, 58, 67 Fortune, 146, 148–49, 161 Fossil fuels, 16, 42, 257–58.

The Berlin Wall: A World Divided, 1961-1989 by Frederick Taylor

anti-communist, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, cuban missile crisis, facts on the ground, Fall of the Berlin Wall, German hyperinflation, Kickstarter, land reform, mass immigration, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, oil shock, open borders, plutocrats, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sinatra Doctrine, the market place, young professional, éminence grise

Only if the ‘enemy’ agreed to respect totally the integrity of the GDR’s borders should this concession be extended. After one final Christmas agreement (1966), the concession was not renewed. It would be years before West Berliners could once again visit the East—as part of a more general settlement which went a long way to granting the Communist regime the recognition it craved.2 During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, almost everyone had expected the Soviets to apply extra pressure via Berlin. The Americans had, after all, demanded the right to board and inspect Soviet missiles bound for Cuba. There had been anxiety that the Soviets would respond with a similar move against Allied traffic going into Berlin.

…

The kind of polarised antiCommunist attitudes that had been general in West Berlin at the beginning of the 1960s had given way, for much of the population-including the political and media élite-at best to a more nuanced view of the Cold War, at worst to a bite-the-hand-that-feeds anti-Americanism. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the main theatre of the Cold War did not switch back to Europe. Despite crablike progress towards a halftolerable status quo in Berlin during the rest of the decade, and the usual East-West name-calling, at no point did the city become a potential flashpoint for the Third World War as it had been between 1948 and 1963.

…

., 99, 171, 216; sworn in as president, 112; background and rise to power, 112-14; and ’missile gap’, 113, 116; and Khrushchev, 115, 121 summit with Khrushchev, 127-9, 131, 138, 208-9 television address, 131-4, 144-5, 148, 152, 209; and border closure, 145-6, 148, 152; ill health, 203; response to border closure, 145-6, 148, 152; irritation with Brandt, 219; Brandt’s letter to, 221-2, 226-8; reply to Brandt, 228-34, 244, 246-8; letter to Khrushchev, 277; and Checkpoint Charlie confrontation, 284-7; and Peter Fechter killing, 320-1; and Cuban Missile Crisis. 336; Berlin visit, 337-42; ’jelly donut’ story, 340-1; assassination, 341 Kennedy, Joseph, 112 INDEX / 511 Kennedy, Robert, 112, 114, 205, 223-4, 229; and Bolshakov channel, 284-5; and Berlin visit, 337; promotes cultural-exchange programme, 355 Kessler, General, 431, 441 Keutschen, 370 KGB, 149, 195, 198, 215, 291 Khrushchev, Leonid, 454 Khrushchev, Nikita, 81, 356, 403, 413, 417; denunciations of Stalin, 100, 103, 275, 281-2, 346; appoints Gomulka, 101; support for Ulbricht, 102, 105, 118; and rocketry and nuclear weapons, 102-3, 113, 116-18, 120-1, 134-5; declaration on prosperity, 103, 386; mocked by Stalin, 103, 117; provokes Berlin Crisis, 103-5; and Kennedy; and Ulbricht’s Berlin policy, 117, 122, 126-7, 137-8; relations with China, 118, 275-6, 287; relationship with Ulbricht, 119-20; stations missiles in GDR, 120; modest personal status, 123; summit with Kennedy, 127-9, 131, 138; and Kennedy’s television address, 132, 134; meeting with McCloy, 134-5; and border closure, 137, 139-41, 145-6, 148-9, 154, 158, 174; intentions over Berlin, 205-6, 211, 220, 224, 226, 251-2, 254, 269, 274, 288; intentions over GDR, 268, 271, 276-7, 286-8; and XXII.

Strategy: A History by Lawrence Freedman

Albert Einstein, anti-communist, Anton Chekhov, Ayatollah Khomeini, barriers to entry, battle of ideas, behavioural economics, Black Swan, Blue Ocean Strategy, British Empire, business process, butterfly effect, centre right, Charles Lindbergh, circulation of elites, cognitive dissonance, coherent worldview, collective bargaining, complexity theory, conceptual framework, Cornelius Vanderbilt, corporate raider, correlation does not imply causation, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, defense in depth, desegregation, disinformation, Dr. Strangelove, Edward Lorenz: Chaos theory, en.wikipedia.org, endogenous growth, endowment effect, escalation ladder, Ford Model T, Ford paid five dollars a day, framing effect, Frederick Winslow Taylor, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Herbert Marcuse, Herman Kahn, Ida Tarbell, information retrieval, interchangeable parts, invisible hand, John Nash: game theory, John von Neumann, Kenneth Arrow, lateral thinking, linear programming, loose coupling, loss aversion, Mahatma Gandhi, means of production, mental accounting, Murray Gell-Mann, mutually assured destruction, Nash equilibrium, Nelson Mandela, Norbert Wiener, Norman Mailer, oil shock, Pareto efficiency, performance metric, Philip Mirowski, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, race to the bottom, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, Richard Thaler, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Rosa Parks, scientific management, seminal paper, shareholder value, social contagion, social intelligence, Steven Pinker, strikebreaker, The Chicago School, The Myth of the Rational Market, the scientific method, theory of mind, Thomas Davenport, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Torches of Freedom, Toyota Production System, transaction costs, Twitter Arab Spring, ultimatum game, unemployed young men, Upton Sinclair, urban sprawl, Vilfredo Pareto, W. E. B. Du Bois, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, Yogi Berra, zero-sum game

Fred Kaplan, Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 302. 50. Kaysen to Kennedy, September 22, 1961, Foreign Relations in the United States XIV-VI, supplement, Document 182. 51. Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 (London: Macmillan, 1969), 69–71, 80, 89, 182. 52. Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002). 53. Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, Controlling the Risks in Cuba, Adelphi Paper No. 17 (London ISS, February 1965). 54. Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, 226, 139. 55. Herman Kahn, On Escalation (London: Pall Mall Press, 1965). 56.

…

He had worked with Schelling on the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s, and the two remained good friends. When McNaughton spoke of arms control, for example, he showed interest in the notion of the “reciprocal fear of surprise attack” and “non-zero-sum games.”34 He is said to have remarked that the Cuban missile crisis demonstrated the realism of Schelling’s games.35 McNaughton was a key figure in the development of the U.S. policy on Vietnam, working closely with Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and National Security Advisor McGeorge Bundy. One of his memos was famously described by a colleague as the reductio ad absurdum of the planner’s art, combining realpolitik with the hyper-rationalist belief in control of the most refined American think tank.36 In a report of a working group McNaughton chaired in February 1964,37 one suggestion was pure Schelling: it would be possible to influence Hanoi’s decisions by action designed “to hurt but not to destroy.”38 Also drawn from Schelling was the proposition that “a decision to use force if necessary, backed by resolute and extensive deployment, and conveyed by every possible means to our adversaries, gives the best present chance of avoiding the actual use of such force.”

…

See Ali, Mohammed Clay, Jenny Strauss, 26 Cleaver, Eldridge, 403 Clegg, Stewart, 559 Clifford, Clark, 447 Clinton, Bill, 434, 450–453 Clinton, Henry, 232 Clinton, Hillary, 453, 455 Co-opetition (Nalebuff and Brandenburger), 523, 710n6 coalitions Carmichael on, 296 Clausewitz on, 90–92 game theory and, 582–583 Hayden on, 376, 380 Napoleonic Wars and, 90–91, 115 Peloponnesian War and, 30, 32–35 Riker on, 581–583 Rustin on, 395 Second World War and, 141–143 Coast of Utopia, The (Stoppard), 265 cognition, hot and cold forms of, 598–599 Cohen, Eliot, 141, 214 Cold War Berlin blockade crisis and, 172–174 communication during, 167, 173 Cuban missile crisis and, 173–176, 190 deterrence theory and, 158–159, 165, 192 nuclear weapons and, 156–159, 167–168 origins of term, 145, 649n2 Cologne Workers Council, 257–258 Columbia University protests, 403–405 Command in the Air (Douhet), 125–126 Committee on Public Information (CPI, United States), 337, 340 communism.

Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge by Cass R. Sunstein

affirmative action, Andrei Shleifer, availability heuristic, behavioural economics, Build a better mousetrap, c2.com, Cass Sunstein, cognitive bias, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, Edward Glaeser, en.wikipedia.org, feminist movement, framing effect, Free Software Foundation, hindsight bias, information asymmetry, Isaac Newton, Jean Tirole, jimmy wales, market bubble, market design, minimum wage unemployment, prediction markets, profit motive, rent control, Richard Stallman, Richard Thaler, Robert Shiller, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, slashdot, stem cell, systematic bias, Ted Sorensen, the Cathedral and the Bazaar, The Wisdom of Crowds, winner-take-all economy

Note that in the blogosphere, it is tempting to try to make a name for oneself, or at least to have a little fun, by taking a contrarian position. The question is whether deliberating groups can give people an incentive to challenge the emerging or conventional wisdom. In at least one well-known case, this approach appeared to work. “During the Cuban missile crisis, President Kennedy 210 / Infotopia gave his brother, the Attorney General, the unambiguous mission of playing devil’s advocate, with seemingly excellent results in breaking up a premature consensus,”20 a consensus that might well have led to war. Research on devil’s advocacy in small groups provides suggestive evidence of the effectiveness of devil’s advocacy in real-world settings.21 Many experimenters have found that protection of genuine dissenting views can enhance group performance.22 But a formal requirement of devil’s advocacy enhances group performance far less than does authentic dissent.

…

., 36, 49–51 Constitutional Convention (1787), 49 conventional wisdom, 29, 201, 210 Cooper, David, 61–62 Copenhagen Consensus, 40, 237.n43 copyleft licenses, 167–68, 179 copyrights, 153–54, 164–67, 179–80 corroboration, 55, 95 Cowgill, Bo, 115, 116 Creative Commons License, 153, 179–80 creativity, 55, 180, 218, 222 open source projects and, 15, 177, 179, 195, 222 credibility, 85, 88 criminal punishment, 68 critical thinking, 201, 204, 213, 223 Cuban missile crisis (1962), 210–11 cultural differences, deliberation and, 71 cumulative knowledge, 9–11, 152 Cunningham, Ward, 149 customer reviews, 10, 18, 192–94 Daily Kos (blog), 6, 181, 189–90 Daily Me (personalized news), 9, 19, 97–98, 147, 219, 224 Daily Us (concept), 10, 11, 15, 219 Index / 261 DARPA Grand Challenge race, 116 Daschle, Tom, 107 Dean, Howard, 99 decision making, 12, 197 Defense Department, U.S., 3–4, 5, 107–8, 131–32, 198 deliberation, 11–14, 43, 45–103, 128, 130, 197, 218 accuracy and, 57–65, 84, 96, 200, 205, 209 amplification of errors and, 14, 17, 75–81, 101, 220 anonymity in, 208, 209, 223 Aristotle on, 49, 119 bias and, 58, 78, 80–81, 96, 212, 242n.8 blogs and, 190 cascade effects in, 14, 17, 75, 88– 92, 98–100, 201, 203, 205, 220 deferral in, 60, 66–67, 215, 216 errors and, 17, 35, 48, 54, 56, 58, 70–71, 96, 201, 221 experts and, 53–54, 65, 207, 211–12 failure factors in, 65–70, 83 failures of, 12–14 group confidence and unity in, 14, 55–57, 78, 86, 95, 102, 206, 238n.15 group polarization in, 17, 75, 92–98, 203, 205, 220–21 hidden profiles and, 17, 81–88, 100–101, 102, 203, 204, 205, 210, 212 improvement of, 19, 69, 102, 200–216, 223 incentives and, 201, 203–5, 223 information aggregation and, 7, 14, 54, 57–58, 70, 81–82 262 / Index informational influences on, 13–14, 66–67, 70–71, 79, 86– 88, 201, 220 Internet and, 8, 58, 148 key preconditions for, 71–73 majority rule in, 64–65 minority views in, 66, 70 in open source software development, 175, 176–77 prediction markets and, 104, 131, 145 private vs. social benefits and, 69–70, 104 problems concerning, 75–102 role assignment in, 211–12 self-silencing in, 14, 67–68, 70, 203–4, 209, 210 social pressures and, 14, 67–71, 79, 86–88, 203–4, 208–10, 220 statistical groups vs., 57, 58, 59–60 status of members and, 70, 87– 88, 206–8 success mechanisms of, 52–55 synergy and learning in, 54–55, 220 theory and practice of, 49–52 truth and, 53, 57, 63–65, 66, 96, 200, 216 Wikipedia and, 152, 195 deliberative democracy, 11–14, 49– 52, 72, 102 deliberative polls, 11–12 Delphi technique, 208–10 democracy, 202–3, 224 Condorcet Jury Theorem and, 27, 35–36, 43, 51 deliberative, 11–14, 49–52, 72, 102 majority rule and, 26–27 Democrats, 14, 70–71, 93, 95, 99, 214 Descartes, René, 217 Deutsche Bank, 117 devil’s advocates, 210–11 dictatorships, 202 disclosure, deliberation and, 69– 70, 201, 203–4 discrimination, 76 dispersed information, 15, 19, 197 blogs and, 18–19, 189, 218, 223 deliberation and, 49, 54, 57, 63, 75 deliberative democracy and, 50 experimental efforts in aggregating, 191–95 Hayek’s view of, 118–21, 130, 137 new technologies and, 217–18 open source initiatives and, 19, 166, 175, 177, 195, 218, 222 prediction markets and, 6, 19, 118–21, 130, 135–37, 144, 198 wikis and, 19, 152, 218, 222 dissenters in deliberating groups, 66, 67–68 devil’s advocates as, 210–11 diversity, 46, 50, 55, 213 dKosopedia (wiki), 6, 160 documentation creation, 149 Dorgan, Byron, 107 Dreamworks, 4–5 drug companies, 177 Dukakis, Michael, 138–39 Dylan, Bob, 166 Eastman Kodak, 163 eBay, 18, 194 echo chambers, 8, 97, 188, 191, 218, 224 Edley, Christopher, 214 efficient capital markets hypothesis, 127 egocentric bias, 80 Ehrlich, Paul, 144–45 elections, 40–41, 108–11, 138–42 Eli Lilly, 117 encyclopedias, online, 160.

Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics by Francis Fukuyama

Asian financial crisis, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Bletchley Park, Bretton Woods, British Empire, business cycle, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, cognitive bias, contact tracing, cuban missile crisis, currency risk, energy security, Fairchild Semiconductor, flex fuel, global pandemic, Herman Kahn, income per capita, informal economy, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), invisible hand, John von Neumann, low interest rates, mass immigration, Menlo Park, Mikhail Gorbachev, moral hazard, Norbert Wiener, oil rush, oil shale / tar sands, oil shock, packet switching, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, The Wisdom of Crowds, trade route, Vannevar Bush, Vernor Vinge, Yom Kippur War

He also foresaw most of the personal computing functions now taken for granted—graphing, simulations, modeling, and more. 2990-7 ch06 bonvillian 64 7/23/07 12:10 PM Page 64 william b. bonvillian These insights served Licklider well in the new assignment coming his way. President John F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara were deeply frustrated by the profound command-and-control problems they encountered during the Cuban missile crisis, particularly the inability to obtain and analyze real-time data and interact with on-the-scene military commanders. DARPA called on Licklider, already at the agency, to tackle the problem. Strongly backed by noted early DARPA directors Jack Ruina and Charles Herzfeld, Licklider set in place a remarkable support network of early information technology researchers at universities and firms that, over time, built the sinews of personal computing and the Internet.

…

., 108 Conventional wisdom, strategic surprises challenging, 94, 95 Convergence, in information technology innovations, 123–25 Corn, ethanol from, 78–79 Cost-benefit analysis: definition of, 14–15; future in, 15, 16, 18–19; inverse, 16–17; limitations of, 14–19, 171; need for, 4; tolerable windows in, 17–18; uncertainty in, 16–18; value of life in, 15–16 Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia, 43 Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, 83–84 Cuban missile crisis, 64 Cultural barriers, to preparing for catastrophes, 13–14 Cultures, capacity for adaptation in, 154–55 Currency devaluation, in East Asian economic crisis, 43, 44, 47–48 Currency undervaluation, in East Asian economic crisis, 44, 47, 49 Cyber-nations, 156–57 DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), 57–70; creation of, 63; innovation organization at, index 63–67; lessons learned from, 59–60; as model for energy dilemma, 59–60, 67–70; precursors of, 60–63; rise of, 63–65 Darul Islam, 144 Data collection, filters in, 99–100 Day after Tomorrow, The (film), 105, 140 Debt, private, in East Asian economic crisis, 44–45, 46, 48 Debt of Honor (Clancy), 93 Defense, Department of, DARPA’s work with, 64–65, 68 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Dataclysm: Who We Are (When We Think No One's Looking) by Christian Rudder

4chan, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, bitcoin, cloud computing, correlation does not imply causation, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, data science, Donald Trump, Edward Snowden, en.wikipedia.org, fake it until you make it, Frank Gehry, Howard Zinn, Jaron Lanier, John Markoff, John Snow's cholera map, lifelogging, Mahatma Gandhi, Mikhail Gorbachev, Nate Silver, Nelson Mandela, new economy, obamacare, Occupy movement, p-value, power law, pre–internet, prosperity theology / prosperity gospel / gospel of success, race to the bottom, retail therapy, Salesforce, selection bias, Snapchat, social graph, Steve Jobs, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, Twitter Arab Spring, two and twenty

The thing is, as much as I love that book, and as much as it turns the schoolhouse version of American history on its head, Howard Zinn could still only tell us what he could see, the observable actions, the words spoken aloud. The hearts of women and men were beyond him. In the stress of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the boredom of the trenches, in the liberation of the Pill—for all the moments of quiet joy and interior anguish lost to history, what if we had the data we have now? How much richer would our understanding be? 1 Google Trends expresses a search’s popularity with a simple index number proportional to the number of searches for the word or phrase.

…

., 8.1, 12.1, 12.2 children, itr.1, 11.1, 11.2, 12.1, bm2.1 birth of raising of, 1.1, 2.1, 7.1 teenage, 1.1, 2.1, 3.1, 7.1, 7.2, 9.1, 10.1, 12.1, 13.1 China Christianity, 7.1, 13.1 Chungking Express (film) Civil War, The (TV series) Civil War, US, 3.1, 3.2 Clinton, Hillary Rodham Clovis people Coldest Winter Ever, The (Sister Souljah) Columbia University communication, 3.1, 5.1, 9.1, 13.1, 14.1 connections fostered by, 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 13.1 identifying sources of momentous changes in, 3.1, 3.2 communities, itr.1, 12.1, 13.1 movement of virtual Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) computers, itr.1, itr.2, 5.1, 6.1, 8.1, 13.1 cookies on hard drives on laptop, itr.1, 13.1 limitations of science of, 4.1, 13.1, 14.1 sitting at software for, 4.1, 4.2, 6.1, 9.1, 11.1, 12.1, 14.1, 14.2 storage of data on, itr.1, 1.1, 3.1, 14.1 use of mouse with Condor, 9.1, 9.2 Congress, US, 9.1, 12.1 approval ratings of, itr.1, nts.1 see also House of Representatives, US Constitute project conversation, itr.1, 4.1, 7.1, 8.1 in-depth on-line, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4 on race Cornell University, 11.1, 12.1 Craigslist, itr.1, 12.1, nts.1 maps of, 12.1, 12.2, 12.3 “Missed Connections” section on, 12.1, 12.2 Crawford, Cindy Crick, Francis criminal justice system, 6.1, 7.1 black vs. white defendants in, 6.1, 8.1 Cronkite, Walter cross dressing Cuban Missile Crisis culturomics, 3.1, 3.2n curves, itr.1, itr.2, 7.1, 7.2, 9.1, bm2.1, nts.1 bell beta, itr.1, nts.1 customer relations management (CRM) customers contradictory behavior of Cyrus, Miley data, itr.1, 9.1, bm2.1 actor vs. acted upon in analysis of, itr.1, 1.1, 2.1, 4.1, 6.1, 14.1, bm2.1 collection of, itr.1, itr.2, itr.3, itr.4, itr.5, 1.1, 1.2, 8.1, 12.1, 14.1 commercial use of, itr.1, 14.1, 14.2 corporate use of, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3 cross-referencing of deletion of, 14.1, 14.2 digital, itr.1, itr.2, itr.3, 6.1, bm2.1 emotional shading behind extrapolations from, 6.1, 8.1, 14.1 governmental surveillance of, itr.1, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, nts.1 hacking of, 12.1, 14.1, 14.2, nts.1 of human interaction, itr.1, itr.2 human story behind, itr.1, itr.2 lack of location longitudinal message, 3.1, 6.1 personal pollution of, 11.1n, 12.1 privacy issue and, itr.1, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3, 14.4, nts.1 robust, 5.1, 10.1 selection bias and selling of, 14.1, 14.2 storage of, itr.1, 1.1, 3.1, 14.1 as storytelling terabytes of, itr.1, 2.1 truth of, 13.1, 14.1 unprecedented deluge of, itr.1, 4.1, 14.1, 14.2 use of color with, itr.1, 3.1, bm1.1 visualization of, 1.1n, 14.1 as windows on our lives databases, itr.1, 1.1, 3.1, 8.1 dataclysm.org/relationshiptest, 4.1 DateHookup, itr.1, 6.1, 6.2 dating, 1.1, 3.1, 4.1, 5.1, nts.1 attractiveness and satisfaction in, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 racism and, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, 6.5 see also websites, dating Dazed and Confused (film), 1.1, 12.1 death “and taxes,” death penalty Democratic Party, 5.1, 8.1, 13.1 demographics, itr.1, 1.1, 5.1, 6.1, 6.2, 10.1 depression, 8.1, 11.1 Description of a Slave Ship Digital OnLine Life and You (DOLLY Project), 12.1, nts.1 disease, 4.1, 14.1, bm1.1 epidemics of, 8.1, 8.2, 14.1, nts.1 “Dittoheads,” dogfooding Don’t Look Back (film) Dowdell, James, 4.1, nts.1 drugs, 8.1, 11.1 side effects of Dylan, Bob, itr.1, itr.2 Earth, itr.1, 2.1, 10.1, 14.1, 14.2, 14.3 age of, 9.1, 9.2 as viewed from space earthquakes, 7.1, 12.1, 12.2, nts.1 eating disorders economics, 1.1, 8.1, 13.1 Economist, 9.1, nts.1 education, 1.1, 5.1, 6.1 college, itr.1, 4.1, 6.1, 10.1, 13.1, 14.1 exchange programs in high school, itr.1, 3.1, 6.1, 9.1, 12.1, 13.1 Egypt, 9.1, 9.2, 13.1 Einstein, Albert, 10.1, 13.1, 13.2, 14.1 elections, US black candidates in, 8.1, 8.2 district gerrymandering and exit polls in of 1952 of 1982 of 2008, 8.1, 8.2, nts.1, nts.2 of 2012 e-mail, 3.1, 3.2, 4.1, 5.1, 12.1, 14.1 embeddedness, 4.1, 4.2 employment, 6.1, 6.2 search for, 7.1, 7.2 see also jobs English language, 3.1, 3.2, 10.1 Enlightenment era, 4.1, 6.1 Escher, M.

Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior by Jonah Berger

Apollo 11, assortative mating, barriers to entry, cotton gin, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, double helix, driverless car, fixed-gear, flying shuttle, Google Glasses, job satisfaction, messenger bag, meta-analysis, mirror neurons, PalmPilot, Ronald Reagan, six sigma, spinning jenny, The Wisdom of Crowds, twin studies, white flight, Yogi Berra

Group members who were on the fence tend to conform, and unless someone has strong objections, they tend to keep their opposition to themselves. Without much of a peep, the group quietly goes one way when they could have just as easily gone the opposite. Groupthink has been blamed for everything from the space shuttle Challenger disaster to the Cuban missile crisis. People talk about the wisdom of crowds, but crowds are only wise when the group has access to everyone’s individual information. Aggregating these pieces can lead to better decisions than any person could have made alone. But if everyone just follows everyone else, or keeps their information to themselves, the value of the group is lost.

…

See also Counterfeiting as an identity-relevant attribute, 180 prominence of, 128–35, 144 Braunstein, Alex, 150 Brian, Jennifer, 64 Brian, Morgan, 63–64, 70 Buchanan, James, 162 Burberry, 131, 143–44 Camry (Toyota), 144 Capitol High (high school pseudonym), 118–19 Celebrities, reverse endorsements by, 16, 99–101, 110 Challenger space shuttle disaster, 58 Chameleons, imitation by, 32–33 Chan, Cindy, 172 Chickens, novelty and, 16, 163–64 Chinese characters experiment, 157–60 Christian Louboutin, 133 Cialdini, Bob, 200 Clinton, Bill, 162 Clothing preferences, 79, 172–76 Coaction effects, 189n Cockroaches, social facilitation and, 17, 187–88, 191–94 Cohen, Geoffrey, 105 Color, 147–49, 180–81n Color of the Year, 147–49, 181 Conformity, 19–30 negative depictions of, 78n power of, 24–27 reasons for, 27–30 Conservatives/Republicans, 15, 67, 105–6, 144 Conspicuous consumption, 131, 133 Coolidge, Calvin, 163–64 Coolidge, Grace, 163–64 Coolidge effect, 165–66 Corn color experiment, 26–27, 56, 59 Costs, 123–28 Coton Doux, 133 Cottage Club, 173–76 Counterfeiting, 134, 135–39, 143 Crowds, 58 Cuban missile crisis, 58 Cuckoo’s Calling, The (Galbraith), 54–55 Culture, differentiation and, 93 Cycle racing, 188 Day & Night watch, 124 Democrats. See Liberals/Democrats Dessert, social pressure to decline, 29–30 Differentiation, 63–97, 229–30 See also Divergence; Optimal distinction culture and, 93 drive for, 70–72 historical influences on, 76–80 identity and, 80–83 illusion of, 83–86 popularity backlash and, 72–76 practical applications of, 96–97 practical applications of similarity and, 181–85 siblings’ influence on, 16, 64–70 social class and, 86–96 Dior, 137 Disney, Walt, 45 Dissension, encouraging, 58–59 Divergence, 15.

Liars and Outliers: How Security Holds Society Together by Bruce Schneier

Abraham Maslow, airport security, Alvin Toffler, barriers to entry, behavioural economics, benefit corporation, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, Brian Krebs, Broken windows theory, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, Chelsea Manning, commoditize, corporate governance, crack epidemic, credit crunch, CRISPR, crowdsourcing, cuban missile crisis, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, David Graeber, desegregation, don't be evil, Double Irish / Dutch Sandwich, Douglas Hofstadter, Dunbar number, experimental economics, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial deregulation, Future Shock, Garrett Hardin, George Akerlof, hydraulic fracturing, impulse control, income inequality, information security, invention of agriculture, invention of gunpowder, iterative process, Jean Tirole, John Bogle, John Nash: game theory, joint-stock company, Julian Assange, language acquisition, longitudinal study, mass incarceration, meta-analysis, microcredit, mirror neurons, moral hazard, Multics, mutually assured destruction, Nate Silver, Network effects, Nick Leeson, off-the-grid, offshore financial centre, Oklahoma City bombing, patent troll, phenotype, pre–internet, principal–agent problem, prisoner's dilemma, profit maximization, profit motive, race to the bottom, Ralph Waldo Emerson, RAND corporation, Recombinant DNA, rent-seeking, RFID, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Ronald Coase, security theater, shareholder value, slashdot, statistical model, Steven Pinker, Stuxnet, technological singularity, The Market for Lemons, The Nature of the Firm, The Spirit Level, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, theory of mind, Timothy McVeigh, too big to fail, traffic fines, Tragedy of the Commons, transaction costs, ultimatum game, UNCLOS, union organizing, Vernor Vinge, WikiLeaks, World Values Survey, Y2K, Yochai Benkler, zero-sum game

Robert Axelrod (1984), The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books. open grazing pasture Garrett Hardin (1968), “The Tragedy of the Commons,” Science, 162:1243–8. Chapter 6 predictably irrational Dan Ariely (2008), Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape our Decisions, Harper Perennial. Cuban Missile Crisis Steven J. Brams (24 Jan 2001), “Game Theory and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Plus Magazine. worst in people Morton Deutsch and Robert M. Krauss (1960), “The Effect of Threat upon Interpersonal Bargaining,” Journal of Abnormal & Normal Social Psychology, 61:181–9. better model Rolf Kümmerli, Caroline Colliard, Nicolas Fiechter, Blaise Petitpierre, Flavien Russier, and Laurent Keller (2007), “Human Cooperation in Social Dilemmas: Comparing the Snowdrift Game with the Prisoner's Dilemma,” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 274:2965–70.

…

(If you don't have a convenient cliff, you can play the game by racing two cars directly at each other; the first person to swerve to avoid the oncoming car is the chicken.) In this game, cooperate–cooperate is the best solution, but cooperate–defect or defect–cooperate is much better than defect–defect. In foreign policy, this is known as brinkmanship, a strategy that almost led to disastrous consequences during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. There have been some fascinating experiments with Chicken that really seem to have brought out the worst in people. (4) For many interactions, the Snowdrift Dilemma is a better model of the real world than the Prisoner's Dilemma. (5) There's also the unfortunately named Battle of the Sexes.

Kissinger: A Biography by Walter Isaacson

Alan Greenspan, Apollo 13, belling the cat, Berlin Wall, Charles Lindbergh, cuban missile crisis, deep learning, Deng Xiaoping, Dr. Strangelove, Great Grain Robbery, haute couture, Herman Kahn, index card, Khyber Pass, long peace, Mikhail Gorbachev, Monroe Doctrine, Norman Mailer, oil shock, out of africa, Plato's cave, RAND corporation, restrictive zoning, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Seymour Hersh, Socratic dialogue, Ted Sorensen, Yom Kippur War

Throughout his career he was skeptical that most Western European governments had the backbone to sustain a tough anti-Soviet defense policy.20 During this period, Kissinger was refining the realpolitik philosophy that undergirded his approach to foreign policy. One of its central tenets was that a nation’s influence depends on the perception the world holds of its power and of its willingness to use power. As he explained in an analysis of the Cuban missile crisis for The Reporter late in 1962: even if one believed that there was not much military danger in allowing the Soviets to keep their missiles in Cuba, America could not afford a weak response because that would “embolden” its adversaries, “dishearten” its allies, and diminish its “credibility.”

…

“Those soccer fields could mean war, Bob,” Kissinger continued. “Cubans play baseball. Russians play soccer.” Haldeman went into the Oval Office, kicked out Ehrlichman, and ushered Kissinger in. What the Soviets were doing, with clever ambiguity, was testing the fuzzy margins that had been established after the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The facility that Moscow was building at Cienfuegos was not exactly a full-fledged submarine base but rather a semi-permanent support facility designed for stopovers, refueling, and recreation. This would allow the Soviets to extend the range of their submarines and to deploy ones carrying nuclear missiles near Cuba.

…

The memo he had hastily drafted and brought to the Oval Office that morning began: “Analysis of reconnaissance flight photography over Cuba has this morning confirmed the construction of a probable submarine deployment base.” Nixon wrote some orders in the margin demanding a report on “what CIA can do to support any kind of action which will irritate Cuba” and “what actions we can take, covert or overt, to put missiles in Turkey or a sub base in the Black Sea.” Nixon did not want a new Cuban missile crisis, especially at that moment. It would force the cancellation of his eagerly anticipated trip to Europe and distract from the crisis in Jordan. Likewise, Secretary Rogers urged Kissinger by phone that day to avoid “high-level tension.” Kissinger disagreed. At an early-afternoon CIA briefing, he was informed that the “support facility” (as the analysis carefully called it) would increase by 33 percent the amount of time Soviet subs could be within range of the U.S.

The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David Hoffman

Able Archer 83, active measures, anti-communist, banking crisis, Berlin Wall, Boeing 747, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, crony capitalism, cuban missile crisis, disinformation, failed state, guns versus butter model, It's morning again in America, joint-stock company, Kickstarter, Korean Air Lines Flight 007, launch on warning, Mikhail Gorbachev, military-industrial complex, mutually assured destruction, nuclear winter, Oklahoma City bombing, radical decentralization, Robert Hanssen: Double agent, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Seymour Hersh, Silicon Valley, standardized shipping container, Stanislav Petrov, Strategic Defense Initiative, Thomas L Friedman, undersea cable, uranium enrichment, Vladimir Vetrov: Farewell Dossier, warehouse robotics, zero-sum game

When the war plan was revised in the spring and summer of 1962, the new plan gave the president more flexibility and choices in waging a possible nuclear attack, including the ability to hold back forces in reserve, to avoid population centers and industry and to leave out some countries as targets. A key feature of the new plan, put into effect just before the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, was to aim largely at Soviet weapons, and not at cities and industry, an idea known as counterforce. If one thinks of cocked pistols aimed at each other, counterforce was an effort to shoot the gun out of the hand of the enemy. 6 It seemed to be more humane to aim at missiles rather than cities, but counterforce also raised deeply disturbing questions.

…

"The packet was constructed with a pull-string, on which an operator could tug to immediately open it up," Yarynich recalled. The whole system was slow and cumbersome. Monolit had another, more serious shortcoming. The orders could not be recalled--there was no way to cancel.7 In late October 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis, Yarynich was sent as a communications officer to supervise at a rocket division near Nizhny Tagil, 860 miles east of Moscow in Siberia. At the peak of the confrontation, the crews received an unmistakable signal through the Monolit system. The code word was "BRONTOZAVR." The word was a signal: switch the command system from peacetime to combat alert status.

…

The Pioneers were the newest Soviet missile, the best technology, with twenty or thirty years of useful service duty ahead of them--and all those involved were appalled at the idea of sacrificing them. Katayev recalled one particularly emotional meeting in 1985 when the idea of reducing the missile arsenal was debated. There were shouts of protest: "Sabotage!" and "The Fifth Column!" and "Remember Khrushchev!" (for the Cuban missile crisis fiasco). "I tried in vain to defuse the emotions with the help of technical arguments in favor of reducing the number of missiles," Katayev recalled. After the stormy meeting, he remained in the conference room with one of Akhromeyev's deputies. Katayev attempted in earnest to argue his point.

Presidents of War by Michael Beschloss

anti-communist, British Empire, California gold rush, Charles Lindbergh, continuation of politics by other means, cuban missile crisis, desegregation, Donald Trump, full employment, guns versus butter model, Henry Ford's grandson gave labor union leader Walter Reuther a tour of the company’s new, automated factory…, long peace, Monroe Doctrine, New Journalism, pneumatic tube, Ronald Reagan, traveling salesman, War on Poverty, Works Progress Administration

As time went on, the sinking of the Maine became shorthand for a disaster that would quickly unite Americans in support for a retaliatory military attack on another country, just as the Thornton affair had generated immediate passion for James Polk to start a war against Mexico. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, President John Kennedy and his brother Robert, his Attorney General, considered scenarios that might win public support for the US military to bomb and invade Fidel Castro’s Cuba, after which it could destroy nuclear-capable missiles that had been secretly slipped onto the island by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

…

.”*24 Unwilling to take to heart the mistakes that Truman and other politicians had made over Korea, the American people and those who guided them were thus all the more doomed to rush into the darkness of Vietnam. *1 In October 1962, President Kennedy borrowed some of this language when he addressed the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, saying, “The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it,” and “The 1930s taught us a clear lesson: aggressive conduct, if allowed to go unchecked and unchallenged, eventually leads to war.” *2 MacArthur had written, “Our hold upon the southern part of Korea represents a secure base.

…

They rebuffed him, citing the constitutional separation of powers, and Kennedy observed that “the steam really went out of Lyndon.” When Kennedy called on Johnson for comment during councils on foreign policy, the Vice President would sometimes lower his large head and sadly reply that he was insufficiently informed to offer an opinion. Throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, Johnson was a member of President Kennedy’s impromptu advisory panel called ExComm. Attorney General Robert Kennedy observed that when his brother refused the Joint Chiefs’ demand that the missile sites be bombed, followed by an invasion of the island, Johnson was “shaking his head, mad,” although “he never made clear what he would do” instead.

The Future of Capitalism: Facing the New Anxieties by Paul Collier

"Friedman doctrine" OR "shareholder theory", accounting loophole / creative accounting, Airbnb, An Inconvenient Truth, assortative mating, bank run, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Berlin Wall, Bernie Sanders, bitcoin, Bob Geldof, bonus culture, business cycle, call centre, central bank independence, centre right, commodity super cycle, computerized trading, corporate governance, creative destruction, cuban missile crisis, David Brooks, delayed gratification, deskilling, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fake news, financial deregulation, full employment, George Akerlof, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, greed is good, income inequality, industrial cluster, information asymmetry, intangible asset, Jean Tirole, Jeremy Corbyn, job satisfaction, John Perry Barlow, Joseph Schumpeter, knowledge economy, late capitalism, loss aversion, Mark Zuckerberg, minimum wage unemployment, moral hazard, negative equity, New Urbanism, Northern Rock, offshore financial centre, out of africa, Peace of Westphalia, principal–agent problem, race to the bottom, rent control, rent-seeking, rising living standards, Robert Shiller, Robert Solow, Ronald Reagan, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley ideology, sovereign wealth fund, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, theory of mind, too big to fail, trade liberalization, urban planning, web of trust, zero-sum game