The Tenuous Relationship between Conflict and Tech
Or, Why we shouldn't be so eager to excuse war when it brings us new toys
Survivor’s bias is a real trip.
A couple of years ago, I was on a YouTube channel talking about global humanism, and I think I rattled the host with my answer to a question about how I handle the fact that many wonderful things exist in the world as an extension of religious history. (This was an atheist show, and one “gotcha” sometimes used against atheists involves the existence of religiously inspired arts as an argument against non-belief. Very silly, but atheist/theist debates usually are.)
Maybe I was a bit too off-the-cuff about it, but I wanted to speak to the broader fallacy of using history as a “gotcha” against the present. So, I pointed out that in the long history of human life that led to my birth—all the people who needed to procreate in order to yield my existence, down hundreds of thousands of years in our species’ time—quite a few of those pregnancies were probably the result of rape. And yet, I don’t need to be thankful for the violence committed by and to my ancestors simply to enjoy the fact of existence here and now.
I didn’t mean to rattle anyone. I thought this observation about origins was obvious. My ancient ancestors probably also ended many other family lines to make room for their own, and did many other awful things in the interest of their own survival.
My point was to dismiss the absurdity of acting like we intrinsically “owe” the past our gratitude simply because it created things we enjoy today—and, conversely, that we have no right to criticize the past while enjoying things today that only exist because of past suffering, whether through slavery, war, or acts of ethnic torture.
But for some reason, survivor’s bias creeps in especially when we’re talking about technology, and its complicated relationship with conflict. There’s this weird truism in many tech-optimist spheres, which likes to spin past wars and related military activities as a net positive, if they leave us with more advanced technology in the end.
And yes, it’s true that we have many extraordinary things today because conflict pressures accelerated their development, either in the throes of “hot” wars or cold ones. Heck, this missive is coming to you from the descendant of ARPANET, the military-driven network that initially linked defence contractors, government agencies, and universities in 1969. But even that example is a bit of a misleading, because even though the military was involved, so were plenty of peaceniks, and other civilian participants dreaming big on the same early tech. This is why the venture took a hard split in 1984, so that some elements could continue through military control, and others continue to expand for civilian users. This is also why ARPANET faced competition from the National Science Foundation that same year.
Suffice it to say, there are many philosophical and sociopolitical problems with connecting conflict with innovation—and one of them came to mind this week, when reflecting on US tariffs and energy futures for Monday Media Review and Tough Times Tuesday. In both, I called attention to the striking language used in the White House fact sheet announcing tariffs on Chinese imports—but I didn’t get fully into why that sabre-rattling was such a problem.
Today we finish the thought, and consider the intellectual and democratic stultification that follows whenever we’re given to believe that innovation can only be achieved through conflict. Last month, US President Joe Biden (or his speech writers) decided that the way to motivate domestic investment in green energy was by treating another country as insidiously ahead of the curve—and the US has certainly benefited, technologically, from that kind of “arms race” before.
But is it necessary?
And does it do more harm than good?
I’d argue “no” and “yes”, respectively—with particular attention paid to the latter point, because the moment we act like we need the threat of conflict to advance, we set ourselves up for some dangerous rationalizations of human trespass.
And I think we know that, too, because history is filled with illustrations of this point. The problem isn’t that most of us genuinely think six or seventeen million lives is ever “worth” the attendant acceleration of a few technological projects. It’s that we haven’t developed a better vocabulary for talking about the past, to bypass those among us who would weaponize today’s advances to dismiss discussion of historical trespass.
To be perfectly clear, then, before we dive into today’s example of a nightmare we should not be so eager to repeat:
It is possible to say, “If horrible things hadn’t been done to and by my ancestors, I wouldn’t be enjoying what I do today” without leaping to the conclusion that “everything that happened before me is justified because it yielded a result I enjoy.”
We do not have to excuse the waste that went in to the creation of so many wonders—and we shouldn’t, if we want to make more humanitarian choices here and now.
The muddled mess of late-1950s intelligence
Outside the nightmare of World War II, with all its awful “gotchas” of modern technology and medicine made possible in part by the actions of Nazis before, during, and after the war, the other major classic example of conflict yielding technological innovation is the “missile gap” myth of the late 1950s and early 1960s.
This is a story of Cold War anxiety that didn’t just stoke an arms race but also spilled into a full-on space race. To many, we thus have the intense paranoia of a few mid-century organizations to thank for every marvel of space exploration to emerge since.
And yet, even the origins of this myth speak to how fragile our intelligence-gathering communities were in the 1950s, just as they are today. (Albeit, with a few less deep-fake videos back then.) This story also offers a potent rejoinder to tech-optimist views of conflict, for reasons that will hopefully reveal themselves as we explore specifics.
On August 21, 1957, the Soviets successfully launched the R-7 Semyorka, globally known as the SS-6, for a long term flight of some 6,000 km. That distance is important, because a projectile needs to go more than 5,500 km to be classified as an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM. This was the first such successful flight.
US citizens could then see the result of a modified version of the R-7, through the flight path of Sputnik 1, which was launched into low-earth orbit on October 4, and which would keep on swingin’ there until a January 4, 1958 reentry.
This second spectacle was a more tangible sign of Soviet technological progress, and it was followed in November by what’s colloquially known as the Gaither Report. (Certainly a snappier title than the National Security Council Report, a “Report to the President by the Security Resources Panel of the ODM Science Advisory Committee on Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age”.)
The Gaither Report was a top-secret document from a mostly civilian committee commissioned by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but some of its more sensational conclusions got leaked to the press, and led to public conversation about the rising Soviet threat. The Washington Post in mid-December offers an especially striking sense of the mood in the US leading up to and during the document’s disclosures.
Here are the top front-page headlines for the days leading up to the release:
December 15: “U.S. Space Domination Drive Urged; Ike in Paris Calls for Free World Unity”
December 16: “NATO Leaders Stress Peace”
December 17: “New East-West Peace Effort Is Urged As U.S. Offers Arms to NATO Allies”
December 18: “NATO Maps Compromise On Defense; 100-Ton Atlas Fired Into Sea Target”
December 19: “NATO Backs U.S. On Missile Bases; Agrees To ‘Explore’ Talks With Reds”
And then, in the middle of ALL this intense Cold War anxiety, we get December 20’s front page, which adds frightening information from the Gaither Report to the mix:
The critical article, “Secret Report Sees U.S. In Grave Peril”, starts right there on Column 1, Page 1, as follows:
The still top-secret Gaither Report portrays a United States in the gravest danger in its history.
It pictures the Nation moving in frightening course to the status of a second-class power.
It shows an America exposed to an almost immediate threat from the missile-bristling Soviet Union.
It finds America’s long-term prospect one of cataclysmic peril in the face of rocketing Soviet military might and of a powerful, growing Soviet economy and technology which will bring new political propaganda and psychological assaults on freedom all around the globe.
In short, the report strips away the complacency and lays bare the highly unpleasant realities in what is the first across-the-board survey of the relative postures of the United States and the Free World and of the Soviet Union and the Communist orbit.
To prevent what otherwise appears to be an inevitable catastrophe, the Gaither Report urgently calls for an enormous increase in military spending—from now through 1970—and for many other costly, radical measures of first and second priority.
Only through such an all-out effort, the report says, can the United States hope to close the current missile gap and to counter the world-wide Communist offensive in many fields and in many lands.
Whew.
Another Edward R. Murrow—an even-handed journalist who knew how to deliver even the grimmest of intel with steady calm amid firm conviction—Mr. Chalmers M. Roberts of The Washington Post was not.
But to get a real sense of how sensational this reporting was, one has to look at the language of the original document. There is certainly a note of concern in the committee’s overview, and plenty of action items recommended to answer the threat.
But there’s caution, too, and humility, in some of its most critical language. The Gaither Report remarks upon the striking growth of the USSR’s economy and military prowess in general, but when it comes to ICBMs, it notes that
In the field of ballistic missiles [the USSR] have weapons of 700 n.m. range, in production for at least a year; successfully tested a number of 950 n.m. missiles; and probably surpassed us in ICBM development.
and
By 1959, the USSR may be able to launch an attack with ICBMs carrying megaton warheads, against which SAC will be almost completely vulnerable under present programs. By 1961-1962, at our present pace, or considerably earlier if we accelerate, the United States could have a reliable early-warning capability against a missile attack, and SAC forces should be on a 7 to 22 minute operational “alert.” The next two years seem to us critical. If we fail to act at once, the risk, in our opinion, will be unacceptable.
The key words there being “probably”, “may be able to”, and “in our opinion”—concepts with a degree of uncertainty that Roberts didn’t reflect in his article.
And even when the document goes into concrete suggestions, it does so as a way of defending against possibilities, rather than absolutes: for instance, “To lessen SAC vulnerability to an attack by Russian ICBMs (a late 1959 threat)” and “To increase SAC’s strategic offensive power (to match Russia’s expected early ICBM capability”.
But lest I suggest that the media was singular in its fear-mongering, it most certainly was not. From a government perspective, it also didn’t matter that the Gaither Report was fairly measured in its comments. As Fred Kaplan, journalist and historian of mid-century US politics, noted in a panel on the 50th anniversary of the missile gap myth, there’d already been a strong belief in a “bomber gap” between the US and the USSR, so even when CIA reports debunked that threat, it couldn’t fully assuage the underlying fear of the US being outdone in some other way by the USSR. It was that lingering Cold War fear, now desperate for a new home in the data, that made so many in government susceptible to worst-case-scenario readings of 1957 ICBM intel.
Indeed, the CIA even helped with that transference of anxiety, because the “late 1959 threat” referenced above, from the Gaither Report, aligned perfectly with a top-secret CIA report in 1957, which estimated that the USSR would have “a first operational capability with up to 10 prototype ICBMs” between 1958 and 1959, and that the USSR might be able to produce “100 ICBMs about one year after its first operational capability date, and … 500 ICBMs about two or at most three years after”.
The US Air Force (USAF) also inflated this sense of an impending missile crisis—some say cynically, to boost its budget; others, from a reasonable misinterpretation of limited aerial footage in the mid-1950s—so between the CIA, the USAF, and those aforementioned quasi-governmental citizens’ findings, there was sound reason for members of the administration to worry about an imminent Soviet threat.
NB: For all that the USAF might have gotten some of its preliminary stats wrong, I still highly recommend that military and space history nerds take some time with the Air University Quarterly Review, Vol. 9 Issue 3, 1957, which is a thorough exploration of the technical, historical, philosophical, and national-defence dimensions of ballistic missile programs under the USAF especially. It is a whole darned course-curriculum’s worth of knowledge about the technology.
But there’s the internal government side, and then there’s the public-facing side.
And for the general public, who needs more than a bit of rumour and secondhand reporting? It was enough for this sensational report to be leaked in an already tense media culture, in the wake of such a tangible sign of Soviet advancement through the launch of Sputnik, for many civilians to feel distressed by their president’s seemingly understated reaction to what they’d heard of the Soviet threat.
In 1958, an enterprising senator looking for re-election on the path to presidency (John F. Kennedy) would leverage this “missile gap” in the middle of a national recession to boost his standing—but it’s also a bit of reverse hagiography to attribute the perpetuation of this myth solely to him, as has been done in many simplified histories of the era. Everyone played a role in this persistent myth: from the Eisenhower administration, to a number of Democratic rivals, to the CIA itself.*
*Even though, amusingly enough, the CIA would later be criticized by the Nixon administration for having a “liberal bias” and under-estimating the Soviet threat. That’s quite a reversal from the mid-century! But for more on the strangeness of CIA politics, there’s a deep-dive published in 1980 by the Naval War College, The DCI’s Role in Producing Strategic Intelligence Estimates, that speaks to how much internal conflict between civil and military government intelligence agencies informed CIA reports. Suffice it to say, every administration has its nonsense!
In 1959, the US Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy, got into some hot water with statements made both in closed committee meetings and at dinner with reporters elsewhere: journalists, that is, who blew things out of proportion much as Roberts had done for The Washington Post in December 1957. As described in Robert J. Watson’s Into the Missile Age, 1956-1960 (starting on page 314),
On 16 January, testifying before a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, McElroy and Twining made some statements that inadvertently strengthened the administration's critics. They gave a generally reassuring picture of U.S. strength but admitted that the Soviets would probably outstrip the United States in long-range missiles in the near future. Twining reaffirmed earlier estimates of 10 Soviet ICBMs in 1959, 100 a year later, and 500 by 1962 or possibly 1961. In contrast, according to Twining, the United States had programmed only 90 Atlas and Titan ICBMs by 1962 and 200 (plus 50 Minuteman) by June 1963. It appeared, then, that the Soviets would have at least twice as many missiles (500 against 250) by 1963. Senator Kennedy suggested that if the Soviets could increase from 100 to 500 by 1962 they could produce 1,000 by 1963. Twining responded that there was no assurance that the Soviets would build to capacity.
Information, accurate or otherwise, about what McElroy and Twining had said soon leaked out. A columnist writing on 22 January 1959 alleged that they had told the Foreign Relations Committee that by 1962 the Soviets would have 1,000 ICBMs and the United States only 300. The figure of 1 ,000, which had been mentioned by Senator Kennedy, was now credited to McElroy; whether the error was made by the columnist or by his informant is unknown. On the same day at a press conference, McElroy was asked about the prospect of a missile gap. One questioner spoke of 300 Soviet ICBMs by 1960 (a figure not mentioned by McElroy, at least not before the Foreign Relations Committee). McElroy declined to go into detail but replied that there was “no positive evidence” that the Soviets would have ICBMs in operation before the United States. He pointed out that a predicted “bomber gap” had not occurred, apparently because the Soviets decided not to press ahead with maximum production.
On 27 January McElroy attended a dinner at which a number of prominent news reporters were present. During a discussion of world events, McElroy admitted that the Soviets might, in the next few years, achieve a numerical superiority of two or even three to one in ICBMs. His hearers, according to Oliver Gale (who was present), were “shocked and horrified” at this statement. Gale quickly informed them that the information was classified, but the statement inevitably leaked out. These developments gave rise to an assertion in some quarters that McElroy had predicted that the Soviets might soon enjoy a three to one edge in intercontinental missiles. It does not appear that he ever made such a bald statement.
But with the damage done—in part by McElroy, in part by Kennedy, in part by the journalists—February and March were consumed by missile discussions, which led to major changes in budget, deployment, and relevant organizational structures to prepare for the Soviet threat in the coming year.
There was so much missile mania then, in fact, that Kennedy also made a speech in February appealing to Congress (and the US public) to turn their attention beyond the missile gap, as well:
Mr. President, the attention of the Congress and the American people in recent weeks has been turned, and properly so, to the forthcoming “missile gap.” I have spoken on this floor previously about this gap and the dangers it presents. I intend to address myself to the subject again, but I wish to speak today about a gap which constitutes an equally clear and present danger to our security.
Unlike the missile gap, the gap to which I allude will not reach the point of critical danger in 1961. That point has already been reached.
Unlike the missile gap, the gap to which I refer is not even on the surface being reduced by the combined efforts of our executive and legislative branches. It is, on the contrary, consistently ignored and steadily widening.
Unlike the missile gap, the gap to which I refer gives rise to no speculation as to whether the Russians will exploit it to their advantage and to our detriment. They are exploiting it now.
I am talking about the economic gap, the gap in living standards and income and hope for the future, the gap between the developed and the underdeveloped worlds; between, roughly speaking, the top half of our globe and the bottom half; between the stable, industrialized nations of the North, whether they are friends or foes, and the overpopulated, underinvested nations of the South, whether they are friends or neutrals.
It is the gap which presents us with our most critical challenge today. It is this gap which is altering the face of the globe, our strategy, our security, and our alliances, more than any current military challenge. And it is this economic challenge to which we have responded most sporadically, most timidly, and most inadequately.
(But this, I raise only to highlight that we should always be careful about adopting too linear a summary of political history. Politicians are many things at once, and many factors go into the maintenance of a “cultural moment”. Kennedy would also famously offer a moving appeal to the UN for mutual co-operation and an end to an era of tech-advancement driven by competition, in 1963, two months before assassination—so it’s a strange bit of historiography that finds him jammed by historians into a single POV.)
Getting out of the mess—sort of
Now, we all know what this mess of an era yielded with respect to advanced military technologies and their analogs in the “space race” of the era. That’s all part of the tech-optimist story about how nothing historical can be too bad if it at least gave us our shiny new trinkets and deepened our scientific understanding of the cosmos.
But it is worth considering how hard it was to overcome the “missile gap” myth even when we started to realize that something wasn’t right about it.
Because even that work took time to get right.
In July 1959, Eisenhower authorized a spy mission to try to clarify US intelligence about Soviet missile capacities. This would mark the first authorized overflight of the Lockheed U-2, along with other aircraft that could take proper surveillance of Soviet airspace, in some 16 months. The British would then help out with their own flights later in the year, and early in the next, followed by another US flight in April.
Cautiously, carefully, and still with one diplomatic disaster in May 1960 (along with a few close-calls, because the US also spooked the Israeli Air Force with these flights), the US tried to gather evidence of Soviet missile projects. Yet despite these four flyovers failing to reveal evidence of expansive ICBM developments, absence of evidence was not the same as definitive proof that early estimates had been wrong.
The CIA was also overly cautious about downgrading its original estimates, and for some political reasons that Kaplan explored in the aforementioned panel as follows:
As the CIA became more and more aware through their analysis that the Soviet Union really had damn little, first in bombers and then in missiles, there was at first cognitive dissonance, because they were too afraid to say they might only have a dozen. They were saying, okay, 40, 50. If they only had that many missiles, they couldn’t possibly pose a first strike threat against us. So they were initially very reluctant even to come to this conclusion.
It was not just, “Oh, they're not ahead of us.” It was, “Well, wait, if they’re not ahead of us, then what does that say about what the Soviets’ objectives and aims really are?” With the bomber gap, they could get out of it. They could say, “Oh, well, they're building missiles, not bombers.” But if they were not even building missiles, what does that say to what their objectives were? It was a hard thing to come to.
Which is where we come to the crux of the matter: the failure of imagination that reveals itself when conflict-driven narratives of tech advancement fall apart.
Whether with the “bomber gap” and the “missile gap” of the mid-1950s, or the “energy gap” advanced in both the current and the preceding US administrations’ tariff policies toward China, the US has a long tradition of stoking technological innovation by whipping up national anxieties tied to the threat of other superpowers.
And on the surface, one might say, hey! It worked in the late 1950s and early 1960s, didn’t it? It got the military the budget it needed for its expansive new industrial complex! It put a man on the moon! It accelerated the US on so many technological fronts that boosted the economy in waves for generations!
But when you go back to a period like the late 1950s, and you really sit with the mentality that average citizens and government agencies alike had to occupy, to bring about that frantic pursuit of more tech, faster and bigger and boom-ier, right now, some uncanny similarities to present discourse should make themselves apparent—and in the process pose a very ugly question for us all.
Back in the late 1950s, fear and fear-mongering shaped plenty of Western projects.
And yet, to look at even the same newspaper today—The Washington Post of 2024—very little has changed for us, with respect to everyday anxiety about the end of international security. In other words, we haven’t progressed much on a human level, despite all the fancier tech we now have at our disposal.
Are there genuine reasons to worry about international sabotage and the rise of oppressive superpowers? About threats to our democratic futures? Absolutely.
But in part, we have to worry about such things because we’re stuck with outmoded vocabularies when talking about societal growth. Almost 70 years after the “missile gap” myth, we’re still dealing with media, government bodies, and political aspirants that only know how to press the “fear” button to achieve their desired results.
And yet, just because living in a state of constant Cold War paranoia yielded tremendous advances in the past doesn’t mean we need to accept that same social contract as a precondition to the innovations we most desperately need today.
Our ancestors muddled through their own awful political moment, and we who have since succeeded them have gained quite a few pleasant benefits from the industry of their era (along with many humanitarian and environmental disasters).
Now it’s up to us, to try to muddle a lot better through our own.
Be well, be kind, and seek justice where you can.
ML