Episode 4: American Primacy and the Information Revolution

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The Hand Behind Unmanned

Hoover Institution

8 episodes

6 days ago

The Hand Behind Unmanned is a podcast about the people who design, direct, and deploy America’s arsenal of unmanned weapons. The limited series podcast tells stories about their beliefs, identities, and the ways in which human ideas about warfare created and continue to shape today’s drone revolution. It is a history of US investment in mines, torpedoes, missiles, satellites, bombs, and drones from the point of view of the generals, admirals, career bureaucrats, academicians, politicians, and entrepreneurs that guided, dictated, and sometimes manipulated technology to create autonomous systems

Technology

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Episode 4: American Primacy and the Information Revolution – Setting the Scene for the Predator

The Hand Behind Unmanned

42 minutes 18 seconds

5 months ago

Episode 4: American Primacy and the Information Revolution – Setting the Scene for the Predator

The episode looks at the rise of cruise missiles in the early information age, tracing a belief in military revolutions from the Gulf War to 9/11.

It is 1989. The US has won the Cold War and is about to have a dramatic victory in Iraq. Meanwhile, in the bowels of the Pentagon, a small office of ivy league elites headed by career bureaucrat Andy Marshall, introduces a new idea about the burgeoning information technology revolution in the American military. In what are called “revolutions in military affairs," these civilians predict a world of rapid, precise wars fought on the backbone of new technologies like unmanned systems. These beliefs get a stunning endorsement in the Gulf War which ushers in a golden age for precision-guided munitions, cruise missiles, space-based navigation, and the birth of a small but promising company, General Atomics.