Historical account of Paul Baran's early RAND work and Cold War deterrence theory

Chapter Five: Fishnet In which we learn why networks spread so quickly. 1. In 1959 a young aeronautical engineer named Paul Baran, who had been working at Howard Hughes’ aircraft design factory in Los Angeles, arrived for his first day at work at a low-slung, modern building along the Santa Monica beach in California. RAND - astylish 1950’s acronym for Research & Development - had been established by the US Air Force with an ambitious aim: How might the best minds of math and science be bent to the purpose of winning the Cold War? RAND was a dream destination for many researchers, offering a fusion of patriotism, technology and California sun. The place became known for a relaxed, intellectual atmosphere - an energy of open creativity that belied the dangerous, nuclear-tipped problems sitting inside its locked safes and eager minds. Shortly after settling in, Baran was given one of the most troubling, deeply secret of these puzzles. The Cold War was then in its early days. The debate over how to manage an age when it was, for the first time, possible for humans to destroy the planet was colored still by fresh memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was charged too with the fear of communist expansion, not an unreasonable worry for Americans who had just fought a world war against two other, dangerously totalitarian forces. A cold fear lingered in the minds of many citizens and military planners: Given a window of vulnerability, might the USSR loose a fast nuclear attack? Avoiding sucha risk became a primary concern of American diplomacy and defense thinking, particularly in the establishment of some sort of deterrent to a Soviet attack. Moscow had to know, and trust, that any attempt to strike-first would be met with a devastating reply. “The chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars,” the nuclear strategist Bernard Brodie wrote in a 1946 memo. “From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them.”!°4 Deterrence rested on this hope that the USSR would be persuaded not to launch a snap-strike because of the certainty of a nation-levelling reply. This logic, this “balance of threat” depended in turn on America’s ability to launch such a strike. If the Soviets could wipe out America’s ability to respond, then Moscow’s leaders might move first, snap of America’s claws, and then pick the world apart at their leisure. If Krushchev’s famous, mocking dangerous ”We will bury you!” line from 1956 really meant what it said, then sucha move would provide an awfully convenient first shovel. In the late 1950s, when Baran arrived at RAND, the Cold War was at its chilliest and one of the most carefully guarded American secrets was this: If the USSR attacked, 104 “The chief purpose of our military”: Bernard Brodie, “The Weapon: War in the Atomic Age and Implications for Military Policy,” in Brodie Ed, The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order, (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1946) 76 ae HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_018309