The behavior of most institutions today must be understood in the context of World War II. WWII was the largest organized catastrophe in the history of the world. It brought the atom bomb, the instantaneous destruction of cities, and mechanized death, leaving worldwide trauma that is still driving events now, more than 75 years later.
The central point of trauma from the war is that people saw for the first time that humanity itself might die, not by an act of God or nature, but by its own hand. This was never possible before, and it was terrifying, like many aspects of WWII. After the war, it took about 25 years, but people found a solution. It’s not a good solution, but the world hasn’t had another world war, hasn’t had a nuclear war, and hasn’t developed even more powerful weapons.
The solution was a massive global slowdown. The slowdown is centered on science and military technology but also shows up in education, the economy, and the intellectual life of society. It’s hard to see, in part because the slowdown is disguised and in part because it’s coming from almost everyone, tacitly working together on the basis of shared fears. But it is real, and describing it brings some clarity to the confusing world around us.
To see the slowdown, we can trace the history of scientific research and weapons development since WWII. At the end of WWII, scientists built the atomic bomb; it was dropped on Japan three weeks later. Scientists had expected to be consulted about the use of the bomb but largely were not. After the war, they were divided on the question of military technology, as illustrated by the Oppenheimer-Teller split on the hydrogen bomb.
The military wanted to ensure continued US dominance and was now faced with a new enemy: the Soviet Union. The USSR developed its first atomic bomb within a few years of the end of the war, and both sides poured money into scientific research to build new weapons. They eventually settled into a standoff, each side prioritizing stability most. For the US, this meant making sure no one else could pull ahead. For Russia, this meant maintaining its position and not falling behind.
The goal of geopolitical stability implied the surprising conclusion that successful weapons research could be bad overall, even from a military perspective. If the US developed new weapons, other countries would soon copy them as they had with the atomic bomb. This might alter the global balance for the worse. If other countries developed new weapons, that too would be problematic. It was thus strategically advantageous to slow down weapons development everywhere, even in the US.
At the same time, the split among scientists between the hawks and the doves widened. The most militant, such as Teller and von Neumann, advocated for increasingly powerful weapons and pre-emptive nuclear war. Most, however, backed away from the brink, and scientists in general sided with Einstein, who for years had been pushing for peace.
Eventually, the scientific community and military found a mutually acceptable solution. The military would fund scientific research broadly, not for offensive purposes, but for defensive ones. Scientists could follow their research interests, and the military would investigate the military applications of the research, not to make devastating new weapons, but to make sure there weren’t powerful weapons there to be invented if anyone tried. Both sides won: science was funded and the military could minimize strategic surprise.
This new arrangement did not necessitate a slowdown, but in practice gave everyone’s fear room to operate. Scientists could be funded without making important breakthroughs, staying busy writing papers and awarding themselves prizes. The military could ensure stability and limit advances in weaponry to expensive projects with little incremental value. Things could inch forward, rather than race, and no one would disrupt the stable peace.
As the primary source of danger was being arrested, there were intense efforts to otherwise maintain the geopolitical order, especially the balance of power among nuclear-armed nations. Nuclear non-proliferation became a worldwide focus, with a global anti-proliferation movement and international treaties like the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Broadly speaking, the efforts to maintain geopolitical stability have been successful. There have been regional wars (North and South Korea) and proxy wars (the US and USSR in Vietnam), but almost a century has passed without a nuclear exchange. By the standard of stability and peace, the last fifty years have gone extremely well. The downstream consequences, however, have been a unique type of slow-moving catastrophe.
Education was gradually sacrificed. The danger of bright young explorers, inspired by the power of science, was too great. Energy demand and population growth stagnated. The alternative was a growing population with growing need for energy, but as the anti-proliferation and environmental movements made clear, this might yield nuclear catastrophe if nuclear technology spread or environmental catastrophe if we used fossil fuels.
In theory, a global scientific and weapon development slowdown, combined with geopolitical stasis, should permit economic growth. Nations becoming wealthier might even lead them to become more stable, with their people having more to lose. In practice, economic growth is tied to scientific and technological advance, education, and demographics. It has been difficult to keep people productive in some ways while stabilizing and slowing them down in others.
The slowdown has been hard to see from the inside. In part, this is because it arose from an unconscious fear rather than a conscious effort. A conscious effort would leave more visible traces; there would be a conspiracy somewhere that someone would notice. Shared traumatic experiences, on the other hand, can act as blind drivers, and since they are shared, almost no one has the ability to point out the effects.
Because the slowdown is unconscious, it is also liable to exceptions; things can slip through the cracks. Drones, developed primarily outside the West, are an example of a new military capacity that may affect the strategic balance. Scientific advances are still made, as with the development of mRNA vaccines. Computers and information technology have for decades been the main example of technological disruption. Exceptions make the slowdown harder to see, as they are proof that some progress somewhere is still being made.
Another cause is the size and complexity of the whole. People may know the dysfunction of their own field, or industry, or school, but lack a way to judge the others. Misleading metrics add to the haze. With scientific papers, it’s easy to measure quantity; quality is harder to discern. In school, one can measure grades, but these can be inflated. Battlefield outcomes are clearer, but war is now rarer, and politics is often a confounding factor.
In the context of misleading metrics and a whole too difficult to judge, the intense effort of a large group becomes irresistible as propaganda. We see scientists publishing papers at an incredible rate. Militaries put billions of dollars into new weapons systems and advertise glitzy new prototypes. Students are spending more and more time in school. It beggars belief that no progress is being made, and there are indeed some examples of bona fide progress, like mRNA vaccines or AI.
One can cut through the fog when one realizes that this is in fact a fog of war, that the intense effort and advertised progress, complete with the misleading metrics, is the world’s emergent defense against the unsolved problems of World War II. We believe we can’t make more progress because we’re already going as fast as we can, faster than ever, and that’s a relief, because actual progress might bring World War III.
Eventually the results of the slowdown become clear. Science shows us roughly the same world it did fifty years ago. New weapons systems provide only marginal benefits, and ultimately the strategic balance is still determined by nukes. Education fails, the population levels off, young people become less optimistic about their prospects, and no one can say why.
But we can say why. It is because WWII and the development of nuclear weapons scared people — almost everyone — with the prospect of human self-destruction. Over time, the world found a solution that is generally safe, generally stable, and has worked now for half a century.
The nuclear component is half of the puzzle, and the crowning element. But it does not amount to a “lockdown,” not yet. To see how the trap was closed, we need the story’s other half, which also found its origin in the world’s last great war.
To be continued…
Here are two different types of evidence: (1) the Mansfield amendments, which were cases where Congress limited military funding of research, and (2) the success of outsiders like SpaceX and Palantir getting government contracts.
I take these to indicate that *if* there are corrupt US military contractors who have captured their funding sources, the degree of capture is only moderate, rather than strong or total. (If there was a strong military-industrial complex, we would expect Congress to not limit military research and outsiders to be more strictly excluded.)
If there's at most a moderate "capture by incompetent military contractors" effect, postulating an unconscious fear helps to complete the picture. Also, there are many other reasons to believe in the fear. But once you think it is operative, it's not hard to imagine it affecting the military (and contractors, etc.) as well.
(I do expect the military to be less susceptible to unconscious fears. Part of military training is mastering one's fear. That said, the US military is still fairly socially continuous with the rest of American society. So I suspect that the larger fears are still shared to an important degree.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Mansfield#Mansfield_Amendments
"The military could ensure stability and limit advances in weaponry to expensive projects with little incremental value"
What's the strongest piece of evidence that this was the result of some unconscious desire rather than some combination of incompetence/military industrial complex looking to grift?