Episode 4: American Primacy and the Information Revolution – Setting the Scene for the Predator
Failed to add items
Add to basket failed.
Add to wishlist failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Episode 4: American Primacy and the Information Revolution – Setting the Scene for the Predator
-
Narrated by:
-
By:
About this listen
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.