May 2, 1994
Memorandum for the Record, Office of the Secretary of Defense
“My purpose in this memo is to put on paper some thoughts about the hypothesis that the next two or three decades will see a revolution in military affairs. The last memo I wrote on this topic was in August of 93. A number of things have happened in the interim that deserve some comment.”
“Technology makes a revolution possible, but the revolution itself takes place only when new concepts of operation develop and new military organizations emerge in order to take full advantage of the opportunities generated by the relevant technologies.”
Remarks of Andrew W. Marshall, Director of OSD Net Assessment, delivered at the National Security Industrial Association’s 13 September 1995 Seminar on “Submarines in the Littoral.”
April 2015
Organization Science
“Much of intellectual history is punctuated by the flaring of intellectual outliers, small groups of thinkers who briefly, but decisively, influence the development of ideas, technologies, policies, or worldviews. To understand the flaring of intellectual outliers, we use archival and interview data from the RAND Corporation after the Second World War. We focus on five factors important to the RAND experience: (1) a belief in fundamental research as a source of practical ideas, (2) a culture of optimistic urgency, (3) the solicitation of renegade ambition, (4) the recruitment of intellectual cronies, and (5) the facilitation of the combinatorics of variety. To understand the subsequent decline of intellectual outliers at RAND, we note that success yields a sense of competence, endurance in a competitive world, and the opportunity and inclination to grow. Self-confidence, endurance, and growth produce numerous positive consequences for an organization; but for the most part, they undermine variety. Outliers and the conditions that produce them are not favored by their environments. Engineering solutions to this problem involve extending time and space horizons, providing false information about the likelihoods of positive returns from exploration, buffering exploratory activities from the pressures of efficiency, and protecting exploration from analysis by connecting it to dictates of identities.”
1999
RAND Corporation
Contributors: Carl H. Builder, David C. Gompert, John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt, Michele Zanini, Jeremy Shapiro, Edward R. Harshberger, David A. Ochmanek, Brian Nichiporuk, Stephen T. Hosmer, et al.
“Advances in information technology have led us to rely on easy communication and readily available information — both in our personal lives and in the life of our nation. For the most part, we have rightly welcomed these changes. But information that is readily available is available to friend and foe alike; a system that relies on communication can become useless if its ability to communicate is interfered with or destroyed. Because this reliance is so general, attacks on the information infrastructure can have widespread effects, both for the military and for society. And such attacks can come from a variety of sources, some difficult or impossible to identify. This, the third volume in the Strategic Appraisal series, draws on the expertise of researchers from across RAND to explore the opportunities and vulnerabilities inherent in the increasing reliance on information technology, looking both at its usefulness to the warrior and the need to protect its usefulness for everyone. The Strategic Appraisal series is intended to review, for a broad audience, issues bearing on national security and defense planning.”
1994
RAND Corporation
“In 1951, the late Herbert Goldhamer, a senior RAND analyst, spent several months as an adviser to the United Nations team that was negotiating with the North Koreans and the Chinese at Panmunjom. Long classified, this now historic document is an unedited transcript of the observations Goldhamer dictated immediately after his return. Intended to capture impressions while they were still fresh, this lively account was to be the raw material for a later more systematic analysis. It offers the reader a firsthand look, through the eyes of an astute observer, at the roles that interpersonal relations and culturally based perceptions play in diplomatic negotiations. The volume includes a Foreword by Andrew W. Marshall and an Introduction by Ernest R. May.”
August 23, 1993
Memorandum for the Record, Office of the Secretary of Defense
Made available by Stanford University
“The purpose of this memo is to put down some ideas about the nature and character of military revolutions and to record where my office is in developing a better understanding of the current, potential military revolution. I also want to put forward some ideas about what ought to be done in the next two or three years. I’m doing this following talks with Bill Perry and John Deutch. Both are quite interested in the notion that a military revolution may be underway, or may be possible. I want to go beyond what I talked about with them to a fuller description of what might be undertaken if they and other top-level officials become convinced that, in fact, we are in the early stages of a major change in the nature of warfare.”
April 11, 1991
Westview Press
1972
RAND Corporation
“A suggestion for a shift in focus on planning and programming U.S. strategic forces. Long-term analysis of the U.S.-Soviet competition should be concerned with both opponents, treating threats within that framework, searching for areas of possible U.S. advantage, and looking for weaknesses as well as strengths. Current analysis focuses solely on warding off potential Soviet difficulties and advantages. It is doubtful that forces on either side develop in accordance with simply stated national goals. Analysis should incorporate the tools of Bayesian analysis and two-sided, force-posture planning games, similar to SAFE and XRAY. It should develop more comprehensive U.S. positions on composition of strategic forces, SALT, arms-control issues, the nature of the strategic arms competition, and general U.S. objectives. By leading away from concentration on a single criterion, the analysis could gain some freedom in planning.”
