Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 641 glimpse into the organizational evolution of a technology-based company shaped by the sometimes conflicting forces of a powerful federal agency, the military, and industry. Catherine Westfall Dr. Westfall is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Michigan State University. She is currently coauthoring books on the history of wartime Los Alamos and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. A Shield in Space? Technology, Politics, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. By Sanford Lakoff and Herbert F. York. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. xv + 409; notes, bibliogra­ phy, index. $35.00. You know you are headed for trouble—or, at least, for an “inside the Beltway” treatise—when the book you pick up begins with a list of 108 acronyms. And yes, you are expected to remember them all or, if that fails, keep your left index finger firmly implanted in the section labeled “Acronyms and Abbreviations.” But tough it out. Although probably not as readable as Herbert York’s Race to Oblivion (1970) or Making Weapons, Talking Peace (1987), A Shield in Space? masterfully combines sophisticated argument with comprehensive guidebook in this tour through the lacunae of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI or, to its detractors, “Star Wars”) first thrust before the public by President Ronald Reagan in March 1983. The SDI debate revolves around three issues: Is SDI technically feasible? Is it strategically preferable to other forms of military modernization, given that the high cost of the SDI will require some hard choices? And what of the impact of the SDI on arms control—is our best defense against “mutual assured destruction” arms control or the ultimate defense promised by SDI advocates? Two chapter titles hint at the authors’ views on these issues: “A ‘Maginot Line of the Twenty-first Century’? SDI and the Western Alliance” and “Security through Technology: An Illusory Faith.” Sanford Lakoff and Herbert York carefully take the reader through the details of the technical and cost issues as well as the policy debates surrounding the SDL They are respectful of SDI’s supporters as they challenge their assumptions—and that is one of the strengths of this book. The authors persuasively disentangle assumption from informed prediction about what the SDI could, and could not, achieve. For example, the inexpert reader has most likely focused on the technological wizardry of the program that has invited the “Star Wars” catchphrase, while one of the most daunting aspects of an operational SDI is likely to be the much less glamorous question of battle management, necessarily entrusted to computers and con­ ducted in seconds, leaving little opportunity for human intervention. 642 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE The most serious assumption of all, in the authors’ view, is that there is an ultimate technical fix for which our adversaries would be helpless to mount the response that would perforce lure us to the next ultimate technical fix, and so on. Yet this was the very assumption, or myth, that led Reagan to appeal over the reservations of the military establishment to the hopes and anxieties of the American people. The authors claim that Reagan’s proposal won the support it did because the president successfully appealed to popular opinion, but they themselves describe the limitations in interpreting polling data. They are critical of Reagan’s failure to defer to the demurrals of the military establishment, but the conservatism of the bureaucracy is well recognized. What is more, the sobriety test normally imposed by bureaucracies on transitory policy enthusiasms serves a salutary function in democratic societies. On the other hand, bureaucracies can be so sobering that they become deadening; presidential leader­ ship must be granted an occasional burst of creative energy as it tries to step out in front of the legions of civil servants still struggling to implement yesterday’s compromises. The tug and pull among the White House, the bureaucracy, and the Congress is a purposeful aspect of American politics. In the end, whether one concludes that it was a good or bad thing for a president to bypass the federal establishment depends a great deal on what one thinks of the policy proposed. If the authors’ treatment of...