Preface
XIII
- there are plenty more - which will allow those who so desire to complete,
verify, or discuss this text. I do not have the naive hope that a twenty year
old student of mathematics will plunge into this ocean of literature; it would
hardly even be a very good service to encourage him to do so. But maybe
this text will find readers who are not so young and no longer have to submit
to examinations or competitions for success. Although the French version of
this Post face devoted a good deal of space to the French situation, I thought
it better, in the English version, to emphasise the American situation more
than I did in French, and this for several good reasons.
From Pearl Harbor to the present day, America has been the world leader
in this domain - a leader which, for a dozen years, has no longer had
any competitor worth naming and seems to be in a technological arms race
against itself 16 , as was already the case when it spent $2000000000 (one
percent of its 1945 GNP) during WW II in order to get the atomic bomb before the Nazis, who did not believe it could be available in time and devoted
very little resources to it. This American polarisation on scientific weapons,
more or less faithfully imitated in the Soviet Union, Britain and France,
had enormous political consequences; among others, it compelled the much
weaker Soviet Union to devote to defence a proportion of its resources which
must have strongly contributed to its downfall and to the present American
hegemony. On the other hand, the civilian uses of mostly American military
innovations in electronics, informatics, aviation, space, telecommunications,
nuclear power, etc., had a deep influence on the daily life of people everywhere. Without WW II and the arms race, most of these innovations would
have come much later, or never, because the financing of research, development and initial production by defence organisations made it possible for
private enterprises to take risks which, otherwise, would have been barred by
the return on investment principle that governs civilian innovations. Without
World War II, no V-2 missiles and no atomic weapons; without these and the
Cold War, no intercontinental ballistic missiles; without ICBMs and the need
of the central military authorities for instant worldwide command, control,
communication, and intelligence - C31 as they call it - no satellites; and
without satellites and many other innovations propelled by the military -
computers, integrated circuits, Arpanet, etc. - then no Internet, to mention
only this most spectacular spin-off of the arms race. The idea that civilian
industry could have, by itself, spent tens or hundreds of billions in order to
invent, produce and market such gigantic amounts of hardware and software
at a time when nobody but the military had any proven need for it is foolish.
Civilian business does not deal in science fiction.
WW II and the arms race also contributed to propelling the funding of
scientific research proper to levels which, before 1939, would have seemed
16 It has been recently disclosed that America will develop in the next 10 or 15
years an hypersonic cruise missile that wili be able to strike anywhere on the
Earth in less than two hours from bases in continental America.
XIII
- there are plenty more - which will allow those who so desire to complete,
verify, or discuss this text. I do not have the naive hope that a twenty year
old student of mathematics will plunge into this ocean of literature; it would
hardly even be a very good service to encourage him to do so. But maybe
this text will find readers who are not so young and no longer have to submit
to examinations or competitions for success. Although the French version of
this Post face devoted a good deal of space to the French situation, I thought
it better, in the English version, to emphasise the American situation more
than I did in French, and this for several good reasons.
From Pearl Harbor to the present day, America has been the world leader
in this domain - a leader which, for a dozen years, has no longer had
any competitor worth naming and seems to be in a technological arms race
against itself 16 , as was already the case when it spent $2000000000 (one
percent of its 1945 GNP) during WW II in order to get the atomic bomb before the Nazis, who did not believe it could be available in time and devoted
very little resources to it. This American polarisation on scientific weapons,
more or less faithfully imitated in the Soviet Union, Britain and France,
had enormous political consequences; among others, it compelled the much
weaker Soviet Union to devote to defence a proportion of its resources which
must have strongly contributed to its downfall and to the present American
hegemony. On the other hand, the civilian uses of mostly American military
innovations in electronics, informatics, aviation, space, telecommunications,
nuclear power, etc., had a deep influence on the daily life of people everywhere. Without WW II and the arms race, most of these innovations would
have come much later, or never, because the financing of research, development and initial production by defence organisations made it possible for
private enterprises to take risks which, otherwise, would have been barred by
the return on investment principle that governs civilian innovations. Without
World War II, no V-2 missiles and no atomic weapons; without these and the
Cold War, no intercontinental ballistic missiles; without ICBMs and the need
of the central military authorities for instant worldwide command, control,
communication, and intelligence - C31 as they call it - no satellites; and
without satellites and many other innovations propelled by the military -
computers, integrated circuits, Arpanet, etc. - then no Internet, to mention
only this most spectacular spin-off of the arms race. The idea that civilian
industry could have, by itself, spent tens or hundreds of billions in order to
invent, produce and market such gigantic amounts of hardware and software
at a time when nobody but the military had any proven need for it is foolish.
Civilian business does not deal in science fiction.
WW II and the arms race also contributed to propelling the funding of
scientific research proper to levels which, before 1939, would have seemed
16 It has been recently disclosed that America will develop in the next 10 or 15
years an hypersonic cruise missile that wili be able to strike anywhere on the
Earth in less than two hours from bases in continental America.