WEBVTT 00:00:00.090 --> 00:00:02.430 The following content is provided under a Creative 00:00:02.430 --> 00:00:03.820 Commons License. 00:00:03.820 --> 00:00:06.030 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:06.030 --> 00:00:10.120 continue to offer high-quality educational resources for free. 00:00:10.120 --> 00:00:12.660 To make a donation or to view additional materials 00:00:12.660 --> 00:00:16.620 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 00:00:16.620 --> 00:00:17.992 at ocw.mit.edu. 00:00:23.220 --> 00:00:26.420 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So today, we're 00:00:26.420 --> 00:00:30.960 going to get into innovation at the institutional level. 00:00:30.960 --> 00:00:34.100 So that's our fundamental topic. 00:00:34.100 --> 00:00:35.730 Because we've been out for two weeks, 00:00:35.730 --> 00:00:39.950 let me do a recap so that we're all current with the underlying 00:00:39.950 --> 00:00:41.210 framework. 00:00:41.210 --> 00:00:44.150 Class 1, we talked about, as you remember, growth theory, 00:00:44.150 --> 00:00:47.030 and we read Robert Solow and Solow taught us 00:00:47.030 --> 00:00:49.760 that technological and related innovation is 00:00:49.760 --> 00:00:54.170 the dominant causative factor in economic growth. 00:00:54.170 --> 00:00:57.230 Old classical economics posited that it was capital supplier 00:00:57.230 --> 00:00:58.280 labor supply. 00:00:58.280 --> 00:01:00.830 Those remain important, but the monster in the room, 00:01:00.830 --> 00:01:05.030 Solow found, to the tune of 60% or more, 00:01:05.030 --> 00:01:08.120 is technological and related innovation. 00:01:08.120 --> 00:01:10.100 We also read Paul Romer. 00:01:10.100 --> 00:01:14.810 And Paul Romer says, wait a minute. 00:01:14.810 --> 00:01:16.790 It's not just having an R&D system. 00:01:16.790 --> 00:01:19.010 You've got to staff that R&D system. 00:01:19.010 --> 00:01:20.870 It's the talent base. 00:01:20.870 --> 00:01:22.910 That's a key driver. 00:01:22.910 --> 00:01:26.040 That's another critical factor. 00:01:26.040 --> 00:01:31.473 So his phrase is quote, "human capital engaged in research." 00:01:31.473 --> 00:01:33.890 So if you train great physicists and they're driving cabs, 00:01:33.890 --> 00:01:35.870 they're not engaged in research, right? 00:01:35.870 --> 00:01:38.580 That's a no-net gain. 00:01:38.580 --> 00:01:42.420 But if they're engaged in that system, that's what's critical. 00:01:42.420 --> 00:01:46.980 And his prospector theory says the size 00:01:46.980 --> 00:01:50.830 of a well-qualified talent base makes a huge difference. 00:01:50.830 --> 00:01:54.120 That's a key driver. 00:01:54.120 --> 00:01:56.390 Talent on task and a lot of talent on task 00:01:56.390 --> 00:01:59.010 is better than less talent on task. 00:01:59.010 --> 00:02:02.760 So those are two fundamental innovation factors 00:02:02.760 --> 00:02:05.520 that we arrived at in the first class. 00:02:05.520 --> 00:02:07.530 Class number 2, we began thinking 00:02:07.530 --> 00:02:10.025 about innovation systems. 00:02:10.025 --> 00:02:11.900 So we got two factors out of the first class. 00:02:11.900 --> 00:02:14.750 Then we began to think about systems. 00:02:14.750 --> 00:02:18.290 Nelson tells us that there are national systems of innovation 00:02:18.290 --> 00:02:22.780 that you can analyze, innovation at the systems level, 00:02:22.780 --> 00:02:25.957 and look at the actors in that system 00:02:25.957 --> 00:02:27.790 and the strength of the actors and therefore 00:02:27.790 --> 00:02:31.040 the strength of the whole system. 00:02:31.040 --> 00:02:36.340 So that gives us a third innovation factor, 00:02:36.340 --> 00:02:37.390 which is really-- 00:02:37.390 --> 00:02:41.320 we'll call it innovation organization. 00:02:41.320 --> 00:02:43.170 And then we read some other pieces in there. 00:02:43.170 --> 00:02:45.610 I'll highlight a couple. 00:02:45.610 --> 00:02:48.760 Don Kash and Robert Rycroft said, you've 00:02:48.760 --> 00:02:49.960 got to network the actors. 00:02:53.090 --> 00:02:55.760 It's the network, the strength of the network of the actors, 00:02:55.760 --> 00:02:58.730 that's now, particularly in a 21st century context, 00:02:58.730 --> 00:03:01.340 particularly critical. 00:03:01.340 --> 00:03:05.845 And we also read Charles Schulze, a noted economist 00:03:05.845 --> 00:03:07.220 from the University of Minnesota, 00:03:07.220 --> 00:03:11.120 who was a senior governmental official in the Lyndon Johnson 00:03:11.120 --> 00:03:13.370 era and then Jimmy Carter era. 00:03:13.370 --> 00:03:18.290 And he raises the issue of what's the public role? 00:03:18.290 --> 00:03:22.010 What's the private role as we look at innovation systems? 00:03:22.010 --> 00:03:23.900 What should the public function be versus 00:03:23.900 --> 00:03:26.390 what the private sector should be. 00:03:26.390 --> 00:03:30.310 An absolutely fundamental set of issues. 00:03:30.310 --> 00:03:32.500 So then we did classes 3 and 4. 00:03:32.500 --> 00:03:35.140 We essentially focused on the innovation challenge 00:03:35.140 --> 00:03:37.360 ahead in production. 00:03:37.360 --> 00:03:40.340 And in class 3, we looked at the kind of history 00:03:40.340 --> 00:03:44.270 of US manufacturing problems. 00:03:44.270 --> 00:03:47.690 We read Kent Hughes, and he explains 00:03:47.690 --> 00:03:50.450 the fascinating competition when Japan launches 00:03:50.450 --> 00:03:54.350 a brilliant new innovation system and production 00:03:54.350 --> 00:03:56.420 around quality. 00:03:56.420 --> 00:03:58.340 That's where the rust belt begins. 00:03:58.340 --> 00:04:03.320 That's where US statistics about growing inequality begin. 00:04:03.320 --> 00:04:06.920 That's where this problem that we're now worse off at, 00:04:06.920 --> 00:04:08.510 that's where it commences. 00:04:08.510 --> 00:04:10.610 And then we looked at Korea and Japan 00:04:10.610 --> 00:04:14.360 and how they built manufacturing-led innovation 00:04:14.360 --> 00:04:16.290 systems. 00:04:16.290 --> 00:04:21.029 And then in class 4, we looked at the current US manufacturing 00:04:21.029 --> 00:04:21.540 problems. 00:04:21.540 --> 00:04:25.590 So I wanted to put a set of real issues, really 00:04:25.590 --> 00:04:29.190 timely critical issues, kind of on the table, if you will, 00:04:29.190 --> 00:04:32.930 at the very beginning of the class so that we're not-- 00:04:32.930 --> 00:04:35.020 you know, this is not a class about abstraction. 00:04:35.020 --> 00:04:37.800 These are real issues that are extremely 00:04:37.800 --> 00:04:41.700 timely in the way in which society operates and functions. 00:04:41.700 --> 00:04:46.440 And the US built a comparative advantage 00:04:46.440 --> 00:04:49.020 around its R&D system. 00:04:49.020 --> 00:04:52.860 It did not organize around manufacturing-led innovation 00:04:52.860 --> 00:04:58.350 like Japan, Germany, Korea, Taiwan, China, and so on. 00:04:58.350 --> 00:05:01.890 We missed that organizational step, 00:05:01.890 --> 00:05:06.850 and we are continuing to pay a price for that. 00:05:06.850 --> 00:05:10.680 So we talked some two weeks ago about David Autor and some 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:13.020 of his absolutely fascinating work 00:05:13.020 --> 00:05:18.300 on the decline of US manufacturing 00:05:18.300 --> 00:05:20.400 and the effect on the labor force. 00:05:20.400 --> 00:05:22.260 He has a new piece out that talks 00:05:22.260 --> 00:05:35.410 about the effect on innovation of the intense competition 00:05:35.410 --> 00:05:35.910 with China. 00:05:35.910 --> 00:05:37.980 And essentially, what he finds is 00:05:37.980 --> 00:05:41.310 that firms that go up against head-on-head competition 00:05:41.310 --> 00:05:44.190 over a particular product line with China 00:05:44.190 --> 00:05:47.910 have to slash their innovation capability, their R&D 00:05:47.910 --> 00:05:51.180 capability, in order to stay in the game. 00:05:51.180 --> 00:05:53.520 But that kills them long term. 00:05:53.520 --> 00:05:57.090 So that this competition with Japan 00:05:57.090 --> 00:06:00.155 is not only having an effect on the labor market, 00:06:00.155 --> 00:06:02.280 but it's also having a big effect on the innovation 00:06:02.280 --> 00:06:04.380 capability of companies. 00:06:04.380 --> 00:06:08.960 And then we talked about whether advanced manufacturing 00:06:08.960 --> 00:06:12.590 could bring a new paradigm to the table, where 00:06:12.590 --> 00:06:15.290 US developing countries can kind of get back in the game. 00:06:15.290 --> 00:06:18.620 So in effect, they would take innovation leadership, 00:06:18.620 --> 00:06:20.300 innovate in the production system 00:06:20.300 --> 00:06:24.470 process and technologies, and be able to compete better. 00:06:24.470 --> 00:06:26.460 That's the essential question. 00:06:26.460 --> 00:06:30.080 And as I mentioned last week, MIT for example, 00:06:30.080 --> 00:06:31.850 there are 14 manufacturing institutes 00:06:31.850 --> 00:06:33.940 that have been stood up in the last few years. 00:06:33.940 --> 00:06:37.280 MIT is participating in 9 of the 14, 00:06:37.280 --> 00:06:41.090 leading one particularly active and about three or four 00:06:41.090 --> 00:06:42.620 but also participant in the others. 00:06:42.620 --> 00:06:44.630 So this is something that's now ongoing 00:06:44.630 --> 00:06:49.100 on this campus in a pretty sizable way. 00:06:49.100 --> 00:06:51.680 So that's the background on manufacturing. 00:06:51.680 --> 00:06:55.910 Now we go back to our whole project 00:06:55.910 --> 00:06:57.470 on innovation organization. 00:06:57.470 --> 00:06:59.420 That's today's class. 00:06:59.420 --> 00:07:01.490 And we're looking at that problem 00:07:01.490 --> 00:07:06.600 of how do you innovate at the institutional level? 00:07:06.600 --> 00:07:10.110 And in particular, we're looking at where did the US innovation 00:07:10.110 --> 00:07:12.150 system come from? 00:07:12.150 --> 00:07:13.500 How did it get created? 00:07:13.500 --> 00:07:15.610 How did it get put together? 00:07:15.610 --> 00:07:21.630 And that's the story that we'll weave today. 00:07:21.630 --> 00:07:27.060 As a backdrop to that, we'll start with a framework 00:07:27.060 --> 00:07:29.687 that a scholar named David Hart put together. 00:07:29.687 --> 00:07:31.395 David teaches at George Mason University. 00:07:31.395 --> 00:07:35.430 He teaches innovation policy issues there. 00:07:35.430 --> 00:07:39.960 And he wrote this-- he got his PhD from MIT and STS. 00:07:43.500 --> 00:07:45.450 He was head service in the Office of Science 00:07:45.450 --> 00:07:47.430 and Technology Policy so he as practical 00:07:47.430 --> 00:07:50.280 as well as a lot of academic experience. 00:07:50.280 --> 00:07:53.070 Authored a big book on energy innovation policy. 00:07:56.610 --> 00:08:00.660 David did this book back in 1998, 00:08:00.660 --> 00:08:05.330 and he essentially argued that what's the ideology of science 00:08:05.330 --> 00:08:08.420 and technology policy? 00:08:08.420 --> 00:08:12.140 If you put it into a political economy kind of context, 00:08:12.140 --> 00:08:13.730 what is the thinking process? 00:08:13.730 --> 00:08:15.900 How do you think about this? 00:08:15.900 --> 00:08:20.660 And he identified kind of five political strains 00:08:20.660 --> 00:08:24.190 in the US that, frankly-- 00:08:24.190 --> 00:08:27.080 you know, I worked in the Senate for over 15 years. 00:08:27.080 --> 00:08:27.790 I saw them all. 00:08:27.790 --> 00:08:28.520 They were real. 00:08:28.520 --> 00:08:30.280 They were all still there. 00:08:30.280 --> 00:08:33.640 There were all ways of thinking about science and tech 00:08:33.640 --> 00:08:37.159 policy, R&D policy that I saw all the time. 00:08:37.159 --> 00:08:39.497 So these are very much alive and well. 00:08:39.497 --> 00:08:41.289 And David tried to put a frame around them, 00:08:41.289 --> 00:08:47.435 and they will help guide us on the politics of science support 00:08:47.435 --> 00:08:49.060 and technology support in this country. 00:08:49.060 --> 00:08:51.160 So what are these five visions? 00:08:51.160 --> 00:08:52.720 I'm going to summarize them briefly. 00:08:52.720 --> 00:08:55.280 And which of our discussion leaders has David Hart? 00:08:55.280 --> 00:08:55.780 Chloe. 00:08:55.780 --> 00:08:56.920 OK. 00:08:56.920 --> 00:09:00.840 So the first was conservatism. 00:09:00.840 --> 00:09:07.400 Now, this perspective saw no need for the state, 00:09:07.400 --> 00:09:10.350 for the federal government, to do anything other 00:09:10.350 --> 00:09:12.900 than providing for defense, including 00:09:12.900 --> 00:09:16.200 military technological innovation. 00:09:16.200 --> 00:09:21.110 Get the state out of everything else. 00:09:21.110 --> 00:09:24.800 They've got to do defense, but leave the rest 00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:26.420 to the private sector. 00:09:26.420 --> 00:09:30.710 It's a very non-interventionist philosophy. 00:09:30.710 --> 00:09:34.750 The budget that President Trump just sent to Capitol Hill 00:09:34.750 --> 00:09:39.800 for FY '18, largely written by the Heritage Foundation, 00:09:39.800 --> 00:09:43.940 argues exactly this theoretical line. 00:09:43.940 --> 00:09:47.540 It takes-- it eliminates ARPA-E. It takes $2 billion 00:09:47.540 --> 00:09:50.030 out of the Applied Research Agencies 00:09:50.030 --> 00:09:53.130 and takes almost $1 billion out of the basic research agencies 00:09:53.130 --> 00:09:54.380 at DOD. 00:09:54.380 --> 00:09:57.420 It's a gigantic cutback. 00:09:57.420 --> 00:10:00.592 The theory is, let the private sector do it. 00:10:00.592 --> 00:10:01.800 They'll do this energy stuff. 00:10:05.130 --> 00:10:07.530 So this is right on us. 00:10:07.530 --> 00:10:10.560 This theoretical framework for approaching R&D support 00:10:10.560 --> 00:10:12.450 is right there. 00:10:12.450 --> 00:10:14.610 One of its leading proponents, and we'll 00:10:14.610 --> 00:10:17.640 run into him when we talk about Alfred Loomis, 00:10:17.640 --> 00:10:19.980 one of its leading proponents in this period that David 00:10:19.980 --> 00:10:21.810 is writing about in the '20s and '30s 00:10:21.810 --> 00:10:27.440 when these ideologies really got put together, was Frank Jewett. 00:10:27.440 --> 00:10:29.720 Jewett was head of Bell Labs. 00:10:29.720 --> 00:10:32.720 And he was president of the National Academies. 00:10:32.720 --> 00:10:34.450 Had both slots. 00:10:34.450 --> 00:10:37.370 And he's head of Bell Labs. 00:10:37.370 --> 00:10:40.100 He's got one of the great basic research 00:10:40.100 --> 00:10:42.080 as well as applied research organizations 00:10:42.080 --> 00:10:45.370 in the history of the world. 00:10:45.370 --> 00:10:46.910 There is a phone monopoly. 00:10:46.910 --> 00:10:49.100 The last thing he wants is the federal government 00:10:49.100 --> 00:10:50.930 messing around in his turf. 00:10:50.930 --> 00:10:55.040 Naturally, he's a proponent of keeping the feds out, 00:10:55.040 --> 00:10:58.040 except in defense and military, which they've got to do. 00:10:58.040 --> 00:11:02.540 So we'll run into to Frank Jewett in a few minutes. 00:11:02.540 --> 00:11:07.790 But this is a noninterventionist defense-only piece. 00:11:07.790 --> 00:11:10.490 Now, on the other side of that argument 00:11:10.490 --> 00:11:13.532 is what David calls associationalism. 00:11:13.532 --> 00:11:17.690 We would call this public-private partnership. 00:11:17.690 --> 00:11:21.590 That's the lingo that's more or less used at this time. 00:11:21.590 --> 00:11:23.900 But the meaning is roughly the same. 00:11:23.900 --> 00:11:26.600 David points out that the first big exponent of this 00:11:26.600 --> 00:11:30.080 was Herbert Hoover, who along with Jimmy Carter, 00:11:30.080 --> 00:11:32.360 was one of the only two engineers 00:11:32.360 --> 00:11:36.390 to ever be president of the United States. 00:11:36.390 --> 00:11:39.100 That doesn't mean there can't be more, just as a lesson to you 00:11:39.100 --> 00:11:39.600 all. 00:11:42.810 --> 00:11:46.590 Hoover was an amazing engineer. 00:11:46.590 --> 00:11:51.330 He was a great organizer of the World War I war relief effort 00:11:51.330 --> 00:11:54.690 to save a staggering number of lives after World War I. 00:11:54.690 --> 00:11:58.230 He was a highly innovative Secretary of Commerce 00:11:58.230 --> 00:11:59.910 and made that at the time actually 00:11:59.910 --> 00:12:03.510 one of the most important Cabinet agencies. 00:12:03.510 --> 00:12:08.790 His vision was that unlimited economic competition 00:12:08.790 --> 00:12:15.420 curtails firms' ability to be innovative. 00:12:15.420 --> 00:12:18.000 If you're frantic about your competitors, 00:12:18.000 --> 00:12:20.610 you're not going to have the energy, time, or resources 00:12:20.610 --> 00:12:25.590 to spend on longer-term, higher-risk R&D. 00:12:25.590 --> 00:12:29.520 So there ought to be a gathering between public and private 00:12:29.520 --> 00:12:35.520 sectors that would collaboratively undertake this. 00:12:35.520 --> 00:12:40.410 So this associationalism really occurs in the 1920s. 00:12:40.410 --> 00:12:48.310 He is a great leader of NIST, the standards organization. 00:12:48.310 --> 00:12:51.010 That would be a classic public-private collaboration, 00:12:51.010 --> 00:12:53.060 where private industry under government auspices 00:12:53.060 --> 00:12:54.810 would come together and negotiate and work 00:12:54.810 --> 00:12:59.950 on standards for products to enable their much more 00:12:59.950 --> 00:13:01.510 efficient production. 00:13:01.510 --> 00:13:05.620 So that would be a classic Hoover kind of effort. 00:13:05.620 --> 00:13:11.260 Franklin Roosevelt adopts this associationalist attitude 00:13:11.260 --> 00:13:12.550 when he becomes president. 00:13:12.550 --> 00:13:16.380 There's a lot of public-private connectivity 00:13:16.380 --> 00:13:20.140 during the Roosevelt regime. 00:13:20.140 --> 00:13:22.510 So that gives us two models. 00:13:22.510 --> 00:13:28.170 Now, this next model, it's kind of disappeared. 00:13:28.170 --> 00:13:31.410 But it was a big movement in the 1930s. 00:13:31.410 --> 00:13:42.060 The basic theory was that cartels, monopolies, 00:13:42.060 --> 00:13:47.450 collusion amongst firms discouraged innovation. 00:13:47.450 --> 00:13:49.730 You build up market control. 00:13:49.730 --> 00:13:54.130 The last thing you want is a disruptive product. 00:13:54.130 --> 00:13:58.160 And we can see this, of course, in a sector like energy 00:13:58.160 --> 00:14:00.710 even now. 00:14:00.710 --> 00:14:06.470 So the concept was reestablish markets by legislation 00:14:06.470 --> 00:14:10.160 or through example by anti-trust laws or regulation, 00:14:10.160 --> 00:14:11.660 and you would encourage innovation 00:14:11.660 --> 00:14:14.118 to break out, because you'd be breaking up the cartels that 00:14:14.118 --> 00:14:17.600 were limiting innovation. 00:14:17.600 --> 00:14:21.040 There's so much global competition now, 00:14:21.040 --> 00:14:24.840 and the competition is so intense that, frankly, there's 00:14:24.840 --> 00:14:31.110 just not that much going on in anti-trust practice or theory. 00:14:31.110 --> 00:14:34.230 Firms may be curtailing innovation because 00:14:34.230 --> 00:14:36.690 of day-to-day competitive pressures, 00:14:36.690 --> 00:14:41.490 but that's not an underlying cartel problem, 00:14:41.490 --> 00:14:43.000 because the competition is there. 00:14:43.000 --> 00:14:49.820 So this one is less present now than it was back 00:14:49.820 --> 00:14:52.760 in that kind of '30s timetable. 00:14:52.760 --> 00:14:55.640 A fourth is keynesianism. 00:14:55.640 --> 00:14:57.890 You remember John Maynard Keynes. 00:14:57.890 --> 00:15:01.220 Keynes develops some crucial fundamentals 00:15:01.220 --> 00:15:03.620 of economic theory. 00:15:03.620 --> 00:15:06.380 His principle contribution is that in periods 00:15:06.380 --> 00:15:09.320 of economic downturn, government spending 00:15:09.320 --> 00:15:11.270 can step up to the plate and substitute 00:15:11.270 --> 00:15:15.500 for the decline in private spending and, in effect, 00:15:15.500 --> 00:15:17.060 stabilize an economy. 00:15:17.060 --> 00:15:19.250 So we just saw this whole theory played out 00:15:19.250 --> 00:15:21.050 in the Economic Stimulus Bill. 00:15:21.050 --> 00:15:24.770 That's what happened in the 2009 Stimulus Bill. 00:15:24.770 --> 00:15:28.310 Massive economic stimulus. 00:15:28.310 --> 00:15:31.840 I think the economists would say that it worked. 00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:36.340 It did stabilize the economy in fairly surprisingly 00:15:36.340 --> 00:15:40.360 short order, given the depth of the threat. 00:15:40.360 --> 00:15:43.810 We didn't slip into another great recession or Great 00:15:43.810 --> 00:15:45.490 Depression. 00:15:45.490 --> 00:15:48.250 But the idea here, as applies to science and technology, 00:15:48.250 --> 00:15:51.400 is look out for the macro-investment levels. 00:15:55.530 --> 00:15:59.820 Have a governmental role in funding investment in research 00:15:59.820 --> 00:16:03.420 and development, because the public sector is not 00:16:03.420 --> 00:16:06.660 prone to take longer-term risks. 00:16:06.660 --> 00:16:09.060 And the government can substitute for that. 00:16:09.060 --> 00:16:11.700 So this factor is still with us. 00:16:11.700 --> 00:16:13.890 That's why in the first class when 00:16:13.890 --> 00:16:16.530 I had you read the National Science Foundation Indicators 00:16:16.530 --> 00:16:19.050 that told us all about investment levels 00:16:19.050 --> 00:16:26.860 by government in R&D, that's Keynesian thinking. 00:16:26.860 --> 00:16:30.250 That's government substituting because the private sector has 00:16:30.250 --> 00:16:32.590 difficulty undertaking longer-term high-risk 00:16:32.590 --> 00:16:36.400 investment in research. 00:16:36.400 --> 00:16:40.510 So that's another ideological kind of element here. 00:16:40.510 --> 00:16:43.090 The fifth is a little bit like conservatism, 00:16:43.090 --> 00:16:45.310 but it's much more far-reaching. 00:16:45.310 --> 00:16:48.100 This emerges in World War II and the Cold War. 00:16:48.100 --> 00:16:52.230 And this doctrine says, whatever it takes. 00:16:52.230 --> 00:16:56.640 National security is so critical, we will do anything. 00:16:56.640 --> 00:17:00.960 The government will be every bit as interventionist 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:06.520 as it needs to be in order to get us national security. 00:17:06.520 --> 00:17:09.700 And that's still very much alive. 00:17:09.700 --> 00:17:13.150 I'd say someone like Senator John McCain, who is currently 00:17:13.150 --> 00:17:17.319 the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, 00:17:17.319 --> 00:17:19.660 Senator McCain is probably a conservative when it comes 00:17:19.660 --> 00:17:23.280 to federal R&D investment, generally speaking, 00:17:23.280 --> 00:17:28.060 but when it comes to defense, whatever it takes. 00:17:28.060 --> 00:17:32.710 So an organization like In-Q-Tel, which essentially 00:17:32.710 --> 00:17:35.620 buys a controlling share in companies so 00:17:35.620 --> 00:17:39.510 that the government can get the technologies at once, 00:17:39.510 --> 00:17:45.480 it's government becoming a venture capitalist on steroids. 00:17:45.480 --> 00:17:48.390 McCain is a huge fan of that model. 00:17:48.390 --> 00:17:53.400 And In-Q-Tel works in the intelligence security 00:17:53.400 --> 00:17:54.050 kind of area. 00:17:54.050 --> 00:17:57.620 So this movement is around too. 00:17:57.620 --> 00:18:02.000 And this is essentially what Vannevar Bush puts together 00:18:02.000 --> 00:18:03.800 when he creates a connected science model-- 00:18:03.800 --> 00:18:05.600 we'll talk about it a little later-- 00:18:05.600 --> 00:18:07.760 during World War II. 00:18:07.760 --> 00:18:10.310 So these are the ideologies. 00:18:10.310 --> 00:18:12.230 I'll just summarize them very quickly again. 00:18:12.230 --> 00:18:14.590 Conservatism. 00:18:14.590 --> 00:18:19.090 Government can do military innovation, but that's it. 00:18:19.090 --> 00:18:19.930 Associationlism. 00:18:19.930 --> 00:18:22.940 That's the public-private partnership model. 00:18:22.940 --> 00:18:26.440 Reform liberalism, which is stamp out cartels. 00:18:26.440 --> 00:18:28.450 They limit innovation. 00:18:28.450 --> 00:18:30.670 And that's not really a powerful movement 00:18:30.670 --> 00:18:33.130 at this point because of international competition. 00:18:33.130 --> 00:18:36.100 Keynesianism, which is analyze science and technology 00:18:36.100 --> 00:18:39.610 based upon these macro-investment levels 00:18:39.610 --> 00:18:42.880 by the public sector, which serves 00:18:42.880 --> 00:18:46.150 to offset a market failure on the private sector side. 00:18:46.150 --> 00:18:48.850 And then the fifth one is this national security state. 00:18:48.850 --> 00:18:50.980 So when I was working in the Senate, 00:18:50.980 --> 00:18:54.160 I saw all of these, sometimes all them 00:18:54.160 --> 00:18:57.340 in a single day in debate on the Senate floor, 00:18:57.340 --> 00:19:00.400 as people would take different perspectives 00:19:00.400 --> 00:19:02.530 and different political understandings 00:19:02.530 --> 00:19:04.690 of the role of R&D in science and technology. 00:19:04.690 --> 00:19:07.310 So these are all still very much with us 00:19:07.310 --> 00:19:09.550 and guide a lot of thinking to this day. 00:19:09.550 --> 00:19:11.290 The latest example, as I mentioned, 00:19:11.290 --> 00:19:15.670 was President Trump's FY '18 budget, 00:19:15.670 --> 00:19:17.920 and it's his position-- explicit position-- 00:19:17.920 --> 00:19:22.018 on supporting research, which a lot of it the private sector 00:19:22.018 --> 00:19:22.810 could just pick up. 00:19:22.810 --> 00:19:26.440 It's just straight out of the conservatism playbook. 00:19:26.440 --> 00:19:27.450 CHLOE: All right. 00:19:27.450 --> 00:19:28.670 Chloe, it's yours. 00:19:28.670 --> 00:19:29.170 OK. 00:19:29.170 --> 00:19:32.460 So first of all, obviously he gave a rundown-- 00:19:32.460 --> 00:19:34.460 very effective rundown-- of all the different-- 00:19:34.460 --> 00:19:36.460 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: You didn't have to say that. 00:19:36.460 --> 00:19:38.280 CHLOE: Just curious why I wouldn't do that 00:19:38.280 --> 00:19:40.680 for a third time and for everyone. 00:19:40.680 --> 00:19:43.440 I think just in conclusion, tagging onto that, 00:19:43.440 --> 00:19:46.950 it's interesting to note, and Hart sort of makes the point, 00:19:46.950 --> 00:19:50.790 that an ever-changing political tide-- 00:19:50.790 --> 00:19:53.490 he says that it generates a lot of policy entrepreneurs. 00:19:53.490 --> 00:19:54.870 So people coming out and being like, oh, this 00:19:54.870 --> 00:19:55.480 is my new policy. 00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:56.105 It's brand new. 00:19:56.105 --> 00:19:57.300 It's never been seen before. 00:19:57.300 --> 00:20:02.220 But in actuality, a lot of these theories were Frankenstein 00:20:02.220 --> 00:20:06.480 models from previous theories, and the successful ones often 00:20:06.480 --> 00:20:09.480 owed their success in part to the pre-existence of other 00:20:09.480 --> 00:20:11.600 institutions that they could-- 00:20:11.600 --> 00:20:13.110 and resources that already existed 00:20:13.110 --> 00:20:16.230 that they could repurpose for readjusting 00:20:16.230 --> 00:20:17.760 their mission for how they viewed 00:20:17.760 --> 00:20:20.010 how science and technology research funding 00:20:20.010 --> 00:20:22.670 should actually go about. 00:20:22.670 --> 00:20:25.170 So in looking through a lot of your summaries and questions, 00:20:25.170 --> 00:20:27.540 it seemed like a lot of people wanted 00:20:27.540 --> 00:20:32.370 to discuss the relevance of these five visions 00:20:32.370 --> 00:20:36.630 to this particular time period, maybe what political climate we 00:20:36.630 --> 00:20:39.430 have now, like what combination, what hybrid of these five 00:20:39.430 --> 00:20:43.110 that we are living with today, and then also maybe what 00:20:43.110 --> 00:20:45.458 components of each are actually successful, 00:20:45.458 --> 00:20:47.250 in your own personal opinion or experience, 00:20:47.250 --> 00:20:49.830 for funding research. 00:20:49.830 --> 00:20:52.650 So just to sort of hone in on-- 00:20:52.650 --> 00:20:57.450 I found associationalism and liberal-- 00:20:57.450 --> 00:20:59.530 reform liberalism the two most interesting ones. 00:20:59.530 --> 00:21:01.180 This is my first question for you 00:21:01.180 --> 00:21:04.860 all, sort of talk about a bit of a tragedy of the commons type 00:21:04.860 --> 00:21:05.910 situation. 00:21:05.910 --> 00:21:08.910 So the institutions desired by associationalism 00:21:08.910 --> 00:21:11.040 are intriguing. 00:21:11.040 --> 00:21:13.200 But does such an implementation have a degree 00:21:13.200 --> 00:21:15.780 of naivete outside of wartime? 00:21:15.780 --> 00:21:19.950 Are all who utilized new information as a resource-- 00:21:19.950 --> 00:21:23.220 do all who utilize the information as a resource 00:21:23.220 --> 00:21:25.425 as an end to the mean of their final product, 00:21:25.425 --> 00:21:27.300 are they also invested in the idea of sharing 00:21:27.300 --> 00:21:29.220 that information with their competition, 00:21:29.220 --> 00:21:31.110 even on a national scale? 00:21:31.110 --> 00:21:33.870 I think that's something a lot of people would think 00:21:33.870 --> 00:21:37.050 is naive perspective. 00:21:37.050 --> 00:21:40.180 MAX: Well, it probably depends on the context. 00:21:40.180 --> 00:21:43.050 So if you were to look at Conant actually-- yeah, 00:21:43.050 --> 00:21:45.660 shameless plug, because that's my reading-- 00:21:45.660 --> 00:21:50.930 so if you look at that, in the time period in World War II, 00:21:50.930 --> 00:21:54.450 you had companies that were fighting this absolute evil 00:21:54.450 --> 00:21:58.200 that was going to just engulf the entire planet 00:21:58.200 --> 00:21:59.520 in a Nazi regime. 00:21:59.520 --> 00:22:00.762 So people were scared. 00:22:00.762 --> 00:22:02.220 So they thought, OK, you know what? 00:22:02.220 --> 00:22:04.320 We're going to do whatever it takes to fight this. 00:22:04.320 --> 00:22:05.610 And it was in everyone's best interest 00:22:05.610 --> 00:22:08.010 to fight it and share all the knowledge that they could. 00:22:08.010 --> 00:22:10.260 Actually, in another class, I was reading a case study 00:22:10.260 --> 00:22:12.750 on-- your part of Lincoln Electric. 00:22:12.750 --> 00:22:14.760 It's this company, they make arc welders. 00:22:14.760 --> 00:22:17.010 They've been working for a few decades, 00:22:17.010 --> 00:22:19.770 and they actually shared a lot of their manufacturing secrets 00:22:19.770 --> 00:22:23.520 during World War II, just for that reason. 00:22:23.520 --> 00:22:27.390 So that's one way that it's not extremely naive, like they just 00:22:27.390 --> 00:22:28.890 need the right incentive. 00:22:28.890 --> 00:22:31.740 On the other hand, if you look at today when 00:22:31.740 --> 00:22:34.860 there isn't an overarching evil that everyone 00:22:34.860 --> 00:22:39.065 can unite behind and try to fight against, people have-- 00:22:39.065 --> 00:22:40.440 they don't have as much incentive 00:22:40.440 --> 00:22:42.332 to share all their secrets. 00:22:42.332 --> 00:22:44.040 CHLOE: So you think that you specifically 00:22:44.040 --> 00:22:48.630 need that defense urge for that cooperation to exist. 00:22:48.630 --> 00:22:50.940 MAX: That's what history has shown me, 00:22:50.940 --> 00:22:53.285 at least from what I can tell. 00:22:53.285 --> 00:22:55.160 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: And I'm glad to tell you, 00:22:55.160 --> 00:22:58.490 Max, that next week we'll have a reading that's entitled, 00:22:58.490 --> 00:23:00.830 is war necessary for economic growth? 00:23:00.830 --> 00:23:03.460 So we will continue this discussion-- that's 00:23:03.460 --> 00:23:05.020 week two-- in addition to that. 00:23:10.620 --> 00:23:14.520 CHLOE: Do you think that any institution that 00:23:14.520 --> 00:23:19.050 might benefit from this sort of like government-funded 00:23:19.050 --> 00:23:21.810 encyclopedia of information, do you think people wouldn't want 00:23:21.810 --> 00:23:23.910 to contribute to that or take from that in a time 00:23:23.910 --> 00:23:29.730 where there wasn't this pre-existing military need? 00:23:29.730 --> 00:23:33.182 Because I mean, I think it's arguable that you would still 00:23:33.182 --> 00:23:34.890 benefit-- a lot of these theories, to me, 00:23:34.890 --> 00:23:39.480 one of the overarching things I noticed is that a lot of them-- 00:23:39.480 --> 00:23:41.730 a lot of people seem to feel the need 00:23:41.730 --> 00:23:46.500 for the government providing something that would facilitate 00:23:46.500 --> 00:23:50.050 communication between innovators and people 00:23:50.050 --> 00:23:51.800 who implemented them in industry. 00:23:51.800 --> 00:23:54.752 It would save a lot of time if the people who-- if everyone 00:23:54.752 --> 00:23:56.460 had the same terms and everyone knew what 00:23:56.460 --> 00:23:58.220 was possible and achievable. 00:23:58.220 --> 00:24:00.720 And I don't know if that's something that implementable, 00:24:00.720 --> 00:24:03.145 even outside of a time when the country all 00:24:03.145 --> 00:24:04.600 needs to work together. 00:24:04.600 --> 00:24:06.180 MAX: It also could-- 00:24:06.180 --> 00:24:07.957 it could scare some people who went 00:24:07.957 --> 00:24:10.290 through the Great Recession, where you've got industries 00:24:10.290 --> 00:24:12.090 that are quote, unquote, "too big to fail," 00:24:12.090 --> 00:24:14.507 because then if you have all these industries that are all 00:24:14.507 --> 00:24:16.080 sharing all of their information, 00:24:16.080 --> 00:24:20.370 then in some sense, they kind of are becoming 00:24:20.370 --> 00:24:21.863 one big conglomerate then. 00:24:21.863 --> 00:24:24.030 At least, that's the way that the thinking could go. 00:24:24.030 --> 00:24:25.738 Now, there are flaws with that, like they 00:24:25.738 --> 00:24:27.978 don't share the same finances, the same employees, 00:24:27.978 --> 00:24:28.770 all sorts of stuff. 00:24:28.770 --> 00:24:33.240 But people could rationalize that it's a step toward that. 00:24:33.240 --> 00:24:39.540 And from there, that also could reduce competition. 00:24:39.540 --> 00:24:41.700 Then you have, hey, the anti-trust laws come back, 00:24:41.700 --> 00:24:44.152 and they're actually interesting again. 00:24:44.152 --> 00:24:45.750 CHLOE: I think that's a good point. 00:24:45.750 --> 00:24:46.250 MAX: Yeah. 00:24:46.250 --> 00:24:47.333 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Right. 00:24:47.333 --> 00:24:49.170 So Chloe, you're pushing us to the point 00:24:49.170 --> 00:24:52.770 that, given your interest in the associationalist, model, 00:24:52.770 --> 00:24:56.130 the public-private partnership model, 00:24:56.130 --> 00:24:58.680 this is exactly what Hoover was driving at, 00:24:58.680 --> 00:25:01.260 that there may be a way of creating 00:25:01.260 --> 00:25:04.290 at least limited cooperation, particularly 00:25:04.290 --> 00:25:06.630 around fundamentals, what has become known 00:25:06.630 --> 00:25:08.093 as pre-competitive research. 00:25:08.093 --> 00:25:09.510 In other words, research before it 00:25:09.510 --> 00:25:12.630 reaches a competitive level that's key to your company. 00:25:12.630 --> 00:25:16.590 At least you could all cooperate on the pre-competitive stuff. 00:25:16.590 --> 00:25:20.340 So that has been a conscious part of the design of some 00:25:20.340 --> 00:25:22.410 of these public-private partnership models 00:25:22.410 --> 00:25:24.780 in timetables like the Clinton administration, 00:25:24.780 --> 00:25:27.030 for example in particular. 00:25:27.030 --> 00:25:30.300 Could companies come together and share resources 00:25:30.300 --> 00:25:32.280 around this pre-competitive stuff, 00:25:32.280 --> 00:25:34.980 even if they were going to be at each other's throats 00:25:34.980 --> 00:25:37.910 the moment that work was completed? 00:25:37.910 --> 00:25:39.360 And how practical is that? 00:25:39.360 --> 00:25:41.640 Are they really going to be willing to do that? 00:25:41.640 --> 00:25:44.890 So the manufacturing institutes that we mentioned last week, 00:25:44.890 --> 00:25:46.980 this is a critical issue for them, 00:25:46.980 --> 00:25:48.280 absolutely critical issue. 00:25:48.280 --> 00:25:51.060 How do you get all these manufacturing companies, 00:25:51.060 --> 00:25:53.520 small and large, into the same room 00:25:53.520 --> 00:25:56.910 to cooperate when they're all also in competition 00:25:56.910 --> 00:25:59.250 and the Manufacturing Institute model is actually 00:25:59.250 --> 00:26:01.740 pretty applied stuff. 00:26:01.740 --> 00:26:04.410 It's around production processes that for some companies 00:26:04.410 --> 00:26:06.240 may be their secret sauce. 00:26:06.240 --> 00:26:07.380 So how do you-- 00:26:07.380 --> 00:26:10.260 you've identified a really critical barrier 00:26:10.260 --> 00:26:12.480 in this associationalist model. 00:26:12.480 --> 00:26:16.470 How do you get this kind of collaboration, 00:26:16.470 --> 00:26:20.065 given the reality and importance of competition? 00:26:27.203 --> 00:26:28.620 MARTHA: I'll come in [INAUDIBLE].. 00:26:28.620 --> 00:26:29.910 I've been here for a while. 00:26:29.910 --> 00:26:32.370 I'll throw in a thought, though, of course, 00:26:32.370 --> 00:26:34.890 which is I do think it's really specific areas 00:26:34.890 --> 00:26:38.550 and pre-competitive and then also enabling technologies, 00:26:38.550 --> 00:26:41.820 like looking today, and we're not seeing it really happen, 00:26:41.820 --> 00:26:43.950 but at the MIT Energy Initiative, 00:26:43.950 --> 00:26:45.725 companies are excited-- 00:26:45.725 --> 00:26:47.850 energy companies are excited about getting together 00:26:47.850 --> 00:26:51.450 on carbon capture and sequestration, 00:26:51.450 --> 00:26:54.780 partly to enable them to just keep running their companies. 00:26:54.780 --> 00:26:57.900 Now, we haven't seen anything formal really happen, 00:26:57.900 --> 00:27:01.470 and the technology is still way too expensive, et cetera. 00:27:01.470 --> 00:27:04.898 But I think in specific areas that it can happen. 00:27:04.898 --> 00:27:05.940 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yeah. 00:27:05.940 --> 00:27:07.710 It's an interesting idea, Martha. 00:27:07.710 --> 00:27:09.180 In other words, in areas that are 00:27:09.180 --> 00:27:12.060 outside your core competitive advantage, 00:27:12.060 --> 00:27:13.530 could you get together with others, 00:27:13.530 --> 00:27:14.910 because it might help everybody? 00:27:14.910 --> 00:27:15.410 Right? 00:27:15.410 --> 00:27:17.993 MARTHA: And I was wondering that about the Manufacturing Bill. 00:27:17.993 --> 00:27:19.633 I am not that knowledgeable about it, 00:27:19.633 --> 00:27:21.300 but if you consider your secret sauce is 00:27:21.300 --> 00:27:23.770 something other than the actual manufacturing, 00:27:23.770 --> 00:27:28.740 if you're a conglomerate that has great product design, 00:27:28.740 --> 00:27:31.108 you know, I don't know, does that work? 00:27:31.108 --> 00:27:31.650 I don't know. 00:27:31.650 --> 00:27:34.170 I don't know where you were willing to open up 00:27:34.170 --> 00:27:35.400 your secrets to others. 00:27:35.400 --> 00:27:35.880 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Right. 00:27:35.880 --> 00:27:37.338 One of the manufacturing institutes 00:27:37.338 --> 00:27:40.170 we talked about last week was around 3D printing. 00:27:40.170 --> 00:27:42.360 And it turns out that that is going 00:27:42.360 --> 00:27:45.180 to be an absolutely critical core 00:27:45.180 --> 00:27:48.210 technology and the way in which anybody ever makes another jet 00:27:48.210 --> 00:27:50.110 aircraft engine. 00:27:50.110 --> 00:27:51.930 I mean, maybe not this week, but certainly 00:27:51.930 --> 00:27:53.550 in the foreseeable future. 00:27:53.550 --> 00:27:55.830 It's going to be absolutely critical. 00:27:55.830 --> 00:27:58.050 So there's frankly been a tremendous amount 00:27:58.050 --> 00:28:02.250 of nervousness when companies like Pratt and GE 00:28:02.250 --> 00:28:05.820 and Lockheed and Boeing and others come into the same room 00:28:05.820 --> 00:28:09.600 and who's ahead? 00:28:09.600 --> 00:28:12.010 And are they going to share their secret sauce? 00:28:12.010 --> 00:28:13.260 And how is this going to work? 00:28:13.260 --> 00:28:15.360 So working on the intellectual property agreements 00:28:15.360 --> 00:28:16.540 has been really complicated. 00:28:16.540 --> 00:28:20.080 So this public-private partnership model, 00:28:20.080 --> 00:28:22.380 there's a lot of examples of it working brilliantly, 00:28:22.380 --> 00:28:24.390 but it is not an easy model to bring 00:28:24.390 --> 00:28:26.400 these highly-competitive firms together and try 00:28:26.400 --> 00:28:28.872 to get them to agree on an agenda 00:28:28.872 --> 00:28:31.330 that they might be able to work together on that would save 00:28:31.330 --> 00:28:33.350 them all resources and funding. 00:28:33.350 --> 00:28:37.300 And Martha runs into that, I'm sure, every day in MITii. 00:28:37.300 --> 00:28:40.740 MARTHA: And we will more and more with these consortia 00:28:40.740 --> 00:28:42.570 that we're putting together. 00:28:42.570 --> 00:28:46.397 CHLOE: I thought another-- to bring free-form liberalism 00:28:46.397 --> 00:28:48.480 into the discussion-- an interesting contrast that 00:28:48.480 --> 00:28:51.270 emerged between them, sort of off of that topic of trying 00:28:51.270 --> 00:28:53.118 to figure out who the other people-- 00:28:53.118 --> 00:28:55.410 like, what they're thinking-- other people in the room, 00:28:55.410 --> 00:28:57.420 what they're thinking, and what your competition is thinking, 00:28:57.420 --> 00:29:00.250 is that both these two policies seem to have very different-- 00:29:00.250 --> 00:29:02.922 two theories-- seem to have very different views on-- 00:29:02.922 --> 00:29:04.380 to get a philosophical-- the innate 00:29:04.380 --> 00:29:08.220 goodness or lack thereof in industry leaders. 00:29:08.220 --> 00:29:09.905 And I think this was such fun. 00:29:09.905 --> 00:29:11.280 I forget the name of the reading. 00:29:11.280 --> 00:29:12.870 It was a later one about how there's 00:29:12.870 --> 00:29:15.510 a philosophical difference between basic research 00:29:15.510 --> 00:29:19.350 and applied research and the people who 00:29:19.350 --> 00:29:20.933 make a career out of each. 00:29:20.933 --> 00:29:23.100 At the end of the day, they have different end goals 00:29:23.100 --> 00:29:26.312 and different core values. 00:29:26.312 --> 00:29:28.020 So I thought it was interesting that that 00:29:28.020 --> 00:29:30.180 was sort of superimposed onto industry leaders, 00:29:30.180 --> 00:29:33.390 and I wasn't quite sure if that actually 00:29:33.390 --> 00:29:36.140 makes a wide base for an economic policy, 00:29:36.140 --> 00:29:39.210 is judgment calls about human nature. 00:29:39.210 --> 00:29:41.460 So I know that's a little touchy-feely, 00:29:41.460 --> 00:29:44.470 but I'd be interested to hear if anyone was like, good idea, 00:29:44.470 --> 00:29:45.000 bad idea. 00:29:49.700 --> 00:29:52.190 AUDIENCE: I have the reading that you're talking about. 00:29:52.190 --> 00:29:53.060 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Stokes, right? 00:29:53.060 --> 00:29:53.290 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 00:29:53.290 --> 00:29:54.373 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Right. 00:29:54.373 --> 00:29:57.410 AUDIENCE: So I think a really important distinction that he 00:29:57.410 --> 00:30:01.900 makes is that whether to sort of base it off like a speculating, 00:30:01.900 --> 00:30:04.370 like speculating if these are the goals of the actors 00:30:04.370 --> 00:30:06.637 or like retroactively knowing. 00:30:06.637 --> 00:30:08.720 And I think that's a really important distinction, 00:30:08.720 --> 00:30:12.373 because if you're making policy, of course, you can't-- 00:30:12.373 --> 00:30:13.790 hindsight is 20/20, but you're not 00:30:13.790 --> 00:30:15.120 going to know retroactively. 00:30:15.120 --> 00:30:18.665 But you have to have some degree of speculation, which 00:30:18.665 --> 00:30:19.790 is something that I think-- 00:30:19.790 --> 00:30:22.373 well, I wasn't quite sure what Stokes was trying to say there, 00:30:22.373 --> 00:30:24.417 but he was saying that the retroactive 00:30:24.417 --> 00:30:26.750 way of looking at it is actually better than speculating 00:30:26.750 --> 00:30:27.742 when looking at it. 00:30:27.742 --> 00:30:29.450 But I think it's a little bit impractical 00:30:29.450 --> 00:30:31.242 when you're thinking about policy decisions 00:30:31.242 --> 00:30:35.630 to kind of try to interpret what the goals of the certain actor 00:30:35.630 --> 00:30:37.940 are going to be based on something like human nature 00:30:37.940 --> 00:30:41.134 or like some other type of kind of non-tangible measurement. 00:30:41.134 --> 00:30:41.634 CHLOE: Yeah. 00:30:44.690 --> 00:30:46.190 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Chloe, would you 00:30:46.190 --> 00:30:48.710 give us a closing thought on David Hart? 00:30:48.710 --> 00:30:49.210 CHLOE: Sure. 00:30:52.110 --> 00:30:54.058 I guess, would a closing question be OK? 00:30:54.058 --> 00:30:55.100 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Sure. 00:30:55.100 --> 00:30:56.610 CHLOE: Because still I haven't-- 00:30:56.610 --> 00:30:58.902 this is a central question for me, one that I haven't-- 00:30:58.902 --> 00:31:01.710 I feel like we haven't come to a conclusion on. 00:31:01.710 --> 00:31:06.120 How have these policies sort of survived the test of time, 00:31:06.120 --> 00:31:08.730 because they're all so built on each other 00:31:08.730 --> 00:31:11.850 and come from different periods, World War II, Cold 00:31:11.850 --> 00:31:15.930 War, the Korean War, and different manufacturing stages 00:31:15.930 --> 00:31:17.070 throughout our history? 00:31:17.070 --> 00:31:19.782 They're all sort of interwoven and interdependent. 00:31:19.782 --> 00:31:21.240 What does that leave us with today? 00:31:21.240 --> 00:31:23.370 What lessons have we learned and what theories 00:31:23.370 --> 00:31:25.580 are working for us right now? 00:31:25.580 --> 00:31:26.810 Yeah. 00:31:26.810 --> 00:31:31.040 STEPH: I thought that an interesting concern 00:31:31.040 --> 00:31:34.460 about the Hart reading was that it sort of presumed 00:31:34.460 --> 00:31:36.770 that scientists and technologists were not 00:31:36.770 --> 00:31:38.900 a part of the policymaking process, that they're 00:31:38.900 --> 00:31:41.285 sort of receivers of the actions of policymakers. 00:31:41.285 --> 00:31:43.160 So I thought it would be interesting to think 00:31:43.160 --> 00:31:48.970 about maybe today or in the next election cycle for midterms 00:31:48.970 --> 00:31:51.433 and congressional elections, what it would look 00:31:51.433 --> 00:31:52.850 like if there were more scientists 00:31:52.850 --> 00:31:55.220 and technologists running for Congress 00:31:55.220 --> 00:31:57.342 and as policymakers and maybe a scientist running 00:31:57.342 --> 00:31:59.300 for president someday or a technologist running 00:31:59.300 --> 00:32:01.100 for president, as they have speculated 00:32:01.100 --> 00:32:03.530 Mark Zuckerberg to be doing. 00:32:03.530 --> 00:32:05.360 Because in that sense, it wouldn't so much 00:32:05.360 --> 00:32:08.300 be a conflict between ideologies, 00:32:08.300 --> 00:32:11.660 but a conflict between how much that person chose 00:32:11.660 --> 00:32:14.700 to put in money in the industry that they're a part of 00:32:14.700 --> 00:32:18.028 and how much they are motivated by what they know 00:32:18.028 --> 00:32:19.070 and what they don't know. 00:32:23.760 --> 00:32:25.680 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: You put your finger right 00:32:25.680 --> 00:32:32.860 on a pulse of a critical issue, Steph. 00:32:32.860 --> 00:32:35.650 The reason why I'm teaching this class is so that all of you 00:32:35.650 --> 00:32:37.810 will be citizen scientists and be 00:32:37.810 --> 00:32:40.840 ready to do great science and engineering and technology 00:32:40.840 --> 00:32:43.570 and run venture capital firms and start companies. 00:32:43.570 --> 00:32:46.330 I want you to do all that stuff, but in addition, 00:32:46.330 --> 00:32:50.000 if you would also hold public office, I'd appreciate it too. 00:32:50.000 --> 00:32:51.610 No, in other words, the science-- this 00:32:51.610 --> 00:32:55.000 is an intensely interest-group-driven 00:32:55.000 --> 00:32:57.340 political system we've got. 00:32:57.340 --> 00:33:01.310 And if you don't show up, you don't get counted. 00:33:01.310 --> 00:33:03.820 And frankly, science and engineering 00:33:03.820 --> 00:33:05.680 doesn't show up very much. 00:33:05.680 --> 00:33:11.440 And there's a lot at stake, as we speak, now. 00:33:11.440 --> 00:33:16.360 And part of the story is that the community of scientists 00:33:16.360 --> 00:33:21.620 and engineers, they're not on the front lines. 00:33:21.620 --> 00:33:25.400 And in an interest-driven society, 00:33:25.400 --> 00:33:27.380 that's really problematic. 00:33:27.380 --> 00:33:29.930 Now, it's storytelling time. 00:33:29.930 --> 00:33:33.800 I couldn't resist putting this in, because at least those 00:33:33.800 --> 00:33:36.650 of you from MIT, this is an important part of your history. 00:33:36.650 --> 00:33:38.615 But I think it's fun for everybody. 00:33:41.870 --> 00:33:48.010 This is Alfred Loomis and Luis Alvarez, the great physicist, 00:33:48.010 --> 00:33:51.040 called him the last of the great amateurs of science. 00:33:51.040 --> 00:33:53.890 And you know, he's a very good-looking guy, 00:33:53.890 --> 00:33:55.300 as you can tell. 00:33:55.300 --> 00:34:00.430 That's the Rad Lab in MIT, where the Stata Building is now. 00:34:00.430 --> 00:34:03.610 That's Rad Lab latest radar sets. 00:34:03.610 --> 00:34:07.540 This is an early army radar set. 00:34:07.540 --> 00:34:11.050 And that's the business of the Rad Lab that Loomis creates. 00:34:11.050 --> 00:34:13.400 And what's this story? 00:34:13.400 --> 00:34:15.790 So if you go over to Stata and you wander around 00:34:15.790 --> 00:34:19.719 on the first floor, at the end of one of the student streets, 00:34:19.719 --> 00:34:23.409 you're going to see some of these radar sets. 00:34:23.409 --> 00:34:27.040 And there's plaques and stuff around there saying 00:34:27.040 --> 00:34:29.560 this was where the Rad Lab was. 00:34:29.560 --> 00:34:33.699 And from an MIT perspective, one statistic you need to know 00:34:33.699 --> 00:34:45.760 is that in the period from 1941 to 1945, MIT as an institution 00:34:45.760 --> 00:34:51.520 received 80 times more federal funding than it did 00:34:51.520 --> 00:34:55.449 in all its previous 80 years. 00:34:55.449 --> 00:34:58.660 This is what creates the federally funded research 00:34:58.660 --> 00:35:00.550 university. 00:35:00.550 --> 00:35:05.370 And it starts big time at the Rad Lab. 00:35:05.370 --> 00:35:09.200 This is where MIT becomes a critical and big and important 00:35:09.200 --> 00:35:10.190 institution. 00:35:10.190 --> 00:35:11.780 It really scales up. 00:35:11.780 --> 00:35:13.040 It's not alone. 00:35:13.040 --> 00:35:15.650 This is happening at other research universities 00:35:15.650 --> 00:35:18.350 across the country. 00:35:18.350 --> 00:35:21.530 And it's the story of Loomis. 00:35:21.530 --> 00:35:27.140 So let me just give you a little background on him. 00:35:27.140 --> 00:35:31.140 Born in 1887, died in 1975. 00:35:31.140 --> 00:35:34.830 He comes from this WASP blue-blood family in New York. 00:35:34.830 --> 00:35:37.560 And his father is a society doctor, 00:35:37.560 --> 00:35:39.332 serving those blue bloods. 00:35:39.332 --> 00:35:41.290 I'm not sure they ever had any health problems. 00:35:41.290 --> 00:35:43.650 But if they did, his father was there. 00:35:43.650 --> 00:35:47.690 Until his father runs off with his secretary. 00:35:47.690 --> 00:35:50.960 This is when Loomis's life changes. 00:35:50.960 --> 00:35:54.470 Loomis is now stuck with the responsibility for the family. 00:35:54.470 --> 00:35:59.540 He can't do what he wanted to do, study science. 00:35:59.540 --> 00:36:03.720 Instead, he has to go to become an investment banker, 00:36:03.720 --> 00:36:04.380 heaven forbid. 00:36:06.990 --> 00:36:10.610 So he has technical training and a love 00:36:10.610 --> 00:36:13.190 for science and strong undergraduate science training. 00:36:16.300 --> 00:36:18.280 He goes into investment banking. 00:36:18.280 --> 00:36:20.650 He understands technology. 00:36:20.650 --> 00:36:26.510 He makes an absolute, one of the great fortunes of the 1920s, 00:36:26.510 --> 00:36:29.660 and his investment banking firm is setting up 00:36:29.660 --> 00:36:31.820 utility companies, utility holding companies. 00:36:31.820 --> 00:36:35.060 He understands the electricity technology, the transmission 00:36:35.060 --> 00:36:36.710 technology. 00:36:36.710 --> 00:36:39.230 He's able to capitalize on that and make 00:36:39.230 --> 00:36:40.910 a fortune for essentially electrifying 00:36:40.910 --> 00:36:44.900 large parts of the country. 00:36:44.900 --> 00:36:49.420 He sees what's going to happen. 00:36:49.420 --> 00:36:56.780 And in 1928, he takes his entire fortune, every last dime 00:36:56.780 --> 00:37:01.790 and gets out of the market, because he saw the bubble. 00:37:01.790 --> 00:37:05.490 And then what's he do? 00:37:05.490 --> 00:37:14.450 So he's got the estate, Tudor house, pond, grounds, lawns, 00:37:14.450 --> 00:37:19.110 40 acres' worth in a place called Tuxedo Park, 00:37:19.110 --> 00:37:21.930 which is about 40 miles north of New York City. 00:37:21.930 --> 00:37:24.660 The tuxedo, you know, the funny penguin suit, 00:37:24.660 --> 00:37:25.848 comes from Tuxedo Park. 00:37:25.848 --> 00:37:27.390 That's the kind of clothing they used 00:37:27.390 --> 00:37:29.040 to wear there in the evening. 00:37:29.040 --> 00:37:30.570 Gives you an idea of what it's like. 00:37:30.570 --> 00:37:35.910 It's like the first kind of gated multi-acre suburb 00:37:35.910 --> 00:37:39.990 for this compound for staggeringly rich people 00:37:39.990 --> 00:37:44.270 from New York City, only 40 miles north of the city. 00:37:44.270 --> 00:37:47.790 So he's got this Tudor mansion there. 00:37:47.790 --> 00:37:49.200 He loves science. 00:37:49.200 --> 00:37:51.870 He's walked out with his entire fortune intact. 00:37:51.870 --> 00:37:59.440 He creates probably the top private research laboratory 00:37:59.440 --> 00:38:01.400 in the 1930s. 00:38:01.400 --> 00:38:05.200 And he staffs it with an incredible group of scientists. 00:38:05.200 --> 00:38:08.020 But in particular, he specializes in what we now 00:38:08.020 --> 00:38:11.020 call the summer study. 00:38:11.020 --> 00:38:14.110 And he's there researching himself. 00:38:14.110 --> 00:38:17.500 His field is physics, particularly microwave physics. 00:38:17.500 --> 00:38:21.100 And he invites in the who's who of physics 00:38:21.100 --> 00:38:22.640 from all over the world. 00:38:22.640 --> 00:38:25.330 So the famous European physicists 00:38:25.330 --> 00:38:28.660 are there for summer projects, and they're rowing on the pond 00:38:28.660 --> 00:38:30.880 and playing lawn tennis on his lawn tennis courts, 00:38:30.880 --> 00:38:33.700 and doing little research, and talking away 00:38:33.700 --> 00:38:34.750 and having great meals. 00:38:34.750 --> 00:38:35.970 It's a nice setting. 00:38:35.970 --> 00:38:36.670 All right. 00:38:36.670 --> 00:38:38.380 You get the picture. 00:38:38.380 --> 00:38:41.260 He gets to know the whole who's who of physics, 00:38:41.260 --> 00:38:47.808 and he's doing important work himself in physics, 00:38:47.808 --> 00:38:49.100 in this microwave physics area. 00:38:53.830 --> 00:38:54.415 Time passes. 00:38:56.950 --> 00:38:58.520 World War II breaks out in Europe. 00:39:04.400 --> 00:39:06.620 He's very sympathetic to the Brits. 00:39:15.100 --> 00:39:18.640 His mentor, his first cousin, is Henry Stimson, 00:39:18.640 --> 00:39:23.110 who's Secretary of War to Franklin Roosevelt. Stimson's 00:39:23.110 --> 00:39:25.810 a famous leader of the War Department during World War II 00:39:25.810 --> 00:39:31.095 and a very talented, highly respected figure in that era. 00:39:31.095 --> 00:39:33.470 He had been Secretary of State previously in the Coolidge 00:39:33.470 --> 00:39:36.970 administration. 00:39:36.970 --> 00:39:41.030 Stimson trusts Loomis. 00:39:41.030 --> 00:39:44.750 They're first cousins, but in effect, Stimson 00:39:44.750 --> 00:39:47.570 is Loomis's father figure. 00:39:47.570 --> 00:39:52.370 So Loomis becomes a very critical advisor to Stimson 00:39:52.370 --> 00:39:56.270 in this pre-war period of '39 and '40. 00:39:56.270 --> 00:40:00.170 And in addition, Loomis is serving with Vannevar Bush, who 00:40:00.170 --> 00:40:04.880 we'll talk about in a minute, on the early defense research 00:40:04.880 --> 00:40:08.318 committees. 00:40:08.318 --> 00:40:13.980 So let's switch to Britain. 00:40:13.980 --> 00:40:17.097 So Britain and the United States develop radar roughly 00:40:17.097 --> 00:40:17.930 about the same time. 00:40:21.030 --> 00:40:24.660 In the US context, it was developed by the Navy 00:40:24.660 --> 00:40:28.680 at the Naval Research Laboratory on the Anacostia River. 00:40:28.680 --> 00:40:31.300 And they were fiddling around with radio, 00:40:31.300 --> 00:40:33.900 and they were shooting radio beams 00:40:33.900 --> 00:40:35.430 across the Anacostia River. 00:40:35.430 --> 00:40:37.740 And they noticed this peculiar thing, 00:40:37.740 --> 00:40:42.450 which was a boat would come down the river 00:40:42.450 --> 00:40:45.540 and the radio beam would bounce back. 00:40:45.540 --> 00:40:46.230 Voila. 00:40:46.230 --> 00:40:47.760 Radar. 00:40:47.760 --> 00:40:49.650 The British were doing experiments 00:40:49.650 --> 00:40:51.240 at roughly the same time period. 00:40:54.320 --> 00:41:00.290 And because the US wasn't 100 miles away from German bombers 00:41:00.290 --> 00:41:02.930 or 200 miles away from German bombers, 00:41:02.930 --> 00:41:05.195 there was no sense of emergency in developing 00:41:05.195 --> 00:41:06.320 radar in the United States. 00:41:06.320 --> 00:41:08.810 There was a considerable sense of emergency developing 00:41:08.810 --> 00:41:09.590 radar in Germany. 00:41:12.160 --> 00:41:15.030 The going doctrine of the time, based 00:41:15.030 --> 00:41:18.090 upon what happened in Spanish Civil War, 00:41:18.090 --> 00:41:20.910 was that mass bombing was going to be 00:41:20.910 --> 00:41:24.510 a core offensive military strategy 00:41:24.510 --> 00:41:26.010 and that there was nothing you could 00:41:26.010 --> 00:41:30.150 do to stop the bombers from getting through. 00:41:30.150 --> 00:41:32.400 The bomber will always get through 00:41:32.400 --> 00:41:34.470 was the prevailing doctrine. 00:41:34.470 --> 00:41:38.010 And people began to see the effect of mass bombing 00:41:38.010 --> 00:41:41.980 from sites like Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. 00:41:41.980 --> 00:41:43.210 And it was a nightmare. 00:41:43.210 --> 00:41:44.377 It was a complete nightmare. 00:41:44.377 --> 00:41:48.300 It dictated a lot of the politics of appeasement 00:41:48.300 --> 00:41:51.000 in the 1930s, because the assumption 00:41:51.000 --> 00:41:55.290 was that you couldn't defend against these bombing raids 00:41:55.290 --> 00:41:58.500 and that cities like London and others 00:41:58.500 --> 00:42:03.190 would just be leveled at huge slaughter. 00:42:03.190 --> 00:42:06.120 So if your assumption is that you can't defend it 00:42:06.120 --> 00:42:08.930 against them, that you're going to lose, 00:42:08.930 --> 00:42:12.470 and that you're going to lose a huge part of your population, 00:42:12.470 --> 00:42:14.720 you can understand where a lot of appeasement doctrine 00:42:14.720 --> 00:42:19.110 comes from, where Chamberlain and Baldwin are coming from. 00:42:19.110 --> 00:42:26.360 Meanwhile, Winston Churchill, always a maverick, 00:42:26.360 --> 00:42:29.240 is trying to figure out what to do about the situation, 00:42:29.240 --> 00:42:33.140 because it's untenable from his political perspective. 00:42:33.140 --> 00:42:39.110 So there's an interesting figure named 00:42:39.110 --> 00:42:46.200 Tizard, who is head of Imperial College in London, 00:42:46.200 --> 00:42:47.630 previously a professor. 00:42:47.630 --> 00:42:50.632 But in World War I a pilot and in World War I, 00:42:50.632 --> 00:42:52.090 because his eyes weren't that good, 00:42:52.090 --> 00:42:54.310 he was relegated to being a test pilot 00:42:54.310 --> 00:42:58.930 in the RAF, the early version of the Royal Air 00:42:58.930 --> 00:43:01.840 Force, Royal Flying Corps. 00:43:01.840 --> 00:43:05.560 And he learned pilot talk and how to get along with pilots. 00:43:05.560 --> 00:43:07.197 He was one, and he knows the language, 00:43:07.197 --> 00:43:08.530 and he understands how it works. 00:43:08.530 --> 00:43:14.420 And the radar idea comes to Tizard. 00:43:14.420 --> 00:43:16.520 As a noted academic, he's heading 00:43:16.520 --> 00:43:20.040 a scientific advisory group for the Royal Air Force. 00:43:20.040 --> 00:43:24.630 And he seizes on and realizes this 00:43:24.630 --> 00:43:28.350 could be the core of a defensive strategy 00:43:28.350 --> 00:43:32.280 against the bomber, that might be able to stop it 00:43:32.280 --> 00:43:35.280 from going through. 00:43:35.280 --> 00:43:37.538 And just because you have a technology idea, 00:43:37.538 --> 00:43:40.080 it doesn't mean anybody in the military is going to adopt it. 00:43:40.080 --> 00:43:41.700 It's got to become operational. 00:43:41.700 --> 00:43:47.700 So he spends years working with the Royal Air Force trying 00:43:47.700 --> 00:43:51.090 to develop an operational doctrine to integrate 00:43:51.090 --> 00:43:55.890 these early long-range radar systems, the communications 00:43:55.890 --> 00:43:59.220 with the Spitfires and fighter planes and the Hurricanes, 00:43:59.220 --> 00:44:01.470 to communicate the results that they're seeing 00:44:01.470 --> 00:44:05.430 on their long-range radar screens, 00:44:05.430 --> 00:44:08.082 get those up to the fighter pilots, get them up in the air 00:44:08.082 --> 00:44:10.290 and get them to the right location at the right time. 00:44:10.290 --> 00:44:14.580 That's critical, because you can't maintain continuous cover 00:44:14.580 --> 00:44:16.080 with fighter planes. 00:44:16.080 --> 00:44:18.150 They're short distance, and they're under-fueled, 00:44:18.150 --> 00:44:19.690 and they have limited range. 00:44:19.690 --> 00:44:21.833 So if you try to defend against 1,000 bombers, 00:44:21.833 --> 00:44:24.000 you can only have a certain number of fighter planes 00:44:24.000 --> 00:44:25.500 up in the air at any given moment. 00:44:25.500 --> 00:44:27.750 But if you know exactly when the bombers are coming in 00:44:27.750 --> 00:44:29.292 and exactly where they're going to be 00:44:29.292 --> 00:44:31.290 and what altitude they're going to be at, 00:44:31.290 --> 00:44:33.930 then you can mash your fighter planes 00:44:33.930 --> 00:44:36.720 and get them position ahead of time and then take them on. 00:44:36.720 --> 00:44:39.090 And that's what the British figured out with radar. 00:44:39.090 --> 00:44:42.570 Now, their system was long-wave radar. 00:44:42.570 --> 00:44:45.840 So they had like a system all around the coast 00:44:45.840 --> 00:44:49.920 of like these big 60-foot telephone pole kinds of things. 00:44:49.920 --> 00:44:51.750 And then these big 30-foot things 00:44:51.750 --> 00:44:53.250 that looked like bed springs, only 00:44:53.250 --> 00:44:55.740 they were about 30 feet long. 00:44:55.740 --> 00:44:58.050 And it was called the Chain Home System. 00:44:58.050 --> 00:45:00.780 It was all around the critical parts of the coast. 00:45:00.780 --> 00:45:05.970 And then they would get information from the radar sets 00:45:05.970 --> 00:45:08.580 to an operational center that would run the fighter 00:45:08.580 --> 00:45:13.410 plane cover system at air bases throughout the British Isles 00:45:13.410 --> 00:45:16.127 and scramble these jets-- 00:45:16.127 --> 00:45:18.210 scramble these fighter planes and get them up just 00:45:18.210 --> 00:45:19.043 in the nick of time. 00:45:22.810 --> 00:45:29.190 It's very clumsy, because the pilots don't have the radar. 00:45:29.190 --> 00:45:32.640 They're talking to somebody who is in turn talking to somebody 00:45:32.640 --> 00:45:34.230 about what the radar says. 00:45:34.230 --> 00:45:36.570 You can imagine what the communication is like. 00:45:36.570 --> 00:45:40.367 I mean, you have to get it down to almost a separate language 00:45:40.367 --> 00:45:41.700 on how to communicate to people. 00:45:41.700 --> 00:45:43.950 So it's very tough. 00:45:43.950 --> 00:45:49.343 Wouldn't it be better if the radar was in the airplane? 00:45:49.343 --> 00:45:50.760 But if it's long-wave, how are you 00:45:50.760 --> 00:45:54.660 going to put this 30-foot bed spring into a fighter aircraft? 00:45:54.660 --> 00:45:55.480 That's the problem. 00:45:55.480 --> 00:45:58.170 So the British work on-- 00:45:58.170 --> 00:46:02.790 frantically working on microwave radar. 00:46:02.790 --> 00:46:08.940 You know, 10-centimeter long radar beams with the idea 00:46:08.940 --> 00:46:10.845 that whoever figures this out is going 00:46:10.845 --> 00:46:14.670 to have a staggering tactical and strategic advantage 00:46:14.670 --> 00:46:16.520 in the war. 00:46:16.520 --> 00:46:20.030 And they put a team on it, and they come up 00:46:20.030 --> 00:46:26.410 with 12 early sets of microwave radar. 00:46:26.410 --> 00:46:29.040 Then what are they going to do? 00:46:29.040 --> 00:46:32.460 Well, Britain has so allowed its industrial base 00:46:32.460 --> 00:46:38.290 to erode that the best thinking is we're going flat-out 00:46:38.290 --> 00:46:41.080 on building munitions, we don't have capacity 00:46:41.080 --> 00:46:44.470 to take up this whole new territory of effectively invent 00:46:44.470 --> 00:46:46.930 electronics. 00:46:46.930 --> 00:46:48.310 We can't do that. 00:46:48.310 --> 00:46:49.810 Who could do it? 00:46:49.810 --> 00:46:51.220 The Americans. 00:46:51.220 --> 00:46:55.270 So Churchill, pressed by to Tizard and others, 00:46:55.270 --> 00:46:58.510 comes up with the idea that they'll 00:46:58.510 --> 00:47:01.690 take microwave radar and a bunch of other secrets 00:47:01.690 --> 00:47:05.513 that they've got, because remember, British science is 00:47:05.513 --> 00:47:07.680 very strong, probably stronger than American science 00:47:07.680 --> 00:47:08.760 at this point. 00:47:08.760 --> 00:47:12.480 We wouldn't think so, but that's probably the case. 00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:19.830 And Tizard is nominated to lead a mission to the United States 00:47:19.830 --> 00:47:21.720 and essentially offer to put-- 00:47:21.720 --> 00:47:23.670 they offer to put their secrets on the table 00:47:23.670 --> 00:47:27.570 if we, the United States, will put our secrets on the table. 00:47:27.570 --> 00:47:28.860 We'll trade secrets. 00:47:28.860 --> 00:47:30.632 That would be the deal. 00:47:30.632 --> 00:47:37.690 So a group of scientists and a couple of military officers 00:47:37.690 --> 00:47:40.450 get on a high-speed passenger ship. 00:47:40.450 --> 00:47:42.580 Now, passenger ships are moving at about 30 knots 00:47:42.580 --> 00:47:44.110 across the ocean. 00:47:44.110 --> 00:47:47.700 U-boats are much slower. 00:47:47.700 --> 00:47:50.490 On the surface, 14, 15 knots. 00:47:50.490 --> 00:47:53.670 Far slower if they're running below the surface. 00:47:53.670 --> 00:47:57.240 So nobody sank a passenger ship on the Atlantic route 00:47:57.240 --> 00:47:58.110 during World War II. 00:47:58.110 --> 00:48:00.390 They always got across. 00:48:00.390 --> 00:48:05.630 So they go into Halifax, and they have in a suitcase 00:48:05.630 --> 00:48:09.190 the most critical secret of the war, 00:48:09.190 --> 00:48:11.755 one of these 12 microwave radar sets. 00:48:15.940 --> 00:48:20.270 Loomis flies over to Halifax. 00:48:20.270 --> 00:48:22.570 They take the train down. 00:48:22.570 --> 00:48:24.430 They go to Washington. 00:48:24.430 --> 00:48:28.130 There's a meeting at the Wardman Park Hotel. 00:48:28.130 --> 00:48:29.150 At the Wardman Park-- 00:48:29.150 --> 00:48:30.560 I bet you it's still there-- 00:48:30.560 --> 00:48:33.860 Loomis, rich guy, consulting in Washington, 00:48:33.860 --> 00:48:35.330 trying to help the war effort, he's 00:48:35.330 --> 00:48:39.720 got a penthouse on the top of the Wardman Park Hotel. 00:48:39.720 --> 00:48:40.908 Fireplace. 00:48:40.908 --> 00:48:41.700 I'm sure it's nice. 00:48:44.730 --> 00:48:48.990 The meeting is at a private dining room downstairs, 00:48:48.990 --> 00:48:53.370 just off the big dining room at this fancy Wardman Park Hotel. 00:48:53.370 --> 00:48:55.535 Loomis, as Stimson's unofficial advisor 00:48:55.535 --> 00:48:56.910 about science and technology, has 00:48:56.910 --> 00:48:59.220 convened the military leaders from the services, 00:48:59.220 --> 00:49:03.270 from the Army and Marine Corps and the Air Force, 00:49:03.270 --> 00:49:05.660 and this is apocryphal. 00:49:05.660 --> 00:49:10.350 It may not exactly be the case, but in essence, 00:49:10.350 --> 00:49:12.480 our uniformed military leaders have 00:49:12.480 --> 00:49:19.060 decided that they're not going to agree to exchange secrets. 00:49:19.060 --> 00:49:20.710 They're not going to do it. 00:49:20.710 --> 00:49:22.882 They think Britain is going down. 00:49:22.882 --> 00:49:24.715 Battle of Britain is hanging in the balance. 00:49:27.090 --> 00:49:28.590 They think Britain is going to lose. 00:49:28.590 --> 00:49:30.173 Anything that goes to Britain is going 00:49:30.173 --> 00:49:33.370 to fall in the hands of Germany. 00:49:33.370 --> 00:49:37.150 So they hit on a strategy, is the apocryphal part, 00:49:37.150 --> 00:49:40.360 of pretending to get drunk at the meal 00:49:40.360 --> 00:49:43.960 and falling asleep in their soup dishes. 00:49:43.960 --> 00:49:45.090 This may be exaggerated. 00:49:45.090 --> 00:49:48.100 It was told to me by someone, but we'll see. 00:49:48.100 --> 00:49:51.130 So they do it, and the Brits have just 00:49:51.130 --> 00:49:52.210 come across the ocean. 00:49:52.210 --> 00:49:55.570 They've got the suitcase with them in the room. 00:49:55.570 --> 00:49:58.523 I mean, you know, the war is hanging in the balance. 00:49:58.523 --> 00:50:00.190 The war could be one if these yanks just 00:50:00.190 --> 00:50:03.340 pick up this technology and manufacture it. 00:50:03.340 --> 00:50:05.410 Lots at stake. 00:50:05.410 --> 00:50:13.490 And they start throwing out hints, little hints 00:50:13.490 --> 00:50:17.770 about this cavity magnetron, as they call it, 00:50:17.770 --> 00:50:21.260 and it's microwave capabilities. 00:50:21.260 --> 00:50:23.580 And of course, sitting at the head of the table 00:50:23.580 --> 00:50:27.140 as Alfred Loomis, who happens to be America's leading microwave 00:50:27.140 --> 00:50:29.690 physicist at this point, author of numerous articles 00:50:29.690 --> 00:50:30.550 and so forth. 00:50:30.550 --> 00:50:32.900 No PhD, but for every intent and purpose, 00:50:32.900 --> 00:50:35.270 the leading scientist in the field. 00:50:35.270 --> 00:50:37.130 He gets the hints. 00:50:37.130 --> 00:50:40.430 He's been working on a much earlier stage of radar himself. 00:50:40.430 --> 00:50:42.930 He starts to understand what they're talking about. 00:50:42.930 --> 00:50:46.550 Little more time passes, Loomis goes up 00:50:46.550 --> 00:50:50.000 to his penthouse with Tizard and the five others, 00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:55.860 sitting around the fireplace, and the story comes out. 00:50:55.860 --> 00:50:58.020 And then they in turn meet at, you 00:50:58.020 --> 00:51:02.850 guessed it, Tuxedo Park and the suitcase exchanges hands. 00:51:02.850 --> 00:51:07.610 And then Loomis, who probably unique in the country, 00:51:07.610 --> 00:51:10.790 is capable of understanding what this technology is, 00:51:10.790 --> 00:51:12.710 how powerful it is. 00:51:12.710 --> 00:51:18.740 If you put a radar set in an airplane, the airplane can see. 00:51:18.740 --> 00:51:23.870 The airplane can fly at night, not just during the daytime. 00:51:23.870 --> 00:51:28.640 It can do its own interception and its own targeting. 00:51:28.640 --> 00:51:32.210 It doesn't have to rely on clumsy radar signals going 00:51:32.210 --> 00:51:34.940 through two or three people down on the ground. 00:51:34.940 --> 00:51:37.220 It's a transformative technology. 00:51:37.220 --> 00:51:38.600 He understands what it is. 00:51:38.600 --> 00:51:40.880 He's been himself working on kind of a much earlier 00:51:40.880 --> 00:51:43.070 stage of this. 00:51:43.070 --> 00:51:44.250 What's he do? 00:51:44.250 --> 00:51:49.610 Well, never underestimate the power of WASP blue blood family 00:51:49.610 --> 00:51:50.450 connections. 00:51:50.450 --> 00:51:52.130 So he immediately gets on the phone 00:51:52.130 --> 00:51:54.650 with Henry Stimson, his first cousin and mentor 00:51:54.650 --> 00:51:56.560 and surrogate father. 00:51:56.560 --> 00:51:59.330 Henry, got to move on this. 00:51:59.330 --> 00:52:00.440 Go see Roosevelt. 00:52:00.440 --> 00:52:02.960 Henry, same day, goes to see Franklin Roosevelt. Franklin 00:52:02.960 --> 00:52:08.690 Roosevelt, the Dutch WASP blue blood family connections, 00:52:08.690 --> 00:52:10.550 yes, move on it, Henry. 00:52:10.550 --> 00:52:13.840 So literally within a day, the fundamental decisions are made. 00:52:13.840 --> 00:52:19.160 Tizard advises Loomis on the structure of the organization 00:52:19.160 --> 00:52:24.410 that the Brits have put together to do this. 00:52:24.410 --> 00:52:26.580 And the Americans decide to do the same thing. 00:52:26.580 --> 00:52:29.180 So what did Tizard set up? 00:52:29.180 --> 00:52:33.470 This is not a bureaucratic military laboratory 00:52:33.470 --> 00:52:35.510 that is doing radar in Britain. 00:52:35.510 --> 00:52:40.340 This is civilian scientists, not in uniform, organized 00:52:40.340 --> 00:52:45.170 in a loose almost academic kind of flat, non-hierarchical way, 00:52:45.170 --> 00:52:47.240 where everybody pitches in with the best ideas. 00:52:47.240 --> 00:52:49.980 There's leadership, there's organization, 00:52:49.980 --> 00:52:53.957 but it's not a military bureaucracy. 00:52:53.957 --> 00:52:55.790 Loomis doesn't have to be persuaded of this. 00:52:55.790 --> 00:52:58.190 He had worked in the war effort in World War I 00:52:58.190 --> 00:53:01.490 and found the military bureaucracy impregnable 00:53:01.490 --> 00:53:03.260 to ideas. 00:53:03.260 --> 00:53:05.170 It had been completely frustrating to him. 00:53:05.170 --> 00:53:07.790 Vannevar Bush had a similar experience, complete frustrated 00:53:07.790 --> 00:53:08.870 as well. 00:53:08.870 --> 00:53:13.670 So they latch onto the way in which the Brits have organized 00:53:13.670 --> 00:53:17.600 their scientific advisory groups and their organizational 00:53:17.600 --> 00:53:20.000 efforts for doing science in a wartime setting. 00:53:22.610 --> 00:53:27.260 The microwave radar is a really important importation. 00:53:27.260 --> 00:53:29.480 The model of scientific organization 00:53:29.480 --> 00:53:31.880 is every bit as important. 00:53:31.880 --> 00:53:34.962 And Loomis runs with them both. 00:53:34.962 --> 00:53:36.420 Loomis immediately gets hold of one 00:53:36.420 --> 00:53:38.760 of his very best friends, who is Ernest Lawrence, who 00:53:38.760 --> 00:53:42.510 is the most prominent American physicist at the time. 00:53:42.510 --> 00:53:46.200 Loomis had been personally funding Ernest Lawrence's work 00:53:46.200 --> 00:53:50.240 to build the early cyclotrons up on Cyclotron Road 00:53:50.240 --> 00:53:55.160 up above the Berkeley campus, where Lawrence is a professor. 00:53:55.160 --> 00:53:56.660 They're very close. 00:53:56.660 --> 00:54:00.080 Loomis has been paying for him and his projects. 00:54:00.080 --> 00:54:02.975 So he gets Lawrence on the phone and says get out here. 00:54:02.975 --> 00:54:04.350 I can't talk to you on the phone. 00:54:04.350 --> 00:54:06.110 Let's get out of here. 00:54:06.110 --> 00:54:07.820 Lawrence-- it's unusual at the time-- 00:54:07.820 --> 00:54:10.130 he doesn't take the train, he flies, 00:54:10.130 --> 00:54:12.650 meets within days with Loomis. 00:54:12.650 --> 00:54:14.780 The two of them get on the phone. 00:54:14.780 --> 00:54:18.170 Because of the summer studies at Tuxedo Park, 00:54:18.170 --> 00:54:21.650 Loomis knows everybody and Lawrence knows everybody else. 00:54:21.650 --> 00:54:24.740 They get on the phone, and the conversations are like this-- 00:54:24.740 --> 00:54:26.510 hi. 00:54:26.510 --> 00:54:28.910 We're going to set up a new laboratory. 00:54:28.910 --> 00:54:31.310 We can't tell you anything about it. 00:54:31.310 --> 00:54:36.750 Arrive in Cambridge in two weeks and quit your job. 00:54:36.750 --> 00:54:38.330 They all come. 00:54:38.330 --> 00:54:44.060 So powerful are Loomis and Lawrence that they come. 00:54:44.060 --> 00:54:48.290 The who's who of physics in the United States shows up. 00:54:48.290 --> 00:54:51.183 Now, why are they going to show up in Cambridge? 00:54:51.183 --> 00:54:52.850 It's another critical part of our story. 00:54:57.070 --> 00:55:00.230 Here's some of the characters that were in the room. 00:55:00.230 --> 00:55:06.560 So there's this defense advisory group that Vannevar Bush, here, 00:55:06.560 --> 00:55:08.370 is running. 00:55:08.370 --> 00:55:14.460 And Loomis is his advisor, here, on air defense microwave 00:55:14.460 --> 00:55:17.160 radar, all this radar stuff. 00:55:17.160 --> 00:55:21.018 And Vannevar Bush and Loomis call a meeting 00:55:21.018 --> 00:55:22.560 to make a decision about where to put 00:55:22.560 --> 00:55:25.710 this new Critical Defense Laboratory that's going 00:55:25.710 --> 00:55:28.290 to work on microwave radar. 00:55:28.290 --> 00:55:31.900 Not in this picture is-- 00:55:31.900 --> 00:55:35.190 you remember Frank Jewett, the exponent of conservatism 00:55:35.190 --> 00:55:39.870 who is head of Bell Labs and the National Academies? 00:55:39.870 --> 00:55:41.790 Frank is in the room. 00:55:41.790 --> 00:55:46.350 Frank says, well, we're going to put it at Bell Labs. 00:55:46.350 --> 00:55:48.540 It's where it's going to go. 00:55:48.540 --> 00:55:51.140 Who would even think otherwise? 00:55:51.140 --> 00:55:51.770 There's a vote. 00:55:54.400 --> 00:56:00.160 So in the room is Karl Compton, president at MIT, and James 00:56:00.160 --> 00:56:02.760 Conant, president of Harvard. 00:56:02.760 --> 00:56:06.420 You may recall that those two schools are in Cambridge. 00:56:06.420 --> 00:56:13.560 Loomis and Vannevar Bush, and that's Lawrence, by the way. 00:56:13.560 --> 00:56:16.800 And that's Arthur Compton, who is Karl's brother, also 00:56:16.800 --> 00:56:19.080 a quite prominent and important physicist at the time 00:56:19.080 --> 00:56:20.497 and involved in this defense work. 00:56:20.497 --> 00:56:22.800 But he's not in the room. 00:56:22.800 --> 00:56:23.850 And then Jewett. 00:56:23.850 --> 00:56:30.860 So it's one, two, three, four, plus Frank Jewett. 00:56:30.860 --> 00:56:31.770 Surprise. 00:56:31.770 --> 00:56:33.330 The vote is 4 to 1. 00:56:33.330 --> 00:56:35.760 It's going to go to MIT. 00:56:35.760 --> 00:56:39.270 And all there is at MIT is industrial space 00:56:39.270 --> 00:56:40.478 all over the place. 00:56:40.478 --> 00:56:42.270 And it's just coming out of the depression. 00:56:42.270 --> 00:56:44.580 So there's a lot of space in MIT. 00:56:44.580 --> 00:56:49.880 So President Compton volunteers the space. 00:56:49.880 --> 00:56:54.710 And that's how come the Rad Lab gets stood up at MIT. 00:56:54.710 --> 00:56:58.040 And it is a remarkably successful organization. 00:56:58.040 --> 00:57:02.610 This is how-- this is the foundation of electronics 00:57:02.610 --> 00:57:03.720 in the United States. 00:57:03.720 --> 00:57:06.390 This is where most of that comes from. 00:57:06.390 --> 00:57:12.840 Of the numerous scientists that worked at the Rad Lab, 00:57:12.840 --> 00:57:15.660 I think 10 win the Nobel Prize. 00:57:18.900 --> 00:57:23.640 The group of scientists that set up the Rad Lab do it on this 00:57:23.640 --> 00:57:27.870 radical, flat, non-hierarchical, collaborative 00:57:27.870 --> 00:57:33.280 stay-out-of-uniform organizational model. 00:57:33.280 --> 00:57:35.740 Loomis plays a critical role in scaling up 00:57:35.740 --> 00:57:39.370 the Manhattan Project, which had been kind of desultory. 00:57:39.370 --> 00:57:41.510 So Loomis next jumps on that problem 00:57:41.510 --> 00:57:43.830 and gets that organized. 00:57:43.830 --> 00:57:46.740 Oppenheimer, who we will talk about in class 7, 00:57:46.740 --> 00:57:49.340 is designated to head that project. 00:57:49.340 --> 00:57:52.620 Oppenheimer doesn't know how to organize this stuff. 00:57:52.620 --> 00:57:57.870 Eleven people go from the Rad Lab to organize Los Alamos 00:57:57.870 --> 00:58:00.310 and work there. 00:58:00.310 --> 00:58:06.010 And II Rabi, who is from the Rad Lab, a great Columbia physicist 00:58:06.010 --> 00:58:09.700 and Nobel Prize winner, he becomes Oppenheimer's advisor 00:58:09.700 --> 00:58:12.940 on how to organize the Los Alamos project. 00:58:12.940 --> 00:58:14.620 So you begin to get the picture here. 00:58:14.620 --> 00:58:17.470 It's a great story about a particular technology, 00:58:17.470 --> 00:58:20.290 but frankly, more important than that story 00:58:20.290 --> 00:58:22.690 is a story of scientific organization. 00:58:22.690 --> 00:58:25.900 How are we going to organize science in this country? 00:58:25.900 --> 00:58:31.200 And what we call the FFRDC, Federally Funded Research 00:58:31.200 --> 00:58:36.120 and Development Center, that is going to be the model. 00:58:36.120 --> 00:58:41.590 And the first one of those is the Rad Lab at MIT. 00:58:41.590 --> 00:58:44.290 Then Los Alamos and then so on. 00:58:44.290 --> 00:58:47.440 Lincoln Laboratory up the street is 00:58:47.440 --> 00:58:50.610 organized on exactly these same kind of lines. 00:58:50.610 --> 00:58:52.815 So it's the organizational model in the end 00:58:52.815 --> 00:58:53.690 that's most critical. 00:58:53.690 --> 00:58:54.827 Rasheed. 00:58:54.827 --> 00:58:55.910 RASHEED: This is a point-- 00:58:55.910 --> 00:58:57.660 I'm pretty sure that's a cyclotron drawing 00:58:57.660 --> 00:58:59.138 on the chalkboard in the picture? 00:58:59.138 --> 00:59:00.680 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: That's very cool. 00:59:00.680 --> 00:59:02.055 I've always wondered what it was. 00:59:02.055 --> 00:59:03.550 RASHEED: Yeah. 00:59:03.550 --> 00:59:07.900 You can tell by the two halves of the circle on the right. 00:59:07.900 --> 00:59:08.510 Yeah. 00:59:08.510 --> 00:59:12.020 And then I'm pretty sure that's a magnet drawing in the middle 00:59:12.020 --> 00:59:12.890 there on the left. 00:59:12.890 --> 00:59:14.630 I don't know what's going on above it. 00:59:14.630 --> 00:59:15.140 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: This one? 00:59:15.140 --> 00:59:16.145 RASHEED: Yeah. 00:59:16.145 --> 00:59:17.600 Random sinusoid. 00:59:17.600 --> 00:59:19.308 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Thank you. 00:59:19.308 --> 00:59:19.850 That's great. 00:59:19.850 --> 00:59:22.070 Now I know the picture better. 00:59:22.070 --> 00:59:24.535 If you could check that out, that would be fascinating. 00:59:24.535 --> 00:59:26.027 RASHEED: Yeah. 00:59:26.027 --> 00:59:28.610 I mean, if Ernest Lawrence drew it, it's probably a cyclotron. 00:59:28.610 --> 00:59:30.040 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yeah. 00:59:30.040 --> 00:59:31.790 I don't see the chalk in his hand, though. 00:59:31.790 --> 00:59:34.160 I don't know. 00:59:34.160 --> 00:59:36.712 But it's entirely possible. 00:59:36.712 --> 00:59:39.170 But I think they're all smiling and happy because they just 00:59:39.170 --> 00:59:41.130 rolled Bell Labs and Frank Jewett, 00:59:41.130 --> 00:59:44.900 I think is what's going on. 00:59:44.900 --> 00:59:46.700 All right. 00:59:46.700 --> 00:59:48.300 That's my storytelling. 00:59:48.300 --> 00:59:49.330 RASHEED: Yeah. 00:59:49.330 --> 00:59:50.663 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: What's that? 00:59:50.663 --> 00:59:53.627 STEPH: Oh, I looked up the blueprint. 00:59:53.627 --> 00:59:55.210 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: It is a cyclotron. 00:59:55.210 --> 00:59:57.247 RASHEED: Cool. 00:59:57.247 --> 00:59:58.330 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Is it? 00:59:58.330 --> 01:00:00.760 Steph, it's a cyclotron? 01:00:00.760 --> 01:00:02.080 Great. 01:00:02.080 --> 01:00:03.000 Rasheed, good. 01:00:03.000 --> 01:00:04.130 That was good. 01:00:04.130 --> 01:00:06.080 STEPH: Created by UC Berkeley. 01:00:06.080 --> 01:00:09.320 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Hey, that's Lawrence. 01:00:09.320 --> 01:00:10.090 This guy. 01:00:10.090 --> 01:00:12.140 MAX: I had no idea that Karl Compton was 01:00:12.140 --> 01:00:14.990 both the guy who made Compton scattering and the president 01:00:14.990 --> 01:00:15.532 of MIT. 01:00:15.532 --> 01:00:16.740 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Oh, yeah. 01:00:16.740 --> 01:00:18.118 MAX: I didn't-- awesome. 01:00:18.118 --> 01:00:19.160 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yeah. 01:00:19.160 --> 01:00:22.370 This is an unbelievable collection in this room. 01:00:22.370 --> 01:00:26.570 That is hard to beat that collection of talent. 01:00:26.570 --> 01:00:33.350 And Janet Conant's grandfather is James Conant. 01:00:33.350 --> 01:00:36.140 So she's able to do the book on Loomis, 01:00:36.140 --> 01:00:38.960 because she's got all the family records, all 01:00:38.960 --> 01:00:40.296 the correspondence. 01:00:45.260 --> 01:00:47.082 So Rasheed, we have a scientific consensus 01:00:47.082 --> 01:00:48.040 that that's what it is? 01:00:50.960 --> 01:00:51.690 RASHEED: Yeah. 01:00:51.690 --> 01:00:51.980 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: All right. 01:00:51.980 --> 01:00:52.580 Great. 01:00:52.580 --> 01:00:53.540 Thank you. 01:00:53.540 --> 01:00:55.550 That will add a whole new piece to the evolution 01:00:55.550 --> 01:00:57.534 of the story over time. 01:00:57.534 --> 01:00:59.617 STEPH: It's what social scientists are good for. 01:00:59.617 --> 01:01:01.530 We do research. 01:01:01.530 --> 01:01:03.660 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: That's good. 01:01:03.660 --> 01:01:04.160 All right. 01:01:04.160 --> 01:01:05.460 Max, have you got this one? 01:01:05.460 --> 01:01:06.050 MAX: Yep. 01:01:06.050 --> 01:01:06.680 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: All right. 01:01:06.680 --> 01:01:06.980 MAX: All right. 01:01:06.980 --> 01:01:07.550 So-- 01:01:07.550 --> 01:01:08.090 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: You could actually 01:01:08.090 --> 01:01:09.770 tell us what actually happened. 01:01:09.770 --> 01:01:10.840 MAX: Yeah. 01:01:10.840 --> 01:01:11.598 Let's see. 01:01:11.598 --> 01:01:12.140 I don't know. 01:01:12.140 --> 01:01:14.395 You covered it in spades. 01:01:16.642 --> 01:01:19.100 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: It's one of my favorite story tellings. 01:01:19.100 --> 01:01:20.550 MAX: Yeah, I gathered. 01:01:20.550 --> 01:01:24.020 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: One story time in most classes. 01:01:24.020 --> 01:01:25.520 MAX: I did appreciate-- so something 01:01:25.520 --> 01:01:27.220 I gather when I was reading it, I 01:01:27.220 --> 01:01:29.330 thought this had taken place before the Manhattan 01:01:29.330 --> 01:01:30.370 Project was ever formed. 01:01:30.370 --> 01:01:30.770 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Oh, yes. 01:01:30.770 --> 01:01:31.810 Absolutely right. 01:01:31.810 --> 01:01:32.893 MAX: OK, which I thought-- 01:01:32.893 --> 01:01:34.268 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So this group 01:01:34.268 --> 01:01:36.680 may well be gathering around next stages of the Manhattan 01:01:36.680 --> 01:01:37.080 Project. 01:01:37.080 --> 01:01:37.610 MAX: Yeah. 01:01:37.610 --> 01:01:37.880 OK. 01:01:37.880 --> 01:01:38.000 So-- 01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:39.625 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Because these folks 01:01:39.625 --> 01:01:42.510 are central to everything that goes on in science 01:01:42.510 --> 01:01:44.120 in that World War II period. 01:01:44.120 --> 01:01:46.430 MAX: So I thought that was one of the general, 01:01:46.430 --> 01:01:48.860 like that emphasized the genius of this group, 01:01:48.860 --> 01:01:51.770 because before then, there weren't really like 01:01:51.770 --> 01:01:53.690 giant gatherings of this sort. 01:01:53.690 --> 01:01:55.570 And it was before the Manhattan Project. 01:01:55.570 --> 01:01:57.938 So something of that scale had never been done before. 01:01:57.938 --> 01:01:59.480 LUYAN: What is the Manhattan Project? 01:01:59.480 --> 01:02:00.110 MAX: What? 01:02:00.110 --> 01:02:01.652 LUYAN: What is the Manhattan Project? 01:02:01.652 --> 01:02:03.960 MAX: Oh, to build the atomic bomb. 01:02:03.960 --> 01:02:04.700 Yeah. 01:02:04.700 --> 01:02:06.200 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So Luyan, that's 01:02:06.200 --> 01:02:11.210 the great crash project at Los Alamos up on a mason 01:02:11.210 --> 01:02:13.620 surrounded by barbed wire, way off in the deserts 01:02:13.620 --> 01:02:17.750 of New Mexico that does most of the critical work 01:02:17.750 --> 01:02:21.080 on developing atomic weapons in the course of World War II. 01:02:21.080 --> 01:02:24.620 And the great fear, as Max suggested earlier, 01:02:24.620 --> 01:02:29.540 was that most of US physicists knew Heisenberg personally. 01:02:29.540 --> 01:02:32.570 And Heisenberg's in charge of the German atomic projects. 01:02:32.570 --> 01:02:35.210 They know how brilliant he is. 01:02:35.210 --> 01:02:37.400 They think he's going to get there first, 01:02:37.400 --> 01:02:39.350 that they're way behind. 01:02:39.350 --> 01:02:44.533 And the war would be over in an hour 01:02:44.533 --> 01:02:45.950 if Germany had gotten there first. 01:02:45.950 --> 01:02:48.367 So that's why there's such a crash project to put together 01:02:48.367 --> 01:02:49.580 the Manhattan Project. 01:02:49.580 --> 01:02:51.470 But this Rad Lab stuff is equally 01:02:51.470 --> 01:02:55.880 important from a tactical point of view, 01:02:55.880 --> 01:02:58.040 in terms of the ability of aircraft to operate, 01:02:58.040 --> 01:03:01.760 the power of air power in World War II, the ability of radar 01:03:01.760 --> 01:03:06.710 systems to see incoming airstrikes, 01:03:06.710 --> 01:03:09.770 the ability of fleets to manage air attacks. 01:03:09.770 --> 01:03:11.660 All that stuff comes out of here, 01:03:11.660 --> 01:03:13.910 and those are critical day-to-day developments 01:03:13.910 --> 01:03:14.600 in World War II. 01:03:14.600 --> 01:03:19.220 So the atomic bomb may have been the final ending of the war, 01:03:19.220 --> 01:03:21.940 but the day-to-day warfare is dramatically 01:03:21.940 --> 01:03:24.190 changed by the microwave radar. 01:03:24.190 --> 01:03:26.800 MAX: So the first question that I 01:03:26.800 --> 01:03:29.350 thought of when I was just looking at all this reading, 01:03:29.350 --> 01:03:33.100 I was thinking, well, they were able to take this design 01:03:33.100 --> 01:03:36.190 and build up the manufacturing facilities, build up the labs, 01:03:36.190 --> 01:03:38.620 scale everything, get all the people, 01:03:38.620 --> 01:03:41.950 and make these planes with this radar equipment 01:03:41.950 --> 01:03:44.640 really quickly, because the war is only like four years. 01:03:44.640 --> 01:03:47.150 So they had to do all of that in that time span. 01:03:47.150 --> 01:03:51.310 So what struck me was just how did they get it so quickly? 01:03:51.310 --> 01:03:53.560 Was it only because they had, as I mentioned 01:03:53.560 --> 01:03:55.840 earlier, the Nazi Germany threat, that they 01:03:55.840 --> 01:03:58.100 had to actually face? 01:03:58.100 --> 01:04:00.840 And is there any way that we could do that today? 01:04:00.840 --> 01:04:02.950 Any way that we could, without some 01:04:02.950 --> 01:04:05.470 sort of evil that we have to fight, 01:04:05.470 --> 01:04:08.050 is there any way that we can increase 01:04:08.050 --> 01:04:11.320 the speed of, I don't know, research progress 01:04:11.320 --> 01:04:16.060 or at least the development side of R&D, 01:04:16.060 --> 01:04:18.280 if we can make it that quick? 01:04:18.280 --> 01:04:22.690 CHLOE: I think, just tagging off of MIT history 01:04:22.690 --> 01:04:24.940 and then sort of tagging in modern MIT history 01:04:24.940 --> 01:04:30.550 or modern today and MIT, but my lab 01:04:30.550 --> 01:04:35.770 builds CubeSats that are oftentimes funded by the Air 01:04:35.770 --> 01:04:37.240 Force Research Laboratory. 01:04:37.240 --> 01:04:39.430 And it's an interesting experience 01:04:39.430 --> 01:04:43.480 seeing the extremely short developmental lifecycle 01:04:43.480 --> 01:04:46.000 of these spacecraft that are technically 01:04:46.000 --> 01:04:48.280 supposed to be student platform spacecraft, but still 01:04:48.280 --> 01:04:53.110 spacecraft, being churned out in two years, which is ridiculous. 01:04:53.110 --> 01:04:54.980 Like, that's really fast. 01:04:54.980 --> 01:04:58.570 And I think that that development speed is achievable 01:04:58.570 --> 01:05:01.810 because of the combination of a lot of money 01:05:01.810 --> 01:05:05.260 from the government institution given 01:05:05.260 --> 01:05:08.740 to an academic institution where you have a lot of young people 01:05:08.740 --> 01:05:13.150 who are very passionate to do good work, who haven't been 01:05:13.150 --> 01:05:15.722 sort of exhausted by the industry already, you know, 01:05:15.722 --> 01:05:16.930 their passion is still there. 01:05:16.930 --> 01:05:18.800 There's still light in their eyes. 01:05:18.800 --> 01:05:20.770 And then they have the resources to-- you know, 01:05:20.770 --> 01:05:24.238 everyone's in one building or, you know, 01:05:24.238 --> 01:05:26.530 everyone can easily connect to the resources they need. 01:05:26.530 --> 01:05:31.480 So it's a good utilization of funds given to people who 01:05:31.480 --> 01:05:33.280 know how to use them quickly. 01:05:33.280 --> 01:05:36.195 So I think that combination works. 01:05:36.195 --> 01:05:36.820 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 01:05:36.820 --> 01:05:40.990 And I think that the Nazi threat is definitely 01:05:40.990 --> 01:05:44.560 something that lit a fire under the research, 01:05:44.560 --> 01:05:49.000 leading to application and widespread use, 01:05:49.000 --> 01:05:52.600 but there were also a couple of really important factors 01:05:52.600 --> 01:05:55.510 in this particular instance. 01:05:55.510 --> 01:05:58.300 One is that Loomis bankrolled a lot of this stuff 01:05:58.300 --> 01:06:00.290 by himself at the very beginning. 01:06:00.290 --> 01:06:05.110 And so it took the government more years, 01:06:05.110 --> 01:06:08.650 I think, to get behind it financially and finally 01:06:08.650 --> 01:06:09.720 jump on board. 01:06:09.720 --> 01:06:12.100 And then the other is that Loomis 01:06:12.100 --> 01:06:15.370 can do pretty much anything he wants, 01:06:15.370 --> 01:06:19.420 because his cousin Stimson just gives him this blank carte 01:06:19.420 --> 01:06:23.230 blanche, do what you have to do. 01:06:23.230 --> 01:06:23.988 But I think that-- 01:06:23.988 --> 01:06:24.530 I don't know. 01:06:24.530 --> 01:06:27.290 Luis Alvarez makes a really bold statement there, 01:06:27.290 --> 01:06:29.528 like the last of the amateurs of science. 01:06:29.528 --> 01:06:30.070 I don't know. 01:06:30.070 --> 01:06:32.170 What about Bill Gates, for example, 01:06:32.170 --> 01:06:35.650 is trying to do something, I think, sort of analogous 01:06:35.650 --> 01:06:39.355 at this point in time, with the newer nuclear reactors 01:06:39.355 --> 01:06:40.480 that he's trying to set up. 01:06:40.480 --> 01:06:42.700 And he's bankrolling that to a large degree and so-- 01:06:42.700 --> 01:06:43.180 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yeah. 01:06:43.180 --> 01:06:44.597 And he's taking MIT online courses 01:06:44.597 --> 01:06:46.102 in physics at the same time. 01:06:46.102 --> 01:06:47.300 AUDIENCE: Is he really? 01:06:47.300 --> 01:06:48.050 MAX: That's great. 01:06:48.050 --> 01:06:50.620 AUDIENCE: And he's assembling billionaires for this fun. 01:06:50.620 --> 01:06:51.370 AUDIENCE: Exactly. 01:06:51.370 --> 01:06:52.900 It's another great group, I think. 01:06:52.900 --> 01:06:56.288 So I disagree with Luis Alvarez on this point. 01:06:56.288 --> 01:06:57.580 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Stay tuned. 01:06:57.580 --> 01:07:01.000 MAX: Well maybe the emphasis in that statement is amateur, 01:07:01.000 --> 01:07:03.970 like maybe there's a difference between what 01:07:03.970 --> 01:07:06.130 he defines as an amateur and maybe Bill Gates. 01:07:06.130 --> 01:07:09.760 Of course, it depends on his specific definition. 01:07:09.760 --> 01:07:12.370 Other questions that I had included-- 01:07:12.370 --> 01:07:16.690 so someone had mentioned-- someone had asked the question, 01:07:16.690 --> 01:07:20.020 I think it was Stimson, who had said that he would prefer 01:07:20.020 --> 01:07:21.748 to just stay involved with his research, 01:07:21.748 --> 01:07:24.040 and he really didn't want to get involved with politics 01:07:24.040 --> 01:07:26.980 or any sort of war effort. 01:07:26.980 --> 01:07:31.390 So someone has-- well, should research-- 01:07:31.390 --> 01:07:33.280 should scientists usually just stay 01:07:33.280 --> 01:07:37.780 in that mindset and just mostly stay into their research 01:07:37.780 --> 01:07:39.830 or should they get involved in politics at all? 01:07:39.830 --> 01:07:41.208 And I see the advantages of both, 01:07:41.208 --> 01:07:43.750 because on one hand, if you have people that are only working 01:07:43.750 --> 01:07:49.030 on research, well, they have a unique perspective they 01:07:49.030 --> 01:07:50.220 can contribute to politics. 01:07:50.220 --> 01:07:51.490 But on the other hand, that's time 01:07:51.490 --> 01:07:53.230 they're spending away from their research 01:07:53.230 --> 01:07:55.730 when they could be producing something that could be helping 01:07:55.730 --> 01:07:57.670 people across the planet. 01:07:57.670 --> 01:08:01.892 So I was just curious if you guys had any thoughts on that. 01:08:01.892 --> 01:08:03.350 RASHEED: I think I'd probably argue 01:08:03.350 --> 01:08:06.140 that it's pretty myopic to say that your research has 01:08:06.140 --> 01:08:10.190 no effect on the outside world, in general, just because you're 01:08:10.190 --> 01:08:11.890 studying the outside world. 01:08:11.890 --> 01:08:14.630 That's going to exist outside of the lab, 01:08:14.630 --> 01:08:16.430 and it will have an effect no matter what 01:08:16.430 --> 01:08:20.720 you do scientifically, like say you have your academic research 01:08:20.720 --> 01:08:22.428 circle that's probably directly affected. 01:08:22.428 --> 01:08:24.803 And then if you look outside of that, if your research is 01:08:24.803 --> 01:08:26.720 impactful enough, you're just going to have, 01:08:26.720 --> 01:08:29.973 no matter what, there are political ramifications 01:08:29.973 --> 01:08:31.890 and everything like that to everything you do. 01:08:31.890 --> 01:08:33.710 And so I think reminding scientists 01:08:33.710 --> 01:08:36.260 to be cognizant of those things and just 01:08:36.260 --> 01:08:39.020 asking them to actively take this into consideration 01:08:39.020 --> 01:08:42.020 while they do research is sort of necessary, just 01:08:42.020 --> 01:08:44.660 because that's just how the world works. 01:08:44.660 --> 01:08:48.319 You can't really put a drop in the bucket 01:08:48.319 --> 01:08:52.040 and not experience ripple effects outside. 01:08:52.040 --> 01:08:55.830 So I think this is probably one of the really solid examples 01:08:55.830 --> 01:08:57.830 of why that's probably a good thing, because you 01:08:57.830 --> 01:08:59.247 have these people very interested, 01:08:59.247 --> 01:09:00.414 obviously, in the academic-- 01:09:00.414 --> 01:09:01.705 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: [INAUDIBLE] 01:09:01.705 --> 01:09:04.430 RASHEED: Yeah, like the academic implications 01:09:04.430 --> 01:09:07.140 of radar, sort of electromagnetism, 01:09:07.140 --> 01:09:08.228 but also war efforts. 01:09:08.228 --> 01:09:09.770 MAX: And I definitely think that like 01:09:09.770 --> 01:09:11.600 this current political climate definitely 01:09:11.600 --> 01:09:15.740 emphasizes why scientists should make their opinions more known 01:09:15.740 --> 01:09:21.040 and the consequences of not doing that. 01:09:21.040 --> 01:09:22.957 You had your hand up for a while. 01:09:22.957 --> 01:09:25.040 AUDIENCE: So I think scientists and engineers like 01:09:25.040 --> 01:09:28.100 to do their work as entirely objective, like what they're 01:09:28.100 --> 01:09:31.152 doing is like black and white, like this is the truth 01:09:31.152 --> 01:09:31.819 and this is not. 01:09:31.819 --> 01:09:34.640 And I think that misses out a lot on the social context 01:09:34.640 --> 01:09:38.810 in which they're doing their work and other, like the fact 01:09:38.810 --> 01:09:40.939 that both what they're studying and how 01:09:40.939 --> 01:09:44.229 they study it is affected by the world that they live in. 01:09:44.229 --> 01:09:46.729 And so saying that they can isolate themselves from that 01:09:46.729 --> 01:09:52.590 doesn't seem very realistic or effective. 01:09:52.590 --> 01:09:55.600 AUDIENCE: I want to go back to that point about Luis Alvarez. 01:09:55.600 --> 01:09:58.215 I think what he meant is there's a whole period time where it 01:09:58.215 --> 01:10:04.000 was like [INAUDIBLE] JJ Thomson, Tesla, 01:10:04.000 --> 01:10:06.500 where it was like people who just did experiments versus now 01:10:06.500 --> 01:10:08.708 it's more academic, more like worrying about theories 01:10:08.708 --> 01:10:11.470 and then you do some research, but there's people that only-- 01:10:11.470 --> 01:10:13.240 they did experiments and they came to conclusions, 01:10:13.240 --> 01:10:14.740 and then they built stuff off those conclusions 01:10:14.740 --> 01:10:15.730 about what they built. 01:10:15.730 --> 01:10:20.020 So it's more of an organic process of innovation. 01:10:20.020 --> 01:10:22.760 The benefit too of Loomis was he came from Wall Street, 01:10:22.760 --> 01:10:25.030 so it was very fast cycle, always getting things done. 01:10:25.030 --> 01:10:27.040 Sometimes you step on some toes. 01:10:27.040 --> 01:10:29.290 And so there's some benefits to that kind of attitude, 01:10:29.290 --> 01:10:31.383 because he thought about it more like a business 01:10:31.383 --> 01:10:32.800 problem in terms of, like, oh, I'm 01:10:32.800 --> 01:10:33.680 going to get the best people. 01:10:33.680 --> 01:10:35.350 I can incentivize them to be here. 01:10:35.350 --> 01:10:39.910 And he pretty much made the first startup incubator. 01:10:39.910 --> 01:10:42.893 And then also, who do I need to know to get this thing done? 01:10:42.893 --> 01:10:45.310 Because he could have definitely just been like, I'm rich. 01:10:45.310 --> 01:10:49.260 I'm going to be in my penthouse and just like take some drinks. 01:10:49.260 --> 01:10:51.250 I don't know if he had a wife or not. 01:10:51.250 --> 01:10:51.970 But like-- 01:10:51.970 --> 01:10:54.873 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: I'll tell that story in a minute. 01:10:54.873 --> 01:10:57.290 AUDIENCE: I mean, I assumed there was a story there, yeah. 01:10:57.290 --> 01:11:00.980 But it very interesting in terms of he's 01:11:00.980 --> 01:11:03.110 just somebody who had to get things done. 01:11:03.110 --> 01:11:04.870 But he just kind of had a side interest. 01:11:04.870 --> 01:11:07.480 And that's usually like some of the most interesting people, 01:11:07.480 --> 01:11:09.147 where they come from one domain and then 01:11:09.147 --> 01:11:10.450 they go interdisciplinary. 01:11:12.558 --> 01:11:14.850 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: And that Cavendish Lab, by the way, 01:11:14.850 --> 01:11:18.000 is a fascinating great group in the 1920s. 01:11:18.000 --> 01:11:19.907 It's really fascinating. 01:11:19.907 --> 01:11:20.740 AUDIENCE: Cavendish? 01:11:20.740 --> 01:11:21.290 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yeah. 01:11:21.290 --> 01:11:21.832 At Cambridge. 01:11:21.832 --> 01:11:22.900 AUDIENCE: Oh, yeah. 01:11:22.900 --> 01:11:24.600 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Where Thompson and some of the others 01:11:24.600 --> 01:11:25.000 were. 01:11:25.000 --> 01:11:26.910 AUDIENCE: So there's this theory that we should think 01:11:26.910 --> 01:11:28.550 about science more like politics and that there's 01:11:28.550 --> 01:11:29.710 different schools of thought. 01:11:29.710 --> 01:11:30.800 And the problem with science right 01:11:30.800 --> 01:11:33.175 now is more that we only have one way of thinking about-- 01:11:33.175 --> 01:11:35.350 you learn science one way or you learn math one way, 01:11:35.350 --> 01:11:37.100 whereas if you got different perspectives, 01:11:37.100 --> 01:11:39.430 it would make it easier to solve problems. 01:11:39.430 --> 01:11:42.395 And that's a very powerful thing. 01:11:42.395 --> 01:11:43.020 AUDIENCE: Yeah. 01:11:43.020 --> 01:11:46.067 So I think Loomis himself said that he thought 01:11:46.067 --> 01:11:47.900 the scientists were more productive focusing 01:11:47.900 --> 01:11:49.900 on their research and getting them off politics. 01:11:49.900 --> 01:11:52.340 I think maybe he almost saw himself 01:11:52.340 --> 01:11:54.150 as kind of the interface probably. 01:11:54.150 --> 01:11:56.150 So as a more amateur scientist. 01:11:56.150 --> 01:11:59.633 But he's kind of facilitating this and making it possible. 01:11:59.633 --> 01:12:02.300 And yeah, I think it's important that scientists think about it. 01:12:02.300 --> 01:12:07.190 But I guess I do agree that they should be focused and maybe 01:12:07.190 --> 01:12:09.830 have other people interface. 01:12:09.830 --> 01:12:11.560 I'll be interested to hear what goes 01:12:11.560 --> 01:12:15.550 in it as working in the MIT DC office that's 01:12:15.550 --> 01:12:18.010 a large part of what you guys do, I imagine, 01:12:18.010 --> 01:12:20.900 just talking to the professors here and advocating 01:12:20.900 --> 01:12:23.920 on their behalf. 01:12:23.920 --> 01:12:24.930 MAX: You had a comment? 01:12:24.930 --> 01:12:27.222 AUDIENCE: Oh, yeah, I just had a similar point to Matt, 01:12:27.222 --> 01:12:29.770 just like if you have an organization with people 01:12:29.770 --> 01:12:33.010 serving different functions, like maybe scientists can stick 01:12:33.010 --> 01:12:35.740 to their realm of specialty and focus on their research 01:12:35.740 --> 01:12:37.990 if there are other people connecting them 01:12:37.990 --> 01:12:40.210 to politics and outside. 01:12:40.210 --> 01:12:41.170 MAX: I see. 01:12:41.170 --> 01:12:43.553 STEPH: To counter, I think about Ernie Moniz a lot. 01:12:43.553 --> 01:12:44.220 AUDIENCE: Moniz. 01:12:44.220 --> 01:12:44.830 STEPH: Moniz. 01:12:44.830 --> 01:12:45.160 Moniz. 01:12:45.160 --> 01:12:46.285 AUDIENCE: That's all right. 01:12:46.285 --> 01:12:46.930 You've got it. 01:12:46.930 --> 01:12:48.010 STEPH: I think of it in the French, yeah. 01:12:48.010 --> 01:12:48.927 AUDIENCE: You're fine. 01:12:48.927 --> 01:12:49.735 You're fine. 01:12:49.735 --> 01:12:52.350 STEPH: I greatly admire him. 01:12:52.350 --> 01:12:56.140 No, I've just been looking at this picture lovingly of him. 01:12:56.140 --> 01:12:57.190 He's one of my heroes. 01:12:57.190 --> 01:12:58.660 AUDIENCE: Well, tell him that. 01:12:58.660 --> 01:12:59.363 STEPH: Please. 01:12:59.363 --> 01:13:01.780 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: He's next door to Martha, as I recall. 01:13:01.780 --> 01:13:02.420 STEPH: Oh, my gosh. 01:13:02.420 --> 01:13:02.920 OK. 01:13:02.920 --> 01:13:04.452 Even better. 01:13:04.452 --> 01:13:05.670 I'm blushing. 01:13:05.670 --> 01:13:06.820 Oh. 01:13:06.820 --> 01:13:10.310 Yeah, so I totally have a crush on Moniz. 01:13:10.310 --> 01:13:11.860 And I think about him a lot. 01:13:15.210 --> 01:13:17.320 So I spent-- 01:13:17.320 --> 01:13:19.750 I took a gap semester to intern in Congress. 01:13:19.750 --> 01:13:21.670 And one of the things that came out of that 01:13:21.670 --> 01:13:23.980 was becoming good friends with the White House liaison 01:13:23.980 --> 01:13:25.147 to the Department of Energy. 01:13:25.147 --> 01:13:28.060 So he was one of the people who helped pick Moniz. 01:13:28.060 --> 01:13:30.585 And then he took me around the office and the top floor. 01:13:30.585 --> 01:13:31.632 I saw his office. 01:13:31.632 --> 01:13:32.340 That was amazing. 01:13:32.340 --> 01:13:34.040 I passed out nearly. 01:13:34.040 --> 01:13:36.777 But the reason I think a lot of him, 01:13:36.777 --> 01:13:38.860 other than the fact that I have an enormous crush, 01:13:38.860 --> 01:13:43.360 is that he is one of those scientists who I almost 01:13:43.360 --> 01:13:46.990 feel like there's an immense trade off because he became 01:13:46.990 --> 01:13:49.960 a public servant, because he could be doing so much 01:13:49.960 --> 01:13:53.950 incredible work in his area of specialty and expertise. 01:13:53.950 --> 01:13:55.660 And at the same time, I trust no one 01:13:55.660 --> 01:13:58.480 but him to run the Department of Energy, right? 01:13:58.480 --> 01:14:04.720 And so there's that sense that he can do what he wants, 01:14:04.720 --> 01:14:07.750 because he is an adult expert. 01:14:07.750 --> 01:14:11.890 And at the same time, that is an immensely personal calculation 01:14:11.890 --> 01:14:14.800 that he has to make about where he feels he can make the best 01:14:14.800 --> 01:14:16.240 contribution. 01:14:16.240 --> 01:14:19.690 So I feel like our jobs, not only as students taking 01:14:19.690 --> 01:14:22.060 this course and as stakeholders in the future 01:14:22.060 --> 01:14:25.540 of a civil society, as civil as it can be, 01:14:25.540 --> 01:14:28.570 is to really consider whether the bulk of our impact 01:14:28.570 --> 01:14:31.990 in the world is going to be in an arena like politics 01:14:31.990 --> 01:14:34.720 or if we are better off delegating that to someone else 01:14:34.720 --> 01:14:37.870 and providing our opinion to other people. 01:14:37.870 --> 01:14:41.890 Because it could be that in the coming years, as he reflects 01:14:41.890 --> 01:14:44.740 on his tenure as Secretary of Energy, he thinks, 01:14:44.740 --> 01:14:47.140 well, I feel like I made a measurable impact, 01:14:47.140 --> 01:14:49.120 but it was for naught, because of the ways 01:14:49.120 --> 01:14:51.370 in which this next administration is 01:14:51.370 --> 01:14:53.710 going to dissolve a lot of the efforts 01:14:53.710 --> 01:14:56.590 that he was able to create. 01:14:56.590 --> 01:14:59.340 So I think it'll be interesting to hear 01:14:59.340 --> 01:15:02.070 him give personal feedback and maybe 01:15:02.070 --> 01:15:05.110 more intimate conversations with students like ourselves. 01:15:05.110 --> 01:15:07.690 And if you do, please let me know, 01:15:07.690 --> 01:15:10.800 because I guess I would hate for him personally 01:15:10.800 --> 01:15:13.410 to feel like he gave up so much of his life 01:15:13.410 --> 01:15:18.630 and his productive potential to something that is going to get 01:15:18.630 --> 01:15:20.380 destroyed ultimately. 01:15:20.380 --> 01:15:23.220 MAX: I was actually, like, when you mentioned him, 01:15:23.220 --> 01:15:24.720 I kind of started thinking-- 01:15:24.720 --> 01:15:28.865 I hadn't researched Compton before outside of scattering, 01:15:28.865 --> 01:15:30.240 for anyone who doesn't know, it's 01:15:30.240 --> 01:15:33.690 like when photons will scatter off of electrons and atoms. 01:15:33.690 --> 01:15:34.710 Does anyone know this? 01:15:34.710 --> 01:15:36.780 I don't know. 01:15:36.780 --> 01:15:39.860 So I didn't realize before this class 01:15:39.860 --> 01:15:41.610 that he was actually the president of MIT. 01:15:41.610 --> 01:15:43.710 So it makes me think that I don't really-- 01:15:46.470 --> 01:15:48.137 at that point, I have a parallel point-- 01:15:48.137 --> 01:15:50.137 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: And this guy is his brother. 01:15:50.137 --> 01:15:51.810 MAX: I wonder-- wow, I didn't realize-- 01:15:51.810 --> 01:15:53.220 I didn't even know he had a brother. 01:15:53.220 --> 01:15:54.410 There's so much about him I don't know. 01:15:54.410 --> 01:15:56.577 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: He was another famous physicist. 01:15:56.577 --> 01:15:58.660 One of the all-time great MIT presidents. 01:15:58.660 --> 01:16:00.270 MAX: And it makes-- 01:16:00.270 --> 01:16:03.085 apparently, he was a really good president, so that's good. 01:16:03.085 --> 01:16:04.710 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: He's credited, Max, 01:16:04.710 --> 01:16:06.510 with bringing great science to MIT. 01:16:06.510 --> 01:16:07.440 MAX: OK. 01:16:07.440 --> 01:16:10.350 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So MIT had always had very good science, 01:16:10.350 --> 01:16:13.710 but Compton really embarks on an effort 01:16:13.710 --> 01:16:19.680 to both train and find truly fabulous science. 01:16:19.680 --> 01:16:23.550 So MIT is positioned, frankly, in that 1930s period when 01:16:23.550 --> 01:16:26.340 he's president, to be this unbelievably 01:16:26.340 --> 01:16:29.520 capable institution with these two sides of the story, 01:16:29.520 --> 01:16:31.710 engineering and science, kind of unified here. 01:16:31.710 --> 01:16:33.630 MAX: So, Stephanie, I would bring up 01:16:33.630 --> 01:16:36.750 that as almost a counter to your point, 01:16:36.750 --> 01:16:40.140 saying that maybe it depends on the time period, not really 01:16:40.140 --> 01:16:43.440 the person, because I'm sure that Moniz is really awesome. 01:16:43.440 --> 01:16:45.330 I'm sure that he's very articulate, 01:16:45.330 --> 01:16:49.080 and he is certainly very convincing in his positions. 01:16:49.080 --> 01:16:53.100 But it probably just depends on the timing. 01:16:53.100 --> 01:16:56.580 So when people try to advance whatever agenda 01:16:56.580 --> 01:17:00.670 that they believe is best for society as a whole. 01:17:00.670 --> 01:17:04.950 So with Compton, I feel that he had a lot of advantages 01:17:04.950 --> 01:17:08.700 at the time period, like, oh, the United States at the time 01:17:08.700 --> 01:17:11.700 realized that we needed science in addition to our development 01:17:11.700 --> 01:17:13.080 capabilities. 01:17:13.080 --> 01:17:17.580 So it definitely made it a lot easier to-- 01:17:17.580 --> 01:17:19.920 there was a gap that he recognized, that he 01:17:19.920 --> 01:17:22.380 knew that could be filled. 01:17:22.380 --> 01:17:28.030 STEPH: I'm trying to think of a statistic about how to get 01:17:28.030 --> 01:17:29.680 a woman to run for office. 01:17:29.680 --> 01:17:31.780 I think it takes something like eight times 01:17:31.780 --> 01:17:33.460 to tell a woman to run for office, 01:17:33.460 --> 01:17:35.440 and she'll finally begin considering it 01:17:35.440 --> 01:17:37.450 in any sort of serious capacity. 01:17:37.450 --> 01:17:40.330 And when you ask a man, it has to be maybe one or two times 01:17:40.330 --> 01:17:42.760 before they seriously consider it. 01:17:42.760 --> 01:17:46.870 And I wonder what it would look like for scientists. 01:17:46.870 --> 01:17:48.550 To what extent do you have to cultivate 01:17:48.550 --> 01:17:54.320 this paradigm of evaluating the impact of your work 01:17:54.320 --> 01:17:58.660 and weighing that against the impact of your perspective and 01:17:58.660 --> 01:18:00.805 how that can make a difference in the world? 01:18:00.805 --> 01:18:02.680 So I'm going to be quiet now, because Rasheed 01:18:02.680 --> 01:18:03.490 seems to have a point. 01:18:03.490 --> 01:18:04.073 RASHEED: Yeah. 01:18:04.073 --> 01:18:06.280 I'm going to argue for form here. 01:18:06.280 --> 01:18:09.130 So I think these guys are all sitting around the room. 01:18:09.130 --> 01:18:10.870 I don't know how often this happens. 01:18:10.870 --> 01:18:12.640 This might happen like totally independent of the war. 01:18:12.640 --> 01:18:14.200 These guys just get together just because they're 01:18:14.200 --> 01:18:15.700 so interconnected anyway. 01:18:15.700 --> 01:18:20.740 But the point is, I think there's an argument here 01:18:20.740 --> 01:18:23.530 that all it really takes is you just 01:18:23.530 --> 01:18:26.530 have to get six or seven of these people of this caliber 01:18:26.530 --> 01:18:28.480 in a room, and they'll naturally come 01:18:28.480 --> 01:18:33.117 to the conclusion or the idea that we need-- 01:18:33.117 --> 01:18:35.700 they'll sort of come up with a solution for a federally funded 01:18:35.700 --> 01:18:37.350 research institution. 01:18:37.350 --> 01:18:39.060 And what's really nice here, I think, 01:18:39.060 --> 01:18:43.080 is Karl Compton is president of MIT and then it's Bush. 01:18:43.080 --> 01:18:45.482 Is there a president between them? 01:18:45.482 --> 01:18:46.440 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: No. 01:18:46.440 --> 01:18:47.520 Bush is not president. 01:18:47.520 --> 01:18:51.480 So Bush is Dean of Engineering and then Vice President MIT. 01:18:51.480 --> 01:18:54.450 And then he goes off to the Carnegie Institute, 01:18:54.450 --> 01:18:58.650 which is then a leading scientific funding organization 01:18:58.650 --> 01:18:59.520 based in Washington. 01:18:59.520 --> 01:19:01.770 And he becomes Franklin Roosevelt's science advisor 01:19:01.770 --> 01:19:03.490 member during the war. 01:19:03.490 --> 01:19:05.880 So he has a rich past at MIT as a faculty member. 01:19:05.880 --> 01:19:07.820 We'll talk about it in a minute. 01:19:07.820 --> 01:19:11.450 RASHEED: But I think because they're both sort of at MIT 01:19:11.450 --> 01:19:12.960 and sort of interconnected anyway, 01:19:12.960 --> 01:19:17.370 you have an opportunity to kind of transform 01:19:17.370 --> 01:19:20.610 MIT from this great scientific institution under Karl Compton 01:19:20.610 --> 01:19:23.610 to sort of this federally funded research institution, which 01:19:23.610 --> 01:19:29.100 largely was an idea of Bush and like a proponent. 01:19:29.100 --> 01:19:31.610 I guess they sort of around the table came up with the idea, 01:19:31.610 --> 01:19:33.330 but Bush writes this paper about it. 01:19:33.330 --> 01:19:36.120 And then they kind of do it under the Rad Lab 01:19:36.120 --> 01:19:36.820 and everything. 01:19:36.820 --> 01:19:39.780 So I think there's an argument here that all you really need 01:19:39.780 --> 01:19:43.760 is sort of seven people, six or-- 01:19:43.760 --> 01:19:46.440 I'm going to say a small group of people who have 01:19:46.440 --> 01:19:53.440 the connections and sort of ability to make transformations 01:19:53.440 --> 01:19:58.050 with connections with large research endowments, 01:19:58.050 --> 01:19:59.880 the top facilities, the top minds, 01:19:59.880 --> 01:20:04.890 and then have access to just the kind of drop-of-a-hat call, 01:20:04.890 --> 01:20:08.040 70 scientists, and they'll all sort of show up the next day 01:20:08.040 --> 01:20:11.040 in a room and then say that this is the direction we're going 01:20:11.040 --> 01:20:12.240 to chart. 01:20:12.240 --> 01:20:16.620 And so I'd probably argue that, in addition to timing, 01:20:16.620 --> 01:20:19.230 kind of access to human capital and form 01:20:19.230 --> 01:20:20.940 probably allows these people to just make 01:20:20.940 --> 01:20:25.440 decisions and kind of chart, really, kind of drastically 01:20:25.440 --> 01:20:27.600 new directions for large institutions 01:20:27.600 --> 01:20:30.300 or large universities and even like the future of science 01:20:30.300 --> 01:20:34.710 and technology funding in the US and kind of make this model up. 01:20:34.710 --> 01:20:37.350 Because it didn't really exist before they got there, but just 01:20:37.350 --> 01:20:39.180 get seven of them in a room, and now you 01:20:39.180 --> 01:20:41.580 have the Rad Lab kind of in two weeks. 01:20:41.580 --> 01:20:45.940 And then a day later, you have funding from Stimson. 01:20:45.940 --> 01:20:48.690 So I think maybe if we're looking in the future 01:20:48.690 --> 01:20:51.330 to do this, a group of these people of this magnitude 01:20:51.330 --> 01:20:54.210 or caliber could meet together semi-regularly and come up 01:20:54.210 --> 01:20:55.590 with ideas for how to do that. 01:20:55.590 --> 01:20:59.077 And then maybe they don't necessarily every single time 01:20:59.077 --> 01:21:00.660 have to do something, because it's not 01:21:00.660 --> 01:21:03.420 as imminent as like Manhattan Project or the Rad Lab, 01:21:03.420 --> 01:21:06.450 but they probably have some pretty good ideas 01:21:06.450 --> 01:21:07.617 on how to reorganize things. 01:21:07.617 --> 01:21:08.992 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: So we'll dive 01:21:08.992 --> 01:21:10.530 into a lot of this thinking when we 01:21:10.530 --> 01:21:11.928 talk about great group theory. 01:21:11.928 --> 01:21:14.220 So Martina, I'm going to ask you to hold your question. 01:21:14.220 --> 01:21:17.970 I want to wrap up Loomis, take a quick break, 01:21:17.970 --> 01:21:19.860 and then we'll come back. 01:21:19.860 --> 01:21:22.560 Let me just close out with Loomis. 01:21:22.560 --> 01:21:24.750 What happens after the war? 01:21:24.750 --> 01:21:27.000 He's created these amazing institutions. 01:21:27.000 --> 01:21:29.280 He's played an absolutely critical role 01:21:29.280 --> 01:21:31.590 in both getting the Rad Lab created 01:21:31.590 --> 01:21:35.600 and in getting Los Alamos and then the Manhattan projects 01:21:35.600 --> 01:21:36.290 accelerated. 01:21:36.290 --> 01:21:37.155 It's quite a story. 01:21:40.320 --> 01:21:42.270 We just talked about the ideology. 01:21:42.270 --> 01:21:43.890 He's an adherent of conservatism. 01:21:43.890 --> 01:21:49.320 He doesn't believe in a strong federal-dominating kind of role 01:21:49.320 --> 01:21:53.680 in R&D. So he and Vannevar Bush literally, 01:21:53.680 --> 01:21:57.510 as soon as the war ends, dismantle the Rad Lab. 01:21:57.510 --> 01:22:02.040 So MIT is left with this weird wooden building. 01:22:02.040 --> 01:22:06.705 And a fair amount of that is Building 20. 01:22:09.390 --> 01:22:15.940 Loomis divorces his wife, marries 01:22:15.940 --> 01:22:21.760 the wife of his research director for Tuxedo Park. 01:22:21.760 --> 01:22:26.950 They live in a Mies van der Rohe-like glass house 01:22:26.950 --> 01:22:30.250 on the site of Tuxedo Park. 01:22:30.250 --> 01:22:33.010 Loomis also happens to own Hilton Head. 01:22:33.010 --> 01:22:36.520 So they spent a nice time down there. 01:22:36.520 --> 01:22:38.740 He just quietly fades. 01:22:38.740 --> 01:22:42.850 He kind of quietly, kind of after this amazing activist 01:22:42.850 --> 01:22:47.343 role, and he faces a certain amount of social ostracism 01:22:47.343 --> 01:22:48.760 because of this divorce, which was 01:22:48.760 --> 01:22:53.020 considered pretty scandalous in that era, and it affects him. 01:22:53.020 --> 01:22:56.100 So he kind of withdraws from society 01:22:56.100 --> 01:22:57.580 in some interesting kind of ways. 01:22:57.580 --> 01:23:01.570 But he kind of does this fade out 01:23:01.570 --> 01:23:06.880 in places like his Mies van der Rohe glass house 01:23:06.880 --> 01:23:08.800 and on Hilton head. 01:23:08.800 --> 01:23:13.660 And the Rad Lab itself, Building 20, becomes very famous at MIT, 01:23:13.660 --> 01:23:17.080 as those of you engineers will understand this, 01:23:17.080 --> 01:23:20.430 but this is anything-goes space. 01:23:20.430 --> 01:23:25.000 And it's an engineering dream. 01:23:25.000 --> 01:23:27.070 When the returning vets come back World War II, 01:23:27.070 --> 01:23:29.930 this is thrown into a dormitory. 01:23:29.930 --> 01:23:33.190 A lot of returning vets had learned gun play 01:23:33.190 --> 01:23:34.510 during the course of the war. 01:23:34.510 --> 01:23:37.750 There's an old shooting gallery in the basement. 01:23:37.750 --> 01:23:40.820 The stories are wild. 01:23:40.820 --> 01:23:44.920 It was made from Hurricane of 1936 wood that 01:23:44.920 --> 01:23:48.310 crashed all over New Hampshire, and they just trucked it down. 01:23:48.310 --> 01:23:51.670 This lasts for another more than a half century at MIT. 01:23:51.670 --> 01:23:54.010 And it's like the wide-open experiment. 01:23:54.010 --> 01:23:55.780 You can blow the place up, anything 01:23:55.780 --> 01:23:58.630 goes kind of space, which is great in science. 01:23:58.630 --> 01:24:00.862 I mean, you really want some of that space where 01:24:00.862 --> 01:24:02.320 you can do anything and don't worry 01:24:02.320 --> 01:24:05.350 about blowing the building up and knocking it down. 01:24:05.350 --> 01:24:08.140 So it becomes this great creative center at MIT, 01:24:08.140 --> 01:24:13.150 and lots of stuff happens there, not quite related to science, 01:24:13.150 --> 01:24:15.760 but Noam Chomsky invents the whole field 01:24:15.760 --> 01:24:17.364 of linguistics in Building 20. 01:24:17.364 --> 01:24:18.406 AUDIENCE: Does he really? 01:24:18.406 --> 01:24:18.904 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Huh? 01:24:18.904 --> 01:24:19.900 AUDIENCE: Does he really? 01:24:19.900 --> 01:24:20.170 WILLIAM BONVILLIAN: Yeah. 01:24:20.170 --> 01:24:20.590 Really. 01:24:20.590 --> 01:24:21.090 It's true. 01:24:21.090 --> 01:24:22.120 In this building. 01:24:22.120 --> 01:24:24.350 So it's wild wide-open space. 01:24:24.350 --> 01:24:26.275 So when Frank Gehry is brought in 01:24:26.275 --> 01:24:30.500 to tear this down and put the Stata Center in its place, 01:24:30.500 --> 01:24:36.220 he tries to preserve some of that funky wide-open cement 01:24:36.220 --> 01:24:41.180 open space culture to sponsor its experimentalist feeling, 01:24:41.180 --> 01:24:45.070 which I think he actually does fairly successfully. 01:24:45.070 --> 01:24:49.912 And indeed, in those wild CSAIL laboratories behind glass, 01:24:49.912 --> 01:24:51.370 pretty much anything goes up there. 01:24:51.370 --> 01:24:54.540 It's a pretty interesting space.