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Saturday, April 28, 2001
A Disquisition on the Strategy of Technology, originally in View 30. It is probably worth keeping a bit closer to the book.
I mentioned Strategy of Technology in a recent letter to subscribers, and discovered that some had never heard of it. That goes to show that this web site is more complicated than it ought to be, and suggests that I need to do more work on organization to let people know what's here. Herewith a short explanation: Fair warning: this is done informally and from memory, and I may have one or two details wrong. Strategy of Technology was written in the 60's and published in 1970. The authors of record were Stefan T. Possony and Jerry Pournelle, and the book, long out of print, was published by Dunellen The University Press of Cambridge, Mass., which no longer exists. There was in fact a third author, Francis X. Kane, Ph.D., (Col. USAF, Ret'd) then the Director of Plans for USAF Systems Command. The book was a success d' estime: that is, it was quite influential, but sold something under 20,000 copies, and went out of print when the publisher vanished. For a while it was a textbook in all three Service Academies and remained so for several years at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It was also used at the Air War College in Alabama and the National War College, and it's my understanding that Xerox copies are used (with our permission) in some classes at the war colleges to this day. Strategy of Technology was very much a book for the Seventy Years War (or Cold War if you like); although the principles remain true and important, all the examples are pretty well drawn from that conflict and specifics are directed to weaknesses in the nomenklatura system that governed the USSR in those times. Over the years we rewrote some of the chapters and published them in various places including my own THERE WILL BE WAR series (books that were about 3/4 science fiction but which contained significant non-fiction essays on military history and principles). Dr. Possony had a disabling stroke in the mid-1980's and died shortly after the Cold War ended; he was lucid enough to know that the USSR was brought down, and that he had been a key player in that game. As one of the authors of the seminal THE PROTRACTED CONFLICT (with Robert Strausz-Hupe and William Kintner) as well as STRATEGY OF TECHNOLOGY, and in countless other ways, he had a major influence in winning the Seventy Years War. In my judgment we would not have won the Cold War without him; he was one of the great men of this century although few have heard of him today. The book has been out of print for years, and when this web site began I was urged to make copies available here, which I did. I have posted the "revised" edition, which contains most of the first edition, prefaces, and some extensively reworked chapters done mostly by Kane and myself, although Stefan had a hand in some of the earlier revision, and we did discuss the later ones with him. After his stroke he remained aware but had great difficulty in communication, which produced extreme frustration as he tried to convey important thoughts that came out incoherently; a very painful situation for all concerned. The html code which presents the book with extensive notes was done by professionals working as volunteers, and has some minor flaws, (I would be grateful to anyone who can correct them) but the book can be read here. I have been urged to make it available in Acrobat pdf format, but I have never had the time to do so. Perhaps one day. When we put it up here we called it an experiment in shareware, and I asked that if you read the book you send me a dollar; a dollar bill in an envelope will do. Some have also added a couple of dollars to checks sent as subscriptions to this web site. Over the years that has amounted to a couple of hundred dollars, and at his birthday party a week or so ago Dr. Kane and I agreed that rather than divide this small sum, I'll just send it all to Dr. Possony's widow, who still lives in Mountain View. Regina Possony was a survivor of Stalin's prison camps (they met in the United States after both had fled). She was born in Berlin and her father was an influential Communist politician who fled with his family to the USSR on the rise of Hitler; they were of course put into a labor camp. As both Jews and Communists they would hardly have survived in Berlin, so a Russian camp was a stark but better alternative to remaining in Nazi Germany. As a young girl Mrs. Possony had met Albert Einstein on a family visit to the United States, and from the USSR prison camp wrote him a letter addressed to "Dr. Albert Einstein, United States of America". The US Post Office delivered it to him at Princeton University. Einstein was gracious enough to reply, and even to send a small package of food and hygienic goods, which raised her status somewhat in Stalin's estimation. After Stefan's stroke she singlehandedly kept him alive for a decade when no one expected him to live a month. Stefan T. Possony was a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution until he died. He had formerly been a Professor of Political Science at Georgetown University, and a Pentagon intelligence officer for the United States. Prior to the invasion of France in 1940 he was an intelligence officer in the French Air Ministry, to which he came from the Air Ministry of Czechoslovakia. His escape from France during the confusion of the Fall of France was a fascinating story; at one point he contemplated using a kayak to paddle to Spain, but managed to get one of the last tickets to Oran. He had fled Czechoslovakia during the Nazi invasion. He had come to Prague from Vienna, where he obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Vienna and joined the Schusschnigg ministry opposing the Anschluss with Germany; he was on the Gestapo's wanted list, and left for Czechoslovakia as the Wehrmacht rode in. He used to say that the Gestapo got his library three times, in Vienna, Prague, and Paris. In the 70's and early 80's Stefan was quietly influential, directing several Pentagon studies of Soviet leadership and strategy. His biography of Lenin is still about the best tool for understanding the founder of the USSR. Alas it is long out of print. Stefan Possony was perhaps the single most important member of my Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy which among other duties assisted Dr. Kane in writing Transition Team papers on space and military policy for the incoming Reagan Administration. Possony was one of the major architects of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Strategy of Technology introduced the notion of a strategy of "assured survival" in contrast to "assured destruction" and Assured Survival is the title of one chapter of that book. Dr. Kane and I would like to revise the book and get it back in print, since the principles seem even more important now than they were when it was written. We're both getting old enough that we wonder if that will happen, but it should. As written it's still worth reading (in my judgment), and several War College students have used it as part of their advanced degree work. Revising it was going to be the project of one USAF officer at the post graduate school, but he was needed as director of a weapons lab and left the school before that could be done. Meanwhile, the book exists here. Jerry Pournelle Studio City, CA Saturday, January 09, 1999
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