Harry Targ,
As the short video below points out the production of weapons is intimately connected to foreign policy. And as President Eisenhower warned a long time ago the military/industrial complex would be penetrating, shaping, and distorting every institution and policy in the United States. And, as the essay below suggests, this penetration includes universities and local communities. May 12, 2022.
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“Purdue is advancing a broad defense innovation capability, distinguished by its depth, breadth, and speed, with the goal of contributing to our nation’s third offset strategy of innovation by integration of existing strengths and forming new partnerships. The depth in quality and creativity of Purdue research centers is, and will remain, our strongest asset. The breadth responds to the need expressed by multiple DoD customers for a ‘total package’: new, integrated solutions (technologies, transition), new talent (graduates highly trained in relevant problems), and new modes of knowledge access (personnel exchange, training, distance education)."
Purdue University researchers conducted over $40M of
sponsored research in the 2014-2015 academic year and, in doing so,
educated hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students in cutting
edge technologies.” https://www.purdue.edu/research/defense-innovation/
“NDIA, in partnership with Purdue University, will host a
comprehensive program on hypersonic systems. Together with government,
industry, and academia, NDIA will present the technical foundations of
hypersonic systems, the current approach to rapidly developing hypersonic
capabilities, and the warfighter, policy, and acquisition perspectives on
delivering a sustainable operational capability” "2019 Hypersonics
Capabilities Conference," NDIA 100, ndia.org.
The National Defense Industry Association NDIA is an
association of defense industry contractors who lobby for increased military
expenditures. Its members are described as “informed opinion leaders” dedicated
to improved national security.
Purdue
University is launching a center to advocate for Taiwan as a trusted partner
and encourage US investment in the nation, former US undersecretary of state
for economic growth, energy and the environment Keith Krach told a news
conference in Taipei yesterday
Krach, chairman of the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue, first announced plans for the establishment of the Taiwan Center for Innovation and Prosperity before his arrival in Taiwan on Wednesday for a four-day visit.\
The center would be a partnership between public and private sectors in the US and Taiwan to “advocate for Taiwan internationally and attract more global partners,” the institute said.
Purdue
launching center to advocate for Taiwan
- By Liu Tzu-hsuan / Staff reporter
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Purdue’s Discovery Park launched in 2001 with a grant from the state of Indiana and expanded by a $25 million Lilly Endowment as a nanotechnology center. Today it is a $1.15 billion research and learning complex that combines Purdue’s expertise in science, engineering, technology, and biology, with connections to the corporate world. As its website suggests: “Leveraging Lilly Endowment’s investment, Discovery Park has created an innovative environment where major global challenges are examined objectively, generating new ideas and directions for future generations.”
One of Discovery Park’s core strengths
is “Global Security.” Key research on this subject is designed to respond to
security threats, global instability, defense needs, terrorism, nuclear deterrence
and proliferation, basically responding to “the most pressing security and
defense challenges facing the nation and the world.”
Chief Discovery Park scientist,
Professor Tomas Diaz de la Rubia posted an essay entitled “The New Future of
Warfare” (Purdue University Discovery Park Vice President’s Blog, (October 1,
2018). In it he addressed the emerging salience of new military technologies
based on artificial intelligence (AI) and war. De la Rubia speculated that
future wars will not be fought on battlefields but rather in cities or in
cyberspace. New AI weapons of war in the hands of presumed enemies could
constitute an existential threat to the survival of the United States.
Discovery Park, he indicated, is already engaged in vital research on biomorphic
robots, automatic target recognition for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, automatic
targeting for drones, and other technologies. In short, a core Discovery Park
mission includes the preparation for and implementation of war. And this is
necessary because as Professor de la Rubia argued:
“It has become apparent that the U.S.
is no longer guaranteed top dog status on the dance card that is the future of
war. In order to maintain military superiority the focus must shift from
traditional weapons of war to advanced systems that rely on A.I.-based
weaponry. The stakes are just too high and the prize too great for the U.S. to
be left behind. All the more reason to call upon Purdue University and its
inestimable capacity to weave together academia, research, and industry for the
greater good. We’re stepping up to secure our place in the future of our
country, and there’s much more to come!” He warned that China had announced
that it would overtake the US by 2030 in the global artificial intelligence
market.
These statements illustrate that Purdue University, a large land-grant university, increasingly is committing its skills to research, development, training, and the production of the instruments of war. Such commitments have been made with little discussion in the broader university community.
President Eisenhower in 1960 warned
about an unwarranted growth of the influence of the military/industrial complex
in American society. Today he would characterize the danger as the
military/industrial/academic complex. It includes the shifting of the research
and education missions of higher education away from human development to
war-making.
These qualitative changes in
university priorities are being made largely in non-transparent decision-making
ways. But when challenged, the military/industrial/academic complex tends to
defend its existence by claiming war is inevitable. And to secure support, when
questioned, self-identified experts construct narratives of enemies; whether
they be the Communists, the terrorists, China, the Cubans, the Venezuelans,
artificial intelligence, or all of the above. As Andrew Bacevich so
compellingly has argued, ever since the end of World War Two, the United States
has created a “permanent war economy.” Given the increasing financial
challenges universities face in the twenty-first century, collaboration with
this permanent war economy becomes attractive to university administrators.
For more on the concept of the military/industrial complex see:
https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2010/12/speeches-that-speak-to-our-times.html
And the military/industrial/academic complex:
https://heartlandradical.blogspot.com/2022/06/the-militaryindustrial-academic-complex.html
For a discussion about competing paradigms in the study of international relations see:
