Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America (Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science) by Audra J. Wolfe

Johns Hopkins Introductory Studies in the History of Science

by Audra J. Wolfe

For most of the second half of the twentieth century, the United States and its allies competed with a hostile Soviet Union in almost every way imaginable except open military engagement. The Cold War placed two opposite conceptions of the good society before the uncommitted world and history itself, and science figured prominently in the picture. Competing with the Soviets offers a short, accessible introduction to the special role that science and technology played in maintaining state power during the Cold War, from the atomic bomb to the Human Genome Project.

The high-tech machinery of nuclear physics and the space race are at the center of this story, but Audra J. Wolfe also examines the surrogate battlefield of scientific achievement in such diverse fields as urban planning, biology, and economics; explains how defense-driven federal investments created vast laboratories and research programs; and shows how unfamiliar worries about national security and corrosive questions of loyalty crept into the supposedly objective scholarly enterprise.

Based on the assumption that scientists are participants in the culture in which they live, Competing with the Soviets looks beyond the debate about whether military influence distorted science in the Cold War. Scientists’ choices and opportunities have always been shaped by the ideological assumptions, political mandates, and social mores of their times. The idea that American science ever operated in a free zone outside of politics is, Wolfe argues, itself a legacy of the ideological Cold War that held up American science, and scientists, as beacons of freedom in contrast to their peers in the Soviet Union. Arranged chronologically and thematically, the book highlights how ideas about the appropriate relationships among science, scientists, and the state changed over time.

Genres: Science, History, American History, Technology, Politics, Russian History, Geography

Paperback

First published December 6, 2012

About the author

am a writer, editor, and historian based in Philadelphia. With a background in both science (B.S., chemistry, Purdue University, 1997) and history (Ph.D., history and sociology of science, University of Pennsylvania, 2002), I’ve been thinking through the relationship between science and power for more than two decades. My work specifically focuses on the role of science during the Cold War, a period when science held a special place in maintaining and projecting state power.

My first book, Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America (2013), explored the power of science and technology as “stuff”: weapons, rockets, labs, and so on. Since then, my research has moved into the fascinating and disturbing topic of propaganda and psychological warfare. My new book, Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science (November 2018), looks at the power of the idea of science. What does it mean to think of science as apolitical, as objective, as separate from state institutions during an era of total ideological warfare? How did Cold Warriors hope to use these ideas to sway potential allies to their side? How do these Cold War-era ideas about “apolitical science” continue to influence our thinking about the appropriate role for science in public life today?

In addition to my work as a writer and historian, I operate an editorial and publishing consulting company, The Outside Reader, that helps writers of serious nonfiction develop their craft. I offer both on-site and online publishing workshops. I’ve also worked in scholarly publishing, radio production, and university teaching.

Reviews

[Nils · Rating 5 out of 5]

A superb short synthetic narrative of the role of American scientists (and to a somewhat lesser extent technologists) in the competition with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It discusses both how science and technology was used in America to compete with the Soviet Union - everything from creating weapons systems (nuclear weapons above all) to promoting economic and social development (both at home in the form of the Great Society and abroad in the form of modernization) to demonstrating prestige (for example with the moonshoot) - as well as how the Cold War deformed the practice of science, both by providing vast new resources (particularly before the 1970s) and by directing those resources toward ends defined by military and defense imperatives. But Wolfe also has an insightful interpretation to offer of the way that the anti-war movement's revolt against military involvement in academic life led to the move of research off campus, while the economic crisis of the 1970s along with detente shifted the logic of and justification for government funding for scientific research away from a purely national-security frame and more toward the economic benefits that scientific research could offer society. This led to the privatization of the benefits of science (a watershed here was the Bayh-Dole act of 1980, which allowed and indeed encouraged universities to profit from patents produced by their researchers) and a shift of resources away from basic science and toward "translational" (e.g. commercializable) efforts.

In part because it is briskly written and relatively short (176p), this book would be excellent to teach. If it has any weakness it is that its strong focus on the Cold War's role in and impact on the American academy, it leaves the reader a little blind to the research that was taking place outside academic contexts, ranging from Xerox PARC and IBM during the heyday of the Cold War (and the fact that the Silicon Valley was almost entirely built on the back of government contracts), to the vast new forms of extra-academic research taking place, particularly in the biosciences. She implies but does not quite show that this migration of research activities away from government funded activity on university campuses into the private sector created a loss, but this is not proven. Certainly the focus has increasingly been on private benefit rather than science as a public good, but the claim that this entails a loss (which I agree with) needs to be argued in a way that the book doesn't take on. Specifically, it would have been helpful to have some discussion of the criticality of "openness" and sharing to the process of scientific advance, a process compromised by intellectual property regimes or organizations who regard their research as trade secrets. It also would need to be demonstrated (or at least argued more forcefully) that the allocation of resources under a private-sector and profit-oriented scientific regime is necessarily less likely to produce public benefits. Certainly this perspective runs deeply counter to the master narrative of Silicon Valley and the so-called California Ideology. In the end, however, these are quibbles in what is an otherwise excellent work.

[Daniel Watkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear prose that reads quickly. Brief, but informative and entertaining, a combination somewhat rare in academic writing.

[Tyler Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The history of the Cold War era is really brought to life in this book. Fascinating....

[Leif D. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great quick book - summary of the entire cold war. Slow to get going in 1st couple chapters but very interesting and fast paced after.

[Suzanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

So heavy on the science and the military's use of it that it was very difficult for me to a) find it interesting, and b)keep focused while reading it.

[Craig Werner · Rating 2 out of 5]

This best thing about this book is the bibliographical essay that follows the main text. The main body of the book never finds its center, leaving the individual chapters to stand or wobble on their own. I settled for the three stars primarily because the book's part of a series titled "Introductory Studies in the History of Science." Limited to 140 pages or so, Wolfe makes a couple of decisions I would have advised against. First, she brackets the history of medicine out, instead incorporating the "social sciences," which have always seemed to me mostly social and not much science. That's defensible given that this was the period during which the sociologists and economics laid claim to the authority and funding that were busily accruing to the sciences. But she never addresses the significance of or problems with those claims in any detail. Second, she spends way too much time on the general social/political background of the era, providing cursory and at times slightly questionable overviews of complicated social contexts. Her discussion of the scholarship and arguments surrounding race, for example, just aren't trustworthy. Stylistically, she's stays about a level and a half too general for my taste, providing the take-home messages with very little concrete evidence demonstrating why those conclusions make sense. In effect, that forces readers to accept her own authority. I'm sympathetic to the challenges of writing synthetic history, but the key is knowing which specifics to incorporate. Can't recommend it either for beginners or for specialists.

[Brandon T. · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Cold War spurred the United States to the forefront of science. Funding skyrocketed, and institutions created for the war effort in the 1940s were repurposed to feed the so-called “military-academic-industrial complex.”

With the growth of big science came inspiring projects, deadly inventions, and a common belief that science held the key to social ills across the world.

Competing with the Soviets chronicles the justifications by scientific, political and military leaders for some of the largest scientific endeavors in the country during the period from the end of World War II through the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Audra J. Wolfe’s narrative is academic and straightforward. She refrains from passing judgment on many of the actors, while at the same time illuminating rifts and alliances between the participants through their own words and activities.

Some of the historical facts explored in her book will surprise readers, such as the overwhelming control that military researchers held over some university labs until the 1960s.

Competing with the Soviets follows a loosely chronological order, but it is simultaneously structured around central themes. This can occasionally make sorting through events confusing.

Wolfe’s book is an essential addition to anyone wishing to understand how scientific institutions in the U.S. came to be structured the way they are today, as well as the role science played in perpetuating the Cold War.