entire book - Chris Hables Gray

Military Computerdom [ 55 ]
remarkable little dream weapons were estimated to cost $1.4 million each in
1990, up from an estimate of $100,000 each in 1988. Wood claimed they
would be "very capable" against a "light" attack from a Third World country.
Still, according to the trade journal Military Space, the "technical strains over
Brilliant Pebbles are matched by a search for political justification" (Military
Space Staff, 1990a, pp. 1,7-8).
Brilliant pebbles aside, computing was the most intractable problem of
SDL As one SDI computing researcher told Military Space:
Progress has been uneven. Some areas, such as weapon target assignment
algorithms, have proved to be easier than expected. In other areas, such
as software producibihty and man-in-the-loop, we don't even know all the
questions we need to ask. (1988b, p. 1)
DARPA claimed great success for the SCP, and the industry press usually
agreed. There was real progress in hardware production, increased processing
speeds, and the successful prototyping of some of the new symbolic processors
that calculate with logical propositions instead of numbers. In other areas,
especially software development and AI production, there was failure.
The Military-Industrial Community
Insiders call it a community. From outside it has been labeled the iron
triangle, the military—industrial complex, and the culture of procurement.
Since the 1950s thousands of high-ranking military and civilian DoD employees
have gone to work for defense contractors and thousands of contractor
employees have gotten DoD jobs managing contracts (Fallows, 1982, p.
65).
Consider the case of Advanced Decision Systems (ADS), a California
firm with AI contracts for Star Wars and the AirLand battle manager. San
Jose Mercury reporter Susan Faludi (1986) discovered that a number of top
ADS managers come from the same halls of the Pentagon where the
contracts originated. One common connection is to have industry scientists
sit on the advisory panels that recommend more of their products to the
military. ADS enjoyed a number of such interfaces. It doesn't make for the
most rigorous oversight. Many of the computer scientists at ADS admitted
to Faludi that there was no possibility of meeting the claims in their contract
bids. Said one young computer whiz of the Pentagon brass he worked with,
"Most of what my clients want is fantasy. You tell them whatever they want
to hear and then you do whatever you want" (p. 13).
It is the same with other programs. Senator Carl Levin s Subcommittee
on Government Management found that out of ten experts reporting from