[SIGCIS-Members] The National Security Agency and Technological Change

[Brian Randell]

Hi:

I recently saw, on another mailing list, an interesting post from Lee Vinsel which contained the comment:

"As a historian of technology, I am interested in how PRISM and the other NSA programs fit into a longer trajectory, namely how government spending and programs shape technological change. I have not read anyone discussing this issue explicitly yet."

I asked Lee for permission to copy his post across to the SIGCIS mailing list - he suggested that instead I draw the mailing list's attention to a revised blog post he has since written. This is at:

  http://americanscience.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/the-national-security-agency-and.html

and starts:

> This post builds on the one Lukas put up last week. Most commentaries on the Snowden Affair, PRISM, and the other NSA programs that have come to light have focused on whether these programs are constitutional, whether Snowden is a hero or villain or something else, and, now, what these programs will mean for US foreign relations. I have also heard people ask how any of us could be surprised by these programs, and for a few days, people spent a lot of time talking about Snowden's girlfriend's pole-dancing skills. In other words, the Snowden Affair has all the markings of a major American media event. 
> 
> In this post, I'd like to exercise the historian's prerogative by exploring how these NSA programs fit into a longer historical trajectory, namely how government spending and procurement influence technological change.
> The history and sociology of science and technology are full of well-known stories of how government funding affected the direction and growth of technological innovation. The best known stories in the United States have to do with technical advances made at MIT, Harvard, and Los Alamos during World War II and the wide variety of scientific breakthroughs and technologies that emerged from Cold War defense spending. (Mark Buchanan recently put up an entertaining postabout the many technologies that ultimately have roots in government spending.) There are many earlier examples in the United States from WWI and even the 19th century. Of course, any comprehensive history of the military-science-technology relationship would have to go back much further; in the West, right through 18th century French science societies through da Vinci at least back to Archimedes. 
> 
> We can assume that spending on intelligence and the technology that undergirds it exploded after 9/11. 9/11 was to the surveillance-industrial complex what Sputnik was for Cold War sci-tech funding. It would be interesting to know whether the programs that developed after that date were merely extensions—if massively scaled up extensions—of things that were already in the works. It would also be interesting to know how many new programs developed after that date (versus building on old programs).
> 
> But it would also be fascinating to learn how these programs have influenced technological change, if at all. Do fundamentally new and largely unknown computing technologies lay behind the NSA's capabilities. Are these capabilities mostly the result of hugely scaling up technologies that are already well known (server farms, data mining algorithms, etc.)? Or will we look back at the NSA's programs as greatly changing computing technologies? If so, which companies would have produced these technologies for the agency? Mostly defense contractors? Or mostly computing firms? Or might the government have its own internal R&D shops? 
 <snip>

Cheers

Brian Randell

School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell