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<p>Hey Bernard,</p>
<p>Some of RAND's work is accessible via the <a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/">
Vietnam Center and Sam Johnson Vietnam Archive</a>, and I would believe the report to which Werbos contributed might be this one:
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://vva.vietnam.ttu.edu/repositories/2/digital_objects/198329">
Rand Document, the Relative Impact of U.S. Military Action on Viet Cong / North Vietnamese Attacks in South Vietnam: Preliminaries to A Computer Simulation</a><br>
</p>
<p>To locate the NY Times article, the exact date would be useful.</p>
<p>Hope that helps, glad to chat for further exchange.</p>
<p>All the best,</p>
<p>Moritz</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Am 30.03.26 um 10:44 schrieb Bernard Geoghegan via Members:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:CAFAAA1TnMP3Zzpj91faEFCazZy2Wzsjmh5gx-HcxmgA-7MOMEQ@mail.gmail.com">
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<div>Dear colleagues with RAND and Vietnam War expertise! </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>In an interview in the book <i>Talking Nets</i>, Paul Werbos, an earlier developer of backpropagation algorithms, tells a story (excerpted below) about a project he worked on for RAND that got leaked to the New York Times. I've emailed with Werbos, but
he doesn't seem to have a handy citation for the NY Times report. Does anyone happen to know the report he has in mind or tips on how to locate the report or a gloss on his work for RAND? There are a few comments in Boden's two volume study of AI, but it appears
her reconstruction is imprecise. Alternately, I'm not planning a RAND archives deep-dive or site visit, but maybe someone has advice for a well targeted remote search request I could file? This is just a little footnote for a larger project, so I'm trying
to not get too sidetracked. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin:0cm;line-height:18.4px;font-family:Aptos,sans-serif;color:rgb(0,0,0)">
Werbos reports: “I went back to Harvard to get a PhiD. in applied math. Having been fortified with humanity from London, I then descended into the bowels of the machine , stopping off at the RAND Corporation for the summer of 1968 along the way....Actually,
I did learn a thing that summer that surprised me. It turned out one of their problems was coming up with a measure of success in the Vietnam War....I looked for stable invariants , and they were things like Vietcong attacks on Americans. That was the best
stable invariant underlying measure. I used that as a success measure and came to the conclusion that we' should radically change our policy and do things like small unit actions instead of these large sweeps...Of course , it was all classified , and I read
it on the front page of the New York Times two weeks later, which immediately made me very cynical about American security. The minute it’s useful , it’s on the front page of the New York Times. That made me very cynical- that event plus a few other things
that happened at the RAND Corporation.”</p>
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<br>
</p>
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Best wishes, Bernard </p>
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<br>
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</blockquote>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr. Moritz J. Feichtinger
Universität Basel | Departement Geschichte
SNF-Ambizione Fellow
Hirschgässlein 21 | CH-4051 Basel
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:moritz.feichtinger@unibas.ch">moritz.feichtinger@unibas.ch</a>
moritzfeichtinger.net
computingthesocial.net
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1260-8884">https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1260-8884</a>
Offline Fridays!</pre>
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