6 ms·

When RAND made magic in Santa Monica

145 points by mitchbob 2y ago

Animats 2y ago
Gen. LeMay was in charge of RAND? Didn't know that. He was the "bomb them back to the Stone Age" general. The USAF was insanely well funded in the 1950's. The military got about 40% of the US government budget back then. The USAF bought most of the world's transistors. They ran several ICBM programs, a bomber program, SAGE, and accumulated huge fleets of aircraft. Even the mediocre airplanes where produced in large quantity. The B-47, the first good jet bomber, was built in quantity 2,042. In comparison, only 744 B-52 bombers were ever built, and many of those are still in use.
- joe_the_user 2y ago
  I recall that one of Rand's area of research was how a nation could survive a nuclear attack. They definitely nuclear hawks. The USAF may get less of the budget as percentage of GDP but I'd wager the budget might equivalent in absolute terms since US economy is larger. I think the real reason they have far fewer planes deployed is this: "The cost of acquiring and maintaining major posture components has tended to grow in real terms over time" [1] as a Rand Corporation report circa 1990 observed. [1] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R3807.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R380... p. 7
  - BJones12 2y ago
    >The USAF may get less of the budget as percentage of GDP but I'd wager the budget might equivalent in absolute terms since US economy is larger. In 1952 the military budget was 41.4 billion. A CPI calculator [1] puts that at 486.98 billion today. The current budget is 910 billion [2]. So the military budget has doubled since 1952. [0] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-budget-message-the-congress-fiscal-year-1952 https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-budget-mess... [1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=41.40&year1=195305&year2=202405 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=41.40&year1=19... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
  - moandcompany 2y ago
    While people may like to call the RAND Corporation as an entity of "nuclear hawks," it seems a bit dismissive of the mission and nature of what the RAND Corporation was chartered to do. They were tasked, and encouraged, to apply their creativity, brain power, quantitative skills, to study decision spaces, future possibilities and analyze these to arrive at recommendations and methods for best achieving desired outcomes, as well as identifying and understanding blind spots in thinking. In the above context of nuclear war, I don't believe nuclear war was an organizationally desired outcome, however they had to contemplate it and its implications. This is the organization that concluded based on application of quantitative methods (e.g. game theory) that for example, pursuing a credible strategy of mutually assured destruction was objectively the best way to avoid a nuclear war. I recommend looking for references to the phrase "Thinking the Unthinkable" to get additional insight to some of RAND's studies.
    - Spooky23 2y ago
      Think tanks are not about the talent, they are about who pays the bills. The USAF paid the bills. The guy signing the checks was Curtis LeMay, who was a… reactionary who ended up as running mate to the George Wallace. He was an enthusiastic proponent of nuclear war and inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. MAD came a bit later, many of the key folks assumed and accepted that nuclear conflict was inevitable. And they may have been right.
      - ferfumarma 2y ago
        The article provides several concrete examples where RAND drew conclusions counter to the implied interests of the USAF. In the absence of counterexamples your argument sounds plausible, but incorrect.
        Spooky23 2y ago
        Fortunately, other resources exist. Try reading the book “Soldiers of Reason”. RAND was literally founded to figure out how to wage nuclear war. It evolved after Vietnam. Particularly in the 50s and early 60s, the firm was the brain of the Air Force, period. In that era, several of the principals fully expected that there would be a nuclear exchange in the 60s or 70s.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    I thought the reason for fewer bombers was the development of the icbm and related ship or sub based ordinance obviated the need for such a force
- jdougan 2y ago
  LeMay was a pussycat compared to General Thomas Power. > Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power
  - sillywalk 2y ago
    Professor William Kaufmann from the RAND Corporation, losing his patience, noted: "Well, you'd better make sure that they're a man and a woman."
  - vkou 2y ago
    Utter madness, and correctly derided as such when the 'enemy' expresses such sentiments.
AlbertCory 2y ago
I had an offer from them. Thankfully, I turned it down for Xerox. (this was much later than most of the events described in here(
- b20000 2y ago
  what was the reason?
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    You're really asking "why choose Xerox, the Office of the Future, over a mainframe job?"
    - b20000 2y ago
      i thought xerox parc had lost its glamour and was being mismanaged by the parent company… maybe that was just a rumour
      - jhbadger 2y ago
        He's talking about 50 years or so ago -- he was there during the glory days of PARC.
      - AlbertCory 2y ago
        "Xerox PARC" is not one word. This whole story has been discussed here ad nauseum. There are several books on it, including one by me.
moandcompany 2y ago
(Disclosure: I once worked at RAND, but at a much later time in its history) RAND's heydays were during the period of WW-II and post-war period including the so-called Cold-war era. From my point of view, RAND during its golden days was very much like Google or Bell Labs during their peaks, with many historically prominent computer scientists and mathematicians having worked at RAND in some capacity. Several people I had worked with were there during the golden days and would reflect on them with great nostalgia... Back then, special names we use today like "computer science" or "data science" were not commonly used. In this era, this field was simply called "Operations Research" (i.e. the application of quantitative methods and data analysis to improve operational and strategic decision making). - Without going off course too much, I previously made the case that places like the RAND Corporation for all practical purposed invented the field of what we call data science today, but may so-called data science practitioners would not know what the RAND Corporation was, nor would many people at the RAND Corporation in modern times have connected the dots to recognize that they had pioneered this field. For anyone interested in reading more on the theme of applying quantitative methods / operations research in the area of US public policy, it's reading about the "Whiz Kids": - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defense) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen...
- helf 2y ago
  Thanks for the tidbits! I'm a huge fan of electronics and computer and related history. Id be interested in any stories you have about your time there :)
- ancorevard 2y ago
  Any books recommendations for this part of history?
  - moandcompany 2y ago
    Will try to update this post if I come across a good book. This RAND Blog Post covers activities that happened during RAND's first seventy-five years of history, which is still nice, as well as browsing through some of the publicly available papers and reports: - https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2023/rand-turns-75-a-look-through-the-decades.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2023/rand-turns-75-a-look... - https://www.rand.org/about/history.html https://www.rand.org/about/history.html - https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7857.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7857.html - https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2009/P3705.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2009/P3705... - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA255904.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA255904.pdf Books: - Soldiers of Reason (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2467227.Soldiers_Of_Reason https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2467227.Soldiers_Of_Reas...) I haven't read this book myself, but it may scratch your itch - History of Operations Research in the United States Army (https://books.google.com/books?id=KqtZ5XpcDHEC https://books.google.com/books?id=KqtZ5XpcDHEC) Some articles on RAND in general: - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1963/09/the-rand-corporation-and-our-policy-makers/658922/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1963/09/the-ran... - https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/22120/rand-corporation-think-tank-controls-america https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/22120/rand-corporation-t... Related back to the topic of "magic": - There's a RAND paper that I recall reading while I was there on designing an office campus for intentional serendipity as part of cultivating a research organization. I hope I can find a copy online so I can link it to this article, as many of the ideas were incorporated into the design of RAND's future/replacement campus in Santa Monica, CA. - The ideas on office/campus design were quite good and even included the subject of floor planning and desk assignments. Despite the inherent draw of organizations to divide office space by departments and functions, the RAND ideas were to deliberate interleave the locations of personnel such that people would have increased chances of collaborating with others that they would not naturally be drawn to directly in executing their work. This extended further to how walkways and passageways should be designed to connect floors, buildings etc... ensuring that people would pass by and see other people/functions/departments that they would not normally see or consider in their day-to-day work. I recall trying to cite some of these ideas when I worked in other research organizations (e.g. Google Research) where one of the principal complaints was siloing/lack of collaboration, yet teams were allowed to physically silo themselves in seating plans (by their own request/demands). - I never got to see the original campus, as it was demolished and later turned into a public park. However, the drawings and photographs of the original campus reminded me of something that resembled an American high school or small university campus. - There are many small details about working at RAND that were part of deliberate efforts to influence an individual's experiences and decisions to improve their creative/work potential. For example, the equivalent of Vacation/PTO time at RAND is called "sabbatical time." RAND employees were paid more, on an hourly equivalent rate, when taking their "sabbatical time" than for regular work time; this idea was not implemented to reduce financial liability of unspent PTO time for the company under modern standards, but because it was believed and understood --through research-- that employees were more likely to bring their best selves to work when having sufficient and periodic time away from their work -- often bringing back new ideas that wouldn't have emerged simply by grinding away at a problem... So they hoped to incentivize employees to take that time away from a problem by paying them more during their time off.
relaxing 2y ago
> One of my favorite past-times, particularly when conversation got too multi-voiced in the office, was to wander the corridors of the abandoned basement. The firm, it transpires, was in the process of constructing a brand spankin’ new office building, right next door. The old one was going to be torn down. So it was in a state of, shall we say, disrepair. In fact, it looked as though they’d stopped doing anything with it, several years earlier. > But I found the basement irresistible. It drew me in like a tractor beam. Long, stale, sunless corridors, cracked linoleum at your feet, illumined by flickering fluorescent light-fixtures. Like something out of (or inspired by) Last Year at Marienbad. Nary a footstep now treads down those halls, which had overheard such secrets, hushed whispers, momentous occasions and portentous events. > One day, to my surprise, I turned the corner, and there, sitting in his cell, was none other than Manuel Noriega, the ex-dictator of Panama. Seeing as how I did not know him personally, but recognized him from his many media appearances, I hastened to introduce myself. “How are they treating you?” I asked. “Si si, not so bad. Every now and then some junior CIA type comes in and we do some more – what is it, water-surfing? Boogie-boarding? No, no, water-boarding. But it is more for his pleasure, than mine.” I told him that the U.S. actually had given Panama the canal. “Yeah, I heard about that,” he replied. “But how about all of the new peoples who are there now, think of all of the opportunities for a little friendly mordida!” I said I was gonna mosey on, but I’d be back. “Please bring me some of the CDs by the band Pink Floyd,” he said. “They are like the thinking man’s AC/DC – I got so sick of all that puerile metal crap they were blasting at me when I was in the compound.” “Better than Sadam Hussein,” I replied. “They got him in a spider hole, and it didn’t look as though he was enjoying any music!” “They got Sadam, too?” he replied, querulously. - David Kronemyer, My Days at RAND Corporation https://web.archive.org/web/20080815050205/http://kronemyer.com/2007/07/15/uncategorized/my-days-at-the-bland-corporation/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080815050205/http://kronemyer....
- dayofthedaleks 2y ago
  Third paragraph marks this as a work of fabulism.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    It’s very much real.
prpl 2y ago
Is it too simple to just say the MBA happened?
- RandomCitizen12 2y ago
  Yes, that is too simple. That may not be accurate, and if accurate stifles investigation into the root cause.
photochemsyn 2y ago
RAND's role in the Vietnam War is widely derided on many grounds, from the highly unethical behavior exposed in the Pentagon Papers to technical incompetence in programs like Igloo White, the 'electronic fence' that was supposed to keep the NVA from infiltrating weapons, soldiers and supplies into South Vietnam. So maybe they were destroyed by largesse of the Vietnam War government contracting programs? Eisenhower's famous comments about the military industrial complex are well known, but the later bits of that speech are worth reading (and contrasting to a certain recent spectacle of ignominious incompetence): > "Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." > "It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."
- glompers 2y ago
  Great quotes.
maroonblazer 2y ago
RAND is a pretty remarkable organization. I recently came across their proposal for an independent Palestinian state, dated 2005, referred to as "The Arc". https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9119.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9119.html The above links to a more comprehensive PDF.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Curious why they didn’t think more simply in terms of their own back yard about about how the jews and arabs of southern california are able to live harmoniously.
nataz 2y ago
In my experience with RAND they always reminded me of a resource extraction company. Think oil and gas, but their trade was government contracts. Add in a couple of big names to justify the cost, staff it with jr people/post grads, shine it up with some fancy graphics and quant-ish formulas and poof, a million dollar study. Of all the FFRDC beltway bandit think tanks, they felt the most like an MBA consultant shop. Lots of overhead, questionable return on investment. While they do have history and prestige, I'm not convinced anything they deliver is uniquely insightful.
nimbius 2y ago
The thing that killed RAND was government oversight and neoliberalism. These days its not possible to innovate something like switched ethernet (which RAND had a hand in) unless you submit bids from forty GSA vendors and hold fifty meetings on which third party implementation consultants you need to hire for the work neoliberalism insists you not do anymore as a corporation because outsource culture is king. wrap it all up in a mountain of project managers and "best practices" because youre too chicken-shit to do anything that 200 other companies dont do, and viola. the punishment for failure FAR outweighs the reward for any breakthrough you think you can achieve. youre not a thinktank anymore youre just a consulting firm with a particularly attractive media spend.
robertclaus 2y ago
It feels like a place like this would easily attract top talent nowadays. Does anybody know of places actually operating this way other than a few skunk works teams reporting to bigger corporations?
- nine_k 2y ago
  Such organizations, while capable of bringing really large (and lucrative) breakthroughs, can't produce them reliably, let alone on a schedule. While at it, they require a constant and rather high upkeep. So they can only exist on thick streams of resources, which can be emitted either by huge corporations (Xerox PARC, Lockheed's skunkworks, IBM and Google research centers, etc), or governments, the latter almost invariably from its military branch.
dboreham 2y ago
My seasonal neighbor now in his 80s worked at RAND, and also studied under Ed Lorenz. This reminds me that I need to go spend some time with him before fall arrives.
surfingdino 2y ago
> We no longer live in an era when branches of the U.S. military can cut massive blank checks to think tanks in the interests of beating the Soviets. Well, that's about to change.
kayo_20211030 2y ago
Even in the late 60's and 70's, RAND did some seminal work in the modeling of estuarine and coastal flows using the computers of the day. It was incredibly practical work that was used through the 90's, and that's still cited today. They were wonderful papers for the time.
pphysch 2y ago
In 2019, RAND published Extending Russia [1], which explored various and prescient hostile means to deal with its current government. It recommended economic warfare against Russia, which, since 2022, will go down as one of the great geopolitical blunders of the 21st century. My questions are to what extent that report affected the openness and credibility of RAND? [1] - https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
- MaxPock 2y ago
  Their follow up report recommends pursuing a peace treaty as the war is no longer served Americas interests and is actually harmful.
PaulHoule 2y ago
This book https://www.amazon.com/If-Then-Simulmatics-Corporation-Invented/dp/1631496107 https://www.amazon.com/If-Then-Simulmatics-Corporation-Inven... describes the rise and fall of a would-be competitor to RAND that I enjoyed.
banish-m4 2y ago
I'm disgusted by the triumphal celebration of an atrophied cog in the military-industrial complex that monetized more efficient killing. Also, Stanford evaded their charter by forming SRI to do defense work, and hired from the USAF revolving door as well.
garcia3252 2y ago
[dead]
jonjacky 2y ago
RAND previously on HN: What is a think tank? (2022): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29829796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29829796

145 points by mitchbob 2y ago

Gen. LeMay was in charge of RAND? Didn't know that. He was the "bomb them back to the Stone Age" general. The USAF was insanely well funded in the 1950's. The military got about 40% of the US government budget back then. The USAF bought most of the world's transistors. They ran several ICBM programs, a bomber program, SAGE, and accumulated huge fleets of aircraft. Even the mediocre airplanes where produced in large quantity. The B-47, the first good jet bomber, was built in quantity 2,042. In comparison, only 744 B-52 bombers were ever built, and many of those are still in use.

joe_the_user 2y ago
I recall that one of Rand's area of research was how a nation could survive a nuclear attack. They definitely nuclear hawks. The USAF may get less of the budget as percentage of GDP but I'd wager the budget might equivalent in absolute terms since US economy is larger. I think the real reason they have far fewer planes deployed is this: "The cost of acquiring and maintaining major posture components has tended to grow in real terms over time" [1] as a Rand Corporation report circa 1990 observed. [1] https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R3807.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/reports/2009/R380... p. 7
- BJones12 2y ago
  >The USAF may get less of the budget as percentage of GDP but I'd wager the budget might equivalent in absolute terms since US economy is larger. In 1952 the military budget was 41.4 billion. A CPI calculator [1] puts that at 486.98 billion today. The current budget is 910 billion [2]. So the military budget has doubled since 1952. [0] https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-budget-message-the-congress-fiscal-year-1952 https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-budget-mess... [1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=41.40&year1=195305&year2=202405 https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=41.40&year1=19... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_by_year https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
- moandcompany 2y ago
  While people may like to call the RAND Corporation as an entity of "nuclear hawks," it seems a bit dismissive of the mission and nature of what the RAND Corporation was chartered to do. They were tasked, and encouraged, to apply their creativity, brain power, quantitative skills, to study decision spaces, future possibilities and analyze these to arrive at recommendations and methods for best achieving desired outcomes, as well as identifying and understanding blind spots in thinking. In the above context of nuclear war, I don't believe nuclear war was an organizationally desired outcome, however they had to contemplate it and its implications. This is the organization that concluded based on application of quantitative methods (e.g. game theory) that for example, pursuing a credible strategy of mutually assured destruction was objectively the best way to avoid a nuclear war. I recommend looking for references to the phrase "Thinking the Unthinkable" to get additional insight to some of RAND's studies.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    Think tanks are not about the talent, they are about who pays the bills. The USAF paid the bills. The guy signing the checks was Curtis LeMay, who was a… reactionary who ended up as running mate to the George Wallace. He was an enthusiastic proponent of nuclear war and inspiration for Dr. Strangelove. MAD came a bit later, many of the key folks assumed and accepted that nuclear conflict was inevitable. And they may have been right.
    - ferfumarma 2y ago
      The article provides several concrete examples where RAND drew conclusions counter to the implied interests of the USAF. In the absence of counterexamples your argument sounds plausible, but incorrect.
      - Spooky23 2y ago
        Fortunately, other resources exist. Try reading the book “Soldiers of Reason”. RAND was literally founded to figure out how to wage nuclear war. It evolved after Vietnam. Particularly in the 50s and early 60s, the firm was the brain of the Air Force, period. In that era, several of the principals fully expected that there would be a nuclear exchange in the 60s or 70s.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  I thought the reason for fewer bombers was the development of the icbm and related ship or sub based ordinance obviated the need for such a force
jdougan 2y ago
LeMay was a pussycat compared to General Thomas Power. > Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_S._Power
- sillywalk 2y ago
  Professor William Kaufmann from the RAND Corporation, losing his patience, noted: "Well, you'd better make sure that they're a man and a woman."
- vkou 2y ago
  Utter madness, and correctly derided as such when the 'enemy' expresses such sentiments.

AlbertCory 2y ago

I had an offer from them. Thankfully, I turned it down for Xerox. (this was much later than most of the events described in here(

b20000 2y ago
what was the reason?
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  You're really asking "why choose Xerox, the Office of the Future, over a mainframe job?"
  - b20000 2y ago
    i thought xerox parc had lost its glamour and was being mismanaged by the parent company… maybe that was just a rumour
    - jhbadger 2y ago
      He's talking about 50 years or so ago -- he was there during the glory days of PARC.
    - AlbertCory 2y ago
      "Xerox PARC" is not one word. This whole story has been discussed here ad nauseum. There are several books on it, including one by me.

moandcompany 2y ago

(Disclosure: I once worked at RAND, but at a much later time in its history) RAND's heydays were during the period of WW-II and post-war period including the so-called Cold-war era. From my point of view, RAND during its golden days was very much like Google or Bell Labs during their peaks, with many historically prominent computer scientists and mathematicians having worked at RAND in some capacity. Several people I had worked with were there during the golden days and would reflect on them with great nostalgia... Back then, special names we use today like "computer science" or "data science" were not commonly used. In this era, this field was simply called "Operations Research" (i.e. the application of quantitative methods and data analysis to improve operational and strategic decision making). - Without going off course too much, I previously made the case that places like the RAND Corporation for all practical purposed invented the field of what we call data science today, but may so-called data science practitioners would not know what the RAND Corporation was, nor would many people at the RAND Corporation in modern times have connected the dots to recognize that they had pioneered this field. For anyone interested in reading more on the theme of applying quantitative methods / operations research in the area of US public policy, it's reading about the "Whiz Kids": - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defense) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whiz_Kids_(Department_of_Defen...

helf 2y ago
Thanks for the tidbits! I'm a huge fan of electronics and computer and related history. Id be interested in any stories you have about your time there :)
ancorevard 2y ago
Any books recommendations for this part of history?
- moandcompany 2y ago
  Will try to update this post if I come across a good book. This RAND Blog Post covers activities that happened during RAND's first seventy-five years of history, which is still nice, as well as browsing through some of the publicly available papers and reports: - https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2023/rand-turns-75-a-look-through-the-decades.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2023/rand-turns-75-a-look... - https://www.rand.org/about/history.html https://www.rand.org/about/history.html - https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7857.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P7857.html - https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2009/P3705.pdf https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2009/P3705... - https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA255904.pdf https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/tr/pdf/ADA255904.pdf Books: - Soldiers of Reason (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2467227.Soldiers_Of_Reason https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2467227.Soldiers_Of_Reas...) I haven't read this book myself, but it may scratch your itch - History of Operations Research in the United States Army (https://books.google.com/books?id=KqtZ5XpcDHEC https://books.google.com/books?id=KqtZ5XpcDHEC) Some articles on RAND in general: - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1963/09/the-rand-corporation-and-our-policy-makers/658922/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1963/09/the-ran... - https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/22120/rand-corporation-think-tank-controls-america https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/22120/rand-corporation-t... Related back to the topic of "magic": - There's a RAND paper that I recall reading while I was there on designing an office campus for intentional serendipity as part of cultivating a research organization. I hope I can find a copy online so I can link it to this article, as many of the ideas were incorporated into the design of RAND's future/replacement campus in Santa Monica, CA. - The ideas on office/campus design were quite good and even included the subject of floor planning and desk assignments. Despite the inherent draw of organizations to divide office space by departments and functions, the RAND ideas were to deliberate interleave the locations of personnel such that people would have increased chances of collaborating with others that they would not naturally be drawn to directly in executing their work. This extended further to how walkways and passageways should be designed to connect floors, buildings etc... ensuring that people would pass by and see other people/functions/departments that they would not normally see or consider in their day-to-day work. I recall trying to cite some of these ideas when I worked in other research organizations (e.g. Google Research) where one of the principal complaints was siloing/lack of collaboration, yet teams were allowed to physically silo themselves in seating plans (by their own request/demands). - I never got to see the original campus, as it was demolished and later turned into a public park. However, the drawings and photographs of the original campus reminded me of something that resembled an American high school or small university campus. - There are many small details about working at RAND that were part of deliberate efforts to influence an individual's experiences and decisions to improve their creative/work potential. For example, the equivalent of Vacation/PTO time at RAND is called "sabbatical time." RAND employees were paid more, on an hourly equivalent rate, when taking their "sabbatical time" than for regular work time; this idea was not implemented to reduce financial liability of unspent PTO time for the company under modern standards, but because it was believed and understood --through research-- that employees were more likely to bring their best selves to work when having sufficient and periodic time away from their work -- often bringing back new ideas that wouldn't have emerged simply by grinding away at a problem... So they hoped to incentivize employees to take that time away from a problem by paying them more during their time off.

relaxing 2y ago

> One of my favorite past-times, particularly when conversation got too multi-voiced in the office, was to wander the corridors of the abandoned basement. The firm, it transpires, was in the process of constructing a brand spankin’ new office building, right next door. The old one was going to be torn down. So it was in a state of, shall we say, disrepair. In fact, it looked as though they’d stopped doing anything with it, several years earlier. > But I found the basement irresistible. It drew me in like a tractor beam. Long, stale, sunless corridors, cracked linoleum at your feet, illumined by flickering fluorescent light-fixtures. Like something out of (or inspired by) Last Year at Marienbad. Nary a footstep now treads down those halls, which had overheard such secrets, hushed whispers, momentous occasions and portentous events. > One day, to my surprise, I turned the corner, and there, sitting in his cell, was none other than Manuel Noriega, the ex-dictator of Panama. Seeing as how I did not know him personally, but recognized him from his many media appearances, I hastened to introduce myself. “How are they treating you?” I asked. “Si si, not so bad. Every now and then some junior CIA type comes in and we do some more – what is it, water-surfing? Boogie-boarding? No, no, water-boarding. But it is more for his pleasure, than mine.” I told him that the U.S. actually had given Panama the canal. “Yeah, I heard about that,” he replied. “But how about all of the new peoples who are there now, think of all of the opportunities for a little friendly mordida!” I said I was gonna mosey on, but I’d be back. “Please bring me some of the CDs by the band Pink Floyd,” he said. “They are like the thinking man’s AC/DC – I got so sick of all that puerile metal crap they were blasting at me when I was in the compound.” “Better than Sadam Hussein,” I replied. “They got him in a spider hole, and it didn’t look as though he was enjoying any music!” “They got Sadam, too?” he replied, querulously. - David Kronemyer, My Days at RAND Corporation https://web.archive.org/web/20080815050205/http://kronemyer.com/2007/07/15/uncategorized/my-days-at-the-bland-corporation/ https://web.archive.org/web/20080815050205/http://kronemyer....

dayofthedaleks 2y ago
Third paragraph marks this as a work of fabulism.
- relaxing 2y ago
  It’s very much real.

prpl 2y ago

Is it too simple to just say the MBA happened?

RandomCitizen12 2y ago
Yes, that is too simple. That may not be accurate, and if accurate stifles investigation into the root cause.

photochemsyn 2y ago

RAND's role in the Vietnam War is widely derided on many grounds, from the highly unethical behavior exposed in the Pentagon Papers to technical incompetence in programs like Igloo White, the 'electronic fence' that was supposed to keep the NVA from infiltrating weapons, soldiers and supplies into South Vietnam. So maybe they were destroyed by largesse of the Vietnam War government contracting programs? Eisenhower's famous comments about the military industrial complex are well known, but the later bits of that speech are worth reading (and contrasting to a certain recent spectacle of ignominious incompetence): > "Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present — and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." > "It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system — ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."

glompers 2y ago
Great quotes.

maroonblazer 2y ago

RAND is a pretty remarkable organization. I recently came across their proposal for an independent Palestinian state, dated 2005, referred to as "The Arc". https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9119.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB9119.html The above links to a more comprehensive PDF.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Curious why they didn’t think more simply in terms of their own back yard about about how the jews and arabs of southern california are able to live harmoniously.

nataz 2y ago

In my experience with RAND they always reminded me of a resource extraction company. Think oil and gas, but their trade was government contracts. Add in a couple of big names to justify the cost, staff it with jr people/post grads, shine it up with some fancy graphics and quant-ish formulas and poof, a million dollar study. Of all the FFRDC beltway bandit think tanks, they felt the most like an MBA consultant shop. Lots of overhead, questionable return on investment. While they do have history and prestige, I'm not convinced anything they deliver is uniquely insightful.

nimbius 2y ago

The thing that killed RAND was government oversight and neoliberalism. These days its not possible to innovate something like switched ethernet (which RAND had a hand in) unless you submit bids from forty GSA vendors and hold fifty meetings on which third party implementation consultants you need to hire for the work neoliberalism insists you not do anymore as a corporation because outsource culture is king. wrap it all up in a mountain of project managers and "best practices" because youre too chicken-shit to do anything that 200 other companies dont do, and viola. the punishment for failure FAR outweighs the reward for any breakthrough you think you can achieve. youre not a thinktank anymore youre just a consulting firm with a particularly attractive media spend.

robertclaus 2y ago

It feels like a place like this would easily attract top talent nowadays. Does anybody know of places actually operating this way other than a few skunk works teams reporting to bigger corporations?

nine_k 2y ago
Such organizations, while capable of bringing really large (and lucrative) breakthroughs, can't produce them reliably, let alone on a schedule. While at it, they require a constant and rather high upkeep. So they can only exist on thick streams of resources, which can be emitted either by huge corporations (Xerox PARC, Lockheed's skunkworks, IBM and Google research centers, etc), or governments, the latter almost invariably from its military branch.

dboreham 2y ago

My seasonal neighbor now in his 80s worked at RAND, and also studied under Ed Lorenz. This reminds me that I need to go spend some time with him before fall arrives.

surfingdino 2y ago

> We no longer live in an era when branches of the U.S. military can cut massive blank checks to think tanks in the interests of beating the Soviets. Well, that's about to change.

kayo_20211030 2y ago

Even in the late 60's and 70's, RAND did some seminal work in the modeling of estuarine and coastal flows using the computers of the day. It was incredibly practical work that was used through the 90's, and that's still cited today. They were wonderful papers for the time.

pphysch 2y ago

In 2019, RAND published Extending Russia [1], which explored various and prescient hostile means to deal with its current government. It recommended economic warfare against Russia, which, since 2022, will go down as one of the great geopolitical blunders of the 21st century. My questions are to what extent that report affected the openness and credibility of RAND? [1] - https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html

MaxPock 2y ago
Their follow up report recommends pursuing a peace treaty as the war is no longer served Americas interests and is actually harmful.

PaulHoule 2y ago

This book https://www.amazon.com/If-Then-Simulmatics-Corporation-Invented/dp/1631496107 https://www.amazon.com/If-Then-Simulmatics-Corporation-Inven... describes the rise and fall of a would-be competitor to RAND that I enjoyed.

banish-m4 2y ago

I'm disgusted by the triumphal celebration of an atrophied cog in the military-industrial complex that monetized more efficient killing. Also, Stanford evaded their charter by forming SRI to do defense work, and hired from the USAF revolving door as well.

garcia3252 2y ago

[dead]

jonjacky 2y ago

RAND previously on HN: What is a think tank? (2022): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29829796 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29829796