Abstract:

How do experts evaluate complex techno-political futures? This essay addresses the question by showing how scientists and engineers confronted U.S. President Ronald Reagan’s call to render “nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.” Popularly known as the “Star Wars” missile defense program, Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative launched a world-wide debate that continues to echo today. I argue that experts used disciplined projections – predictions based on generally accepted, mathematical rules of scientific disciplines – to produce certainty and authority about the future of SDI. Importantly, different disciplines highlighted distinctive aspects of SDI, and generated different kinds of political authority. Physicists analyzed idealized systems and mobilized a form of disciplinary objectivity. By contrast, computer experts analyzed complex, faulty systems, and made their arguments persuasive by appealing to common sense. These differences reveal the influence of technological enthusiasm in U.S. political culture.

An excerpt from "Implementing Change: Organizational Challenges" (pp. 309-310):

Improving organizational performance is never easy. As sociologist Jim March has noted, success requires that organizations balance exploration the search for new ways of doing things with exploitation, the ability to harness new practices and jettison older, less effective ones (March, 1991). These challenges confront all organizations, but two factors make them more acute for intelligence agencies. The first is bounded rationality (Simon, 1976). In the theoretical world, individuals have the luxury of perfect rationality, seeing all of the relevant options, assessing trade-offs with clarity, and making the best decisions. The real world is not as nice. There, rationality is inherently limited or bounded by uncertainty, imperfect information, and cognitive constraints that lead individuals to make decisions that appear to be “good enough”—but may turn out to be nowhere close (Simon, 1976). Intelligence officials have the toughest time of all, confronting bounded rationality problems in spades. Their job is to give policy-making customers decision advantage amidst swirling uncertainty, missing information, enemy deception and denial, and fast-changing events that are often unforeseeable, even to the participants themselves.

The second acute intelligence challenge is secrecy. As I discuss below, the more specialized any organization becomes, the harder it is for any one part of the organization to understand or improve what another part is doing, a phenomenon that sociologists call “structural secrecy” (Vaughan, 1996). In the classified universe, of course, this structural secrecy is compounded by actual secrecy, which protects vital information from adversaries, but also compartmentalizes information, ideas, organizations, and practices to a much greater extent.

Despite the intelligence community’s (IC’s) unique challenges, the fields of organization theory and political science offer useful insights and cautionary warnings about the organizational side of improving intelligence analysis. The chapters in Part II (Analytic Methods) of this volume mine an array of relevant literature for the best analytic tools to improve intelligence analysis. Here, we turn to a different task: Examining a broad sweep of relevant social science research with an eye to identifying which organizational factors impede or facilitate effective analysis. Worth underscoring, though, is the fact that social science does not offer ready-made instructions about how to make intelligence analytic improvements stick. However, it does offer some useful generalizations that can illuminate the trade-offs and challenges involved to guide more effective implementation.

The legacy of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung's decision in the early 1990s to pursue a strategic partnership with the United States has run its course. In its place, the focus of Pyongyang's policies has decisively shifted to Beijing. However wary the North Koreans may be of their neighbor, the fact is that from Pyongyang's viewpoint, the Chinese have delivered and the United States did not.

Any shards remaining from the North's previous, decades-long effort to normalize ties with the U.S. were swept away by current leader Kim Jong Il's trip in May to China, his third in barely a year. Based on our discussions with Chinese officials, we believe that during that visit, Pyongyang and Beijing came to an understanding that, in preparation for planned, major domestic political events in 2012, both sides require sustained political stability, a convergence of interests that provides the opportunity for expanding bilateral relations beyond anything enjoyed in the past. The North is building toward a "prosperous and powerful" nation in celebration of the Kim Il Sung centenary in April; the Chinese are looking toward their 18th Party Congress scheduled for late next year. In both cases, it was apparently decided, stability on the Korean peninsula would serve economic programs and the succession of a new generation of leaders.

In the arrangements — formal and informal — that emerged from Kim Jong Il's discussions with his hosts, Pyongyang agreed not to "make trouble" (as the Chinese described it to us) in the short term, presumably meaning no deliberate military provocations, no third nuclear test and no launch of another ballistic missile. Beyond that, the talks ended in a compromise that neither side found entirely satisfactory. Kim came away with less aid and a smaller Chinese commitment of support than he had sought, though Pyongyang typically asks for more than it can get.

The North did, however, receive increased access to both Chinese capital and technology in spite ofUnited Nations and other foreign sanctions. Kim also obtained, through the establishment of joint economic zones with China along the Yalu River, a locale to test adjustments necessary to economic development, adjustments that would fall short of what Beijing considers genuine economic reform. Chinese President Hu Jintao, we were told, had to settle for Kim's promise to cause less trouble but without a North Korean commitment to serious steps toward denuclearization.

We believe that this pivot toward Beijing is no routine oscillation in North Korean policy. The drive to normalize relations with the U.S. from 1991 to 2009 had been real, sustained and rooted in Kim Il Sung's deep concern about the regime's future in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Perhaps there was no better demonstration of the North's approach in those years than the situation on Oct. 25, 2000 — the 50th anniversary of the entry of the Chinese People's Volunteers into theKorean War. Who was in Pyongyang on that date meeting Kim Jong Il? The Chinese defense minister? No, he was cooling his heels while Kim met with the U.S. secretary of State. That was no accident of scheduling on Pyongyang's part; it would not happen again today.

If the paradigm shift is real, we expect the North in the near to medium term to make far less overt trouble. Less tension on the Korean peninsula? What could be wrong with that? Nothing, as long as it is understood that such tranquillity will also provide a veil for the North's continuing pursuit of nuclear weapons and increasingly sophisticated delivery systems. With the onset of stability and growing Chinese-North Korean cooperation, Pyongyang may well calculate that the outside world's focus on the North Korean nuclear program will become diffuse. Indeed, the North Koreans have long assumed that given enough time, the world would resign itself to their nuclear weapons, as happened with India and Pakistan.

To help things along, it isn't out of the question that Pyongyang might even agree to some U.S. efforts to contain the nuclear program through a series of what Washington calls "pre-steps." The North has repeatedly expressed willingness to consider discussion of its uranium enrichment program and moratoriums on missile and nuclear tests. As unilateral actions, these would have short-term benefits by further stabilizing the situation to provide additional room for discussions. But in the absence of long, serious negotiations between the two sides, they will turn out to be no more meaningful than the ill-considered agreements of the now moribund six-party talks.

All of which brings us back to the deepening North Korean-Chinese ties, and the downgrading in Pyongyang's calculations of relations with the United States. There was considerable momentum behind the North's strategy for engaging the U.S. in past negotiations. That is no longer the case, with consequences we have only started to feel.

Textbook Synopsis From Cambridge University Press online:

How will we meet rising energy demands? What are our options? Are there viable long-term solutions for the future? Learn the fundamental physical, chemical and materials science at the heart of: 

• Renewable/non-renewable energy sources 
• Future transportation systems 
• Energy efficiency 
• Energy storage 

Whether you are a student taking an energy course or a newcomer to the field, this book will help you understand critical relationships between the environment, energy and sustainability. Leading experts provide comprehensive coverage of each topic, bringing together diverse subject matter by integrating theory with engaging insights. Each chapter includes helpful features to aid understanding, including a historical overview to provide context, suggested further reading and questions for discussion. Every subject is beautifully illustrated and brought to life with full color images and color-coded sections for easy browsing, making this a complete educational package. Fundamentals of Materials for Energy and Environmental Sustainability will help enable today's scientists and educate future generations.