Between 1945 and 1960, RAND operated as the world’s most productive research organization. Initially envisioned as a research arm of the Air Force, RAND made century-defining breakthroughs both in basic science and applied strategic analysis. Its members helped define U.S. nuclear strategy, conceptualized satellites, pioneered systems analysis, and developed the earliest reports on defense economics. They also revolutionized much of STEM: RAND scholars developed the basics of game theory, linear programming, and Monte Carlo methods. They helped conceptualize generalized artificial intelligence, developed the basics for packet switching (which enables data transmission across networks), and built one of the world’s first computers.
Today, RAND remains a successful think tank — by some metrics, among the world’s best. In 2022, it brought in over $350 million in revenue, and large proportions still come from contracts with the US military. Its graduate school is among the largest for public policy in America.
But RAND’s modern achievements don’t capture the same fundamental policy mindshare as they once did. Its military reports may remain influential, but they hold much less of their early sway, as when they forced the U.S. Air Force to rethink several crucial assumptions in defense policy. And RAND’s fundamental research programs in science and technology have mostly stopped. Gone are the days when one could look to U.S. foreign policy or fundamental scientific breakthroughs and trace their development directly back to RAND.
How was magic made in Santa Monica? And why did it stop?
The Roots of RAND
Economists, physicists, and statisticians — civilian scientists to that point not traditionally valued by the military — first proved their utility in the late stages of World War II operational planning. American bomber units needed to improve their efficiency over long distances in the Pacific theater. The scientists hired by the Army Air Force proposed what at the time seemed a radical solution: removing the B-29 bomber’s armor to reduce weight and increase speed. This ran counter to USAAF doctrine, which assumed that an unprotected plane would be vulnerable to Japanese air attacks. The doctrine proved incorrect. The increased speed not only led to greater efficiency, it also led to more U.S. planes returning safely from missions, as Japanese planes and air defense systems were unable to keep up. Civilian scientists were suddenly in demand. By the end of the war, all USAAF units had built out their own operations research departments to optimize battle strategy. When the war ended, the question turned to how to retain the scientific brain trust it had helped to assemble.