Portrait Of The Scientist As A Renaissance Man

THE BUSINESS OF SCIENCE: Winning And Losing In The High-Tech Age Simon Ramo Hill and Wang; New York; 289 pages; $19.95 Scientists like Simon Ramo are rare think of a utility infielder who batts .300, knocks in 100 RBI’s, and wins a Golden Glove award to boot Trained as a physicist at Cal Tech Ramo proved adept at technological innovation, with 25 patents by the time he was 30. He made major contributions to the development of microwave radar during World War II and helped develop the electron microscope. Then Ramo proved even more gifted at managing technological development. Within a few years after the war, he built Hughes Aircraft into a major defense contractor. In 1953 he founded his own company, which became TRW (for Thompson Ramo Woolridge), one of the largest technology-based companies in the world. Meanwhile in the 1950s, Ramo served as chief scientist for the development of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile system, a huge, enormously complex project done under the political and time pressures of a race with the Soviet Union—making him the architect of a key portion of our nuclear deterrent. And all the while, Ramo has been advising presidents and their key staff on science and defense matters. Over the last three decades, he exerted his greatest influence with President Ford, Vice President Rockefeller, and President Reagan. Yet he never became a creature of government, bitter with Potomac fever and the ambition for bureaucratic power rather he remained an outsider, albeit a very influential one. Now Ramo has written a fascinating book reflecting on these intertwined careers. But it is more than a memoir. Ramo draws on his experiences to address two of the most critical questions of our time—the risk of nuclear war and America’s flagging ability to compete with Japan and other countries. His predictions and suggestions are, to say the least, bold: Ramo, the ultimate weapon’s system designer, forecasts drastic ruts in ICBMs and foresees the eventual possibility of eliminating nuclear missiles and the threat of nuclear war altogether. He suggests that President Reagan’s dream of a defense against nuclear missiles may in fact come to be, but not in the same sense that Reagan meant it. Ramo is hardly a peacenik, nor has he joined the campaign against the Strategic Defense Initiative— indeed, he advises the Reagan administration and several defense companies on the project. Yet he says forthrightly that "today’s technology does not permit us to design an effective defensive system against an all-out Soviet attack." And he points out that, in the absence of limits on offensive weapons, defensive systems may not make economic sense, they are easy to counter by simply expanding the number of missiles. But he argues that both the U.S. and the USSR have compelling economic reasons to reduce the number of their offensive missiles and predicts that cuts of perhaps 90% will occur over the next decade. A major part of such an agreement, he believes, will be technological developments that make possible verification of each nation’s adherence to a treaty. But Ramo also thinks that SDI critics are off-base. He opines that once the number of offensive systems is sharply reduced and effectively capped, defensive systems become much more feasible, and without wishful thinking about exotic and unproven technologies. On the issue of international competitiveness, Ramo analyzes U.S. strengths and weaknesses. The weaknesses, he says, include an increasingly disastrous educational system, undisciplined methods of decision-making in public policy, and a dangerous lack of technical expertise in the military and in government as a whole. Thus he finds cost overruns and weapons that don’t work a direct consequence of the scarcity of Defense Department senior officers who possess the scientific and engineering depth to manage large development projects. Nonetheless, Ramo says, the United States has a keen advantage—the cultural willingness to take risks that foster entrepreneurial activity. It is the continual formation of small companies that can quickly exploit new technological advances that is our best hope of regaining industrial and economic leadership. Thus, Ramo argues, we should adjust our governmental policies to favor such activity. Ramo may not be right in his predictions on the arms race and his prescriptions for our economic success. However, his track record is good and his arguments, buttressed by a wealth of examples, ring true—at least to this reviewer. This is an important book and deserves to be widely read by scientists, by financiers, and , let us hope, by government policy makers. Allen Hammond, founder of Science 80-86 and former editor of Issues in Science and Technology, is now editor of the Science Impact Letter.

Portrait Of The Scientist As A Renaissance Man

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