Peter J. Westwick PROJECT SUMMARY The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), popularly known as Star Wars, occupied a central place in American society and strategic policy at the end of the Cold War. The plan for a system for ballistic missile defense, announced in 1983 by President Reagan, sparked a national and international debate over its technical feasibility and strategic implications. This proposal is for a history of SDI from Reagan's announcement in 1983 to the cancellation of the program in 1993 under President Clinton, with an epilogue to cover more recent developments. It requests support for two years of research, leading to the publication of a book and scholarly articles. The intellectual merit of this project derives first from its approach to SDI itself. The project will take advantage of two decades of historical perspective, recent scholarship, and access to primary sources to provide the first synthetic treatment of SDI, stressing its scientific and technological content. This project will look beyond high policy circles to the activity of scientists and engineers on the ground level, in laboratories throughout the country. It will also highlight the mediating role of program managers, who translated technical possibilities into policy and vice versa. This project will integrate a detailed history of SDI technology with approaches based on organization and strategy, and will thus illuminate the interplay between technological change and public policy. In addition to SDI's intrinsic intellectual interest, this project addresses several general issues that have engaged scholars of Cold War science and technology: the independence of scientists amid military funding; the effects of secrecy on science and democracy; and the development of the military-industrial-academic complex. Existing literature on these issues focuses on the early Cold War; this project will examine them in a different context, after the emergence of new attitudes towards science, technology, and the military starting in the 1960s; it will then trace the response of people and institutions when the Cold War itself ended. The project will also generate declassified documents and oral history transcripts to support further research by other scholars. This project will have substantial broader impact. It will look beyond the SDI debate itself to the deep and diverse influence of SDI on American society. SDI developed technologies such as adaptive optics and supercomputing, promoted particular scientific disciplines, and reshaped the institutional landscape in academia, industry, and the military, all in addition to its profound effects on diplomatic policy and military strategy, despite the fact that the program did not produce an operational system. That is, this project will examine not just how and why the U.S. chose to invest extensive national resources in SDI, but also what effects this investment produced. The resultant narrative will shed light on a crucial episode in American history, and the analysis will address issues of great public as well as intellectual interest. The debate over missile defense continues today, albeit in different technological form and amid changing strategic purposes and geopolitical contexts. But the underlying issues remain, and involve fundamental questions about the place of science and technology in modern society.
