Breakthrough: Security Archives

Written by Breakthrough Generation fellow Zach Arnold

Look behind many of the key technologies of the 20th and 21st centuries, and you'll see a long history of military involvement. The U.S. armed forces kick-started American dominance in civil aviation through their demand for planes during WWI, and later drove the growth of the computer industry by buying every microchip and supercomputer in sight during the 60's. Military scientists and military-funded researchers developed the ideas behind the Internet, nuclear power, and personal computing. Indeed, the U.S. military has arguably been the greatest force for technological growth in modern times. And now, it's time for renewable energy to get the Army treatment.

Let's look back to the 1960s. Jack Kilby, a scientist at Texas Instruments, had pioneered an innovative circuit design a few years earlier by packing several transistors onto a single conductive "chip," creating a "microchip" that stood to be more reliable, better suited to mass production, and far faster than existing circuitry. It was the military - not the consumer market - that quickly realized the strategic value of Kilby's achievement. Throughout the early 1960's, military agencies bought virtually every microchip manufacturers could produce. These purchases enabled big advances in military technology, facilitating projects like Minuteman and Apollo and cementing America's position as a military power.

And a funny thing happened along the way.

Continue reading "From Microchips to Clean Tech: The Military's Role in a Renewable Energy Future" »

By Adam Rodriques, Breakthrough Generation Fellow

Taking a break from its everyday responsibilities, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) took a noteworthy step yesterday when it delivered a briefing on climate change to the House of Representatives' Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. The briefing, given by Thomas Fingar, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Analysis, represents the first time that the American intelligence community has weighed in on the issue of climate change.

Now, these guys are not physicists, nor were meant to be: Fingar explicitly stated that they "did not evaluate the science of climate change per se," choosing to focus instead on analyzing the national security implications of existing predictions (their chosen model was a mid-range IPCC prediction). Nevertheless, the mere fact that this briefing was given at all is hugely significant...and on top of that, they have some very interesting and insightful things to say.

Continue reading "Climate Change Gets The Fingar: Intelligence Community Weighs in on Climate Security Risks" »