The Whiz Kids of the Pentagon: Systems Analysis and the Cold War

After the election of John F. Kennedy, Robert McNamara filled the Department of Defense with recruits from the RAND Corporation, who believed that nuclear strategy, military spending, and security policy could be revolutionized with the tools of systems analysis. Over the following decade, they transformed the Pentagon, revealing both the power and the limits of what the Whiz Kids called “quantitative common sense.” This talk explores their methods, their impact on the Cold War and Vietnam, and their relevance to the complicated problems of our own time.