Big Science and The Launch of the Military Industrial Complex

We all remember Ben Franklin flying his kite, or Alexander Graham Bell calling for Watson, even Jonas Salk working quietly in his laboratory.

Today science, or at least big science, is a global effort. It involves governments, private enterprise, universities and vast institutional support. Think about the International Space Station, the Large Hadron Collider, and even before all of that, the Manhattan Project and even the development of the Internet itself.

All are part of what Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Hiltzik writes about in Big Science: Ernest Lawrence and the Invention that Launched the Military-Industrial Complex.

My conversation with Michael Hiltzik:

The Making of The Military Industrial Complex

Last night on 60 Minutes we learned how man's reach into space has been virtually shut down over three billion dollars! While certainly this is real money, it is but a mere fraction of America's defense budget, much of which goes for waste, fraud, abuse and to satisfy the insatiable demands of the "military industrial complex."  Fifty years ago, Eisenhower warned us about it.  Today journalist William Hartung takes us inside the largest of America's ongoing military pariahs, Lockheed Martin.

My conversation with Willaims Hartung about the Prophets of War: Lockheed Martin and the Making of the Military-Industrial Complex.

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The Military-industrial complex

This has been an amazing month for speeches and anniversaries of speeches. Last week the current President of the United States gave perhaps his greatest speech to date. On Thursday we will mark the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's Inaugural Address, and yesterday we also marked the 50th anniversary of perhaps the most important farewell address ever given by any President, including Washington. Dwight David Eisenhower, whose place in history is still evolving, warned us about an all to pervasive Military Industrial Complex; an idea that is still relevant and still part of our collective political consciousness. Journalist James Ledbetter, in his book Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial Complex, gives us the definitive analysis of that speech and it's place in history.

My conversation with James Ledbetter:

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