Is War Necessary for Economic Growth?

Abstract Military and defense-related procurement has been an important source of technology development across a broad spectrum of industries that account for an important share of U.S. industrial production. This book focuses on six general-purpose technologies: interchangeable parts and mass production, military and commercial aircraft, nuclear energy and electric power, computers and semiconductors, the Internet, and the space industries. It addresses three questions that have significant implications for the future growth of the U.S. economy: Will changes in the structure of the U.S. economy and of the defense-industrial base preclude military and defense-related research, development, and procurement from playing a role in the future comparable to the role it played in the past? Will public support for commercial research and development become an important source of new general purpose technologies? Will a major war, or the threat of major war, be necessary to mobilize the scientific, technical, and financial resources necessary to induce the development of new general-purpose technologies? It argues that when the history of U.S. technology development over the next half century is written, it will focus on incremental rather than revolutionary changes in both military and commercial technology. It will also be written within the context of slower productivity growth than the relatively high rates that prevailed in the U.S. through the 1960s or during the information technology bubble that began in the early 1990s.