The Hoover Applied History Working Group hosted a special book-launch seminar: Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State on March 14, 2024.
ABOUT THE TALK
Join us for a book talk that will span law, international affairs, and top-secret technology to unmask the tension between intellectual property rights and national security.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, two British inventors, Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, solved a major military problem: how to aim and fire the big guns of battleships in poor conditions. Pollen and Isherwood built an integrated system for gathering data, calculating predictions, and transmitting the results to the gunners. At the heart of their invention was the most advanced analog computer of the day, a technological breakthrough that anticipated the famous Norden bombsight of World War II, the inertial guidance systems of nuclear missiles, and the networked “smart” systems that dominate combat today. Recognizing the value of Pollen and Isherwood’s invention, the British Royal Navy and the United States Navy pirated it, one after the other. When the inventors sued, both the British and US governments invoked secrecy, citing national security concerns.
Drawing on a wealth of archival evidence, Kate Epstein analyzes these and related legal battles over naval technology, exploring how national defense tested the two countries’ commitment to individual rights and the free market. Epstein’s account reveals that long before the US national security state sought to restrict information about atomic energy, it was already embroiled in another contest between innovation and secrecy. The America portrayed in this sweeping and accessible history isn’t yet a global hegemon but a rising superpower ready to acquire foreign technology by fair means or foul—much as it accuses China of doing today.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Kate Epstein is an Associate Professor of History at Rutgers-Camden, where she teaches courses in US history, military and diplomatic history, and historical methods. Her research focuses on the intersection of defense contracting, intellectual property, and government secrecy in Great Britain and the United States, as well as the “hegemonic transition” from the Pax Britannica to the Pax Americana. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, she has written two books: Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State (University of Chicago Press, 2024) and Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain (Harvard University Press, 2014). In addition to her historical work she also writes essays and op-eds about politics and academia, which have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Liberties, and American Purpose.
