scholarly journals The Surveillant Simulation of War: Entertainment and Surveillance in the 21st Century

2011 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 517-522
Author(s):  
Matthew Cousineau
Keyword(s):  
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Video Game ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Future Direction ◽  
Sports Broadcasting ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

This paper pulls together some strands in Surveillance Studies to make a case for the analytical advantages of a future direction. Conceptualizing surveillance as entertainment helps sensitize Surveillance Studies to emerging patterns of surveillance in the relationship between the military-industrial complex and entertainment. I describe four examples of this, which include both video game simulations of surveillance as well as actual military surveillance technologies and practices. Army developed video games and simulators designed to recruit, along with unmanned aerial vehicles and sports broadcasting technologies provide contemporary examples of the blurring boundaries between civilians and soldiers, war and entertainment, and work and play. Focusing on surveillance as entertainment, I suggest, furnishes us with several analytical advantages that help make sense of the complex global surveillance realities of the 21st century.  

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Ford
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Innovation ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Personal Rights ◽  
Democratic Control ◽  
Alliance Partners ◽  
Distribution Of Power ◽  
The Military ◽  
Back Office ◽  
The Relationship

There are many ways of thinking about guns. Guns can be seen through the lens of gender or identity, as a matter of personal rights or from the perspective of the engineer interested in design features and standardization. This book considers firearms from the perspective of military innovation and seeks to map socio-technical change from the battlefield to the back-office: from soldiers and engineers to scientists and bureaucrats, from alliance partners to industry. In the process this book describes the distribution of power within the military industrial complex and asks us to reflect on the relationship between technology and strategy and democratic control over weapon selection.

An Organizational Perspective on the Military-Industrial Complex

1978 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 250-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert D. Cuff
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
World War ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Military ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Relationship

Is there a “military-industrial complex” in the United States? What is the relationship between business, government, and the military with its needs for vast quantities of goods and services? How has organization for war and defense changed since the demands of World War I first made such questions important? How much do we know about what actually happened between World War I and Vietnam to change the relationship between private and public organizations? Professor Cuff discusses the complexities involved in trying to answer such historical questions, and prescribes a professional historian's regimen for future work on this subject.

Eisenhower versus the Spin-off Story: Did the Rise of the Military–Industrial Complex Hurt or Help America's Commercial Aircraft Industry?

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-95
Author(s):  
Eugene Gholz
Keyword(s):  
High Tech ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Commercial Aircraft ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Commercial Markets ◽  
American Research ◽  
Contemporary Development ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Benefits And Costs

In his Farewell Address, President Eisenhower warned that the military-industrial complex (MIC) threatened to dominate American research, crowding out commercial innovation. Ironically, a number of analysts point to spin-off benefits of the 1950s' military effort as a crucial source of American high-tech competitiveness, often citing the key example of the relationship between military jet aircraft and the Boeing's 707. But the huge military investment in jet aviation had both benefits and costs for the commercial industry. This article compares the development of the Boeing 707 and its relationship to military projects like the KC-135 tanker to the contemporary development of commercial jet aircraft by other companies that were also integral parts of the military-industrial complex (MIC), including Douglas Aircraft and its commercial DC-8 and Convair and its commercial 880 and 990. Using evidence from archives, interviews with retired company executives, contemporary trade press, and academic studies, the article concludes that membership in the MIC did not offer firms a leg up in commercial markets. President Eisenhower was generally right about the costs of the military effort, but military spending remained low enough to allow commercial industry to thrive in parallel to the defense industry.

Canadian Entrepreneurs and the Preservation of the Capitalist Peace in the North Atlantic Triangle in the Civil War Era, 1861–1871

2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 515-545
Author(s):  
ANDREW D. SMITH ◽  
LAURENCE B. MUSSIO
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Ceteris Paribus ◽  
Economic Interests ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
The North ◽  
Transnational Community ◽  
Civil War Era ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Relationship

In their 2013 bookReimagining Business History, Philip Scranton and Patrick Fridenson called on business historians to reassess militarization and the “two-way exchanges” between the military and the private sector. The call is timely. The extensive business-historical scholarship on the relationship between companies and war sensibly focuses on companies that profited from their involvement in the military-industrial complex.1The business-historical literature is virtually silent, however, on the role of business in preventing wars from starting in the first place. In other words, business historians have missed a productive opportunity to engage with capitalist peace theory (CPT), an increasingly important theory in the discipline of international relations (IR). Many IR scholars now argue that the mutual economic interdependence characteristic of global capitalism reduces the likelihood of war. Their research suggests that while extensive cross-border economic linkages do not preclude the possibility of war, the creation of a transnational community of economic interests tends,ceteris paribus, to reduce the frequency, duration, and intensity of warfare.2

The 21st-Century Turn to Culture: American Exceptionalism

2014 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 794-796
Author(s):  
Rochelle Davis
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Differences ◽  
21St Century ◽  
American Exceptionalism ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

The U.S. Military's turn to culture in the 21st century occurred largely because of its inability to achieve its stated objectives in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through conventional military force. Building on a long history of military strategies concerned with the cultural differences of others, the U.S. military crafted a warfighting strategy in 2006 based on a counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine of using cultural knowledge to battle the enemy. Charting how and why culture was embraced as a 21st-century “weapons system” shows us how technopolitical systems inside the military-industrial complex are envisioned, built, and then dismantled. Close tracking of these changing 21st-century strategies of war reveals, deep within the counterterrorism discourse, a fundamental belief in American exceptionalism. The principle that emerged from this ideological environment is that the enemies to be fought are not only terrorists or the ideologues of al-Qaʿida but also the countries and cultures that produced them. The implementation of this principle, despite its obvious failures, reveals the ideological underpinning that has justified the incredible destruction and securitized implementation of warfighting.

Planning and Profits

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Miller
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Private Industry ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Fixed Prices ◽  
Government Organisation ◽  
British State ◽  
The Military ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Relationship

In a time of great need for Britain, a small coterie of influential businessmen gained access to secret information on industrial mobilisation as advisers to the Principal Supply Officers Committee. They provided the state with priceless advice, but, as “insiders” utilised their access to information to build a business empire at a fraction of the normal costs. Outsiders, in contrast, lacked influence and were forced together into a defensive “ring” – or cartel – which effectively fixed prices for British warships. By the 1930s, the cartel grew into one of the most sophisticated profiteering groups of its day. This book examines the relationship between the private naval armaments industry, businessmen, and the British government defence planners between the wars. It reassesses the concept of the military-industrial complex through the impact of disarmament upon private industry, the role of leading industrialists in supply and procurement policy, and the successes and failings of government organisation. It blends together political, naval, and business history in new ways, and, by situating the business activities of industrialists alongside their work as government advisors, sheds new light on the operation of the British state. This is the story of how these men profited while effectively saving the National Government from itself.

The aspects of the innovation of the military-industrial complex and its significance for the national security of Russia

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-20
Author(s):  
Irina Orlova ◽  
Artem Sukharev ◽  
Maria Sukhareva ◽  
Mikhail Deikun
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Systematic Approach ◽  
Defense Industry ◽  
World Market ◽  
Modern World ◽  
High Tech ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
The Russian Federation ◽  
The Military

The main objective of the article is to substantiate a systematic approach to the introduction of all types of innovations in the development of the military-industrial complex of the Russian Federation. The relevance of the study is due to the fact that in the modern world it is especially important to ensure the national security of the country and the defense industry plays a crucial role in this. At the same time, one cannot but note the importance of the defense industry in the production of high-tech civilian products and dual-use products, which enhances the country's competitiveness in the world market. In addition, the relevance of the topic is due to the presence of rather serious problems in the Russian defense industry, which require immediate resolution. The article uses the methodology of structurally functional analysis, the institutional approach and the method of comparative assessments. The authors conclude that technological innovation alone will not be able to achieve strategic results for ensuring national security, only in conjunction with organizational, product, social and marketing innovations, the domestic defense industry is able to solve its tasks.

Cinema's Military Industrial Complex

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
World War ◽  
Film Exhibition ◽  
Record Keeping ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
The Military

Cinema’s Military Industrial Complex examines how the American military has used cinema and related visual, sonic, and mobile technologies to further its varied aims. The essays in this book address the way cinema was put to work for purposes of training, orientation, record keeping, internal and external communication, propaganda, research and development, tactical analysis, surveillance, physical and mental health, recreation, and morale. The contributors examine the technologies and types of films that were produced and used in collaboration among the military, film industry, and technology manufacturers. The essays also explore the goals of the American state, which deployed the military and its unique modes of filmmaking, film exhibition, and film viewing to various ends. Together, the essays reveal the military’s deep investment in cinema, which began around World War I, expanded during World War II, continued during the Cold War (including wars in Korea and Vietnam), and still continues in the ongoing War on Terror.

The Washington Consensus, liberal ideas and terms of the military-technological policy

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (11) ◽  
pp. 2103-2123
Author(s):  
V.L. Gladyshevskii ◽  
E.V. Gorgola ◽  
D.V. Khudyakov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Production Management ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Internal Quality ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Military Industrial Complex ◽  
Industrial Complexes ◽  
The Military

Subject. In the twentieth century, the most developed countries formed a permanent military economy represented by military-industrial complexes, which began to perform almost a system-forming role in national economies, acting as the basis for ensuring national security, and being an independent military and political force. The United States is pursuing a pronounced militaristic policy, has almost begun to unleash a new "cold war" against Russia and to unwind the arms race, on the one hand, trying to exhaust the enemy's economy, on the other hand, to reindustrialize its own economy, relying on the military-industrial complex. Objectives. We examine the evolution, main features and operational distinctions of the military-industrial complex of the United States and that of the Russian Federation, revealing sources of their military-technological and military-economic advancement in comparison with other countries. Methods. The study uses military-economic analysis, scientific and methodological apparatus of modern institutionalism. Results. Regulating the national economy and constant monitoring of budget financing contribute to the rise of military production, especially in the context of austerity and crisis phenomena, which, in particular, justifies the irrelevance of institutionalists' conclusions about increasing transaction costs and intensifying centralization in the industrial production management with respect to to the military-industrial complex. Conclusions. Proving to be much more efficient, the domestic military-industrial complex, without having such access to finance as the U.S. military monopolies, should certainly evolve and progress, strengthening the coordination, manageability, planning, maximum cost reduction, increasing labor productivity, and implementing an internal quality system with the active involvement of the State and its resources.

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