The Storm Before the Calm: America's Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond

by George Friedman

This model is still very much in place. Look at the smartphone. The cell phone was first deployed for the U.S. Army in 1985. The National Reconnaissance Office first designed the camera in the smartphone for use in spy satellites. The GPS function on a cell phone was first devised and implemented by the U.S. Air Force, lithium-ion batteries were developed by the Department of Energy, and the Internet was pioneered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. So what you have in the smartphone is a compendium of military hardware, much of it researched in universities and turned into weapons and products by corporations. Because federal inventions can’t be patented, companies like Apple took the technology and developed the smartphone. Science, industry, and the federal government, particularly the military, combined to drive the American economy. It was in the relationship between the federal government and a redefinition of institutions that we can see the triumph and failure of the system.