Without true believers, the ARPANET could have easily been killed, either by protesters worried that it was a Pentagon project to conduct nuclear warfare or by lawmakers convinced it was not doing enough for the Pentagon. The ARPANET continued through those years largely unscathed, because ARPA officials believed in the vision of man-computer symbiosis that had been laid out by J. C. R. Licklider and worked hard to protect it. Stephen Lukasik, like Charles Herzfeld before him, understood the broader importance of the project and struck a delicate balance of justifying its work to Congress as
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