The leadership with which Shannon was interacting had come of age in the midst of two massive intelligence failures. The horror of Pearl Harbor was seared in their memories. More recently, the invasion of South Korea by North Korea had again blindsided American policy makers, and by 1950, the country was again on a war footing. Which is all to say that Shannon was speaking with and working for men who had seen armed combat and were sending a new generation of Americans into another bloody conflict. The stakes were real; the intelligence requirements were manifold. Mathematical thinkers of
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