Question

What sorts of policies were adopted in order to maintain and strengthen US scientific and technological superiority?

Answer 1

After World War II, the threat of a new enemy and competitor, the USSR, inspired the country and specially the Department of Defense to develop strategies to keep the upper hand in military and technology, consequently the country's safety.

Developed by then-Under Secretary of Defense Bill Perry in the late 1970s, the U.S. adopted a new strategy called Offset Strategy. The plan had two main components:

1 - Technological superiority by investment in robust research and development (R&D) budget, especially to develop information based technology, like global positioning services (GPS). These would improve the country's existing technologies and systems.

2 - Preservation of the technological advantage, which were totally funded, built and controlled by the U.S through export and trade route control, like the Arms Export Control Act and the Missile Technology Control Regime, allowing the nation to provide or deny access to particular technologies on command.

The strategy was successful, leading into era of unparalleled U.S. scientific-technological dominance, resulting in victory in the Cold War. The program also was the progenitor of early-generation microelectronics, nuclear power and the internet for example.

Answer 2

Towards the middle of the 19th century, the United States managed to round off the territory from the narrow Atlantic strip to the peaceful façade, by conquering the immense territories of the Southwest. Before the formidable pressure, fomented by the federal government and turned into an epic that immortalized the Hollywood industry with the legendary Far-West, of farmers, planters, merchants, adventurers, European immigrants and missionaries, the mythical "Frontera", considered the territory Savage par excellence, it became a powerful factor in the expansion of capitalism. However, the conquest of the West served not only to increase the agricultural, livestock and mining space (gold rush in California), and to promote the demographic development, but also to forge the myths from which the new nation has been nourished until today. American

While the war against the Cheyenne and Arapajo in the Far West was resumed in 1861, President Abraham Lincoln declared war on the Confederation of Southern States. Thus began the first great modern war, characterized by extreme cruelty to the civilian population, the massive use of modern means of combat and the systematic destruction by the Yankees of the southern plantations.

The war threw in the end a macabre balance of more than one million victims, civilians and military. However, the victory of the industrialized and anti-slavery North meant the triumph of industrial capitalism based on free competition and individual risk and success, as well as an organic federal conception of the State, cornering the agricultural aristocracy of the South that, defending a concept of federation based on the free and sovereign union of federated states, sought in the protection of cotton, the maintenance of an aristocratic system of life based on the slavery of blacks and the cradle of whites. The triumph of the North allowed the great later industrial development and, although legally sanctioned the freedom of the blacks and their right to vote, could not erase discrimination and segregation in the southern states.

In this process, the industrial production went from less than 2000 million dollars per year to more than 13,000, in the same way the number of employees in industry, mining, construction and services went from less than 4 million people up to 18 million. The factors that determined industrialization were the abundance of natural resources, the growth of the population, the accumulation of capital and foreign investment, immigration also provided a broad and cheap labor force. During this period, the consolidation of companies in large-scale units became evident. This consolidation was based largely on the birth of the trust that were agreements of the shareholders of different companies of a certain economic sector to unify the direction and management of the same and reducing competition.