Ask an expert what a quantum computer will bring, and you always get the same answer. Namely that such an ultra -powerful computer will solve problems that ‘traditional’ computers can never handle. Nevertheless, the Ministry of Defense will also have more concrete reasons to want to be universities in the field of quantum technology to collaborate. For example: to prevent quantum computers from giving other powers the opportunity to crack the security of Dutch bank details, or that of the Delta Works.
But something like that is less often the subject of conversation in many forms of science communication. In any case, there is little talk about how science and innovation always produce new forms of exercise and (protect against) warfare. While there are countless examples of that. Take the poison gas that Nobel Prize winner Fritz Haber During the First World War in Berlin with four other later Nobel Prize winners developed. And of course famous is the American Manhattan project to make the atomic bomb – where immediately and indirect even even 26 Nobel Prize winners were involved. By the way, even who refused to work on this, such as Lise Meitner Who identified the crucial process of nuclear splitting for atomic bombs did not escape it: discoveries are always used ‘for evil’ (and to offend thereof).
In an interesting article last week in Nature Steven Blank of Stanford University, and expert in this field, showed how science and military applications in the Second World War through that Manhattan project became more intertwined. He also describes how this interdependence then produced the successful research system that the United States made as a world leader in science and innovation, and to the country with the most frightening armed forces in the world.
Research into arms technology
It is precisely in the Second World War that convinced science adviser Vannevar Bush President Roosevelt’s government that research into arms technology should be conducted by academics at ordinary universities. Bush also argued that those scientists had to receive ample government financing, also for their laboratories and the organization – or, for all ‘overhead’. In addition, he encouraged that researchers started working directly with companies and received financing from those companies.
And all those aspects, Blank writes, are reflected in the post -war system in which the US government, for example through the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, research groups and their overhead costs continued to finance ($ 60 billion in 2023). In which (especially) companies then almost double such subsidies (46 billion). And in which innovations that do not immediately find their way to the government or such companies are further developed in start-ups, which again benefit from investments by the government (4 billion dollars in 2023) and other capital providers (170 billion).
Certainly in the first decades after the Second World War, it caused unprecedented growth in prosperity, better medical care and almost continuous economic growth. But at the same time, and that was the reason for Blanks broken, the same US also produced the Trump government who is now rapidly dismantling this ‘world-leading’ research system.
Where did it go wrong? Got Trump so much support because the US, as some people say, spent too much money on giving wars elsewhere, and too little for public transport, good education and accessible medical care in its own country? Is it because the mega winsts that arise from innovation in the field of information technology now mainly end up with a small group of techbros and their entourage? Because the American dream of a home, car and quiet life has become unreachable for many? Because a large group of poorly trained people can hardly cope with all the disinformation that is poured out over them through innovative smartphone applications?
Mold and bad insulation
And indeed: what good is new innovative cancer treatments if even basic medical care is outside your reach? Or, to translate it to the Netherlands: to the latest solar cell technology if you live in a rental home with poor insulation and fungal problems? On endless discussions about correct language use at universities if you yourself belong to the 20 percent Low -literate came from school?
I suddenly thought of Emilie du Châtelet, who was already permeated three hundred years ago of the coherence of science, innovation, defense and military efforts. In her book Foundations of physics she explained the newest insights in classical mechanics to her son at the time, who was destined as a member of the highest French nobility for a glorious career in the army. And she was getting all that knowledge with examples useful for military practice. Did she want to make her son a winner? Instead he finished under the guillotine During the French Revolution, which was partly unleashed because the lion’s share of the population barely benefited from all new knowledge and progress. Perhaps it all says together that we have to talk more often about what makes a society worth defending and how science (and education) can also be significant.
Margriet van der Heijden is a physicist and professor of science communication at the Eindhoven University of Technology.