Peoples & Things Kate Epstein on How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National-Security State" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
Oct 27, 2025
Join Kate Epstein, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Camden and author of Analog Superpowers, as she dives into how twentieth-century technology theft influenced the national-security state. She discusses the legal battles over naval fire-control systems, the complexities of intellectual property in wartime, and the implications of secrecy on innovation. Epstein also shares insights on the competitive tensions in military procurement and the rigorous research methods that shaped her work.
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Liberal Militarism Creates IP Tensions
- "Liberal militarism" links liberal economies' reliance on private-sector tech to military needs, creating tensions over secrecy and IP.
- States outsource R&D to firms to avoid statism, then clash over who owns resulting intellectual property.
Civilians Built The Fire-Control Breakthrough
- Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood, civilians, studied the calculus of relative ship movement and began building solutions in their spare time.
- They combined mathematical insight with Isherwood's engineering to pursue a radical fire-control design.
Fire Control As Early Analog AI
- The fire-control machine was an analog computer using mechanical integrators and gyroscopes to compute continuous rates.
- Pollen framed his device as a self-initializing 'machine that uses intelligence'—an early claim of automation.
