Defense and Technology Supplement: The Information Opportunity

TAKING advantage of the information revolution during the Persian Gulf War, General Norman Schwarzkopf knew his stealth fighters had destroyed their first targets in Baghdad when CNN’s Baghdad reporters went off the air because they had lost the satellite uplink carrying their reports to the world. By contrast, when Andrew Jackson’s forces defeated the British on January 8, 1815, in the largest battle of the War of 1812, they contributed nothing to the war’s outcome: negotiators had ended the conflict two weeks earlier. Unfortunately, word of the peace didn’t reach Washington until February 13.

For most of human history, communication was limited to the speed of the fastest horse or an occasional signaling system. The “information revolution” began in 1842 when Congress paid Samuel Morse $30,000 to run an experimental telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Two years later, Morse inaugurated the first practical means of using electricity to send messages long distances nearly instantaneously with the astonished invocation, “What hath God wrought!”

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Robert S. Walker

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TAKING advantage of the information revolution during the Persian Gulf War, General Norman Schwarzkopf knew his stealth fighters had destroyed their first targets in Baghdad when CNN’s Baghdad reporters went off the air because they had lost the satellite uplink carrying their reports to the world. By contrast, when Andrew Jackson’s forces defeated the British on January 8, 1815, in the largest battle of the War of 1812, they contributed nothing to the war’s outcome: negotiators had ended the conflict two weeks earlier. Unfortunately, word of the peace didn’t reach Washington until February 13.

For most of human history, communication was limited to the speed of the fastest horse or an occasional signaling system. The “information revolution” began in 1842 when Congress paid Samuel Morse $30,000 to run an experimental telegraph line between Washington and Baltimore. Two years later, Morse inaugurated the first practical means of using electricity to send messages long distances nearly instantaneously with the astonished invocation, “What hath God wrought!”