The Military-Industrial Divide

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In the debate on the incidence and dynamics of new industrial complexes, technological innovation has been treated as exogenous, and endogenous entrepreneurial growth forces have been stressed at the expense of state actions, interregional interactions, and geographical transfers of capital and labor. In this paper it is argued that technological paths are deliberately chosen and that the state, through its commitment to cold-war armament, has been a major source of demand for and underwriter of the new flexible technologies and new product lines so central to the new industrial districts phenomenon in the USA. The emergence of specific agglomerations, such as Los Angeles, Orange County, Silicon Valley, and the Boston area's Route 128, and the parallel failure of the industrial heartland cities to host military-related high-tech development, are the products of concerted locational choice and developmental efforts by military personnel, politicians, boosters, and military-industrial corporate managers, Military-led innovation has furthermore contributed to the rise of accelerated and institutionalized innovation and to the emergence of new macroeconomic pathologies, such as state debt, accelerated deindustrialization, and a worsening income distribution.

This publication has 17 references indexed in Scilit: