Ike & Hayek
Eisenhower’s warning about the “military-industrial complex” marked an era when the American right feared militarism could bankrupt the country and plunge it into socialism.
President Dwight Eisenhower giving a 1957 televised speech in the WhiteHouse about science and national security, next to a nose cone of an experimental missile which had been into space and back. (Warren K. Leffler/Library of Congress)
In the 1950s, a new manufacturing industry emerged in the United States, with a freshly coined name — “aerospace” — and a full complement of trade publications, such as Missiles and Rockets and Aviation Week. Like magazines at the doctor’s office, these journals were left lying around the White House, where one day they caught the eye […]