Whiz Kids

The "Whiz Kids", according to the article, "Neocons: The men behind the curtain" by Khurram Husain, published November/December 2003 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, states that


 * "When Robert Strange McNamara entered the Pentagon as defense secretary, he brought with him a clutch of youthful RAND Corporation/Rand analysts deeply steeped in studies of SAC vulnerability and counterforce. They came to be called the "Whiz Kids" for their penchant for numbers, models, and systems analysis. The Whiz Kids clashed routinely with senior uniformed officers, yet nobody could outdo them in an argument. Once their thinking began to determine defense allocations, force commanders found that the survival of their pet weapons systems depended on their ability to speak the Whiz Kids's language, and they moved to learn the techniques of systems analysis and game theory to avoid becoming irrelevant. In this way, the methodologies and language of strategic analysis developed at Rand seeped into the Pentagon and became the ubiquitous language in which military matters were going to be discussed."


 * "There was Alain Enthoven, the leader of the Whiz Kids, a team that advised Robert McNamara on the conduct of the Vietnam War."

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Other SourceWatch Resources

 * preemptive war
 * revolution in military affairs