Analog Superpowers: How 20th Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State

March 11, 2025

In this talk, which draws on her new book Analog Superpowers: How Twentieth-Century Technology Theft Built the National Security State, Katherine C. Epstein will explore a little-known but important chapter in the history of analog computing, and its surprising connections with today’s world of digital devices and great-power competition.

In the decade before World War I, two British civilians named Arthur Pollen and Harold Isherwood invented an artificially intelligent analog computer for aiming the big guns of battleships. Rather than pay for their invention, however, first the British navy and then the US navy pirated it. When the inventors sued for patent infringement, both governments invoked legal privileges to withhold evidence on the grounds of national-security secrecy. The US lawsuits became entangled with high-level Anglo-American diplomacy during World War II and with the Manhattan Project. The talk will thus speak to several major—and timely—issues: the intersection of computer technology and geopolitical rivalry, the impact of patent laws on defense innovation, and the scope of government secrecy.