Operation paperclip

This isn’t related to healthcare. It is related to science.

I personally believe the foundations of modern science (and innovations) were from Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. I am still trying to dig the references to explain why the foundational mechanisms were strong (primarily the ideas around nationalistic roots). The closest example is Israel (e.g. its famed Unit 8200), which sets a high bar for innovation (happening in the militaristic context), but repurposed for civilian use. For example, Radiation Oncology has its roots in the Marshall Plan, which could then spin off benefits for cancer treatment. We have made only incremental improvements after the 1960’s after the initial impetus was stopped.

While it is easy to demonise the West for the societal ills, it is imperative to remember that industry-academia linkage and strong nationalistic push helped push innovation against an “imaginary enemy”. The US was smart enough to realise and capture value through gradual de-risking of technological bets by involvement of private venture capital. The “start-ups”, though, now offer a “me-too” crappy template system, and I don’t foresee the “breakthroughs” that breathless mainstream media rants about. Besides, the socialist governance systems (e.g. freebies) have completely destroyed the ideas about entrepreneurship and manufacturing by basing economies on services, rather than core manufacturing and consumption led systems.

Therefore, this fascinating historical context here:

What Was Operation Paperclip? – HISTORY

In a covert affair originally dubbed Operation Overcast but later renamed Operation Paperclip, roughly 1,600 of these German scientists (along with their families) were brought to the United States to work on America’s behalf during the Cold War. The program was run by the newly-formed Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), whose goal was to harness German intellectual resources to help develop America’s arsenal of rockets and other biological and chemical weapons, and to ensure such coveted information did not fall into the hands of the Soviet Union.

One of the most well-known recruits was Wernher von Braun, the technical director at the Peenemunde Army Research Center in Germany who was instrumental in developing the lethal V-2 rocket that devastated England during the war. Von Braun and other rocket scientists were brought to Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Proving Grounds, New Mexico, as “War Department Special Employees” to assist the U.S. Army with rocket experimentation. Von Braun later became director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and the chief architect of the Saturn V launch vehicle, which eventually propelled two dozen American astronauts to the Moon.

(A little digression – Britain had prospered through the incessant looting of wealth from India; including the “foot soldiers” fighting a foreign war. The Indian Army cannot erase the past, though. The UK had rebuilt its economy from ground up till recently, when they are driving it to the ground back again. Their source of “pride” – NHS is tottering on the brink of collapse, while the exact same Singaporean healthcare system modelled on NHS is thriving).

The world War II had been instrumental in American rise. The de-dollarisation is going to rewrite a lot of scripts.