RAND Corporation

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The RAND Corporation (an acronym for Research ANd Development) is a foreign relations and global policy think tank known for their non-biased, rational analyses of many of the most important issues facing the world today. RAND's mission statement is "to help improve policy and decision making through research and analysis", using its "core values of quality and objectivity." RAND takes an extremely academic, mathematical and scientific approach to their analyses, leading to frequent charges of amoral, unethical and overly militaristic conclusions.

1 Locations
2 Allegations of conspiracy
3 Notable members
4 Focus issues
5 See also
6 External links

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Locations

The RAND Corporation has 4 main locations: Arlington, Virginia; the RAND Europe center in Cambridge, UK; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and their headquarters in Santa Monica, California. Smaller offices are located in Jackson, Mississippi and Doha, Qatar.

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Allegations of conspiracy

Like similar organizations such as the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, The RAND Corporation has attracted a great deal of attention from conspiracy theorists. The most standard charge is that RAND is nothing more than a tool of the Military Industrial Complex, a claim that is hard to confirm or deny as a result of the secret nature of some of their work. Evidence for this is shaky, but plausible. RAND frequently has adopted suggestions that advise massive changes be made to current strategies. This would certainly lead to increased military spending, though it would also shake up the status quo. The use of game theory to map human interactions has also been called into question. One of the corporation's biggest controversies involved the book On Thermonuclear War by RAND participant Herman Kahn. The book seemed to upset people on both sides of the aisle with its rational and unemotional view of nuclear stategy.

Apart from these theories, there is little doubt that RAND is a group of unelected individuals who nonetheless wield tremendous influence within our government. They are far from alone in this regard, but a case can be made that any group that behaves in such a manner, is if not involved in a conspiracy, is teetering dangerously close to such a line.

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Notable members

Henry H. Arnold — General, United States Air Force — RAND founder
Donald Wills Douglas, Sr. — President, Douglas Aircraft Company — RAND founder
David L. Aaron — Deputy National Security Advisor under Carter and drafter of the NATO treaty
Donald Rumsfeld— Chairman of RAND Corporation from 1981–1986 and Secretary of Defense for the United States from 1975 to 1977 and 2001 to 2006.
Condoleezza Rice — former trustee 1991–1997 and current Secretary of State for the United States.
Paul O'Neill — Chairman in the late 1990s.
Bernard Brodie — Military strategist and nuclear architect.
Harold L. Brode — physicist, leading nuclear weapons effects expert
Herman Kahn — theorist on nuclear war and one of the founders of scenario planning.
Zalmay Khalilzad — U.S. Ambassador to United Nations.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby — Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff.
John Forbes Nash, Jr. — Nobel prize-winning mathematician

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Focus issues

Among RAND's main accomplishments involved the use of game theory to military war theory. Many other analytical techniques were pioneered by RAND and spanned the disciplines of math, economics, and some uses of computer modeling. Among these is their controversial use of game theory(mentioned above).

While 50% of RAND's research concerns national security, they also investigate a wide variety of other issues, including but not limited to education, healthcare, environmental issues, social welfare, science & technology and labor markets.

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