Episode 4: American Primacy and the Information Revolution – Setting the Scene for the Predator

The episode looks at the rise of cruise missiles in the early information age, tracing a belief in military revolutions from the Gulf War to 9/11.

It is 1989. The US has won the Cold War and is about to have a dramatic victory in Iraq. Meanwhile, in the bowels of the Pentagon, a small office of ivy league elites headed by career bureaucrat Andy Marshall, introduces a new idea about the burgeoning information technology revolution in the American military. In what are called “revolutions in military affairs," these civilians predict a world of rapid, precise wars fought on the backbone of new technologies like unmanned systems. These beliefs get a stunning endorsement in the Gulf War which ushers in a golden age for precision-guided munitions, cruise missiles, space-based navigation, and the birth of a small but promising company, General Atomics.