Publication

This essay considers the demand-pull and technology-push drivers of the use of information technology in the US military. Demand-pull factors stem from foreign threats and other tasking that arise from US foreign policy initiatives, such as peacekeeping missions. Technology-push factors stem from IT-related means and opportunities created in response to demands other than foreign threats or missions, for example, from commercial markets. The author argues that since the initial heavy demand-pull weighting of the 1940s, the imbalance has shifted to the technology-push side, a shift that has even accelerated since the early 1980s.