Young wannabes doing their thing at a Techcrunch Disrupt conference in 2012. Photo via Flickr user JD Lasica

At the Powell Street BART station in San Francisco, ads for Oakley sunglasses are everywhere. “Disruptive by design,” they declare—or, rather, #DESRUPTIVEBYDESIGN. Behind those words are gray images of blueprints and lasers and factories with big bolts like in Charlie Chaplin’s spoof Modern Times. Fittingly, the campaign is a collaboration with Wired, the foremost media enterprise devoted to the worship of all things new. In the Silicon Valley lexicon, disruption is such an overused incantation that it's almost dull. Now even sunglasses can do it.

The truth, however, is that disruption is not boring at all. It impacts people's lives every day—though much more often the lives of vulnerable working people, rather than those of the complacent fat cats all this talk of “disruption” is supposed to threaten. We need to be a lot more careful about how we throw that word around and, much more importantly, how we actually disrupt.

Jill Lepore’s recent essay in The New Yorker, “The Disruption Machine,” offers an important intervention. She questions the economic logic of the gospel of disruption being taught at business schools and startup accelerators—that forever disrupting the way of things means endless innovation, growth and progress. Lepore points out that this worldview overlooks the great bulk of the economy that rests on relative stability and rather marginal improvements. Compared to them, disruption is a bit of a sideshow. Even in tech.

A good way to start thinking about disruption is by asking questions like this: Who is being disrupted most? And who really benefits? 25-year-old startup CEOs—the people we hear talking about disruption the most these days—come and go. Some of them will manage to make a living on the basis of their disruptive ideas, and a few will get very rich, but most will end up going through cycles of boom and bust, disrupting themselves until they wind up working for someone else. The venture capitalists who fund them, and who so eagerly egg on their disruptive talk, hedge their bets and diversify their portfolios and will probably end up with plenty of money no matter what.

The most serious disruption of our economy in recent memory, the 2008 financial crash, is a particularly troubling example of this pattern. What caused the crisis? A financial industry gone recklessly amok, disruptively innovating complex instruments like derivatives and new ways of packaging mortgage-backed securities without regard for the consequences. Who suffered those consequences? Some well-paid bankers were laid off, but millions of people across the United States lost their homes, their jobs, or both.

A bailout arrived for the banks, and soon they rehired most of those who’d been laid off and kept—or even increased—their stratospheric executive bonuses. For people in other sectors who were able to get back to work, it was generally to lower-paying jobs. Foreclosed homes in many communities were acquired by big companies on behalf of Wall Street, rather than being bought back by individuals and families who lived in them. That disruption, in the end, only helped the fat cats.

No matter who causes a disruption—or, in some respects, even what kind of disruption it is—those who are best prepared to take advantage of it are the ones who win out. In 2008, the banks had lobbyists and PACs and their own former co-workers at the highest levels of government. The people left homeless or jobless, meanwhile, had little recourse but silence and a misplaced sense of shame. Disruption, then, tends to make our rampant inequality even worse.

Another kind of disruption is that of a resistance movement. We all watched, often with surprise and dismay, what happened in the wake of the 2011 uprising in Egypt. The initial pro-democracy wave created a massive disruption and forced a ruler from power. But the democratic forces were fairly marginal in Egyptian society, and that was just about the last we heard from them. Soon, the Muslim Brotherhood took power, having joined the protests only reluctantly. The group won elections not because its members sparked the unrest, but because for decades they had been building formidable networks throughout the population. Before long, they were crushed by the military, a vast apparatus fueled by billions of dollars in aid from the United States. Once again, entrenched power prevailed over the agents of disruption, and those who've suffered most have been working class Egyptians.

Disruption is essential, and a fact of life. This is a world rife with injustice and cruel inertia, and we should definitely explore creative ways of resisting those tendencies. We should be in the streets protesting when we need to, and we should be creating new kinds of organizations that push the boundaries set by old ones. But disruption, in and of itself, isn’t necessarily a good thing unless those who are most vulnerable in society are poised to benefit.

There are ways communities can make that happen, or at least make it more likely. They can build strong, disciplined coalitions. They can organize workers and develop habits of self-reliance. An important recent conference in Jackson, Mississippi, for instance, focused on building resilient cooperative enterprises in black communities, which were especially hard-hit by the 2008 crisis. African Americans in the South know this lesson well. Decades earlier, the civil rights movement turned its disruptions into victories because of tight-knit networks like churches and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Disruption is not a word we should use lightly, or cynically, or in order to sell more eyewear. It is not a mere business model. Perhaps it should be treated more like a swear word, in the sense of being especially potent and rather seldom used. We draw our swear words from sexuality and religion—important things that can have dire consequences. Disruption is important and dire, too, and it’s time we talked about it that way.

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In the heart of Silicon Valley where start-ups are a way of life, open space offices and teams rule the landscape. Even at the biggest of the big companies such as Google and Facebook, power struggles among and between bureaucrats are a thing of the past. ”Move fast and break things” is a Facebook’s slogan. Flat organizations, no elaborate hierarchies, and constant change dominate. Or so, everyone seems to say. See here, here, and here.

Then along comes a Stanford professor who says: “Sorry Kids, Corporate Power Hasn’t Changed.” Jeffrey Pfeffer at the Graduate School of Business since 1979 has studied organizations for decades. According to Pfeffer, Silicon Valley firms–big and small–recruit engineers and programmers to become managers by saying:

We’re not political here. We’re young, cool, socially networked, hip, high-technology people focused on building and selling great products. We’re family-friendly, have fewer management levels and less hierarchy, and make decisions collegially.

It just ain’t so, according to Pfeffer. He points out that hierarchies exists in all organizations and power, acquiring status, and control over ideas and practices are in play unceasingly. He points to the power struggles that occurred at the birth of Twitter and the frequent turnover of CEOs as Hewlett-Packard. And hierarchy is alive and well at Facebook and Google where dual classes of stock “allow the founders to retain the lion’s share of control.” An infographic on hierarchy at both firms would have strengthened his argument even further.

Pfeffer concludes his article with the flat-out statement:

Competition for status and advancement exists not only over time and across countries but also in virtually all species. In short, whether we like it or not, the rules of power abide largely unchanged. People who ignore these principles do so at their peril.

I was struck by Pfeffer’s points that amid all of the talk about change, flat organizations, and team-work, the constancy of competition within companies for power and status remains. Even in Silicon Valley.

Power, Status, and Hierarchy in Public Schools

A similar rhetoric pervades the quest for effective schooling. Reformers, both on the political left and right, say say, teachers need to collaborate, network, and build strong school cultures where instruction and learning are primary goals. See here, here, and here. But talk is cheap. Beyond the words, what are the organizational realities (i.e., tall or flat, hierarchical or teams) in public schools?

Most U.S. elementary schools are already “flat” organizationally. There is a principal, a few administrative and instructional aides, building staff, and the largest group of all, the teachers who report to the principal. That’s it. In larger secondary schools there are more administrators, staff, and rules but few hierarchical strata separate teachers from their principals. The largest number of staff in middle and high schools are teachers. But rules also come from district and state offices.

Regulations abound in schools because districts are creatures of the state which, in turn, makes educational policy for everyone. So district administrators try to make sure that local and state policies are followed in schools. School-site principals do the same with teachers. In short, even with a flat school-site organization, bureaucratic levels exist in school districts and the state which means that elbowing for higher status and getting more clout occur in schools, districts, and state departments of education. Here’s the catch, however.

With all of the rules and hierarchical levels from classroom through the state superintendent of education, teachers have one things in their power to do: close the classroom door. They are (and have been) gatekeepers for student content, skills, and attitudes.

What about charter schools that have autonomy and are free from most district and state regulations? KIPP, Aspire, and other groups of charter schools have state and national organizations that make rules for individual schools to follow. As in public schools, however, charter school teachers can close their doors.

Teachers as gatekeepers exist because the organizational reality of both regular and charter schools is that they are age-graded and each teacher has a self-contained classroom with a door to close. Teachers have power within their classroom but little outside of it unless they develop a support network, a culture within the school. And, from time to time, that has occurred in both charter and regular schools.

Consider all the talk of moving to project-based learning and shifting the teacher’s role from the sage-on-stage to guide-on-the-side. Periodically, school reformers for more than a century have coerced, urged, and pleaded with teachers to change their dominant teacher-centered forms of instruction into more student-centered ones along the lines mentioned above.

On occasion, some of the reforms have stuck in some schools where teachers weathered criticism and supported one another through cascades of hype and criticism. In these scattered instances, teachers kept their doors open and built a stable school culture supporting such instructional reforms as teaching in small groups regularly, sustaining open classrooms, using project-based learning, and creating rich student-centered activities (seehere and here). But not most teachers who returned time and again to practices that worked better for them than the “new” reform simply because they could close their classroom doors.

These are (and have been) abiding features of public schools and companies that no amount of talk and hype about doing business differently has changed. Even in Silicon Valley.

U.S., Italian, and French aircraft carriers. Photo via

For the past few weeks, China, India, France, Italy, and the United States have engaged in a large-scale promotional campaign, complete with exclusive photo ops. Glamour shots were snapped in exotic locations. Entourages were spotted. But in large part, the only fans who took notice were a handful of naval-warfare nerds. Because the photos were of aircraft carriers.

In the ongoing international game of “Who Will Rule The World?”, these photographs represent a focused and deliberate attempt to communicate to each other—and to the rest of the world — that these countries intend to be dominant world powers this century.

China started it off with a photo op of its new carrier and some support ships. India, not wanting to be outdone, took some pics of both of the country's carriers at sea, side-by-side. The U.S. and some of its allies responded with a picture of a US, French, and Italian carrier sailing with each other. Even when using a pretty generous definition of the term “aircraft carrier,” there are only a few dozen of them in the world today, so the fact that a sizable percentage of the operational carriers have been shown off in recent weeks is more than just coincidence.

National militaries are sometimes as much about image and symbolism as they are about killing enemies. But a nation building an aircraft carrier isn’t the same thing as a dude buying a muscle car. For starters, a lot of the effect of having a big, scary military isn’t about testosterone—it’s about deterrence. And while deterrence involves persuading others that you’re a badass, the functional consequence of deterrence is peace. Convincing some mouthy goofball that picking a fight with your country is a losing proposition is just as big a part of preventing war as diplomacy.

A Chinese aircraft carrier leads a battle group. Photo via

Among the many tools of military posturing, aircraft carriers are king. While they are indeed warships, they're not simply for fighting other navies. Aircraft carriers are, first and foremost, airbases. Of course, they can never be a one-for-one equivalent to an airbase built on land, but navies work very hard to replicate the functionality as closely as possible. And they are also mobile, able to park themselves within range of an awful lot of the world's potential targets. For months on end.

If a navy can do these things effectively, an aircraft carrier can be a potent political tool. There’s nothing quite like a floating airbase carrying 75 or more aircraft (which are perhaps in turn carrying nuclear weapons) appearing off-shore to encourage an end to hostilities. While other things may pose a bigger practical threat, it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to guess how people would react if, in the middle of a diplomatic crisis, China parked a carrier battle group bristling with weapons 30 miles off California beaches. So even though aircraft carriers are potent weapons systems designed to break things and kill people, their day-in, day-out use is mostly about political signaling.

So if carriers are used to send political messages, what have these countries been trying to tell each other for the last few weeks? First off, the Chinese wanted to show the world that their first entry into the world of aircraft carriers—it’s actually an old Russian carrier—can go to sea, coordinate with other ships, and operate—rather than just decorate—a dock. What the analytical folks saw was a carrier that isn’t very good at being an airbase. Based on the photo, experts don’t think the Chinese would be able to send that carrier very far, and they don’t believe that it could operate at sea for very long. So as far as surprise airbases go, China’s would get a C for airbase and C for surprise. This isn’t unusual for a first entry into aircraft carriers, but it’s pretty clear that this first entry is more of a warm-up than an actual threat.

Indian aircraft carriers. Photo via

The Indian photo-op featured both their carriers, which was a none-too-delicate way of showing up the Chinese as a bunch of newbie upstarts—even if the Indian carriers are a positively ancient British carrier and an old, modified Russian ship. The Indian display featured some highlights—like the presence of refueling and support ships—that allowed India to demonstrate they were better equipped to use the surprise airbases in practice, not just in theory. So India would get a C for airbase, but a B for surprise.

The most recent photo breaks this mold a bit, and that’s the interesting part. It is widely acknowledged that the US is the superheavyweight champion of the world when it comes to carriers and power projection. In the surprise airbase category, the US has walked away with A grades in both areas for decades. There’s nothing new here. What made the US photo op interesting is that it didn’t focus on just the US. The photo included an aircraft carrier from France and one from Italy. And the picture didn’t include any of the support ships that are usually shown in such photos. What the US and its allies were signaling downplayed ratings for surprise airbases, but showed off the real concrete manifestation of the diplomatic and functional relationships between the NATO allies. The point wasn’t that one of these three countries can go toe-to-toe with other navies—it’s that many countries can, and that those countries are allies.

And so in essence, what started out as China trying to display emerging capabilities morphed into India one-upping China, and then resulted in a message from the West reminding both of those rising and competitive Asian powers that while they’re up-and-coming contenders for global dominance, they’re still a lot more up-and-coming than they are contenders.

It’s that time again. With the New Year comes new lists, and like I did last year, I’ve tried to put together abibliography of nuclear history scholarship that was published over the course of the year. All of the same caveats about completeness and inclusion apply — it has to be something primarily about the past, it has to be more or less a work of “history” relating to nuclear technology (I’ve left out a lot of quantitative political science because while it can be quite interesting, I’m not sure it is history), and it had to have been published in 2013. I haven’t tried to track down chapters in books (sorry) or most web-only content (which means I’ve omitted the great stuff on Able Archer 83 that the National Security Archive published, but such is life).

“Any books on atomic power?” New York Times Book Review, November 18, 1945.

Looking at the list, I don’t see any obvious trends from the titles alone. Last year was the anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, so that was the one obvious trend there. This year, I don’t see anything that stands out (other than sampling issues like the fact that the Bulletin of the Atomic Sciences ran an issue on nuclear culture).

I‘m sure there is much missing — so please leave me a note below in the comments section, or send me an e-mail, if you know of something that might belong here, and if I think it meets my (somewhat loose) criteria I’ll add it to the list.

As an aside, it would be great if other scholars out there would produce similar lists for their own sub-fields! It takes a lot less time than one might imagine (hooray for academic search engines), and is a great way to get a quick survey of all of those things that you didn’t know you had missed.

BOOKS

Brown, Kate. Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters.Oxford University Press, 2013.

Creager, Angela.Life Atomic: A History of Radioisotopes in Science and Medicine. University of Chicago Press, 2013.

Farmelo, Graham. Churchill’s Bomb: How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race. Basic Books, 2013.

Foertsch, Jacqueline. Reckoning Day: Race, Place, and the Atom Bomb in Postwar America. Vanderbilt University Press, 2013.

Frederickson, Kari. Cold War Dixie: Militarization and Modernization in the American South.University of Georgia Press, 2013.

Freedman, Lawrence. Strategy: A History. Oxford University Press, 2013.

Hamblin, Jacob Darwin.Arming Mother Nature: The Birth of Catastrophic Environmentalism.Oxford University Press, 2013.

Hill, C.N. An Atomic Empire: A Technical History of the Rise and Fall of the British Atomic Energy Programme. Imperial College Press, 2013.

Kiernan, Denise. The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II. Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Krupar, Shiloh R. Hot Spotter’s Report: Military Fables of Toxic Waste.University of Minn. Press, 2013.

Lanouette, William with Bela Szilard.Genius in the shadows: A biography of Leo Szilard, the man behind the bomb. [Revised edn.] Skyhorse Publisher, 2013.

Lavine, Matthew. The First Atomic Age: Scientists, Radiations, and the American Public, 1895-1945.Palgrave Macmillan,

2013.Melosi, Martin V.Atomic Age America.Pearson,

Monk, Ray. Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. Doubleday,

2013.

Phalkey, Jahnavi.Atomic State: Big Science in Twentieth-Century India. Permanent Black, 2013.

Schewe, Phillip F. Maverick Genius: The Pioneering Odyssey of Freeman Dyson. St. Martin’s Press, 2013.

Schlosser, Eric. Command and Control: Nuclear Weapons, the Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety. Penguin, 2013.

Sokolski, Henry D. , and Bruno Tertrais.Nuclear Weapons Security Crises: What Does History Teach? Strategic Studies Institute, 2013.

Seed, David. Under the Shadow: The Atomic Bomb and Cold War Narratives. Kent State University Press, 2013.

Wilson, Ward. Five Myths about Nuclear Weapons. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Wolfe, Audra J.Competing with the Soviets: Science, Technology, and the State in Cold War America.Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013.

ARTICLES

Alvarez, Robert. “Uranium Mining and the U.S. Nuclear Weapons Program.” Public Interest Report 66, no. 4 (Fall 2013).

Broughner, Kerry. “Art and nuclear culture.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 6 (November/December

2013).Dennis, Michael A. “Tacit Knowledge as a Factor in the Proliferation of WMD: The Example of Nuclear Weapons.”Studies in Intelligence 57, No. 3 (Extracts, September

Dvorak, Darrell. “The First Atomic Bomb Mission: Trinity B-29 Operations Three Weeks Before Hiroshima.”Air Hiroshima.” Air Power History 60, no. 4 (Winter 2013).

Gallagher, Carole. “Nuclear photography: Making the invisible visible.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 6 (November/December 2013).

Gainor, Christopher. “The Atlas and the Air Force: Reassessing “Reassessing the Beginnings of America’s First Intercontinental Ballistic Missile.” Technology and Culture 54, no. 2 (April 2013).

Gerson, Michael S. ”The Origins of Strategic Stability: The United States and Surprise Attack.” InStrategic Stability: Contending Interpretations, edited by Elbridge Colby and Gerson. Strategic Studies Institute, 2013.

Gheorghe, Eliza. “Atomic Maverick: Romania’s negotiations for nuclear technology, 1964–1970.” Cold War History 13, no. 3 (2013).

Harrison, Henrietta. “Popular Responses to the Atomic Bomb in China 1945–1955.” Past and Present 218, no. 1 (2013).

Harrell, Eben and David E. Hoffmann. “Plutonium Mountain: Inside the 17-Year Mission to Secure a Legacy of Soviet Nuclear Testing.” Report, Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (August 2013).

Harris, Ian M. and Charles F. Howlett. “‘Duck and cover’: The evolution of peace education at the beginning of the nuclear age.” Journal of Peace Education 10, no. 2 (2013).

Hargittai, Istvan. “Los Alamos and ‘Los Arzamas.’” Structural Chemistry 24, no. 5 (October 2013).

Hecker, Siegfried S. “The story of Plutonium Mountain.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 5 (September/October 2013).

Hughes, R. Gerald, and Thomas Robb. “Kissinger and the Diplomacy of Coercive Linkage in the ‘Special Relationship’ between the United States and Great Britain, 1969–1977.”Diplomatic History 37, no. 4 (2013).

Hultman, Nathan, and Jonathan Koomey. “Three Mile Island: The driver of US nuclear power’s decline?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 3 (May/June 2013).

Hymans, Jacques E. C. “The Threat of Nuclear Proliferation: Perception and Reality.” Ethics & International Affairs 27, no. 3 (2013).

Jameson, Robert P. “Armageddon’s Shortening Fuse: How Advances in Nuclear Weapons Technology Pushed Strategists to Mutually Assured Destruction, 1945-1962.” Air Power History 60, no. 1 (Spring 2013).

Jones, Loh, Sato, “Narrating Fukushima: Scales of a Nuclear Meltdown”East Asian Science, Technology, and Society(2013) 7: 601-623.

Jones, Nate. “Countdown to declassification: Finding answers to a 1983 nuclear war scare.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 6 (November/December 2013).

Khlopkov, Anton. “How the United States Helped Iran Build a Laser Enrichment Laboratory.” Nonproliferation Review 20, no. 1 (March 2013).

Komine, Yukinori. “Okinawa Confidential, 1969: Exploring the Linkage between the Nuclear Issue and the Base Issue.” Diplomatic History 37, no. 4 (September 2013).

Lifton, Robert J. “The dimensions of contemporary war and violence: How to reclaim humanity from a continuing revolution in the technology of killing.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 4 (July/August 2013).

Masco, Joseph P. “Terror as normality.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 6 (November/December 2013).

McKellar, Shelley. “Negotiating Risk: The Failed Development of Atomic Hearts in America, 1967-1977.” Technology and Culture 54, no. 1 (January

2013).Norris, Robert S. “The History of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile 1945-2013.” Public Interest Report 66, no. 3 (Spring

Nye, Jr., Joseph S. “From bombs to bytes: Can our nuclear history inform our cyber future?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 5 (September/October 2013).

Parr, Helen. “‘The Nuclear Myth’: Edward Heath, Europe, and the International Politics of Anglo-French Nuclear Co-Operation 1970–3.” International History Review 35, no. 3 (2013).

Perrow, Charles. “Nuclear denial: From Hiroshima to Fukushima.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 5 (September/October 2013).

Reader, Joseph and Charles W. Clark. “1932, a Watershed Year in Nuclear Physics.” Physics Today 66, no. 3 (March 2013).

Rothschild, Rachel. “Environmental Awareness in the Atomic Age: Radioecologists and Nuclear Technology.”Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences43, no. 4 (September 2013), 492-530.

Singh, Jasjit. “India’s Nuclear Policy: The Year After.” Strategic Analysis 37, no. 6 (2013).

Sylvest, Casper. “Technology and Global Politics: The Modern Experiences of Bertrand Russell and John H. Herz.” International History Review 35, no. 1 (2013).

Tal, David. “‘Absolutes’ and ‘Stages’ in the Making and Application of Nixon’s SALT Policy.” Diplomatic History 37, no. 5 (2013).

Tzeng, Peter. “Nuclear Leverage: US Intervention in Sensitive Technology Transfers in the 1970s.” Nonproliferation Review 20, no. 3 (November 2013).

Veys, Lucy. “Joseph Rotblat: Moral Dilemmas and the Manhattan Project.” Physics in Perspective15, no. 4 (December 2013).

Volmar, Axel. “Listening to the Cold War: The Nuclear Test Ban Negotiations, Seismology, and Psychoacoustics, 1958–1963.”Osiris 28, No. 1 (January 2013), 80-102.

Wellerstein, Alex. “Bomb Appétit!”Lucky Peachno. 6 (Winter 2013), 144.¹

Wellerstein, Alex. “We Don’t Need Another Manhattan Project,” Public Interest Report66, no. 4 (Fall 2013).

Weiss, Leonard. “The Lavon Affair: How a false-flag operation led to war and the Israeli bomb.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 69, no. 4 (July/August 2013).

Yellen, Jeremy A. “The Specter of Revolution: Reconsidering Japan’s Decision to Surrender.” International History Review 35, no. 1 (2013).

Young, Ken. “Revisiting NSC 68.” Journal of Cold War Studies 15, no. 1 (Winter 2013).

Young, Ken. “Special Weapon, Special Relationship: The Atomic Bomb Comes to Britain.” Journal of Military History 77, no. 2 (April 2013).

Young, Ken. “The Hydrogen Bomb, Lewis L. Strauss and the Writing of Nuclear History.” Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 3 (December 2013).

1. Hey, I write the blog, so I define what’s “scholarly,” right? I’ve put a link to the PDF of this on my articles page for those who are interested.