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  Herman Kahn

Founder, Hudson Institute

Biographical Highlights
Herman Kahn, the most celebrated and controversial nuclear strategist of
his day, later to be known also as a futurist, political scientist,
geo-strategist and founder and director of the Hudson Institute "think
tank,” began his career in the late 1940s with the Rand Corporation as a
physicist and mathematician. His co-directorship of the Strategic Air
Force Project while being at Rand inspired him to write /On
Thermonuclear War/, the book that elevated him to national and
international preeminence. /On Thermonuclear War/ was the first book to
systematically analyze the possible effects of nuclear war and the
possible strategic options under various circumstances. The book was
followed by a sequence of similar studies having a profound impact on
the US nuclear and military strategy and on strategic thinking in
general (/Thinking about the Unthinkable, Crises and Arms Control, On
Escalation/).

In 1961 Kahn resigned the Rand Corporation and established the Hudson
Institute, an organization that developed into a pioneer and model for
the new emerging forms of public policy and interdisciplinary research
institutions. Kahn became the first director of the Institute, which was
set up to do inter-disciplinary freelance research into what he termed
"important issues, not just urgent ones."

While he maintained his interest in strategic and military matters, Kahn
began to turn his attentions to economics, politics and especially to
public policy issues. He became one of the founding fathers of the
Futures Studies (futurology) movement contributing to the highest degree
to its methodological and theoretical foundations: he developed the
scenario method, the application of systems analysis and of mathematical
and scientific tools to forecasting, and the organizational bases of
interdisciplinary and future-oriented research.

He had a critical and very visible participation in the public debates
of his day on topics related to economic development, global trends and
the impact of technology. He challenged the neo-Malthusianism and
doomsday scenarios and rhetoric popular in the 1970’ and with a series
of path breaking studies he contributed decisively to the emergence of a
more realistic and pragmatic approach to global problems (/The Year
2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next 33 Years, World Economic
Development, The Next 200 Years/ and /The Coming Boom: Economic,
Political and Social/).

During his lifetime he was considered: “one of the world's great
intellects”, “a mental mutation” possessing “an incredibly high,
stratospheric I.Q.“, a “mesmerizing presence”, “spectacular”, “a
provocateur in the sedate world of ideas”, “a reformer”, "a
technological optimist" or “a futurist who attempted to cope with
history before it happens.” Kahn described himself as a "free-thinking
intellectual (…) largely determined by a desire to do policy-oriented
studies with practical applications (…) pragmatic, eclectic, and
synthetic in thinking”. "I'm against ignorance," Kahn once told, "I'm
against sloppy, emotional thinking. I'm against fashionable thinking. I
am against the whole cliché of the moment". Learn more about Herman
Kahn's work here. <http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=HermanKahn>


Paul D. Aligica, Hudson Institute

Publications and Media Exposure

    * /Application of Monte Carlo/, Rand Corporation, 1954.


    * /On Thermonuclear War/, Princeton University Press, 1962,
      Greenwood, 1978.


    * /Thinking about the Unthinkable/, Horizon Press, 1962.


    * (Editor with Anthony Wiener) /Crises and Arms Control/, Hudson
      Institute, 1962.


    * /On Escalation,/ Praeger, 1965, Greenwood, 1986.


    * /The Alternative World Futures Approach/, Hudson Institute, 1966.


    * (With Carl Dibble) /Notes on the Choice of a Basic National
      Security Policy/, Hudson Institute, 1967.


    * (With Wiener) /The Year 2,000: A Framework for Speculation on the
      Next 33 Years/, Macmillan, 1967.


    * /Can We Win in Vietnam?/, Praeger, 1968.


    * /On Thermonuclear War: Three Lectures and Some Suggestions/, Free
      Press, 1969.


    * /The Emerging Japanese Superstate: Challenge and Response/,
      Prentice-Hall, 1970.


    * /Why ABM?/, Prentice-Hall, 1970.