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Postcards from Heaven: Critical Geographies of the Cold War Military–Industrial–Academic Complex
Author(s) -
Pinkerton Alasdair,
Young Stephen,
Dodds Klaus
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2010.00821.x
Subject(s) - cold war , adversary , state (computer science) , peninsula , heaven , political science , spanish civil war , economic history , public administration , law , history , politics , archaeology , computer security , algorithm , computer science
This article examines a little‐known project funded by the US Air Force and CIA, and carried out by communications scientists at the University of Washington during the early 1950s. Project Revere sought to investigate how the seemingly humble information leaflet could be deployed, via air drops, as a “flexible weapon” to spark “interpersonal communications” and spread rumours throughout particular target populations. While the testing ground for these aerial experiments was the northwest United States (Washington State, Utah, Idaho), Revere scientists were aware that their work would find particular application in supporting America's Cold War activities overseas, not least in the Korean peninsula. At the same time, however, the Revere tests were implicated in the intensification of domestic anxieties as leaflets dropped over rural Washington State and Utah mobilised issues of civil defence, emergency procedures and warnings about “enemy bombers”. In this way, we suggest that Revere corresponded with, and heightened, efforts by national and local governments to mobilise citizens into a Cold War “call to arms”.