The

The Hello and welcome to behind the news. My name is Doug Hinwood. A reassuring continuity prevails, two guests, two segments.

Laleigh-Kalili will talk about the role of the military and U.S. industrial development,

and Cal Chan will talk about how and why China is overtaking the U.S.

Most of us are aware of how deeply involved in funding U.S. technological development the Pentagon has been.

The Internet, computers, radar, just three prominent examples. Yes, the federal government has also

heavily subsidized basic biomedical research as well. The drug companies take that research and turn it

into profitable products with barely a thank you. Or at least that's the way it worked until

Elon came through with his chainsaw. But the military has had a huge role, what is less known as how long a history this has.

My first guest, Laleigh Kalili, has a review of a couple of books on military technology

in the London Review of Books. The books are barely worth mentioning, but Laleigh brings a lot of

her own expertise to the topic.

Unusually for an academic, she's professor of Gulf Studies at the University of Exeter in England.

She's had a wide variety of experience outside the ivory tower.

Her undergraduate degrees in chemical engineering, and she worked for several years as a management consultant.

She was on this show back in August 2020 to discuss her book, Sinews of War and Trade, a history of the role of shipping

in the economic development of the Arabian Peninsula. A minor correction. About eight

minutes into this interview, Lale says, in the United States and then mentions the NHS. She

meant the United Kingdom and NHS is the British National

Health Service. Laleigh Khalili. You opened a look at Palantir. Trump's now got them

assembling all the disparate data the U.S. government has on Americans into a single master database.

Who is Palantir and how alarmed should we be by this? So many years ago, when I was working on my second book about counterinsurgency, I went

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