This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 9, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Eisenhower warned us of an unwieldy military industrial complex,

but as a former university precedent, he also understood the dependency

that comes with federal research dollars.

That tension between academic integrity and research

may be curtailed because of tighter military controls.

Chris Preble, Vice President for Defense and Foreign Policy Studies

at the Cato Institute comments.

New rules that the Defense Department is considering would perhaps change the degree to which universities are participate in research for the

Defense Department.

As our colleague Jim Harper pointed out, that if you live by the military industrial complex you die by the military

industrial complex so you say that this was foreseeable and and foreseen

that's right I mean I think for libertarians there's all it's pretty

obvious that the danger that federal money could have a could certainly influence and perhaps be a pernicious influence on research and the direction

of research is longstanding.

But if you go back to Dwight Eisenhower's famous Farewell address, you know, people

remember the line, the military industrial complex, they remember the line a scientific

technical elite, but just that passage, he warned of domination of the nation's

scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money.

He said this is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. In other words,

Eisenhower understood that the growing dependence of the educational establishment,

...