The first historical study of export control regulations as a tool for the sharing and withholding of knowledge.
In this groundbreaking book, Mario Daniels and John Krige set out to show the enormous political relevance that export control regulations have had for American debates about national security, foreign policy, and trade policy since 1945. Indeed, they argue that from the 1940s to today the issue of how to control the transnational movement of information has been central to the thinking and actions of the guardians of the American national security state. The expansion of control over knowledge and know-how is apparent from the increasingly systematic inclusion of universities and research institutions into a system that in the 1950s and 1960s mainly targeted business activities. As this book vividly reveals, classification was not the only—and not even the most important—regulatory instrument that came into being in the postwar era.
"“Daniels and Krige’s attempt is remarkable because of the breadth of the research required, but also because it breaks new ground. . . . This is a necessary, useful, and foundational book for aspects of twentieth- and twenty-first-century US policy that in combination typically get short shrift. For scholars interested in Cold War foreign policy, the history of technology and institutions, sociology, or twentieth-century intellectual history, this will be a book to have.”" - Technology and Culture
"This is a terrific and important book. To make sense of our current moment of post-neoliberal revirement, we need new, engaged, and detailed political histories of state institutions. Daniels and Krige show us what that might look like." - H-Diplo Roundtable XXIV-8
