Universities and the Military
how does your university tie in?

The University-Industrial-
Academic Complex:
Institutional and Interpersonal Links

University Profiles

Case Study #2 Faculty at UC Santa Cruz

The interpersonal links of professors and research faculty sometimes serves an even more ingrained and functional purpose than do Regent or Trustee connections. Faculty connected with the military-research complex not only conduct research, but also direct students and university resources toward the production of war.

Benjamin Friedlander, a professor of electrical engineering in the Jack Baskin School at UCSC is one example. Friedlanderís research background is essentially a career of service for the military-industrial complex. 42 of the past 51 research projects Friedlander has acted as principal investigator on have been sponsored by a military office, these include; US Army Missile Command, Ballistics Missiles Office ‚ Norton AFB, US Army Strategic Defense Command, and the Naval Surface Weapons Center. Much of professor Friedlanderís research concerns ìtarget tracking,î using advanced electronics for missiles, or airplanes.

In 1987 and 1988, long before Friedlander joined the Baskin School at Santa Cruz he worked as a consultant for a computer company in Sunnyvale named Saxpy. His research included projects like, ìSystolic Processor for Real-Time Target Classificationî all facilitated by the Small Business Innovative Research program (SBIR) of the Department of Defense, Missile Defense Agency. The SBIR funds research at small businesses that provide services not often found in the larger military contractors.

Prior to his work for the US military, Friedlander worked for the Israeli Military as an engineer. After exiting military employment, he worked for Israeli Aircraft Corporation, a defense contractor with arms sales to over 85 nations, producer of combat vehicles, ground penetrating radar, the Harpy Loitering Weapon System (a missile which hovers over its target until the opportune moment to strike), NIMROD laser guided missiles, and dozens of other weapons systems.

Friedlander also serves on the steering committee of the Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers held annually in Monterey California. The conference is sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School, and the Mission Research Corporation. Mission Research Corp. is based in Santa Barbara with 450 employees at over a dozen locations and sales of $90 million a year. Mission Research Corporationís client list is strictly military, DARPA, Army, Air Force, and Navy Research Labs, as well as the nuclear weapons complex of LLNL, LANL, Sandia, and the DOE. Other universities represented by faculty on the organizing committees of the 2003 Asilomar Conference are; San Diego State, Penn State, Oklahoma State, Rice, U. of Texas, U. of Washington, and U. of Wisconson, in addition to their Navy and Mission Research Corp. counterparts.

It is through these informal personal, formal institutional, and financial exchanges that universities serve the warfare state and its corporate allies. Personal relationships connect military, corporate, and university personnel while bridging the divide between these institutions. Formal institutional links establish cooperation and coordination across the military-industrial-academic complex. Be they research institutes, labs, and centers, or personal relationships spanning industry-university-military, the web of connections far exceeds any attempts to quantify.

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