[[Philosophical celebrities]] Herman Kahn was born in Bayonne, New Jersey on 15 February 1922 to Yetta and Abraham Kahn. He was brought up in the Bronx with a Jewish upbringing, but would later become atheistic in his beliefs. Throughout the 1950s, Khan would write various reports at the Hudson Institute on the concept and practicality of [](https://archive.org/details/AlbertWohlstetterAndHermanKahnNotesOnMissileGapAndMadmanTheory/mode/2up)[nuclear deterrence](https://archive.org/details/AlbertWohlstetterAndHermanKahnNotesOnMissileGapAndMadmanTheory/mode/2up), which would subsequently become official military policy. He would also compile reports for official hearings, such as the [](https://archive.org/details/Type2DeterrenceKahnAndCon/mode/2up)[Subcommittee on Radiation](https://archive.org/details/Type2DeterrenceKahnAndCon/mode/2up). It is in the primordial hysteria of the earliest years of the Cold War where Kahn would be given the intellectual, and some may say ethical and moral, space to “think the unthinkable”. Khan would apply game theory – the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions among rational agents – to wargame potential scenarios and outcomes concerning thermonuclear war. In 1960, Kahn would publish, [](https://archive.org/details/naturefeasibilit0000kahn)[The Nature and Feasibility of War and Deterrence](https://archive.org/details/naturefeasibilit0000kahn), which studied the risks and subsequent impact of a thermonuclear war. [](https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1888.html)[The Rand Corporation sums up](https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1888.html) the kinds of deterrents discussed in Kahn’s work as: the deterrence of a direct attack, the use of strategic threats to deter an enemy from engaging in very provocative acts other than a direct attack on the United States, and, lastly, the acts that are deterred because the potential aggressor is afraid that the defender or others will take limited actions, military or non-military, to make the aggression unprofitable.  Herman Kahn (left) with Gerald Ford and Donald Rumsfeld The following year, Princeton University Press would first publish Herman Kahn’s seminal work, [](https://archive.org/details/onthermonuclearw0000kahn/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater)[On Thermonuclear War](https://archive.org/details/onthermonuclearw0000kahn/page/n3/mode/2up?view=theater). This book would have an enormous impact on the near and distant future of global politics and would drive American Establishment politicians to create foreign policy specifically designed to counter the potential worst case thermonuclear scenario. On the release of Kahn’s terrifying work, the Israeli-American sociologist and “communitarian”, [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitai_Etzioni)[Amitai Etzioni](https://unlimitedhangout.com/2021/12/investigative-reports/the-new-normal-the-civil-society-deception/), would be quoted as saying, “Kahn does for nuclear arms what free-love advocates did for sex: he speaks candidly of acts about which others whisper behind closed doors”. Khan’s complex theories have often been erroneously paraphrased, with most of his work being impossible to sum up in just a sentence or two, and this is emblematic of his ideas concerning thermonuclear war. Kahn’s research team were studying a multitude of different scenarios, a constantly evolving, dynamic, multipolar world, and many unknowns. On Thermonuclear War had an instant and lasting impact, not only on geopolitics, but also on culture, expressed within a few years by a very famous movie. 1964 saw the release of the Stanley Kubrick classic, [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove)[Dr Strangelove](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Strangelove), and from the moment of its release, and ever since, Khan has been referred to as the _real_ Dr. Strangelove. When quizzed about the comparison, Khan would tell Newsweek, “Kubrick is a friend of mine. He told me Dr. Strangelove wasn’t supposed to be me.” But others would point out the many affinities between Stanley Kubrick’s classic character and the real life Herman Kahn. In an essay written for the Council on Foreign Relations in July 1966, entitled, [](https://ur.booksc.me/book/27969152/fbdae4)[Our Alternatives in](https://ur.booksc.me/book/27969152/fbdae4) [Europe](https://ur.booksc.me/book/27969152/fbdae4), Kahn states: > “_Existing U.S. policy has generally been directed to the political and economic as well as the military integration or unification of Western Europe as a means to European security. Some have seen unification as a step toward the political unity of the West as a whole, or even of the world. Thus, the achievement of some more qualified form of integration or federation of Europe, and of Europe with America, has also been held to be an intrinsically desirable goal, especially as national rivalries in Europe have been seen as a fundamentally disruptive force in modern history; hence their suppression, or accommodation in a larger political framework, is indispensable to the future stability of the world.”_ This statement suggests that the preferred solution for future European/American relations would be the creation of a European union. Even more preferable to Kahn was the idea of creating a unified American and European superstate. In 1967, Herman Kahn would write one of the most important futurist works of the 20th century, [](https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Year_2000.html?id=2vRGAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y)[The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years](https://archive.org/details/year2000framewor00kahn). In this book, co-authored by Anthony J Wiener, Khan and company predicted where we would be technologically at the end of the millennium. But there was another document released soon after Kahn’s The Year 2000, which had been written simultaneously. That document entitled, Ancillary Pilot Study for the Educational Policy Research Program: Final Report, was to map out how to achieve the future society Kahn’s work in The Year 2000 had envisaged. Under a section titled “[Special Educational Needs of Decision-Makers](https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED024124/page/n20/mode/1up?q=europe)”, the paper states: “The desirability of explicitly educated decision-makers so that they are better able, in effect, to plan the destiny of the nation, or to carry out the plans formulated through a more democratic process, should be very seriously considered. One facet of this procedure would be the creation of a shared set of concepts, shared language, shared analogies, shared references…” He goes on to state in the same section that: “Universal re-teaching in the spirit of the humanistic tradition of Europe – at least for its comprehensive leadership group – might be useful in many ways.” When you study the previously mentioned rhetoric and decipher what it means, in this document Herman Kahn suggests subverting democracy by training only a certain group in society as potential leaders, with those pre-selected few who are groomed for power being able to define what our shared values as a society should be. Maybe Herman Kahn would agree with the World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader scheme, which is the exact manifestation of his original suggestion. In 1968, Herman Kahn [](https://archive.org/details/worldsofhermanka00gham/page/69/mode/2up?q=zoom)[would be asked by a reporter](https://archive.org/details/worldsofhermanka00gham/page/69/mode/2up?q=zoom) what they do at the Hudson Institute. He would say, “We take God’s view. The President’s view. Big. Aerial. Global. Galactic. Ethereal. Spatial. Overall. Megalomania is the standard occupational hazard.” This was reportedly followed by Herman Kahn rising out of his chair, pointing his finger towards the sky and suddenly shouting out: ‘Megalomania, zoom!'” In 1970, Kahn would travel to Europe with Galbraith to support Klaus Schwab’s recruitment drive for the first European Management Symposium. In 1971, Kahn would be sitting centre stage to watch John Kenneth Galbraith’s keynote speech at the historic first session of the policy making organisation which would eventually become the World Economic Forum. In 1972, the Club of Rome published “The Limits to Growth”, which cautioned that the needs of the global population would exceed available resources by the year 2000. Kahn spent much of his final decade arguing against this idea. In 1976, Khan would publish a more optimistic view of the future, [](https://archive.org/details/next200yearsscen00kahn)[The Next 200 Years](https://archive.org/details/next200yearsscen00kahn), which claimed that the potentials of capitalism, science, technology, human reason, and self-discipline were boundless. The Next 200 Years would also dismiss pernicious [](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism)[Malthusian ideology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism) by predicting that the planet’s resources set no limits to economic growth, but rather, human beings would “create such societies everywhere in the solar system and perhaps to the stars as well.”