What Is RAND?
Rotary Club Luncheon Talk, Westwood, California
Michael D. Rich, Executive Vice President, RAND Corporation
Thank you. I very much appreciate the invitation to be with you today.
I am always grateful for a chance to talk about RAND. There are many people, of course, who have never even heard of us. And, I know there are many who think we're a bit mysterious. What I'll try to do today is see if I can dispel a bit of the mystery, but leave the mystique intact.
Let me start by clearing up any misunderstandings about RAND. First--Is there anyone here who thinks we make maps?
- No connection with Rand McNally.
Old typewriters?
- No connection with Remington Rand.
Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead?
- No connection with Ayn Rand.
Hollywood hasn't helped our image either.
Take the film "Dr. Strangelove." The feasibility study for the doomsday device was performed by the "Bland Corporation." . . . We knew who they were talking about.
More recently, in the movie, "Back to School," Rodney Dangerfield plays a self-made tycoon who enrolls in college with his son. He is not much of a student, but at one point he gets an A+ on a term paper. When his son asks him how he managed that, he replied, "Simple. I hired the RAND Corporation."
Needless to say, I hope: We don't work on doomsday devices and we don't ghostwrite term papers, so let me tell you what RAND actually does.
The mission of RAND is to help improve policy through research, analysis, and education. We help decisionmakers make decisions by providing information and analyzing options. The decisionmakers range from the president to senior military leaders to mayors to businessmen and individual voters. The decisions concern issues from all parts of the foreign, defense, social, and economic policy domains.
Like many of the United States' most prized scientific organizations, the origin of RAND dates back to the waning days of World War II. The credit for the original idea goes to General of the Air Force Hap Arnold. Arnold is one of only nine people in our nation's history to earn the rank of five-star general and the only one to do so in the Air Force.
In World War II, he commanded the Army Air Forces and in that position he saw how the U.S. military had benefited from the tremendous influx of civilian scientists and engineers during the war. By the end of the war, just as airpower was gaining in importance, he realized that most of the scientists and engineers would soon return to their jobs in industry and universities.
His solution was Project RAND, a contract for what we would now call long-range or strategic planning. Project RAND's first home was the Douglas Aircraft Company. Douglas was then the nation's largest defense contractor and it was headquartered in Santa Monica.
The name, RAND, is spelled with all capital letters. It is a contraction of the term, "research and development," or "R&D." Actually, "research and NO development" would be more accurate.
It wasn't very long before people began to question the wisdom of housing a team producing options for the senior Air Force leadership in a commercial company that competed for weapon system contracts. In 1948, the Ford Foundation made a gift that enabled Project RAND to break away from Douglas and incorporate itself as a separate, private, non-profit institution. That break cemented RAND's reputation for high-quality analysis and unmatched objectivity. Ever since, we have worked hard at avoiding commercial and partisan biases and affiliations with any particular ideology. There was a recent survey of think tanks and their position on the political spectrum. Of the many organizations rated, RAND was the only one placed smack in the center--and that's exactly where we want to be.
Douglas left Santa Monica for Long Beach a long time ago, but RAND is still headquartered there, between the Santa Monica Pier and City Hall.
It would take me all afternoon to tell you about all of our pathbreaking studies, so let me just give you a sample.
RAND's very first study still ranks as one of its most influential. It was titled, A Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship. I know that must not seem very remarkable to you, but consider this: The report was published in May 1946--more than 11 years before the launch of Sputnik. Its release is often marked as the beginning of the U.S. space program.
In fact, much of the work during the initial 10 years involved the development of new concepts and methods that subsequently spread throughout the United States and the world: dynamic programming, game theory, linear programming, systems analysis, aeriel refueling, . . .
RAND built the world's first operational computer with a core memory and we developed the technique of "packet switching," which is the centerpiece of the Internet.
Not surprisingly, we focused considerable attention on the Soviet Union during its lifetime. Many of our Soviet research projects were the first to surface indicators of the problems to come:
- the enormous costs of maintaining its global empire of client states
- ethnic tensions within the military
- cracks in the Warsaw Pact, and
- key demographic changes that sparked the explosive nationalist disputes that continue to boil today.
In the 1960s, we recognized that the methods that we had pioneered for studying problems of national security were equally applicable to problems of society. As a result, we launched studies of health care, education, housing, communications, crime, transportation, and numerous others areas.
In 1970, we decided to teach the RAND method of policy analysis and started a graduate school to do just that. Today, it is the nation's largest doctoral program in public policy, outstripping even Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.
We've made many contributions in the social and economic policy realms, just as we have in the national security realm.
They are too numerous to list, so let me tell you about the kinds of problems and issues that are our specialty and give you some illustrations of where RAND has made a difference.
We like problems where the underlying phenomena are unknown or unquantified.
- For example, RAND studies were the first to measure the efficiency of our court system, the dynamics of illegal drug markets, and the dimensions of worldwide terrorism.
We're especially good on issues where the key variable seems impossible to measure.
- How do you know how large the defense budget should be if you can't measure military readiness?
- How do you evaluate a health-care reform proposal if you can't measure the quality of care provided?
RAND did the pioneering work on measuring both readiness and health-care quality, areas we continue to explore today.
Also, issues whose resolution is impeded by seemingly intractable competing interests.
- Should we allow commercial use of the Global Positioning System given its national-security importance?
- How should the Netherlands modernize its transportation infrastructure of rail, waterway, and road systems?
These are a few of the issues that were stalled until a careful and objective RAND study broke the impasse.
You're businessmen, so I know I won't escape without giving you some vital statistics.
Our annual revenue is about $110 million.
- About 80 percent from government
- 10 percent from private foundations
- 10 percent from donations, international sources, and (more recently, corporations).
Donations are not a large fraction of the total. But, they are essential to preserving our independence and maintaining our record of innovation. (And, yes, donations to RAND are tax-deductible.)
Our most important asset is our staff. On any one day, there are about 1300 people working at or for RAND:
- About 1,250 employees
- About 300 visitors, consultants, students, military officers
It's a staff of unusual quality and diversity:
- Over 80% have advanced degrees; almost 50% have doctorates
- Nearly every major academic discipline represented.
RAND studies have been at the center of numerous policy debates this year:
- NATO-Russian Relations
- Counterterrorism
- California Energy Crisis
- Education Vouchers and Charter Schools
- Quadrennial Defense Review and Military Transformation
Among many others.
No research center--university or think tank--can boast of a record like that.
I believe that the future at RAND has never been more exciting because there has never been a more dynamic policy environment.
First, with the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, America has no superpower rival and no long-term competition to consume massive resources. But, it still faces a tricky course in assuring a world that is hospitable to American interests.
Second, although America's problems at home still loom large, traditional formulas for government action are now widely believed to be ineffectual. Both political parties and a large slice of the public now look to public-private partnerships and even the private sector alone to achieve these objectives.
Third, while Americans have always prided themselves in being self-sufficient and controlling their own destiny, they are coming to understand that the conditions favoring both their security and their well-being must be considered from a global perspective.
For RAND, these are profound changes that are having far-reaching effects on our research agenda and our client base. In the interest of time, let me focus on the middle one.
The unmistakable signs that the federal government is devolving many of its responsibilities to state and local governments and the private sector have led us to change our business strategy. The most dramatic change involves our relationship with the private sector, especially the business community.
Last year we acquired the Council for Aid to Education, a corporate-supported nonprofit organization devoted to improving the effectiveness of corporate philanthropy in the world of education. If business is expected to step up its involvement in advancing educational reform, we thought it was important for RAND to help it do so.
We have also begun to work directly for corporations and industry associations on issues affecting the public interest. The interests and concerns of the private sector are no longer purely commercial and where they intersect with the public interest, RAND can help make a difference.
At the same time, we are mindful of the important role that the general public--the informed citizen--plays in the formulation of public policy. A few years ago, we began a program to do a better job of disseminating the findings of our research to interested citizens here in Southern California. One element is a membership program featuring a series of half-day and breakfast briefings on topics from the full range of RAND's agenda.
If that interests any of you, leave me your business card and I will be delighted to send you information.
Let me close by saying again how much I appreciate the chance to be here today. RAND's agenda is global and sometimes it seems we're better known in Washington, London, and Moscow than in our hometown.
That's why I was delighted by your invitation.
