Whiz Kids (Department of Defense)

For other uses, see Whiz Kids.

Whiz Kids was a name given to a group of experts from RAND Corporation with which Robert McNamara surrounded himself, in order to turn around the management of the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in the 1960s. The purpose was to shape a modern defense strategy in the Nuclear Age, by bringing in economic analysis, operations research, game theory, computing, as well as implementing modern management systems to coordinate the huge dimension of operations of the DoD, with methods such as the Planning, Programming, and Budgeting System (PPBS). They were called the Whiz Kids, recalling the group at Ford Motor Company that McNamara was part of in the 1940s and 1950s.

Personnel

The group included, among others:

• Harold Brown, nuclear physicist
• Alain Enthoven, economist
• Steven Fenster
• Patrick Gross
• William Kaufmann, nuclear strategist^[1]
• Jan Lodal
• Howard Margolis, social scientist
• Frank Nicolai
• Merton Joseph Peck
• Charles O. Rossotti, systems reformer
• Henry Rowen, national security expert, economist, and academician
• John H. Rubel, engineer
• Willis H. Sargent
• Ivan Selin, research engineer
• Robert (Bob) Schneider,
• Pierre Sprey, defense analyst
• David Staiger
• Adam Yarmolinsky, academic, educator and author
• Richard Zeckhauser, economist
• Thomas Nicholson
• John M. Deutch, physical chemist and civil servant
• Charles F. Baldwin, economist

References

1. Hevesi, Dennis (22 December 2008). "William Kaufmann, Nuclear Strategist Who Helped Reshape Policy, Dies at 90". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 January 2025.

Further reading

• Kaplan, Fred. The Wizards of Armageddon. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.