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Wikipedia / RAND Corporation

The RAND Corporation, doing business as RAND, is an American nonprofit global policy think tank, research institute, and public sector consulting firm. RAND engages in research and development (R&D) in several fields and industries. Since the 1950s, RAND research has helped inform United States policy decisions on a wide variety of issues, including the Cold War space race, the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, the U.S.–Soviet nuclear arms confrontation, the creation of the Great Society social welfare programs, and national health care.

RAND originated as "Project RAND" (from the phrase "research and development") in the post-war period immediately after World War II. The U.S. Army Air Forces established Project RAND with the objective of investigating long-range planning of future weapons. The Douglas Aircraft Company was granted a contract to research intercontinental warfare. Project RAND later evolved into RAND, and expanded its research into civilian fields such as education and international affairs. It was the first think tank to be regularly referred to as a "think tank".

RAND receives both public and private funding. Its funding sources include the U.S. government, private endowments, corporations, universities, charitable foundations, U.S. state and local governments, international organizations, and to a small extent, foreign governments. In the 2024 fiscal year, the think tank's revenues and other support were $514 million, of which $328 million was provided by the U.S. federal government.

Overview

RAND has approximately 1,850 employees. Its American locations include: Santa Monica, California (headquarters); Arlington, Virginia; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and Boston, Massachusetts. The RAND Gulf States Policy Institute has an office in New Orleans, Louisiana. RAND Europe is located in Cambridge, United Kingdom; Brussels, Belgium; and The Hague, Netherlands. RAND Australia is located in Canberra, Australia.

RAND is home to the RAND School of Public Policy, one of eight original graduate schools in public policy and the first to offer a PhD. Its selective doctoral program provides an analytically rigorous and applied curriculum through coursework and collaboration with RAND researchers to address real-world policy challenges. The campus is at RAND's Santa Monica research facility and is the world's largest institution specializing in graduate-level education in policy analysis.

All PhD students receive fellowships to cover their education costs. This allows them to dedicate their time in research projects and provides them with on-the-job training. RAND also offers a number of internship and fellowship programs allowing students and others to assist in conducting research for RAND projects.

RAND publishes the RAND Journal of Economics, a peer-reviewed journal of economic sciences. Thirty-two recipients of the Nobel Prize, primarily in the fields of economics and physics, have been associated with RAND at some point in their career.

History

Project RAND

RAND was created after individuals in the War Department, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, and industry began to discuss the need for a private organization to connect operational research with research and development decisions. The immediate impetus for the creation of RAND was a conversation in September 1945 between General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold and Douglas executive Franklin R. Collbohm. Both men were deeply worried that ongoing demobilization meant the federal government was about to lose direct control of the vast amount of American scientific brainpower assembled to fight World War II.

As soon as Arnold realized Collbohm had been thinking along similar lines, he said, "I know just what you're going to tell me. It's the most important thing we can do." With Arnold's blessing, Collbohm quickly pulled in additional people from Douglas to help, and together with Donald Douglas, they convened with Arnold two days later at Hamilton Army Airfield to sketch out a general outline for Collbohm's proposed project.

Douglas engineer Arthur Emmons Raymond came up with the name Project RAND, from "research and development". Collbohm suggested that he himself should serve as the project's first director, which he thought would be a temporary position while he searched for a permanent replacement for himself. He later became RAND's first president and served in that capacity until his retirement in 1967.

On 1 October 1945, Project RAND was set up under special contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company and began operations in December 1945. In May 1946, the Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship was released.

RAND

By late 1947, Douglas Aircraft executives had expressed their concerns that their close relationship with RAND might create conflict of interest problems on future hardware contracts. In February 1948, the chief of staff of the newly created United States Air Force approved the evolution of Project RAND into a nonprofit corporation, independent of Douglas.

On 14 May 1948, RAND was incorporated as a nonprofit corporation under the laws of the State of California and on 1 November 1948, the Project RAND contract was formally transferred from the Douglas Aircraft Company to RAND. Initial capital for the spin-off was provided by the Ford Foundation.

Since the 1950s, RAND research has helped inform United States policy decisions on a wide variety of issues, including the space race, the Vietnam War, the U.S.–Soviet nuclear arms confrontation, the creation of the Great Society social welfare programs, the digital revolution, and national health care. In the 1970s, New York City used RAND's computer models to determine which fire stations to close. Most of the closed stations were in relatively poor areas, such as South Bronx or Lower East Side.

RAND contributed to the doctrine of nuclear deterrence by mutually assured destruction (MAD), developed under the guidance of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and based upon their work with game theory. Chief strategist Herman Kahn also posited the idea of a "winnable" nuclear exchange in his 1960 book On Thermonuclear War. This led to Kahn's being one of the models for the titular character of the film Dr. Strangelove, in which RAND is spoofed as the "BLAND Corporation".

Even in the late 1940s and early 1950s, long before Sputnik, the RAND project was secretly recommending to the US government a major effort to design a human-made satellite that would take photographs from space and the rockets to put such a satellite in orbit.

RAND was not the first think tank, but during the 1960s, it was the first to be regularly referred to as a "think tank". Accordingly, RAND served as the "prototype" for the modern definition of that term.

In the early 1990s, RAND established a European branch to serve clients across the public, private, and third sectors, including governments, charities, and corporations. RAND Europe is the European arm of RAND, and like its main branch, it is a nonprofit policy research organization dedicated to improving decision-making through evidence-based research and analysis. RAND Europe's stated mission is to improve policy and decision-making through rigorous, independent research. RAND Europe is incorporated in, and has offices in, Cambridge, The Hague, and Brussels.

Research

The research of RAND stems from its development of systems analysis. Important contributions are claimed in space systems and the United States' space program, in computing and in artificial intelligence. RAND researchers developed many of the principles that were used to build the Internet. RAND also contributed to the development and use of wargaming.

Current areas of expertise include: child policy, law, civil and criminal justice, education, health (public health and health care), international policy/foreign policy, labor markets, national security, defense policy, infrastructure, energy, environment, business and corporate governance, economic development, intelligence policy, long-range planning, crisis management and emergency management-disaster preparation, population studies, regional studies, comparative studies, science and technology, social policy, welfare, terrorism and counterterrorism, cultural policy, arts policy, and transportation.

Defense and national security

During the Cold War, RAND researchers contributed to the development of nuclear strategy concepts such as deterrence theory and mutually assured destruction. In recent years, RAND has analyzed military readiness, force modernization, and counterterrorism strategies. For example, one study examined the effectiveness of counterinsurgency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Healthcare and public health

RAND designed and conducted one of the largest and most important studies of health insurance between 1974 and 1982. The RAND Health Insurance Experiment, funded by the then–U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare, established an insurance corporation to compare demand for health services with their cost to the patient.

In 2018, RAND began its Gun Policy in America initiative, which resulted in comprehensive reviews of the evidence of the effects of gun policies in the United States. The second expanded review in 2020 analyzed almost 13,000 relevant studies on guns and gun violence since 1995 and selected 123 as having sufficient methodological rigor for inclusion. These studies were used to evaluate scientific support for eighteen classes of gun policy. The review found supportive evidence that child-access prevention laws reduce firearm self-injuries (including suicides), firearm homicides or assault injuries, and unintentional firearm injuries and deaths among youth. Conversely, it identified that stand-your-ground laws increase firearm homicides and shall-issue concealed carry laws increase total and firearm homicides. RAND also emphasized that the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Both proponents and opponents of various gun control measures have cited the RAND initiative.

Additionally, RAND has researched the opioid epidemic and alcoholism.

Education

The RAND analysis of the Intensive Partnerships for Effective Teaching, a $575 million initiative from the Gates Foundation to increase teacher effectiveness, found that the interventions had no significant effect on student achievement.

Emerging technologies and innovation

RAND has examined the implications of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity threats, and autonomous systems. It was accused of working too closely with Open Philanthropy in its work on AI, at the risk of losing its independence. RAND employees have expressed concerns to Politico about the organization's objectivity after it was revealed that RAND helped draft the Executive Order on AI, following over $15 million in funding from a Facebook founder-backed Open Philanthropy. In December 2023, the House Science Committee sent a bipartisan letter to the National Institute of Standards and Technology raising concerns over RAND's "research that has failed to go through robust review processes, such as academic peer review." On September 13, 2024, the ranking member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation sent a letter to RAND to better understand its "involvement in the AI Executive Order and the administration's other actions related to online speech."

Other research areas

Notable participants

See also

References

Further reading

Books

Articles

  • Clifford, Peggy, ed. "RAND and The City". Santa Monica Mirror, 27 October 1999 – 2 November 1999. Five-part series includes:

  • Miller, Arthur Selwyn, reviewer, book review: "Smith: June 1966, Florida Law Review, Volume 19, Issue 1, Article 15.

  • Specht, R.D. "Rand: A Personal View of Its History," Operations Research, vol. 8, no. 6 (Nov.–Dec. 1960), pp.825–839. In JSTOR

Documentary films and broadcast programs