There aren’t many Presidential farewell addresses of which Americans have much familiarity. One of the few, possibly the most famous of them, may well owe most of its notoriety to some silly little moviemaker incapable of swallowing the hard truth that his favorite commander-in-chief was simply killed by some silly little Communist. Just a few years prior to John Kennedy’s assassination, his predecessor identified two threats, “new in kind or degree,” to a great nation that rose out of the ashes of a great depression and a great war. Your average chatty mediocrity rails against the first — like I said, it was in the pictures! — but the second is a bit more current to the far out future-times of right now.

Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.

In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.

The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.

Equipped with psychoanalytic complexity, Ike surely identified in his more famous passages the predicament that would leave much to be desired from an America with newfound superpowers. But while the grotesqueries of Team America policing the world are noteworthy, the pullout from Afghanistan gives us a reminder that even a country intoxicated by Tarantino movie violence and internet porn somehow manages to suffer from a lack of imagination. I suppose we can rest assured that impotent talking heads will do their parts to fill in our gaps of knowledge in the coming months.

The American “military-industrial complex” was in 1961, and still is, likely a real threat of a new degree. But it’s not the threat that keeps me up at night, and it would appear that it isn’t the threat that ought to have kept decent people of the Middle East up at night either – at least not exactly. There’s a great deal of difference between sending men and women of the finest stock to godforsaken places like Iraq and Afghanistan versus sending drones. And it’s drones of a different kind that worry little me in what should be a country drunk on nothing but gratitude. The threat of a new kind developed more quietly, but still on the taxpayer’s dime. And it’s the taxpayer whom it’s honing in on.

After 18 months of pathetic pandemic paranoia, we’re back to — but also were never quite out of — code red infinite midnight. (Something like that.) Why are we stuck with all of these things? Cuz of drones. Or as Ike put it that one time: because “public policy [has become] the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”

Yeah, yeah, I get it: “elite” is thrown around a bunch. The delineation between the elites, on the one hand, and the humming drones who thoughtlessly execute their orders is not, and will probably never be, precise. But it hardly matters when people are needlessly suffering over a war that nobody seriously cares about winning for the patently clear reason that it can’t possibly be. I can live with overambitious careerists. I can live with their opportunistic bromides. I could live splendidly cheerily if they stay all the way over there; and if they come my way, I can tell ’em where to shove it. But the drones… they’ve got a lot of [redacted] drones. And they’re [redacted] everywhere!

More from Ike’s Farewell:

Crises there will continue to be. In meeting them, whether foreign or domestic, great or small, there is a recurring temptation to feel that some spectacular and costly action could become the miraculous solution to all current difficulties… But each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration: the need to maintain balance in and among national programs-balance between the private and the public economy, balance between cost and hoped for advantage-balance between the clearly necessary and the comfortably desirable; balance between our essential requirements as a nation and the duties imposed by the nation upon the individual; balance between action of the moment and the national welfare of the future. Good judgment seeks balance and progress; lack of it eventually finds imbalance and frustration.

Agreed. There’s imbalance and frustration. And it’s just sad.