[ih] When the words Internet was design to survive a nuclear war appeared for the first time?

[Jack Haverty]

My recollection is that the "survivability" theme became prominent in
the Reagan Era, with the advent of the "Star Wars" programs, aka
"Strategic Defense Initiative".  We found that where we had been
"working on the Internet project" we were suddenly "working on the
Strategic Defense Initiative", or SDI.  The main reason for that was
that the funding faucets moved.  I recall Danny Cohen giving a talk at
one of the quarterly Internet meetings about what SDI was and why we had
to care.

This had little noticeable effect on the people writing code and
building things, who mostly just continued to do what they had been
doing.  It did have an effect on things like writing proposals (to get
the next round of funding), since the $$s were all being directed at SDI.

I was involved in both situations.  It was interesting and often
challenging translating "what we wanted to build" into "why it's
critical to SDI" and vice versa.

So the answer to the question "when did people start saying that" will
probably depend strongly on which people you ask.

/Jack Haverty

On 2/14/19 7:28 AM, Scott O. Bradner wrote:
> when did people start saying that or what was the reason they said that?
>
> fwiw - I just gave a talk on the latter 
>
> http://www.sobco.com/presentations/2019-02-05-Internet-history-bkc.pdf
>
> a video will be posted at some point on youtube - https://www.youtube.com/user/BerkmanCenter under 2018-2019 talks
>
> Scott
>
>> On Feb 14, 2019, at 8:44 AM, Alejandro Acosta <alejandroacostaalamo at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hello All,
>>
>>   Today I was reading some news about Internet and in one of them I
>> found the phrase (that all of you have listened before):  "Internet
>> (ARPANET) was intended to survive a nuclear war", however, as far as I
>> know, this is kind of a myth, right?, ARPANET was intended as a research
>> network and the "war" part if very far away from the thuth.
>>
>>   My question would be: when the words "designed to survive a nuclear
>> war" appeared for the first time?
>>
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>>
>> Alejandro,
>>
>>
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