Jefferson, the Army, and the Internet: How to Strengthen National Security, the Economy, and Grassroots Communities

Although hardly anyone remembers it now, the United States Military Academy at West Point was founded by Thomas Jefferson with a view toward preparing Army leaders for the great task of constructing a nation-their own. Harvey Meyerson traces the Army's Jeffersonian domestic nation-building heritage and proposes a new mission that would be modeled after one of its many forgotten successes-Franklin Roosevelt's fabled Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, whose camps for civilian volunteers were built and run by the Army. The mission of the new American Resilience Corps, or ARC, would be to maximize the entrepreneurial potential of the Internet and digital manufacturing by spreading it out into rural/small town America instead of funneling it through Silicon Valley and a few other towers of power. ARC's decentralization mission also would make America less vulnerable to crippling cyber or other threats to overcentralized critical infrastructure, including a national electric grid upon which Americans depend for virtually all essential services. It's a civilian-military mission in our nation's best tradition that would transform America and inspire the world.