Can (Should) States Control Technologies? The Anglo-American Telecommunications Struggle, 1910–34

In the Anglo-American struggle to control the global economy that matured in the aftermath of World War One, telecommunications played a vital role. At Versailles President Wilson noted that, in the post-war world, there would be three major arenas of economic struggle between America and Britain: over international transportation, which seemed under British control; over petroleum, which seemed under American control; and over international communications, which seemed up for grabs. Given the geopolitical importance of international communications, especially in the eyes of the U.S. navy, which had clandestinely constructed the world's first global wireless communications system starting in 1910 with its acquisition of the Federal Telegraph Company, and given the limited technological understanding of politicians such as Wilson and Hoover and senior naval officers such as Bullard, a state controlled monopoly seemed a necessity. To Wilson, Hoover, and the navy, the solution seemed to be the formation of a private company, R.C.A., which would act as if it were under state control. But in creating R.C.A. they created a company that found itself in control of all the patents that made radio broadcasting profitable. R.C.A. quickly jumped ship. The British response to R.C.A. was to force a merger between the British submarine cable interests and Marconi Wireless in 1928 to create the company that became Cable and Wireless in 1934. Although nominally private, Cable and Wireless had to act as if it were under state control, not least because the B.B.C. was made a state-owned corporation in 1927, allowing the British state to monopolize broadcasting and giving Cable and Wireless no such advantage as that enjoyed by R.C.A.