CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE

UNITED NATIONS PLAZA AT 46TH STREET NEW YORK, N. Y. 10017 CABLE ADDRESS [NTERPAX OXFORD 7-3131

September 4, 1970

Professor Joshua Lederberg
Stanford University Medical Center
Stanford, California 94305

Dear Professor Lederberg,

I appreciate very much your letter with the material on CBW
control and on the use of computer techniques for “chemical intelligence."
I hope that your statements at Geneva were taken to heart by the delagates
present. I also agree with you relative to the dangers of escalation when
the fire breaks are not sufficiently sharp.

Work on the use of game theory in developing arms limitation
was earried out under the direction of Dr. Thomas Saaty who has now left
ACDA and is prefessor at the University of Pennsylvania. The actual work
was carried out at Penn by a group under Professor Russell Ackoff. This
ACDA-supported research is now terminated,but the reports of the project
are all unclassified and could be obtained directiy from the ACDA library,
While I am not very well qualified to evaluate directly the work, I was
personally very much impressed by this research. They not only made import-
ant extensions of conventional game theory but also used considerable
imagination in attempting to apply them to real life situations, In many
eases the conclusions they reached were very sensible, but of course I
would agree with you that it is a long way to go before one can solve
political problems by mathematical techniques. The political scientists
have a strong aversion to any such approach which accounts for some of the
hostility in the Senate hearings. In view of your interest in this subject
I would strongly recommend that you get the ACDA reports and perhaps esta-
blish direct contact with Doctors Ackoff and Saaty. Dr. Saaty summarized
some of this material in a book which was published by McGraw Hill and
entitled "Mathematical Models of Arms Control and Disarmament".

I hope these leads will prove useful and assist you in your
work,

Best regards,
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Herbert Seoville, Jr.
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