Iron Mountain Report
01
In 1966, when tensions surrounding the Cold War began to ease, the New York Times reported that a recent stock market downturn was due to a "peace scare". In response, high-ranking civilians in the US government formed a committee to examine the hypothesis that the American economy would collapse if ware ever ended. They began to discuss steps toward achieving a healthy peace. Their findings were reportedly too unsettling to release to the public. However, a copy of their final report was leaked and became known as the "Report from Iron Mountain".
The report concluded that nations and societies exist to make war. Without war, the nation-state in the modern sense would crumble. War ensured social and economic stability by sustaining poverty and the class system. It promoted scientific and cultural progress by keeping the population in check. As such, peace was dangerous, and eliminating war "would almost certainly not be in the best interests of stable society". This provocative conclusion was fiercely debated by the American intellectual establishment.
In the 1990s, it was revealed that the entire report was a hoax, a work of satire. However, some liberal-minded thinkers maintain there is still some truth in its convincing argument.