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Hudson Institute is an American right-wing Neoconservatism think tank based in Washington, D.C. It was founded in 1961 in Croton-on-Hudson, New York by futurist Herman Kahn and his colleagues Max Singer and Oscar M. Ruebhausen at the RAND Corporation.
Kahn was a physicist and military consultant known for envisioning Nuclear warfare. The institute's research branched out from the military into various areas including economics, health, education, and gambling. Kahn died in 1983 and the institute moved to Indianapolis, Indiana the year after. The institute helped design Wisconsin's influential workfare program in the mid-1990s. (2026). 9781317249474, Taylor & Francis. ISBN 9781317249474 Hudson relocated to Washington, D.C., in 2004. It has been noted for work with governments and industries, including Defense industry and agribusiness.
Kahn moved to Croton-on-Hudson, New York, intending to establish a new think tank that was less hierarchical and bureaucratic.Paul Dragos Aligica, Kenneth R. Weinstein (2026). 9780739128299, Lexington Books. . ISBN 9780739128299 Along with Max Singer, a young government lawyer who had been Kahn's RAND colleague, and New York attorney Oscar Ruebhausen, Kahn founded the Hudson Institute on July 20, 1961. Kahn has been described as Hudson's driving intellect while Singer developed the institute's organization. Ruebhausen was an advisor to New York governor Nelson Rockefeller.
Hudson's initial research projects largely represented Kahn's personal interests, which included the domestic and military use of nuclear power and scenario planning exercises about policy options and their possible outcomes. The use of the word scenario in such exercises had been adapted from Hollywood movie storytelling as a more dignified word than "screenplay", and Kahn was an enthusiastic practitioner. Kahn and his colleagues made pioneering contributions to nuclear deterrence theory and strategy during this period.
Hudson's detailed analyses of "ladders of escalation" and reports on the likely consequences of limited and unlimited nuclear exchanges, eventually published as Thinking About the Unthinkable in 1962 and On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios in 1965, were influential within the Kennedy administration. They helped the institute win its first major research contract from the Office of Civil Defense at the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, in popular culture, Dr. Strangelove in 1964 borrowed many lines from Kahn's On Thermonuclear War, and the methods of Kahn, Hudson and RAND also inspired the 1967 satirical book The Report From Iron Mountain, depicting a supposedly secret study on the dangers of peace.
Kahn did not want Hudson limited to defense-related research, and along with Singer, he recruited a staff from diverse academic backgrounds. Hudson also involved a wide range of consultants for analysis and policy, including French philosopher Raymond Aron, African-American novelist Ralph Ellison, political scientist Henry Kissinger, conceptual artist James Lee Byars, and social scientist Daniel Bell. Its focus expanded to include geopolitics, economics, demography, anthropology, science and technology, education, and urban planning.
Kahn in 1962 predicted the rise of Japan as the world's second-largest economy and developed close ties to politicians and corporate leaders there.
Hudson Institute used scenario-planning techniques to forecast long-term developments and was noted for its future studies. In 1967, Hudson published The Year 2000, a bestselling book commissioned by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Many of the predictions proved correct, including technological developments like portable telephones and network-linked home and office computers.
In 1970, The Emerging Japanese Superstate was published. After the Club of Rome's 1972 report The Limits to Growth produced alarm about the possibility that population growth and resource depletion might result in a 21st-century global "collapse", Hudson responded with its own analysis, The Next 200 Years, which concluded instead that scientific and practical innovations were likely to significantly improve worldwide living standards.
Hudson struggled with funding problems in the 1970s for reasons including increased competition from other think tanks for government grants. (2026). 9781497651579, Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ORD). ISBN 9781497651579 It turned to grants from corporations such as IBM and Mobil.
In his 1982 book The Coming Boom, Kahn argued that pro-growth tax and fiscal policies, information technology, and developments by the energy industry would make possible an unprecedented prosperity in the Western world by the early 21st century. Kahn also foresaw unconventional extraction techniques like hydraulic fracturing.
Within 20 years, Hudson had offices in Bonn, Paris, Brussels, Montreal and Tokyo. Other research projects were related to South Korea, Singapore, Australia and Latin America.
William Eldridge Odom, former director of the National Security Agency, became Hudson's director of national security studies; economist Alan Reynolds became director of economic research. Technologist George Gilder led a project on the implications of the digital era for American society.
In 1990, Daniels quit to become vice president of corporate affairs at Eli Lilly and Company. He was succeeded as CEO by Leslie Lenkowsky, a social scientist, and former consultant to Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
Under Lenkowsky, Hudson emphasized domestic and social policy. During the early 1990s, the institute did work concerning education reform and applied research on charter schools and school choice.
Also in 1990, Hudson Institute spun off a subsidiary non-profit organization that took the name the Discovery Institute.
At the initiative of Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson, two members of Hudson were in the small planning group that designed the Wisconsin Works welfare-to-work program. Hudson also helped fund the planning and evaluated the results. A version was adopted nationwide in the 1996 federal welfare-reform legislation signed by President Bill Clinton. In 2001, President George W. Bush's initiative on charitable choice was based on Hudson's research into social-service programs administered by faith-based organizations.
Other Hudson research from this period included 1987's "Workforce 2000", the "Blue Ribbon Commission on Hungary" (1990) "International Baltic Economic Commission" (1991–93), on market-oriented reforms in the newly independent states of Eastern Europe, and the 1997 follow-up study "Workforce 2020".
In 1997, Lenkowsky was succeeded by Herbert London.
In 2012, Sarah May Stern became chairman of the board of trustees, and remains so to the present.
In 2016, Hudson relocated from its McPherson Square headquarters to a custom-built office space on Pennsylvania Avenue, near the U.S. Capitol and the White House. The new LEED-certified offices were designed by Cookfox. The Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe presided over the opening of the new offices.
In 2021, Mike Pompeo and Elaine Chao, Secretary of Transportation in the Trump administration, joined the institute. In January 2021, John P. Walters was appointed president and CEO of the Hudson Institute. Walters succeeded Kenneth R. Weinstein, who became the first Walter P. Stern Distinguished Fellow. Former U.S. attorney general William P. Barr joined as a distinguished fellow in 2022. On March 30, 2023, President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan attended an event held by the Hudson Institute, where she accepted the institute's Global Leadership Award. In response to the award event, the Foreign Ministry of China imposed sanctions on the institute, its Board of Trustees Chair Sarah May Stern, and its President and CEO John P. Walters.
In September 2023, the Hudson Institute was designated as an "undesirable organization" in Russia.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spoke at the Hudson Institute in support of Israel in October 2023 after the October 7 attacks. The speech was coordinated with the White House as President Joe Biden urged Congress to approve additional aid to support Ukraine and Israel.
The Institute provides several briefing services, such as the Keystone Defense Initiative, where Rebecca Heinrichs is the Senior Fellow and Director.
As of 2021, the organization reported revenue of over $37m with under $20m in expenses and an endowment of $81m.
Hudson Institute has accepted $7.9m from Donors Trust. It has received $25,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998 and less than $100,000 from Koch family foundations, both of which actively minimize climate change.
The New York Times commented on Dennis Avery's attacks on organic farming: "The attack on organic food by a well-financed research organization suggests that, though organic food accounts for only 1 percent of food sales in the United States, the conventional food industry is worried".Marian Burros, "Eating Well; Anti-Organic, And Flawed", The New York Times, accessed December 14, 2007.
Another employee of the institute, Michael Fumento, was revealed to have received funding from Monsanto for his 1999 book Bio-Evolution. Monsanto's spokesman said: "It's our practice, that if we're dealing with an organization like this, that any funds we're giving should be unrestricted." Hudson's CEO and President Kenneth R. Weinstein told BusinessWeek that he was uncertain if the payment should have been disclosed. "That's a good question, period," he said.
The New York Times suggested Huntington Ingalls Industries had used the Hudson Institute to enhance the company's argument for more nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, at a cost of US$11 billion each. The Times alleged that a former naval officer was paid by Hudson to publish an analysis endorsing more funding. The report was delivered to the House Armed Services subcommittee without disclosing that Huntington Ingalls had paid for part of the report. Hudson acknowledged the misconduct, describing it as a "mistake".
The institute, which publishes frequent reports concerning China, has received funding from the Taiwanese government as have other prominent think tanks.
The institute is generally described as conservative and sometimes neoconservative. Hudson says it hosts policymakers, foreign policy experts, and elected officials from across the political spectrum. According to its website, Hudson "challenges conventional thinking and helps manage strategic transitions through interdisciplinary studies in defense, international relations, economics, energy, technology, culture, and law."
The commission is chaired by Nadia Schadlow and Arthur L. Herman. The other members are:
In 2016, Hudson's Kleptocracy Initiative issued a report, authored by Ben Judah, sounding the alarm about offshore financial flows, and calling for the end of anonymous shell companies as a US national security priority. The Hudson Institute received criticism by a member of its Kleptocracy Initiative advisory board when its 2018 awards gala was funded in part by Len Blavatnik, a magnate who had business dealings with Russian oligarchs who were on the United States sanctions list.
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