2025 Tomash Virtual Lecture with Aaron Gluck-Thaler

Join CBI's 2024-2025 Tomash Fellow Aaron Gluck-Thaler, Ph.D. Candidate, History of Science at Harvard University, presenting his paper Pattern Recognition and Intelligence Reform in Cold War America.

This virtual event is free and open to the public.

Registration closes at 12 CST on Friday, April 18.

Abstract: This talk considers how scientists working on pattern recognition, machine learning, and artificial intelligence began consulting for U.S. intelligence agencies in the early Cold War. Serving on prominent presidential advisory panels and building surveillance instruments, these scientists went on to change how mid-century intelligence agencies conducted surveillance. Drawing from recently declassified government documents, the talk foregrounds the central and still ongoing role that scientists and technologists play in shaping state surveillance practices and priorities.

About

Aaron Gluck-Thaler is a PhD Candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University and the 2024-2025 Tomash Fellow in the History of Information Technology at the Charles Babbage Institute. His research examines the history of surveillance and its relationship to scientific practice. Aaron’s research has been published in Technology and Culture and Surveillance & Society, among other venues. From 2022-2024, Aaron led the development of Surveillance: From Vision to Data, a public exhibit on the history of surveillance held at Harvard’s Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

Aaron holds a BEng in Mechanical Engineering from McGill University, a MSc in the Social Science of the Internet from the Oxford Internet Institute, and a MSc in the History of Science, Medicine, and Technology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. Aaron’s research has been supported by the Frank Knox Memorial Fellowship, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, and the American Philosophical Society.

2025 Tomash Virtual Lecture with Aaron Gluck-Thaler

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