Buckminster Fuller Wanted to Bomb the Rainforest

I am not making this up. Here is the exact quote from Fuller’s 1981 book, Critical Path, page 306:

“Certain it is that the jungle in no way lends itself to the easy, speculative wanderings of homesteaders and prospectors. An entirely different means for deploying the Brazilian population over the whole of their land for purposes of its development must be devised from those which augmented the pioneering of the U.S., Canadian, and Russian hinterlands.

Almost so simple that it will be shunned by those who prefer to plan the hard way, in order to take advantage of their hard-earned specialized experience of the past, is the technique now provided by modern warfare that would approach this whole Brazilian jungleland from above, bombing it open, then parachuting in with well-planned hand equipment and personal protective devices to carve out a complete polka-dot pattern of island airports over the whole country, into which pattern mechanical devices would be fed progressively as parachute deliveries graduate to plane-landed deliveries, etc. Each area would receive its quota of machine tools, drafting equipment, air conditioning, etc., and then its engineering and designing personnel would amplify the hold on the jungle. This ‘island’ network of ‘tropical research and development stations’ should form the nuclear structure for the new Brazil.”

What about the natives living there? Fuller didn’t give them a thought. I might also add that in the same book, Fuller lauded the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a strategic stroke of genius – and couldn’t have been more wrong if he tried. Fuller rooted against the USA during the Cold War; he was a true believer in the supremacy of the Soviet system. Start reading on the bottom of page 192 for more on this subject.

Believe it or not, President Reagan gave Fuller a Presidential Medal of Freedom for Architecture in 1983. I guess he didn’t read Critical Path.