Project Cybersyn

Chile, 1971–1973

Chile's 1971–1973 attempt, led by Stafford Beer under Salvador Allende's government, to coordinate the nationalised economy in near real time using telex, statistics and the Viable System Model.

Project Cybersyn (in Spanish, Synco) was a project of the Chilean government of Salvador Allende to manage the country’s newly nationalised industries using cybernetic principles. It ran from November 1971 until the military coup of 11 September 1973.

Origins

Fernando Flores, a young engineer at the state development agency CORFO, had read Stafford Beer’s work and invited him to Chile in 1971. Beer saw a chance to apply the Viable System Model at the scale of a national economy, with the aim of combining central coordination with as much autonomy as possible for workers and factories.

Components

  • Cybernet: a network of telex machines linking factories to Santiago, through which production data was reported daily.
  • Cyberstride: statistical software that looked for significant deviations in the data and flagged them, first to the factory itself and then upwards if not resolved.
  • CHECO: an economic simulator intended to model the effects of policy.
  • An operations room: a hexagonal room with seven swivel chairs and wall screens displaying the state of the economy, designed for quick, informed decisions. It became the project’s iconic image.

In use and after

The project was only partially complete when it was tested. During the trucker strike of October 1972, the telex network helped the government coordinate the deployment of the trucks that remained loyal and keep supplies moving. After the coup the project was abandoned and the operations room was dismantled.

Cybersyn has since become a touchstone in debates about technology and politics: for some an early vision of decentralised, data-driven socialism, for others a warning about surveillance and technocratic control. Eden Medina’s history Cybernetic Revolutionaries (2011) brought it to wide attention.

Further reading

  • Eden Medina, Cybernetic Revolutionaries (2011)
  • Stafford Beer, Brain of the Firm, 2nd edn (1981), part 4
  • Evgeny Morozov, The Santiago Boys (podcast, 2023)

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