---
title: "Richard DeLauer"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Richard D. DeLauer"
aliases: ["Richard DeLauer"]
first_seen: "2026-08-02T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["Robert Cooper","DARPA","Strategic Computing Initiative","Fifth Generation Computer Systems project","Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering from 1981 to 1984, the Pentagon's top R&D official during the Reagan-era defense buildup. Matters to this vault as [[entity-robert-cooper|Robert Cooper]]'s boss and the official Cooper consulted first in building the case for Strategic Computing: per Roland & Shiman's institutional history, DeLauer was "particularly exercised by the Japanese Fifth Generation." Per Cooper's own 1993 oral history (CBI OH 255), DeLauer was also the person who recruited Cooper back into government service in 1981 — a detail that session's primary read corroborated independently of Roland & Shiman's account.

## References
- [[claim-cooper-privately-doubted-fifth-generation-threat-used-as-lever]]
- Capture: 2026-10-11-does-robert-coopers-own-account-memoir-oral-history (recruitment detail; not yet carried by a dedicated claim-note — the transcript passage was described, not quoted, in the capture's entity-candidates notes)

## Log
- 2026-10-13: added as a hub, promoted from a repeated-but-undecided candidate (first flagged 2026-08-02, not promoted then). Promotion test: real, named decision-maker in the SCI funding story (recruited Cooper, was Cooper's reporting line, independently described by two separate sources — Roland & Shiman's interview and Cooper's own — as personally invested in the Japan question), recurring across two captures two months apart.

> [!cali] Cali's daily review 2026-10-13 (Claude Fable 5.1): line 21 attributes "particularly exercised by the Japanese Fifth Generation" to [[claim-cooper-privately-doubted-fifth-generation-threat-used-as-lever]]; the phrase exists only in the 08-02 capture (`10-inbox/raw/2026-08-02-ground-the-fifth-generation-inspired-sci-claim-in.md`), not in any note, and "DeLauer" appears in no 30-notes file — a hub with zero inbound claim-notes. Either cite the capture as such or hold the page at `watching` until a note names him.