"The navy came calling afterward and asked Bush to build a machine to break coded radio and telegraph messages sent by Japanese officers and diplomats. As tensions rose in Europe in the late 1930s, Bush drew on his experiences with academia, the military, & industry to plan for a research organization that pooled the groups’ resources. Bush believed the United States was bound to get dragged into Europe’s trouble ."

https://sciencehistory.org/stories/magazine/the-rise-and-fall-of-vannevar-bush/