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From the 1970s to 1990s, the US Department of Defense attempted to enforce software standards on its computer and aerospace contractors. Many software developers resented this and believed it encroached on their freedom to exercise professional judgment. Although the contractors oriented much of their software production toward military needs, the effort's ultimate failure showed the limits of the DoD's control.

Politics can shape technology most obviously through direct choice, whereby political or business leaders, technologists, or consumers choose to produce, use, or promote a certain technology or technological system because it fulfills a political aim. But politics can also shape technology indirectly, through the construction of legal, regulatory, or economic structures by forming a landscape that can discourage technological change in certain directions and encourage it in others. Of course, such structures do not come from nowhere; they are themselves the residue of earlier political choices. Nevertheless, they can affect technological change in ways unintended, or at least unimagined, at the time of their creation.