Nation: THE PENTAGON'S WHIZ KIDS

Though the ranks of the Whiz Kids in the Defense Department are proliferating, five stand out for the scope and strength of their influence:

Alain C. Enthoven, 31, intense and dark-suited, looks more like a young college professor than a weapons analyst. Yet, as deputy comptroller for systems analysis, this young economist must lay bare the calculations on which many defense decisions are made. After graduating from Stanford with honors in economics, spending two years at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar and getting his Ph.D. from M.I.T., he joined the Rand Corp. think factory, where he helped direct a major...