The United States responses to the threats of the Cold War varied from positive to negative. Perhaps the most positive reaction came from the "Sputnik moment."

On Oct. 4, 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first Earth-orbiting satellite, into space. Terrified that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union in technology, the United States Congress swiftly passed the National Defense and Education Act, which increased funding for education, especially in science and engineering, and also passed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA. Both of these acts led to great improvements in education and scientific research in the United States, as well as to a golden era of space exploration and scientific advances.

On the other hand, paranoia generated by the Cold War led to the rise of Joseph McCarthy and the Republican-led House Un-American Activities Committee, which, fueled by anti-Soviet paranoia, threatened basic civil liberties in the United States, including creating blacklists of people who were suspected not of actual treason, but simply of ideological sympathy with socialism, who were spied on, fired, and barred from certain jobs.