Search:

Perhaps there is also the random chance factor. Marc Sageman wrote that most terrorists are recruited through pre-existing personal contacts. Perhaps engineers are overrepresented because, by...

That would be excellent! I would hold off on it though until I have done some more research so I could target my questions better. Can I PM you when I'm ready?

I'm thinking of writing my masters thesis on the Tuareg rebellion, in Mali and Niger. A major hurdle is that I don't speak or read French. Can anyone point me to some sources in English?

I've...

Yes the military is involved in a lot (not all) of covert ops, but my point was that not all covert ops - and not all national security affairs in general - are under control of the Department of...

Plenty of things that are critical to national security aren't within DoD - intelligence/covert ops (granted 80% is DoD but still much is outside), state, the economy, etc. Just because something is...

Kahl had a good online debate with Brian Katulis and Marc Lynch over at Dr. Lynch's blog:
http://abuaardvark.typepad.com/abuaardvark/2007/11/kahl-katulis-de.html

Ideas are the primary weapon of those who aren't in power. All they have to do is make promises. But if you are in power and all you have are grand ideas and promises, but you haven't done anything...

You might link the commercial and non-commercial stuff by using RAND's "Enlisting Madison Avenue".

http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/MG607/

Great post. Reminded me of an article in Democracy Journal: "The Progressive Case for Military Service" by Kathryn Roth-Douquet:

http://democracyjournal.com/printfriendly.php?ID=6566

I think the key is that, in addition to a coordinating body in the NSC or wherever, you need the individuals who head up the various agencies to actually care about SC. I don't think there's a...

I think SC is the kind of thing that you can't get right under a hierarchical structure where one guy at the top has directive authority over the whole operation, especially the NSC. A few reasons:...

In what I am chalking up as a lesson in government bureaucracy, the writeup has been sent out for security review (after it was reviewed by other various people) and will be posted anywhere between a...

It looks like we will do a 4 to 5 page writeup of the conference that we'll be sending to the Pentagon and posting on our website. Once that goes up I'll post the link.

I don't find the observation that "war is hard" to be particularly novel. Some old fogey mentioned two hundred years ago that in war everything is simple and the simplest thing is very hard. Was...

I saw Control Room as well. It was a pretty good movie but isn't terribly informative.

CIFA does the necessary job of force protection for military bases, but it makes me pretty uneasy that they are within DoD - I'd feel more comfortable if the mission was given to either the FBI which...

Jedburgh was not accusing of you of being hunkered down in a fob (I assume you're talking about this post) - he was quoting from my blog post after that Heritage event. For the record I was not...

Like I mentioned above, it's a tricky question because of the non-attribution issue. Still haven't resolved it with the bosses.

The NDU PAO stuck it up on the website so now you know it's official. The link to the official agenda actually links to something else - I'll try to fix it Monday. There might be one or two...

Kyle Teamey, former O3, coauthor of the COIN manual, and John McCary, former E5, currently a grad student in Georgetown's SSP (same program I'm in).

We have an addition - Michael S. Doran, currently DASD/Support to Public Diplomacy, will be sitting on a panel.

Agree - less people to manipulate. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to get chummy with about 20 producers of TV shows to have them give you favorable coverage than it would be to get chummy with 200...

NDU's non-attribution policy would limit what I could share, like specific observations by different people, etc. But I could share general observations I think - I'll check on that with my boss.

I work at NDU, putting on monthly conferences. This month's conference is titled "The Battle of Ideas: Messages, Mediums and Methods." It's at NDU in DC, free and open to the public...

Good review, although I don't agree with your take on the central management of networks.

Also there's a special forum for Brave New War discussions
...