Technology Links

Danger Room

Foreign Policy in Focus

National Priorities Project

Thomas P. M. Barnett

Why We Fight (2005 film)

Technology Readings

Todd C. Helmus, et al., Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2007).

Bruce Held, et al., Seeking Nontraditional Approaches to Collaborating and Partnering with Industry (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2002).

William Greider, Fortress America: The American Military and the Consequences of Peace (New York: Public Affairs, 1998).

Technology Newsroll

"Long before the Army started embedding Human Terrain Teams in its Afghan combat units, Russia was "using social scientists to inform war policy and strategy" in Central Asia, notes the insightful Afghanistan-centered blog Ghosts of Alexander. And as you might expect, the results were often brutal."
Source: "'Human Terrain,' Russian-Style," Danger Room
go! · [7/15/08]

A leading science journal suggests that the military's controversial Human Terrain Teams could be a "win–win approach."
Source: "A social contract,"Nature (July 10, 2008)
go! · [7/15/08]

Michael Bhatia, a social scientist deployed with the Army's Human Terrain Teams, was killed in Afghanistan on May 7, 2008.
go! · [6/4/08]

The Shield Star Wars began as a Reagan-era fantasy. Under Bush, it is now the most expensive weapons system in the history of man. It has never been successfully tested. It will never be finished. And it is completely unnecessary.
Source: "The Shield," Rolling Stone (September 26, 2007)
go! · [10/18/07]

In a controversial new program called Human Terrain Teams, the U.S. military is pairing anthropologists alongside combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan, with the goal of fostering relationships and preventing conflict.
Source: David Rhode, "Army Enlists Anthropology in War Zones," New York Times (October 5, 2007).
go! · [10/5/07]

In April, Foreign Policy in Focus released its latest "Unified Security Budget" for the United States, showing how weapons spending can be replaced by more effective alternatives.
go! · [9/26/07]

Nonleathal weapons are not always a pretty sight. Here is video of a taser test on pigs.
Source: Danger Room at Wired.
go! · [9/1/07]

The contracting culture in the Pentagon may be keeping American soldiers from getting better body armor.
Source: Danger Room at Wired.
go! · [9/1/07]

Changing birth rates are changing the way that we approach strategy in war now and in the future.
Source: James Kurth, "One-Child Foreign Policy," The American Conservative (August 27, 2007).
go! · [9/1/07]

Due to the conflict in Iraq, American law enforcement departments are suffering a shortage of bullets.
go! · [8/29/07]

British companies are increasingly winning American contracts in the Iraq contracting bubble.
Source: Alec Klein, "For Security in Iraq, a Turn to British Know-How," The Washington Post (August 24, 2007).
go! · [8/24/07]

Fewer than half of the promised mine-resistant vehicles promised to troops in Iraq will be delivered this year because of logistics delays. To date, not a single soldier has been killed in one.
Source: Sharon Weinberger, "MRAP Delivery Estimates Cut Over Half," Wired News (August 23, 2007).
go! · [8/23/07]

A pair of economists have noticed a pattern in stock markets that may help to identify illegal arms trading and embargo violations.
Source: Stefano DellaVigna and Eliana La Ferrara, "Detecting Illegal Arms Trade" (August 9, 2007).
go! · [8/22/07]