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Spying on the Spooks

August 20, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment
Military Spy Satellite

From the courtyard of his house in the center of his Dutch hometown of Leiden, Marco Langbroek spies on American military satellites, and makes no secret about it. He blogs about it. While thousands of amateurs track the world’s orbiters, Langbroek is part of a small subset— about 20 loosely affiliated members from around the world: Russia, Canada, South Africa, Texas, he says—focused on covert launches. They’re generally not spies themselves, just enthusiastic fanboys. Langbroek, for example, earns his livelihood digging into the earth, not looking up at the heavens. ... Read More

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Can Compulsory Service Reunite the Nation?

March 29, 2012 • By • Leave a Comment

In a recent New York Times op-ed, conservative columnist David Brooks commented on a new book, Coming Apart, by libertarian Charles Murray. Brooks heaped praise on Murray and his study of an increasingly polarized America but concluded — with a single sentence — in kicking a hornet’s nest: “I doubt Murray would agree, but we need a National Service Program” to reunify the nation. His suggestion set the Internet abuzz. Amidst a backdrop of the Republican primaries highlighting deep regional, political, and economic fractures among Americans, Brooks had struck a ... Read More

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One Laptop Per Child Redux

December 23, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

The New York Times called it,  “The Laptop That Will Save the World,” while the renowned Computer Graphics Laboratory at Stanford University  referred to it as “a monumental feat of engineering and design.” Dressed up like a toy in a Kermit-the-Frog green and white plastic shell, this durable little computer was the progeny of the nonprofit organization, One Laptop Per Child. When the laptops went into mass production in November 2007, OLPC’s ambitious plan aimed to place a free computer into the hands of the world's 1 billion impoverished children. Education is the exit ramp ... Read More

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The Last Word on Wartime Contractors?

November 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

At the end of September, after three years of hearings, reports and deliberations, the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan turned off its lights for the last time. It left behind a report that is arguably the most comprehensive examination yet of the fraud, waste, and abuse rife among contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Contractors are a reality,” says the commission’s co-chair, former nine-term Republican congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut. “You can’t go to war without contractors. The irony is that we went to war unprepared to use ... Read More

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No Way Out: Exiting Afghanistan and Iraq

October 3, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

On Oct. 7, 2001, U.S. forces launched an offensive in Afghanistan with the aim of dismantling the al-Qaeda terror network and driving the radical Islamist Taliban government from power. That was a decade ago, and the war goes on. Today, the U.S. finds itself facing a clear but intractable question: How do we end wars? As the “long wars” of Afghanistan and Iraq rumble on, the answer becomes more elusive and more vague. In an August 2010 speech, President Obama described how the world had entered a new era, “an age without surrender ceremonies.” Perhaps Obama remembered that ... Read More

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Mr. Y: Best Military Strategy Starts at Home

September 26, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

Weak nation, strong military? Sounds like a description of a third-world country, not the United States of America. But that is what the current overheated debate in Washington amounts to, according to two of the Pentagon's top strategists. "In July 2009, Admiral Mike Mullen asked me to look at grand strategy" in order to make sense of global trends, says Navy Capt. Wayne Porter. He is special assistant for strategy, working for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, the president's top military adviser. Instead of focusing on weapons systems or how the military ... Read More

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An Army of Change

September 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

As U.S. soldiers pull out of Iraq this December, and with 33,000 more scheduled to leave Afghanistan by the fall of 2012, American land forces may find themselves the victims of their own success. The budget deal signed by the president in August promises big cuts in defense dollars, and the burden of leaner budgets is expected to fall on the troops. A key Pentagon review published last year signaled that the future belongs largely to the Navy and the Air Force; Libya seems a proving ground for the use of U.S. air and naval power (combined with that of their NATO peers) fighting to overthrow ... Read More

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War on Terror Promises Era of Persistent Conflict

April 29, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

This is the last of a three-part series looking at how the ... Read More

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A Professional Military and the Privatization of Warfare

April 22, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

This is the second of a three-part series looking at how the ... Read More

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America in the Hands of a Professional Military

April 15, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment

This is the first of a three-part series looking at how the professionalization of the military has led to the privatization of warfare and an era of persistent conflict. Americans observe two anniversaries this year, neither one of them wanted. March marked eight years of combat in Iraq, and October, 10 years of fighting in Afghanistan. These are America's "long wars," a seemingly endless grind of combat. These long wars invite comparison, and some recall the eight years of U.S. war in Vietnam, but there is a more compelling distinction. It was a conscript Army that flew its Hueys over ... Read More

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