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The Mistake that Decapitated Pentagon Innovation — and How to Fix It
When the Packard Commission demoted the director of defense engineering and research, they essentially elevated gunsmithing over strategic marksmanship.
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Harvard’s Love-Hate Relationship with the US Military
The gap between America’s elite educational institutions and its military remains wide. Harvard faces a moral imperative to help close it.
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Divert Course: Beijing Needs A Way To Save Face in the South China Sea
It will take U.S. help and a politically difficult climb-down, but it will help China escape the blind alley its imprudent policies have steered it toward.
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How to Turn The Heat Down in the South China Sea
These five concrete steps can keep tensions from becoming war — if the U.S. acts.
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Don’t Let the Pentagon Become the Next Enron
Bad financial assumptions and unwillingness to make hard choices threaten to undermine national security.
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A Firewalled Nuke Fund Is Bad Budgeting and Bad Planning
It’s a budget gimmick that would promote waste and push off hard choices about tomorrow’s nuclear arsenal.
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How Should the World Respond to Terrorism?
We invert the classic Q&A to explore the complexities influencing global responses to terrorism today.
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The US Should Never Develop Another Joint Fighter
The savings rarely materialize when the services try to develop common weapons, but the problems sure do.
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Don't Let China Steal the US Military's Logistical Edge
It's time to harden defenses against hackers seeking data and state-owned companies buying up key suppliers.
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China's Military Wants to Put Its Nukes on a Hair Trigger
If Barack Obama gets one thing done at the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, it should be dissuading Xi Jinping from doing this.
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Obama's Record as Commander-in-Chief, By the Numbers
He vowed to end America's wars, but has mostly just changed who’s doing the fighting.
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Some Good Reading for the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit
As the curtain prepares to rise on tomorrow's opening in Washington, take a moment to read the best from Defense One staff and contributors.
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Is That All There Is? Obama’s Disappointing Nuclear Legacy
The biggest roadblock to making the world safer from nuclear weapons turned out to be the president's own team.
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Let’s Not Give Suicide Bombers So Much Credit—Sometimes They Have No Strategy
The Brussels attackers may have been responding to territorial losses in Iraq and Syria, but that's not the only possible scenario.
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The FBI Should Tell Apple About the iPhone Vulnerability, If It Can
White House cybersecurity guidelines suggest disclosure, but the feds may not actually have the information.
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Genocide, Empty Threats, and a Warning to Obama, Clinton, and Trump
I watched America’s broken promise fuel Radovan Karadzic's terror in Bosnia.
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It's Time for China to Turn Nuclear-Security Pledges into Reality
Beijing's made a good start, but must buckle down before terror groups exploit corruption to devastating effect.
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The Changing Logic Behind Suicide Bombings
What was once purely a strategic action has become a tactical move meant to help hold territory.
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ISIS Is Using the Media Against Itself
It doesn’t matter if the coverage that follows an attack is negative. For ISIS, any coverage is good coverage.
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