Ideas
Global Defense Spending Is Getting Murkier
Many of the governments that are spending more on their militaries are also the least transparent.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
Don’t Let the Pentagon Become the Next Enron
Bad financial assumptions and unwillingness to make hard choices threaten to undermine national security.
Ideas
How Should the World Respond to Terrorism?
We invert the classic Q&A to explore the complexities influencing global responses to terrorism today.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
Genocide, Empty Threats, and a Warning to Obama, Clinton, and Trump
I watched America’s broken promise fuel Radovan Karadzic's terror in Bosnia.
Ideas
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.
Ideas
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.
Threats
What Trump Got Right About Brussels
Trump’s diagnosis of the attack makes sense. But the proposals he and Ted Cruz offered in response do not.
Ideas
The All-Too-Human Reason Nuclear Material Isn’t Secure Enough
Every facility that holds it is vulnerable to security complacency.
Ideas
Not Just Trump: The Chilling Rise in Global Authoritarianism
Terrorism and drone war are feeding a larger sense of insecurity, driving some to xenophobia and jingoism.
Ideas
NATO Needs to Move Two Brigades East, and That’s Just a Start
The world is changing around the alliance; here's what its leaders must do to keep up.
Ideas
Keep America's Top Military Officer Out of the Chain of Command
I lived through Goldwater-Nichols. Congress should know why it's still a bad idea to give the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who advises the president, that kind of power.
Ideas