Experts

Fellow

Warren Sakey

Veterans Advanced Energy Fellow

Global Energy Center

Energy & Environment Renewables & Advanced Energy

Staff

Nushin Sarkarati

Deputy Director, Strategic Litigation Project

Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

Corruption Human Rights

Fellow

Joumana Seif

Former Nonresident Senior Fellow

Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

Arabic English

Fellow

Jordan Shontz

Veterans Advanced Energy Fellow

Global Energy Center

Energy & Environment Renewables & Advanced Energy

Staff

William F. Wechsler

Senior Director, Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

Rafik Hariri Center & Middle East programs

National Security Middle East

Fellow

Alex Yachanin

Veterans Advanced Energy Fellow

Global Energy Center

Energy & Environment Renewables & Advanced Energy

Content

Strategy Consortium

Feb 6, 2017

The challenge of ascertaining a strategic surprise

By William Inboden

The challenge posed by strategic surprises is not just their unexpected nature, but also that they are often not evident when they first occur. This memo discusses criteria and indicators for determining when a strategic surprise is occurring.

Israel
National Security

Strategy Consortium

Feb 6, 2017

Conducting a pre-mortem

By Jim Miller, Todd Rosenblum

It is worth doing a quick pre-mortem on the idea of conducting a pre-mortem in the development of national security strategies and plans. Three potential pitfalls stand out.

National Security
Security & Defense

Emerging Defense Challenges

Feb 1, 2017

Grundman Quoted by Inside Defense on Defense Contractors and the Trump Administration

By Steven Grundman

Read full article here.

Defense Industry
Security & Defense

In the News

Jan 29, 2017

LeBaron and Ashooh in the Chronicle of Higher Education: Colleges Must Find Ways to Serve Students Shut Out by the Ban

By Richard LeBaron and Jessica Ashooh

Read the full article here.

Defense Industrialist

Jan 26, 2017

Keep that hiring freeze short

By James Hasik

Really reducing the Pentagon workforce will be a challenging task, because every office needs to be effectively searched for who’s not doing a great job, and who’s not doing a job that really needs to be done. It’s also an important job, because the layering-on of people and offices over the years has created a bureaucratic monster in which simple decisions can take months to effect. So here’s one bit of advice to the new administration, in the interests of efficient administration of defense. Make no small plans at the OMB. Get to work on that plan for eliminating the deadwood, the unimportant, and the sclerotic. Just don’t let this hiring freeze linger. Because until fresh hiring can resume, you’ll get none of the new talent you need.

Defense Policy
Security & Defense

Energy Diplomacy Initiative

Jan 26, 2017

Report Launch: A Natural Gas Diplomacy Strategy for the New US Administration

By Energy Diplomacy Initiative

On Thursday, January 26, 2017 the Global Energy Center’s Energy Diplomacy Initiative hosted a report launch on A Natural Gas Diplomacy Strategy for the New US Administration for public and private interests. A new presidential administration under Donald J. Trump, newly elected Congress, and definite transformation in the US gas sector has brought forth a […]

Event Recap

Jan 26, 2017

Too Big to Fail? The Power of Transparency in Preventing Future Financial Crises

On January 25, the Atlantic Council and Thomson Reuters hosted Richard Berner, Director of the Office of Financial Research, U.S. Department of the Treasury.

Defense Industrialist

Jan 23, 2017

The USAF needs more than 300 light attack aircraft—now.

By Dave Foster

Lowering flight-hour costs later in the long war isn’t the main issue.

Defense Industry
Iraq

Defense Industrialist

Jan 21, 2017

The high beta presidency

By Steven Grundman

What does the Trump Administration portend for defense policy? I hew to the simple refrain, “Anything could happen.” Or, as an investor put it to me, “Trump’s promises to be the ‘high-beta’ presidency.” Beta is the measure of a stock’s volatility against the market as a whole, though the analogue to molecular biology and the treatment of hypertension may be equally apt. Of one thing we do know for sure: Donald Trump is a master of the political narrative, and the story about public policy counts far more than those of us with a deductive train of mind might care to admit.

Afghanistan
Defense Industry

Defense Industrialist

Jan 21, 2017

To get revolutionary in procurement, get radical on requirements

By James Hasik

In the US system, sketching out what the forces need is a task for military officers, upstream from the responsibilities of the under secretariat for AT&L. Ensuring they make sense and don’t excessively overlap amongst the services is supposed to be the job of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, which impanels the vice chairman of the joint chiefs and the vice chiefs of the individual services. However, in its 20-year history, the JROC has rarely seen a requirement it didn’t usher through the process with minimal change. In the long run, radically rethinking requirements requires radically rethinking the process of setting requirements. And that’s where the big money is to be found.

Afghanistan
Defense Industry
Load More