Scowcroft Center Commentary, Analysis, & Reports

The Role of Service Contractors in the United States and Around the World

Steven. F. Gaffney, chairman and CEO of DynCorp International, gave an address entitled “The Role of Service Contractors in the United States and Around the World” as part of the Atlantic Council Captains of Industry series.

Pavel on Adopting a “Dynamic Security” Strategy

By Barry Pavel

VP and Scowcroft Center Director Barry Pavel writes for Defense News on why the United States should adopt a “dynamic security” strategy for adapting to a “Westphalian-plus” world:

Beyond 3D Printing: Programming the Material World

By Thomas A. Campbell

New technologies are converging in a cresting tsunami. Robotics, autonomous vehicles, big data, the “internet of everything,” nanotechnology and other technology sectors are being mashed up in ways incredible to those who studied engineering even as recently as the 1990s. In particular, 3D printing (additive manufacturing)1 revolutionizes the future with its potential to make almost […]

The art of war

By Mark Revor

The creative minds of David Brin, renowned tech-futurist; August Cole, adjunct fellow at the American Security Project; and Dave Anthony, director and writer of Call of Duty: Black Ops II; along with moderator Steven Grundman, the M.A. and George Lund Fellow for Emerging Defense Challenges in the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the […]

Preparing the Military for Coming Challenges

As the head of the the US Missile Defense Agency, Patrick O’Reilly saw a lot of advanced military technology. But of late, one of the most intriguing advancements he has seen has come from a few newly graduated engineers at a commercial wireless company. With a 3D printer, they have created new antenna shapes that […]

Betting on Breakthrough Defense Technologies: Keynote with DARPA Director Arati Prabhakar

By Mark Revor

No discussion on disruptive technologies would be complete without the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which has been the leading developer of disruptive technologies for decades. Their work has brought us the internet, global positioning system, and that voice on your iPhone. Joining the Disruptive Defense conference for an afternoon keynote on Betting on […]

The New World We Face, The New Strategy We Need

By James Hasik

What’s changing, Barry Pavel asked, in this “Westphalia-Plus” world? Stephen Hadley and Jim Miller agreed that the challenges today are not primarily technological, but political. Hadley offered the salient example of Pakistan, where “all the drone strikes in the world” will not solve the problems of a failing state, but rather, only competent government. The […]

Disrupting Geopolitics

By Mark Revor

Mathew Burrows, Andrew Hoehn, and Moisés Naím joined moderator Francis Rose of Federal News Radio for Disrupting Geopolitics, the second panel of Atlantic Council’s Disrupting Defense conference. General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, opened the conference, highlighting the challenges of today’s geopolitical environment from a military perspective, stating that the application […]

Dempsey Calls for Innovation in Defense

By James Hasik

Keynote Address by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey Today, General Dempsey noted, is the forty-ninth anniversary of the founding of the long-defunct Warsaw Pact. Back then, in 1955, he was three years old. In 1975, as he noted, the Dempsey went to Germany to patrol the Czech border as a […]