Staff Bios
Peter W. Singer
Peter Warren Singer is Senior Fellow and Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He is the youngest scholar named Senior Fellow in Brookings's 90-year history. Singer has also been recognized by the Financial Times as "Guru of the Week" for the thinker that most influenced the world that week. In his personal capacity, Singer served as coordinator of the Obama-08 campaign’s defense policy task force.
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Video game veterans and the new American politics
Published: Nov 17, 2009
Inside the Beltway, the military, media, and pundits are all awaiting the president's decision on the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. But for more people outside, the decision for war has already been made. Virtual war that is.
"Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" is the new video game phenomenon in which the player fights in contemporary conflict zones. As part of a US special operations team, the player roams everywhere from Afghanistan to the Caucasus, winning hearts and minds with a mix of machine pistols and Predator drone strikes. The players also fight out in range of potential new conflict zones, from the rough urban favelas of Brazil to a simulated Russian invasion...
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How to steal from our troops: the annual defense budget raid
Published: Oct 20, 2009
Our nation faces booming budget deficits and an economic challenge of a scale not seen in decades. Our military is locked in not one, but two grinding wars. And, in the last presidential election both the Democratic and Republican candidates pledged, to universal acclaim, to fight government waste. If ever the stars were aligned for Congress to treat our defense budget with due seriousness, this was the time.
But fear not, the season for the defense budget to be raided for personal pet projects has come around once more. This month the Senate Appropriations Committee placed 778 earmarks (also known as "pork") into the legislative bill that is supposed to pay for our nation's...
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Peter W. Singer: From crop-dusting to counterinsurgency?
Published: Sep 22, 2009
In the 1992 film "Iron Eagle III," a retired U.S. Air Force fighter ace is asked by a buxom South American woman to defend her village against narco-terrorists led by a former Nazi. He does the only logical thing: He rounds up some vintage World War II-era propeller planes, updates them with laser-guided bombs and flies down to teach the bad guys a lesson. It is great to see those beautiful old planes in action, but all the nostalgia in the world cannot rescue a bad idea of a movie.
I thought about this recently when the Air Force announced its plan to explore purchasing 100 "light fighters." The planes must be able to cruise 180 knots for at least five hours on...
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Fueling our security: The need for a defense energy strategy
Published: Aug 25, 2009
Whether you believe global climate change is caused by human-driven carbon emissions or unicorn flatulence, it is inarguable that the issue of energy is an enormous national security concern. Our nation's dependency on nonrenewable and often foreign sources of energy does everything from bolster the power of illiberal regimes that control oil reserves to indirectly finance terrorist groups. Yet, even if none of these factors was in play, a new report out by the Brookings Institution, titled "Fueling the Balance," argues that our nation needs a defense energy strategy because of simple military pragmatism.
Our Department of Defense is the largest consumer of energy not just in...
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Who’s afraid of the big, bad Chinese aircraft carrier?
Published: Jul 28, 2009
When I was 11, my uncle worked in the Pentagon. Knowing that I was interested in military issues, he once sent me “Soviet Military Power,” a yearly report provided to Congress. It may have seemed like odd reading for a kid, but I found it absolutely fascinating. Filled with glossy pictures, tables, and graphs, it laid out in almost loving detail the overwhelming danger presented by the Soviet military. Indeed, after reading how they outnumbered us four to one in nearly every weapon we had, one almost wondered why we were even bothering to try to fight them. There was only one problem: The Cold War hype in “Soviet Military Power” turned out to be as hollow as the...
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‘The biggest loser’? Our dangerous defense policy addiction
Published: Jun 30, 2009
From the Super Big Gulps that we love to slurp down to the gargantuan sport utility vehicles that we park in our McMansions, we are a nation that loves to go “big” in all the meanings of the term. Indeed, this “bigger is better” mentality even permeates all aspects of our defense acquisitions.
Take the size of our weapons. We specialize in buying systems that aren’t just big, but supersized, from the Navy’s Ford class aircraft carrier that weighs 112,000 tons and is staffed by a crew half the size of our nation’s diplomatic corps to the Marines’ planned Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle, tasked to nimbly navigate urban combat zones, even...
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The damning paradox of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
Published: Jun 02, 2009
Lt. Dan Choi of the New York National Guard is a graduate of West Point, an infantry officer and Iraq war veteran. Choi even has a degree in Arabic language. These skills and experiences can be invaluable in the complex wars of Iraq or Afghanistan. But the next time his unit is sent into harm’s way, Choi’s fellow soldiers and his nation won’t benefit from his service. Want to know why? Don’t ask, if you don’t want me to tell.
But Choi decided to tell. And so, his truthful admission that he was gay triggered a discharge process that will occur in coming weeks.
Homosexuals have served with the U.S. military going back to Baron von Steuben at Valley Forge. But...
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