Age of Danger

Description

Bestselling author Thom Shanker and defense expert Andrew Hoehn offer an urgent look at how America's national security machine went astray and how it fails to keep us safe—and what we can do to fix it.

Again and again, American taxpayers are asked to open their wallets and pay for a national security machine that costs $1.25 trillion operate. How is it possible that the United States Government gets it so wrong on so many critical issues, and so often? And if our expensive national security machine is not working, what can be done?
 
Enter Thom Shanker, bestselling author and former New York Times editor, along with Andrew Hoehn, RAND SVP of Research and Analysis and former Pentagon official, who have not only decades of national security expertise between them, but access to virtually every expert with something valuable to say.

Age of Danger looks at the major challenges facing America—from superpowers like Russia and China to emerging threats like pandemics, cybersecurity, climate change, and drones—and reimagines the national security apparatus into something that can truly keep Americans safe. After several decades focused primarily on the imminent threat of terrorism, it is time for America to once again be forward thinking in its national security, before we lose pace with a new generation of threats. Weaving together expert analysis with exclusive interviews from a who’s who of national security, including Robert Gates, Stanley McChrystal, Eric Schmidt, and Michael Leiter, Shanker and Hoehn argue that the United States must create an industrial-grade, life-saving machine out of a system that, for too long, was focused only on  deterring adversaries and carrying out global military operations. It is a timely and crucial call to action, a call that if heeded, could save Americans lives, money, and our very future on the global stage.American taxpayers will be asked again this year to open their wallets and pay for a government national security machine that costs $1.25 trillion – yes, trillion – to operate. How is it possible that the United States Government gets it so wrong on so many critical issues, and so often? And if our expensive government national security machine is not working, what is to be done?
 
America needs a top-to-bottom overhaul of its national security system, rivaling major changes made at other critical time periods in history: the end of World War II, after the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1989 and post-9/11. Enter bestselling author (and NYT editor), Thom Shanker, and RAND exec (and former Pentagon official), Thom Shanker, who not only have decades of national security between them, but access to every expert who has something valuable to say.
 
They will look at the major challenges facing America—including pandemics, food scarcity, China, cybersecurity, and drones—and reimagine the national security apparatus into something that truly keeps Americans safe. They describe why the United States must create an industrial strength life-saving machine out of a system that, for too long, was focused on how to be best at threatening lethal force to deter adversaries and carrying out military operations. A new focus is necessary to protect American lives from digits and microbes as much as planes, bombs, and bullets. This book is a timely and crucial call to action, offering remedies –  including  specific reforms to our military and intelligence, and a government-wide refocusing from the zoom on terrorism of the past two decades to a more panoramic assessment of risks to our nation.
 Thom Shanker is the director of the Project for Media and National Security (PMNS), an initiative within the George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs that works to deepen public understanding of national security. Previously, he was the National Security/Foreign Policy Editor for the New York Times' Washington Bureau, after serving for for 13 years as the newspaper’s Pentagon and military correspondent. He is co-author of Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda, a New York Times bestseller. For the war in Afghanistan, Shanker embedded with Army Special Forces at Kandahar during the initial invasion of Afghanistan, and later conducted numerous reporting trips to Afghanistan and Iraq. Prior to joining the Times in 1997, he was foreign editor of the Chicago Tribune. He was the Tribune's senior European correspondent, based in Berlin, from 1992-1995, with most of that time spent covering the wars in former Yugoslavia. He was the Tribune's Moscow bureau chief from 1985-1988, covering the first years of the Gorbachev era and issues of superpower arms control. He returned to Moscow from 1990-1992 to cover the death of the USSR and the collapse of the communist empire in Eastern Europe.

Andrew Hoehn is senior vice president for research and analysis at the RAND Corporation. He is responsible for all U.S.-based research and recruitment of RAND's 1,300 research staff. He is author of several RAND volumes, including the recent “Strategic Choices for a Turbulent World” (RAND, 2017). Mr. Hoehn previously served as a RAND vice president of Project AIR FORCE (PAF), where he oversaw research and analyses on strategy, force employment, personnel and training, and resource management. Previously, Hoehn was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy, during the years just preceding and following 9/11, responsible for developing and implementing U.S. defense strategy, force planning and assessments, and long-range policy planning. Earlier, he had several management and staff positions in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Prior to joining government, Hoehn was associate editor of the Marine Corps Gazette.
 

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