THE DEFIANT WAR; When it began three years ago, few people could have anticipated that the combat in Iraq would last so long or that the enemy would become a stubborn and resilient insurgency

The San Francisco ChronicleOn the third anniversary of the beginning of war in the harsh environment of Iraq, the physical well-being of U.S. forces seems far better than the state of the ethical health of our country's military and civilian leadership

9/11: Yesterday and tomorrow; How we could lose the war on terror

The San Francisco ChronicleThe war on terror has become a global intifada, but despite our all- out commitment we're not much safer than before 9-11. As the conflict enters its third year, the greatest threat is that our failure to cripple al Qaeda and its allies will inspire the rise of even more terror networks. The dark, looming specter is the possibility that 10 years from now, there will be 10 al Qaedas -- fanatical, highly organized and well disciplined terror networks, some of them in secret service to rogue (or maybe not-so-roguish) nations that really do possess weapons of mass destruction

A better way to fight the war on terror; Mobile 'hunter networks' are the right strategy to combat guerrilla fighters

The San Francisco ChronicleThe movement of U.S. troops rotating into and out of Iraq is an eye- catching logistical ballet, but the repositioning of U.S. special forces teams around the world merits more attention. In their potential impact on the course of the war on terror, these elite "hunter networks" can better carry the fight directly to al Qaeda and its affiliates, ripping them apart cell by cell

In the fight against terrorism, the long war is the wrong war; Sooner or later, terrorists will get, and use, WMD

The San Francisco ChronicleThe war on terror may require a long, long time, as the Bush administration insists, but time is not on our side. Continuing attempts by the administration to make a virtue of the prospect of a drawn-out conflict only encourage mistaken thinking. For if the war does last decades, our chances of losing it rise dramatically

The Dangers of Military Robots, the Risks of Online Voting

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2771281John Arquilla considers the evolution of defense drones, and why Duncan A. Buell thinks we are not ready for e-voting

Where's Osama this election?

The San Francisco ChronicleThe silence coming from the caves is deafening. Having toppled the sitting Spanish government by staging an attack in Madrid days before an election in March 2004, and apparently helping George W. Bush win re-election in November of that year - thanks to the timely release of an oddly meditative videotape - Osama bin Laden seems to be sitting this one out

The End of War as We Knew It? Insurgency, counterinsurgency and lessons from the forgotten history of early terror networks

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10,1080/01436590601153861The growing potency of networked organisations has manifested itself over the past decade in the fresh energy evident among terrorists and insurgents—most notably al-Qaida and Hezbollah. Networks have even shown a capacity to wage war toe-to-toe against nation-states—with some success, as can be seen in the outcome of the First Russo-Chechen War (1994 – 96). The range of choices available to networks thus covers an entire spectrum of conflict, posing the prospect of a significant blurring of the lines between insurgency, terror and war. While history provides some useful examples to stimulate strategic thought about such problems, coping with networks that can fight in so many different ways—sparking myriad, hybrid forms of conflict—is going to require some innovative thinking to go along with more traditional introspection about the relevant lessons of history

Towards a National Information Security Strategy

From "The Information Revolution and National Security" (2000) edited by Thomas E. Copeland, Strategic Studies Institute (SSI), US Army War CollegeThis session built on the previous session on responses to security threats. A Video Teleconference