This memoir serves as a powerful work laying bare what it is like to experience a terrorist attack. It also serves as a fitting warning of our need to learn, and sadly often re-learn, the lessons of the past to prevent future failures from occurring.

NATO has enabled and supported U.S. foreign policy since the early days of the Cold War and continues to do so today. Given the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s emphasis on the return of great power competition, NATO’s importance to the United States will grow as competition intensifies. The United States should consider reinforcing NATO and reassuring its NATO allies of continued American commitment.

Most wars are limited wars, with significant political restraints on military force. Such restraints create conundrums for military strategists. “The less intense the motives,” wrote Carl von Clausewitz, “the less will the military element’s natural tendency to violence coincide with political directives.” Yet, as Allied Force illustrates, the savvy strategist can maximize the effectiveness of the air weapon even when political will is weaker.

Fifty years ago, Vermont Royster wrote that “it may seem cruel, this tradition of asking good and well-intentioned men to account for their deeds.” This accounting should not stop with the commanders at sea, but should also go to actions ashore, including how incidents like this are handled, and learned from.

Because much of science fiction involves organized violence, it also challenges readers to think about the enduring nature of war, especially when the character and conduct of war change because of new technologies or new domains.

The collapse of the Soviet Union has created an ideological and identity crisis in Russia. Prior to the collapse, the U.S.S.R was a multinational, multicultural state with the ideological mission to be the vanguard of a worldwide Communist revolution.  Afterwards, Russians foundered to find out who they were, what ideology they should embrace, and where they fit globally.  Initial attempts at liberalization seemed to have been a spectacular failure, and attempts to define themselves have bred a new form of nationalism that is not necessarily compatible with Western ideals.

Operations in the information environment will be a critical part of future joint force operations and should be baked in to those operations as a fully valued tool in commanders’ combined arms toolboxes. Reaching that goal will require greater acceptance and understanding of information across the joint force, new structures for information forces, and the evolution of how operations in the information environment are handled within the staff.

The widening rift between the Pentagon and Silicon Valley endangers national security in an era when global powers are embracing strategic military-technical competition. As countries race to harness the next potentially offsetting technology, artificial intelligence, the implications of relinquishing their competitive edge could drastically change the landscape of the next conflict. The Pentagon has struggled—and continues to struggle—to make a solid business case for technology vendors to sell their products to the Defense Department. Making the economic case to Silicon Valley requires process improvement, but building a strong relationship will necessitate embracing the ethical questions surrounding the development and employment of artificial intelligence on the battlefield.

The concern here, however, is not that death by robot represents a more horrible outcome than when a human pulls the trigger. Rather it has to do with the nature of morality itself and the central role respect for persons, understood in the Kantian sense as something moral agents owe each other, plays in forming our moral judgments.

The Russian military is developing the doctrine and capabilities for gaining and contesting battlefield awareness that will pose a significant challenge to U.S. forces in any future conflict with Russia. The military’s focus on information dominance extends from a broader belief among Russian leadership that information confrontation is one of the fundamental ways in which states compete. While the Russian military has always been adept at bringing tremendous firepower to bear during combat operations, it has also been a brawler, needing to get in contact with its opponent before being able to fight.

As dramatic changes in society are redefining the role of communication in organizational leadership across civil industry in the democratized world, a similar topic of professionalism is inspiring new conversations among U.S. military leaders. Public affairs officers and military researchers have identified challenges that complicate the best use of communication talent in the military. Insufficient training, how and where many public affairs officers are placed within unit organizational staffs, and unit cultures have historically marginalized the career field, inhibiting the inculcation of a professional ethos across the public affairs community.

Navy culture builds on traditions of the sea and seafaring in a nearly unbroken line from the sailing fleets of the British Empire through today’s modern nuclear-powered  ships of steel. One common saying is that the United States Navy is “over 240 years of tradition, unhampered by progress,” a simultaneous indictment of conservatism and a celebration of history and tradition. While the statement is not fully true, however, tradition is a such a cornerstone of naval life that tradition is an unofficial fourth core value and the single most common rationale for any action. Sailors cite tradition in many ways and forms, often interchangeably with custom and routine.

The long-serving professionals of the modern U.S. Army may seem worlds apart from their citizen-soldier forebears. Yet, the lessons outlined here have echoes in the present. A growth in military marketing and benefits following the rise of the all-volunteer force in 1973 testifies to the ongoing effort to satisfy the motivations of prospective recruits.

Cognitive biases have enormous implications for deterrence. Our new understanding of biases means deterrence is now stronger than it ever was during the Cold War.

It is questionable whether the UN can really afford to shift political responsibility to local actors while renouncing to vigorous political initiatives as a mediator. To leverage its global legitimacy, the UN will need to take into account the inherently partiality of military tools and to work around its implications, insisting that politics need to come first.

Over the last decade, military theorists and authors in the fields of future warfare and strategy have examined in detail the potential impacts of an ongoing revolution in information technology. There has been a particular focus on the impacts of automation and artificial intelligence on military and national security affairs. This attention on silicon-based disruption has nonetheless meant that sufficient attention may not have been paid to other equally profound technological developments. One of those developments is the field of biotechnology.

A kleptocracy and a vast narco-economy rot Mexico’s weak institutions. Continuous gun battles and the failing military and police force raise concerns over Mexico’s stability as a state. The power dynamic continues to shift where the state continues to lose any monopoly on the legitimate use of force, and there's a real possibility that Mexico can fail as a state and one that is on the United States’ border. The United States needs to take a hard look at Mexico and treat it as a growing security threat.