home > about cfr > leadership and staff > andrew hansen > Robb: U.S. Faces Brave New War
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| Interviewee: | John Robb |
|---|---|
| Interviewer: | Andrew Hansen |
June 1, 2007
U.S. forces and the fledgling Iraqi government struggle against the insurgency in Baghdad. Drug gangs in Mexico wrest power from the government. Militias attack oil interests in Nigeria. Armed Software executive and former Air Force counterterrorist operative John Robb tracks them all on his popular blog. In his book, Brave New War, Robb uses the theory of open-source software development to describe modern insurgencies. Collaboration on software produces innovation. “In Iraq, we see similar levels of innovation,” he says. “And this has radically changed how we fight war.” He concludes that the Defense Department is ill-equipped to face the challenges of this new type of warfare. “The U.S. Defense Department is a huge bureaucracy. Most of its focus is on these large weapons systems that are pretty much useless in modern conflict.”
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