P. W. Singer
Author of Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
About the Author
Peter Warren Singer graduated with a BA from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and earned his Ph.D. in Government at Harvard University. Previous career experiences include working for the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard show more University, the Balkans Task Force in the U.S. Department of Defense, and the International Peace Academy. He also served as the Defense Policy Task Force coordinator for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign. Singer is the Director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution and was the youngest scholar named a Senior Fellow by the Institution. He has written the following books about contemporary warfare: Corporate Warriors, Children at War, and Wired for War. Corporate Warriors, about private companies providing services to the military, was named best book of the year by the American Political Science Association. Children at War, which examines the role of child soldiers, was recognized as the 2006 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book of the Year Award. Wired for War became a New York Times bestseller in the first week of its release and focuses on current technologies being used in warfare, including robotics. Singer is a frequent consultant and commentator and has written numerous articles for major publications including the Washington Post, Foreign Affairs, and World Policy Journal, as well as spoken on the radio and appeared on television. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Works by P. W. Singer
Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (2009) 607 copies, 13 reviews
Associated Works
MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History — Spring 2003 (2003) — Author "The Ultimate Military Entrepreneur" — 8 copies
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- Singer, Peter Warren
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Reviews
I was a bit late in getting to it, but I was pleasantly surprised by P.W. Singer and August Cole's Ghost Fleet. It took a bit of effort to get into it, but the temporal leap the novel takes into years after a second Pearl Harbor attack allows for some very interesting worldbuilding. The United States has been taken down a peg and enjoys little to none of its previous dominance. What does the post-hegemonic era look like for America? How, in the fabled era of "degraded ISR," can American show more armed forces operate and conduct operations? While we're living through that transition now, Singer and Cole explore what that future might actually resemble.
Riddled throughout with trenchant criticisms of the current political-military-industrial complex (such as a "Big Two" defense contractors, numerous references to the failings of the F-35, and the Air Force's institutional resistance to unmanned air-to-air platforms), the vision fleshed out in Ghost Fleet is not a flattering one to our current state of affairs. At times the references are a bit on the nose, but the degree of underlying wit makes up for it.
If nothing else, the opening sequence helps explain even to the layman the importance of sensor platforms and space-based assets, the US military's dependence on them, and their exquisite vulnerability. Finite quantities of ship-launched missiles and other material become apparent in a way that can be challenging to discern in real-life operations. Our reliance on Chinese-produced microchips and other advanced technology becomes a easily-exploitable Achilles' Heel, in a manner all too reminiscent of the Battlestar Galactica pilot miniseries.
A new techno-thriller is, of course, cause for comparison to Tom Clancy, and where this far outshines him is in its willingness to critique technology and current trends in military procurement rather than lauding it unreservedly, while crafting somewhat multi-dimensional characters (some of whom are even not white!). And as I've written before, even if wrong in the details, fiction like this helps broaden the aperture a bit and convey the potentialities of future conflict. If not China, then Russia; if not the F-35, then perhaps the long-range strike bomber: things will go wrong, technologies will fail, and the United States may well be caught unawares. Hopefully, with novels such as Ghost Fleet illustrating the cost of unpreparedness, it will be possible to forestall the future it envisions. show less
Riddled throughout with trenchant criticisms of the current political-military-industrial complex (such as a "Big Two" defense contractors, numerous references to the failings of the F-35, and the Air Force's institutional resistance to unmanned air-to-air platforms), the vision fleshed out in Ghost Fleet is not a flattering one to our current state of affairs. At times the references are a bit on the nose, but the degree of underlying wit makes up for it.
If nothing else, the opening sequence helps explain even to the layman the importance of sensor platforms and space-based assets, the US military's dependence on them, and their exquisite vulnerability. Finite quantities of ship-launched missiles and other material become apparent in a way that can be challenging to discern in real-life operations. Our reliance on Chinese-produced microchips and other advanced technology becomes a easily-exploitable Achilles' Heel, in a manner all too reminiscent of the Battlestar Galactica pilot miniseries.
A new techno-thriller is, of course, cause for comparison to Tom Clancy, and where this far outshines him is in its willingness to critique technology and current trends in military procurement rather than lauding it unreservedly, while crafting somewhat multi-dimensional characters (some of whom are even not white!). And as I've written before, even if wrong in the details, fiction like this helps broaden the aperture a bit and convey the potentialities of future conflict. If not China, then Russia; if not the F-35, then perhaps the long-range strike bomber: things will go wrong, technologies will fail, and the United States may well be caught unawares. Hopefully, with novels such as Ghost Fleet illustrating the cost of unpreparedness, it will be possible to forestall the future it envisions. show less
Singer, P. W., and August Cole. Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020.
A near-future tech thriller always requires finding a balance between action and exposition. You can imagine a scale with Tom Clancy on the action end and Kim Stanley Robinson on the exposition end. Burn-In, as you might guess from its subtitle and long list of references, leans more toward Robinson than Clancy. One snarky review on Goodreads said that if you like slow thrillers, show more this the book for you. The complaint is valid if a bit harsh. Singer and Cole do create quite a few riveting action scenes, but you can tell they are more interested in speculating about near-future advances in AI, robotics, and human-machine interactions. Their heroine, an FBI agent assigned to field-test an advanced police robot, struggles to remember not to anthropomorphize the machine. She refuses to give it a name, and frequently reminds herself never to test a machine you can’t disable in the crunch. For the most part, Singer and Cole succeed in not turning their robot into Johnny-Five or K-9. Four stars. show less
A near-future tech thriller always requires finding a balance between action and exposition. You can imagine a scale with Tom Clancy on the action end and Kim Stanley Robinson on the exposition end. Burn-In, as you might guess from its subtitle and long list of references, leans more toward Robinson than Clancy. One snarky review on Goodreads said that if you like slow thrillers, show more this the book for you. The complaint is valid if a bit harsh. Singer and Cole do create quite a few riveting action scenes, but you can tell they are more interested in speculating about near-future advances in AI, robotics, and human-machine interactions. Their heroine, an FBI agent assigned to field-test an advanced police robot, struggles to remember not to anthropomorphize the machine. She refuses to give it a name, and frequently reminds herself never to test a machine you can’t disable in the crunch. For the most part, Singer and Cole succeed in not turning their robot into Johnny-Five or K-9. Four stars. show less
"There is a war... for your Mind!"
That's the slogan of InfoWars, the incendiary conspiracy news network and nutritional supplement marketing firm. And while Alex Jones is wrong about almost everything, he's right about that. In LikeWar Singer and Brooking ably synthesize a sophisticated picture of information warfare in 2018, drawing from sources as diverse as Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and ISIS, to argue that the internet has lead to a blurring of lines between consumer, citizen, show more journalist, activist, and warrior which threatens the foundations of liberal democracy. The tech companies which built these platforms and profited from them must grapple with the politics of their technologies, before we all reap the whirlwind.
Computer networks and smart phones connect billions of people, allowing ideas to flow faster than ever before in history. Sometimes, the results can be impressive. The Chiapas Zapatista movement in 1994 was a dial-up and fax version of a network insurgency that managed to bring enough international opprobrium on Mexico that the government blinked, and reached some kind of political accord (Chiapas is complicated). More recently, Eliot Higgins and a team of open source analysts at Bellingcat managed to track down the exact BUK missile system and Russian soldiers responsible for shooting down MH 17 in 2014.
But there are a lot of dark sides. When people connect, the emotion that spreads most rapidly is anger. Lies spread five times faster than truth. Musicians can use social networks to directly connect with their fans, and ISIS uses it to connect with alienated Muslim youths worldwide. Social networks sort diverse citizens into filter bubbles of people who think alike. Eliot Higgin's careful open source intelligence has a paranoid fun-house mirror version in the QAnon conspiracy, where Qultist decoders find hidden messages from an alleged 'senior white house source'.
And then there is the matter of information war, an area that even now, after years of offensive cyber operations, liberal democracies still don't understand. Hostile propaganda slips into Western news networks and major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are infested with bots. LikeWar can even take a personal toll. Over the course of writing this book, General Michael Flynn went from forward looking full-spectrum commander to head Trumpist conspiracy cheerleader to indicted and plead out felon. Flynn's fall is complex, but it can't be separated from the internet. If the trolls got him, what chance does your idiot cousin stand? The counters, 'citizen truth teams' and senior emissaries to groups vulnerable to recruitment, seem like thin reeds against the coming maelstrom of noise.
LikeWar starts with Clausewitz's dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means, and there are clear links between cyberspace and physical space. Intensity of hashtags impacted the subsequent intensity of Israeli airstrikes during attacks on the Gaza strip. ISIS used propaganda to create an aura of invincibility that outflanked the defenders of Mosul, while Russia denied that its 'little green men' were even in Ukraine. But the difference is that cyberspace is constructed space rather than natural space. The networks are built, maintained, and owned by real corporations and real people. The internet grew from an anarchic specialized scientific network to a major engine of commerce and communicate with little deliberate government oversight. Section 230 absolved American companies of responsibility for policing content, with major carve outs for copyrighted IP and pornography. Yet as concerns over cyberbullying and counter-terrorism rose, major networks adopted digital constitutions that were permissive towards speech and censorious towards erotica. Policing content is and was possible, but always took a back seat to growth and engagement, the guide stars of Silicon Valley.
The future is if anything, darker. Advances in machine learning and AI allow ever more realistic bots, computer generated DeepFakes where a politician can be programmed to say anything, and personalized targeting of people with exactly the propaganda they'll believe. There are defensive counters, but if I might draw military analogies, what we saw in 2016 was armored warfare circa 1918: clearly the future, but not yet a mature system. Given the pace of technology, we only have a few years before digital blitzkrieg.
I'm extremely online, and I've been following this space for years. I've presented at multiple conferences on this topic, including Governance of Emerging Technologies and Association of Internet Researchers. LikeWar is the book I wish I'd written. Cognizant, forward looking, and deeply researched, it is vital reading for anyone interested in technology or politics.
My only reservation is that I wish the sources were better linked in the text, instead of being buried in static endnotes. Maybe the next edition will push an update. show less
That's the slogan of InfoWars, the incendiary conspiracy news network and nutritional supplement marketing firm. And while Alex Jones is wrong about almost everything, he's right about that. In LikeWar Singer and Brooking ably synthesize a sophisticated picture of information warfare in 2018, drawing from sources as diverse as Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and ISIS, to argue that the internet has lead to a blurring of lines between consumer, citizen, show more journalist, activist, and warrior which threatens the foundations of liberal democracy. The tech companies which built these platforms and profited from them must grapple with the politics of their technologies, before we all reap the whirlwind.
Computer networks and smart phones connect billions of people, allowing ideas to flow faster than ever before in history. Sometimes, the results can be impressive. The Chiapas Zapatista movement in 1994 was a dial-up and fax version of a network insurgency that managed to bring enough international opprobrium on Mexico that the government blinked, and reached some kind of political accord (Chiapas is complicated). More recently, Eliot Higgins and a team of open source analysts at Bellingcat managed to track down the exact BUK missile system and Russian soldiers responsible for shooting down MH 17 in 2014.
But there are a lot of dark sides. When people connect, the emotion that spreads most rapidly is anger. Lies spread five times faster than truth. Musicians can use social networks to directly connect with their fans, and ISIS uses it to connect with alienated Muslim youths worldwide. Social networks sort diverse citizens into filter bubbles of people who think alike. Eliot Higgin's careful open source intelligence has a paranoid fun-house mirror version in the QAnon conspiracy, where Qultist decoders find hidden messages from an alleged 'senior white house source'.
And then there is the matter of information war, an area that even now, after years of offensive cyber operations, liberal democracies still don't understand. Hostile propaganda slips into Western news networks and major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are infested with bots. LikeWar can even take a personal toll. Over the course of writing this book, General Michael Flynn went from forward looking full-spectrum commander to head Trumpist conspiracy cheerleader to indicted and plead out felon. Flynn's fall is complex, but it can't be separated from the internet. If the trolls got him, what chance does your idiot cousin stand? The counters, 'citizen truth teams' and senior emissaries to groups vulnerable to recruitment, seem like thin reeds against the coming maelstrom of noise.
LikeWar starts with Clausewitz's dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means, and there are clear links between cyberspace and physical space. Intensity of hashtags impacted the subsequent intensity of Israeli airstrikes during attacks on the Gaza strip. ISIS used propaganda to create an aura of invincibility that outflanked the defenders of Mosul, while Russia denied that its 'little green men' were even in Ukraine. But the difference is that cyberspace is constructed space rather than natural space. The networks are built, maintained, and owned by real corporations and real people. The internet grew from an anarchic specialized scientific network to a major engine of commerce and communicate with little deliberate government oversight. Section 230 absolved American companies of responsibility for policing content, with major carve outs for copyrighted IP and pornography. Yet as concerns over cyberbullying and counter-terrorism rose, major networks adopted digital constitutions that were permissive towards speech and censorious towards erotica. Policing content is and was possible, but always took a back seat to growth and engagement, the guide stars of Silicon Valley.
The future is if anything, darker. Advances in machine learning and AI allow ever more realistic bots, computer generated DeepFakes where a politician can be programmed to say anything, and personalized targeting of people with exactly the propaganda they'll believe. There are defensive counters, but if I might draw military analogies, what we saw in 2016 was armored warfare circa 1918: clearly the future, but not yet a mature system. Given the pace of technology, we only have a few years before digital blitzkrieg.
I'm extremely online, and I've been following this space for years. I've presented at multiple conferences on this topic, including Governance of Emerging Technologies and Association of Internet Researchers. LikeWar is the book I wish I'd written. Cognizant, forward looking, and deeply researched, it is vital reading for anyone interested in technology or politics.
My only reservation is that I wish the sources were better linked in the text, instead of being buried in static endnotes. Maybe the next edition will push an update. show less
Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell Studies in Security Affairs) by P. W. Singer
It has been much too long in coming, but I finally finished P.W. Singer's Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry. It is, quite simply, excellent.
Singer is one of the most intriguing defense/security writers out there, as his "thing" is basically finding heavily underrreported - yet crucial - developments occurring in the U.S. military. He seems to always be one of the first to really study in a comprehensive and coherent manner certain evolutionary changes in the show more way war is fought, and Corporate Warriors is no exception. His other works deal with heady subjects like robotics in war and child soldiers, and here he is at the forefront of yet another startling trend.
Corporate Warriors is an attempt to trace the lineage of the Private Military Firm (PMF) from early mercenaries to today's corporate arrangements, and in doing so, to fit them into a theoretical framework for better understanding and predicting industry developments. Published on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003, the book mostly deals with the 1990s, though to fully explain the rise of the PMF it jumps back to earlier examples in the 1970s and 80s.
Much of Corporate Warriors is couched in the language of IR theory, but Singer never slavishly tries to fit all of his findings into a rigid framework. Chapter 2 is an excellent historical survey of privatized military history, ranging from mercenaries in the service of King Shulgi of Ur to Syracusan hoplites to the first "companies" of the Hundred Years War. Singer fully explains the 'state as monopoly on violence' and the prominence that mercenaries enjoyed from the dawn of history until the nineteenth century, explaining that the odd little gap between roughly 1860 and 1950 in which the state's monopoly was the only game in town. But he is never overly concerned with the theoretical framework. Chapter 11, "Market Dynamism and Global Security Disruptions," opens with an epigraph from Professor R.B.J. Walker:
Nevertheless, there is a basic terminology to sort out the different functions that these PMFs perform. Broadly, they can be slotted into the categories of "provider firm" (actual, boots-on-the-ground fighting forces, like Airscan, DynCorp, and Executive Outcomes), "consulting firm" (providing everything but combat troops, including training, intelligence, and logistical planning; see MPRI, Ronco, and CACI), and the "support firm" (logistics such as transportation, maintenance, and catering; see KBR, Serco, and General Dynamics). While the categories are relatively firm, their companies are not - most have sub-units, spinoffs, and subcontractors that define themselves fluidly and often shift between functions.
Singer performs an admirable job of pointing out obvious absurdities in the way contracts are awarded and over the very functions that are now being outsourced and privatized. When the ostensible point of outsourcing to private companies is to save money, it makes little sense to award no-bid contracts, or to ask for bidding when less than a handful of companies exist that are even capable of performing the job. As Singer notes, "such arrangements forget that the efficiency of privatization comes from greater competition, rather than simply that it is private."
A good amount of space is devoted to some of the less obvious problems that arise from private militarization. Instead of a traditional arms race, the Ethiopian-Eritrean War saw an actual bidding race, as both sides rushed to secure the most in-demand services before their opponent could do the same. In this sense, more than any military build-up might be, a PMF race between adversarial nations represents a truly zero-sum situation. Whereas a country can attempt to increase spending, conscription, and overall arms procurement to match another country (such as the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War), every PMF that is hired by one party leaves one less to be hired by the other. This, Singer warns, can have serious unforeseen and destabilizing effects on future conflicts.
Other surprising issues are at stake. One such example of PMFs and the civil-military balance is particularly fascinating, and deserves to be quoted in full:
Another hitherto unforeseen situation is the potential for "good" NGOs and humanitarian groups to hire a PMF. Singer writes that during the early days of Rwanda, the United Nations at one point considered hiring mercenary groups to avoid a prolonged negotiation between its own member countries as to the composition of a peacekeeping force, and because a PMF could deploy much sooner. Groups like Worldvision in Sierra Leone and other agencies of the UN (including the High Commission for Refugees) have hired firms for protection and security advice. The world of private military capabilities is a complex one, and there are both objectively "good" and positive contingent outcomes that are hard to predict in advance.
While a book on the private military industry written on the eve of the invasion of Iraq might seem like it would be woefully outdated, it's held up surprisingly well. This is helped, of course, by Singer's new 2007 postscript - "The Lessons of Iraq" - which makes a compelling case for his own arguments. Sadly, the moderation and careful consideration he proscribed in his earlier conclusion was nowhere in sight during the following decade, and in fact the his most dire assessments of the real dilemmas with private military contracting were somehow outdone by reality. Vast quantities of money were funneled to contractors with little-to-no oversight, much of which simply vanished. Contractors were unaccountable, belonging neither to the military chain of command (and thus subject to the UCMJ) nor to civilian courts - always walking away free.
Singer's final proscription is that perhaps we had best take a step back and ask ourselves whether some of the functions we are now privatizing would be best left to our own military. Are we losing core functions and capabilities to the private sector? And are we paying the cost of training soldiers, only to see them leave and sell those same services back to us at twice the cost? Until such questions are answered publicly and definitely, the hazy, murky world of military contracting will continue to flourish. And while that in itself may not be a bad thing for now, if left to grow rampant and unchecked the blowback will become more than we can possibly imagine.
Corporate Warriors sought to analyze a new and growing trend, and since its writing that trend has increased exponentially. Like Singer's other work, it found a military development on the edge of mass awareness and firmly planted itself in the public mind. He foresaw the problems with PMFs and anticipated their logical extreme, to which they went in the five years after initial publication. Let us hope that in the future, if his next books contain such dire predictions, that they are wrong on those counts. show less
Singer is one of the most intriguing defense/security writers out there, as his "thing" is basically finding heavily underrreported - yet crucial - developments occurring in the U.S. military. He seems to always be one of the first to really study in a comprehensive and coherent manner certain evolutionary changes in the show more way war is fought, and Corporate Warriors is no exception. His other works deal with heady subjects like robotics in war and child soldiers, and here he is at the forefront of yet another startling trend.
Corporate Warriors is an attempt to trace the lineage of the Private Military Firm (PMF) from early mercenaries to today's corporate arrangements, and in doing so, to fit them into a theoretical framework for better understanding and predicting industry developments. Published on the eve of the Iraq War in 2003, the book mostly deals with the 1990s, though to fully explain the rise of the PMF it jumps back to earlier examples in the 1970s and 80s.
Much of Corporate Warriors is couched in the language of IR theory, but Singer never slavishly tries to fit all of his findings into a rigid framework. Chapter 2 is an excellent historical survey of privatized military history, ranging from mercenaries in the service of King Shulgi of Ur to Syracusan hoplites to the first "companies" of the Hundred Years War. Singer fully explains the 'state as monopoly on violence' and the prominence that mercenaries enjoyed from the dawn of history until the nineteenth century, explaining that the odd little gap between roughly 1860 and 1950 in which the state's monopoly was the only game in town. But he is never overly concerned with the theoretical framework. Chapter 11, "Market Dynamism and Global Security Disruptions," opens with an epigraph from Professor R.B.J. Walker:
The disjunction between the seriousness of international politics and the triviality of international relations theory is quite startling.
Nevertheless, there is a basic terminology to sort out the different functions that these PMFs perform. Broadly, they can be slotted into the categories of "provider firm" (actual, boots-on-the-ground fighting forces, like Airscan, DynCorp, and Executive Outcomes), "consulting firm" (providing everything but combat troops, including training, intelligence, and logistical planning; see MPRI, Ronco, and CACI), and the "support firm" (logistics such as transportation, maintenance, and catering; see KBR, Serco, and General Dynamics). While the categories are relatively firm, their companies are not - most have sub-units, spinoffs, and subcontractors that define themselves fluidly and often shift between functions.
Singer performs an admirable job of pointing out obvious absurdities in the way contracts are awarded and over the very functions that are now being outsourced and privatized. When the ostensible point of outsourcing to private companies is to save money, it makes little sense to award no-bid contracts, or to ask for bidding when less than a handful of companies exist that are even capable of performing the job. As Singer notes, "such arrangements forget that the efficiency of privatization comes from greater competition, rather than simply that it is private."
A good amount of space is devoted to some of the less obvious problems that arise from private militarization. Instead of a traditional arms race, the Ethiopian-Eritrean War saw an actual bidding race, as both sides rushed to secure the most in-demand services before their opponent could do the same. In this sense, more than any military build-up might be, a PMF race between adversarial nations represents a truly zero-sum situation. Whereas a country can attempt to increase spending, conscription, and overall arms procurement to match another country (such as the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War), every PMF that is hired by one party leaves one less to be hired by the other. This, Singer warns, can have serious unforeseen and destabilizing effects on future conflicts.
Other surprising issues are at stake. One such example of PMFs and the civil-military balance is particularly fascinating, and deserves to be quoted in full:
Given the checkered history of the soldiers who had served in the elite units of the apartheid-era South African military [and who now worked for PMF Executive Outcomes (EO)], the new African National Congress (ANC) government in South Africa led by Nelson Mandela had a particular incentive to see that these soldiers stayed out of domestic trouble, especially during the first multiracial elections in 1994. This may in part explain the lack of sanctions when EO first fought in the Angolan civil war. In public, the Mandela government was decidedly against the firm's activities, as EO was acting in contravention of the "new" South Africa's attempt to become a responsible regional power. However, in private, it quietly tolerated and even facilitated early EO recruitment of these forces. The rationale was the government's belief that "it would remove from South Africa a number of personnel who might have had a destabilising effect on the forthcoming multiracial elections." The ultimate outcome was the the South African elections went off without a hitch, while hundreds of potential agitators, with high levels of military skills, were kept busy making money abroad.
Another hitherto unforeseen situation is the potential for "good" NGOs and humanitarian groups to hire a PMF. Singer writes that during the early days of Rwanda, the United Nations at one point considered hiring mercenary groups to avoid a prolonged negotiation between its own member countries as to the composition of a peacekeeping force, and because a PMF could deploy much sooner. Groups like Worldvision in Sierra Leone and other agencies of the UN (including the High Commission for Refugees) have hired firms for protection and security advice. The world of private military capabilities is a complex one, and there are both objectively "good" and positive contingent outcomes that are hard to predict in advance.
While a book on the private military industry written on the eve of the invasion of Iraq might seem like it would be woefully outdated, it's held up surprisingly well. This is helped, of course, by Singer's new 2007 postscript - "The Lessons of Iraq" - which makes a compelling case for his own arguments. Sadly, the moderation and careful consideration he proscribed in his earlier conclusion was nowhere in sight during the following decade, and in fact the his most dire assessments of the real dilemmas with private military contracting were somehow outdone by reality. Vast quantities of money were funneled to contractors with little-to-no oversight, much of which simply vanished. Contractors were unaccountable, belonging neither to the military chain of command (and thus subject to the UCMJ) nor to civilian courts - always walking away free.
Singer's final proscription is that perhaps we had best take a step back and ask ourselves whether some of the functions we are now privatizing would be best left to our own military. Are we losing core functions and capabilities to the private sector? And are we paying the cost of training soldiers, only to see them leave and sell those same services back to us at twice the cost? Until such questions are answered publicly and definitely, the hazy, murky world of military contracting will continue to flourish. And while that in itself may not be a bad thing for now, if left to grow rampant and unchecked the blowback will become more than we can possibly imagine.
Corporate Warriors sought to analyze a new and growing trend, and since its writing that trend has increased exponentially. Like Singer's other work, it found a military development on the edge of mass awareness and firmly planted itself in the public mind. He foresaw the problems with PMFs and anticipated their logical extreme, to which they went in the five years after initial publication. Let us hope that in the future, if his next books contain such dire predictions, that they are wrong on those counts. show less
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