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 trillion operate. Yet time and time again, the US government gets it wrong on critical issues. So, what can be done? Enter bestselling author Thom Shanker and defense expert Andrew Hoehn. With decades of national security expertise between them and access to virtually every expert, they look at what's going wrong in national security and how to make it go right.
“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. Weaving together expert analysis with exclusive interviews from a new generation of national security leaders, 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.
