Fear Factor: Weaponizing Panic in Asymmetric Conflicts is a comprehensive, analytical guide to understanding and leveraging the strategic power of panic in modern warfare. Written with the precision of a military field manual and the rigor of a psychological operations textbook, this book dissects how irregular forces—guerrillas, insurgents, and terrorists—use fear as a weapon to destabilize superior adversaries. Through case studies, scientific models, and proven tactics, this book provides a detailed roadmap for inducing, sustaining, and exploiting panic on the battlefield and in civilian populations. This is not theoretical. This is a practical manual on how fear can be weaponized to cripple operational efficiency, disrupt command structures, and demoralize entire societies. Key features of this book include: A thorough analysis of panic as a psychological weapon in both historical and contemporary conflicts. Tactical methods for identifying vulnerabilities, launching fear-based attacks, and sustaining panic in military and civilian targets. Case studies from the Vietnam War, the Soviet-Afghan conflict, and modern insurgencies, demonstrating the real-world application of these tactics. Step-by-step breakdowns of disinformation campaigns, cyber warfare, and psychological operations designed to create chaos and disarray in the enemy’s ranks. Insights into how modern technologies—AI, cyberattacks, and autonomous systems—are transforming the battlefield by amplifying the psychological impact of panic. Strategies for turning individual fear into widespread organizational collapse. With a unique focus on the psychological dimension of asymmetric warfare, Fear Factor offers commanders, intelligence analysts, and strategic planners an in-depth look at how to effectively integrate psychological operations into broader military campaigns. Drawing from cutting-edge research on cognitive load theory, stress-response models, and collective behavior, this book provides the scientific and operational rigor needed to turn panic into a force multiplier. Fear Factor is not just an exploration of panic—it is a field-tested guide to using fear as a strategic tool to outmaneuver, disorient, and defeat larger, conventional forces. It is an essential resource for anyone engaged in the planning and execution of modern warfare.

This groundbreaking work provides an unprecedented, in-depth examination of the global arms trade as a sophisticated business enterprise, uncovering the logistical, financial, and strategic mechanisms that underpin one of the world’s most resilient industries. Moving beyond traditional narratives that cast arms dealing in purely moral or political terms, The Merchants of Death repositions the arms trade industry as a complex economic ecosystem defined by adaptability, alliances, and logistical prowess. Through meticulously researched case studies and incisive analysis, this work reveals how arms dealers navigate an intricate web of regulations, circumvent embargoes, and leverage state and non-state alliances to expand their influence across volatile regions. Positioned to become a seminal work on the subject, The Merchants of Death bridges international relations, business strategy, and security studies as it presents the arms trade not merely as a shadow economy but as an industry with a sophisticated structure and resilience that rivals global corporations. Scholars, policymakers, security analysts, and business professionals alike will find the book’s insights invaluable, challenging traditional frameworks and introducing a powerful new perspective on how illicit markets thrive within legal boundaries. The Merchants of Death’s revelations hold the potential to reshape policymaking and regulatory approaches by equipping policymakers with a nuanced understanding of why traditional controls often fail. For academics, it opens fresh avenues for research, encouraging cross-industry comparisons and new inquiries into how high-risk, high-stakes markets operate within the global economy. Professionals in logistics, finance, and international business will find its lessons on adaptability and network resilience equally compelling, with applications that extend beyond the arms trade. By reframing the arms trade as a complex business ecosystem, The Merchants of Death offers lasting value across multiple fields of study and sectors, establishing itself as an essential reference for understanding the intersection of commerce, strategy, and global security. It is a definitive resource that demystifies the world of arms dealing, revealing the structural realities that sustain it and prompting readers to rethink their understanding of one of the most enduring, controversial industries of our time.

Social media has been weaponized, as state hackers and rogue terrorists have seized upon Twitter and Facebook to create chaos and destruction. This urgent report is required reading, from defense experts P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking.

Impending technological advances will widen an adversary’s attack plane over the next decade. Visualizing what the future will hold, and what new threat vectors could emerge, is a task that traditional planning mechanisms struggle to accomplish given the wide range of potential issues. Understanding and preparing for the future operating environment is the basis of an analytical method known as Threatcasting. It is a method that gives researchers a structured way to envision and plan for risks ten years in the future. Threatcasting uses input from social science, technical research, cultural history, economics, trends, expert interviews, and even a little science fiction to recognize future threats and design potential futures. During this human-centric process, participants brainstorm what actions can be taken to identify, track, disrupt, mitigate, and recover from the possible threats. Specifically, groups explore how to transform the future they desire into reality while avoiding an undesired future. The Threatcasting method also exposes what events could happen that indicate the progression toward an increasingly possible threat landscape. This book begins with an overview of the Threatcasting method with examples and case studies to enhance the academic foundation. Along with end-of-chapter exercises to enhance the reader’s understanding of the concepts, there is also a full project where the reader can conduct a mock Threatcasting on the topic of “the next biological public health crisis.” The second half of the book is designed as a practitioner’s handbook. It has three separate chapters (based on the general size of the Threatcasting group) that walk the reader through how to apply the knowledge from Part I to conduct an actual Threatcasting activity. This book will be useful for a wide audience (from student to practitioner) and will hopefully promote new dialogues across communities and novel developments in the area.

This is a book about strategy and war fighting. It contains 11 essays which examine topics such as military operations against a well-armed rogue state, the potential of parallel warfare strategy for different kinds of states, the revolutionary potential of information warfare, the lethal possibilities of biological warfare and the elements of an ongoing revolution in military affairs. The purpose of the book is to focus attention on the operational problems, enemy strategies and threat that will confront U.S. national security decision makers in the twenty-first century.

Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration's desire to develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike. Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries' cities at risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a hostile neighbor that might strike one's own cities. Thus, our diplomats have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle East. Indeed, given that Israelis surrounded by enemies that would not hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel's retention of a significant nuclear capability totally "understandable."

This new work defines national security strategy, its objectives, the problems it confronts, and the influences that constrain and facilitate its development and implementation in a post-Cold War, post-9/11 environment. The authors note that making and implementing national strategy centers on risk management and present a model for assessing strategic risks and the process for allocating limited resources to reduce them. The major threats facing the United States now come from its unique status as "the sole remaining superpower" against which no nation-state or other entity can hope to compete through conventional means. The alternative is what is now called asymmetrical or fourth generation warfare. Drew and Snow discuss all these factors in detail and bring them together by examining the continuing problems of making strategy in a changed and changing world. Originally published in 2006.

Hugo and Shirley Jackson award-winning Peter Watts stands on the cutting edge of hard SF with his acclaimed novel, Blindsight Two months since the stars fell... Two months of silence, while a world held its breath. Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route. So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met? You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there. Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.