Center for a New American Security

Counterstrike: The Untold Story Of America's Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda - Video

On September 8, 2011, CNAS held an inaugural book release party at the Willard InterContinental Hotel for Counterstrike. At the release event, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker offered the audience an insider’s look at how the U.S. government has adapted its strategy for fighting terrorism since 2001.

Watch the video of the event here.

Command Post: "How Has U.S. National Security Changed Since 9/11?"

It's hard to believe -- at least for some of us -- that it has been a decade since 9/11. Before then, covering the military meant going out to the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, to witness future ways of war that, in hindsight, seem obsolete. For the past decade, the U.S. military -- and indeed, the U.S. itself -- has been consumed with people -- individuals -- who hate us, and are willing to kill themselves to show the depths of their anger-cum-depravity. This week, on Command Post, we're looking into the post-9/11 U.S. national-security mindset with Eric Schmitt of the New York Times -- and co-author of Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America's Secret Campaign Against al Qaeda -- and Margaret Harrell, a military manpower expert with the Center for a New American Security. I'm joined, comme d'habitude, by John Nagl, CNAS's president.

Command Post: "Who Are the Real Cyber-Warriors?"

National-security debates used to be a lot easier when it took a nation-state to raise an army and build an arsenal. To hear some cyber-defense experts tell it, today a cyberwar can be launched by a couple of bored teen-age hackers in one of their basements. While that's a stretch, what about criminal cybergangs? Or nation-states? Or, most insidiously, nation-states that hire such underlings to carry out cyber attacks? John Nagl of the Center for a New American Security and I chat about the vexatious challenge with James Lewis, a cyber-warfare expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Kristin Lord, who recently oversaw a CNAS examination into the issue.

Command Post: "How Vulnerable Is Our Infrastructure to Cyber Attack?"

The folks who get paid to stay up at night worrying about cyber-security are always telling us that our basic infrastructure -- the online computer networks that run our water, electricity, banking and other vital systems -- are big fat targets just waiting to be taken down by skilled hackers. Well, it hasn't happened yet. Are we just lucky -- or just whistling past the graveyard? John Nagl, of the Center for a New American Security, and your Battleland scribe ruminate on the topic with James Lewis, a cyber-security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Kristin Lord, a security analyst who just wrapped up work on a major CNAS study into the topic.