Disrupt or Be Disrupted: How Governments Can Develop Decisive Military Technologies

May 13, 2014 

By James Hasik and Byron Callan 

U.S. Army/Spc. Steven Hitchcock. Licensed under Creative Commons.

Just what makes a military technology disruptive? How does one know who will disrupt, and who will be disrupted? How can we aim to develop disruptive technologies, and how can we spot them before others use them to disrupt our security?

In the latest issue brief from the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security, “Disrupt or Be Disrupted: How Governments Can Develop Decisive Military Technologies,” authors James Hasik and Byron Callan explore these questions and consider the history and future of the military’s adaptation to groundbreaking technological advances. 

Read the Issue Brief (PDF)

Hasik and Callan recommend that even in peacetime, US national security leaders must be willing to invest heavily in R&D and increase focus on prototyping and field experimentation in order to maintain its competitive edge in military technology.

This issue brief is part of the Atlantic Council’s conference Disrupting Defense: Dynamic Security in an Age of New Technologies. The conference hosts leaders from government, business, media, and the think tank community to explore technology’s disruptive impact on geopolitics, efforts by public and private investors to fund technological breakthroughs, the changing ways the United States and its allies equip their forces for wars of the future, and how best to leverage the creativity of artists to envision those wars and continue this important dialogue.