Age of Danger: Keeping America Safe in an Era of New Superpowers, New Weapons, and New Threats

What do American taxpayers actually get for the $1.25 trillion they spend per year on national security? RAND Corporation senior v-p Hoehn and Shanker (coauthor, Counterstrike), director of the Project for Media and National Security, examine in this astute survey how government and military leaders have responded to threats ranging from Russia and China to Covid-19 and climate change. Dividing America’s “national security apparatus” into the “warning machine” (intelligence officials who “gather, assess, and curate information from around the world”) and the “action machine” (“a large and expensive set of systems, from the FBI and Homeland Security to the military, charged with taking the actions to keep our country safe”), the authors argue that an overcorrection after 9/11 to focus almost exclusively on terrorism has contributed to America’s failure to anticipate or respond effectively to “the nonstop Chinese theft of U.S. intellectual property,” Russian cyberattacks, and other dangers. Hoehn and Shanker contend that “the future needs a seat at the table” if the national security system is to learn from such costly mistakes, but the library of unheeded intelligence reports they bring to light raises questions about prioritization, communication, and procedure that aren’t fully resolved. Still, this is a knowledgeable and convincing tour of where and how America’s safeguards should be strengthened. (May)