Peter W. Singer will be offering Robots & the Future of Conflict in the 21st Century at the Idea Festival on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at 12 p.m.
Singer was named one of the top 100 Global Thinkers of 2009 by Foreign Policy magazine , and this seminar focuses on the future of war.
He is the director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative (and a senior fellow in Foreign Poilicy) at Brookings Institution and often lectures to military audiences. He has an impressive resume. At the age of 29, he was named the youngest fellow at Brookings during their entire 90-year history.
His first book Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Military Industry (Cornell University Press, 2003) is about private companies that offer military services and has won many awards. It is also a text at many learning institutions including Army War College.
Singer still serves as a resource on the issue to the U.S. Congress, U.S. Department of Defense, the CIA and the European Union. His next book Children at War (Pantheon, 2005) focuses on the rise of child soldier groups, winning the 2006 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book of the Year Award.
This seminar focuses on the topic of his third book: Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin, 2009).
Singer covers how more robots are being used in war, the ethical dilemmas involved, and how it will shape the future of war. The work had already been featured in the video game Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots before the book was even published. It was named a non-fiction book of the year by the Financial Times and became part of the official reading lists for the U.S. Airforce, U.S. Navy, and the Royal Australian Navy.
