Thom Shanker is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. He is also the director of the Project for Media and National Security at George Washington University School of Media and Public Affairs.
Prior to his time at these academic institutions, Shanker was a longtime Pentagon correspondent and editor for the New York Times. His tenure with the Times included thirteen years covering the US Department of Defense, overseas combat operations, and national-security policymaking.
Shanker conducted dozens of reporting trips to Afghanistan and Iraq and was embedded in the field with units from the squad and company level through battalion, brigade, division, and corps. He has chronicled a historic series of defense secretaries, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, Robert M. Gates, Leon E. Panetta, and Chuck Hagel. More recently, Shanker served as deputy Washington editor of diplomacy, military, and veterans affairs.
Before joining the Times in 1997, Shanker spent five years as the Tribune’s Moscow correspondent, covering from the start of the Gorbachev era to the death of the Soviet Union and the communist empire in Eastern Europe.
Shanker is an author, with Eric Schmitt, of Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda, published in August 201. The book became a New York Times best seller.
During our chat, we talked at length about his newest book, Age of Danger that he co-authored with Andrew Hoehne. Their book was published in May of 2023 to much acclaim by both military experts and politicians alike.
During our chat, we discussed the history of our “warning and action systems” specific to our military readiness, and how these systems have been altered and improved over the decades to protect Americans and our national security. We also discussed the many new challenges presented by climate change, pandemics, AI, and our ever increasing involvement with two hot wars in the middle east and Russian.
It was a fascinating conversation with a true legend in the world of investigative journalism, and it was my honor to have Thom join me on the program. I hope you learn as much as I did from this chat.
Watch Episode:
Age of Danger with Thom Shanker