What Social Networks Mean for Modern Warfare

Manhunt: From Saddam to bin Laden:
What Social Networks Mean for Modern Warfare

A Future Tense Event from Slate Magazine and the New America Foundation
Friday, February 26, 2010
9:30 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.

In 2003, a team of innovative U.S. soldiers captured Saddam Hussein by using Facebook-style social network theory to crack the network of families protecting him. That success has shaped subsequent efforts in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- with decidedly mixed results.

Please join Slate magazine and the New America Foundation on Friday, Feb. 26, for this Future Tense Event. Slate's Chris Wilson, New America's Peter Bergen and others will explore the implications of such social networking for other military operations, and ask why the U.S. hasn't been able to get Osama Bin Laden using the same methods.

This week, Slate is running a five-part series in which Wilson details the "Search for Saddam" -- and outlines many of the issues and questions to be discussed on Friday.

Featured Speakers:

Chris Wilson
Associate Editor, Slate magazine

"Matthew Alexander" (a pseudonym)
Air Force interrogator involved in the hunt for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

Scott Helfstein, PhD
Associate, Combating Terrorism Center
Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences
United States Military Academy

Moderator
Peter Bergen
Co-Director, Counterterrorism Strategy Initiative
New America Foundation

To RSVP for the event:
http://www.newamerica.net/events/2010/searching_for_saddam

For questions, contact Stephanie Gunter at (202) 596-3367 or gunter@newamerica.net.

For media inquiries, contact Kate Brown at (202) 596-3365 or brown@newamerica.net.