Twenty years ago, I sat in a classroom on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with around 40 peers. We were concentration-shopping — the ritual through which students at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) received presentations by faculty explaining the various courses of study available to them. This particular session was devoted to international security policy, and the content was being delivered by its then-director, the venerable Dick Betts. I remember very clearly watching Betts step behind the lectern to make the following statement with frank and unsentimental seriousness: “You may not be interested in war. But war is interested in you.” Some number of people tittered at what I presume they found to be the melodrama in the moment; the following Tuesday was September 11, 2001.
“War is interested in you”: Balancing the promise and peril of high-tech deterrence (brookings.edu)
