Potomac Institute for Policy Studies CEO Michael Swetnam says the time is right for Bold Ideas 2010, an Institute-wide effort to identify key national security challenges in the decade ahead.  Back in 1999-2000, the Institute's original Bold Ideas project demonstrated remarkable foresight. Institute scholars warned of asymmetric threats in the coming years, when our adversaries would come to rely on unconventional tactics and weapons.  Bold Ideas 2010 provides an opportunity for the Institute to once again stake out territory at the frontiers of strategic thinking.

As Swetnam points out, the world is more complicated today, offering fresh challenges but also fresh opportunities.  We live in a "flattening" world, where communications are nearly instantaneous, and the very nature of national power is changing. "In the past," Swetnam says, "it was big, mighty weapons and armies" that defined a superpower. "Today, it's economics and dollars, and world control. Sometimes it's influence and control of public opinion even more than the influence of dollars. How those things will change society for the good and the bad is something we really need to think about."  Then he says, let's think about how to leverage those changes to benefit society, and let's use today's technology to spread the word worldwide.  Click below for comments by Michael Swetnam on Bold Ideas 2010.            

 {flv}Swetnam_Bold Ideas{/flv}