The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon

Paveway, the first “smart” bomb, was created to be a more precise and ostensibly humane weapon, reducing civilian casualties. The true impact of the bomb, however, is ever more complex and unpredictable. In his new book, The Warhead: The Quest to Build the Perfect Weapon in the Age of Modern Warfare, Jeffrey Stern tells the story of Paveway through interconnected stories of Nazis, Kennedys, Operation Paperclip, and Walt Disney, along with the Apollo mission and the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Paveway inadvertently sparked the personal computing revolution and the adoption of GPS, and ushered in the era of modern warfare. Stern unearths the complicated truth behind one of the most significant weapons of our time.

Join New America's Future Security Program as they welcome Jeffrey E. Stern for a discussion of his book and the history behind the first “smart” bombs. Stern is an award-winning journalist and the author of five books, including The 15:17 to Paris, which was adapted as a major motion picture by Clint Eastwood and Warner Brothers, and The Last Thousand: One School’s Promise in a Nation at War, an honorable mention for Best Book of the Year by Library Journal. He has been named a graduate fellow at the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation and a grantee of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Stern’s reporting has appeared in magazines such as The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic.

Join the conversation online using #TheWarhead and following @NewAmericaISP. 

Participants:

Jeffrey E. Stern

Author, The Warhead

Moderator:

Peter Bergen
Vice President, New America
Co-Director, Future Security
Professor of Practice, Arizona State University