Jon Askonas works on the connections between the republican tradition, technology, and national security. He is currently working on a manuscript examining post-war organizational forgetting processes in militaries. The book will address the relationship between how the US Army organizes itself for war, how it adapts to new challenges (using case studies from Vietnam and Iraq), and why it forgets much of what it has learned after the war winds down. He is also working on essays on the deep political, moral, and practical implications of the volunteer military and on the connection between artificial intelligence research and authoritarian surveillance.
He has a BS in International Politics (summa cum laude) from Georgetown University and a DPhil from the University of Oxford. He has worked at the Council on Foreign Relations, US Embassy in Moscow, and the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin, and his work has been supported by the Beinecke Scholarship, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Charles Koch Foundation, and the Cyril Foster Fund. His writing has appeared in Russian Analytical Digest, Triple Helix, Fare Forward, War on the Rocks, and the Texas National Security Review.
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Publications
- “Empathize this: McMaster’s flawed understanding of restraint and ‘strategic empathy,’ Responsible Statecraft, June 26, 2020.
- “How the Pentagon Budget is a Threat to the Middle Class,” American Conservative, April 3, 2019.
- “How Tech Utopia Fosters Tyranny” The New Atlantis, (Winter 2019): 3-13.
- “Possessed in America,” Mere Orthodoxy, August 7, 2019.
- “All Activities Monitored” (review of Arthur Holland Michel’s Eyes in the Sky: The Secret Rise of Gorgon Stare and How It Will Watch Us All), The New Atlantis, (Summer 2019): 91-96.
- “Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy Roundtable” Texas National Security Review, September 18, 2019.