Wikistrat names Professor Waller as senior analyst
Posted: Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Wikistrat, the international next-generation strategy group, has named IWP's Professor J. Michael Waller as a senior analyst.
The internetted consulting firm has pioneered the concept of "crowdsourcing" a global network of subject matter experts for scenario analysis to identify strategic surprise, manage political risk, and understand commercial opportunities worldwide, especially in unstable areas and emerging markets.
In 2010, IWP students fielded two teams in Wikistrat's international Grand Strategy Competition. The IWP team representing Brazil placed in the top 10 globally. Noted strategist Thomas P.M. Barnett, Wikistrat's chief strategist, identified the IWP Brazil team as presenting the first of "the most provocative takeaways" from the last week of the competition.
Dr. Waller brings a unique analytical approach to Wikistrat because he is one of the very few Western academics who understands insurgency from personal experience. According to Wikistrat, Waller "can think like an insurgent, having received military training as an insurgent with the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Resistance [Contras] in the 1980s. He successfully trained scores of U.S.-backed insurgent commanders (Nicaraguan) in political warfare and psychological operations and aided their demobilization and transition into a democratic society. He worked with Afghan resistance fighters against the Soviet Army. He also successfully trained U.S.-backed foreign military counterinsurgency forces to defeat guerrillas and terrorists through non-kinetic means; and designed and implemented ideological warfare operations to infiltrate and disrupt adversary political front organizations and hostile foreign security and intelligence services."
"Wikistrat continues to recruit a top-notch international team of analysts and experts at all levels, from the most senior to those just starting out, and I encourage IWP students to apply for consideration," says Professor Waller. "Several IWP students and alumni are already on the Wikistrat team."
