Of arms and algorithms

Are leaders more or less likely to take a military threat seriously when it arrives via a social media platform like X (formerly Twitter)?

Does the presence of unmanned aerial vehicles—drones—accelerate or inhibit the progression toward full-fledged conflict? These are the sort of questions that Erik Lin-Greenberg ’09, SM ’09 wrestles with in his research.

“Current technologies like social media and artificial intelligence and drones are increasingly important during times of rising tensions,” says Lin-Greenberg, the Leo Marx Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science. “Because they offer states a way to interact, even forcefully, while still avoiding conflict.”

Born and raised in the suburbs outside of New York City, Lin-Greenberg was first drawn to the military during the attacks on New York’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. “There was such a sense of confusion,” recalls Lin-Greenberg, who had just started his sophomore year in high school. “Then we heard fighter jets fly over our building. Hearing those jets gave me a sense of safety. Because I knew they were there for us.”

A Reserve Officers’ Training Corps student at MIT through 2009, Lin-Greenberg served on active duty in the US Air Force for four years, with tours of duty that included Afghanistan, Qatar, and Washington, DC. It was in Qatar that he first glimpsed the contribution he might make to the modern military as an academic. “The colonel I worked for assigned me to escort an academic who was visiting Qatar,” says Lin-Greenberg, who continues to serve in the Air Force Reserve as director of operations for an intelligence squadron. “He was studying the effects of airpower on counterinsurgency operations. I watched him at work, conducting interviews and gathering data. I thought it all looked pretty cool.”