Synopses & Reviews
An international security expert shows how competitive organizations can get—and stay—ahead by thinking like their adversaries
Review
Mark Mateski, Director of the Watermark Institute and Vice President, Red Teaming and Strategic AnalysisThis is the book the red teaming community has long required to grow and reach a new generation of red teamers. It captures the domains founding experiences and stories, previously available only anecdotally to a small network of insiders. By writing this book, Micah Zenko has done a great service to both the current and future red teaming community.”
Review
Jami Miscik, former Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIAIn todays complex world, decision makers need smart, sophisticated, and insightful options. Red Team shows policymakers and CEOs alike that the way to make the best use of your organizational talent is to break down your organization.”
James Fallows, Correspondent for the Atlantic
"Everyone has heard the clichés about playing devils advocate or avoiding groupthink. Red Team is an impressively clear, convincing, and practical-minded study of how organizations can put in-house contrarians to the most valuable use."
Moises Naim, Distinguished Fellow, Carnegie Endowment, author of The End of Power
Complacency, groupthink, inertia, tunnel vision. These are the most common after-the-fact explanations of big failures in politics, government, war, and business. In these pages Micah Zenko offers a lucid analysis backed by many fun-to-read examples of common mistakes as well as a useful compendium of best practices. Red Team is must-read for decision makers everywhere.”
Mark Mateski, Director of the Watermark Institute and Vice President, Red Teaming and Strategic Analysis
This is the book the red teaming community has long required to grow and reach a new generation of red teamers. It captures the domains founding experiences and stories, previously available only anecdotally to a small network of insiders. By writing this book, Micah Zenko has done a great service to both the current and future red teaming community.”
Synopsis
Red teaming. It is a practice as old as the Devil's Advocate, the eleventh-century Vatican official charged with discrediting candidates for sainthood. Today, red teams--comprised primarily of fearless skeptics and those assuming the role of saboteurs who seek to better understand the interests, intentions, and capabilities of institutions or potential competitors--are used widely in both the public and private sector. Red teaming, including simulations, vulnerability probes, and alternative analyses, helps institutions in competitive environments to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses, challenge assumptions, and anticipate potential threats ahead of the next special operations raid, malicious cyberattack, or corporate merger. But not all red teams are created equal; indeed, some cause more damage than they prevent.
In Red Team, national security expert Micah Zenko provides an in-depth investigation into the work of red teams, revealing the best practices, most common pitfalls, and most effective applications of these modern-day Devil's Advocates. The best practices of red teaming can be applied to the CIA, NYPD, or a pharmaceutical company, and executed correctly they can yield impressive results: red teams give businesses an edge over their competition, poke holes in vital intelligence estimates, and troubleshoot dangerous military missions long before boots are on the ground. But red teams are only as good as leaders allow them to be, and Zenko shows not only how to create and empower red teams, but also what to do with the information they produce.
Essential reading for business leaders and policymakers alike, Red Team will revolutionize the way organizations think about, exploit, compensate for, and correct their institutional strengths and weaknesses. Drawing on little-known case studies and unprecedented access to elite red teamers in the United States and abroad, Zenko shows how any group--from military units to friendly hackers--can win by thinking like the enemy.
Synopsis
Essential reading for business leaders and policymakers, an in-depth investigation of red teaming, the practice of inhabiting the perspective of potential competitors to gain a strategic advantage Red teaming. The concept is as old as the Devil's Advocate, the eleventh-century Vatican official charged with discrediting candidates for sainthood. Today, red teams are used widely in both the public and the private sector by those seeking to better understand the interests, intentions, and capabilities of institutional rivals. In the right circumstances, red teams can yield impressive results, giving businesses an edge over their competition, poking holes in vital intelligence estimates, and troubleshooting dangerous military missions long before boots are on the ground. But not all red teams are created equal; indeed, some cause more damage than they prevent. Drawing on a fascinating range of case studies, Red Team shows not only how to create and empower red teams, but also what to do with the information they produce.
In this vivid, deeply-informed account, national security expert Micah Zenko provides the definitive book on this important strategy -- full of vital insights for decision makers of all kinds.
About the Author
Micah Zenko is the Douglas Dillon Fellow in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He holds a PhD in political science from Brandeis University, an MA in Security Policy Studies from George Washington Universitys Elliot School of International Affairs, and a BA in International Relations from University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before working at CFR, he was a research analyst at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School and an analyst in the Office of Policy Planning at the State Department. The author of one previous book and four Council Special Reports for CFR, Zenko writes a column for
Foreign Policy and has also contributed to the
Financial Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Foreign Affairs, and
Baltimore Sun. He has been featured on CNN, Charlie Rose, NBC News, Fox News, BBC TV and Radio, Al Jazeera, the Brian Lehrer Show, Pacifica Radio, Sirius/XM Radios POTUS and
Wall Street Journal Radio, and was named one of
Foreign Policys Top 100 Twitterati in 2011 and 2012.