The Weapon That Changed Warfare.
An interview with Jeffrey Stern.
From Jeffrey Stern’s website:
Jeffrey E. Stern is an award-winning journalist and the author of five books, including his latest book The Warhead, 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. Stern co-wrote and produced the award-winning independent film Yasmeen’s Element, which premiered at the SXSW film festival and was named a “best of the fest.” He has been named a graduate fellow at the Stanford Center for International Conflict and Negotiation and a grantee of the Pulitzer Center Fellow for Crisis Reporting. Stern’s reporting has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, and The Atlantic, among other publications. (Sources: jeffreystern.com, penguinrandomhouse.com, youtube.com, nytimes.com)
I first met Jeffrey in 2002. He wanted to go to Afghanistan to cover the war. A mutual friend thought I might be able to help him get hired by a major news organization to do so. He didn’t get hired, initially, but he went anyway and went on to become one of the war’s great correspondents.
With war in Iran on the horizon, I read his most recent book — ‘The Warhead’ — which tells the story of the Paveway missile through the lives of seven interconnected stories. (Sources: penguinrandomhouse.com, rtx.com)
This from Publisher’s Weekly:
Journalist Stern uncovers the captivating history of the first "smart" bomb and its impacts on both human lives and the evolution of technology. The Paveway self-steering missile originated in the quagmire of the Vietnam War, when the Air Force needed a precision weapon to destroy a key bridge known as the Dragon's Jaw. Weldon Word, an engineer with Texas Instruments, was tasked by the Department of Defense to find a solution. The result was a long-range missile that used TI's new semiconductor chips to navigate after being dropped.
Stern tracks the Paveway from Vietnam to its subsequent deployments, often with upgraded capabilities, in hot zones around the world. Along the way he spotlights fighter pilots using the new tech; peace activists protesting against the bomb's deployment; CIA analysts wrapping their heads around the unlimited potential of a weapon that, ostensibly, removed people from the war-fighting equation; and innocent civilians on the ground who suffered the collateral damage.
Stern also tracks how each new iteration of the Paveway contributed to a military technological revolution that eventually led to the easy accessibility and ubiquitousness of tech like personal computers and GPS systems. Combining cinematic storytelling with urgent reflections on the moral implications of targeted killing at the press of a button, this is an enthralling and nuanced chronicle of modern warfare. (Sources: publishersweekly.com, nationalmuseum.af.mil)
It’s a great book. We talked about it in the latest episode of The New Items Podcast.
We’re having trouble posting the podcast inside the Substack domain. But we have a workaround:
You can find it (and all previous News Items podcasts) on most of the major podcasting platforms. Hyperlinks to the “big three” are here:
Apple. Episode 7, Jeffrey Stern.
Amazon. Episode 7, Jeffrey Stern.
Spotify. Episode 7, Jeffrey Stern.