[ACKNOWLEDGMENTS]

No one could write a book like this without an immense amount of help. Ralph Wipfli of Brookings and Elina Noor of ISIS-Malaysia tirelessly assisted in gathering the immense amount of research that made the project possible. They are two of the smartest young political analysts out there, so I am sure many a time they wondered just how they had ended up researching robots and editing chapters that name-dropped Paris Hilton. The Brookings Institution sponsored and hosted the project through the Stephen and Barbara Friedman Fellowship, the Sydney J. Stein Jr. Chair, and the President’s Special Initiative Fund. Brookings is the world’s first “think tank,” and thus is perhaps the only place confident enough in the rigor of its research to take risks on such a nontraditional but important project. Strobe Talbott, Carlos Pascual, and my colleagues in the 21st Century Defense Initiative have my deepest thanks for providing an atmosphere in which truly revolutionary scholarship can thrive.

Various organizations and conferences kindly hosted me along the way, including several military bases and operations that must remain unidentified, but still have my gratitude. But some I can thank include the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, Foster-Miller, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement, the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, iRobot, Marine Corps University, the Air Force Institute of Technology, National Defense University, and the Office of Naval Research.

I am in deep appreciation of the scores of interviewees who took time out of their busy schedules to talk with me about their work and share their perspectives. They had far better things to do, be it inventing robots or fighting wars, and I appreciate their generosity. I only regret that I could not tell all their stories. A special thanks goes to Noah Shachtman, who hosts Danger Room, the best site for data and discussion on defense technology on the entire Internet, and someone with a wicked sense of humor that infected the research. Dan Mandel of Sanford J. Greenburger Associates shepherded the project to publishers and found it a home. Eamon Dolan showed immense faith and patience in a young author and guided it to completion with thoughtful edits and comments. And, finally, the reviewers and academic referees provided many useful suggestions that turned inferior early drafts into what you see here. If you like the book, all credit goes to them. If you do not, all bile and corrections go to me.

Finally, I wish to thank the people who bought me the toys and gadgets, gave me the books, took me to the movies, told me the stories, and shared the times, for better or for worse, that shaped me as a person and this book as a whole. More recently, they suffered through countless oddball stories of robots or war, as if either was an appropriate conversation topic at dinners, parties, and even on vacations. Who could ask for more than good friends and family?