Thomas PM Barnett

A military strategist and world-class asshole, as this TED talk shows. Note the alternative URL with the 33: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/33


Interesting wiki profile:

From 1998 through 2004, Barnett was a Senior Strategic Researcher and Professor in the Warfare Analysis & Research Department, Center for Naval Warfare Studies, U.S. Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.

At the Naval War College, Barnett served as Director of the New Rule Sets Project an effort designed to explore how the spread of globalization alters the basic "rules of the road" in the international security environment, with special reference to how these changes redefine the U.S. Military's historic role as "security enabler" of America's commercial network ties with the world.[1] The project was hosted by Cantor Fitzgerald and took place near the top of One World Trade Center. After the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald and its carbon credit brokerage subsidiary CantorCO2e were destroyed at One World Trade Center on 9/11/2001, Barnett described the event as the "first live-broadcast, mass snuff film in human history."

I suspect his profile was hacked to add in the carbon credit junk, but good old Ningen wrote up a nice piece on Barnett back in 2007, that verifies the "snuff film" quote and gives even more damning info. This is a VERY odd quote from Barnett:

First, we need to expand dramatically the dialogue between Wall Street and the Pentagon regarding how globalization changes our definitions of national security. Over the past several years, the Naval War College has collaborated with the broker-dealer firm Cantor Fitzgerald in conducting a series of Economic Security Exercises examining scenarios such as a terrorist strike against Wall Street, the Year 2000 Problem, and Asia’s future energy needs.

These pioneering war games are the brainchild of retired Navy Admiral William J. Flanagan, Senior Managing Director of Cantor Fitzgerald, which until 11 September had its international headquarters in the uppermost floors of the World Trade Center. It is not hyperbole to call the September terrorist strike a new form of warfare. Cantor Fitzgerald’s catastrophic human loss only underscored the paradigm shift. These individuals were killed not only to terrorize the American people, but also to disable U.S. financial markets and, by doing so, diminish global investor confidence in their long-term stability.

When did Barnett write this? 9/11 seems to have occurred but he is still talking about these wargames at Cantor Fitzgerald in the present tense. Given the quote at the top, the wargames started before 9/11, wargames which included a terrorist strike against Wall Street. Very odd, and makes Barnett seem like a possible perp. He's certainly a disgusting person, given his flip attitude towards war in the TED talk.

It also looks like Barnett scrubbed his site of all these old quoted links. Typical.

UPDATE: this piece from History Commons clarifies a bit:

May 1, 2000-June 4, 2001: Workshops Held at WTC Discuss Possibility of Terrorist Attack on Wall Street

The logo of the New Rule Sets Project, showing the WTC Twin Towers. [Source: US Naval War College]Beginning early in 2000, a unique research partnership takes place between the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island and the Wall Street bond firm Cantor Fitzgerald. The venture is called the New Rule Sets Project and is directed by Thomas Barnett, a senior strategic researcher at the Naval War College. It aims to explore how globalization is altering America’s definitions of national security. In particular, the project leads to three-day-long workshops being held at the Windows on the World Restaurant on the 107th floor of the north World Trade Center tower, where Cantor Fitzgerald has offices. These are in May 2000, October 2000, and June 2001. They bring together “Wall Street heavyweights, senior national security officials, and leading experts from academia and think tanks.” The participants discuss “globalization’s future and the threats that could derail it.” They explore scenarios such as “a terrorist strike on Wall Street, war in the Persian Gulf, and a financial crisis in Asia,” all of which, as Barnett will later point out, “proved amazingly prescient.” [Naval War College, 1/7/2002; Barnett, 2004, pp. 5-6, 46-47 and 197] At the second of these workshops, three mysterious “spies” turn up. They do not participate or interact with anyone, but just observe. Despite having a Top Secret clearance, project director Thomas Barnett is not allowed to know their identities. This particular workshop involves the future of foreign direct investment in Asia, so Barnett later suggests the “spies” are observing it, “because both the Pentagon and the intelligence community had developed a laserlike focus on China as the ‘rising near-peer competitor.’” Due to the Naval War College’s partnership with Cantor Fitzgerald, Barnett visits the World Trade Center two or three dozen times between 1998 and 2001. The last of these visits will be just four days before 9/11, and Barnett is originally scheduled to meet there again two weeks after 9/11. As director of the New Rule Sets Project, he also visits the Pentagon on a regular basis, and will be scheduled to give another briefing there a week after 9/11, in the Navy’s command center facilities: an area of the building that is destroyed when the Pentagon is struck. [Barnett, 2004, pp. 46-47 and 224-225; C-SPAN, 5/30/2004] Barnett will later reflect, “September 11 was crystallizing. We all just went, This is what we were talking about—a peacetime, war-like event that’s so profound it forces us to rethink everything.” [Esquire, 12/2002] Cantor Fitzgerald will suffer the greatest single loss by any company on 9/11, with 658 of its employees dying in the north WTC tower. [Business Week, 9/11/2006] But Barnett’s two “mentors” at the firm that he interacts with—Bud Flanagan and Philip Ginsburg—will both be out of the building at the time, for “accidental reasons,” and therefore survive the attacks. [Bloomberg, 9/13/2001; Barnett, 2004, pp. 199; Institute of International Studies, 3/8/2005] Within weeks of 9/11, Barnett will be installed as the assistant for strategic futures in Donald Rumsfeld’s newly created Office of Force Transformation (see October 29, 2001). [Esquire, 12/2002]

Entity Tags: Naval War College, New Rule Sets Project, Thomas Barnett, Cantor Fitzgerald Securities

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline