PHOTO: GRETCHEN ERTL
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.”
Inspired by the academic’s visit, Lin-Greenberg enrolled in a political science PhD program at Columbia University in 2013, finishing his degree in 2019. He joined the MIT faculty in July 2020, and publishes widely on emerging technology, crisis education, and security strategy in journals including International Studies Quarterly and Foreign Affairs, as well as the Washington Post.
Lin-Greenberg’s research often uses data analysis and wargaming to chart the evolving relationships between civilian and military leaders and emerging technologies. Some of the outcomes are predictable, while others are surprising. His research indicates that national security experts are less likely to take military action when intelligence is analyzed by AI. Yet those same security experts are more likely to retaliate when their troops are killed because of an error caused by a rival’s use of AI than by an error made by a rival human analyst. “It may sound counterintuitive,” he concedes. “But I think these experts may feel angry that the rival had delegated a life-or-death decision to a machine.”
Another surprising result involves social media. Using a series of experiments, Lin-Greenberg and a graduate student co-author observe that security experts will take a threat issued on X just as seriously as one delivered through more traditional channels. “One conclusion here is that policy leaders need to be careful about what they put on their social media accounts,” he observes.
In his forthcoming book, The Remote Revolution: Drones and Modern Statecraft (Cornell University Press), Lin-Greenberg explores the expanding role of drones, not just as instruments of battle but as instruments of statecraft. “The prevailing assumption was that drones lower the barrier to using force, because you can order retaliation without risking your people’s lives,” says Lin-Greenberg, who worked on the US drone program during his active military service. “The reality is different. Rivals including Russia and Iran have shot down US drones, and the US has chosen not to retaliate with military strikes as they would have had there been loss of life. These incidents are meant as messages—a warning to us, and as a show of strength for their own populations. Drones provide an arena somewhere between diplomacy and all-out conflict where states can compete and communicate. Where they can do something without doing too much.”