Contact
Vivian Palmer
World Affairs Council of Las Vegas
702-708-2760
executivedirector@waclv.org
International Piracy, broadly defined to include maritime and air hijackings and acts of terrorism on the high seas, continues to mount a serious challenge to safe passage of people and commerce globally. Pirates have roamed the seas for millennia. Today, the waters around the Horn of Africa, the Straits of Malacca and other hot spots are at the center of military and intelligence attention, as terror groups add political dimensions to traditional looting motives.
Dr. John Alexander, a recognized expert on the subject who has advised the Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Special Operations Command, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the National Intelligence Council, and commanded Special Forces teams in combat during his career with the U.S. Army, will offer a formal presentation, to be followed by a Roundtable discussion. The presentation is based on his 2013 monograph for the Joint Special Operations University (JSOU), MacDill AFB, titled Piracy: The Best Business Model Available.
Dr. Alexander has been a leading advocate for the development of non-lethal weapons since he created renewed interest in the field starting in 1989. In 2003 he served as a mentor to Afghan Ministry of Defense senior officials through the Office of Military Cooperation – Afghanistan, (Coalition Forces) Kabul. He has traveled to ALL of the continents on Earth. He trekked the remote areas of Tibet including the Mount Everest Base Camp, went to Timbuktu in the Sahel, tracked gorillas in Rwanda, met shamans from the Amazon to Mongolia, traveled across cartel controlled areas of Central America and in 2013 filmed voodoo ceremonies in West Africa.
He entered the US Army as a private in 1956 and rose through the ranks to sergeant first class, attended OCS, and was a colonel of Infantry in 1988 when he retired. During his varied career, he held many key positions in special operations, intelligence, and research and development. He later worked as a program manager at Los Alamos National Laboratory and retired from the University of California.
Academically, he holds a M.A., Pepperdine University, Ph.D., Walden University, and later attended the Anderson School of Management at UCLA, the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and the Kennedy School of Government general officer program “National and International Security for Senior Executives” at Harvard University. In 2012 he received the Knowlton Award for lifelong contributions to military intelligence.
Currently a private consultant, from 2004 to 2013 he served as a Senior Fellow at JSOU. His books include, The Warrior’s Edge, Wm. Morrow, (1990) Future War, with foreword by Tom Clancy, St. Martin’s Press (1999), and the sequel, Winning the War, published August 2003. His latest book, UFOs: Myths Conspiracies and Realities was released in February 2011.