81. John Arquilla
for bringing network theory to counterterrorism.
Cyberwar theorist | U.S. Naval Postgraduate School | Monterey, Calif.
It was during the first Gulf War that Arquilla, a self-described "bombs and bullets" guy, became a cybersoldier. As U.S-led forces routed Saddam Hussein's Republican Guard, Arquilla realized that their biggest advantage was communications. But this strength was also a great vulnerability: A small group of hackers could disrupt their network with a few keystrokes. In a widely publicized Rand Corp. study, "Swarming and the Future of Conflict," Arquilla began to theorize about other ways that cybercriminals could wreak havoc on an increasingly networked society and the similarities between fighting hackers and fighting terrorist networks. "You have to hunt like a network to defeat a network" by empowering small, decentralized, local groups abroad and at home, he told the New Yorker. Arquilla counts the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are stationed in smaller units throughout an area as opposed to being located on a single, large base, as evidence that the military is slowly coming to understand how to counter a decentralized foe.
Reading list: Terrorism: How to Respond, by Richard English; Garibaldi and His Enemies, by Christopher Hibbert; Tal-Botvinnik 1960, by Mikhail Tal.
Wants to visit: Turkey
Gadget: Throwaway cell phone.
82. Peter W. Singer
for asking what happens when you remove the human element from war.
Military scholar | Brookings Institution | Washington
A leading expert on the mechanization of war, Singer is deeply knowledgeable about innovations from toy-sized robots that search cars for explosives to drones controlled by pilots half a world away. But he is not simply a cataloger of gadgets. Instead, as in his most recent book, this year's Wired for War, he brilliantly explores the moral, ethical, political, and military costs of the unmanning of combat. As a result, he has become a pre-eminent voice in the debate over U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq: "We are now creating a very similar problem to what the Israelis face in Gaza.… They've gotten very good at killing Hamas leaders. They have in no way, shape, or form succeeded in preventing a 12-year-old [from] joining Hamas," Singer said.
Reading list: Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown; Sharpe's Battle, by Bernard Cornwell; Fool, by Christopher Moore.
Wants to visit: Australia
Best idea: Obama's Cairo speech.
Worst idea: The health-care debate in the United States.
83. Paul Farmer
for bringing communities into public health in Haiti and beyond.
Medical anthropologist | Partners in Health | Cambridge, Mass.
A physician and medical anthropologist, Farmer began his life's work when he stepped off a plane in Haiti 27 years ago. The organization he helped found there, Partners in Health, works to strengthen communities as well as answer specific medical needs and has now expanded to Peru, Lesotho, and Russia, among other places. Its recipe for fighting HIV/AIDS through multiple channels (medicines, better nutrition, and health infrastructure) has become a model, adopted by everyone from the World Health Organization to the U.S. government. Farmer also serves as deputy to former U.S. President Bill Clinton in his position as U.N. special envoy to Haiti, where he could prove helpful indeed.
On the big ideas in the aid world today: We have 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day. So if we can't hurry up the social justice movement to make sure that the world's resources are spent more equitably, we will have an explosive situation.
On the limits of NGOs: If you're interested in rights -- things like the right to health care, to clean water, to education, or even a job -- which institutions confer those rights, especially rights to poor people? It's the government. So while celebrating the NGO movement is a really important thing to do, we really need to find ways to strengthen public-sector capacity.
Reading list: Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Díaz.
Gadget: Just a few months ago I got a BlackBerry, but I'm not so sure it's great.
84 . Hu Shuli
for persisting in the idea that public accountability is possible even in one-party China.
journalist | China
Within an hour of learning about the devastating earthquake that struck western China last year, Hu, the founding editor of Caijing magazine, had dispatched her first reporter to Sichuan -- an unremarkable decision in most other parts of the world. But in a country with active censorship and absolutely no tradition of watchdog journalism, Hu has been a pioneer, publishing muckraking stories on SARS, industrial pollution, and corruption. Hu says she wants journalism to be a tool for improving the system -- not for blind praise of Beijing or for gotcha-style sensationalism. Her guiding philosophy, as she told an interviewer, is "If it's not absolutely forbidden, we do it." Alas, in November, Hu left Caijing after a battle with management over editorial control, suggesting that China may not be ready for her brand of investigative reporting.
Wants to visit: Turkey
Best idea: Improve the mechanism of international financial policymaking and collaboration of actions; strengthen the international regulatory system.
Worst idea: The current financial crisis is only an episode of economic history that will be absorbed soon.
85. Jacqueline Novogratz
for helping build a new generation of social entrepreneurs.
Development entrepreneur | Acumen Fund | New York
In 1986, Novogratz left a profitable career in corporate banking to travel to Africa, fully intent on saving the world. What she discovered is that Africans did not want to be saved -- rather, they wanted to save themselves. With that lesson in mind, Novogratz founded the Acumen Fund, a nonprofit venture capital fund, in 2001. Today, Acumen has invested $40 million in more than 25 countries, for everything from mosquito bed nets in Africa to agricultural systems in Pakistan. Novogratz's book, The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor in an Interconnected World, was published this year, bringing a wider audience to her unique approach to aid.
Reading list: Half the Sky, by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn; Tribes, by Seth Godin; The Case for God, by Karen Armstrong; Half of a Yellow Sun, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
86. Jacques Attali
for defining public intellectual in the country that invented them.
Economist | France
For 20 years, Attali has been a major figure in French public life, as an advisor to President François Mitterrand in the 1980s and then as an investor, the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the author of numerous books. This year, at the request of President Nicolas Sarkozy, an Attali-led committee produced a groundbreaking report advising the president on how to kick-start growth by shrinking the lumbering French bureaucracy and implementing dozens of free market reforms. Attali also published a follow-up to the acclaimed Millennium, his 1991 book warning of the endpoint of globalization: a stateless world, populated by the hyperwealthy and the destitute poor. His prediction in 2009's A Brief History of the Future is that his globalized vision will come true -- but not before the end of American hegemony and horrific bloody wars.
Reading list: Co-opetition, by Adam Brandenburger and Barry Nalebuff; Operation Shylock, by Philip Roth; Le Japon n'existe pas, by Alberto Torres-Blandina.
Wants to visit: Papua New Guinea
Best idea: World government.
Worst idea: Legalization of euthanasia.
87. Karen Armstrong
for advocating a truce in the religion wars.
Religious scholar | Britain
Fundamentalism is a modern invention, not a phenomenon inherent in religious belief itself, argues Armstrong, a one-time aspiring Catholic nun who has published more than 20 books on comparative religion, including this year's The Case for God and histories of Prophet Muhammad and the Bible. Armstrong is now launching a Charter for Compassion to promote the spirit of flexibility and humanity she thinks is present in all the major religions. "Religion was not supposed to provide explanations that lay within the competence of reason," she wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "but to help us live creatively with realities for which there are no easy solutions and find an interior haven of peace."
Reading list: A Concise Economic History of the World, by Rondo Cameron; Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen; The Believers, by Zoë Heller.
Gadget: BlackBerry!
88. Sunita Narain
for giving voice to India's environmental conscience.
Director | Centre for Science and Environment | India
Narain has a long-standing penchant for picking -- and usually winning -- David-and-Goliath fights. At the helm of a small but highly influential NGO, Narain is the aggressive public face of India's environmental movement, waging war on both big-business polluters and the government interests that shelter them. The central conviction animating Narain's work is the idea that environmentalism is at root an issue of equality -- of access to resources and freedom from health-endangering pollution, not simply of rivers and endangered species. Most recently, she was at the forefront of a campaign to expose pesticide contamination in domestically produced Coke and Pepsi products, the success of which won her personal plaudits from India's health minister and Bollywood film producers alike.
89. Adam Michnik
for keeping the flame of anti-Moscow resistance burning in Eastern Europe.
Editor | Gazeta Wyborcza | Poland
From underground dissident to establishment democrat, Michnik has helped shape Polish intellectual and political life during its turbulent transition from Cold War flashpoint to beacon of New Europe. Throughout, he has been a clarion voice of warning about the Russian hegemon to the east. A former activist in the trade union Solidarity, he went on to found the influential national daily Gazeta Wyborcza in 1989. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the accession of an independent Poland to NATO and the European Union, Michnik's dream of joining the liberal Western order would appear complete. Today, however, with the country's elites divided and Russia reasserting itself, Michnik once again finds himself the voice of an informal pro-democracy opposition movement and a proselytizer for what he views as the incomplete journey toward the democratic ideas he championed.
90. Minxin Pei
for reminding us of the dark side of China's rise.
China scholar | Claremont McKenna College | Claremont, Calif.
Pei has made a name raining on Beijing's parade, especially during the particularly jingoistic 60th anniversary year of the People's Republic. According to Pei, the country's leaders have attempted a shotgun wedding of planned economy and free markets, authoritarianism and democracy. Although the ruling Communist Party's policies have yielded high rates of economic growth, the distorted priorities they have created are causing the rapid and unsustainable accumulation of social deficits. Without a civil society to channel relations between the state and its people, Pei warns, China's rulers face a perpetual and troubling crisis of legitimacy.
Best idea: The public option in U.S. health-care reform (although it is unlikely to pass).
Worst idea: The supersovereign international reserve currency proposed by China.
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