17 ABRAHAM KAREM, WILLIAM MCRAVEN
For leading the drone revolution.
Aeronautical engineer | Lake Forest, Calif.
Commander, U.S. Special Operations Command | Tampa, Fla.
If Adm. William McRaven has turned hunting terrorists into an art form, Abraham Karem is the man who provided him with the paintbrush. It has been three decades since Karem, a former Israeli Air Force engineer, retreated to his garage to construct something the Pentagon did not then consider possible -- an unmanned drone that would reliably stay aloft for hours on end. The ultimate result of the project was the Predator drone, which has emerged as the defining weapon of the post-9/11 era.
McRaven, who oversees some of the most elite U.S. fighting forces at Special Operations Command, has spent a lifetime studying special operations and has formulated a blueprint for what makes them successful. He emphasizes the need for speed in commando assaults and extensive planning that relies on precise intelligence, which is where drones come in. In the operation that earned McRaven a spot in the history books -- the killing of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan last year -- drones provided vital intelligence for months on the compound where the al Qaeda chief was staying. The raid presented a compelling vision for the 21st-century U.S. military: fast, networked, and deadly. But though the modern-day warrior has tools at his disposal that his ancestors could only dream of, McRaven doesn't discount the old-fashioned virtue of a soldier's dedication to the mission. "In an age of high technology and Jedi Knights we often overlook the need for personal involvement, but we do so at our own risk," he has written.
While McRaven is busy revolutionizing warfare and the drones are buzzing over faraway lands such as Libya, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen -- killing well over 1,000 people in countries with which the United States has not been at war during Barack Obama's presidency -- Karem, now 75, is hard at work designing the next generation of aviation technology. His current project: a Boeing 737-size plane capable of taking off and landing like a helicopter. A pipe dream? "I never fail," he retorts.
KAREM Reading list: East to the Dawn: The Life of Amelia Earhart, by Susan Butler; Einstein, by Walter Isaacson; Stalin, by Dmitri Volkogonov. Best idea: Capital gains tax on a sliding scale (90 percent on assets held less than six months, 10 percent on assets held 10 years). Worst idea: Acceptance of unlimited growth of political campaign financing without transparency of contributors. American decline or American renewal? Both very feasible. More Europe or less? Europe has the same economic problems as the U.S., except they are more complex and more difficult to solve. To tweet or not to tweet? I didn't start. But it is an unstoppable next step for human contact through computer networks.
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