Andrew Marshall, Pentagon's Threat Expert, Dies at 97

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Source: New York Times

Andrew Marshall, Pentagon’s Threat Expert, Dies at 97

By Julian E. Barnes
March 26, 2019

Andrew Marshall, a Pentagon strategist who helped shape American military thinking on the Soviet Union, China and other global competitors for more than four decades, died on Tuesday in Alexandria, Va. He was 97.

His death was confirmed by Jaymie Durnan, his executor.

Mr. Marshall, as director of the Office of Net Assessment, was the secretive futurist of the Pentagon, a long-range thinker who both prodded and inspired secretaries of defense and high-level policymakers. Virtually unknown among the wider public, he came to be revered inside the Defense Department as a mysterious Yoda-like figure who embodied an exceptionally long institutional memory.

In the early 2000s, at a time when the Pentagon was focused on counterinsurgency and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Marshall urged officials to focus on the challenge of China — a view that many considered outdated. But today, national security officials are increasingly adopting Mr. Marshall’s view of China as a potential strategic adversary, an idea now at the heart of national defense strategy.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/us/politics/andrew-marshall-dead.html

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Also: Andy Marshall, the Pentagon’s ‘Yoda,’ dies at age 97 (Defense News)