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George Friedman

George Friedman is an American political scientist and author. He is the founder, chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO of the private intelligence corporation Stratfor. He has authored several books, including America's Secret War, The Intelligence Edge, and The Future of War.

Biography

Friedman was born in Hungary to Holocaust survivor parents. In order to flee from the Communists, his family left Hungary in 1949. They went to Austria and lived in a displaced person camp for several years before getting visas to come to the United States. Friedman has described theirs as "a very classic story of refugees making a new life in America." Arriving in the US at the age of three, "[b]asically, I grew up as a New York kid." Living in the Bronx and attending the Charles Dorsey School in the New York City school system. He graduated with a B.A. from the City College of New York where he majored in political science, and received a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. In 1974, he accepted a post teaching political science at Dickinson College where he taught for almost 20 years.

Friedman's original interest was in political philosophy and most of his early work was on Marxism. In 1981, Cornell University Press published a book he wrote on the Frankfurt School. Becoming increasingly interested in the problems of international conflict, he studied the U.S.-Soviet balance from a military perspective. When the Soviet Union collapsed, he came to study impending U.S.-Japan conflicts, co-authoring a book titled The Coming War With Japan in 1991. Friedman was an early designer of computerized war games. During his years in academics, Friedman briefed widely on security and national defense matters, including senior commanders in all armed services, the Office of Net Assessments, SHAPE Technical Center, the U.S. Army War College, National Defense University and the RAND Corporation.

In 1994, Friedman founded the Center for Geopolitical Studies at Louisiana State University, which engages in integrated economic, political and military modeling and forecasting; it was the only non-DOD/non-governmental organization granted access to Joint Theater Level Simulation (JTLS) by the Joint Warfighting Center.

Friedman entered the private sector in 1996 and founded Stratfor (Strategic Forecasting Inc.), a private intelligence firm which provides foreign affairs analysis to its (mostly corporate) clients. He serves as its chief intelligence officer, and CEO.

Personal life

Friedman was first married to Dorothy.

Friedman is now married to Meredith Friedman (née LeBard) with four children and currently lives in Austin, Texas. Two of their children serve in the U.S. Military.

Political viewpoint

Friedman has described himself as "a conservative Republican." "Up until 1989 I would have considered myself a classic conservative, my primary concern being the Soviet Union and anti-communism." "One of the things, I think, as a conservative I believe is there's a constancy in the human condition. There isn't dramatic changes, millennial changes, where everything is solved and we live happily in peace".

Having parents who had been Holocaust survivors and also fled from Communism, Friedman developed "a kind of deep and abiding hatred of totalitarianism."

Books

The Political Philosophy of the Frankfurt School (1981). Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-1279-X.
Coming War With Japan, with Meredith LeBard (1991). St Martins Press. Reprint edition, 1992, ISBN 0-312-07677-0.
The Future of War: Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the Twenty-First Century with Meredith Friedman (1996). 1st ed., Crown Publishers, ISBN 0-517-70403-X. St. Martin's Griffin, 1998, ISBN 0-312-18100-0.
The Intelligence Edge: How to Profit in the Information Age with Meredith Friedman, Colin Chapman, and John Baker (1997). Crown, 1st edition. ISBN 0-609-60075-3.
America's Secret War: Inside the Hidden Worldwide Struggle Between the United States and Its Enemies (2004). Doubleday, 1st ed, ISBN 0-385-51245-7. Broadway, reprint edition (2005). ISBN 0-7679-1785-5.
The Next Hundred Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century (2009). Doubleday. ISBN 0-385-51705-X.