Welcome to the DEFAERO Andy Marshall Strategy Series, our discussion with leading thinkers on security, business and technology. Our guest is Thomas E. Ricks, author, journalist, editor and adviser on national security.  Ricks covered the US military for The Washington Post from 2000 through 2008. Until the end of 1999 he had the same beat at The Wall Street Journal, where he was a reporter for seventeen years. A member of two Pulitzer Prize–winning teams, he covered US military activities in Somalia, Haiti, Korea, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Kuwait, Turkey, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Ricks is the author of several books, including The Generals, The Gamble, and the number one New York Times bestseller Fiasco, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His most recent book is "First Principles: What America's Founders Learned from the Greeks and Romans and How That Shaped Our Country, " and is the centerpiece of our discussion.

This conversation is part of a series on strategists and strategy devoted to the memory of one of the nation’s greatest national security strategists, Andy Marshall, the former director of the Pentagon’s office of net assessment and sponsored by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems.