The House Armed Services Committee’s decision to withhold funding for the Human Terrain System until the program “certifies Department‐level guidelines for the use of social scientists” prompts an online response by the American Anthropological Association, which considers the Human Terrain System a violation of its Code of Ethics. Meanwhile, prominent military leaders have endorsed the program in policy and defense circles. In a recent speech to the American Enterprise Institute, General David Petraeus said that in the current U.S. wars, “the Human Terrain is the decisive terrain,” while in a Defense News interview, U.S. Marine Corps General Jim Mattis said that the lessons to be learned in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are “most importantly, the human terrain.”
You can read the American Anthropological Association’s article here.
You can read General Petraeus’s speech to the American Enterprise Institute here.
You can read General Jim Mattis’s Defense News interview here.
Wired Magazine’s Danger Room has also covered the House Armes Services Committee review of HTS here.