Matthew Gallagher

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Speaker Profile: Matthew Gallagher
A former member of the Army's armored cavalry talks about the ins and outs of modern war, based on his experiences in Iraq.
Travels From: New York, NY
Areas of expertise: The US Army, Military Service, Iraq, Counterinsurgency, Social Media
Author of:
KaboomKaboom
Da Capo Press
2010

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About the speaker:

Matthew Gallagher joined the U.S. Army in 2005 and received a commission in the armored cavalry. During his time in the service, Gallagher wrote a widely read blog called "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal." When the blog was shut down in June 2008 by the U.S. Army, there were more than twenty-five congressional inquiries regarding the matter as well as reports through the military grapevine that many high-ranking officials and officers at the Pentagon were disappointed that the blog had been ordered closed. Following a fifteen-month deployment in Iraq, Gallagher left the army in 2009. Originally from Reno, Nevada, he now lives in New York City.

Gallagher Speech Topics:
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Modern Counterinsurgency Operations

  • What little wars look like at the ground level – counterinsurgency became a subject of relevance to many Americans with the institution of the Iraqi Surge, but it is a subject and a strategy steeped in the annals of military history. But for all its sweeping strategic goals, what does a modern counterinsurgency look like in practice, on the ground level? Taking a small unit devoted to destruction, and molding it into a group of devoted counterinsurgents may not be easy, but it can prove fulfilling.

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How Rap Music Taught Me that Leadership Is More Art than Science

  • The armored cavalry of the U.S. Army is a hyper-macho world, fueled by testosterone and weightlifting. When the speaker showed up to his platoon as a 145-pound babyface fresh out of college, months away from taking them to war, he had to quickly earn their trust and respect – and he turned to rap music for motivation.

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The Military and Social Media: Why Control from the Top-Down Won't Work

  • The initial decade 21st century yielded phrases and realms like "new media" and "social networking." The U.S. military has had a rocky, tepid relationship with these new-age communication tools. Soldier blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, amongst other online tools, have crippled the ability for control of message from the top-down. This doesn't have to be a bad thing, though.

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The Nature of Insurgencies, in Theory and Practice

  • In modern vernacular, the words "terrorist" and "insurgent" have become synonymous, but they haven't always been. Insurgencies are as old as war itself, and our own nation owes its founding to such.

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