Jon B. Perdue

Jon B. Perdue

Perdue speaking on Capitol Hill
Nationality United States
Occupation Counterterrorism author and analyst
Known for Author, The War of All the People, Packbow inventor

Jon B. Perdue is an American counterterrorism author and analyst, as well as an inventor who appears on season one of the CNBC reality docu-series “Make Me a Millionaire Inventor." He has worked for educational and security-related think tanks in Washington, DC and Latin America, and has lectured on asymmetric warfare and strategic communication. He has written for numerous national security publications and has published articles in U.S. and Latin American newspapers, including Investor’s Business Daily, The Washington Times, The Miami Herald, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.[1] He has given testimony on national and international security issues before members of the U.S. congress and to members of the European Parliament.[2]

Early life and education

Perdue grew up in Thomaston, Georgia, and graduated from the University of North Georgia (formerly North Georgia College), a senior military college in Dahlonega, Georgia, with a degree in finance, and served in the Georgia Army National Guard.[3]

Business and non-profit career

Perdue worked for several years as a business consultant, later becoming the vice president of business development for Infectech,[4] a Pennsylvania-based biotech company, until it was acquired by Nutrapharma in October 2003.[5] Following the Nutrapharma acquisition, Perdue moved to Latin America to start a company importing ambulances and medical equipment and setting up medical clinics for underserved patients in partnership with the non-profit Salud sin Fronteras (Healthcare Without Borders). After selling the medical import business in 2004, he began working with non-profit education-focused think tanks in Latin America and the U.S.[6] In 2008, he moved to Washington, DC to become the founding director of the Institute for Leadership in the Americas, a newly formed Latin America-focused educational program of The Fund for American Studies.

Counterterrorism career

Perdue began writing on politics and foreign policy in the late 1990s, and had studied radical movements and guerrilla warfare in Latin America since first traveling to the region in 1998. He renewed his writing on the subject after moving to Washington in 2008. In 2012, he was named a Senior Fellow at the Center for a Secure Free Society, an international security think tank based in Washington, DC, and published his first book, "The War of All the People: The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism" (Potomac Books). He has contributed chapters to several anthologies on national security and asymmetric warfare, and wrote the foreword to the book "Rethinking the Reset Button: Understanding Contemporary Russian Foreign Policy" by Soviet defector Evgueni Novikov. He also contributed a chapter titled “A Marriage of Radical Ideologies” for the book "Iran's Strategic Penetration of Latin America" (Lexington Books, 2014). He is credited with coining the term "preclusionary engagement,”[7] a counterterrorism strategy that "focuses on a combination of aggressive diplomacy and economic engagement as a first and necessary step, along with a capability for small-unit operations that can be conducted with a much smaller footprint when necessary.” Known as a “be bold early” strategy, its aim is to preclude or minimize the need for larger, more costly operations that may prove unavoidable once a conflict has escalated past the so-called “threshold of concern.” This strategy is designed to counter modern, “slow tyranny,” which is becoming commonplace in Latin America, Russia and parts of the Middle East. Rather than initiating military coups, most of today’s emerging dictators "have traded their Kalashnikovs for hackable electronic voting systems and Washington-based 'information offices.'”[8] Perdue has worked unofficially on three presidential campaigns, contributing foreign policy and counterterrorism policy advice.[9]

Human Rights career

Perdue began working on human rights issues in 2000, when he traveled to Cuba to report on the condition of ordinary Cubans and dissidents, publishing an article on the subject in Investor’s Business Daily. In 2008, he wrote a series of articles that were published in the U.S. and Peru concerning a Peruvian general that had been falsely accused of collaborating with narcotraffickers in the VRAE region of Peru, a notorious trafficking area.[10] The exposé aided in the general’s subsequent exoneration by the Peruvian Supreme Court.[11] In 2009, he traveled to Honduras as part of the Washington Senior Observer Group for the historic presidential election as an international election observer.[12] In 2010, he served as an expert witness in a precedent-setting human rights trial in the Miami Circuit Court, which prevented the extradition of a U.S. citizen to Argentina, the defendant’s native country.[13] In 2012, Perdue took up the cause of free speech in Ecuador, after President Rafael Correa ostensibly "used the courts, under what could be considered dictatorial powers, to jail journalists for calling him a dictator.” Correa had actually sued the editorial page editor of El Universo, an Ecuadorian newspaper, for saying, in an opinion piece, that he was acting like a dictator. The editorial page editor, Emiio Palacio, was subsequently forced to seek asylum in the U.S.[14] In 2013, Perdue attended the Human Rights Foundation’s annual Oslo Freedom Forum in Oslo, Norway, to interview Cuban dissident and leader of the Ladies in White, Berta Soler, and wrote an article for the Miami Herald on Soler and the racial discrimination suffered by Afro-Cubans under the Castro dictatorship.[15] He also interviewed Tutu Alicante, a human rights activist from Equatorial Guinea, and published an article for the UK Commentator in London.[16]

Television career

Jon Perdue on CNBC’s “Make Me a Millionaire Inventor”

On the first season of CNBC’s invention docu-series “Make Me a Millionaire Inventor," Perdue is featured on the season finale, showcasing the "Packbow," his archery invention.[17] He has also served as a security analyst for several international TV outlets, including Latin American news channel NTN24 and China-based news channel China Central Television (CCTV).[9]

Awards

Perdue received the International Young Leader Award in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 2009, given by Jovenes Lideres Internacional, and the Global Leadership Award in London, England in 2010, presented by the Bow Group, London’s oldest conservative think tank.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 Fund for American Studies bio, “Jon Perdue, Director - Latin America Programs"
  2. ↑ Center for a Secure Free Society News, "SFS presents high-level briefs at European Parliament’s Summer Conference in Portugal", July 8, 2013
  3. ↑ Center for a Secure Free Society bio, “Jon B. Perdue bio"
  4. ↑ Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "Dateline Pittsburgh: A look at who's making news", October 3, 2000
  5. ↑ The Business Journals - Los Angeles, "Nutra Pharma buys Infectech controlling interest", October 20, 2003
  6. ↑ Michigan Education Report, “Michigan Education Report welcomes Jon Perdue as managing editor”, August 12, 2004
  7. ↑ InFocus Quarterly, “Preclusionary Engagement”, Summer 2010
  8. ↑ Hispanic American Center for Economic Research, “The Importance of Honduras' Constitutional Stand”, August 2, 2009
  9. 1 2 Amazon Author Page, “Author Jon B. Perdue”
  10. ↑ Center for Security Policy - The Americas Report, “The New Battlefield in Latin America”, July 17, 2008
  11. ↑ Center for Security Policy - The Americas Report, “A Rare Victory in the Judicial War in Peru”, March 5, 2009
  12. ↑ Journal of International Security Affairs, “Statement on the National Elections in Honduras”, December 4, 2009
  13. ↑ Center for a Secure Free Society, “Jon B. Perdue Bio”
  14. ↑ Fox News Latino, “Correa and Ecuador’s judicial system on trial in El Universo case”
  15. ↑ Capitol Hill Cubans, “Exposing the myth of racial equality in Cuba”, May 16, 2013
  16. ↑ The Commentator, "Elections in Equatorial Guinea will underwrite oppression”, May 24, 2013
  17. ↑ CNBC.com, “CNBC’s new series Make Me a Millionaire Inventor premieres”, August 7, 2015
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