At a time when the U.S. Department of Defense increasingly grapples with emerging technologies and their implications for national security, Erik Lin-Greenberg ’09, SM ’09 occupies a rare position at the intersection of theory and practice.

The MIT political scientist and lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve recently assumed command of the 820th Intelligence Squadron at the Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, where he now leads dozens of officers and enlisted personnel. He does so while maintaining his full-time role as the Leo Marx Career Development Associate Professor in the History and Culture of Science and Technology at MIT, with areas of focus including emerging technologies, crisis escalation, and security.

Combining these two worlds — the military and the academic — has been natural for Lin-Greenberg, and he anticipates that his duties in both will continue to amplify each other.

“I’m honored to have the privilege of serving as a squadron commander,” Lin-Greenberg says. “I’ve learned a lot about leadership as a professor, an airman, and as a reservist, and look forward to serving the airmen in my squadron.”

From tragedy to service

Lin-Greenberg’s commitment to service was born from tragedy, when thousands of civilians lost their lives in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “I grew up outside New York City,” he says, “and saw fighter jets flying overhead.”

Soon thereafter, Lin-Greenberg decided to heed what he felt was a call to serve the nation. As an undergraduate at MIT, he began his military career as a member of the U.S. Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) Detachment 365, which comprises students from MIT, Harvard University, Tufts University, and Wellesley College.

Upon graduating in 2009 with both a bachelor’s and an master’s in political science, he joined the Air Force, where he was commissioned as an intelligence officer. He rose through the ranks, becoming a flight commander at California’s Beale Air Force Base. “I really enjoyed being a member of the Air Force,” he says, “so I transferred to the Reserve when I started my PhD program.”

The scholar-warrior

Lin-Greenberg went on to complete a PhD in political science at Columbia University in 2019. Following fellowships at Stanford University and the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the MIT Department of Political Science as an assistant professor in 2020.

Having deployed to Qatar and Afghanistan and worked with drones early in his Air Force career, Lin-Greenberg says his experiences and immersion in operations have motivated much of his academic research. “Drones are tools of war and statecraft,” he notes, and his forthcoming book explores their use in crises and conflicts since the Cold War.

“My research examines how new technologies impact the use of force and decision-making during interstate conflicts,” Lin-Greenberg says. When conducting academic inquiries, he finds himself asking: “Would my boss’s boss care about the questions I’m asking?”

Lin-Greenberg also co-leads the MIT Security Studies Program’s Wargaming Lab, a research group that investigates conflict through war-gaming and helps develop best practices for academic war-gaming. “War games are data-gathering tools,” he says, “and the lab allows me to integrate academic tools, like experiments, into war games, which have traditionally been used by militaries.”

Leading in the classroom and on the base

Lin-Greenberg understands and appreciates the responsibilities he’s earned and takes a deliberate and careful approach to how he leads his reserve unit and how he advises his students. The personnel he leads in the Air Force in many ways resemble his MIT students, Lin-Greenberg believes. “They are innovative and dedicated to their work,” he says. His role as a leader in the armed forces helps him develop strategies to effectively advise his students while creating mentorship opportunities in all of his professional roles.

When advising students, Lin-Greenberg explains that he leverages lessons about giving tough feedback and motivating people, lessons he learned from Air Force mentors. In his Air Force role, he tries to incorporate insights from international relations and security studies scholarship to explain the strategic environment to junior personnel.

Lin-Greenberg believes he landed in his positions in the Air Force and at MIT because he took advantage of opportunities when they arrived, and he advises others to do the same. “Everything happens for a reason,” he says.