Benjamin Bahney is an adjunct employee at the RAND Corporation. Ben was a full-time associate at RAND from 2006 to 2010, where he focused on national security issues relating to non-state actors.
Ben led a number of studies at RAND on the economics of terrorism and insurgency, and recently published the monograph "An Economic Analysis of the Financial Records of al-Qa'ida in Iraq (AQI)." Ben spent four months directly supporting the Multi-National Force-Iraq in Baghdad in 2008 and 2009, specifically focusing on the finances of AQI. He also co-authored monograph in 2009 on U.S. policy towards the security crisis in Mexico, analyzing the threat from drug trafficking organizations and assessing the potential impact of different U.S. policy options.
In 2009, Ben contributed a chapter on measuring the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies for the RAND monograph "Social Science for Counterterrorism."
He has contributed to the editorial pages at the Washington Times and the San Diego Union Tribune, and guest lectures on terrorism financing at the Naval Postgraduate School.
Ben is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and received a master's degree in international economics from the University of California San Diego.