Tobias Bernard Switzer is an adjunct senior policy researcher at RAND. A retired USAF colonel, he served as a special operations helicopter pilot, combat aviation advisor, and foreign area officer. Switzer's career includes multiple counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Central America.
Notable military roles include commanding a NATO Special Operations Advisor Team in Afghanistan and serving as Deputy Director of the Commander's Action Group and Deputy Division Chief for Policy at United States Southern Command. Switzer's academic background includes a BS in mathematics from the University of Chicago and an MS in economics from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, where he studied as an Olmsted Scholar.
Switzer is also an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security. He formerly served as a Senior Military Fellow at the National Defense University's Center for Applied Strategic Learning and at the Center for Strategic and International Studies' International Security Program.
His research and writing span a broad range of topics, focusing on U.S. military personnel policy, market design, security force assistance, and air advising. Switzer has published in various prestigious journals and platforms, including Econometrica, Air and Space Power Journal, War on the Rocks, Defense One, Joint Forces Quarterly, and the Irregular Warfare Initiative.
BS in mathematics with specialization in economics, University of Chicago; MS in economics, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
Spanish
Adjunct Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security
