A private military company (PMC) or private military and security company (PMSC) is a private company providing armed combat or security services for financial gain. PMCs refer to their personnel as "security contractors" or "private military contractors".

Peter Warren Singer is an American political scientist, an international relations scholar and a specialist on 21st-century warfare. He is a New York Times bestselling author of both nonfiction and fiction, who has been described in The Wall Street Journal as "the premier futurist in the national-security environment".