Brad Whitaker is an international black market arms dealer. He is fascinated by war, but has no actual military experience, so he turns to arms dealing to organize his own personal military force. Expelled from West Point for cheating, he spends a short stint as a mercenary in the Belgian Congo before starting to work with various other criminal organisations that would help organise his very first arms deals. He loves military history and it is implied that he wargames various historical conflicts using automated miniature figures and effects, such as the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Gettysburg. In a conversation with Bond during their confrontation, Whitaker says that he believes that Pickett's Charge should have been made up Little Round Top and that, if Ulysses S. Grant had been in charge of the Union at Gettysburg, he would have crushed the Army of Northern Virginia, thus ending the rebellion. He says "Meade should have taken another 35,000 dead at Gettysburg!".