Covert Contact

Iraq’s Consolidation and the Kurds

Iraq has made surprising gains in its effort to undermine or eliminate Kurdish autonomy since mid-October when we first visited this issue. Phillip Smyth joins me again to look at recent developments and the potential implications.

Information Warfare

Rise of the Politibots

In June (which seems far more distant than it really is) I spent some time at Jigsaw (The Google-formed incubator focused on tackling tough global security issues) contibuting to critical discussions about bots.

Information Warfare

Motherboard: The Bots That Are Changing Politics

Jigsaw, the Google/Alphabet think-tank, recently invited me and a handful of others to spend a day in New York City thinking about how to build a taxonomy for political bots. It was a productive day and a month or so later we made some of that work public in this essay at Motherboard.

Covert Contact

The Crypto Wars: Update from the Australian Front

Australian freelance journalist, commentator, and broadcaster Stilgherrian is back to discuss the battle over encryption and the seemingly irreconcilable differences between governments and privacy advocates.

Covert Contact

From CIA Case Officer to Rookie Cop

Former Air Marshall and CIA Case Officer Patrick Skinner has become a become a police officer in his community in an effort to drive change. We discuss the transition and what he is learning in episode 81.

Covert Contact

The Kurdish Problem

Phillip Smyth joins me to look at the complexities surrounding the Kurdish drive for independence and how that looks to play out given the recent setback.

Covert Contact

Propaganda, Influence, and Disruption

A look at recent developments in the social media component of the investigation into Russian meddling in the U.S. election and what the evidence says about our ability (or inability) to identify and address modern propaganda.

Covert Contact

Australian Cyber Policy

Episode 78 wraps up a full month of focus on Australian defense perspectives with a look at cyber policy with the highly-regarded freelance journalist, commentator, and broadcaster Stilgherrian.

Covert Contact

Australian Approaches to Counterterrorism

Levi West, the Director of Terrorism Studies at Charles Sturt University in Canberra, joins me for a wide ranging discussion on Australian counterterrorism programs.

Covert Contact

Australian Special Operations Forces

In episode 76 we’re taking a look at Australia’s special operations forces. We discuss how SOF are utilized, structured, and how they compliment and differ from similar forces in the United States.

Covert Contact

Understanding and Developing Resilience To Information Warfare

Dr. Clint Arizmendi, an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow for the Australian Graduate School of Policing & Security's Terrorism Studies program at Charles Sturt University, joins me to discuss information warfare in episode 75.

Covert Contact

Deep State Conspiracies

Alex Finley, a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, joined me to discuss the rise of deep state conspiracies that often feature a monolithic, highly partisan, intelligence community at their center.

Covert Contact

Data, AI, and Ethics

Entrepreneur Evanna Hu joins me to discuss our rapidly evolving relationship with data. The explosion of data streams and technologies that offload challenging analysis to machines are creating interesting national security challenges and opportunities at lightening speed.

Covert Contact

Beyond Russia: Overlooked Counterintelligence Threats

Russian intelligence presents a significant challenge for the United States but it is far from the only threat. There are dozens of nations and non-state actors actively collecting against us at any given time.

History

Harvey Floods Houston: Reflecting on Katrina

The tragedy unfolding in Houston brought back memories of Katrina and Houston's response to the plight of evacuees from Louisiana. It was a massive effort that consumed the city for weeks. The scale of it all would change Houston forever.

Covert Contact

System Failure: It Only Gets More Difficult from Here

What if Charlottesville and the dysfunction in Washington are not aberrations? What happens if the challenges facing society and governance only get more difficult for failing systems to tackle?

Guest Posts

Carlos

In my office, visitors are surprised to see that I have a copy of one of my own books signed by Ilyich Ramírez Sánchez, better known as “Carlos the Jackal.”

Covert Contact

Iran in the Age of Trump

In episode 70 Phillip Smyth joins me for a quick look at how the change in U.S. leadership is impacting the balance of sectarian power and our policy toward Iran.

Covert Contact

Securing Data, Communications, and Identity with Keybase

Keybase is a small but ambitious company that aims to make cyrpto available and virtually seamless for everyone. Their approach to this problem, a massively challenging one that hasn’t really been cracked to date, has been creative.

Covert Contact

Egyptian, Muslim, American

My friend Angie Gad joins me for episode 68 of Covert Contact to discuss growing up as a first generation Egyptian-American Muslim. We cover a lot of ground in this episode including her family's struggle to maintain and establish roots in two very different worlds

Covert Contact

The Manchester Attack

Regular contributor William J. Tucker joined me to examine the Manchester Attack about 24 hours after it occurred.

Covert Contact

Intelligence Analysis: Feedback, Bias, and Other Challenges

In this episode we discuss bias and how it can impact both the production and consumption of intelligence products.

Art

Warren Ellis at Google

I'm a huge fan of Warren Ellis, his no-nonsense views on technology, and the way he weaves it all into his work. He is able to sweep away the hype while clearly and creatively envisioning potential outcomes (and, of course, having some dark fun with it).

Covert Contact

Counterintelligence in the Trump Era

William J. Tucker, regular contributor on counterintelligence topics for Blogs of War and Covert Contact, joins me to discuss the unprecedented challenge the Trump presidency poses to both U.S. counterintelligence and the intelligence community as whole.

Updates

Blogs of War Gets a New Look (and a New Platform)

I've periodically checked in on the Ghost publishing platform as a potential solution over the past couple of years. I wasn't quite ready to make the move in 2015 or 2016 but I recently checked back in on the project and liked what I saw.