Following Russia’s annexation of Crimea, hybrid warfare has become conversational short form in the West for describing Moscow’s sneaky ways of fighting war. If there’s one thing you’ve learned over the past two years about Russia, it’s that it uses hybrid warfare, a dangerous Kremlin innovation the West must learn to grapple with. In two…
Category: Counterintelligence
Espionage Files: Spy vs Spies: Why Deciphering Putin is So Hard for U.S. Intelligence
American intelligence officers are trained to tackle tough targets. But there are tough targets, and then there’s Russian President Vladimir Putin, who plays his cards so closely that it’s hard for his own advisers to divine what he’s thinking, says Gregory Treverton, chairman of the National Intelligence Council. “Putin is so isolated that the chances…
Espionage Files: 10 Real ‘HoneyPot’ Operations
The honeypot might be the most glamorized espionage technique in fiction. It’s a tale of hushed phone calls and late-night rendezvous, of secrets whispered through lying lips. But femme fatales and lovers’ plots are not exclusive to fiction. Although the honeypot isn’t used as often as other spy techniques, it still has a place in…
“Predictive Policing”: The Cyber Version of “Stop and Frisk”
Thanks America! How China’s Newest Software Could Track, Predict, and Crush Dissent Armed with data from spying on its citizens, Beijing could turn ‘predictive policing’ into an AI tool of repression. What if the Communist Party could have predicted Tiananmen Square? The Chinese government is deploying a new tool to keep the population from uprising. Beijing is building…
Espionage Files: ‘Spy-Plane’ Crashes in Iraq
When Talal Abdulqadir woke up on March 5, he probably didn’t expect his farm in northern Iraq would end up crawling with American troops guarding a crashed aircraft. In an instant, the green field outside the town of Kawrgosk put on full display some of the more shadowy elements of Washington’s fight against Islamic State….
What the 2016 Presidential Candidates Get Wrong About the Future of War
They fail, they lack, they misunderstand, they pander, they don’t get, and they just don’t know national security – not according to our Future of War roster of experts. “The President shall be Commander in Chief…” This clause that leads Article Two, Section II of the U.S. Constitution is without a doubt the most important of…
Espionage Non-Fiction Book Review: The Rice Paddy Navy
Osprey Publishing; November 2012; 316 pp. Before Navy SEALs stormed mansions in Pakistan, the notion of sailors waging war on land sounded ludicrous to many. So when Gen. George C. Marshall learned that Navy captain Milton Miles intended to train an army of Chinese guerillas to disrupt Japanese army operations in China and create a…
Bloody Hillary
The truth about what really happened in Libya and Benghazi May Shock You By Eric Margolis I went to Libya in 1987 to interview its strongman, Muammar Gaddafi. We spent an evening talking in his colorful Bedouin tent outside the Bab al-Azizya Barracks in Tripoli which had been bombed a year earlier by the US…
Espionage Files: Israel’s Intel Wars
On January 12, the spokesman of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) announced the resignation of Brig. Gen. Eli Ben-Meiras head of the Research Division due to differences of opinion with the chief of the Israeli Military Intelligence Directorate, Maj. Gen. Herzi Halevi. According to several prominent Israeli media channels, the dispute revolved around disagreement on…
Espionage Files: Time for a New CIA?
By John Sipher of the Cipher Brief Across the Central Intelligence Agency lobby from the iconic stars memorializing officers killed in the line of duty is a less well-known memorial. It is an understated relief in honor of those foreign spies who risked and lost their lives to provide secret information to the United States. …