A riveting account of espionage for the digital age, from one of America’s leading intelligence experts Spying has never been more ubiquitous—or less understood. The world is drowning in spy movies, TV shows, and novels, but universities offer more courses on rock and roll than on the CIA and there are more congressional experts on powdered milk than espionage. This crisis in intelligence education is distorting public opinion, fueling conspiracy theories, and hurting intelligence policy. In Spies, Lies, and Algorithms, Amy Zegart separates fact from fiction as she offers an engaging and enlightening account of the past, present, and future of American espionage as it faces a revolution driven by digital technology. Drawing on decades of research and hundreds of interviews with intelligence officials, Zegart provides a history of U.S. espionage, from George Washington’s Revolutionary War spies to today’s spy satellites; examines how fictional spies are influencing real officials; gives an overview of intelligence basics and life inside America’s intelligence agencies; explains the deadly cognitive biases that can mislead analysts; and explores the vexed issues of traitors, covert action, and congressional oversight. Most of all, Zegart describes how technology is empowering new enemies and opportunities, and creating powerful new players, such as private citizens who are successfully tracking nuclear threats using little more than Google Earth. And she shows why cyberspace is, in many ways, the ultimate cloak-and-dagger battleground, where nefarious actors employ deception, subterfuge, and advanced technology for theft, espionage, and information warfare. A fascinating and revealing account of espionage for the digital age, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the reality of spying today.
Drawn from detailed interviews with an extraordinary cast of characters, a shocking true account retells the brutal murder of James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man who was chained to the bumper of a truck and dragged down a ...
Presidents often underestimate the domestic political costs of covert action. #14 Covert action also has the risk of unintended consequences down the line. In 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in Iran, ...
In this pathbreaking book, Amy Zegart provides the first scholarly examination of the intelligence failures that preceded September 11.
In this volume, edited by Herbert Lin and Amy Zegart—co-directors of the Stanford Cyber Policy Program—leading scholars and practitioners explore these and other vital questions about the strategic uses of offensive cyber operations.
Challenging the belief that national security agencies work well, this book asks what forces shaped the initial design of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council in ways that meant they ...
LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2021 'One of the best books ever written about intelligence analysis and its long-term lessons' Christopher Andrew, author of The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 'An ...
See Aileen Clayton , The Enemy is Listening ( London : Hutchinson and Company , 1980 ) . 5 . See R . V . Jones , The Secret War : British Scientific Intelligence , 1939 – 1945 ( New York : Coward , McCann , and Geoghegan , 1978 ) , pp .
Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm.
I testified at that hearing, along with Lee Hamilton, who served as the 9/11 Commission's vice chairman and earlier as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI). Pointing his finger at all the senators ...
Teams of enlisted men took down Morse code messages by hand and then retransmitted the copied traffic via encrypted landline or radio teleprinter links back to Washington or other cryptanalytic processing centers in Hawaii and Australia ...