A critical look at how the US military is weaponizing technology and data for new kinds of warfare-and why we must resist. War Virtually is the story of how scientists, programmers, and engineers are racing to develop data-driven technologies for fighting virtual wars, both at home and abroad. In this landmark book, Roberto J. Gonzalez gives us a lucid and gripping account of what lies behind the autonomous weapons, robotic systems, predictive modeling software, advanced surveillance programs, and psyops techniques that are transforming the nature of military conflict. Gonzalez, a cultural anthropologist, takes a critical approach to the techno-utopian view of these advancements and their dubious promise of a less deadly and more efficient warfare. With clear, accessible prose, this book exposes the high-tech underpinnings of contemporary military operations-and the cultural assumptions they're built on. Chapters cover automated battlefield robotics; social scientists' involvement in experimental defense research; the blurred line between political consulting and propaganda in the internet era; and the military's use of big data to craft new counterinsurgency methods based on predicting conflict. Gonzalez also lays bare the processes by which the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies have quietly joined forces with Big Tech, raising an alarming prospect: that someday Google, Amazon, and other Silicon Valley firms might merge with some of the world's biggest defense contractors. War Virtually takes an unflinching look at an algorithmic future-where new military technologies threaten democratic governance and human survival.

Investigating the global system of detention centers that imprison asylum seekers and conceal persistent human rights violations   Remote detention centers confine tens of thousands of refugees, asylum seekers, and undocumented immigrants around the world, operating in a legal gray area that hides terrible human rights abuses from the international community. Built to temporarily house eight hundred migrants in transit, the immigrant “reception center� on the Italian island of Lampedusa has held thousands of North African refugees under inhumane conditions for weeks on end. Australia’s use of Christmas Island as a detention center for asylum seekers has enabled successive governments to imprison migrants from Asia and Africa, including the Sudanese human rights activist Abdul Aziz Muhamat, held there for five years.  In The Death of Asylum, Alison Mountz traces the global chain of remote sites used by states of the Global North to confine migrants fleeing violence and poverty, using cruel measures that, if unchecked, will lead to the death of asylum as an ethical ideal. Through unprecedented access to offshore detention centers and immigrant-processing facilities, Mountz illustrates how authorities in the United States, the European Union, and Australia have created a new and shadowy geopolitical formation allowing them to externalize their borders to distant islands where harsh treatment and deadly force deprive migrants of basic human rights. Mountz details how states use the geographic inaccessibility of places like Christmas Island, almost a thousand miles off the Australian mainland, to isolate asylum seekers far from the scrutiny of humanitarian NGOs, human rights groups, journalists, and their own citizens. By focusing on borderlands and spaces of transit between regions, The Death of Asylum shows how remote detention centers effectively curtail the basic human right to seek asylum, forcing refugees to take more dangerous risks to escape war, famine, and oppression.

Intelligence and Espionage: Secrets and Spies provides a global introduction to the role of intelligence - a key, but sometimes controversial, aspect of ensuring national security. Separating fact from fiction, the book draws on past examples to explore the use and misuse of intelligence, examine why failures take place and address important ethical issues over its use. Divided into two parts, the book adopts a thematic approach to the topic, guiding the reader through the collection and analysis of information and its use by policymakers, before looking at intelligence sharing. Lomas and Murphy also explore the important associated activities of counterintelligence and the use of covert action, to influence foreign countries and individuals. Topics covered include human and signals intelligence, the Cuban Missile Crisis, intelligence and Stalin, Trump and the US intelligence community, and the Soviet Bloc. This analysis is supplemented by a comprehensive documents section, containing newly released documents, including material from Edward Snowden's leaks of classified material. Supported by images, a comprehensive chronology, glossary, and 'who's who' of key figures, Intelligence and Espionage is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the role of intelligence in policymaking, international relations and diplomacy, warfighting and politics to the present day.

In 1920s Shanghai, Zhou Enlai founded the first Chinese communist spy network, operating in the shadows against nationalists, Western powers and the Japanese. The story of Chinese spies has been a global one from the start. Unearthing previously unseen papers and interviewing countless insiders, Roger Faligot's astonishing account reveals nothing less than a century of world events shaped by Chinese spies. Working as scientists, journalists, diplomats, foreign students and businessmen, they've been everywhere, from Stalin's purges to 9/11. This murky world has swept up Ho Chi Minh, the Clintons and everyone in between, with the action moving from Cambodia to Cambridge, and from the Australian outback to the centres of Western power. This fascinating narrative exposes the sprawling tentacles of the world's largest intelligence service, from the very birth of communist China to Xi Jinping's absolute rule today.

This fascinating account of how two young Americans turned traitor during the Cold War is an "absolutely smashing real-life spy story" (The New York Times Book Review). At the height of the Cold War, some of the nation's most precious secrets passed through a CIA contractor in Southern California. Only a handful of employees were cleared to handle the intelligence that came through the Black Vault. One of them was Christopher John Boyce, a hard-partying genius with a sky-high IQ, a passion for falconry, and little love for his country. Security at the Vault was so lax, Boyce couldn't help but be tempted. And when he gave in, the fate of the free world would hang in the balance. With the help of his best friend, Andrew Daulton Lee, a drug dealer with connections south of the border, Boyce began stealing classified documents and selling them to the Soviet embassy in Mexico City. It was an audacious act of treason, committed by two spoiled young men who were nearly always drunk, stoned, or both--and were about to find themselves caught in the middle of a fight between the CIA and the KGB. This Edgar Award-winning book was the inspiration for the critically acclaimed film starring Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn--a true story as thrilling as any dreamed up by Ian Fleming or John le Carre. Before Edward Snowden, there were Boyce and Lee, two of the most unlikely spies in the history of the Cold War.

Published for the first time, the history of the CIA's clandestine short-wave radio broadcasts to Eastern Europe and the USSR during the early Cold War is covered in-depth. Chapters describe the "gray" broadcasting of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty in Munich; clandestine or "black" radio broadcasts from Radio Nacional de Espana in Madrid to Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine; transmissions to Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Ukraine and the USSR from a secret site near Athens; and broadcasts to Byelorussia and Slovakia. Infiltrated behind the Iron Curtain through dangerous air drops and boat landings, CIA and other intelligence service agents faced counterespionage, kidnapping, assassination, arrest and imprisonment. Excerpts from broadcasts taken from monitoring reports of Eastern Europe intelligence agencies are included.

'Tim Tate, in Hitler's British Traitors, [explores] the entire grimy landscape of British treachery during the Second World War and the astonishing rogues' gallery of traitors working to help Nazi Germany win. [He makes] excellent use of the vast trove of material declassified by MI5 in recent years.' - Ben Macintyre, The Times

Hitler’s British Traitors is the first authoritative account of a well-kept secret: the British Fifth Column and its activities during the Second World War.

Drawing on hundreds of declassified official files – many of them previously unpublished – Tim Tate uncovers the largely unknown history of more than 70 British traitors who were convicted, mostly in secret trials, of working to help Nazi Germany win the war, and several hundred British Fascists who were interned without trial on evidence that they were working on behalf of the enemy. Four were condemned to death; two were executed.

This engrossing book reveals the extraordinary methods adopted by MI5 to uncover British traitors and their German spymasters, as well as two serious wartime plots by well-connected British fascists to mount a coup d’etat which would replace the government with an authoritarian pro-Nazi regime.

The book also shows how archaic attitudes to social status and gender in Whitehall and the courts ensured that justice was neither fair nor equitable. Aristocratic British pro-Nazi sympathizers and collaborators were frequently protected while the less-privileged foot soldiers of the Fifth Column were interned, jailed or even executed for identical crimes.

How is it that the FBI, a domestic intelligence agency, operates beyond the US borders? What role does the bureau play in emerging democracies? In what ways does it contribute to US diplomacy and global security? Darren Tromblay tackles these intriguing questions to assess the FBI's presence abroad, revealing the inextricable nature of domestic and foreign intelligence activities.

Home-grown terrorists equipped by a foreign power are not a new phenomenon. During the Second World War, Hitler's Germany made sustained efforts to inflict a terror campaign on the streets of Britain through the use of secret agents and agents provocateurs. The aim was to blow up military, industrial, transport and telecommunication targets, to lower morale among the civilian population and disrupt the war effort. Even before the outbreak of war, the Nazis provided the IRA with assistance for their plan to sabotage the British mainland. Prior to their planned invasion in the summer of 1940, the Nazis were also keen to recruit members of the Welsh and Scottish Nationalist Parties to engage in sabotaging British targets and, over the course of the war, infiltrated dozens of trained agents from countries including Norway, Denmark, Holland, France and Cuba. What happened to the myriad plots to blow up Britain? We know that intelligence obtained from decrypted enemy messages via Bletchley Park and double agents like ZIGZAG, SUMMER and TATE alerted MI5 to some of these spies' arrivals, but what about the others? And how successful were MI5's efforts to fake acts of sabotage and arrange media coverage to fool the enemy into thinking their agents were still at large and on task? In this book, Bernard O'Connor, a noted wartime espionage historian, tells the complete story of the successes and failures of the Nazi terror offensive on mainland Britain during 1938-1944.

This clandestine history of Operation Ajax to overthrow the Prime Minister of Iran was written for the US Central Intelligence Agency in March 1954 by Dr. Donald N. Wilber. It gives a unique insight into the extent to which the CIA and its British ally went in pursuit of their aim to remove Iran's elected head of government in 1952-53. It also includes many interesting parallels with contemporary developments in the Middle East. Dr. Mohammad Mossadeq was Prime Minister of Iran for just over two years, from April 1951 to August 1953, when he was removed from power in a complex plot prepared by the British and US intelligence agencies. Shortly after coming to office, Mossadeq enforced the Oil Nationalisation Act, which involved the expropriation of Anglo Iranian Oil Company's assets. In response, the British foreign secretary, Herbert Morrison, announced that the Mossadeq government would not be allowed to export any oil produced in the formerly British-controlled refinery at Abadan. In October 1952, Mossadeq declared Britain 'an enemy', and cut all diplomatic relations with the United Kingdom. In November and December of that year, British intelligence officials suggested to American intelligence that he should be ousted. Near the end of April 1953, Donald N. Wilber, covert consultant to Near East and Africa Division of the CIA, was selected by the Division to go to Nicosia, and in close collaboration with the SIS (the British Secret Intelligence Service), draw up a plan for the overthrow of Mossadeq...

Anthony Blunt, aesthete, communist, homosexual, MI5 agent and Soviet mole, was Surveyor of the King's Pictures and Director of the Courtauld Institute. Betrayed in 1963, he voted for Margaret Thatcher in 1979. Late that year, she was to expose his treachery and strip him of his knighthood. While the other Cambridge spies (Philby, Burgess and Maclean) subordinated their lives and careers to espionage, Blunt had a separate passionate existence. His reputation as an art historian was second to none: he made an enormous contribution to the establishment of art history as an academic discipline; his volumes on Poussin, French and Italian art and old master drawings are still in print and some are still set texts. At the Courtauld he trained a whole generation of world-class academics and curators.

Widely-researched and fast-paced, Private Warriors surveys the generals, gun-runners and national security staffers who were cast adrift at the end of the Cold War and who now operate in the private sector. In these pages we encounter Ernst Werner Glatt, a right-wing German who was for many years the Pentagon's preferred gun-runner; ex-Secretary of State Alexander Haig who now lobbies for China and assists in selling weapons to Turkey; and Frank Gaffney, an ex-Pentagon official who has grown rich by promoting the biggest boondoggle of them all, Star Wars. Today's private warriors have a direct financial interest in war and the connections to push for the maintenance of bloated military budgets.

Northern sympathizer in the Confederate capital, daring spymaster, postwar politician: Elizabeth Van Lew was one of the most remarkable figures in American history, a woman who defied the conventions of the nineteenth-century South. In Southern Lady, Yankee Spy, historian Elizabeth Varon provides a gripping, richly researched account of the woman who led what one historian called "the most productive espionage operation of the Civil War." Under the nose of the Confederate government, Van Lew ran a spy ring that gathered intelligence, hampered the Southern war effort, and helped scores of Union soldiers to escape from Richmond prisons.
Varon describes a woman who was very much a product of her time and place, yet continually took controversial stands--from her early efforts to free her family's slaves, to her daring wartime activities and beyond. Varon's powerful biography brings Van Lew to life, showing how she used the stereotypes of the day to confound Confederate authorities (who suspected her, but could not believe a proper Southern lady could be a spy), even as she brought together Union sympathizers at all levels of society, from slaves to slaveholders. After the war, a grateful President Ulysses S. Grant named her postmaster of Richmond--a remarkable break with custom for this politically influential post. But her Unionism, Republican politics, and outspoken support of racial justice earned her a lifetime of scorn in the former Confederate capital. Even today, Elizabeth Van Lew remains a controversial figure in her beloved Richmond, remembered as the "Crazy Bet" of Lost Cause propaganda. Elizabeth Varon's account rescues her from both derision and oblivion, depicting an intelligent, resourceful, highly principled woman who remained, as she saw it, true to her country to the end.

A Daily Mail Book of the Year and a The Times and Sunday Times Best Book of 2021 'Monumental.. Authoritative and highly readable.' Ben Macintyre, The Times 'A fascinating history of royal espionage.' Sunday Times 'Excellent... Compelling' Guardian For the first time, The Secret Royals uncovers the remarkable relationship between the Royal Family and the intelligence community, from the reign of Queen Victoria to the death of Princess Diana. In an enthralling narrative, Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac show how the British secret services grew out of persistent attempts to assassinate Victoria and then operated on a private and informal basis, drawing on close personal relationships between senior spies, the aristocracy, and the monarchy. This reached its zenith after the murder of the Romanovs and the Russian revolution when, fearing a similar revolt in Britain, King George V considered using private networks to provide intelligence on the loyalty of the armed forces - and of the broader population. In 1936, the dramatic abdication of Edward VIII formed a turning point in this relationship. What originally started as family feuding over a romantic liaison with the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, escalated into a national security crisis. Fearing the couple's Nazi sympathies as well as domestic instability, British spies turned their attention to the King. During the Second World War, his successor, King George VI gradually restored trust between the secret world and House of Windsor. Thereafter, Queen Elizabeth II regularly enacted her constitutional right to advise and warn, raising her eyebrow knowingly at prime ministers and spymasters alike. Based on original research and new evidence, The Secret Royals presents the British monarchy in an entirely new light and reveals how far their majesties still call the shots in a hidden world.

This updated and expanded edition of Cyberspace in Peace and War by Martin C. Libicki presents a comprehensive understanding of cybersecurity, cyberwar, and cyber-terrorism. From basic concepts to advanced principles, Libicki examines the sources and consequences of system compromises, addresses strategic aspects of cyberwar, and defines cybersecurity in the context of military operations while highlighting unique aspects of the digital battleground and strategic uses of cyberwar. This new edition provides updated analysis on cyberespionage, including the enigmatic behavior of Russian actors, making this volume a timely and necessary addition to the cyber-practitioner's library. Cyberspace in Peace and War guides readers through the complexities of cybersecurity and cyberwar and challenges them to understand the topics in new ways. Libicki provides the technical and geopolitical foundations of cyberwar necessary to understand the policies, operations, and strategies required for safeguarding an increasingly online infrastructure.

The People's Republic of China and the United States are today at war. It is being fought with the use of information, politics and finance. The Chinese believe that, as in all war, it would be better to win without engaging the enemy on the battlefield or having to resort to the likes of nuclear weapons if it can be avoided. To achieve this, China has engaged in a decades-long campaign to manipulate and corrupt America's ruling elite. This Broadside describes the degree to which Chinese influence has penetrated American society and what will be required to prevent Communist China from winning the struggle in which we find ourselves today.

Since its creation in 1947, the CIA has been at the heart of America's security apparatus. It has also been the subject of major national and international controversies, and been subject to accusations of poor performance and failure, most notably over the 9/11 attacks and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. Written by intelligence scholars and experts, this book offers the reader a lively and authoritative survey of the CIA past and present. The history of the agency is presented through the prism of its declassified documents, with each being supplemented by insightful contextual analysis. The book chronicles the evolution of the CIA, its remarkable successes, clandestine operations, and its ongoing struggle to maintain American security in an age of proliferating threats.

As Katherine Verdery observes, "There's nothing like reading your secret police file to make you wonder who you really are." In 1973 Verdery began her doctoral fieldwork in the Transylvanian region of Romania, ruled at the time by communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. She returned several times over the next twenty-five years, during which time the secret police-the Securitate-compiled a massive surveillance file on her. Reading through its 2,781 pages, she learned that she was "actually" a spy, a CIA agent, a Hungarian agitator, and a friend of dissidents: in short, an enemy of Romania. In My Life as a Spy she analyzes her file alongside her original field notes and conversations with Securitate officers. Verdery also talks with some of the informers who were close friends, learning the complex circumstances that led them to report on her, and considers how fieldwork and spying can be easily confused. Part memoir, part detective story, part anthropological analysis, My Life as a Spy offers a personal account of how government surveillance worked during the Cold War and how Verdery experienced living under it.

LONGLISTED FOR THE ALCS GOLD DAGGER FOR NON-FICTION 'One of the mysteries I've long been fascinated by, and I am so grateful that Ravi Somaiya has cracked it open so brilliantly' David Grann, author of Killers of the Flower Moon A PLANE CRASH IN THE JUNGLE. A LEGENDARY STATESMAN DEAD. A TRAGIC ACCIDENT... OR THE ULTIMATE CONSPIRACY? For nearly sixty years, the circumstances surrounding the death of renowned diplomat Dag Hammarskjoeld have remained one of the Cold War's most tightly guarded secrets. Now, with exclusive evidence, investigative journalist Ravi Somaiya finally uncovers the truth. In 1961 the Congo was in crisis, fragmented and at war with itself. The streets of Leopoldville, the capital, were crawling with CIA operatives, MI6 agents and Soviet infiltrators. Belgian colonialists, Rhodesian white supremacists and corporate mercenaries massed in the south of the country. The chaos conspired to make it one of the most dangerous places on earth. UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjoeld, the man John F. Kennedy called 'the greatest statesman of our century' flew into the maelstrom. He was an idealist. The Congo's best hope for peace and independence. But en route to a diplomatic summit to reunite the country, Hammarskjoeld's plane mysteriously disappeared. Soon afterward he was discovered dead in the smoking wreckage, an Ace of Spades playing card placed on his body. A riveting work of investigative journalism based on new evidence, recently revealed first-hand accounts, and groundbreaking interviews, Operation Morthor reveals the plot behind one of the longest-standing murder mysteries of the Cold War, with dark implications for governments and corporations alike.

As John le Carre's fictional intelligence men admit, it was the case histories - constructed narratives serving shifting agendas - that shaped the British intelligence machine, rather than their personal experience of secret operations. Secret History demonstrates that a critical scrutiny of internal "after action" assessments of intelligence prepared by British officials provides an invaluable and original perspective on the emergence of British intelligence culture over a period stretching from the First World War to the early Cold War. The historical record reflects personal value judgments about what qualified as effective techniques and organization, and even who could rightfully be called an intelligence officer. The history of intelligence thus became a powerful form of self-reinforcing cultural capital. Shining an intense light on the history of Britain's intelligence organizations, Secret History excavates how contemporary myths, misperceptions, and misunderstandings were captured and how they affected the development of British intelligence and the state.

The incredible inside story of the world's most extraordinary covert operation. Air America - a secret airline run by the CIA - flew missions no one else would touch, from General Claire Cennault's legendary Flying Tigers in WW II to two brutal decades cruising over the bomb-savaged jungles of Southeast Asia. Their pilots dared all and did all - a high-rolling, fast-playing bunch of has-beens and hellraisers whose motto was 'Anything, Anywhere, Anytime'. Whether it was delivering food and weapons or spooks and opium, Air America was the one airline where you didn't need reservations - just a hell of a lot of courage and a willingness to fly to the bitter end.

A wide range of actors have publicly identified cyber stability as a key policy goal but the meaning of stability in the context of cyber policy remains vague and contested: vague because most policymakers and experts do not define cyber stability when they use the concept; contested because they propose measures that rely - often implicitly - on divergent understandings of cyber stability. This is a thorough investigation of instability within cyberspace and of cyberspace itself. Its purpose is to reconceptualise stability and instability for cyberspace, highlight their various dimensions and thereby identify relevant policy measures. It critically examines both 'classic' notions associated with stability - for example, whether cyber operations can lead to unwanted escalation - as well as topics that have so far not been addressed in the existing cyber literature, such as the application of a decolonial lens to investigate Euro-American conceptualisations of stability in cyberspace.