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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > Espionage & secret services
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.
Keenie Meenie Services - the most powerful mercenary company you've never heard of - was involved in war crimes around the world from Sri Lanka to Nicaragua for which its shadowy directors have never been held accountable. Like its mysterious name, Keenie Meenie Services escaped definition and to this day has evaded sanctions. Now explosive new evidence - only recently declassified - exposes the extent of these war crimes, and the British government's tacit support for the company's operations. Including testimonies from SAS veterans, spy chiefs and diplomats, we hear from key figures battle-hardened by the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Iranian Embassy siege. Investigative journalist Phil Miller asks, who were these mercenaries: heroes, terrorists, freedom fighters or war criminals? This book presents the first ever comprehensive case against Keenie Meenie Services, providing long overdue evidence on the crimes of the people who make a killing from killing.
In the greatest intelligence operation in the history of the world, Donald Trump was made President of the United States with the assistance of a foreign power. For the first time, The Plot to Destroy Democracy reveals the dramatic story of how blackmail, espionage, assassination, and psychological warfare were used by Vladimir Putin and his spy agencies to steal the 2016 U.S. election--and attempted to bring about the fall of NATO, the European Union, and western democracy. It will show how Russia and its fifth column allies tried to flip the cornerstones of democracy in order to re-engineer the world political order that has kept most of the world free since 1945. Career U.S. Intelligence officer Malcolm Nance will examine how Russia has used cyber warfare, political propaganda, and manipulation of our perception of reality--and will do so again--to weaponize American news, traditional media, social media, and the workings of the internet to attack and break apart democratic institutions from within, and what we can expect to come should we fail to stop their next attack. Nance has utilized top secret Russian-sourced political and hybrid warfare strategy documents to demonstrate the master plan to undermine American institutions that has been in effect from the Cold War to the present day. Based on original research and countless interviews with espionage experts, Nance examines how Putin's recent hacking accomplished a crucial first step for destabilizing the West for Russia, and why Putin is just the man to do it. Nance exposes how Russia has supported the campaigns of right-wing extremists throughout both the U.S. and Europe to leverage an axis of autocracy, and how Putin's agencies have worked since 2010 to bring fringe candidate Donald Trump into elections. Revelatory, insightful, and shocking, The Plot To Destroy Democracy puts a professional spy lens on Putin's plot and unravels it play-by-play. In the end, he provides a better understanding of why Putin's efforts are a serious threat to our national security and global alliances--in much more than one election--and a blistering indictment of Putin's puppet, President Donald J. Trump.
Moving the debate beyond the place of tactical intelligence in counterinsurgency warfare, Confronting the Colonies considers the view from Whitehall, where the biggest decisions were made. It reveals the evolving impact of strategic intelligence upon government under- standings of, and policy responses to, insurgent threats. Confronting the Colonies demonstrates for the first time how, in the decades after World War Two, the intelligence agenda expanded to include non-state actors, insurgencies, and irregular warfare. It explores the challenges these emerging threats posed to intelligence assessment and how they were met with varying degrees of success. Such issues remain of vital importance today. By examining the relationship between intelligence and policy, Cormac provides original and revealing in- sights into government thinking in the era of decolonisation, from the origins of nationalist unrest to the projection of dwindling British power. He demonstrates how intelligence (mis-) understood the complex relationship between the Cold War, nationalism, and decolonisation; how it fuelled fierce Whitehall feuding; and how it shaped policymakers' attempts to integrate counterinsurgency into broader strategic policy.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, Churchill and Stalin secretly agreed that Britain would infiltrate Soviet agents into occupied Western Europe. Liaison began between the NKVD and the SOE, each country's secret service. Transported in convoys across the Arctic Ocean and often attacked by German U-Boats, thirty-four men and women arrived in Scotland. To stop people finding out that Britain was helping the Communists, the agents were given false identities and provided with accommodation and training at remote country houses in southern England, including Beaulieu. Codenamed PICKAXES, they were sent for parachute practice at Ringway aerodrome, provided with documents, cover stories and wireless sets and sent on clandestine missions into France, Belgium, Holland, Austria, Germany and Italy. Whilst most were sent from RAF Tempsford, Churchill's Most Secret airfield, one was sent by boat across the Channel and another by submarine into Northern Italy. Only a few survived the war as most were caught, interrogated and executed. Based on extensive research, Bernard O'Connor tells their human stories enmeshed in a web of political intrigue and diplomacy.
In the mid-nineteenth century a group of Irish revolutionaries, known as the Fenians, set out to destroy Britain's North American empire. Between 1866 and 1871 they launched a series of armed raids into Canadian territory. In Canadian Spy Story David Wilson takes readers into a dark and dangerous world of betrayal and deception, spies and informers, invasion and assassination, spanning Canada, the United States, Ireland, and Britain. In Canada there were Fenian secret societies in urban areas, including Quebec City, Montreal, Ottawa, and Toronto, and in some rural townships, all part of a wider North American network. Wilson tells the tale of Irishmen who attempted to liberate their country from British rule, and the Canadian secret police who infiltrated their revolutionary cells and worked their way to the top of the organization. With surprises at every turn, the story includes a sex scandal that nearly brought Canadian spy operations crashing down, as well as reports from Toronto about a plot to assassinate Queen Victoria. Featuring a cast of idealists, patriots, cynics, manipulators, and liars, Canadian Spy Story raises fundamental questions about state security and civil liberty, with important lessons for our own time.
Originally published in 1998 and a best seller in its hardcover and paperback publications, Blind Man's Bulff is a dramatic, and riveting history. Over the course of five years, investigative reporters Sherry Sontag and Chris Drew interviewed hundreds of men who had never spoken about their underwater lives,not even to their wives and children. They uncovered a wealth of classified information: the tapping of undersea Soviet telephone cables, the stealing of Soviet weapons, the tragic collisions of enemy submarines. They tell of medals awarded in secret and deaths disguised with disinformation. Blind Man's Bluff is a critical work of history that reads with all the excitement of a Tom Clancy novel and all the tragedy of Das Boot.
The explosive book from ex-MI5 surveillance officer Tom Marcus takes the reader on a non-stop, adrenalin-fuelled ride as he hunts down those who would do our country harm. Tom spent years working covertly to stop those who want to do us harm. In his bestselling memoir Soldier Spy, he told how he was recruited and described some of his top-secret operations. In I Spy, he takes us deeper undercover as he puts his life on the line once more. I Spy plunges the reader straight into the action as Tom and his team race to prevent terrorists from causing carnage on our streets and outsmart Russian agents, blocking a daring plot that threatens the security of the nation. Relying on their quick wits, training and courage, the extraordinary men and women of MI5 are under intense pressure every day. Not everyone is suited for the work, and Tom shows how the incredibly tough challenges he faced growing up gave him the mental strength and skills to survive in a dangerous world. Gritty and eye-opening, this is a unique insight into a hidden war and the sacrifices made by those who fight it. You will never take your safety for granted again.
This book presents a comprehensive source document on intelligence and security oversight and review. It compares the oversight arrangements found in nine countries-New Zealand, Australia, Canada, United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Norway and South Africa. This is done through an analysis of a wide range of areas including statutory basis, agencies overseen, membership, tenure, appointment/dismissal, mandate, powers, access to classified information, complaints function, reporting and, in the case of parliamentary committees, the frequency of meetings. Within an annotated bibliography section Richardson and Gilmour also provide detailed summaries of other relevant research and commentary aligned with oversight and review practices. Intelligence and Security Oversight: An Annotated Bibliography and Comparative Analysis comprehensively demonstrates the powers and limitations placed with, and on, oversight bodies, appealing to academics, researchers and practitioners in the intelligence and security environment.
The Cold War was only cold in that the major powers, the U.S. and
the Soviet Union, did not engage in a nuclear war. But during that
period (1945-1991) there were wars, spying, shoot downs of numerous
reconnaissance aircraft, captures of U.S. military personnel,
murders, defections, a space race with men put in orbit and an
eventual moon landing.
This is both a history of the service attache, beginning with the Napoleonic era, and a discussion of his changing role, past and present. Professor Vagts shows the military adviser temporarily joined to the diplomatic corps as a person often divided in his loyalties to diplomatic officials and to military leaders. Affected by increasing bureaucratic specialization, he sometimes became a "twilight" figure engaged in political activity and even espionage. Professor Vagts' numerous works on the history of militarism and the military, in both German and English, and his research in the chancelleries of Europe have given him perspective for this book. Originally published in 1967. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
It would be easy for the modern reader to conclude that women had no place in the world of early modern espionage, with a few seventeenth-century women spies identified and then relegated to the footnotes of history. If even the espionage carried out by Susan Hyde, sister of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, during the turbulent decades of civil strife in Britain can escape the historiographer's gaze, then how many more like her lurk in the archives? Nadine Akkerman's search for an answer to this question has led to the writing of Invisible Agents, the very first study to analyse the role of early modern women spies, demonstrating that the allegedly-male world of the spy was more than merely infiltrated by women. This compelling and ground-breaking contribution to the history of espionage details a series of case studies in which women — from playwright to postmistress, from lady-in-waiting to laundry woman — acted as spies, sourcing and passing on confidential information on account of political and religious convictions or to obtain money or power. The struggle of the She-Intelligencers to construct credibility in their own time is mirrored in their invisibility in modern historiography. Akkerman has immersed herself in archives, libraries, and private collections, transcribing hundreds of letters, breaking cipher codes and their keys, studying invisible inks, and interpreting riddles, acting as a modern-day Spymistress to unearth plots and conspiracies that have long remained hidden by history.
A rallying cry to link the food justice movement to broader social justice debates The United States is a nation of foodies and food activists, many of them progressives, and yet their overwhelming concern for what they consume often hinders their engagement with social justice more broadly. Food Justice Now! charts a path from food activism to social justice activism that integrates the two. It calls on the food-focused to broaden and deepen their commitment to the struggle against structural inequalities both within and beyond the food system. In an engrossing, historically grounded, and ethnographically rich narrative, Joshua Sbicca argues that food justice is more than just a myopic focus on food, allowing scholars and activists alike to investigate the causes behind inequities and evaluate and implement political strategies to overcome them. Focusing on carceral, labor, and immigration crises, Sbicca tells the stories of three California-based food movement organizations, showing that when activists use food to confront neoliberal capitalism and institutional racism, they can creatively expand how to practice and achieve food justice. Sbicca sets his central argument in opposition to apolitical and individual solutions, discussing national food movement campaigns and the need for economically and racially just food policies-a matter of vital public concern with deep implications for building collective power across a diversity of interests.
The Strength of the Wolf is the first complete history of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (1930-1968). Working undercover around the globe, the FBN's charismatic "case-making" agents penetrated the Mafia and its French connection. In the process, however, they uncovered the national security establishment's ties to organized crime. Victims of their freewheeling methods and unparalleled success in hunting down society's predators, the agents were ultimately targeted for destruction by the FBI and CIA. Based largely on interviews with case-making agents, The Strength of the Wolf provides a new, exciting, and revealing chapter in American history.
A well-balanced and detailed look at the East German Ministry for State Security, the secret police force more commonly known as the Stasi. "This is an excellent book, full of careful, balanced judgements and a wealth of concisely-communicated knowledge. It is also well written. Indeed, it is the best book yet published on the MfS."-German History The Stasi stood for Stalinist oppression and all-encompassing surveillance. The "shield and sword of the party," it secured the rule of the Communist Party for more than forty years, and by the 1980s it had become the largest secret-police apparatus in the world, per capita. Jens Gieseke tells the story of the Stasi, a feared secret-police force and a highly professional intelligence service. He inquires into the mechanisms of dictatorship and the day-to-day effects of surveillance and suspicion. Masterful and thorough at once, he takes the reader through this dark chapter of German postwar history, supplying key information on perpetrators, informers, and victims. In an assessment of post-communist memory politics, he critically discusses the consequences of opening the files and the outcomes of the Stasi debate in reunified Germany. A major guide for research on communist secret-police forces, this book is considered the standard reference work on the Stasi.
Since the turn of the century much has happened in politics, governments, spying, technology, global business, mobile communications, and global competition on national and corporate levels. These sweeping changes have nearly annihilated privacy anywhere in the world and have also affected how global information warfare is waged and what must be done to counter its attacks. In light of increased attacks since 2002, Global Information Warfare: The New Digital Battlefield, Second Edition provides a critical update on the nature and approaches to global information warfare. It focuses on threats, vulnerabilities, attacks, and defenses from the perspectives of various players such as governments, corporations, terrorists, and private citizens. Upgrades to the Second Edition Include: Revised discussions of changes and impacts of global information warfare since 2002 Updated analyses of the capabilities of several nation-states as well as nonstate actors A comprehensive list of incidents that have occurred in the past year to show the scope of the problem of GIW Discussions of post-9/11 governmental changes and shifting priorities with clearer hindsight than was possible in the first edition The book underscores how hostile countries, business competitors, terrorists, and others are waging information warfare against adversaries, even from across the globe. It describes attacks on information systems through theft, Internet espionage, deception, and sabotage, and illustrates countermeasures used to defeat these threats. The second edition of Global Information Warfare contains a wealth of information and detailed analyses of capabilities of contemporary information technology and the capabilities of the individuals and groups who employ it in their respective digital wars. It is a crucial source for gaining the best understanding of the current state of information warfare and the most effective ways to counter it.
Interrogation, Intelligence and Security examines the origins and effects of a group of interrogation techniques known as the 'five techniques'. Through its in-depth analysis the book reveals how British forces came to use these controversial methods. Focusing on the British colony of Aden (1963-67), the height of 'the troubles' in Northern Ireland (1971), and the conflict in Iraq (2003), the book explores the use of hooding to restrict vision, white noise, stress positions, limited sleep and a limited diet. There are clear parallels between these three case studies and the use of controversial interrogation techniques today. Readers will be able to make informed judgements about whether, on the basis of the results of these cases, interrogation techniques that might be described as torture can be justified. This book will be of particular interest to security professionals, academics and members of the public interested in the torture debate, intelligence, the military, counter-insurgency, counter-terrorism, foreign policy and law enforcement. -- .
Sober, accurate and all the more thrilling for it. The best thing on Blake that we are likely to get for a very long time.' JOHN LE CARRE On 3 May 1961, after a trial conducted largely in secret, a man named George Blake was sentenced to an unprecedented forty-two years in jail. At the time few details of his crimes were made known. By his own confession he was a Soviet spy, and rumours later circulated that his actions had endangered British agents, but the reasons for such a severe punishment were never revealed. To the public, Blake was simply the greatest traitor of the Cold War. Yet, as Roger Hermiston reveals in this thrilling new biography, his story touches not only the depths of treachery but also the heights of heroism. Drawing on hitherto unpublished records from his trial, new revelations about his dramatic jailbreak from Wormwood Scrubs, and original interviews with former spies, friends and the man himself, The Greatest Traitor sheds new light on this most complex of characters and presents a fascinating shadow history of the Cold War.
Moscow in the late 1970s: one by one, CIA assets are disappearing. The perils of American arrogance, mixed with bureaucratic infighting, had left the country unspeakably vulnerable to ultra-sophisticated Russian electronic surveillance.. The Spy in Moscow Station tells of a time when―much like today―Russian spycraft was proving itself far ahead of the best technology the U.S. had to offer. This is the true story of unorthodox, underdog intelligence officers who fought an uphill battle against their government to prove that the KGB had pulled off the most devastating and breathtakingly thorough penetration of U.S. national security in history. Incorporating declassified internal CIA memos and diplomatic cables, this suspenseful narrative reads like a thriller―but real lives were at stake, and every twist is true as the US and USSR attempt to wrongfoot each other in eavesdropping technology and tradecraft. The book also carries a chilling warning for the present: like the State and CIA officers who were certain their "sweeps" could detect any threat in Moscow, we don't know what we don't know.
This book is an in-depth examination of the relations between Ireland and the former East Germany between the end of the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. It explores political, diplomatic, economic, media and cultural issues. The long and tortuous process of establishing diplomatic relations is unique in the annals of diplomatic history. Central in this study are the activities of the Stasi. They show how and where East German intelligence obtained information on Ireland and Northern Ireland and also what kind of information was gathered. A particularly interesting aspect of the book is the monitoring of the activities of the Irish Republican Army and the Irish National Liberation Army and their campaigns against the British army in West Germany. The Stasi had infiltrated West German security services and knew about Irish suspects and their contacts with West German terrorist groups. East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949-90 makes an original contribution to diplomatic, intelligence, terrorist and Cold War studies. -- . |
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