State Secrets

This week we’re excited to welcome Jared Maples, to the show. Jared is the Director of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.   I caught up with Jared to talk about how he and his team work to counter threats from terrorism, cyber-attacks and most recently, the growing and complicated issue of state sponsored disinformation.

Peter Singer is co-author along with August Cole of the new book Burn-In a Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution. Peter is also a strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

Richard Haass- President of the Council on Foreign Relations

This week we’re joined by Cipher Brief Expert Mike Vigil.  Mike is the former Chief of International Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Before his retirement, he was one of the most highly-decorated agents within the agency and was responsible for numerous multi-national operations, the largest involved 36 countries.

Welcome to the next episode of the State Secrets podcast.  This week we catch up with Brian Raymond, who is the Senior Director of the National Security Group at Primer, a machine intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco.  Primer is one of our private sector partners at The Cipher Brief and is part of our daily open source collection team.  They are involved in pushing the envelope of technology applied towards national security objectives that use machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Admiral James Stavridis spent more than thirty years in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of 4-star Admiral.  He served as Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and previously commanded U.S. Southern Command.  You can imagine that someone with that kind of experience has seen a lot in his career, so to retire and then write a book about character is an interesting choice. Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher talkes with Admiral Stavridis about what made him want to zero in on the issue of character.

This is part 2 of our border security series.  In this episode Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian catches back up with Mike Fisher, former Chief of the US Customs and Border Protection, to talk about recent developments with Mexico, the situation surrounding children in detention along the border, threats of deportations by the U.S. administration and what it will take to get the border crisis under control.  

Border security is a complex issue. From conflict zones like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, to geo-political hot spots like Israel and North Korea. International borders are where military, law enforcement, crime, politics and policy collide. Rarely do countries have the ability to control their entire borders, leaving open the possibility of smuggling and illegal immigration. The U.S. is among the world’s countries facing a challenging border security dynamic. We spoke with two experts.

Richard Clarke has been on the cutting edge of terrorism and cyber issues for quite some time.  He served more than 30 years in government and was the first White House official tasked with taking charge of U.S. cybersecurity policy.  He’s written eight books, half fiction, half non-fiction and his latest book, ‘The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats’ was written with Robert Knake.

If you’ve done any reporting on national security issues in Washington DC, you already know JJ Green. He’s been covering national security for the city’s most popular radio station for 15 years now.  As you can imagine, he’s seen a lot of changes in that time.

It seems like everyone in Washington, DC wants to write a book these days, and more of them are, even if they aren't the big names you're used to hearing.  There are stories to tell in this town, and there are sleuths who know how to go about telling them.  Keith Urbahn is a co-owner of the literary agency Javelin, which started out getting book deals for smaller names with bigger stories, but when they signed James Comey for his book released in 2017, they knew things had changed.  

Christopher Krebs left his role as the Director of Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft back in 2017 and went back to work for the government.  He joined the Department of Homeland Security with a top priority to get anew Agency established- one that put a solid focus on government support for a private sector facing an onslaught of cyber threats.   We caught up with CISA's first Director and biggest advocate, Christopher Krebs to talk about what he hopes to do now that the Agency is established.  

The Cipher Brief spoke with Steve Hall about how he believes the President's negative comments towards the Intelligence Community are negatively impacting national security, and about what matters and what doesn’t, in an era where the Intelligence Community often finds itself in the crosshairs.

A recent worldwide threat report delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by leaders of the Intelligence Community made clear that China is the largest national security threat to the United States.   This wee, State Secrets talks to one of the world's most renowned experts on the U.S.- China relationship, Graham Allison.  His 2017 book Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydides' Trap? was a national and international best seller.

We spoke with Cipher Brief Expert John Sipher, to understand the impact of the President's comments towards the Intelligence Community leaders, following a firestorm of debate after the presentation of the worldwide threat assessment by the Intelligence Community leadership to Congress.