As aircraft and weapons have become more precise, human beings have become less essential to the conduct of war. The rise of unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly known as drones, promises to push human beings further out of the loop. This essay is part of the Hoover Institution’s Koret-Taube Task Force on National Security and […]

I was a guest today on The Diane Rehm Show, discussing drones and the future of the United States’ strategy to fight terrorism. We also discussed what drones mean for the future of war and when drones will be showing up in U.S. cities.  You can listen to the full show here.

A new private intelligence outfit, formed by ex-Blackwater execs and former team members of the pre-9/11 Able Danger program, says it has human sources inside the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran. Check out the full–rather incredible–details here.

Before a team of elite Navy forces stormed Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, they and senior US officials had closely studied a digital mock-up of the facility and even a physical miniature, able to be laid out on a table. It showed them the intelligence community’s best guess about what Bin Laden’s hiding […]

What a difference two years, a couple hundred drone strikes, and killing Osama bin Laden make. With the news that a CIA-led operation ended the life of the world’s most wanted man, the long-embattled agency may have politically rehabilitated itself after years of controversy that once seemed likely to sink it. Read the full story […]

As the CIA has gotten better at hunting down and killing people, it has come to look increasingly like a military outfit run by civilians.The ascendancy of Gen. David Petraeus to CIA director begins to make a lot more sense when you consider that the difference between CIA and military operations is getting less significant […]

“They already know who it is.” That’s how one former U.S. official responded the Justice Department’s years-long investigation of a suspected leaker of classified intelligence. So, why are prosecutors trying to force a well-known journalist to identify this suspect before a federal grand jury? And what does it mean for the future of a free […]

Here’s my take on why President Obama fired Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and why the president should consider getting rid of the spy post altogether.

Harold Koh made big news last night, laying out for the first time the administration’s position that drone strikes against terrorists and militants are legal. Here’s my first take for the Atlantic on the news and what it means for the administration.

Here’s a departure from all the talk of surveillance and book tours. I was at a breakfast yesterday morning with Harold Koh, the State Department’s legal adviser, and had a chance to ask him where he stands on the use of unmmanned drones to kill suspected terrorists. I wrote a lenghty piece about this issue […]