Here’s the first thing you need to know about a reported “cyber attack” against natural gas pipeline operators that was revealed last week: It wasn’t actually an attack. More here.    

Have a bunch of Silicon Valley computer geeks figured out how to stop terrorists?

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 [...]

No one asks, “Where were you on 9/10?” and most people don’t remember. It’s only in hindsight that the details of a thoroughly ordinary day seem so remarkable.

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 [...]

National Journal’s Bruce Stokes learned in the documents that, while he was the magazine’s international-economics correspondent, he was unknowingly the central character in an apparent Chinese espionage plot. Read the full story here.

The Watchers is on sale today in paperback. You can pick up a copy in your favorite bookstore or online. It’s got a nifty new cover, as well as a new afterword on the Christmas Day bombing attempt. That event occurred as the hardcover was going to press, so we couldn’t work it in. I’m glad it’s in the new version, because it ties up the theme of the whole book very nicely.

Here are some links to bookstores selling the paperback:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Borders

Powell’s

IndieBound

Penguin