How does a security company know it’s not selling the building blocks of a cyber weapon to China or North Korea? Continue reading…

In a major speech on US national security, the President signaled that some wartime authorities will not be withdrawn. Continue reading…    

The government claims Mark Owen violated secrecy agreements in writing about the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. Here’s how the ex-SEAL can avoid jail time.

My op-ed in today’s New York Times looks at a decade of secret government surveillance and why we’re still powerless against it.

A just-published paper offers new insights and intriguing details about the New York Times’ 2005 blockbuster on government spying. More here.

  Why is the government pressing so hard to find leaks of classified information? Because it can. More here.

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 draft indictment against former NSA official Thomas Drake, which was never filed, shows that the government contemplated prosecuting him for a range of crimes, including conspiracy. But many of the most serious charges were dropped. Why? And what does it tell us about the Obama administration’s ongoing campaign to staunch leaks of classified information? [...]

I’ve long known that, on many important national security decisions, former president George W. Bush wasn’t in the driver’s seat. But I was shocked to discover that at one of the most critical points of his presidency, Bush wasn’t even in the car. Here’s my review of Bush’s shocking admission, in his new memoir, about [...]