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

ValleyWag has gotten this terribly intriguing tip about the former general/CIA Director’s possible comeback. More intriguing still is speculation that he could be headed for the high-profile data mining company, Palantir. Continue reading…     

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.

Could “total information awareness” have prevented the killings in Colorado? No. Here’s why.

Palantir Technologies, the Silicon Valley upstart-turned intelligence community darling, has hired Gavin Hood, formerly a liaison between British and American spy services. More here.

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

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.

I was a guest on this week’s “On the Media,” talking about the renewal of the Patriot Act, and whether the Obama administration is secretly interpreting the law in a way that allows the government to collect more information.