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 joined NPR’s Scott Simon recently for a discussion about unmanned aircraft, and whether we’ll soon  be seeing tiny drones flying around American cities. The full audio is here.

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 [...]

Nick Clegg is taking on the U.K.’s police state. Here’s my analysis for The Daily Beast on what it means for U.S. politicians.

C-SPAN has been re-airing my book talk from the International Spy Museum in Washington. This was on February 18, publication day for The Watchers.

Or do they just help investigators find someone after he’s blown something up? In light of the failed attack on Times Square, I joined “Word of Mouth” on New Hampshire Public Radio to talk about the pros and cons of surveillance cameras. Do we need more? Or are they giving us a false sense of security?

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 [...]