New Books In National Security

Machine Learning for Criminology and Crime Research: At the Crossroads (Routledge, 2022) reviews the roots of the intersection between machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI), and research on crime; examines the current state of the art in this area of scholarly inquiry; and discusses future perspectives that may emerge from this relationship. As machine learning and AI approaches become increasingly pervasive, it is critical for criminology and crime research to reflect on the ways in which these paradigms could reshape the study of crime. In response, this book seeks to stimulate this discussion. The opening part is framed through a historical lens, with the first chapter dedicated to the origins of the relationship between AI and research on crime, refuting the novelty narrative that often surrounds this debate. The second presents a compact overview of the history of AI, further providing a nontechnical primer on machine learning. The following chapter reviews some of the most important trends in c

In the late eighties and early nineties, driven by the post–Cold War environment and lessons learned during military operations, United States policy makers made intelligence support to the military the Intelligence Community's top priority. In response to this demand, the CIA and DoD instituted policy and organizational changes that altered their relationship with one another. While debates over the future of the Intelligence Community were occurring on Capitol Hill, the CIA and DoD were expanding their relationship in peacekeeping and nation-building operations in Somalia and the Balkans. By the late 1990s, some policy makers and national security professionals became concerned that intelligence support to military operations had gone too far. In Subordinating Intelligence: The DoD/CIA Post-Cold War Relationship (UP of Kentucky Press, 2019), David P. Oakley reveals that, despite these concerns, no major changes to national intelligence or its priorities were implemented. These concerns were forgotten after

By 1990 the Berlin Wall had fallen and the East German state security service folded. For forty years, they had amassed more than a billion pages in manila files detailing the lives of their citizens. Almost a hundred thousand Stasi employees, many of them experienced officers with access to highly personal information, found themselves unemployed overnight. Ralph Hope’s The Grey Men: Pursuing the Stasi Into the Present (Oneworld, 2022) is the story of what they did next. Former FBI agent Ralph Hope uses present-day sources and access to Stasi records to track and expose ex-officers working everywhere from the Russian energy sector to the police and even the government department tasked with prosecuting Stasi crimes. He examines why the key players have never been called to account and, in doing so, asks if we have really learned from the past at all. He highlights a man who continued to fight the Stasi for thirty years after the Wall fell, and reveals a truth that many today don't want spoken. This interview

Most existing literature regarding civil-military relations in the United States references either the Cold War or post-Cold War era, leaving a significant gap in understanding as our political landscape rapidly changes. Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: The Military, Society, Politics, and Modern War (Oxford UP, 2020) builds upon our current perception of civil-military relations, filling in this gap and providing contemporary understanding of these concepts. The authors examine modern factors such as increasing partisanship and political division, evolving technology, new dynamics of armed conflict, and the breakdown of conventional democratic and civil-military norms, focusing on the multifaceted ways they affect civil-military relations and American society as a whole. Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks, and Daniel Maurer, serving as both editors of the volume and authors themselves, recruited contributing authors who come from a diversity of backgrounds, many of whom have served in the military,

In Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military (Duke UP, 2021), Andrew Bickford analyzes the US military's attempts to design performance enhancement technologies and create pharmacological "supersoldiers" capable of withstanding extreme trauma. Bickford traces the deep history of efforts to biologically fortify and extend the health and lethal power of soldiers from the Cold War era into the twenty-first century, from early adoptions of mandatory immunizations to bio-protective gear, to the development and spread of new performance enhancing drugs during the global War on Terrorism. In his examination of government efforts to alter soldiers' bodies through new technologies, Bickford invites us to contemplate what constitutes heroism when armor becomes built in, wired in, and even edited into the molecular being of an American soldier. Lurking in the background and dark recesses of all US military enhancement research, Bickford demonstrates, is the desire to preserve US military and impe

War is ever changing. Just within the last decade or so, new domains have opened up as potential battlefields of the present and the future. These range from traditional land battles to space as well as social media, among other domains. Combined this with the recent resurgence of great power competition on the world stage, the challenges being faced are quite daunting. What are the implications for military strategy? Such issues are addressed in Old and New Battlespaces: Society, Military Power, and War (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2022) co-authored by Jahara Matisek and Buddhika Jayamaha. Jahara ‘Franky’ Matisek is a Lieutenant Colonel and Senior Pilot in the US Air Force and will be serving as a Military Professor at the US Naval War College this Fall. He earned his PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University and was previously an Associate Professor in the Department of Military Strategic Studies and Senior Fellow at the Homeland Defense Institute at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He is also the Fell

Knowledge Regulation and National Security in Postwar America (University of Chicago Press, 2022) is the first historical study of export control regulations as a tool for the sharing and withholding of knowledge. In this groundbreaking book, Dr. Mario Daniels and Dr. John Krige set out to show the enormous political relevance that export control regulations have had for American debates about national security, foreign policy, and trade policy since 1945. Indeed, they argue that from the 1940s to today the issue of how to control the transnational movement of information has been central to the thinking and actions of the guardians of the American national security state. They argue that every single day beginning in the 1940s, US export controls have intervened in the global sharing of scientific-technological knowledge. The expansion of control over knowledge and know-how is apparent from the increasingly systematic inclusion of universities and research institutions into a system that in the 1950s and 196

In Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party is Reshaping the World (Oneworld, 2021), Dr. Clive Hamilton and Dr. Mareike Ohlberg explores how the Chinese Communist Party is determined to reshape the world in its image. The book details China’s decades-long infiltration of the West threatens democracy, human rights, privacy, security and free speech. Throughout North America and Europe, political and business elites, Wall Street, Hollywood, think tanks, universities and the Chinese diaspora are being manipulated with money, pressure and privilege. In this book, the authors reveal the myriad ways the CCP is fulfilling its dream of undermining liberal values and controlling the world. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoi

Saudi global export of an ultra-conservative strand of Islam and its impact on Muslim countries and communities across the globe has been a hotly debate topic for more than two decades. The rise of jihadist groups like Al Qaeda and the Islamic State and their attacks in the United States, Europe, Asia, and Africa fuelled the debate, particularly since the September 11, 2001, strikes in New York and Washington. Critics of Saudi Arabia charge that Wahhabism and Salafism, the ultra-conservative interpretations of Islam associated with the kingdom, created the theological and ideological incubator and the breeding ground for jihadism. Wahhabism and the World, Understanding Saudi Arabia’s Global Influence on Islam (Oxford UP, 2022) edited by Peter Mandaville constitutes one of the few, if not the first comprehensive, impassionate interrogations of the impact on the faith of Saudi financial and other support for the global spread of what Mandaville calls Saudi religious transnationalism and is more colloquially ref

Defections from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were an important part of the narrative of the Republic of China (ROC) in Taiwan during the Cold War, but their stories have previously barely been told, less still examined, in English. During the 1960s, 70s and 80s, the ROC government paid much special attention to these anti-communist heroes (fangong yishi). Their choices to leave behind the turmoil of the PRC were a propaganda coup for the Nationalist one-party state in Taiwan, proving the superiority of the "Free China" that they had created there.  In Defectors from the PRC to Taiwan, 1960-1989: The Anti-Communist Righteous Warriors (Routledge, 2022), Morris looks at the stories behind these headlines, what the defectors understood about the ROC before they arrived, and how they dealt with the reality of their post-defection lives in Taiwan. He also looks at how these dramatic individual histories of migration were understood to prove essential differences between the two regimes, while at the same ti

Our contemporary political condition is obsessed with immunity. The immunity of bodies and the body politic; personal immunity and herd immunity; how to immunize the social system against breakdown. The obsession intensifies with every new crisis and the mobilization of yet more powers of war and police, from quarantine to border closures and from vaccination certificates to immunological surveillance.  Engaging four key concepts with enormous cultural weight – Cell, Self, System and Sovereignty – The Politics of Immunity: Security and the Policing of Bodies (Verso, 2022) moves from philosophical biology to intellectual history and from critical theory to psychoanalysis to expose the politics underpinning the way immunity is imagined. At the heart of this imagination is the way security has come to dominate the whole realm of human experience. From biological cell to political subject, and from physiological system to the social body, immunity folds into security, just as security folds into immunity. The boo

Digital connections permeate our lives-and so do data breaches. Given that we must be online for basic communication, finance, healthcare, and more, it is alarming how difficult it is to create rules for securing our personal information. Despite the passage of many data security laws, data breaches are increasing at a record pace. In Breached!: Why Data Security Law Fails and How to Improve It (Oxford UP, 2022), Daniel Solove and Woodrow Hartzog, two of the world's leading experts on privacy and data security, argue that the law fails because, ironically, it focuses too much on the breach itself. Drawing insights from many fascinating stories about data breaches, Solove and Hartzog show how major breaches could have been prevented or mitigated through a different approach to data security rules. Current law is counterproductive. It pummels organizations that have suffered a breach but doesn't address the many other actors that contribute to the problem: software companies that create vulnerable software, dev

In Chinese Communist Espionage: An Intelligence Primer (Naval Institute Press, 2019), authors Mathew Brazil and Peter Mattis present an unprecedented look into the murky world of Chinese espionage. An introduction-cum-reference guide, the book describes the institutions, operations, individuals, and ideology that have shaped modern China’s intelligence apparatus. On the podcast, we talk about the role of ideology in the production and consumption of intelligence, why China’s intelligence services managed the transition to the digital age so effectively, who China thinks is winning the intelligence contest with the United States, and more.  Dr. Mathew (Matt) Brazil is a senior analyst at BluePath Labs in Washington, DC, and he is currently working on a second book which will be a narrative account of Beijing's contemporary espionage and influence offensive. Before helping to write Chinese Communist Espionage, he worked as a soldier, diplomat, export controller, and corporate security investigator. He has spent

A hilltop at the heart of Jerusalem, Israel, is known to Jews and Christians as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. It has been the site of Muslim rioting during the month-long religious holiday of Ramadan. How did a holiday dedicated to fasting, prayer and charitable-giving become a time of violence – and not in Jerusalem alone? Recent years have seen Ramadan attacks in countries as different as France and Syria, Tunisia, Afghanistan, Kuwait, and Somalia. Nevertheless, there is something distinctive about violence on the Temple Mount, a location that some have called ground zero. Ambassador Dore Gold will provide insight into the dangerous dynamic of Ramadan violence: What incites it? Who benefits from it? And how can it best be countered? Ambassador Dore Gold is the President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. Among his many articles and books books are The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Iran Defies the West and Tower of Babel: How the United Nations has Fueled Global Chaos. Renee Ga

The attacks of 9/11 changed the course of the global counter-terrorism order which has entrenched a system of global governance. This institutional creep is arguably eroding national borders, spheres of domestic governance, human rights, and seeps into the daily lives of ordinary citizens in largely unforeseen aspects. Perhaps just as alarming, there is limited accountability on the part of either international institutions, state or private actors of who are instigators in this ever-expansive transnational counter-terror framework.  In this conversation, Professor Fiona de Londras and I discuss these and other issues in her latest book, The Practice and Problems of Transnational Counter-Terrorism, published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. This is serious stuff, which is relevant to international lawyers, constitutional law experts, human rights activists and anyone who is concerned about the implications of the expanding sphere of the institution of transnational counter-terrorism and how it impacts t

Michael Graziano’s intriguing book fuses two landmark titles in American history: Perry Miller’s Errand into the Wilderness (1956), about the religious worldview of the early Massachusetts colonists, and David Martin’s Wilderness of Mirrors (1980), about the dangers and delusions inherent to the Central Intelligence Agency. Fittingly, Errand Into the Wilderness of Mirrors: Religion and the History of the CIA (U Chicago Press, 2021) investigates the dangers and delusions that ensued from the religious worldview of the early molders of the Central Intelligence Agency. Graziano argues that the religious approach to intelligence by key OSS and CIA figures like “Wild” Bill Donovan and Edward Lansdale was an essential, and overlooked, factor in establishing the agency’s concerns, methods, and understandings of the world. In a practical sense, this was because the Roman Catholic Church already had global networks of people and safe places that American agents could use to their advantage. But more tellingly, Grazian

Despite attracting headlines and hype, insurgents rarely win. Even when they claim territory and threaten governmental writ, they typically face a military backlash too powerful to withstand. States struggle with addressing the political roots of such movements, and their military efforts mostly just ‘mow the grass’; yet, for the insurgent, the grass is nonetheless mowed–and the armed project must start over. “In reviewing the overall insurgent experience in recent years, there are exceedingly few instances where they have toppled an established government and seized sustained power. Indeed, rather than being overthrown one after the other, most states survive the onslaught of insurgency, often by relying on their superior resources and military capabilities. Though the counterinsurgency manuals preach mobilisation and hearts and minds, it is typically through suppression that states contain their adversary, causing their movement to either fizzle our or to become a peripheral concern. Outright victory may el

Although there is often opposition to individual wars, most people continue to believe that the arms industry is necessary in some form: to safeguard our security, provide jobs and stimulate the economy. Not only conservatives, but many progressives and liberals, support it for these reasons. Indefensible puts forward a devastating challenge to this conventional wisdom, which has normalized the existence of the most savage weapons of mass destruction ever known. Indefensible: Seven Myths that Sustain the Global Arms Trade (Zed Books, 2017) is the essential handbook for those who want to debunk the arguments of the industry and its supporters: deploying case studies, statistics and irrefutable evidence to demonstrate they are fundamentally flawed, both factually and logically. Far from protecting us, the book shows how the arms trade undermines our security by fanning the flames of war, terrorism and global instability. In countering these myths, the book points to ways in which we can combat the arms trade's

The Schengen area consists of 26 European states, most members of the EU but some not, and consists of two main features: the absence of intra-Schengen state border controls on persons and a common external border control on entry into the Schengen area. However, this inclusivity has been threatened over time by events like refugee crises, terrorism, and a global pandemic. In light of the present refugee influx from Ukraine, the issue of border control in Europe merits closer inspection. In the first episode of our new themed series Migration, Dr. Elspeth Guild, Jean Monnet Professor ad personam at Queen Mary, University of London, takes us through the trajectory of abolition and re-introduction of border control in the Schengen states from its formation in 1985 to the present day, in the context of her work “Schengen Borders and Multiple National States of Emergency: From Refugees to Terrorism to COVID-19”, published by Brill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by

South Korean presidential election ended and the conservative party candidate, Yoon Suk-yeol won the election. How will he balance the relationships between Korea and the US and China? The current progressive Moon Jae-in administration has pursued strategic ambiguity in foreign policy, trying to maintain a strong alliance relationship with the US while pursuing an economic partnership with China. During the campaign, Yoon promised that he will reverse the Moon’s foreign policy and pursue strategic clarity, emphasizing security concerns in the Korean Peninsula. In this episode, Dr. Sungmin Cho shares his expertise on South and North Korea’s relations with China, North Korea’s newly posed threats this year, and the security dynamics surrounding the Korean Peninsula. Dr. Sungmin Cho is a professor of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, an academic institute of the US Department of Defense, based in Hawaii. His area of expertise covers China-Korean Peninsula relations, North Korea’s nuc