Author Archive

Amy Zegart

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation

Amy Zegart is the co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. She is the author of three books examining U.S. intelligence challenges, including Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11.
Ideas

The Global Race for Big National-Security Ideas Is On

The United States faces genuinely new challenges—but tries to understand them using outmoded theories from a bygone era.

Ideas

Today, Everyone’s a Nuclear Spy

Nuclear intelligence isn’t just for government agencies anymore. Self-appointed watchdogs are finding creative ways to foil regimes that pursue atomic weapons.

Ideas

The Whistle-Blower Really Knows How to Write

As an intelligence report, the complaint against Trump holds up well. The author carefully explained where the information came from and left investigators a number of concrete leads.

Ideas

After 9/11, US Intelligence Reinvented Itself. It's Time to Do It Again

After missing the Sept. 11 plot, spy agencies reoriented toward terrorism. Now technological threats require a new round of reforms.

Ideas

Trump’s Cyber Strategy Is Far Too Optimistic

The director of national intelligence’s threat assessment exposes two of its pillars as convenient fictions.

Ideas

The Divide Between Silicon Valley and Washington Is a National-Security Threat

Closing the gap between technology leaders and policy makers will require a radically different approach from the defense establishment.

Ideas

Trump Says Russia Isn’t Still Targeting the U.S.—But He’s Wrong

Putin’s government is waging information warfare against America, but the president is ignoring his intelligence advisers as they sound the alarm.

Ideas

The Self-Inflicted Demise of American Power

The effect of Trump’s foreign-policy doctrine can be summed up as “Make America Weak Again.”

Ideas

The Specter of a Chinese Mole in America

The case of a suspected turncoat couldn’t come at a worse time for the intelligence community.

Ideas

Trump Isn't the Only Problem with Trump's Foreign Policy

America’s approach to the world is a complicated mess, for reasons that predate the current president.

Science & Tech

The NSA Confronts a Problem of Its Own Making

Recent cyberattacks show what happens when America’s secret-keepers can’t keep their secrets.

Ideas

Trump vs. the Spies

In this digital age, it is reasonable to ask just what America’s intelligence community still brings to the table. The answer is a lot.