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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart
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.”
- Amy Zegart
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.
- Amy Zegart
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic
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.
- Amy Zegart, The Atlantic