“I asked someone who had worked at Tailored Access Operations [the NSA’s black bag division], ‘I’m in your cubicle at work; what am I seeing?’  and he said, ‘I’m sitting at a monitor, and I’m typing code.  And behind me is a supervisor, and behind him is a lawyer, and they’re taking down all of my keystrokes.'” 

Fred Kaplan rejoins the show to talk about his new book, Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War (Simon & Schuster). ( We last talked in 2013).  We get into the tangled, wild-west story of how cyber warfare is waged, where it might go in future, and why it’s the ultimate asymmetric warfare.  Fred also tells us about the role of cyber in the success of the Iraq surge, the story of Stuxnet, the problem with not having rules of engagement for cyber war, how he came to respect the NSA, the statist/libertarian divide at the core of encryption battles, and what he thinks of Edward Snowden.  Give it a listen!  And go buy Fred’s book, Dark Territory! 

“In the US, privacy has become a quaint notion.” 

Then Charles Bivona joins us for his monthly installment of #NJPoet’s Corner, where we focus on his dream course: Batman Studies.  Go listen!  And buy #NJPoet, Chuck’s newly-published poetry collection! 

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist.  The conversation was recorded at Mr. Kaplan’s home in Brooklyn on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder.  The conversation with Charles Bivona was recorded on the same setup, at his homeI recorded the intro and outro on the same setup.  Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro.  Photo of Mr. Kaplan by Carol Dronsfield.