Something is changing in our country, and most
people feel it before they can explain it. My
guest today is Shane Harris, a national security
journalist at The Atlantic and a former Washington
Post national security reporter. Shane's known
for deeply reported stories on intelligence,
surveillance, and cyber conflict. And at The
Post, he was a part of the team that won the
2022 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. He's
also the author of two books on surveillance
and cyber conflict, The Watchers and At War.
And he's known for deeply reported stories that
connect intelligence tradecraft to real world
consequences. In fact, he's one of those guys
that somehow has sources inside the report stuff
that even those of us in the national security
space are like, wow, how do you know that? So
Shane, welcome to the show. Good to see you,
John. Thanks for having me. My pleasure. It's
great to see you too. I want to talk about your
career and changes you've witnessed in U .S.
national security and also some recent events.
But I think Americans are rightly focused on
domestic economic issues now. But I think it's
nonetheless important to show what happens abroad
and in our national security that will eventually
impact us at home. So I want to get to some of
that stuff, if you don't mind. Sure. That's great.
Well, first of all, I know you spent several
years at The Washington Post. Your reporting
was excellent. And like I said, often surprising
to a former intelligence officer about just how
much you uncovered. So what is your take on what's
happening at the Post now and maybe the state
of media and journalism related to foreign affairs
in general? Yeah, well, my my my big take on
what's happening at the post is it's terribly
sad. You know, I spent seven years there and
worked with a lot of people who aren't there
anymore, either because they left, you know,
a year or so ago, like I did, or they got they
lost their jobs or in the recent round of layoffs.
You know, I said this publicly. I think that.
The sad truth about what's going on at The Post
is the people who've been in charge don't know
how to run a newspaper. They just don't really
seem to understand, you know, the business model
of journalism in the year 2026, which I'm not
saying that there's some, you know, obvious way
to do this. But, you know. It seems to me that
they alienated a lot of their subscribers with
things like canceling a presidential endorsement
11 days before the endorsement, which, look,
I'm in the category of people who don't think
newspapers should be doing presidential endorsements
either. But if you do it 11, if you cancel it
11 days before an election, you're going to annoy
some people. And they lost hundreds of thousands
of subscribers because of that. There just never
was really a plan for how to make money, given
all the great reporting that people were doing
at The Post. The Wall Street Journal figured
out how to do that. The New York Times figured
out how to do that. My current employer has figured
out how to do that. And I don't think that the
answer is unknowable. I just think that the people
who are at the top really did not make good decisions.
And ultimately, Jeff Bezos is very distracted
and is more interested in building rockets and
competing with Elon Musk than running a newspaper.
Well, does he even need to make money? I mean,
the guy's got so much money, he could run the
Washington Post out of his back pocket and not
even realize where the money is going. So in
a certain sense, if I was super rich and I was
running something, I would just like say, hey,
make this the best in the world. If it costs
me some money, fine. If it makes money, great.
But like, I don't get it. And that's exactly
what people thought. I mean, when we were when
I was at the Post, that's what people thought
that he was intending. You know. There was a
period where we were profitable, particularly,
you know, during the first Trump administration
where we had tons of readers and subscribers.
I mean, that is the important difference between
someone who just reads the paper and who actually
pays for it. And not that, you know, you know,
just because you have a billionaire owner, they
should run a newspaper like a charity. But profit
was never going to be the thing for him. I mean,
it was I mean, even in the days when newspapers
made, you know, hefty, hefty profits, you know,
decades ago. The Post was never going to generate
the kind of money that would matter to somebody
as rich as him. So my question is, and I don't
know that we know the answer to this, at what
point did Bezos go from being a kind of benevolent
owner who, as he said, wanted this to be his
legacy and the thing that he looked back on when
he was in his 90s as what he was most proud of?
to somebody who said, no, I actually need this
thing to be more efficient and turn a profit.
I think you can read in his very outward political
overtures to the current administration, you
know, including Amazon buying, you know, the
Melania documentary for $40 million, which would
have gone a long way to helping a post get out
of the red. You know, I do think that there's
something to this kind of... rightward tilt of
the editorial page and a kind of gutting of the
newsroom that's more interested in turning it
into. Something that can be self -sustaining,
which is great. But there's again, the problem
is there's no plan here. Like, I mean, at the
end of the day, they said we want to focus on
politics and national security journalism, which
that's great. Those are two things that I've
spent my career writing about. But then how are
you any different than like Politico? Why are
you The Washington Post when you don't have a
sports section, a local section? You don't have
a foreign desk anymore. Color me skeptical that
you can record on U .S. national security without
having a foreign staff. It doesn't work that
way. Oh, it's sad. That's one thing for sure.
So now you're at The Atlantic and you've written
a number of excellent articles. And one recent
one that I found really fascinating had to do
with your potential brush with an Iranian spy
in an article called They Killed My Source. Can
you give the listeners a bit of background on
the story and like what ethical lines did you
have to think about while you're pursuing that
story? Yeah, this was one of the wilder stories
in my career, which has had some pretty wild
ones. So this actually goes all the way back
to 2016, and I waited a long time to write about
this for various reasons that we can talk about
if you want. But back in 2016, a source of mine
in the cybersecurity world alerted me to the
fact that there had been a message posted on
essentially like a bulletin board on the dark
web that was known to be frequented by hacker
groups. And this person posting this message
claimed to be part of an Iranian hacker collective,
which was well known at the time, and that they
had information about the downing of a U .S.
stealth drone over Iran, which had taken place
earlier. And in my experience, you know, I get
emails from and texts from people fairly frequently
that claim to know something about, you know.
mysterious beings buried in the desert or the
fillings in my teeth are talking to me, right?
And then there's people who claim to know something
that sounds a little bit more potentially real,
but most of the time they turn out to really
not know much anything at all. And it's those
kind of inquiries that, you know, it's worth
just firing it off an email just to see if the
person is completely full of it or not. Like,
what does it cost you? It costs you 30 seconds.
So I wrote to this person and said, hey, I heard
you have this information. You claim to have
information. Long story short, he gets back in
touch with me a few days later and starts going
through this whole protocol to, like, verify
my identity. Based on things that he must have
researched online about my biography to kind
of verify that I am who I am. And as I'm talking
to him, I'm like, this guy sure seems to be,
you know, kind of professionalized about this.
This is interesting. And what he told me was
that he was an Iranian intelligence officer.
that he was part of essentially their cyber warfare
unit, that it was his staff that had hacked the
stealth drone and forced it to crash, and that
he had information about the regime's cyber activities
that he wanted to leak to a reporter. And I'm
kind of collapsing, you know, several days of
conversation here, but... He said he was a regime
insider, that his father was a senior intelligence
person in the intelligence ministry. And he clearly
had grudges against people in the bureaucracy
and had like revenge that he wanted to exact
on people for reasons that were not entirely
clear to me at the time by leaking on them. So
he was sort of interested in kind of burning
the house down. And in the course of this, he
then told me that in addition to being an Iranian
intelligence officer, he had also been an agent
for the CIA. So he had spied for the Americans.
And that the relationship had ended not on great
terms. I didn't know what that meant at the time.
And that his hope was that in the course of leaking
information to me that would then show up in
news articles, the CIA would notice this. And
at some point he was going to see if I would
be willing to call the agency on his behalf.
Get back in touch with them. Get back in touch
with them and say, hey, you remember your boy
who you broke up with a while ago? He's got new
stuff for you. He's got new stuff. Look, you're
reading about it in the press. And for all kinds
of reasons, that sounded absolutely nuts. But
the first part of, you know, I want to leak things
to you that you can then go try to verify and
report on. That's what I do. That's exactly what
my job is. So we talked for about two months,
and my intention was to gather information and
eventually try and vet him, which I did, by the
way, and determined that he had been an asset
for the agency, a pretty productive one and a
good one, but a very hard -to -handle one who
liked to do things his own way. And I think that
the risk -reward... relationship here for the
agency which is a normal calculus when you're
inside yeah it just so they cut him off you got
to keep these people safe like if you have them
and eventually they're going to get themselves
caught It's almost better, you know, sometimes
to get rid of that intelligence because it's
going to fall apart at some point. Well, and
to your point, I mean, and I learned all this
later, but he had gotten himself caught after
he had separated with the agency. He had been
arrested. He had been suspected of leaking information
to dissident groups in Iran. He had spent time
in prison. I didn't know any of this. And I learned
about this after he was killed while. He was
in touch with me. So on a day that we were supposed
to have one of our regular online meetings and
we met with these kind of encrypted communications
helping us, he didn't show up. And then I heard
for a couple of days later from a mutual contact
that he had been killed at his apartment. And
the story is kind of going back and piecing all
of this together and figuring out, you know.
Why he was talking to me in the first place,
what was really the nature of his relationship
with the agency. And one of the things I explore
in the story is how the relationship that a reporter
forms with a source becomes this extremely intimate
relationship that is very similar to what your
world was when you're developing sources as an
intelligence officer. And one of the things I
kind of grapple with in this story was a lot
of the. uh uh initial um um fear and guilt i
had that had i done something to not keep him
safe enough that he had got caught. And people
can kind of read the story and, you know, learn
more about that. But from an ethical standpoint,
it was it was a very challenging relationship
because on the one hand, he was a source. On
the other hand, he wanted to use me to get back
in touch with his old handlers, which would have
been we never had to cross that bridge. But I
don't think I would have been able to do that.
Well, it's an incredible story. And I would suggest
that people read it. But it shows those kind
of things we dealt with in our work when I worked
in CIA of like balancing security and safety
and the information and somebody's ego and the
trust. And so I think it's a great, great story.
So I suggest people read it. So let me move on
a little bit to something more general about
intelligence and national security. So obviously,
with this new Trump administration, there's been
a lot of changes. But let's go back to what you've
been doing this for the last 10, 15 years. What
changes have you witnessed over the past 10 to
15 years, essentially during the Trump era? Because
it seems like the Trump era is a stress test
on our institutions. Yeah. How are they changing?
And how does it affect who stays, who leaves,
who rises? Give us a sense of what's changed
and what you've learned. You know, I used to
say in the first Trump term. Looking back on
those four years that I spent that time not writing
about the intelligence community, but about a
president at war with the intelligence community.
And it's so often felt like the main story within
these agencies was how they were trying to resist
political influence by the president, how they
were trying to, to some significant degree, defend
themselves against. His constant accusations
that it was, you know, run by a deep state of
people who were not loyal to him, who were manufacturing
information to try and take him down. And that
was just kind of, you know, a dominant theme
of the coverage. And that was extraordinary because,
I mean, you know, I came of age writing about
the intelligence community after 9 -11. And one
of the and I mean, I before I was like a 25 year
old reporter and everything I knew about the
CIA had seen in movies, which, you know, is totally
accurate. But one of the things that was really
impressed upon me very early on by people who
were veteran intelligence officers. was the way
in which the community strives to function in
a political manner. It doesn't mean it always
succeeds, right? But that the default position
should be that we are an organization that is
here to serve the president and the decision
makers, whoever they are, whatever the party,
and that we do this in as objective a way as
possible, which resonated with me because that's
kind of how we work as journalists. And that
Trump wasn't seeing this. And wasn't understanding
it or didn't believe it. Just colored the entire
relationship, I think. You know, and then layering
on top of that, you know, that, you know, there
were early on concerns that his campaign had
been in touch with Russians. And like, I mean,
people forget this, right? I mean, you don't.
But that the first year of his term in office,
I mean, he was. actively under investigation
by a special counsel to determine whether his
campaign was coordinating with the Russians during
the election. And, you know, which he loves to
call the Russia hoax. Those were real targets
for us as journalists. And that made us targets
for a lot of his critics who thought that we
were inventing this stuff. So, you know, then
you get kind of to Biden. And things seem to
kind of revert back to the norm then. And, you
know, there were many success stories, I think,
for the intelligence community in the Biden years,
particularly, you know, their very accurate call
about Putin's intentions to invade Russia, which
was now practically four years ago to the day.
And it just felt like the intelligence agencies
were sort of getting back to. the kind of normal
position that they were always in when I covered
them, which kind of made it a more normal story.
And now we've sort of flipped back the way things
were in Trump 1. But what's really changed and
I think is really alarming to me, I mean, just
as a citizen, is that in the first term, you
had people in positions of authority and people
leading all of these various national security
agencies. That I think generally, I mean, with
some exceptions, but we're generally trying to,
quote, do the right thing. Right. And understood
that the system was under tremendous strain.
And in many instances, we're trying to kind of
hold the line or resist the temptation, the president's
impulses to really politicize these agencies.
There is no one like that in positions of authority
today. In fact, it is the opposite. I think for
almost exclusively, with some notable exceptions,
you have people. Running these agencies who very
much believe in the mission of politicizing the
agencies, turning them into instruments of politics
and policy. Now, they will not see it that way,
but that is what they're doing. I mean, you do
not have an independent FBI and Justice Department
right now. The director of national intelligence
appears to be spending most of her time. Trying
to prove conspiracy theories to undermine Americans'
confidence in the election, I presume so that
when Republicans lose the House in nine months,
the president's supporters will say the election
is stolen. Like we have gone so far past the
zone of even what a politicized intelligence
community I thought would look like. Let me ask
you a little bit. How is that impacting the workforce?
So when I worked at CIA, yes, they bring in a
new director. And in this case, they bring in
incompetent partisan directors, Tulsi Gabbard,
Ratcliffe, Ash Patel or whatever. But in general,
the workforce, everybody else there came from
the bottom up, was trained, sees themselves as
professionals. How is it impacting? I mean, I'm
careful not to actually reach into old friends
and ask questions because I'd be putting them
at risk. But that's sort of your job. Do you
see that this is having an impact on the workforces?
What do you see is happening? Because there's
a lot of news lately that, you know, Ratcliffe
is saying, pulling all these old analytical reports
because they're woke and Tulsi Gabbard is trying
to say that the community was involved in. in
Russia hoax and all these kind of things. How
is that impacting the workforce? What are you
seeing as a reporter? I see morale being plummeting.
People who've been in the agencies long enough
to know that this is not how it normally works,
questioning whether they should leave. A lot
of people leaving. People being fired, obviously,
who won't go along with the program, as it were.
You know, people know this is messed up. Like
they know this isn't normal and whether they're
Republicans, Democrats, and they, for the most
part, they leave the politics at the door when
they go to work every day. And I think, you know,
I don't, one thing I wonder is, you know, about
young people who were in positions where they're
just coming in right now. And this is. This is
the environment in which they're learning about
how the intelligence community works. And are
they going to presume this is always how it's
been? Like this is the I mean, you know, it's
a very as you know, it's a closed system. Right.
I mean, and you are really inculcated in the
traditions and the values by people above you.
Now, I have to imagine to some degree those people
are saying to young people like this is not how
it's always worked. But, you know, there are
reports about loyalty tests. Or, you know, people
coming into positions now in the national security
agencies, are we, are they now screening only
for, you know, MAGA people? This could have a
long -term kind of effect, you know, and, you
know, and another, you know, way to measure this
is in talking to, you know, American allies,
particularly in the Five Eyes community. You
know, I talked to, you know, one member of that
group who said to me, you know, When Biden was
elected in 2020, we thought, OK, Trump was the
aberration in American politics. Biden, now we're
back to the norm. When Trump was reelected in
2024, this person said, now we realize Biden
was the aberration, that the norm in your politics
is that you are polarized. And, you know. Whether
it's the Canadians, the Brits, the Aussies, whoever
cooperates with us, I think at the working level,
those relationships are still pretty sound, from
what I can tell, and reasonable. But I think
there is just now this presumption for our allies
that our politics could vacillate between extreme
hyper -partisanship and something that looks
more normal. And by the way, if it does... And
if a Democrat is elected in two years, is that
a guarantee that that person won't politicize?
the FBI and the CIA and the DNI, the way this
administration has? I mean, will they look at
this and say, well, Trump got away with it. Maybe
I can do it, too. I mean, it's not we shouldn't
just presume that because somebody is a Democrat,
that they're just disposed to be, you know, apolitical
institutionalists when it comes to this stuff.
And I think our allies see that as well. And
that makes them very nervous. Well, as a reporter,
though, does it make it hard or easier to report?
Are there more people? Maybe let me spread that
out to the national security community. Are more
people willing to talk to reporters to leak those
type of things or less? It makes it easier for
people, I think, who are disgruntled and afraid.
Like those people kind of come forward, which,
you know, look, I mean, as a reporter. Disgruntled
government employees are often like really good
sources of information. Right. So in that sense,
I think. It is helpful insofar as people might
feel more compelled to go to a reporter and say
somebody has to do something about this or I
have to tell someone about this. On the flip
side, what's making it harder is that, you know,
in a properly functioning intelligence community,
it's not that the leadership are friendly with
the press, but. You know, they realize that the
press has a role to play as well in informing
the public on foreign policy and the operations
of government. And the best DNIs or CIA directors,
in my experience, are the ones who have been
willing talk to reporters, to bring them in,
to brief them, to put analysts in front of them,
you know, often off the record or on background.
But those folks who really did see the press
as, you know, an organization, institution that
they needed to have a relationship with, both
to get their views across, but also because they
understood that we play an important part in
performing the public. In the current environment,
You have leaders who view us as the enemy. I
mean, who delight in, you know, slamming us on
Twitter all day. And so speaking for myself,
that dialogue that used to occur between the
press and the institution in the terms through
the leadership of those organizations, it's not
there. Does it make it harder when people come
to talk to you from inside, like quote unquote
whistleblowers or what have you, because you
have to then vet. How do you develop trust with
them? How do you know that they are not? I don't
know, because like in our world, when I was trying
to run sources, we were looking for people who
had a clear motivation that we understood, that
we understood where they were coming from, but
also we wanted them to be sources for a long
time. Like I didn't want just someone to come
out, dump something and then go away, right?
We wanted, how does that impact, like what has
changed for you since you started this work?
on national security and you're getting inside
information compared to now. Is it different?
On a fundamental level, I think it is still the
same in that you have to develop trust and you
have to, you know, I often say that like the
motive for the source is not the most important
thing. It's the information that the source has.
And on one level, that's true. Like if somebody
comes to you with a claim that seems like something
you might be able to report, you have to go out
and find, independent sources to back that up.
But then in a longer term relationship, right,
as you say, the motive is important and you want
to know like, well, why is this person taking
a risk and talking to me? Is it because they're
a good government type and they think that things
should be done a certain way and they're not?
Do they just have a huge ego? Do they like spilling
their guts to a reporter? And I think the most
important thing that I've found that you can
do with a source is you just have to really actively
listen to that person. That the act of listening
is extremely powerful. People want to be heard.
And if someone has made the decision to... you
know, violate their security agreement and take
the risk of talking to a reporter. What they
really want is that reporter to take them seriously
and to listen to them. So, you know, I mean,
I do a lot of talking and writing in my work,
but when I'm reporting, for the most part, I'm
just listening to people. And has it become harder
now? I mean, I think what's actually making it
harder now is probably that sources are even
more afraid. of, you know, what will happen to
them if they're found to be talking to a reporter.
And I want to make clear, too, that like I'm
not there are some people who are like many people
who come talk to reporters and, you know, I'm
no different. are telling you things that are
not classified. Like they might be talking about
at a school, they might be in Canada, but it
doesn't mean that they're handing you a top secret
document, right? But even that is a risk because
they're not supposed to be, if they work in a
job where they're not authorized to talk to a
reporter. And their people are being much cagier
and much more careful because they fear the consequences
of being seen as disloyal. This administration
also, again, sees journalists as the enemy. They
might come after you. They might start to use
those government resources that they took more
seriously in the past. The FBI and others started
like, OK, I want to know. Shane clearly has sources.
I'm going to start tapping Shane's phone. So
I'm going to start listening. This has been something
that has been an issue for years, but we've normally
been protected from it. Are you more worried
because you've written about fiber and how big
data is used in these surveillance techniques?
How does that impact you? Has that changed the
way you do business now? Because essentially
the ways that people can contact a reporter are
essentially things that can be found out using
law enforcement and intelligence techniques,
surveillance techniques. A hundred percent. I
mean, the technology allows for the government
to get much more precise in trying to figure
out who might be talking. So, you know, we do
all the things that, you know, one would expect
of using good. Information security protocols
and all that, and I'll just kind of leave it
at that. But technology helps with that. The
thing that worries me more now, though, is it's
less, you know, can the government use its own
really powerful surveillance apparatus to find
out who reporters are talking to? It's more that
the government is not abiding by the traditions
of the past, which was to make it the norm. It
was very, well, let me back this up and say,
I mean, it used to be that the government, if
they were investigating a leak, would consider
subpoenaing the phone records of a reporter as
a kind of measure of last resort. And that's
just not the case anymore. You know, a few months
ago, the FBI served a search warrant on the home
of Hannah Nathanson, you know, one of my former
colleagues at the Washington Post, and took her
electronic devices. That is absolutely extraordinary.
And in my conversations with people who have
worked in the government and know how these leak
investigations normally work, that is so far
beyond anything that a Republican or a Democratic
administration would have done in the past to
actually serve a search warrant on a reporter's
home, which might strike some listeners as strange
because you think, well, wait a minute, like
you're getting classified information. Of course,
they're going to search your house. We haven't
done it that way because there has long been
a tradition in the Justice Department and the
intelligence community that we do not want to
impede upon a functioning free press and that
we don't criminalize journalism. We criminalize
sources giving information to journalists, of
course, but not the journalists themselves for
publishing what they received. And so now we're
in this zone where the government, I think, is
very clearly, you know, has taken the gloves
off. And that worries me even more than the technology
and the capability they have to monitor communications.
That's what authoritarian governments do abroad,
too. So, I mean, we're clearly this, among other
things, are moving in that direction. Let me
ask you just into some of the issues of your
covering of late. I know you've written about
Greenland, Iran, this recent stuff with Venezuela.
Talk a little bit about, you know, the kind of
things that you're looking at now, you're worried
about now. Are there underreported? areas that
are worth discussing? Well, what really is on
my mind, I mean, as we're talking right now,
obviously, is, you know, is the president going
to order a military strike on Iran? And by the
time folks hear this, he may have. And it just,
you know, it's what's remarkable to me in this
second term is how President Trump has put so
much of his attention on foreign affairs. And
for somebody who, you know, notably ran for office
talking about unnecessary foreign engagements
and years long wars that wasted lives and treasure.
He sure seems interested in using military force
and the intelligence agencies to get involved
in the metal and other countries affairs. So
that's a big, big thing on my mind right now.
I mean, if you look, Greenland is a really good
example of another kind of meta story that I'm
paying attention to this term, which is, you
know. The dismantling of the post -World War
II, you know, U .S.-led Western liberal order,
right? I mean, you know, the institutions that,
you know, for the better part of the past eight
decades that Americans were instrumental in building
have kept, you know, hundreds of millions of
people in the West generally safe and quite prosperous.
That's all coming apart and it's being deliberately
taken apart by us. Our government is doing that.
And that is having just profound ripple effects
throughout the world and particularly in Europe
with our allies. And Greenland was kind of this
acute example of that where, you know, there
was a week there where we were all watching and
talking to sources and people, including in Denmark
and in Greenland and in NATO, were not sure whether
the president was just going to unilaterally
declare that Greenland now belongs to the United
States. And you had this extraordinary moment
where the prime minister of Denmark gave an interview
in which she said, you know, if the United States
like forcibly tries to take Greenland, like puts
troops in Greenland, which sounds preposterous
because it's only like 50 ,000 people, that's
the end of NATO. If you try and take the territory
of a NATO member state, I mean, that's the end.
And this was really something we were all contemplating.
And then Trump went off and had a meeting with
Mark Ruda, the secretary general of NATO, and
came out and was like, oh, no, we've reached
a deal. It's good. It's all fine. And it's just
I mean, but that's sort of the world that we're
living in, where it is this kind of like traumatic
whipsawing. And it takes a huge effect on our
allies and it erodes trust. And it may continue
and it is likely to continue. It'll absolutely
continue. This is not a bug. This is the feature.
And I'm just surprised he's spending so much
time on international affairs while the economy
is turning south. And that's the thing he was
elected to fix and he's not fixing it. I agree.
The one thing I would also say, and I think you
agree with this, is I don't think previous presidents
Biden, Obama, Bush, others have really communicated
to the American people why that post -war...
way of the world and why these allies and why
they're so important. How do they help Americans
themselves? Those of us who worked there, lived
overseas and worked with allies and saw what
they did, saw the value to American citizens,
how they save American lives, how they build
American economy, totally get it. But most Americans
don't. So it made it easy, easier for Trump to
just rip it apart or because there's people who
just don't get it. And I think one of the jobs
of presidents is to communicate and previous
presidents didn't communicate clearly enough.
I totally agree with you. And it's almost I don't
want to say it's too late, but boy, has, you
know, have the Atlanticists in the United States
politics really lost a lot of time here to try
and make the case for like, why should we care
about? you know the security of you know european
democracies and why does that matter to me and
and the case i think is pretty clear it's just
that it's a you know u .s elections are not one
on foreign policy And there's just been this
bedrock presumption. They're like, well, no,
this is just how the way things work. And obviously,
you know, so much has changed and globalization
and trade and the rest of it. And I think you're
right that presidents who have long believed
in the strength of those alliances did not do
a good job of explaining to people. I mean, Biden
tried with this whole notion that he had of like,
we need to articulate. Why foreign policy is
domestic policy. And he was trying, I think,
to make connections around the economy. And but
it always felt very like. And he didn't have
that skill. He didn't have that skill to communicate.
He didn't have the skill. And it all kind of
felt like underbaked a little bit. It's like,
yeah, you need to do a little more work and like
give me some more concrete examples. And then
I think he thought that, you know. The war in
Ukraine would. maybe provide an object lesson
for Americans of like, no, right, this is why
this is important, because, hi, the Russians,
you know, are trying to take over countries in
Europe. And then you have a Republican Party
that is, you know, at the very least, not willing
to stand up for the proposition that, no, we
shouldn't have, you know, a Russian dictator
trying to take over free countries in Europe,
which is just mind boggling, because, I mean,
I grew up, you know. reagan kid you know um uh
and uh you know it's the we it's we don't have
the public doesn't i think broadly understand
or appreciate why these alliances matter so much
um and uh you know i i think that our allies
look at that and are now planning for a future
in which they can't depend on us and they would
be crazy not to do that frankly they would be
crazy not to start spending more of their gdp
on defense and being prepared to go their own
way because they can't depend on us politically
right and i hope i hope they do but i also just
having lived overseas from a strike i think they're
still people want People want an America that's
serious. They don't want China to be the leader
of the free world. China, in fact, itself has
benefited tremendously economically from U .S.
national security. So with that, you know, you've
been really kind with your time and I don't want
to take up much more of your time. So can you
just give us a sense of. Some of the issues you're
working on now, how people can find your reporting,
that type of thing before we sign off here. Yeah.
So, I mean, broadly, like I said, I'm interested
in like, you know, the whole dismantling of the
order. I continue to be deeply interested in,
you know, what the intelligence agencies are
doing with regards to trying to understand China.
which is arguably one of the most important and
hardest intelligence topics right now, how the
world of technology is changing both what our
intelligence agencies can do, but also the environments
in which they operate. I mean, the degree to
which AI and persistent surveillance changes
everything about the nature of how people who
do what you used to do go about trying to recruit
human assets in these countries. I mean, this
whole world is just kind of changing. And, you
know, these are the kinds of stories that interest
me, right? Because I've always found that the
intelligence agencies are this great kind of
front line for what the big conflicts are in
the world and what those fault lines really are,
because that's where they need to be in understanding
them. So you can find me at The Atlantic. You
can find me on Twitter at Shane Harris. I'm not
tweeting a whole lot, but if I write something,
I'll put it out there. But that's probably the
best way to find me these days. Well, very good.
Well, I would suggest to our listeners that.
They should follow you. Your reporting is excellent.
You have great sources. You have a great understanding
of the territory. So thank you for spending some
time with us. And, you know, I hope we will be
able to talk again. I got to get you on my other
podcast, too. I love that. Thanks, John. It's
always great to see you and to talk to you. Thanks
for having me. Great for talking to you, too.
So for those of you who have been listening,
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