Things That Go Boom

When a violent pro-Trump mob stormed the legislature on Jan. 6, it caught the Capitol Police completely off-guard. But there was one woman in the House Chamber who was not surprised. In fact, she wore tennis shoes that day — Rep. Barbara Lee. We speak with Lee about the greatest terror threat inside the United States today, white nationalism, as well as a more general trend toward political radicalization. We also revisit her lonely vote in the wake of 9/11, when Lee was the only lawmaker in both chambers to take a stand against granting broad war powers to the president in response to the attack. Twenty years later, those powers have been stretched to cover drone strikes and military interventions across the globe. But with President Joe Biden in the White House, Lee seems closer than ever to getting that authorization repealed. GUEST: Rep. Barbara Lee, of California’s 13th congressional district, is a member of the Democratic Party. Besides her efforts to reign in presidential war powers, she’s advocated to end poverty and fight HIV. ADDITIONAL READING: 60 Words And A War Without End, BuzzFeed White Supremacist Domestic Terror Threat Looms Large In US, The Guardian Lone Wolves Connected Online: A History Of Modern White Supremacy, NYT

In December 2020, the company FireEye noticed that it had been the victim of a cyber intrusion. And it wasn’t the only one. About 18,000 companies and government agencies were breached, everything from the agency that controls America's nuclear weapons to the agency that regulates the electric grid, to a company whose products you probably use every day: Microsoft. So, what did they have in common? They were all using the same software monitoring service: a platform called Orion, from the company SolarWinds. The breach leaves the US open to nightmare scenario after nightmare scenario. So how did we get here, and how can we prevent similar attacks in the future? GUESTS: Mieke Eoyang, Senior Vice President for the National Security Program and Chairperson of the Cyber Enforcement Initiative, Third Way; Juliet Okafor, Founder and CEO, Revolution Cyber ADDITIONAL READING: Cybercrime vs. Cyberwar: Paradigms for Addressing Malicious Cyber Activity, Journal of National Security Law and Policy. To Catch a Hacker. A Moment of Reckoning: The Need for a Strong and Global Cybersecurity Response, Microsoft.

Darlene Turner is an Inupiaq Eskimo living on a battle line. Not the military kind, the climate change kind. With less sea ice to buffer storms, the ocean is washing away chunks of her village and its residents have made a difficult decision to relocate. “Would you relocate?” she asks. Experts believe stories like Darlene’s are just a precursor to a massive migratory trend that could have millions of Americans on the move before mid-century, as wildfires rage and floodwaters rise. And the consequences could be far-reaching— affecting our economy, our social fabric and even our foreign policy priorities. On this episode, we examine how ‘climigration’ could play out here at home, and how climate change can become a threat multiplier. GUESTS: Jesse Keenan, associate professor of real estate at the Tulane School of Architecture specializing in climate change adaptation: Francesco Femia, co-founder of the Center for Climate and Security, and the Council on Strategic Risks; Darlene Turner, library skills teacher; Jonathan Foret, executive director of the South Louisiana Wetlands Discovery Center. ADDITIONAL READING: The Great Climate Migration, ProPublica. ‘We’re Moving to Higher Ground’: America’s Era of Climate Mass Migration is Here, The Guardian. How Russia Wins the Climate Crisis, NYT.

Over the past few weeks, the president-elect, Joe Biden, has been rolling out announcements about his new cabinet. And in one of those announcements, he revealed that the subject of one of our favorite interviews over the years, Jake Sullivan, would be named national security advisor. The announcement made sense to us, since tensions between the US and Iran seem to have reached a new boiling point in the wake of President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal. Jake, you might remember, led the backchannel negotiations that ultimately brought us the deal. And, in this episode, which originally aired in 2019, Jake takes us back to the moment when those negotiations began. GUESTS: Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor-designate; Wendy Sherman, former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; Ernest Moniz, former Secretary of Energy ADDITIONAL READING: The Inexorable Rise of Jake Sullivan, Politico. Iran’s Rouhani Says ‘No Doubt’ Biden Will Rejoin Nuclear Deal, Lift Sanctions, Washington Post.

Just after President Dwight D. Eisenhower assumed office on January 20, 1953, deep in the middle of the Cold War, his greatest adversary died. The speech that followed is considered one of his best, though not his most well known. Today, the US is sitting on the precipice of another great moment of potential change. One in which it’s not hard to imagine Eisenhower standing up before us and making the same case he did almost 70 years ago. So on today’s episode, we sit down with someone in a position to help us realize the perhaps forgotten potential of Eisenhower’s “Chance for Peace.” Someone who's given a lot of thought to the cost of violence, both at home and abroad. Senator Chris Murphy. GUESTS: Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) ADDITIONAL READING: Principles for a Progressive Foreign Policy; Chris Murphy, Brian Schatz, and Martin Heinrich. Rethinking the Battlefield; Chris Murphy. How to Make a Progressive Foreign Policy Actually Work; Chris Murphy.

Things That Go Boom is launching its very first fundraiser! Please consider giving just $5 a month. It’s convenient for you, provides ongoing support for Things That Go Boom and Inkstick Media, and you’ll feel good knowing you’re helping make Things That Go Boom freely available to everyone. Always. If Things That Go Boom is something that you’ve come to rely on over the course of the past two years, please go to inkstickmedia.com/donate and make a donation today. ————————— In 1958, a movie about a man-eating, bloodcurdling mass from outer space introduced the world to "The Blob." But in recent years, that term has taken on a whole new meaning among foreign policy professionals in Washington. What exactly defines this Blob can be as amorphous as the movie monster, so we reached out to three people to explain who exactly belongs in this group. The term, we learned, describes a perspective that transcends party lines and has remained relatively unchallenged for decades. In this episode, we'll explore the moment that all changed, and the Blob came face-to-face with... the anti-Blob. GUESTS: Ben Armbruster, Managing Editor of ResponsibleStatecraft.org at The Quincy Institute; Emma Ashford, Senior Fellow at the New American Engagement Initiative in the Scowcroft Center of the Atlantic Council; Van Jackson, professor of International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. ADDITIONAL READING: Build a Better Blob, Emma Ashford The Blob Strikes Back, and Misses, Patrick Porter. More, Less, or Different?, Jake Sullivan. Policy Roundtable: The Future of Progressive Foreign Policy, Van Jackson.

2020 has been a scary year. In an effort to get to the root of why we’re all feeling the way we are, the first thing we did was something we probably should have done a long time ago... we reached out to a psychiatrist. We also asked all of you — our listeners, our friends, our family — to tell us the answer to what might seem like a pretty simple question: How safe do you feel? But the answers didn’t feel simple at all. GUESTS: Arash Javanbakht, MD; Bunmi Akinnusotu, Host of What in the World?; You guys! ADDITIONAL READING: Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals, Carol Cohn. The Politics of Fear: How Fear Goes Tribal, Allowing Us To Be Manipulated, Arash Javanbakht. When Mask-Wearing Rules in the 1918 Pandemic Faced Resistance, Becky Little. As the 1918 Flu Emerged, Cover-Up and Denial Helped It Spread, Becky Little.

Things That Go Boom will be back November 9th, and we’ll be there to hold your hand while you weep, or party, all the way to the inauguration, a coronavirus vaccine, an accidental nuclear war (?!) … and beyond. In the meantime, go vote!

Can the country rebound from the social, cultural, and economic toll of COVID-19? Now we know what happens while we’re sleeping; have we woken up? And what will it take to right the ship? GUESTS: Gigi Kwik Gronvall, Senior Scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health; Sherri Goodman, former Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Environmental Security and a Senior Fellow at the Wilson Center and the Center for Climate Security; Travis L. Adkins, lecturer of African and Security Studies at the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University; Marissa Conway, Co-founder of the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy. ADDITIONAL READING: Foreign Policy Begins at Home, Council on Foreign Relations. At the Intersection of Domestic and Foreign Policy, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Is American Foreign Policy the Key to Economic Growth?, The Washington Post. The Legacy of American Racism at Home and Abroad, Foreign Policy. The Scientific Response to COVID-19 and Lessons for Security, Survival.

Why did the US Naval Academy reinstate celestial navigation as part of its curriculum a few years ago? Well, you can’t hack a sextant. In this episode, we look at some of the vulnerabilities that come with an over-reliance on high-tech defense systems. Our guests are Peter Singer and August Cole — national security experts who have taken to writing futuristic techno-thrillers to sound a few alarms. Among their warnings: The opening battles of WWIII won’t happen on a battlefield, and they will probably be silent. GUESTS: Peter Singer, strategist and senior fellow at New America; August Cole, non-resident senior fellow at the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. ADDITIONAL READING: Burn-In, Forbes. Ghost Fleet, The Diplomat. China Uses AI To Enhance Totalitarian Control, The Atlantic.