Welcome to Talking Feds, a round table that brings together prominent former federal officials

and special guests for a dynamic discussion of the most important political and legal topics of

the day. I'm Harry Littman. Along with a number of momentous developments, the week-broad visions

of the near and medium future across a range of fields, the CDC issued new guidelines for COVID,

that confirmed many people's sense that we are definitively putting it behind us and returning

to the light of normal life. At the same time, the notion of confining the virus fully to history

receded for a number of reasons, including the intransigent resistance of 13% of the population

to the vaccine, we are looking at months or more of risk minimization not full return to pre-COVID

life. After increasingly bitter backroom discussions, the Republican Party split

cleanly along the seam of the big lie, with the alster of Liz Cheney for her refusal to credit

the ridiculous idea that the election was somehow stolen from Donald Trump. It means that going

forward at least to 2022, the big lie reigns supreme in the GOP. The New York Times broke a

story detailing a broad, if partly, comic mission by conservative activists and dirty tricksters

to trap Trump government officials and words of disloyalty to the leader while Trump was in office.

It had the whiff of possible coordination with people inside the government,

which would make it much more of a Watergate style mega scandal. We'll see in the coming months

if the story gets traction or fades away. Finally, the colonial pipeline is again functioning,

but the successful cyber attack on a line that carries 45% of the fuel for the East Coast

and gave rise to a ransom payout of $5 million in cryptocurrency may turn out to be the most

harrowing glimpse of the future in some time. To break down this eventful and politically charged

week, we have a stellar trio of incisive commentators. They are.

Juliet Kayum, a national security analyst at CNN, the Bell for Senior Lecture in International

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