Welcome everybody to another War on the Rocks podcast. I'm Mark Stout, one of the senior editors at War on the Rocks.

And I'm joined by a really great group of people here today, but for those of you who may not know me, just real briefly, I'm a senior editor at War on the Rocks.

I also run a couple of graduate programs and security studies and intelligence at Johns Hopkins University School of Arts and Sciences here in Washington.

Worked in government, worked in the think tank world, and I'm a I'm a historian as well who lives in the

sort of the borderlands between intelligence and military history.

And since this is War on the Rocks,

I thought I'd note simply that I'm drinking

Flying Dog Amber Logger today.

And today I've got three really terrific guests.

We'll start with Shane Harris.

Shane's a senior correspondent at The Daily Beast,

where he covers National Security, Intelligence,

and Cybersecurity.

And he's also the author of two just really terrific books.

The first one is the award winning The Watchers,

The Rise of America's Surveillance State, which came out in 2010, I believe.

And then just recently in 2014, we saw the publication of a second book, At War, The Rise of the Military

Internet Complex. at war, the rise of the military internet complex.

Shane's also an ASU future of war fellow at New America.

And kind of a renaissance man, he has a background in fiction writing,

film writing, and I believe has some sort of

connection with a comedy troop and you get a free drink on me if you can work the

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