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Hello, and welcome to the LawFair podcast. I'm Benjamin Wittis. Today on the podcast,

Nathan Mirvold, tech entrepreneur, culinary visionary, former Microsoft technology chief, and

author of a recent LawFair research paper series article on strategic terrorism. Mirvold, for

those who have never heard of him, is the founder of a company called Intellectual Ventures. He also,

however, wrote a paper we published back in July, arguing that law enforcement authorities are too

focused on tactical terrorism, bomb plots, hijackings, and the like, and insufficiently focused on

the threats of greatest magnitude, particularly biological threats. Mirvold was in Washington this

week, discussing his paper and his thesis in a series of high-level meetings with government

officials. He stopped by Brookings to discuss the paper and the problem. So when people think of

Nathan Mirvold, they think of Microsoft, of intellectual ventures, of food, of paleontology,

most people don't think of national security. How do you get into this?

Well, I think like many people after 9-11, I was drawn to the particular situation that the

world and the United States find itself in, where terrorism isn't just an annoyance, but it's

something that really is a major threat that shapes national policy. And I sort of think about

what I could do to contribute. And what I concluded was that it was this insight on strategic

terrorism that might be something that I could make a contribution to because it was analogous

in some ways to what had gone on in the personal computer industry that I'd been involved with.

How so? Well, the thing that drove personal computers was the fact that microprocessors and

...