You were listening to the War on the Rocks podcast on strategy, defense, and foreign affairs.

I'm Doyle Hodges, executive editor of Texas National Security Review.

For many people, terms like piracy, stowaway, and kidnap,

conjure up romantic visions perhaps influenced by the literature of Robert Louis

Stevenson or if you're a Navy nerd like myself, maybe the literature of CS Forrester.

But as our guests today are going to tell us, these terms actually have deadly serious

meanings without much romance and actually a great deal of grim reality to them.

We're really privileged today to have Ian Urbina

and Martina Vandenberg to talk about issues precisely

of piracy, kidnapping, and stowaways on the high seas. I'll ask each of you to introduce yourselves real quickly.

My name is Ian Urbina. I'm a journalist and I work on Lawless and Assetty.

And Martia. My name is Martina Vanneenberg and I'm the president of the Human Trafficking Legal Center and

we try and stop lawlessness around the world.

So that's a relatively modest ambition.

I'm sure that's something that you can knock out

before lunch and then have the rest of the afternoon free.

That's terrific.

Exactly right.

And Ian has been a little bit modest saying that it does this work.

If you haven't had a chance I highly

commend his book The Outlaw Ocean which compiles and expands on a lot of the

reporting he's done with the New York Times looking precisely at issues of

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