TechStuff Redux: Russia’s Espionage ‘Laboratory’ w/ Ben Taub
TechStuff
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 1.9K Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
We’re taking this week off! But don’t worry, we’ll be back with new episodes starting September 10th. In the meantime, we’re sharing some of our favorite interviews from the year so far. This week, Oz talks with journalist Ben Taub about Russia’s ice-cold testing ground for new espionage tech.
Ben Taub is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker. His piece, “Russia’s Espionage War in the Arctic,” covers tensions at the Russian border with Norway, an area Russia uses as a testing ground for future intelligence operations. Taub sits down with Oz to discuss the technology being used for survival and for espionage, as the war in Ukraine has escalated tensions.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:15.8 | Hi, HART, Pardt, Pryce. |
| 0:18.3 | We're taking the week off. |
| 0:19.5 | Indeed. We'll be back with new episodes |
| 0:21.6 | starting September 10th. In the meantime, instead of leaving this feed empty, we wanted to share |
| 0:26.2 | an episode from earlier this year. This week, we're re-airing my conversation with Ben Talb from |
| 0:31.5 | February 26th. He's a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and a staff writer at the |
| 0:36.7 | New Yorker. |
| 0:42.4 | We discussed the tech being used by Russia to safeguard its nuclear arsenal and to spy on NATO countries, all in one of the coldest places on Earth. |
| 0:48.5 | I interviewed Ben at a time when tensions between Russia and Norway were high, |
| 0:52.5 | and as Russia clashed with NATO over the war on Ukraine. |
| 0:56.2 | Hope you enjoy it, and thanks for listening. |
| 0:59.8 | Welcome to Tech Stuff. This is the story, and this week our guest is the investigative journalist Ben Tau. |
| 1:06.9 | Every Wednesday, we bring you an in-depth interview with someone who has a front-row seat to the most fascinating things happening in tech. |
| 1:16.2 | Ben Taub, who writes for the New Yorker and has won the Pulitzer and two National Magazine Awards, |
| 1:22.1 | has found himself up close in a tech battle for world supremacy, not really by design, but by following a good story. |
| 1:30.5 | For Ben, it all started on the singing show The Voice. |
| 1:34.0 | No, really. Ben was an undergrad at Princeton, took a little time off to audition for the voice, |
| 1:39.3 | and stashed away the stipend provided to performers on the show to fund his first foray into international |
| 1:45.6 | journalism, travelling to the Turkish-Syrian border, which gave him the bug not just for reporting, |
| 1:51.7 | but reporting on the periphery of international conflict. After reporting in Syria and Chad, |
| 1:58.0 | he found himself drawn to the periphery of a conflict animated by the fear |
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