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no bull, and the aftermath.

You know, if you talk to kind of intelligence folks today, you know, there is a sense that

they feel sometimes that folks in the valley don't understand the national security implications

of the work that they do because they just exist in a place where they want to sell.

You know, they want to get bought out or sell and they don't, you know, there's a certain

cosmopolitanism here which can be really, really good and beneficial and open and wonderful

and a symbol of like what's best about America. But there's also this side where, you know,

there's a sense in which it's untethered from the kind of exigent national security concerns

of the day and interstate competition. And so Harper I think provides a great example

of like a worst case scenario for how that culture can go really, really sour.

I'm Scott Anderson and this is the LawFair podcast for August 23rd, 2023.

In May 1984, former US Marine engineer and early Silicon Valley entrepreneur James Harper

was sentenced to life in prison for his central role in audacious scheme to sell a bevy of

classified documents relating to US missile defense to the Soviet block and its allies.

Four decades later, his story was almost forgotten until it was rediscovered and investigated

by national security reporter Zach Dorfman with help from some of the men who helped catch

Harper and the spy himself. Now with help from our friends at Goat rodeo, Dorfman has

turned this story into a phenomenal six part podcast series entitled Spy Valley, which

takes a close look at Harper's seminal spy case. Earlier this week, I sat down with Dorfman

...