Freedom National

Remember when an unattended package was just that, an unattended package? Remember when the airport was a place that evoked magical possibilities, not the anxiety of a full-body scan? In the post-9/11 world, we have become focused on heightened security measures, but do you feel safer? Are you safer? Against Security explains how our anxieties about public safety have translated into command-and-control procedures that annoy, intimidate, and are often counterproductive.

Students and enthusiasts of American history are familiar with the Revolutionary War spies Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold, but few studies have closely examined the wider intelligence efforts that enabled the colonies to gain their independence. Spies, Patriots, and Traitors provides readers with a fascinating, well-documented, and highly readable account of American intelligence activities during the era of the Revolutionary War, from 1765 to 1783.

At the beginning of the 21st century, China is poised to become a major global power. And though much has been written of China's rise, a crucial aspect of this transformation has gone largely unnoticed: the way that China is using soft power to appeal to its neighbors and to distant countries alike.

In Spam Nation, investigative journalist and cybersecurity expert Brian Krebs unmasks the criminal masterminds driving some of the biggest spam and hacker operations targeting Americans and their bank accounts. Tracing the rise, fall, and alarming resurrection of the digital mafia behind the two largest spam pharmacies - and countless viruses, phishing, and spyware attacks - he delivers the first definitive narrative of the global spam problem and its threat to consumers everywhere.

This audiobook challenges several longstanding notions about the American way of war. It examines US military practice (strategic and operational) from the War of Independence to the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan to determine what patterns, if any, existed in the way Americans have used military force. Echevarria surveys all major US wars and most every small conflict in the country's military history.

Congressman and Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, Michael McCaul, has spent years in Washington watching the administration turn a blind eye to the most pressing possible threats to the country. Now, in Failures of Imagination, McCaul turns away from the over-sensationalized, unrealistic fears circulated through the media in order to expose the most legitimate and looming national security threats, which have long been swept under the rug by the administration.

From drone warfare in the Middle East to digital spying by the National Security Agency, the US government has harnessed the power of cutting-edge technology to awesome effect. But what happens when ordinary people have the same tools at their fingertips? Advances in cybertechnology, biotechnology, and robotics mean that more people than ever before have access to potentially dangerous technologies that could be used to attack states and private citizens alike.

They Know Everything About You is a groundbreaking exposé of how government agencies and tech corporations monitor virtually every aspect of our lives, and a fierce defense of privacy and democracy. The revelation that the government has access to a vast trove of personal online data demonstrates that we already live in a surveillance society. But the erosion of privacy rights extends far beyond big government.

Al Qaeda is no longer the central organizing force that aids or authorizes terrorist attacks or recruits terrorists. It is now more a source of inspiration for terrorist acts carried out by independent local groups that have branded themselves with the Al Qaeda name. Building on his previous groundbreaking work on the Al Qaeda network, forensic psychiatrist Marc Sageman has greatly expanded his research to explain how Islamic terrorism emerges and operates in the 21 century.

Written by one of the Department of the Army's leading intelligence and military analysts on the Taliban, this book covers the group's complete history, including its formation, ideology, and political power, as well as the origins of its current conflict with the United States. The work carefully analyzes the agenda, capabilities, and support base of the Taliban; forecasts the group's likely course of action to retake Afghanistan; and details the Coalition forces' probable counterinsurgency responses.

Fight Back is a timely, comprehensive guide on corporate and institutional security as well as personal defense. It relates Liddy's strategies for dealing with a variety of attacks and threats, including criminals, terrorism, and even weapons of mass destruction. It includes a terrorism response handbook with important information on dealing with chemical, biological, and nuclear attacks, with clear-cut directions detailing what you should do to survive.

Christopher Hemmer examines America's grand strategic choices between 1914 and 2014 using four recurring debates in American foreign policy as lenses. First, how should the United States balance the trade-offs between working alone versus working with other states and international organizations? Second, what is the proper place of American values in foreign policy? Third, where does the strategic perimeter of the United States lie? And fourth, is time on the side of the United States or of its enemies?

In Operation Shakespeare, investigative journalist John Shiffman traces a high-risk undercover operation launched by an elite undercover Homeland Security unit created to stop the Iranians, Russians, Chinese, Pakistanis, and North Koreans from acquiring sophisticated American-made electronics capable of guiding missiles, jamming radar, and triggering countless weapons - from wireless IEDs to nuclear bombs.

During the early years of the Iraq War, the US Army was unable to translate initial combat success into strategic and political victory. Iraq plunged into a complex insurgency, and defeating this insurgency required beating highly adaptive foes. A competition between the hierarchical and vertically integrated Army and networked and horizontally integrated insurgents ensued. The latter could quickly adapt and conduct networked operations in a decentralized fashion; the former was predisposed to fighting via prescriptive plans under a centralized command and control.

Strategic planning needs to be a more integral part of America's foreign policymaking. While thousands of troops are engaged in combat and homeland security concerns abound, long-term coordination of goals and resources would seem to be of paramount importance. A change in presidential administration brings the hope that strategic planning will play an elevated role in U.S. foreign policy. Can policy planners - in the Pentagon, State Department, Treasury, NSC, and National Intelligence Council - rise to the challenge?

Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. The Missile Next Door tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards - and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending. By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view.

One of the most respected national reporters in the field, Gertz examines the still-looming threat of China to the United States, including espionage, military escalation, economic warfare, and diplomatic treachery.

A former US Navy intelligence officer, David Locke Hall was a federal prosecutor when a bizarre-sounding website, CRACK99, came to his attention. It looked like Craigslist on acid, but what it sold was anything but amateurish: thousands of high-tech software products used largely by the military, and for mere pennies on the dollar. Want to purchase satellite tracking software? No problem. Aerospace and aviation simulations? No problem. Communications systems designs? No problem.

In US Foreign Policy and Defense Strategy, the authors analyze the strategic underpinnings of hegemony, assess the national security establishment that sustains dominance, consider the impact on civil-military relations, and explore the intertwining relationships between foreign policy, defense strategy, and commercial activities.

In Enemies Within Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman lay bare the complex and often contradictory state of counterterrorism and intelligence in America through the pursuit of Najibullah Zazi, a terrorist bomber who trained under one of bin Laden's most trusted deputies. Zazi and his coconspirators represented America's greatest fear: a terrorist cell operating inside America. Apuzzo and Goldman lift the veil of secrecy to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of our counterterrorism measures.