Social Intelligence Science

In 1917, a band of communist revolutionaries stormed the Winter Palace of Tsar Nicholas II - a dramatic and explosive act marking that Vladimir Lenin’s communist revolution was now underway. But Lenin would not be satisfied with overthrowing the Tsar. His goal was a global revolt that would topple all Western capitalist regimes - starting with the British Empire. Russian Roulette tells the spectacular and harrowing story of the British spies in revolutionary Russia and their mission to stop Lenin’s red tide from washing across the free world.

Karen Abbott illuminates one of the most fascinating yet little-known aspects of the Civil War: The stories of four courageous women - a socialite, a farmgirl, an abolitionist, and a widow - who were spies. After shooting a Union soldier in her front hall with a pocket pistol, Belle Boyd became a courier and spy for the Confederate army, using her charms to seduce men on both sides. Emma Edmonds cut off her hair and assumed the identity of a man to enlist as a Union private, witnessing the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

Between 1939 and 1945, more than 70 Allied men and women were convicted - mostly in secret trials - of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. In the same period, hundreds of British Fascists were also interned without trial on specific and detailed evidence that they were spying for, or working on behalf of, Germany. Collectively, these men and women were part of a little-known Fifth Column: traitors who committed crimes including espionage, sabotage, communicating with enemy intelligence agents, and attempting to cause disaffection among Allied troops.

No ordinary Washington memoir, Facing Down Evil is an unprecedented look behind the scenes of our nation's most powerful law-enforcement agency. As the FBI's premier hostage negotiator, Clint Van Zandt worked or consulted on some of recent U.S. history's most unsettling and high-profile conflicts, including the Waco, Oklahoma City, and Unabomber cases.

Argentina, 1960. A car speeds through the streets of Buenos Aires. Inside are four Israeli secret agents and their prisoner: Adolf Eichmann, one of the most notorious war criminals of Nazi Germany. In this detailed memoir, Rafi Eitan tells the story of his remarkable life and career. He describes how as a teenager, he smuggled Jewish refugees into Palestine, and how, as a spy in the newly established Mossad, he swam through sewers to blow up a British radar station. He goes on to describe in detail his involvement in the extraordinary hunt for the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann.

By the end of January 1945, it was clear to Germany that the war was lost. The Third Reich was in freefall, and its leaders, apart from those clustered around Hitler in his Berlin bunker, sought to abscond before they were besieged. But they wanted to take their wealth with them. Bestselling author Neill Lochery here brilliantly recounts the flight of the Nazi-looted riches—the last great escape of World War II—and the Allied quest for justice.

Uncover everything you need to know about "deepfakes" and what could become the biggest information and communications meltdown in world history.

Shadows of the Mind: The Secrets and Scars of MK-Ultra delves into one of the most shocking and controversial covert operations in U.S. history. From the 1950s through the 1970s, the CIA conducted a series of secretive and brutal experiments under the umbrella of MK-Ultra, aimed at controlling human behavior through mind-altering drugs, hypnosis, and psychological manipulation.

At the outbreak of World War II, MI6 spymaster Thomas Kendrick arrived at the Tower of London to set up a top secret operation: German prisoners' cells were to be bugged and listeners installed behind the walls to record and transcribe their private conversations. This mission proved so effective that it would go on to be set up at three further sites - and provide the Allies with crucial insight into new technology being developed by the Nazis. In this astonishing history, Helen Fry uncovers the inner workings of the bugging operation.

Everywhere we turn, a new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services, and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future. We're told that innovations - from augmented - reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars - will make life easier, more convenient, and more productive.

Much has been written about the challenges tech presents to equality and democracy. But we can either criticize big data and automation or steer it to do better. Lobel makes a compelling argument that while we cannot stop technological development, we can direct its course according to our most fundamental values. With provocative insights in every chapter, Lobel masterfully shows that digital technology frequently has a comparative advantage over humans.

In the summer of 1975, 17-year-old Eva Dillon's family was living in New Delhi when her father was exposed as a CIA spy. Eva had long believed that her father was a US State Department employee. She had no idea that he was handling the CIA's highest ranking double agent - Dmitri Fedorovich Polyakov, a Soviet general whose code name was TOPHAT. Dillon's father and Polyakov had a close friendship that went back years, to their first meeting in Burma in the mid-1960s.

A gripping history of the Security Service and its covert surveillance on British writers and intellectuals in the twentieth century.

In the dark days immediately after 9/11, the CIA turned to Dr. James Mitchell to help craft an interrogation program designed to elicit intelligence from just-captured top al-Qa'ida leaders and terror suspects. A civilian contractor who had spent years training US military members to resist interrogation should they be captured, Mitchell, aware of the urgent need to prevent impending catastrophic attacks, worked with the CIA to implement "enhanced interrogation techniques" - which included waterboarding.

A major new work, a hybrid of history, journalism, and memoir, about the modern Freedom of Information Act - FOIA - and the horrifying, decades-old government misdeeds that it is unable to demystify, from one of America's most celebrated writers.

How China Loses tells the story of China's struggles to overcome new risks and endure the global backlash against its assertive reach. Combining on-the-ground reportage with incisive analysis, Luke Patey argues that China's predatory economic agenda, headstrong diplomacy, and military expansion undermine its global ambitions to dominate the global economy and world affairs.

On November 4, 1979, "student" supporters of the Ayatollah seized the U.S. Embassy with over sixty hostages. Although the Cold War was in full swing, the Iran hostage crisis was a watershed for the United States. Detachment A had been established in Berlin early in the Cold War to harass and delay any Soviet military advance west. This Special unit trained relentlessly for every aspect of unconventional warfare, and was later assigned a second mission of counterterrorism. Veteran and historian James Stejskal details Det A's unique and integral role in Operation Eagle Claw.

In the late 1970s, the National Security Agency still did not officially exist - those in the know referred to it dryly as the No Such Agency. So why, when NSA engineer Charles Gandy filed for a visa to visit Moscow, did the Russian Foreign Ministry assert with confidence that he was a spy? Outsmarting honey traps and encroaching deep enough into enemy territory to perform complicated technical investigations, Gandy accomplished his mission in Russia but discovered more than State and CIA wanted him to know.

Over the past 10 years, urban planners, technology companies, and governments have promoted smart cities with a somewhat utopian vision of urban life made knowable and manageable through data collection and analysis. Emerging smart cities have become both crucibles and showrooms for the practical application of the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and the integration of big data into everyday life. Are smart cities optimized, sustainable, digitally networked solutions to urban problems? Or are they neoliberal, corporate-controlled, undemocratic non-places?

Aman, Mossad et Shin Beth. Infiltration d'agents au cœur des organisations ennemies, sabotages clandestins, éliminations ciblées, raids de commandos... autant de missions menées par les services secrets israéliens, considérés comme les meilleurs du monde. Mais cette réputation est-elle justifiée ? Comment fonctionnent-ils ? Comment leurs opérateurs sont-ils formés ? Quels ont été leurs succès et leurs échecs ? La seule façon pour Israël d'éviter le sort funeste que lui promettent ses ennemis, c'est d'anticiper toute action adverse.