A Spy at War | Charles Beaumont
Secrets and Spies Podcast: Espionage | Global Issues | Current AffairsShow Notes
Charles Beaumont spent years as an MI6 officer running human sources before turning to fiction—and his second novel, A Spy at War, carries the authority of someone who has actually done the work. Set against the early days of the Ukraine War in 2022, the book maps the architecture of Russian disinformation: corruption narratives seeded into sympathetic media, useful idiots at senior policy levels, and the Chechen enforcers whose own histories implicate Moscow in the violence that built Putin's state.
More from Secrets and Spies Podcast: Espionage | Global Issues | Current Affairs
Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Joby Warrick covered national security for the Washington Post for nearly three decades. In his new book, The Jackal, he turns to Ilich Ramírez Sánchez—Carlos the Jackal—the Venezuelan who in the 1970s and '80s was the most famous terrorist in the world.
A quick programming note: this weekend’s episode will be out on Sunday, October 18, rather than our usual Saturday release. We’re taking an extra day in the edit on Matt’s conversation with national security reporter Joby Warrick about Carlos the Jackal, the Venezuelan-born militant who became one of the Cold War’s most wanted men. Thanks for your patience, and we’ll see you Sunday.
Chris and Matt break down the week's biggest intelligence and geopolitical stories: what really happened at RAF Fairford, the intelligence failure behind the FlyDubai hijacking, allegations of treason against a former BND chief, and a major data leak at the FBI.
Sam Lichtenstein, director of analysis at the global risk intelligence firm RANE, returns to walk Chris through RANE's 2025–2035 decade forecast: a multipolar world in which no great power has the will or the means to set the rules.
Every week, Russia’s Security Council publishes a digest of world events that, journalist Dave Troy argues, reveals more about the Kremlin’s worldview than objective reality. In conversation with Chris, Troy explains how Moscow sees the war in Ukraine as part of a broader struggle over the global order—and how it seeks to export that worldview through proxies, information warfare, conspiracy theories, and ideas about sovereignty.