Podcast

In The Room

Each week, listeners are invited to join Peter as he covers topics like the Ukraine War, the war in Gaza, the Pentagon’s long and schizophrenic relationship with UFOs, a rare peek inside the FBI’s unit that is trying to prevent mass shootings, and a tour of the CIA’s secret museum. He interviews top experts and leaders like U.S. Army General David Petraeus, Jen Easterly, who leads U.S. efforts to prevent cyberattacks, former U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton, U.S. Deputy Homeland Security Advisor Josh Geltzer, CNN Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward, Sir Lawrence Freedman, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Lord Andrew Roberts, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Christine Abizaid, Admiral William “Bill” McRaven and leading authors like Patrick Radden Keefe, Elizabeth Kolbert, David Sanger, Fareed Zaharia, and Anne Applebaum.

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Episode 6

Episode 6: Stop Keeping Your Password on a Sticky Underneath Your Keyboard

Cybercriminals and states like China and Russia are targeting the computer networks of everything from America’s hospitals to the water coming out of the kitchen tap. Jen Easterly, the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), breaks down the biggest cyber threats and what the government, companies, and the rest of us need to do about them.

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Episode 5

Episode 5: What Should the U.S. Do About Havana Syndrome?

It started in 2016 when a small group of American diplomats and spies in Havana, Cuba said they heard a piercing sound and became debilitatingly ill. Seven years later, more than a thousand Americans all over the globe now say they’ve also gotten sick. Despite several scientific studies and numerous government investigations, the debate around what’s making people sick still hasn’t been fully resolved. Could the job these foreign service and intelligence officers do — trying to keep America safe — in outposts like Cuba and Russia and China be so stressful that it causes serious neurological symptoms? And is Havana Syndrome still a national security threat — since it’s taking out some of the best and brightest Americans in the foreign service and intelligence?

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Episode 4

Episode 4 CIA Secret Museum

Tucked away deep inside the intelligence agency’s headquarters in Langley, VA is a museum most of us will never see. It chronicles the organization’s history—including some of its most important missions and greatest failures. The public isn’t allowed in, but in this episode you get a peek inside.

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Episode 3

Can You Trust the Pentagon About UFOs?

A media frenzy erupted when a Chinese spy balloon crossed the skies above the United States, but that was hardly the first UFO to violate American airspace. U.S. warplanes have shot down multiple UFOs this year and the government has reported over 150 more mysterious sightings in recent years that it can’t explain. Pilots and former Pentagon officials say it’s time for the U.S. government to study the issue seriously and tell the public what it knows. But the Pentagon’s bizarre history of stifling — and stoking — UFO panic makes it hard to know how out-there the truth will turn out to be.

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Episode 2

What Keeps General David Petraeus Up at Night?

The celebrated American general takes you on a world tour of hotspots, sizes up the threats posed by China and Russia, assesses the risk of a military coup in the U.S., discusses a future where AI-powered machines are doing most of the war-fighting, and explains why he thinks the most apt metaphor for the challenges facing America in the current global landscape is…a very tricky circus act

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Episode 1

Will Vladimir Putin Get Away with War Crimes?

When a newly-hired intern at the International Criminal Court was arrested and revealed to be a Russian spy, it begged the question: what was he up to? Now that Vladimir Putin has a warrant from this court for his arrest, it’s not hard to imagine the spy was planning to tell Moscow about evidence that is accumulating in the case against Russia for its atrocities in Ukraine. Turns out the evidence is abundant — and this may be the conflict that finally makes it hard to get away with war crimes.

Listen on Audible | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript