Secrets and Spies Podcast: Espionage | Global Issues | Current Affairs

After a midterm wave handed Democrats both houses of Congress, Chris and Matt, espresso martinis in hand, ask what the result changes for American national security. Matt lays out what the new majorities gain in January, from subpoenas to the defense budget to confirmations, and what they don’t, as the Pentagon braces for a fight over who answers for the Iran war and Pete Hegseth’s future comes into question. Chris brings the view from Europe, where relief is tempered by doubt over whether voters rejected Trumpism or just gas prices, and where capitals are weighing how to work with Congress, manage the White House and plan for what comes after. Along the way: Elon Musk, Starlink and the limits of private power over public defense, and what the transatlantic relationship can realistically become.

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Articles discussed in today’s episode
"Accountability Will Come – What Should It Look Like for the Department of Defense?" by Frank Kendall | Just Security: https://www.justsecurity.org/162162/accountability-will-come-department-of-defense/

"How Americans Defeated an Autocrat-in-Waiting" by Anne Applebaum | The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/11/future-democracy/689280/

"Trump asking advisers if Hegseth should stay after midterm losses, sources say" by Jennifer Jacobs and Emma Nicholson | CBS News: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-hegseth-midterm-election-losses/

"‘Knives out’ for Hegseth, other military leaders after Iran war dooms GOP" by Dan Lamothe, Tara Copp, Noah Robertson, and Katherine Doyle | The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/11/04/knives-out-pentagon-after-unpopular-iran-war-dooms-gop-midterms/

"After the midterms: Europe's three-pronged strategy for dealing with America" Giuseppe Spatafora | European Union Institute for Security Studies: https://www.iss.europa.eu/publications/commentary/after-midterms-europes-three-pronged-strategy-dealing-america

"Time to focus on cost of living, says PM after US election results" by Kate Whannel | BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c6kgl0xk8en9o

"Why Europe shouldn’t celebrate a Democratic midterm victory" by Jamie Dettmer | Politico: https://www.politico.eu/article/why-europe-shouldnt-celebrate-democratic-us-midterm-victory/

"Even if US democracy can be salvaged from Trump, Europe is moving on" by Rafael Behr | The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/nov/03/us-democracy-donald-trump-europe-trust

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Secrets & Spies is produced by Films & Podcasts LTD: https://filmsandpodcasts.co.uk/

Music by Andrew R. Bird

Photos by US Congress, Anadolu/Getty, Andrew Harnik/Getty

Secrets and Spies sits at the intersection of intelligence, covert action, real-world espionage, and broader geopolitics in a way that is digestible but serious. Hosted by filmmaker Chris Carr and writer Matt Fulton, each episode examines the very topics that real intelligence officers and analysts consider on a daily basis through the lens of global events and geopolitics, featuring expert insights from former spies, authors, and journalists.

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Keir Giles has spent his career explaining why Russia does what it does, as an adviser to governments and a senior fellow in Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme. He returns to talk with Chris about his new book, American Overthrow: Moscow’s Endgame in Its Long War with Washington, which reads Trump’s second term through the lens of Kremlinology. Giles argues that the administration’s choices track closely with goals Russian strategists set out decades ago. He points to concentrating power in the presidency, dismantling the offices that guarded against foreign interference, pressing Ukraine toward a ceasefire and draining US munitions in Iran. He is equally careful about what the evidence cannot yet show: the mechanism connecting Moscow’s aims to Washington’s decisions. The conversation closes on 2028, and whether Trump follows Putin’s playbook on term limits.

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Order American Overthrow: https://hurstpublishers.com/book/american-overthrow/

More about Keir Giles: https://www.chathamhouse.org/about-us/our-people/keir-giles

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Secrets and Spies is produced by Films & Podcasts LTD: https://filmsandpodcasts.co.uk/

Music by Andrew R. Bird

Secrets and Spies sits at the intersection of intelligence, covert action, real-world espionage, and broader geopolitics in a way that is digestible but serious. Hosted by filmmaker Chris Carr and writer Matt Fulton, each episode examines the very topics that real intelligence officers and analysts consider on a daily basis through the lens of global events and geopolitics, featuring expert insights from former spies, authors, and journalists.

#Spies #GeoPolitics #TrumpRussia
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Chris and Matt open with two reports, from the Washington Post and Politico, that point to a more aggressive Pentagon intelligence posture: a planned deep-cover program with officers posing as businesspeople as part of economic warfare against China, and a quietly created Technology Support Office built to sabotage rivals’ military technology. The Pentagon calls the reporting “simply not true.” They weigh which model of non-official cover the Pentagon might borrow, JSOC’s or the CIA’s, and what oversight should look like. From there: MI5 Director General Ken McCallum’s annual threat update and social media’s role in radicalization; Israel’s inconclusive election, which left neither Benjamin Netanyahu nor Gadi Eisenkot within reach of a majority; Austria’s expulsion of four Russian diplomats from Vienna, long a hub for Russian intelligence in Europe; and a Defense Intelligence Agency report with the clearest image yet of China’s secretive spaceplane.

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Andrew R Bird Album "Automatopia" https://music.imusician.pro/a/xfpkGB99

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Articles discussed in today’s episode
"Pentagon looks to build a deep-cover spy program to confront China" by Zach Dorfman & Warren P. Strobel | The Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/10/21/pentagon-looks-build-deep-cover-spy-program-confront-china/

"The Pentagon is quietly building an elite new tech sabotage agency" by John Sakellariadis, Jack Detsch & Paul McLeary | Politico: https://www.politico.com/news/2026/10/22/technology-support-office-dod-tech-spyware-sabotage-01100327

“Unpacking MI5’s Warning on a ‘New Era’ of Security Threats” by Farah Pandith | Council on Foreign Relations: https://www.cfr.org/articles/unpacking-mi5s-warning-on-a-new-era-of-security-threats

“Israel’s Election: When Will We Know Who Will Be Prime Minister?” by Ephrat Livni | The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/world/middleeast/israel-election-guide-netanyahu-eisenkot.html

“Spies Suspected at Russian Embassy and OSCE Mission in Vienna. Austria Orders Four Diplomats to Leave” by Katherina Poplinichenko | United24 Media: https://united24media.com/world/spies-suspected-at-russian-embassy-and-osce-mission-in-vienna-austria-orders-four-diplomats-to-leave-23759

"U.S. Intel Confirms This Is China’s Secret Spaceplane" by Joseph Trevithick | The War Zone: https://www.twz.com/news-features/u-s-intel-confirms-this-is-chinas-secret-spaceplane

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Secrets & Spies is produced by Films & Podcasts LTD: https://filmsandpodcasts.co.uk/

Music by Andrew R. Bird

Photos by Eric Lee/NYT, Canva, Aaron Favila/Reuters

Secrets and Spies sits at the intersection of intelligence, covert action, real-world espionage, and broader geopolitics in a way that is digestible but serious. Hosted by filmmaker Chris Carr and writer Matt Fulton, each episode examines the very topics that real intelligence officers and analysts consider on a daily basis through the lens of global events and geopolitics, featuring expert insights from former spies, authors, and journalists.

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Former U.S. Army counterintelligence special agent Pete Turner joins Chris for a conversation about what human intelligence actually looks like on the ground. Turner’s career ran from post–Cold War Germany and Bosnia through Egypt in the weeks after 9/11 to Iraq and Afghanistan, and he explains why the work turned less on stealing secrets than on access: winning over wary commanders, building rapport with sheikhs and district governors, and treating interpreters as partners rather than mouthpieces. Along the way he recounts a meeting he later learned the Taliban had called to look him over, and a colleague’s hunt for a district’s shadow governor that ended at the governor’s own door. Turner, host of the Break It Down Show, closes on what the job taught him about human nature.

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Find Pete on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PeteATurner/streams

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https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/break-it-down-show/id941689175

https://open.spotify.com/show/1FcUXypxYsB2heFD3Q4gcm

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Music by Andrew R. Bird

Photo by U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Cody Quinn

Secrets and Spies sits at the intersection of intelligence, covert action, real-world espionage, and broader geopolitics in a way that is digestible but serious. Hosted by filmmaker Chris Carr and writer Matt Fulton, each episode examines the very topics that real intelligence officers and analysts consider on a daily basis through the lens of global events and geopolitics, featuring expert insights from former spies, authors, and journalists.

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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. Matt talks with Warrick about Carlos’s rise, from the audacious 1975 OPEC siege in Vienna to his years as a gun for hire in the Soviet bloc, and about the book’s sharpest argument: that Carlos was less a true believer than a narcissist in love with his own legend. They close on why his story matters now as the deniable, mercenary terror Carlos pioneered is back, in the contract attacks Russia and Iran are running across the West. Only this time, the hired hands have no wish to be famous.

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Secrets and Spies is produced by Films & Podcasts LTD: https://filmsandpodcasts.co.uk/

Music by Andrew R. Bird

Photos by Jack Guez/AFP, AFP/Getty, Marvin Joseph/WaPo

Secrets and Spies sits at the intersection of intelligence, covert action, real-world espionage, and broader geopolitics in a way that is digestible but serious. Hosted by filmmaker Chris Carr and writer Matt Fulton, each episode examines the very topics that real intelligence officers and analysts consider on a daily basis through the lens of global events and geopolitics, featuring expert insights from former spies, authors, and journalists.

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.