“The panel is tasked with reviewing records to make recommendations to the State Department’s Office of the Historian and Foreign Service Institute for its Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series…” thehill.com/homenews/admin…

‘The English delegate said that while much could be said against a practice which personally seemed to him rather unsportsmanlike, still he felt he must reserve the right of any cannibal allies of Britannia to go as far as they liked.’

This article makes the case for studying US intelligence history by barely mentioning intelligence at all, even though crises in civil-intelligence relations have been enormously influential in producing reactions against the national security state, especially the current one.

"The taste of the common man in New Zealand, I think I can safely say, is very raw," said Professor Nikolaus Pevsner in a BBC talk after his return to London. "You recognise it in furnishing stores, in women’s clothes, and men’s ties as well." paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZ…

Our first speaker line up for the Aspen Otago National Security Forum is Chris Taylor of ASPI, interviewing the Biden Administration’s emerging tech czar Anne Neuberger on the huge challenges artificial intelligence poses for espionage and analysis. Chris Taylor

Teaching POLS213 NZ Foreign Policy again. Abdicated my duties for Lecture 1 and got former Deputy PM and POLS213 alumni Grant Robertson to run it. Grant talked about Covid 19, an enormously difficult decision that affected foreign policy and everything else. Students v. impressed

A chance to talk about Shaun Walker and Douglas Walller’s new books, as well as namecheck books by Rory Cormac and Richard Aldrich, Kevin Riehle, Luca Trenta, Emrah Gurkhan, Helen Fry. Shout out to to spy publishers Georgetown University Press, Edinburgh University Press and Yale University Press

How has recent CIA history influenced US civil-intelligence relations? Here are some observations in a The TLS review of tim weiner’s The Mission and The Spy and the State: Deep State vs Donald Trump | TLS the-tls.com/politics-by-re…

Great to have former US diplomat Ford Hart talking to the class from Virginia this morning. Ford has been a friend of Pols213 for some years now, and always appreciate his perspective on the US-NZ relationship. Next week we have former head of MFAT Chris Seed. A stellar line up!

I talked to Corin Dann on Morning Report about the FBI opening an office in Wellington. rnz.co.nz/national/progr…

🚨 Foreign espionage is now a major economic threat to Australia. ASIO has officially revealed that such activity cost the nation A$12.5 billion in 2023–24, estimating via a report from the Australian Institute of Criminology that this figure is likely conservative.

Full house today (120 students) for former head of the NZ foreign service Chris Seed. Fantastic presentation on NZ’s position in an unstable world. Big Q&A session afterwards (the biggest since Gerald Hensley’s visit in 2019.) Thanks to Chris!

BZ, NZ. airguide.info/brave-nz-pilot…

Great to have NZSIS presenting at the Aspen-Otago National Security Forum. More announcements to come!

Registrations open now. Other sessions include: the Australian/NZ threat landscape, AI and Espionage, Frozen Conflict? Antarctica as a Contested Space, North Korea's Nuclear Deterrence and the Implications for Regional Security. otago.ac.nz/foreign-policy… ASPI

Court documents say the (unnamed) Chinese woman facing foreign interference charges in Canberra had some very substantial assets. Police allege she'd received approx $320,000 AUD from PRC accounts since 2017, and had an impressive collection of luxury goods

Today we had NZSIS visit to preview the 2025 Threat Assessment and discuss intel careers. A full house again (with picture of desktop as good opsec, don’t want trouble). Class is working on their own threat assessment so great to compare notes.

A very thoughtful and thorough press today from Jennifer Parker on the Australian-NZ defence relationship. Very kind of Jen, who is enormously busy, and tailored her talk just for the class. And entirely appropriate to the threat assessment and policy paper they are thinking about!