My first story for WIRED—yep, 31 years ago—looked at a group of “crypto rebels” who were trying to pry strong encryption technology from the government-classified world and send it into the mainstream. Naturally I attempted to speak to someone at the National Security Agency for comment and ideally get a window into its thinking. Unsurprisingly, that was a no-go, because the NSA was famous for its reticence. Eventually we agreed that I could fax (!) a list of questions. In return I got an unsigned response in unhelpful bureaucratese that didn’t address my queries. Even that represented a loosening of what once was total blackout on anything having to do with this ultra-secretive intelligence agency. For decades after its post–World War II founding, the government revealed nothing, not even the name, of this agency and its activities. Those in the know referred to it as “No Such Agency.”
In recent years, the widespread adoption of encryption technology and the vital need for cybersecurity has led to more openness. Its directors began to speak in public; in 2012, NSA director Keith Alexander actually keynoted Defcon. I’d spent the entire 1990s lobbying to visit the agency for my book Crypto; in 2013, I finally crossed the threshold of its iconic Fort Meade Headquarters for an on-the-record conversation with officials, including Alexander. NSA now has social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. And there is a form on the agency website for podcasters to request guest appearances by an actual NSA-ite.
So it shouldn’t be a total shock that NSA is now doing its own podcast. You don’t need to be an intelligence agency to know that pods are a unique way to tell stories and hold people’s attention. The first two episodes of the seven-part season dropped this week. It’s called No Such Podcast, earning some self-irony points from the get-go.
In keeping with the openness vibe, the NSA granted me an interview with an official in charge of the project—one of the de facto podcast producers, a title that apparently is still not an official NSA job posting. Since NSA still gotta NSA, I can’t use this person’s name. But my source did point out that in the podcast itself, both the hosts and the guests—who are past and present agency officials—speak under their actual identities. We conducted the interview via Microsoft Teams; my spokesperson and one of the hosts were in a room with an impressive background of the official seals of the NSA, the US Central Command, and the United States Cyber Command. I did my end from a World Trade Center conference room, praying my Wi-Fi wouldn’t cut out.
Why an NSA podcast? The spokesperson explains that the NSA has the world’s best cryptologists and cryptanalysts, all of whom work in silence, and the agency wanted to talk about their critical and amazing work. “The podcast,” the spokesperson says, “is a medium that allows for good storytelling and conversation that is distinct from things we already engage in. It provides a different level of connection.” I later received a statement from Sara Siegle, the NSA’s head of strategic communications, echoing that point: “NSA believes in showcasing the incredible, dedicated work of our diverse, expert workforce. No Such Podcast extends our existing efforts into a new and growing medium.” Got it.
I suggest some secondary motivations. Some of the NSA’s social media posts solicit workers, and this podcast seems likewise designed to appeal to STEM graduates who might place patriotism over working for Google or a startup. My source acknowledged that this was the case. “Recruitment is not the number one goal of the podcast, but we are certainly hoping that by showcasing the work we do here, and the real people on the show who work here, listeners might say, ‘Oh, that sounds like a really cool job—and that person seems pretty normal, right?’”
The NSA also apparently sees the podcast as a chance to answer some critics who charge that the agency is a Big Brother-ish snooping operation that threatens our privacy. In the very first episode, guest speaker Natalie Laing, the NSA’s director of operations, speaks at length about how the NSA limits itself to information relevant to national security and similar imperatives. “Compliance is our number one focus,” she says. By hitting this note so hard that my Apple Watch sent me a volume alert, the NSA seems to be using the podcast format to address suspicions that it violates privacy—especially after the shocking revelations from Edward Snowden about how much stuff the NSA does grab. (I am told Snowden’s name is not uttered in the entire NSA podcast series—no such person?)
The NSA used fairly traditional marketing skills to figure out the format of its podcast. It checked out not only popular pods, but those of its sister intelligence agencies. Yes, the CIA and FBI are already in the game. The NSA finally settled on a classical interview format where a revolving set of four hosts—not outside professionals, but the winners of an internal talent search for employees with broadcast skills—talk with officials about the agency’s operations and exploits. “We definitely wanted that conversational tone that provides space for our guests to share their expertise and stories in a way that doesn’t really feel like lectures,” says my spokesperson. The podcasts were recorded in the NSA’s own in-house video studio. That is a sentence that you will never find in a John LeCarré novel.
As you would expect, there is a lot of vetting to make sure that none of the stories shared on the pod are classified, or would compromise future operations. No, we will not find out whether there is a quantum computer in the basement of the NSA’s Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters. While the numbers of reviewers varied by episode, I was assured it was more than a dozen and less than a hundred.
I’ve read the transcripts for the first two episodes. The series opens with a bang, with episode 1 recounting the NSA’s role in finding Osama Bin Laden. As background to the narrative, Laing and the other guest, former director of operations Jon Darby, provide a rather detailed precis of the workings of signals intelligence, or SIGINT in spook-speak, which is the core activity of the agency. They give a once-unthinkably straightforward rundown of what the NSA calls its “production cycle”—the way it grabs signals, analyzes them, and distributes them to US officials, the military, our allies, and even some people in the private sector. The information is familiar to those who have been studying intelligence agencies, or at least reading spy novels, but for many years the NSA would confirm none of this.
The description of how SIGINT helped find Bin Laden was gripping, but I missed a journalistic toughness in the questioning. Paging Barton Gellman or our own Andy Greenberg! At one point Jon Darby said, “… the fall of 2001—that’s when we really started really looking for Bin Laden.” Since the NSA was well aware al-Qaeda had already run terror operations against the US, why not earlier? And maybe an explanation of why we were blindsided by 9/11? Another question: While it’s an inspiring triumph that we located Bin Laden, it did take over 10 years. Given how much we pay for the NSA, is that acceptable?
The second episode is about cybersecurity. It struck me as relatively vague, with a lot of talk about the importance of protecting information for the military and even the space program but fewer concrete examples. The guests talk about stopping ransomware attacks but don’t say how. I would have liked to have heard more about how the NSA works with private industry to protect our infrastructure. Or doesn’t. A few spectacular breaches in recent years exposed critical government information, including several whopping hacks of Microsoft by the Russians and the Chinese. Those didn’t make it in that episode.
Still, No Such Podcast can be revealing. The Bin Laden episode had a brief but intriguing digression about encryption. (Future episodes, I am told, will dive deeper into the subject, including one about the history of cryptography.) During the 1990s the NSA had been an active opponent of strong public encryption. But at the end of the decade, the Clinton Administration seemingly ended the Crypto Wars by allowing the private sector to employ the techniques. Nowadays we’ve got the FBI and other law enforcement officials caterwauling about the danger of end-to-end encryption in software made by Apple, Meta, and others. But in this podcast, the NSA’s head of operations is not crying doomsday. To the contrary, Laing brags about how the great codebreakers at the NSA, despite the revolution in private sector cryptography, are still able to get the job done. “Our ability to impact in a positive way our nation’s national security, to defend our nation, that has not changed … Every day I am a little gobsmacked at the talent that we have at this agency and the things they are able to do. That absolutely has not changed. And what else hasn’t changed is, we can’t tell people about it generally.” While the FBI is screaming that we’re doomed if we don’t rein in end-to-end crypto, here is the NSA saying, “We got this.”
For that reason I’ll give a thumbs-up to No Such Podcast. Yes, it’s kind of propagandistic—how could it be otherwise?—but despite the podcast’s selective spin on its activities, there’s more signal here than noise. As a bonus, there are no ads for energy drinks, gold bullion, or newly minted cryptocurrency tokens. Also, I’m curious to hear the NSA’s take on artificial intelligence, the subject of an upcoming episode.
Before I end my discussion with the NSA, I ask a question that is top of mind for every podcaster: Will No Such Podcast be picked up for season 2? “We can neither confirm or deny,” says the unnamed person I spoke to. Now that’s the NSA I know.
Time Travel
During the six years I spent writing Crypto, I begged and begged to visit the NSA, to no avail. After many months of negotiation, I finally got an official interview with a key source. It was conducted at the National Cryptologic Museum, just outside the agency’s gates. Maybe that was an early sign of the thaw that has led to this podcast. But as I documented in my book, in the NSA’s first decades, silence—and an electrified, triple-layered barbed-wire fence—enveloped all that the agency touched or dealt with.
Since all the salient information about modern crypto was withheld from public view, outsiders could only guess what happened in “The Fort.” The NSA undoubtedly operated the most sophisticated snooping operation in the world. It was universally assumed (though never admitted) that no foreign phone call, radio broadcast, or telegraph transmission was safe from the agency’s global vacuum cleaner. Signals were sucked up and the contents analyzed with a multi-MIPS computer, combing the text for anything of value. …
What’s more, the NSA considered itself the sole repository of cryptographic information—not just that used by the civilian government and all the armed forces, as the law dictated, but that used by the private sector as well. Ultimately, the triple-depth fence surrounding its headquarters was not only a physical barrier but a metaphor for the NSA’s near-fanatical drive to hide information about itself and its activities. In the United States of America, serious crypto existed only behind the Triple Fence.
Ask Me One Thing
Chris asks, “All things considered, has the internet been a good or bad thing? Or, what percentage good or bad?”
Thanks for the question, Chris. You do realize that the internet is the big, all-encompassing blob where we all now live, right? You might as well ask whether civilization is a good thing. I can think of lots of reasons to answer in the negative, but none that would send me into a cave.
Look, a lot of us went overboard 30 years ago when we realized that the internet was going to be pervasive and revolutionary, and it seemed like an opportunity to do a constructive reset on a lot of things that stood in the way of access and equality and the generally calcified way that media operated. Some of those lofty visions came true, and some unexpected hellscapes arose. Overall, the mistake that the optimists made was somehow forgetting that it would be people who would make the internet what it was, and what it would become. No matter how technology might nudge us into comity, a lot of humanity won’t go there no matter what. And the massive scale of the internet, as well as the riches to be gained, can lure even the most idealistic founders into breaking bad.
I still believe that the internet provides a pathway for the best of humanity to shine. But a lot of people are simply awful, and way too many of them are in your face all the time now. So my answer is 58-42—on the side of the good. No cave for me.
You can submit questions to [email protected]. Write ASK LEVY in the subject line.
End Times Chronicle
1943: Publication of Herman Hesse’s futuristic, trippy final novel, The Glass Bead Game. Last week: Analysis of material from a Chinese space probe reveals glass beads on the moon. Just sayin’.
Last but Not Least
Russia’s most feared military intelligence agency now has a cyber warfare team. A meaty subject for No Such Podcast!
It wasn’t the NSA but the State Department that discovered the Chinese hacker of Microsoft—and that’s just one thing Secretary of State Anthony Blinken talks about in our Big Interview.
Blinken also goes on camera as the Big Interview now has video!
WIRED hunted hidden police signals at the Democratic Convention–our own SIGINT op!
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