Podcast

Aug 13 2024
Length: 38 mins

The parallels between the 1968 Democratic National Convention and this year’s are undeniable: An incumbent president dropping out of the race. A party deeply divided over a brutal war. A nation arguing over the right to free expression vs. law and order. And it’s all happening again in Chicago, where in 1968 the streets around the Convention became a bloody battle between protesters and police. Is it going to be possible for the city this time around to accommodate peaceful protesters peacefully protesting? A protest organizer, an eyewitness to the violence of ‘68, and an expert on law enforcement weigh in on preparations for the convention and the lessons to be learned from that violent week in 1968.

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July 9 2024

In the wake of 9/11, a massive surveillance system quietly made its way onto our smartphones. The data of millions of Americans is for sale to the highest bidder — and it’s not always clear who’s buying. Here’s how information about everything, from where you got a drink last night (and maybe even with whom) to where you sleep, might be available for purchase by the national security apparatus — or even your own local police department. And they don’t need a warrant.

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July 2 2024

These days when a thorny international conflict is resolved, more and more often a major player in the negotiation has been the small Persian Gulf state of Qatar. The country has made itself uniquely indispensable on the global stage by trying to play nice with pretty much everyone, including Hamas and Iran. And also by keeping on very good terms with the United States. Peter visits Qatar to see this high-wire act of diplomacy up close.

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New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman has been thinking about the Middle East since he was 15 years old and he’s been covering the region for 45 years. He remains adamant that the only way forward for Israelis and Palestinians is through a two-state solution. He tells Peter what it will take to get there.

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Veteran journalist and CNN host Fareed Zakaria has made a career of putting hard questions to many of the world’s most powerful people. Taking the temperature of global politics these days, he’s worried democracy is on a dangerous downward slide. He explains why — and where — leaders are taking their countries down dark paths, and what can be done to rescue democracy as we know it.

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You may have heard some ruckus about Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s 887-page plan to overhaul the federal government, fire thousands of career bureaucrats and bring in loyalists if Trump wins a second term. But what would this look like in practice? You’ll hear from the author of one chapter of the plan who says curing what ails the US State Department should start with replacing many of its diplomats. And you’ll hear why a couple of veteran US diplomats believe doing so will threaten national security.

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Peter speaks with a former CIA officer who entered the CIA in 1968, another who got her start just before 9/11, and the author of The Sisterhood: The Secret History of Women at the CIA.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India is the most popular leader in the world — and he’s poised to win reelection to a third term. With his embrace of religious nationalism, is India’s secular democracy in peril? Or is Modi just giving the country’s 1.1 billion Hindus what they want?

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How could the US lose a war with China? What happens if American political divisions keep getting more extreme? And what in the world will A.I, mean for national security? These are the questions that keep the former commander of NATO, retired Admiral James Stavridis and retired Marine Captain Elliot Ackerman up at night. But unlike a lot of people in their shoes, they haven’t been harrying policymakers with op-eds or whitepapers. Instead they teamed up to write a set of novels showing how badly things could go — and what the U.S. can do to avoid a nightmarish future.

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In the Room with Peter Bergen

Mina Al-Oraibi is the editor of The National, an English-language newspaper headquartered in Abu Dhabi. She shares how the post-October 7th news landscape looks inside the Middle East.

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