One of the central questions guiding my recent work on intelligence, knowledge production and state power concerns undeclared interests and relationship of research funders. Most of the questions I pursue grew out of my efforts to understand the implications of a mid-1970s finding by the US Senate Church Committee (so named, because it was chaired by Senator Frank Church) that the CIA’s covert funding of US international scholarship was “massive.” The committee established that about half the grants for international research during the 1960s (excluding grants made by Carnegie, Ford, and Rockefeller Foundations—which the report found had their own CIA ties) were secretly funded or influenced by the CIA. This passage got me searching for documents that could substantiate how this system worked. More

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth proclaimed that illicit drugs are “tantamount to chemical weapons” and the dead suspects “are the al-Qaeda of our hemisphere, and we are hunting them with the sophistication and precision that we hunted al-Qaeda.”  Anyone who the U.S. military killed is automatically posthumously designated a narco-terrorist. If the U.S. government is entitled to summarily kill suspected drug traffickers abroad, there is no reason why the same prerogative would not eventually be invoked on the home front.  If politicians truly want to protect Americans, why not authorize the U.S. military, state police, and county government dog catchers to summarily attack any boat suspected of transporting drugs on the nation’s lakes, rivers, or overgrown puddles? More

Donald Trump’s visit to Évian and Versailles offered this Geneva resident an unusually close look at the American president as the local press reported on all the ins and outs of his drop-by. While much of the commentary has focused on the G7 and the very thin memorandum of understanding with Iran, what stood out was Trump’s conduct. His declaration that “I’m the boss,” his hostility toward journalists, and the pageantry at Versailles all reinforced the image of a president increasingly drawn to the trappings of royal power. Trump turned the visit into another display of self-aggrandizement, reinforcing his image as the “Ugly American.” More