Intelligence History

Richard Sorge was a man with two homelands. Born of a German father and a Russian mother in Baku in 1895, he moved in a world of shifting alliances and infinite possibility. A member of the angry and deluded generation who found new, radical faiths after their experiences on the battlefields of the First World War, Sorge became a fanatical communist - and the Soviet Union’s most formidable spy.

This audiobook explains why AI is unique, what legal and ethical problems it could cause, and how we can address them. It argues that AI is unlike any other previous technology, owing to its ability to take decisions independently and unpredictably. This gives rise to three issues: responsibility - who is liable if AI causes harm; rights - the disputed moral and pragmatic grounds for granting AI legal personality; and the ethics surrounding the decision-making of AI.

An unprecedented high-level master narrative of America's intelligence wars from the only person ever to helm both the CIA and NSA, at a time of heinous new threats and wrenching change. For General Michael Hayden, playing to the edge means playing so close to the line that you get chalk dust on your cleats. Otherwise, by playing back, you may protect yourself, but you will be less successful in protecting America.

Gordon Corera uses declassified documents and extensive original research to tell the story of the Operation Columba and the Secret Pigeon Service for the first time. A tale of wartime espionage, bitter rivalries, extraordinary courage, astonishing betrayal, harrowing tragedy, and a quirky, quarrelsome band of spy masters and their special mission, Operation Columba opens a fascinating new chapter in the annals of World War II. It is ultimately, the story of how, in one of the darkest and most dangerous times in history, under threat of death, people bravely chose to resist.

We are used to thinking of computers as being a step up from calculators - very good at storing information, and maybe even at playing a logical game like chess. But up to now they haven't been able to think in ways that are intuitive, or respond to questions as a human might. All that has changed, dramatically, in the past few years. Our search engines are becoming answer engines. Artificial intelligence is already revolutionising sectors from education to healthcare to the creative arts. But how does an AI understand sentiment or context?

Flipping TVs is a business model that is often overlooked, but those who are getting involved and know what to look out for can make impressive additional incomes–with very little effort.

The incredible true story of British special agents Eileen and Jacqueline Nearne, sisters who risked everything to fight for freedom during the Second World War. When elderly recluse Eileen Nearne died, few suspected that the quiet little old lady was a decorated WWII war hero. Volunteering to serve for British intelligence at age 21, Eileen was posted to Nazi-occupied France to send encoded messages of crucial importance for the Allies, until her capture by the Gestapo.

Two years before 9/11, the United States was attacked by an unknown enemy. No advance warning was given, and it didn't target civilians. Instead, tomahawk missiles started missing their targets, US agents were swept up by hostile governments, and America’s enemies seemed to know its every move in advance. A new phase of warfare—cyber war—had arrived. And within two decades it escaped Pandora's Box, plunging us into a state of total war where every day, countless cyber attacks perpetrated by states and mercenaries are reshaping the world.

The National Security Agency was born out of the legendary codebreaking programs of World War II that cracked the famed Enigma machine and other German and Japanese codes, thereby turning the tide of Allied victory. In the postwar years, as the United States developed a new enemy in the Soviet Union, our intelligence community found itself targeting not soldiers on the battlefield, but suspected spies, foreign leaders, and even American citizens.

Robotics is slowly creeping into our lives, and soon, robots will be everywhere. Do you know everything there is to know about robotics? Do you want to know more about robotics? Do you want to discover the advantages of robotics? If so, then you've come to the right place.

The entire vast modern American intelligence system—the amalgam of three-letter spy services of many stripes—can be traced back to the dire straits that Britain faced at the end of June 1940. Before World War II, the US had no organization to recruit spies and steal secrets or launch secret campaigns against enemies overseas. It was only through Winston Churchill’s determination to mobilize the US to help in their fight against Hitler that the first American spy service was born, one that was built by scratch in the background of WWII.

In this rapid-paced book, a former CIA chief of Soviet bloc counterintelligence breaks open the mysterious case of KGB officer Yuri Nosenko's 1964 defection to the United States. Still a highly controversial chapter in the history of Cold War espionage, the Nosenko affair has inspired debate for more than 40 years. Was Nosenko a bona fide defector with the real information about Lee Harvey Oswald's stay in Soviet Russia, or was he a KGB loyalist, engaged in a complex game of deception?

Technology is our new life partner. No longer confined to the sidelines, new interactive technologies like AI therapists, avatar friends, and robot assistants are ready to transform technology's role from basic tools of convenience to intimate elements of our social and emotional lives.

At 10.20 p.m. on 21 May 1991, a young woman bowed before Rajiv Gandhi at an election rally in Sriperumbudur, 42 km north of Chennai. And then there was an explosion. This book is the definitive account of one of the most controversial crimes in contemporary India. It unravels the complex plot hatched by the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) to ensure that Rajiv Gandhi did not return to power in the 1991 general elections.

Olive Yang was a widely mythologized genderqueer lesbian opium-pioneer in the 1950s heyday of the Golden Triangle. After escaping an arranged marriage with a noble cousin, Olive felt that she had no choice but to lead a life of banditry with an anti-communist rebel army supported by the CIA. As her smuggling empire grew, she became so powerful and infamous that novelists were inspired to write about her evil ruthlessness and beauty. Yet, Olive’s real life and identity remained a mystery to many.

US Air Force Major George Filer belongs to the generation of pilots and airmen who first became aware of the strange aircraft showing up in the Earth’s atmosphere after World War II. These men - military professionals who flew planes, commanded ships, served as radar operators and air traffic controllers at air fields around the world - began to whisper amongst themselves about encounters with suspected extraterrestrial aircraft.

If you want to learn about the internet of things, then pay attention.... You were just woken up in the middle of the night by smart light bulbs in your house blasting at full power for no reason. Your bleary-eyed investigation shows they tried to download a firmware update and failed. At that moment, Alexa starts quietly whispering sweet nonsense to herself in the corner and Roomba starts slamming into the nearest wall. What do you do? Is your house haunted or have the machines finally started an uprising? Neither - it’s just another day in the IoT wonderland.

Between 1939 and 1945, more than 70 Allied men and women were convicted - mostly in secret trials - of working to help Nazi Germany win the war. In the same period, hundreds of British Fascists were also interned without trial on specific and detailed evidence that they were spying for, or working on behalf of, Germany. Collectively, these men and women were part of a little-known Fifth Column: traitors who committed crimes including espionage, sabotage, communicating with enemy intelligence agents, and attempting to cause disaffection among Allied troops.

Carve Her Name with Pride is the inspiring story of the half-French Violette Szabo who was born in Paris in 1921 to an English motorcar dealer, and a French Mother. She met and married Etienne Szabo, a Captain in the French Foreign Legion in 1940. Shortly after the birth of her daughter, Tania, her husband died at El Alamein. She became a FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) and was recruited into the SOE and underwent secret agent training. Her first trip to France was completed successfully even though she was arrested and then released by the French Police.

Learn from some of the greatest thinkers in history. Study their patterns and stand on the shoulders of giants.