Greetings from London, where after what feels like – and actually is – a month of almost continual traveling myself and assistants are now happily ensconced in an apartment in London’s Bankside just by Shakespeare’s Globe.

Thanks to some very dedicated work by all London volunteers, PS21 is doing very well here – to the point where Tuesday’s discussion on counterterrorism is, I’m afraid, fully booked [let me know if you wish to join the cancellation list as that may be a handful of spaces, but I can’t promise anything]. We have some great further events coming up, however – and for those in DC, Wednesday’s discussion on foreign policy should be excellent.

We also have a really good discussion coming up in London the following week on the changing nature of intelligence.

Plenty of great developments to come in addition. For this week, I leave you with my most recent Reuters column, a slightly alarming piece looking at just what it might take from North Korea to acquire the capability to strike the continental United States with a nuclear warhead.

all the best as always,

Peter Apps

Executive Director, PS21

Reuters global affairs columnist

LONDON 

Tuesday, June 7, 6 PM. Whitehall, London, exact location to be confirmed to attendees.

This event is now fully booked. We will, however, be in the Red Lion pub in Whitehall as usual from around 715 p.m. onwards.

 PS21 talks to Richard Barrett, former senior British intelligence official, head of the United Nations Al Qaeda and Taliban monitoring team 2004-13 and one of the world’s leading experts on the changing jihadist threat.

Moderated by Peter Apps, Reuters global affairs columnist and executive director of the Project for Study of the 21st Century.

 

The Changing Face of Intelligence

Wednesday, June 15, six p.m. London location to be confirmed to attendees

From the growth of cyberspace to the application of Open source information, the intelligence landscape – both for the government and private sector – is starting to see significantly change. PS21 looks into the changing sources of information, the needs and wants of those consuming intelligence, and asks how that shadowy world looks set to change in the years to come.

 

Peter Apps [moderator] – global affairs columnist, Reuters. Executive director, PS21

John Bassett – former head of GCHQ London and Washington stations

Christiaan Triebert – an open source intelligence (OSINT) specialist at Bellingcat. Tracking conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Yemen especially, he also provides UK transparency group Airwars with Geolocations of alleged civilian casualty incidents.

Sign up here.

 

WASHINGTON DC

A Choice of Foreign Policy Futures

Wednesday, June 8, 6 PM. Thomson Reuters, 1333 H St. NW., Washington DC

With the  rise of  isolationist rhetoric with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders — and, of course, the more conservative foreign policy stature of Hillary Clinton — the 2016 election is shaping up to offer a foreign policy range rarely seen in recent American history. As it faces the rise of rival powers and budget constraints the US faces some difficult decisions. What do the politics and geopolitics of this year’s face-off tell us about policymaking in the years and decades to come?

Ali Wyne [moderator] – PS21 Global Fellow. Nonresident Fellow, Atlantic Council

Nikolas Gvosdev – Prof. of National Security Studies, United States Naval war College

Rachel Rizzo – Research Associate, Center for a New American Security

Alexander Ward – Associate Director, Scowcroft Center, Atlantic Council

Chris Jackson – Pollster, Ipsos

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