In this week’s State Secrets, host Suzanne Kelly talks with Dr. Trent Maul. Dr. Maul was appointed to Director of Analysis for the Defense Intelligence Agency in May 2021. Dr. Maul discusses the Defense Intelligence Agency’s global outlook on the Russia-Ukraine war and the possibility of Russia trying to expand its influence in the region to other neighboring countries.

Ambassador Joe DeTrani has spent much of his career centered on China. He is not only a former Special Envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea, he is also a former director of East Asia Operations at the CIA. In this episode, Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian sits down with Ambassador DeTrani to discuss senior leadership changes in Beijing and a potential phone call between Xi and US President Joe Biden.

Former Senior CIA Officer and Cipher Brief Expert Marc Polymeropoulos was in Moscow in late 2017, when he woke up in his hotel room with a blinding headache.  It was the beginning of a 5-year journey that landed him in Walter Reed’s Traumatic Brain Injury Program.  What happened?  Marc believes he was the victim of a targeted microwave weapon attack – something that’s become known as Havana Syndrome, after US government employees working at the Embassy in Cuba reported similar debilitating symptoms.  Now, the Intelligence Community has issued its latest assessment on Havana Syndrome, which it refers to as Analogous Health Incidents and Polymeropoulos says the report leaves a lot to be desired.

In this episode of State Secrets, Suzanne Kelly talks about the ways in which the war in Ukraine is changing the world with author Rajan Menon. Menon, a nonresident scholar in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is co-author of the book, Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order. Menon, like Kelly, recently returned from Ukraine and shares his first-hand impressions about what’s happening there and how this war is changing the world.