Book and Film Recommendations

Creator: Steve Conrad | T.V. Series | 2015-2018

Follows the complicated life of intelligence officer John Tavner, whose latest assignment--to prevent Iran from going nuclear--requires him to forgo all safety nets and assume a perilous, non-official cover.

Antonia Senior | PublicAffairs | 26 May 2026

The Cambridge Five was the most infamous spy ring in history. Its members—Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, Donald Maclean, Guy Burgess, and John Cairncross—met at university, amid the left-wing ferment overtaking British campuses between the World Wars. The Five were soon recruited by Soviet agents and pledged allegiance to Stalin, and each quickly took up a place in the British government. From the 1930s, they funneled top-secret intelligence to the USSR, some so sensitive that their Soviet handlers feared a double cross. Their unmasking in 1951 rocked Britain, helping to end a chummy, boys’ club stranglehold on the country’s institutions of power. But, as Antonia Senior shows, the Five’s treachery had much graver and more devastating consequences across the world. Their work invaluably aided Stalin as he sought to build a Red Empire, condemning millions across Eastern Europe to decades of repression, violence, and death.

Rife with code names, smuggled documents, clandestine rendezvous, and copious amounts of gin, Stalin’s Apostles wields impeccable research and storytelling and all the thrilling details and high tragedy of a classic spy thriller.

M.J. Brennan | Independently published | 12 April 2026

China's Ministry of State Security doesn't operate like any intelligence service the West has ever faced. It doesn't rely on a handful of trained spies stealing classified documents. It mobilizes hundreds of thousands of students, researchers, and business travelers to collect fragments that, individually, mean nothing but collectively shift the global balance of power before anyone notices.

Inside this book, you will discover:

• How the "thousand grains of sand" doctrine turns ordinary Chinese citizens into an intelligence collection network of a scale no other nation can replicate
• How MSS cyber units conduct month-long intrusions inside foreign networks, fusing stolen data with human intelligence to produce capabilities neither discipline could achieve alone
• How officers recruit foreign agents through guanxi, building genuine relationships over years with no recruitment pitch and no moment the target realizes they have crossed the line into espionage
• How suspects are held in secret RSDL facilities for up to six months without legal counsel while interrogators extract intelligence and produce confessions for broadcast on state television
• How Operations Fox Hunt and Skynet deploy officers without diplomatic immunity to hunt, pressure, and compel the return of Chinese nationals across more than one hundred countries

Drawing from court documents, defector accounts, Congressional investigations, and four decades of documented operations, each chapter includes practical training exercises revealing exactly how the MSS prepares its officers. From sixty-day cyber intrusion campaigns to double agent operations exploiting the surveillance state's total data coverage, these exercises demonstrate the methods behind what Western counterintelligence officials call the most significant intelligence threat they face.

Andreas Krieg | Georgetown University Press | 1 May 2023

Now more than ever, communities across the world are integrated into a complex, global information ecosystem that shapes the nature of social, political, and economic life. The ripple effects of actors trying to manipulate or disrupt this information ecosystem are far more severe than the primary effects that are merely being felt in the information space. In fact, the weaponization of narratives has already shown its potential to transform the character of conflict in the twenty-first century.

Subversion examines how malicious state and nonstate actors take advantage of the information space to sow political chaos. Andreas Krieg reveals how the coordinated use of weaponized narratives can achieve strategic-level effects through a six-stage process. Preying on vulnerable states and communities to find the fault lines within societies, these campaigns begin in the information space with an ultimate goal of producing tangible results (such as changes to policy or voting behavior, or spurring political violence). Krieg closely examines recent subversion campaigns by two states in particular, focusing on Russia’s interference in Western public discourse and the United Arab Emirates’s demonization of the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization.

Subversion will provide scholars and policymakers with a comprehensive understanding of one of the most urgent threats in international politics along with recommendations on how vulnerable communities can become more resilient.