Ratcliffe’s Moscow Warning, Iran’s Long Reach, and an Alliance on Edge | Espresso Martini

Chris and Matt open season eleven, and Secrets & Spies’ tenth anniversary, with three stories from a busy August. First, CIA Director John Ratcliffe’s trip to Moscow, a rare visit by an agency chief since Bill Burns went in 2021, reportedly carrying a blunt warning against testing NATO amid U.S. assessments that a cornered Russia might attempt a limited probe of the alliance. Then, a New Yorker investigation into how Iran now reaches its critics abroad by renting the local underworld — Romanian petty criminals, teenagers recruited over Snapchat — a "cutout of a cutout" model built to defeat the way security services watch known threats. Finally, they discuss a new Foreign Affairs piece that pushes back against transatlantic-alliance fatalism.

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