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"Power Wars" in 100 Tweets

Timothy Edgar
Monday, December 7, 2015, 11:56 AM

Like many Lawfare readers, I confess to being a little obsessed with Charlie Savage's new book, Power Wars. It is a remarkable account of how national security law is forged, step by step, through the decisions of unsung government officials at times of intense stress. Its subtitle is "Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency," but it could just as easily bear the subtitle of this blog -- "Hard National Security Choices."

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Like many Lawfare readers, I confess to being a little obsessed with Charlie Savage's new book, Power Wars. It is a remarkable account of how national security law is forged, step by step, through the decisions of unsung government officials at times of intense stress. Its subtitle is "Inside Obama's Post-9/11 Presidency," but it could just as easily bear the subtitle of this blog -- "Hard National Security Choices."

In an era in which we are supposed to express ourselves through social media in 140 characters, it's a pleasure to read a really meaty book. Gideon Rose, the editor of Foreign Affairs, has written that Power Wars is a "master class in how to think seriously about the subject." He urged politicians to read it rather than rush to opine on what we should be doing about terrorist attacks.

I couldn't agree more. But if your attention span has been wrecked by the Internet, I've reduced Charlie's book to 100 tweets. Here they are.


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Timothy H. Edgar teaches cybersecurity and digital privacy at Brown University and Harvard Law School. He is the author of Beyond Snowden: Privacy, Mass Surveillance and the Struggle to Reform the NSA. He served as a privacy official in the National Security Staff and in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and was a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union.

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