The Cipher Brief Open Source Report

This use to be such a great resource but they have shortened their open source brief to barely cover a few headlines with little detail. Before it was a great summary of the top news headlines affecting national security but ever since they made their open source newsletter a subscription only resource, the meat and potatoes of this podcast has been super disappointing.

As a student and researcher within the field of gravitational-wave astronomy, I am someone who has a deep care for all the professionals within the fields of intelligence and national security. The Cipher Brief is one of the best outlets for receiving the latest news about the most challenging issues that the intelligence community faces, their approach to the audience is direct, unbiased, logical, analytical, and well-researched. They know how to address their audience in an effective manner, they do delicately. They are keen to making their audience acutely cognizant of the fact that they are not just a number, but individuals, whose input is of worthy value at the table; thusly, creating the foundation for meaningful relationships built on respect and inclusivity.

Brad Christian in particular is not media ready. Clearing his throat, umming, and in general sounding sloppy undermines the potential of this podcast.

I’ve been listening to The Cipher Brief for a long time, and while I appreciate the information it collects and broadcasts, sadly it is not always the straight unbiased data that it purports to dispense. While highlighting excerpts from a particular politician’s speech, they are in fact legitimizing his highly politicized rhetoric in which he demonizes his party’s opposition, while completely ignoring his own culpability in government corruption, his weaponization of government offices, illegally government influence of media outlets in the world of big tech, which incidentally is connected directly to his lying to the public about his knowledge regarding a particular scandal that was thereby censored by social platforms, and creating division within the general population. I’m sorry, but I can no longer consider such a podcast to be legitimate and trustworthy. I will hereby unsubscribe, as there are still many many unbiased podcasts to choose from. Anyone interested, The World and Everything In It is one such podcast.