David Ignatius, the foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Post, explores space warfare, geopolitics and espionage in his new spy novel, “Phantom Orbit.” Ignatius joins The Post’s national security reporter Shane Harris to discuss his timely book, his recent interview with Ukrainian President Zelensky and insights about the Israel-Gaza war.
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[Music] it’s a scene I I likened it uh sadly to uh chapter in Lord of the Flies come to life where you where you see when people are reduced to this raw struggle for survival what what happens so um this is indicative the Biden Administration believes of Israel’s lack of a clear plan it simply does not have a way of providing order and Security in the areas that it has cleared of Hamas fighters in Northern Gaza hello everyone and welcome to Washington Post Live I’m Shane Harris I’m a national security reporter here at the post and I am very pleased today to be joined by my colleague Foreign Affairs columnist novelist the great David ignacius David it’s great to see you thanks for being here thank you for doing this Shane great to be with you on the other side of the microphone as it were yeah nice change right uh we showed 12 your previous 11 novels there on the screen so people can see those you are now on number 12 uh one of these days you’re going to tell me when you sleep since you are also writing a regular column for the post and we’re going to get to talk about the new book which I really really enjoyed Phantom orbit folks see it there um but first while you’re here I wanted to talk to you just a bit about events uh in the Middle East that are in Israel because we saw some news yesterday there was uh reports of how as agreeing to a ceasefire proposal from Egypt uh and from cter uh notably not necessarily the Israeli proposal I’m just curious to kind of get your thoughts on where we are in this moment where it seemed like we were whipsawing yesterday back and forth on whether there might be a deal ins sight whether that was uh uh actually not to be what are you thinking what are you hearing so my sense Shane is that we’re in the last phase of of bargaining as is often the case in the Middle East it’s accompanied by by violence the Israelis have been attacking not in a fullscale attack mode but but but advancing their troops on Rafa the offensive that they’ve been saying was on the way for for for many weeks uh I whether this will lead to a final deal obviously I don’t know um what I hear from sources in the administration is that they they think it’s it’s possible I have to say President Biden has been working extraordinarily hard to make this happen he sent Bill Burns the CI director uh for repeated meetings back and forth Cairo Doha Cairo to to try to provide American guarantees assurances and pressure to make this happen the administration feels it’s essential to get this war into a different phase where it can begin to deescalate whether they’ll succeed I I don’t know just note one other thing um as the Israelis move toward points and Rafa I can’t help but think that they’re trying to capture strategic nodes that they would want to control if a ceasefire did in fact happen uh means of escape from the tunnels toward Egypt for example uh control nodes that they’d like to have in hand before the ceasefire starts yeah and that actually points kind kind of the subject of your most recent column which is you know really what is the end game what is the end goal here uh in Gaza and we have a question on this from Ricardo Helman from Florida he asks what is an achievable scenario that could end the war in Gaza and provide a realistic two-state solution who are the players that would need to support it economically in addition to the Palestinians and Israelis you wrote pretty forcefully about this uh in your most recent column this week including about as you see it the fact that prime minister Netanyahu has never really laid out an answer to this question so I think that’s my biggest criticism of prime minister Netanyahu he has not had a strategic plan for where this war ends uh what kind of future he envisions for Gaza for Israel’s relations with Gaza I worry that he’s just creating a version of Somalia on his border endless chaos which isn’t good for Israel and certainly isn’t good for the Palestinians who who live there we’re a long way from a two-state solution I should make that clear it’s going to it’s going to take many many months to get to the point of even being able to advance that seriously but it is possible indeed it’s essential to think about what the governance and security mechanism for Gaza will be as Israeli troops withdraw as we move into this ceasefire phase that everybody hopes is coming who’s going to keep order we we talk about humanitarian convoys hundreds of trucks moving into Gaza who’s going to guarantee that Bandits don’t just rip off the supplies coming out of those trucks as it’s happened in the past in the footage that you showed before we began so I I think Netanyahu needs to think carefully about that he’s been resistant to the obvious solution which is to take the the Palestinian authorities people in Gaza there are nearly 10,000 of them in theory on the roles as supporters of the Palestinian Authority and and train them uh uh discipline them convert them over time into a force that will provide an alternative to Hamas to govern Gaza and to provide security if he doesn’t do that the mess we have now is going to lead into another kind of mess less dangerous for Israel but but but I fear no less miserable for the Palestinians in Gaza do you think it’s going to take a change in Israeli leadership at the top to see them through to the end so I I have been disappointed that Netanyahu has has resisted thinking clearly about these issues I think there are other in the war cabinet who who have thought uh much more carefully I think the defense Ministry of Galant has has tried to think about the day after Benny gance was talking about it today and some things that that I read uh I think the issue is that Israel as a whole needs to to think Beyond its understandable uh totally uh human rage about October 7 and the slaughter of Israelis in that attack to what comes next it’s in their interest to do that and and I think the person who’s the next prime minister whoever he is needs to put that at the top of his list of to-do right um well let’s let’s talk about the new novel here which uh is also extremely timely uh you know you can’t always plan these things because writers start writing books many years before they ever published as as authors will know uh but this book is all about you know a war in space it’s about satellites our dependence on satellites for communication for navigation for the modern economy functioning and how vulnerable those are and you know so what you draw so much in all of your fiction from your reporting and the things that you are doing in your journalism what you’re seeing which you can then turn into these these great stories so what was happening for you when you started getting the idea for the book that became Phantom orbit so Shane I always try to think when I’m planning a novel what’s the thing that people are going to be um thinking about talking about uh two years from when I start because that’s when the book’s going to appear and I in past novels I I’ve written about deep fakes and Quantum Computing and things that obviously were were ahead in National Security and would make a good terrain for for a spy novel and as I thought about it in 2021 when I really was getting down to work on this seemed obvious that satellite weapons um space was going to be Central I had been in my columns a supporter of the creation of a space force during the Trump Administration I thought Trump was right that basically the Air Force had dropped the ball in in in monitoring space and in competing with the Chinese uh and developing space weapons Space Systems and we needed a separate Force so i’ know people in the in the space world I interviewed Jay Raymond who was the the general who was the leader of the the of the space force I began to think in more detail about the elements of of a plot and then in 2022 when I was really getting down to work on the book I went to Ukraine in December 22 and looked at the most advanced uh systems the ukrainians were using for intelligence acquisition and targeting and I realized they were all all basically uh part of this new world of commercial space systems the ukrainians were dialing into commercial satellites from maxar planet lab uh capella all these companies that have got satellites in space plus they were using the starlink terminals to provide connectivity for their commanders in the in the field in the forward positions so seemed obvious then that we were already living with a space War so that really convinced me this this was the right subject and then I as a novelist you try to spin a plot that captures things in the news but isn’t the news you don’t want to write a 100,000 word piece of Journalism obviously right right and you and you do something interesting too is when you go back the book begins really in the late 1990s and follows these kind of three major characters through the evolution of satellite technology which each of them kind of has a foothold in um but we do up to you know the war on Ukraine and we’re not going to give away anything about the plot of the book people created it for themselves but the war in Ukraine does figure fairly prominently in there and you’ve written recently about Ukraine as being the first space War so talk a little bit about what what that means what you mean by Ukraine being the first space War so When The War Began um the primary objective for the Russians was to turn off the satellite base communication systems that the ukrainians were using starlink wasn’t big yet uh but they did go after a European constellation and briefly were successful in hacking it and shutting it down the ukrainians responded very quickly this is right in the beginning in February 2022 Starling came in with a very aggressive program Elon Musk decided he was going to go all in on this and they shipped terminals by the thousands in into Ukraine the problem was initially they couldn’t turn them on because of other Russian jamming that was preventing the signals that You’ Need Just A literally click on so the the terminal would work and receive signals from from space very clever Engineers from starlink figured out a way to get around that and suddenly Ukraine had the gift of broadband connectivity and was able to to to move forward um in my in my reporting I saw lots of other systems I was able to look at what Ukrainian commanders see when they’re looking I remember seeing a screen that had haon in the South and and the the sort of control nodule said this is the number of satellites commercial satellites that will pass over this area of Ukraine in the next 24 hours if you’d like more you can you know add this additional coverage by paying more money you can go from something like four to eight and I I thought wow this is this is a completely different kind of warfare than I’ve than I’ve ever seen the Russians have not been able to to to catch up they don’t have the same commercial resources of their own they’ve tried very hard to jam all these systems they’ve had some success but my most recent trip a month ago I looked at all the ways that the ukrainians have found working with Western companies to evade jamming so in some yeah this is a space War it’s a technology War it’s much more of an inflection point in Warfare than I think most people realize when you’re when you’re seeing these things as reporter I mean and you’re you might be thinking how could I perhaps work this into a fictional story at some point I mean are you kind of imagining uh you know who the characters might be is it sort of in your head it’s happening on two tracks as you’re reporting and you’re thinking what the novel version might be like I mean so much of it is drawn so from events that we’ve all seen But there is that fictitious fictional ribbon that kind of runs through it too so uh reporting is is highly conscious Focus effort you’re just on the balls of your feet you’re leaning forward you’re asking questions you’re you know writing notes hard to think of a more focused conscious effort than that writing fiction I found and this is my 12th book is preconscious in a way it’s more like dreaming than it is like reporting or writing a news story you just fall into the characters and plot you dream about them literally you you fall asleep thinking about them so it’s just it’s it’s a different um kind of creative work than the creative work we do as as journalists and I think all of the reporting that I do is there you know in my mind in my preconscious I don’t know how all the pieces assemble themselves some are drawn from Life some are just entirely imagined nobody ever existed like some of the characters in this novel yeah in reading your book uh I immediately recalled an incident from a couple of months ago uh when there was a very unusual Disclosure by the chairman of the house intelligence committee Congressman Turner that got all of this in Washington spinning about some national security threat that he wanted to alert members to and of course as we’ve all reported it turns out that Russia is trying to field some kind of nuclear weapon or nuclear weapon capable device to put in space as an anti-satellite weapon I mean this is something could be torn right from the pages of your novel um what did you make of that moment when you heard about that knowing that of course you’re writing a book about some of these very subjects well I I I wanted to send a note to to Congressman Turner saying you know what a what a timely intervention U because I knew my my book was coming out so um the Russians have a problem which is how do they deal with the incredible development of us space capability especially commercial space starlink has 5,000 satellites in low Warth orbit covering every every part of the the globe with systems inside that U may not be disclos may have nothing to do with with Broadband Communications who knows um Amazon’s about to put up another 2,000 satellites in lower aor what are the what are the Russians going to do about that what do they do about the existing array of satellite Communications now they’ve tried to jam them that that’s not successful uh as I as I mentioned earlier so so they’ve been thinking I think with increasing anxiety about this problem and what Congressman Turner surfaced was the most extreme I think really crazy uh way of responding which is is to Simply detonate a nuclear weapon in low earth orbit and turn low earth orbit where all these commercial satellites that that theevil the Russians are located uh into into a junkyard so nothing can pass be the would just be a debris field for the rest of our of our lifetimes it’s just a dreadful Dreadful idea that the International Community should unite in saying don’t even think about it and I I don’t think the Russians would be likely to really do it I think the weapons that they’d be thinking about if they’re smart would in fact be more focused on denying Communications among the satellites the Starling satellites have their own mesh net in space and communicate satellite to satellite before they ever come back to earth go after that instead of instead of trying to blow the whole thing up which which would be uh really um kind of primitive kind of warfare and potentially I would think blowback on them as well which is another kind of interesting thing to think about why they would do it you know so much of the plot in in Phantom orbit revolves around the vulnerability of these systems and a question of how could you potentially attack them and then take them out I mean how much of what we see in the book do you think is reflective of what national security officials like precise scenarios that they worry about that an adversary country could try to use on our satellites or that we might might be developing to try and use on adversary satellite technology so uh Sean let me mention two things that are right right at the beginning of the of the book that I think are real uh and will give viewers a sense of of what the book is about so the book opens with a Russian scientist Ivon wof who’s really the hero of this of this book who who comes to believe that there is a Russian Chinese system that can GPS the satellite system that allows us to use our cell phones allows airplanes to know where they are in space allows banking transactions to happen I mean there’s almost nothing on Earth that doesn’t have some GPS connection and he feels that there’s a kill switch that can turn it off and and he’s torn about what to do he finally decides he’s going to contact the CIA through the cia’s website and tell them this and he does and to his astonishment there’s no answer nothing comes back and indeed through the book in different ways the there’s no answer why is that that’s one of the riddles that that the book is about the second thing right at the beginning is that we kind of go back with Ivon our hero to to the time when he was a graduate student in Beijing he was uh a Russian from from Russian version of Pittsburgh studying in Moscow was broke couldn’t pay his tuition so he got a scholarship just to study in China and what he encounters there is that the Chinese in 1995 when they had no satellite capability whatsoever they had just a cheap little piece of tin that revolved around the world and played the East is red their their their national uh song um but they knew that space was crucial so they began thinking and I think this is drawn from fact they began thinking how can we intervene in the supply chain for America’s incredibly Advanced Space Systems like GPS so that little tiny pieces of of Chinese technology are inserted in ways that are invisible little little parts of big systems that will give them the ability to compromise those systems down the road because they know that that satellites satellite systems are crucial for National Security so that theme runs through the book this Chinese effort to penetrate what we’re doing sometimes in Le in League with the Russians that’s that’s how we get started in the book I think those are very real dilemmas that the US has in fact encountered especially this idea of the Chinese penetrating penetrating our supply chain yeah so much of the book it reads like a space race between the US Russia and China and there are times when it’s it’s not clear necessarily who’s in the lead um and I want to ask you about volco too this character who kind of grapples with this question of whether to become you know essentially try to become an agent for the CIA or an informant um a lot of this book it seems to me is drawing on kind of you know your own experience reporting about Russia of you know I don’t want to say it’s a love letter to Russia but there’s kind of a hopefulness to it and and he seems to represent vov qualities of a Russia that I think you know probably you and a lot of us would hope that they may have been once and could be again so so kind of talk about what you’re trying to say about Russia in this moment through this character so I I I do say just that sh Shane in in the acknowledgements that that there’s a way in which this book is a love letter to the Russia that once was and and may be again Ivan volov is from a town in Russia uh East Far East of Moscow called magnitogorsk it’s the the town that Stalin envisioned as the great Steel Capital of the Soviet Union uh it is like Pittsburgh uh miltown uh built around a a a mountain of iron ore that was so overwhelming that it said the compasses wouldn’t work in the area of of Magneto gor so like our own Pittsburgh it was crushed after the fall of Soviet Union it was a ruined industrial town and that’s where my hero grew up and he grew up with the legacy of Soviet communism his father had been a party official in this in this steel town he’s just living in a shattered World he’s a brilliant young man he’s good at math and science as so many Russians are he gets scholarships he joins you know all Russia clubs and competitions ends up in in in Moscow and then finally as as I say in Beijing but but I wanted people to see somebody who embodies the values that I admire in Russian culture um intellectual creativity discipline and in in the Sciences a kind of yearning for something that’s better than what they have um which I I tragically to me Putin is just crushing that wonderful thing in the Russian spirit I think is more and more under under stress The Washington Post today has a brilliant piece by our mosc correspondent that I commen commended people about putinism the new regime that Putin is is creating so I wanted vov and his son Demitri becomes a kind of crusading prosecutor in Russia to to be embodiments of of a place that’s different from the one that that Putin tragically to me is creating yeah there’s another theme that you deal with in some chapters of the book about this issue of uh sexual harassment and discrimination at the CIA one of the main characters is is subjected to this and and really struggles with it and kind of has this fight with a bureaucracy and and we’ve seen uh this has really come to light in the past years so the house intelligence committee we mentioned chairman Turner a moment ago has investigated the issues of harassment and discrimination at the agency can you talk a little bit about that and and and what you wanted to working and make people aware of when you’re writing about this character and her particular fight with the with her employers so we first meet this character Edith Ryan in 1995 when she like volov is is a graduate student in in Beijing she is um in a kind of agent role with the CI she’s not yet joined the CI as a case officer but she’s reporting to people she’s kind of a spotter and she sees vov and and has an interaction with him that that she ends up being deeply ashamed of feeling that she’s crossing a line between emotional and and professional and later in her career as she becomes a case officer she tragically like many women that I’ve interviewed over the years is is subject to sexual harassment in a culture that you know as as we know looking at stories about CI and its operations is is just sometimes too aggressive uncontrolled lacking discipline over the years I I’m sure like you Shane covering the CIA have have heard many stories about about case officers whose Behavior was out of control uh and you know in in in most cases were eventually brought to discipline but but but not all and that’s that’s a part of the the Legacy uh of the of the modern C I think they take the issue seriously now women case officers are are are are much more uh prominent in the agency we’ve had a woman director in Gina Gina haspel um so I think it is different but that’s a fight that my character Edith Ryan has to wage she wages it uh courageously she ends up in ways that let the reader discover being very successful in the end in in bringing something new to the agency to help people like her who suffered this kind of harassment discrimination there’s a an audience question from D Slattery from New Jersey who asks a related question a bit more it’s from the Israeli perspective she writes that uh she’s read that Israeli military station near the Gaz of Border had repeatedly reported to sightings of unusual activities by Hamas prior to October 7th and yet were dismissed by their male superiors as not credible there there’s even a part in the beginning of your book where it’s a young female analyst who Flags this warning that the protagonist volov sends in and you write that a more experienced officer with have likely disregarded it I mean it seems that that the we’re seeing some of this play out in the Israeli context too of maybe of of women lower down the chain simply being ignored by their superiors and the consequences can be pretty devastating so when when the Gaza war is over and it’s time for retrospectives I think one of the most shocking facts will be that as with 911 every piece of information necessary to prevent this attack was in the system it is reported by our colleague Ronan Bergman at the at the New York Times that there was a woman analyst I believe she was at the unit that does Cyber activities Unit 8 8200 but I’m not certain of that uh who who saw intelligence that described exactly the plan that was carried out on October 7 and all the details of how they would Stage IT and tried to bring it to the attention of her superiors and her superiors wouldn’t listen was sex sexs a part of that I who can say they were convinced that no no no Hamas is in a different phase they’re they’re now buying into the idea of more prosperity in Gaza uh they’re they’re working with gutter to to improve their political situation no they’re not going to do that and so this woman was was ignored I’m sure you could get a catalog from Israel uh CIA probably any intelligence service on the planet where with women tried to say things and Men ignored them and hopefully when the details of this come out it will be a pretty Stark warning to everybody to pay attention to to your subordinates whoever they are right we just got a couple minutes left I just want to ask you one last question uh of course Vladimir Putin has been inaugurated today for his I believe it’s his another six-year term as president effectively becoming president for life here in Russia because you know you talked about technology and satellite technology being so crucial to the way Ukraine has fought the War they are finally now getting weapons from the US after Congress has finally passed this $61 billion Aid package just very briefly what are your thoughts on what the rest of the year looks like for Ukraine whether this Weaponry is going to be decisive as they try and push Russia back so I I don’t think it’ll be decisive this year I think the the great thing about this weapons package is it’s enough uh to to stretch into the next uh Administration whether that’s Biden or Trump obviously we don’t know but $61 billion will go a long way I think that the job for Ukraine this year is to hold tight to consolidate their lines to use the new aam’s long range missiles to strike at Russian targets within occupied Ukraine in Crimea in the donbas really make life difficult for the Russians in their forward Logistics positions make it tough for them to stay where they are but in terms of a real Ukrainian breakout to to push the Russians back as they tried to do unsuccessfully last year I think that’s going to wait for next year right well David we are out of time I wish we had more time to talk about the book and the world the book is Phantom orbit people should read it it is remarkably timely it’s a great read I tore through it uh and so David thank you so much for being here to share your insights and to talk about your 12th novel I appreciate it thank you Sean and thank you to everybody for joining us if you want to find out more about these conversations go over to washingtonpost.com slash live and when you’re there subscribe to The Washington Post you can find a free trial of the paper there I’m Shane Harris thanks again for joining us on Washington Post Live take care
1 Comment
Got to get Phantom Orbit. Have read several of David’s novels. Always enjoy them.