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 INTERNATIONAL EDITION
AUGUST 02, 2019 _ VOL.173 _ NO.03
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16 30
FLIGHT 655
Thousands in Tehran mourn the 290 victims,
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Hacking Long Memories
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For more headlines, go to
NEWSWEEK.COM BY ADAM PIORE BY TOM O’CONNOR

1

THE CODE
Book excerpt: How
Facebook’s approach
to data reshaped social
connections—and
changed the political
landscape forever.
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Rewind

The Archives
“All the pent-up hate and violence finally erupts,” Newsweek reported
1964 of fierce race riots in New York. Steeped in racial tension, “Harlem
had been an explosion waiting for a time to go off,” as “white New York pushed
its ‘Negro problem’ out of sight, north of 110th Street, and postponed it to
another generation.” The riots were sparked by the shooting and killing of a
15-year-old African American boy by a white off-duty police lieutenant. Current
events suggest America is still waiting on that other generation to arrive.

1973
“The dramatic disclosure that Richard
Nixon had taped his White House
meetings and calls meant hard evidence
may exist to determine his responsibility
in the Watergate Scandal,” Newsweek
wrote. The existence of the tapes
threatened to make the president’s “last
line of defense untenable.”

CLO CKWISE FROM LEFT: ROY DE CAR AVA; WA LLY MC NAMEE/MAT T SULTAN/WELBECK STUDIO; G.B. TRUDEAU

1995
Newsweek defined the “new elite” as
the rising class of hard-charging and
ambitious tech-savvy professionals
who are “laying claim to an increasing
share of the national income.” They are
“the people who put Jim Carrey on
magazine covers, who renamed
blue-green ‘teal’ and keep loaning
money to Donald Trump.”

4 NEWSWEEK.COM Augu s t 02, 2019

New York Times Bestseller

“An invaluable exposé, a reportorial

tour de force, and a well-turned epic.”
—New York Times

“An important work…. Anyone who takes

prescription drugs should read it.”
—Eric Schlosser, author of
Command and Control and Fast Food Nation

Available now in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook.

KatherineEban.com ● #BottleOfLies
In Focus THE NEWS IN PICTURES

6 NEWSWEEK.COM Augu s t 02, 2019

 HATISHILA, INDIA

After the Deluge

An Indian family took refuge on the roof of a hut in the Kamrup district of
India’s Assam state on July 16 after torrential monsoons had washed away
homes and caused landslides across South Asia. Authorities said millions
of people were affected by the rains and flooding and 180 had been killed.
→ BIJU BORO
BIJU BORO/A FP/GET T Y
In Focus
PROBOLINGGO, INDONESIA
In the Fire’s Mouth
Scavengers trying to snare offerings of
food, money and other items thrown
off the summit of Mount Bromo, an
active volcano in Java on July 18.
During the annual Yadnya Kasada
festival, members of the Tenggerese
people of the area, joined by tourists,
seek the gods’ blessings by throwing
fruit, livestock and rice into the
volcano. Poor villagers supplement
their incomes by climbing into the
crater and catching what they can.
→ JUNI KRISWANTO
8 NEWSWEEK.COM
SAN JUAN, PUERTO RICO
Time for a Change
Reggaeton singer Bad Bunny at a
July 17 demonstration attended by
thousands demanding Governor
Ricardo Rossello’s resignation
following the arrest of two of
Rossello’s aides on corruption
charges and the leak of hundreds
of his texts that were sexist and
homophobic and in which he joked
about shooting San Juan’s mayor.
Four days later, Rossello announced
he would not seek reelection.
→ ERIC ROJAS
WASHINGTON, DC
Hitting Back
U.S. Representative Ayanna Pressley
speaks as (from left) Reps. Ilhan
Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Rashida Tlaib hold a press conference
on July 15. The four progressive
Democrats were responding to
President Donald Trump’s tweet the
day before in which he kicked off a
cycle of outrage by wondering why
they didn’t “go back and help fix the
totally broken and crime infested
places from which they came.”
→ BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
Augu s t 02, 2019
 CLO CKWISE FROM LEFT: JUNI KRISWANTO/AFP/GET TY; ERIC ROJAS/AFP/GET TY; BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI

NEWSWEEK.COM
9
Periscope NEWS, OPINION + ANALYSIS

IN THE CLOUD Facebook remade the Web itself into something Zuckerberg called “more social, more personalized and more semantically aware.”

10 NEWSWEEK.COM Augu s t 02, 2019

 “I was thinking of per diem, how many dollars
per mile we’d be paid for this voyage.” » P.15

T E CHNOLOGY

Silicon Magic
How Facebook’s singular approach to data reshaped social
connections and changed the political landscape forever

In The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, Margaret O’Mara
explores how Silicon Valley came to be at the epicenter of technology in America. O’Mara,
a historian at the University of Washington, worked in the Clinton White House in the early
days of the internet. She shows how the explosive growth of social media, when paired with
data from the sites users visited online, increased engagement—and how it flourished in an
environment free from government oversight. The following excerpt describes how Facebook
came of age at a time when society was seeking greater human connection—and in turn
reshaped the political landscape in the hands of a social media master named Barack Obama.

Three billion smartphones. Two billion social media users. Two trillion-dollar companies.
San Francisco’s tallest skyscraper, Seattle’s biggest employer, the four most expensive corpo-
rate campuses on the planet. The richest people in the history of humanity.
The benchmarks attained by America’s largest technology compa-
nies in the twilight years of the 21st century’s second decade boggle the BY

imagination. Added together, the valuations of tech’s so-called Big Five—

Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google/Alphabet and Microsoft—total more MARGARET O’MARA
@margaretomara
than the entire economy of the United Kingdom. Yet, few people had
heard of “Silicon Valley” and the electronics firms that clustered there
when a trade-paper journalist decided to give it that snappy nickname in early 1971. Even
10 years later, when personal computers mushroomed on office desks and boy-wonder
entrepreneurs with last names like Jobs and Gates seized the public imagination, the
Valley itself remained off to the side of the main action.
However, the Valley and its sister technopolis of Seattle soared to staggering heights
in the dot-com 1990s—“the largest single legal creation of wealth we’ve witnessed on the
GRE MLIN/GET T Y; TOP R IGHT: NASA

planet,” quipped venture capitalist John Doerr—only to plummet to earth as the new
millennium dawned with a massive, NASDAQ-pummeling pop, leaving the carcasses
of once-shining internet companies strewn across the landscape. The rocketing rise of
Amazon felt like a fever dream, Apple had run out of product ideas, Microsoft had been
ordered to split itself in two, and Google was a garage operation whose leaders seemed
more interested in going to Burning Man than turning a profit.
How quickly things change. Fast-forward to the present, and Silicon Valley is no lon-
ger merely a place in Northern California. It is a global network, a business sensibility,

NEWSWEEK.COM 11
Periscope
a cultural shorthand, a political
hack. Hundreds of places around the
world have rebranded themselves Sil-
icon Deserts, Forests, Roundabouts,
Steppes and Wadis as they seek to
capture some of the original’s magic.
ENTER FACEBOOK
Facebook was a little more than
five years old when it moved into a
building on the fringe of the Stan-
ford Research Park that once had
housed part of Hewlett-Packard. The
platform’s growth had left all its com-
petitors and predecessors in the dust.
An expansionist, earnest, set-the-de-
faults-to-public spirit reverberated
through the campus. By connecting
the world through software, and
doing so at massive scale, the com-
pany was accomplishing something
the Valley had been trying to do for
generations. Posters emblazoned
with the company’s de facto motto
adorned the walls surrounding Face-
book’s expansive open-plan bullpen:
“Move fast and break things.”
In 2007, Facebook opened up its
network to third-party apps, bring-
ing in games and quizzes and other
content to its newsfeed, and allow-
ing developers to tap into the trea-
sure trove of knowledge about users’
connections and likes that Facebook
called the “social graph.” In 2010,
Facebook announced “Open Graph,”
which connected a user’s profile
and network to the other places she
traveled online. It wasn’t just a social
network atop the Web anymore. Face-
book had remade the Web itself into
something, as Mark Zuckerberg put it,
“more social, more personalized and
more semantically aware.” The com-
pany allowed academic researchers
to tap into its troves of information
as well, underscoring its belief that
freer and more transparent flows of
information served the greater good.
12 NEWSWEEK.COM
TECHNOLOGY
Zuckerberg had a deepening sense
of his place in Valley history as the
company’s wealth and influence grew.
In the new digs, he adopted Steve Jobs’
famous habit of holding “walk and
talk” meetings behind Facebook’s
building to a sweeping view of the
birthplace of so many of the Valley’s
iconic names: Shockley and Fairchild,
Intel and Apple, Netscape and Google.
He would point out these sites, then
turn to his companion to make his
pitch. Facebook “would eventually be
bigger than all of the companies” he
had just mentioned, one prospective
employee later recounted him saying.
“If I joined the company, I could be part
of it all.” Time agreed that the young
CEO was making history, making him
Person of the Year for 2010.
SIGN OF THE TIMES
Like generations of tech companies
before it, Facebook owed its success
not only to the talents of its creators
but also to the historical moment
in which it grew. The long-brewing
distrust of government, dislike of
traditional gatekeepers and decen-
tralization of American mass media
accelerated rapidly in the post-9/11
era, aided by the internet. Added into
the already frantic spin of cable TV
came the cacophony of online outlets
and the you-may-also-like curation
of RSS feeds and Google News. The
age of terror and grinding war in
the Middle East caused a longing for
familiar realms of family and com-
munity, and it increased suspicion
When real life felt
terrifying, social
media was a
welcome retreat.
of foreigners and religious minori-
ties, the “them” versus “us.” When real
life felt terrifying, social media was a
welcome retreat.
But Facebook and other social
networks also filled a cultural void
created by a half century of political
liberation and economic dislocation,
the vanishing of bowling leagues and
church picnics and union meetings
that had glued together midcentury
America in conformity and commu-
nity. Social media became a more
cosmopolitan town square, one that
crossed national borders, launched
new voices and created moments of
connection that could morph into
real-life friendships. It turned every-
one into a diarist, a philosopher, an
activist—even if that activism was
merely clicking a “like” button.
Both Facebook and Twitter, a
social platform originally designed
for 140-character “microblog” status
updates, became powerful mecha-
nisms for political organizing and
communication during the Arab
Spring and Occupy Wall Street move-
ments of 2011. Twitter swiftly gained
a disproportionate number of African
American users and “Black Twitter”
became a powerful platform for both
civic activism and cultural exchange;
the most powerful racial justice move-
FROM TOP : KIMBERLY WHITE/COR BIS/GE T T Y; DAV ID RAMOS/GET T Y
ment of the century’s second decade,
Black Lives Matter, began as a Twitter
hashtag. And in the 2008 and 2012
presidential races, candidates used
social networking as a powerful tool
to reach sharply targeted groups of
likely voters, as well as providing the
ultimate free-media platform for
unfiltered campaign messaging.
THE SOCIAL MEDIA PRESIDENT
Few did this earlier and better than
Barack Obama. Like Zuckerberg, the
onetime state senator from Illinois
had been a virtual unknown in 2004,
Augu s t 02, 2019

shooting into the international
spotlight because of his remarkable
charisma, singular vision and lucky
timing. Silicon Valley power players
had been searching for a new boy
wonder in the wake of the success
of Sergey Brin and Larry Page of
Google, and they had found it in
Zuckerberg. Similarly, Clinton-weary
Democrats who opposed the Bush
Administration’s decision to go to war
in Iraq (and 2008 frontrunner Hillary
Clinton’s vote for it) found in Obama a
fresh face and compelling voice.
Just as Franklin Roosevelt had done
with radio and John F. Kennedy with
TV, Barack Obama leveraged social
media more thoroughly and creatively
than his political rivals, and he formed
a close and convivial relationship with
the Valley in the process. Google’s Eric
Schmidt became an early donor and
advisor. Chris Hughes, a member of
Zuckerberg’s original Harvard team,
took a sabbatical from Facebook to
serve as Obama’s new-media guru,
helping the campaign deliver targeted
messages as cool and crisply designed
as Web 2.0 itself.
Traditional direct-mail opera-
tions couldn’t hold a candle to inex-
pensive and viral Facebook pages;
a well-turned tweet by the candi-
date reached more voters than any
SOCIAL POWER
Obama (left) understood how to leverage
social media more effectively than his
political rivals; and Facebook’s Zuckerberg
(below) remade the social network.
stump speech. Bill Clinton might
have won the tech community’s
votes in the early 1990s, but the new
generation’s hearts and wallets were
with Obama. As eager Stanford stu-
dent volunteers swarmed the Palo
Alto field office and tech executives
lined up to give high-dollar dona-
tions, one reporter quipped that the
Obama campaign had become “the
hottest start-up in the Valley.”
After entering office in 2009, the
commander in chief became a famil-
iar presence in town, holding town
hall meetings at Facebook and Linked‑
In, convening big-ticket fundraisers
and enjoying private dinners with
tech titans. One CEO gathering at
John and Ann Doerr’s Woodside
home featured one of the most
staggering assemblies of net worth
in human history, with Zuckerberg,
Schmidt and Jobs all joining Doerr
and Obama around the table.
Back in Washington, the president
pushed for wiring schools and rein-
venting bureaucracy with new soft-
ware. He called on his tech allies and
donors after the disastrous rollout of
the enrollment website for his health
care plan. Obama hired the nation’s
first chief technology officer, beefed
up the White House Office of Science
and Technology Policy and staged sci-
ence-fair photo ops to encourage kids
to pursue engineering. He hosted a Red-
dit Ask Me Anything (“Hey everybody—
this is barack,” the president began),
had millions of followers on Twitter
and hired a mind-boggling number of
people who had once worked at Google.
Obama aides, in turn, often made their
way to Silicon Valley after their stint in
public service was up.
NEWSWEEK.COM 13
Periscope
Toward the end of his time in office,
in one final and important victory for
the information-should-be-free crowd,
Obama’s FCC sided with the Valley
(and against telecom companies) on
the hot-button issue of “net neutral-
ity,” which prevented internet service
providers from blocking or charging
higher prices for certain content. But
it was tech’s great capitalists whom
Obama seemed to admire and rely
upon the most. He quietly conferred
with Doerr, Schmidt and others as he
began to mull his post-presidency life,
and at one point floated the notion of
becoming a venture capitalist himself.
America had become even more
fractured and fractious over the
course of Obama’s presidency, yet
he remained optimistic about social
media’s potential to bridge the divide.
Even a rising swell of foreign hacks
and online security breaches did
not dim the president’s hope that
much could be overcome if tech and
government were both at the table.
“I’m absolutely confident that if we
keep...working together in a spirit of
collaboration, like all those innova-
tors before us, our work will endure,
like a great cathedral, for centuries
to come,” he exhorted an admiring
Stanford crowd during a cybersecu-
rity summit the White House held on
campus in 2015. “And that cathedral
will not just be about technology, it
will be about the values that we’ve
embedded in the architecture of this
system. It will be about privacy, and it
will be about community. And it will
be about connection.”
Mark Zuckerberg couldn’t have
said it better himself.
→ From THE CODE: Silicon Valley and
the Remaking of America. Published
by arrangement with Penguin Press, a
member of Penguin Random House LLC.
Copyright © 2019 by Margaret O’Mara.
14 NEWSWEEK.COM
Q&A: Margaret O’Mara
BY MEREDITH WOLF SCHIZER
How did you come up with
the idea for the book?
I’ve been studying the histo-
ry of the tech industry for a
long time, and people always
kept asking me, “How did Sil-
icon Valley do it?” and “How
can we build another Silicon
Valley?” I wrote the book to
answer those questions.
I also set out to show how,
despite all its disruptive,
risk-embracing iconoclasm,
the Valley has always been
deeply connected to and
shaped by other places
and people: Wall Street,
Washington D.C. and tech
hubs like Boston and Seattle.
We can’t separate the story
of these extraordinary com-
panies and entrepreneurs
from the broader history of
modern American culture,
politics and business
enterprise—they’ve been
intertwined all along.
What obstacles did you
face when researching
the book and how did you
overcome them?
It’s a really big story. From
the Cold War to mainframes
to PCs, the Internet, mobile
and social media there’s a lot
to capture. Plus, technology
moves fast. I was writing
about the very recent past
and the still-evolving history
of the biggest players in
today’s tech. When I started
this project six years ago, the
media and political worlds
BOOKS
were pretty optimistic about
the power of Silicon Valley
technologists to change the
world for the better. Now the
mood is much darker. The
real story lies somewhere in
between—a tale of techno-
logical marvels and critical
blind spots, of entrepreneur-
ial triumph and institutional
failure, of human capability
and fallibility.
What do you see as social
media’s benefits? Its
drawbacks?
Social media has done
remarkable things in its
relatively short lifetime. It
connects and reconnects
far-flung friends and loved
ones, it delivers moments of
lightness and joy, and it can
make people realize they are
not alone in this world. But
the same engineering that
encourages these connec-
tions and conversations also
can privilege the loudest and
angriest voices in the room.
The challenge now before
Silicon Valley technolo-
gists—and all of us—is to find
ways to harness the creative
energy of social media while
curbing its destructive ten-
dencies. This won’t be easy,
but it’s essential.
Do you put limits on your
daughters’ screen time?
Like all families, we are trying
to figure out the healthy
and happy way to live in a
world of screens. Only our
older daughter, age 13,
has a phone. It has limited
browsing capacity, with no
social media apps. She can
communicate via calls, texts
and email, and no electron-
ics are allowed in bedrooms.
What about yourself?
Even though I write about
the online world, I need to
go offline in order to get any
good words on the page. The
Freedom browser add-on
[an app that blocks the inter-
net for a set amount of time]
is worth every penny.
What’s your next project?
I’m not ready to reveal that
quite yet! I can say for sure
it will be about the same
things that always interest
me: powerful people and the
times that shape them.
Where is your favorite spot
to write and what is your
preferred font?
Give me a flat surface, a de-
cent chair and a good playlist
on my headphones, and I can
write nearly anywhere. And
I’ve flirted with others, but I
always come back to Times
New Roman, 12 point font.
iPhone or Android? Apple
or Windows?
It’s awkward for someone
JIM GARNER
from Microsoft’s hometown
to confess this, but I’m an
Apple user all the way.
Augu s t 02, 2019
 NEWSMAKERS

Talking Points
"Boeing have not "BOTH DOMESTICALLY
apologised to us AND INTERNATIONALLY, IN
SUBSTANCE AND IN TONE,
personally. They I'M WORRIED ABOUT THE
have not reached STATE OF POLITICS."
—UK Prime Minister Theresa May
out to us at all.”
—PAUL NJOROGE, WHOSE
WIFE, MOTHER-IN-LAW AND
THREE CHILDREN DIED IN A
BOEING 737 MAX CRASH “I’m proud to
report that
our show
and Game
of Thrones
“ W H AT W I L L A L L OW I N G
Theresa May
SA M E- S EX C O U P L E S T O
FROM L EFT: MIKHAIL TER ESHC HE NKO/TASS/GET T Y; J B L ACROIX /WI REIMAGE/GET T Y; HENRY NICHOLLS/WPA PO OL/GET T Y

A D O P T C H I L D R E N L EA D T O?
I T ’ L L S I M P LY L EA D T O T H E received a
EX T I N C T I O N O F M A N K I N D.” combined 33 “ I’m wrestling with
Emmy nods.
—Valentina Matvienko, he ad of
Russia’s upper house of parliament
behavior that has more
Now, 32 were to do with middle school
than a court of law.”
for them.” —Jud ge Amy Berman Jacks on
on Trump c onfidant Ro ger
—jimmy kimmel Stone's s o cial media p o sts

Valentina Matvienko

“Since the government will “I WAS THINKING OF

send me to a jail where PER DIEM, YOU KNOW,
my name will not ever be HOW MANY DOLLARS PER
heard again, I take this
opportunity to say: MILE WE’D BE PAID
There was no justice.” FOR THIS VOYAGE.”
—Drug chieftain Joaquín “El —Apollo 11 astronaut Michael
Chapo” Guzmán before being Collins on what went through
sentenced to life in prison his mind on the launchpad

NEWSWEEK.COM 15
Jimmy Kimmel
 by Adam Piore
ILLUSTRATIONS BY ALEX FINE
Russia is using classic Cold War
strategy to undermine the faith of
Americans in the next presidential
election.WILL IT WORK?

NEWSWEEK.COM 17
 HAC K I N G

hree events occurring in rapid Many campaigns have already begun practic-
succession on October 7, 2016, stand ing better cyber-security hygiene—purging their
out in Robby Mook’s memory. systems of old emails and text messages every 30
The first came at about 3:30 pm. days or so and requiring workers to use two-factor
The Obama Administration issued a statement that authentication when they log in (verifying their
publicly blamed Russia for hacking the Democratic identity from two devices), says Joshua Franklin, a
National Committee and orchestrating the release of cybersecurity expert who has worked for a wide ar- HACKED
Hillary Clinton’s
the thousands of emails roiling the Democratic Party, ray of government and private institutions involved presidential ambitions
which, it said, were “intended to interfere with the US in coming up with election security standards, and took a hit when Wikileaks
election process.” In the day’s crazy news cycle, that is consulting for a number of campaigns. released campaign
chairman John Podesta’s
highly-unusual announcement never had a chance. As November 2020 gets closer, a growing army stolen emails; U.S.
At 4 pm, The Washington Post unveiled the infa- of private citizens, public policy advocates, politi- intelligence later linked
mous Access Hollywood Tape, on which then-candi- cians, state and local election officials and national the trove to Russian
hackers. Clockwise
date Donald Trump was recorded boasting about security agencies are racing to shore up the vast from top right: Clinton,
his own sexual harassment of women. “When patchwork of security vulnerabilities laid bare by flanked by Bill Clinton and
you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Russia’s coordinated campaign of internet mischief Senator Tim Kaine, gives
her concession speech;
Grab ‘em by the pussy. You can do anything.” during the 2016 election. During the Mueller inves- Podesta and campaign
Within the hour, yet another media bomb tigation, Congress gave $380 million to the states to manager Robby Mook at
dropped. Wikileaks released another trove of improve their election cyber-security. Brooklyn headquarters on
June 28, 2016; Russian
emails—the first 20,000 pages of 50,000 hacked Mook has now taken a bipartisan role. In 2017, he President Vladimir Putin
emails stolen from the account of Hillary Clinton’s partnered with Republican Matt Rhoades, former in Rome on July 4, 2019.
Campaign Chairman John Podesta.
“It was so clear what was happening,” recalls
Mook, who at the time was a 35-year-old political
operative running the Clinton campaign. In time,
reporters would dig out old transcripts of paid
speeches to Wall Street banks, controversial com-
ments about Catholic voters and other documents
that turned out to be damaging to the Clinton cam-
paign. U.S. intelligence has since linked the Podesta
trove to the Russian military.
Three years later, as the U.S. gears up for a new
presidential election, Mook and other experts ex-
pect the Russians to strike again. They’ll continue
using their modern version of “agitprop” (a mash-
up of agitation and propaganda) that KGB officers—
including a young recruit posing as a translator in
Dresden, East Germany named Vladimir Putin—
perfected during the Cold War.
The overall intent of the Russians, most intelli-
gence officials and Russia experts agree, has always
been to “to spin us up, pit us against each other, sow
divisiveness and discord, undermine Americans’
faith in democracy,” in the words of FBI Director
Christopher Wray. Or as Richard Clarke, a former
member of the State Department and the National
Security Council and a seasoned Cold Warrior, puts
it: what the Russians really want is for “the Ameri-
can people to give up on our system.”

18 NEWSWEEK.COM
 campaign manager for Mitt Romney’s 2012 presi-
dential campaign, to establish the Defending Digital
Democracy Project (D3P), at a Harvard University-af-
filiated think tank. The aim of the organization is to
protect democracies from cyber and information
attacks. Last month, a D3P spinoff won approval
from the Federal Election Committee, to provide
free and low-cost cybersecurity services to political
campaigns without violating campaign finance laws.
Now that Mook and his collaborators have won
that approval, more campaigns will be able to de-
ploy cutting age pattern recognition software of
the type used by banks to spot fraudulent activity
to monitor for likely spear-phishing emails and the
unusual export of large datafiles, says Crane Has-
sold, a former FBI cyber expert and senior director
of threat research at the cybersecurity firm Agari.
The precautions the campaigns are taking now
tend to address yesterday’s problems, such as the
DNC hack that was ultimately so damaging to the
Clinton campaign in 2016. The worry of intelli-
gence and security experts is what the Russians are
likely to do in 2020 that somehow was either over-
looked in the aftermath of the last two elections
or comes out of the blue. “We recognize that our
adversaries are going to keep adapting and upping
their game,” the FBI’s Wray said to the Council on
Foreign Relations in April.
To understand how Russia plans to undermine
FROM TOP : EW EL SAMAD/AFP/GET T Y; BRO OKS KR AFT/GET T Y; ANTO NIO MASIELLO/GET T Y

Americans’ faith in the U.S. democratic system, cy-

ber-security experts and campaign officials are dig-
ging through the aftermath of the elections of 2016
and 2018 for clues. There’s a lot to worry about.

The Propaganda War

Shortly before the 2016 election, University
of Washington researcher Kate Starbird began
studying the online conversations of the #Black-

“What they really LivesMatter movement. She and her team followed
some of the most active Twitter accounts and

want is for tracked the influence of their tweets.

Starbird, who studies human-computer interac-

the AMERICAN PEOPLE to tion, was primarily struck by how toxic much of
the content was—and how vitriolic and polarized

give up on our system.” the debate had become, with some advocating vio-
lence and others using racist language. Then, just a
few weeks after the team published its first paper
on the topic in October 2017, representatives of
Facebook admitted to congressional investigators

AUGUS T 02, 2019 NEWSWEEK.COM 19

 DIVIDED
America was already a
divided nation before
the 2016 and 2018
elections. Disinformation
campaigns then sought
JOE RA EDLE/GET T Y

to exacerbate existing
tensions by amplifying
extremes on both sides.
Pictured: Trump supporters
and critics clash near the
Mar-a-Lago resort in 2017.

20 NEWSWEEK.COM AUGUS T 02, 2019

HACKING

that they had traced ad sales totaling more than

$100,000 to a shadowy Russian company known
as Russia’s Internet Research Agency (IRA), with a
history of pushing pro-Kremlin propaganda. The
US Intelligence community had already concluded
that Russia paid social media trolls to spread fake
news and influence public opinion. The ads had
focused on politically divisive issues such as gun
rights, immigration, and racial discrimination.
The news got Starbird and her team wondering if
any of the trolls engaged in any of the conversations
she had studied. In November, when the House In-
telligence Committee released a list of accounts giv-
en them by Twitter associated with IRA, Starbird and
her team decided to take a look and see if they recog-
nized anyone. They were stunned by what they dis-
covered. Dozens of the accounts in the list appeared
in their data—some among the most retweeted. IRA
accounts were also masquerading as genuine #Black-
LivesMatter and #BlueLivesMatter activists.
When Starbird and her team went back into their
data from 2016, they found that IRA internet trolls
had set up parallel operations that worked in close
concert, allowing them to play both sides of the fence.
They adopted the personas of online activists, infil-
trating communities, and mimicking the sentiments
of other participants, and then, when the opportunity
struck, acting as influencers, subtly and not so subtly
shaping the conversations. Some adopted relatively
mild personas, sticking with the pack, building a
trusted brand. Others were bomb throwers, adopt-
ing caricatures of US political identities and fanning
the flames of dissent. “They targeted both Black Lives
Matter conversations on the left, and then online con-
servative activism on the right,” she says.
“So on the left and in the pro Black Lives Matter
group, you could have accounts like ‘bleep the po-
lice’ who are calling police pigs and advocating for
violence against police, and some of the IRA trolls
are saying some of the worst things in that kind of
vein,” Starbird says. “And then on the right they are
using racial epithets and saying some of the nastier
things. In some cases, you have their troll on one
side arguing with their troll on the other side just
to say nasty things to each other.”
In 2016, Russian online personas would put in
a good word for Trump on the right and denigrate
and try to get people not to vote for Hillary on the
left. In 2020, Starbird expects these same trolls to

NEWSWEEK.COM 21
 A
STATE OF
CYBER WAR
The elections in 2020 will take place on a
CYBER-BATTLEGROUND that puts the U.S.
at a disadvantage, says expert Richard Clarke

RICHARD CLARKE HAS NEVER BEEN SHY
about highlighting the security vulner-
abilities of the United States. He came
to national prominence by attacking
the Bush Administration for its failure
to stop the 9-11 attacks. His new book
The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Coun-
try, Our Companies, and Ourselves in
the Age of Cyber Threats (Penguin,July
2019), written with Robert Knake, is a
deep dive into how digital technologies
might be used against the U.S. and what
we can do to protect against them.
Clarke has decades of experience to
back up his opinions. He worked in US
State Department during President Ron-
ald Reagan’s administration and was Bill
Clinton’s chief counter-terrorism adviser
missile or a bomb. If North Korea did
a major attack, again, in the United
States, our public policy is we might
bomb you.
Q. How might we lesson tensions?
A. In Europe with arms control in the
70s and 80s and strategically between
the Soviet Union and the US during
the Cold War, we did two things. First,
we did risk reduction measures, where
if you see something that bothers
you, some unusual activity, you’ve got
someone you can immediately call to get
an answer. Once, we had a missile
launch that kind of went crazy
and I thought the Russians
might’ve misinterpreted where

on the National Security Council. He
also served as a special advisor on cy-
bersecurity to George W. Bush. News-
week’s Adam Piore caught up with him
recently to discuss how nation-states
are weaponizing cyberspace and what it
means for national security.
Q. You’ve said that the U.S. has
low-grade simmering cyber con-
flicts with Russia, China, and Iran.
What do you mean by that?
A. We’ve attacked Iran as recently as
last month with cyber attacks. That’s
a straight forward example of simmer-
ing war. With Russia, we have more
or less admitted that we’ve recently
penetrated their power grid. That’s
what I mean by simmering cyber war.
Q. Will the next major shooting war be
provoked by a cyber attack?
A. It could very well be. When Hamas,
a terrorist movement in Gaza, was
doing cyber attacks on Israel earlier
this year, the Israelis responded by
dropping a bomb on the Hamas cyber
facility. The Pentagon’s policy for the
last four years has been, if there’s a
significant cyber attack in the US, we
hold the right to respond to that with a
it was going. I called them and said,
‘Hey guys, want you to know we had a
little problem with our missile’.” We
also did confidence building mea-
sures—transparency activities and ways
that you can be part of or observe the
activities on the other side.
No one’s developed a risk reduc-
tion measures or confidence building
measures for cyber war yet, but I think
they’re doable. The more we create cri-
sis instability by getting into each other’s
power grids and things like that, the
more we need risk reduction measures
and confidence building measures.
Q. Russia doesn’t seem to have much
incentive to have confidence building
and risk reduction measures.
A. You may be right, I don’t know. But
we should at least try.
Q. What should the U.S. be doing to
protect itself against these threats?
A. We’re not doing enough on the
defensive side—we’re sitting in a glass
house. It makes it really difficult to
go to the president and say, ‘Hey, we
want to retaliate on the cyber attack’
when we know that the Chinese can
affect our natural gas pipelines and the
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GET T Y
Russians can affect our electric power
grid—and you can imagine that other
critical systems are also vulnerable.
Q. How does the 2020 election look
from the standpoint of cybersecurity?
A. It’s easier and cheaper to be the at-
tacker than it is to be the defender. The
attacker can choose where to attack; the
defender has to defend everywhere. The
attacker can probably spend a couple
hundred bucks to buy malware on the
dark web. To defend against that, you’re
going to have to spend hundreds of
thousands of dollars. Hackers can be a
relatively small team in another country
and defenders have to be present in
counties around the United States. So
there really is an offense preference.
Q. How optimistic are you that our demo-
cracy can survive threats from Russia?
A. We have been, for the last 250 years,
a fairly resilient country, not brittle.
We’ve gone through some terrible
situations and bounced back. But that
doesn’t mean that will always happen.
Q. So are you optimistic or pessimistic?
A. I’m concerned.

22 NEWSWEEK.COM
 HACKING

Trolls actually
had very parallel
ramp up their efforts to “divide the left.” With a O P E R A T I O N S that
crowded field of candidates vying for attention,
trolls may adopt personas aligned with specific posted almost
candidates, infiltrate discussions and then, when- exactly the same
ever possible, use their positions to attack other
Democratic candidates (likely supported by other number of tweets
personas created by the trolls in the cubicles next
to them) and depress the eventual vote. on both sides,
“You’ll see them mimicking regularly the “resist” with this common
and other sorts of Democratic personas, and start
denigrating the other candidates,” she says. “And goal of U N D E R M I N I N G
especially once the Democrats choose a candi-
date, they’ll denigrate the chosen candidate, and trusted media.
say, ‘Oh this person doesn’t represent us. We can’t
vote for them. Therefore, I’m not going to vote’.”

Countering the Trolls

This time, the trolls no longer have the ad-
vantage of surprise. Efforts are underway to block Ohio and Connecticut plan to include disinformation
them or reduce their influence. education in their voter education programs.
THE OLD GAME Under mounting political pressure, both Facebook The military’s Cyber Command has also been
The Russians, said FBI
director Christopher and Twitter have vowed to shut down the trolls. Before active. Before the 2018 election, they launched a
Wray, have always the 2018 mid-term election, the FBI identified dozens campaign to deter the Russians behind the 2016
wanted “to spin us of accounts and pages operated by the IRA. Facebook influence campaign, warning Russian operatives to
up, pit us against each
other, sow divisiveness promptly inactivated them. It also set up a “war room” cease their efforts and knocking a troll farm run by
and discord, undermine to monitor threats as they emerged in real time. the IRA offline for several days.
Americans’ faith in Federal agencies, meanwhile, have ramped up ef- But no one is under any illusions about the chal-
democracy.” Below: Wray
testifies before the Senate forts to help voters spot bots and disinformation cam- lenges that lie ahead. We expect Russia to continue
Appropriations Committee. paigns. Election officials in West Virginia, Iowa, Kansas, “to focus on aggravating social and racial tensions,
undermining trust in authorities, and criticizing
perceived anti-Russia politicians,” Director of Na-
tional Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Intelli-
gence Committee in January. “Moscow may employ
additional influence toolkits—such as spreading dis-
information, conducting hack-and-leak operations,
or manipulating data—in a more targeted fashion
to influence US policy, actions, and elections.”
Not only did the Russians continue their tactics
through 2018, says the FBI’s Wray, “but we’ve seen
an indication that they’re continuing to adapt their
model, and that other countries are taking a very
interested eye in that approach”
The rhetorical goal remains the same as it has al-
ways been. “They want the American people to think
that politics and politicians are awful,” Clarke says.
“That there’s gridlock, nothing gets done. They want
us to be inward-looking, at each other’s throats.”
The desire to promote cynicism and division also
helps to explain another key part of the Russia’s

NEWSWEEK.COM 23
2016 attacks—and why we should be so worried
about our 2020 vulnerabilities: Russian efforts to
penetrate our election infrastructure.
Hack the Vote
Susan Greenhalgh can’t say for sure the Rus-
sians successfully hacked into the voter registra-
tion system of Durham County, in the swing state
of North Carolina back on election day 2016 and
caused the widespread chaos she witnessed unfold.
Nor can she offer up any proof they were behind
the curious problems with voter registration rolls
that gummed up the works in Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Indiana, Georgia and Florida on election day 2018.
But if somebody wanted to strategically depress
vote counts, piss off lots of people, and cast the
veracity of U.S. elections into question on the lo-
cal level, it seems to Greenhalgh it would probably
look a lot like what she watched unfold in real time
on both those election days. None of those inci-
dents have yet been fully investigated—some of
them not at all. In Florida, according to the Muel-
ler report, a voting system in at least one county
was hacked in 2016 (the governor and county offi-
cials are keeping mum about which one).
Greenhalgh worries what might be in store for
November 2020.
Greenhalgh, a former chemical commodities
broker, abandoned finance in the early 2000s and
found her new calling advocating for election secu-
rity. As counties around the nation began moving to
electronic voting and electronic voter registration
systems, she began working for organizations call-
ing for paper ballots and other protections against
malfunctions, hacking and fraud. She also began
volunteering for rapid response election monitor-
ing groups on hand to solve any issues on election
day that might interfere with the constitutionally
protected right to vote. In 2016, she manned a vast
call center in a law office in midtown Manhattan on
the morning of election day. She had been assigned
to a group tasked with monitoring and responding
to problems in North Carolina – and the calls began
almost as soon as the polls opened at 6:30 am.
The electronic version of the voter registration
rolls, loaded onto the laptops and tablets that poll
workers used to check in voters, appeared to be in-
correct – as scores of voters were told they had al-
ready voted, when they insisted they had not. Other
24 NEWSWEEK.COM
“They want the American people to
politicians are awful, that
They want us to be inward-looking,
poll workers found themselves unable to look up
any digital information at all.
The problems were so widespread that within
just a few hours county election officials had decid-
ed to abandon the electronic version of the regis-
tration rolls altogether and do things the old-fash-
ioned way. Which created a new series of problems:
as poll workers scrambled for paper versions of the SOCIAL MEDIA MORASS
voting rolls and paper forms required by law, long During the 2016 election,
lines formed and tempers boiled. Voting was halt- trolls at Russia’s Internet
Research Agency
ed for two hours in one precinct. In the meantime, masqueraded as activists
scores of voters gave up and went back to work or from Black Lives Matter
went home, thoroughly discouraged. and other groups on
Twitter and bought ads
“It took hours for the line to work through and on Facebook. Clockwise
dissipate,” Greenhalgh says. “So it really did have an from top: Black Lives
impact on people’s ability to vote that day.” Matter protestors in
Charlottesville, Virginia;
To Greenhalgh it seemed suspicious. A couple the Maryland campus of
weeks earlier, CNN had reported that a voting sys- U.S. Cyber Command, the
tem vendor had been attacked by Russian intelli- National Secrity Agency
and the Central Security
gence and the FBI was investigating. She’d heard Service; representatives
through her contacts that the name of the vendor of Facebook, Twitter
was VR Systems. Then around midday, buried in a and Google are called
to testify to a Senate
news story, she read a sentence that stopped her Judiciary Subcommittee
cold: Charlotte had signed a contract just a year in October 2017.
AUGUS T 02, 2019

before with VR Systems to use their electronic poll
book systems. Greenhalgh reached out to the De-
partment of Homeland Security.
“They were very interested,” she recalls.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t until this June that the
DHS revealed in an interview with The Washing-
ton Post they finally planned to conduct a forensic
analysis of the laptops used during the election—a
request North Carolina elections officials did not
make until months after the election, insisting
they could carry out an investigation on their own.
In the interim, Mueller and his team filed indict-
ments detailing the activities of Russian intelli-
gence operatives, and then issued his long-awaited
report. They confirmed that in the weeks before
the 2016 elections, Russian intelligence agents
not only attempted to hack VR Systems, they also
think that politics and
there’s G R I D L O C K , nothing gets done.
at each other’s throats.”
FROM TOP: EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/WASHINGTON POST/GETTY; CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY; DREW ANGERER/GETTY
HACKING
sent “spear-phishing” emails to 122 local elections
officials who were the firm’s customers (personal-
ized emails, in other words, designed to trick them
into clicking on links or opening attachments that
would allow hackers to penetrate accounts). And
that the same Russian military unit had probed at
least 21 state systems, looking for vulnerabilities.
The Mueller Report itself noted that in August
2016 Russian military intelligence had managed “to
install malware on the company network” of one
unnamed voter registration technology vendor in
the United States. That company is widely suspect-
ed to be VR Systems, Greenhalgh says.
VR Systems has acknowledged that Russian hack-
ers, in an apparent attempt to penetrate its voting
systems, sent email phishing attacks to employees
and customers. It insists that none of its employ-
ees’ email accounts were compromised and that
it promptly warned all its customers of the attack.
“No one indicated to us that they had opened the
email,” the company said in a statement. The com-
pany says it has cooperated all along with law en-
forcement and has tightened its cyber-security.
In the meantime, Greenhalgh’s concern over the
vulnerabilities of the election infrastructure have
only grown. In fact, during the 2018 mid-term
elections, she watched the same thing happen.
This time, problems were reported in other states,
too. In Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana and Florida,
some voters showed up and were told, incorrectly,
that they had already voted on absentee ballots. In
Georgia, some voters showed up at the polling sta-
tions where they had been voting for years to find
their addresses had been changed and no longer
matched those on their IDs. Others learned that
their registrations had suddenly disappeared.
In most of these cases, Greenhalgh says, technol-
ogy was once again involved.
She’s not ready to give either the 2016 or 2018
elections a clean bill of health. She is not persuaded
by DNI’s Coats, who told Congress in January that
the US “does not have any intelligence reporting to
indicate any compromise of our nation’s election
infrastructure that would have prevented voting,
changed vote counts, or disrupted the ability to
tally votes” in either 2016 or 2018.
Whether her suspicions are warranted or not,
it probably doesn’t matter much to the Russians.
Their primary goal isn’t to change the outcome—
NEWSWEEK.COM 25
 HACKING

it’s to undermine confidence. In other words: It

doesn’t matter if the vote was rigged. The opera- “Once the Democrats choose a
tion is successful if U.S. citizens just think it was and say, ‘Oh this person
rigged.

So, What Can Be Done?

Sure, efforts are underway to shore up pro-
tection of the election infrastructure. The trouble
is this: the U.S. elections system is spread out and
administered by thousands of individual county, city
and town election officials – many of whom jealous-
ly guard their autonomy from the federal govern-
ment. Electronic voting machine manufacturers
have cultivated cozy, revolving door relationships
with local and state election officials.
This helps explain what to some election secu-
rity advocates seems inexplicable: Legislation that
would set new cybersecurity standards for all feder-
al elections has been stalled in the U.S.
Senate for months. (Senate Majority TROUBLE AGAIN
Leader Mitch McConnell has so far Legislation to set
cybersecurity standards
refused to bring it up for a vote). for voting machines is
“Part of the Mueller Report was just sitting on Senate Majority
a cri de coeur about how we need to Leader Mitch McConnell’s
desk, but he refuses to
be more prepared and we haven’t bring it up for a vote. Right:
done enough in the face of a clear Voters cast their ballots in
attack on our elections,” Lawrence D. downtown Columbus, Ohio
during the 2018 primaries.
Norden, Director of the Election Re-
form Program at the Brennan Center
for Justice at New York University School of Law
says. “And it is amazing how little has been done to
patch up some of these vulnerabilities.”
Many of these systems, he notes, have gaping se-
curity holes. Electronic poll books of the type that
caused so many problems in Durham back in 2016

MAT THEW HATCHER /SOPA IMAGE S/LIGHTRO CKET/GE T T Y

are used in at least 34 states, Norden says. Often the
information is on the cloud, or maintained with
wireless components for which no federal securi-
ty standards have been established. As of May 2017,
at least 41 states were using voting systems that are
more than a decade old, running software no longer
serviced or provided security patches.
At least 11 states, meanwhile, continue to use
paperless voting machines in at least some coun-
ties and towns - despite warnings from the Na-
tional Academy of Science, the Senate and House
Intelligence Committees and the DHS that they
need to replace them with a system that at the very
least has paper backups.

26 NEWSWEEK.COM AUGUS T 02, 2019

 candidate, trolls will denigrate the chosen candidate,
doesn’t represent us. We can’t vote for them.

THEREFORE I’M NOT GOING TO VOTE.’”

NEWSWEEK.COM 27
 The private vendors in charge of producing and
programming voting machines and maintaining
registration databases—and even in some cases
tallying election night returns—are not regulated.
“We don’t know basic things like who they employ,

FROM TOP: DREW ANGERER/GET T Y; TOM WI LLI AMS/CQ ROLL CALL/G ET T Y

what kind of screening process they have around
security, what their cybersecurity best practices
are, who owns them, even who they are, how many
there are,” Norden says.

What We Don’t Know

To many the most alarming thing about the Rus-
sians and 2020 is that we don’t know what’s coming.
“What I’m worried about is that we’re only think-
ing about preventing a repeat of 2016,” says Rob
Knake, a former director of cybersecurity policy at
the National Security Council, and the coauthor of
a new book with Richard Clarke on cyber security.
He adds: “It’s the nature of cyber conflict that
when you close off one avenue, the attackers don’t
give up and go home ... the Russians will be look-

THE
THREAT
MATRIX
SOCIAL MEDIA

The two-year probe by → Starting in 2014, → The organization → By 2016, many

special prosecutor Russia’s Internet Re-
Robert Mueller uncovered search Agency spent
millions of dollars
many instances in which
and tasked scores of
Russia attempted to people to create fake
interfere with the 2016 online personas on
presidential elections. Facebook, YouTube,
The threats fall into Instagram and Twitter.
They posed as ac- “Blactivist;” religion,
four broad categories—
tivists and operated
social media, election social media pages
infrastructure, campaign designed to attract
security and dark money. a U.S. audience. The
Security experts are stated goal was to
“spread distrust to-
anticipating a similarly
wards the candidates
broad campaign of attacks and the political
between now and November system in general.”
2020. BY ADAM PIORE
sought to sow IRA-controlled pages
divisiveness by had grown to have
controlling pages on hundreds of thousands
immigration, with of online followers.
names like “secured
borders;” the Black → Political ads and
Lives Matter move- social-media pages
ment, with names like urged black followers
to vote for Green party
with “Army of Jesus” candidate Jill Stein, or
and “United Muslims not to vote at all.
of America;” and
regions, with groups → Posing as grassroots US
like “South United” entities and persons, the
and “Heart of Texas.” IRA also staged political
rallies and solicited
and compensated US
citizens to promote or
disparage candidates.

28 NEWSWEEK.COM AUGUS T 02, 2019

 HACKING

THE NEXT THING ing at alternative ways to influence the election, or Clarke’s biggest concern is that the Russians will
Security experts worry
directly interfere in voting this time.” penetrate voter rolls in key swing states and create
about new, more insidious
methods of spreading Intelligence officials have already identified one chaos aimed at strategically depressing the vote
disinformation, including relatively new weapon. In his testimony before enough to raise more questions about the legiti-
doctored videos called
Congress, Coats warned that the Russians might try macy of the election outcome.
“deep fakes.” Adam Schiff,
Chairman of the House to sow chaos with “deep fakes”—doctored videos In the end the most powerful tool we have to
Intelligence Committee, that depict things that never happened. Software combat the efforts has little to do with technol-
said: “The most severe
is now widely available that makes it easy to paste ogy. While die-hard Clinton loyalists continue to
escalation might be the
introduction of a deep a person’s face on another person’s body. A chilling maintain that the scale of the 2016 hacks consti-
fake—a video of one of foreshadowing came in May when a low-tech doc- tuted an unprecedented attack on our democracy,
the candidates saying
tored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi slurring many seasoned Cold Warriors prefer to place it
something they never
said.” Top left: Democratic picked up millions of views on Facebook. in a larger context. By historical standards, some
presidential candidates “The most severe escalation might be the in- argue, our bellicose Slavic foes have employed far
on the second night of
troduction of a deep fake—a video of one of the more aggressive tactics . There was a time, after all,
the first debate of the
2020 election; Left: candidates saying something they never said,” when they controlled unions and could mobilize
Representative Schiff. House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff said thousands to agitate on their behalf.
last spring. “If you look back at how impactful the “None of this works because they’re good,” says
Mitt Romney videotape about the 47 percent was, Edward Lucas, a British writer and security policy
you could imagine how a videotape that is more expert, whose many books include The New Cold
incendiary could be election-altering. This may be War: Putin’s Russia and the Threat to the West. “It
the future we are heading into.” all works because we’re weak.”

INFRASTRUCTURE CAMPAIGN SECURITY DARK MONEY

→ Hackers connected to → 29 computers at the → In August 2016, → The Citizens United

Russian intelligence
services targeted
at least 21 state
computer networks
(and possibly many
more) and at least
one manufacturer of
voting machines.
→ Spear-phishing emails
sent to local election
officials resulted in
a breach of at least → More than 50,000
one Florida coun-
ty government.
→ Hackers stole voter
data from the Illinois
election board.
Democratic Con-
gressional Campaign
Committee were
hacked and data
from more than 70
gigabytes of files
were stolen, setting
the stage for the
subsequent hack
of the Democratic
National Committee.
emails from Hillary
Clinton campaign
chairman John Po-
desta were stolen and
eventually released
through Wikileaks.
after the DCCC and ruling opened up
DNC hacks became a gaping hole in
public, according to campaign finance
Mueller, an unnamed reporting. Intelli-
candidate for U.S. gence officials worry
Congress reached that Russia, with
out to Guccifer 2.0, help from a domes-
an online persona tic partner, could
created by members funnel money to
of Russian intelli- US campaigns.
gence, requesting sto-
len documents. The
Russians responded
by sending the
candidate stolen doc-
uments related to the
candidate’s opponent.

NEWSWEEK.COM 29
NOT FORGOTTEN
In 1988, the USS
Vincennes shot down
a civilian aircraft,
Iranian Air Flight 655 ,
killing 290 people.

30 NEWSWEEK.COM AUGUS T 02, 2019

 The U.S. killed 300 Iranian citizens three decades ago.
Americans don’t remember this—but Iranians do
PLANE: C . V. GRINSVEN/SOPA IMAGES/L IGHTRO C KET/GET T Y

BY T O M O ’ C O N N O R I M AG E BY G L U E K I T

NEWSWEEK.COM 31
 he downing of a U.S. spy drone,
the near launch of military ac-
tion against Iran and recent un-
claimed attacks against nearby
oil tankers in the past months
have not only set off tensions in the Persian Gulf,
but invoked memories of an even deadlier time in
the two rivals’ troubled history three decades ago
when the U.S. killed nearly 300 Iranian civilians.
The U.S. and Iran have never officially fought a
war. But they’ve engaged in bouts of violence since
the CIA-backed coup that reinstalled Iran’s mon-
archy in 1953 and the 1979 Islamic Revolution that
ousted that leadership for the current cleric-led gov-
ernment. The following decade would prove com-
plex for Washington and Tehran amid the regional
32 NEWSWEEK.COM
volatility of the Iran-Iraq War, during which the U.S.
sought to protect Kuwaiti vessels in the Persian Gulf.
The war often spilled over into these narrow, stra-
tegic waters, where the guided-missile frigate USS
Stark was bombed by a modified Iraqi warplane,
killing 37 sailors in May 1987, and fellow warship
USS Samuel B. Roberts struck a mine in April 1988. POWER PLAY
The U.S. blamed Iran for the Roberts incident Top left: Iraqi soldiers in
1988 during the war with
and conducted one of the largest naval operations Iran. Top right: Ceremonies
since World War II, destroying a number of Iranian in Dover, Delaware for
ships and killing dozens of sailors. sailors killed during an
Iraqi attack on the USS
Less than two months later, on July 3, 1988, Ae- Stark in 1987. Right: A
gis-armed guided-missile cruiser USS Vincennes Norwegian owned tanker
opened fire at what its crew would later claim they attacked in June; Iran has
denied any wrongdoing in
thought to be an attacking Iranian F-14 fighter jet. that incident and others
In fact, the aircraft was Iran Air Flight 655, a Dubai- in the Gulf of Oman.
AUGUS T 02, 2019

bound civilian Airbus A300 with 290 people on
board—all of whom were killed.
“The incident still resonates with Iranians,” Reza H.
Akbari, program manager at the U.K.-based Institute
for War & Peace Reporting, told Newsweek. “Once
a year, the country’s state media rebroadcasts the
tragic footage of the plane’s wreckage and civilian
bodies floating in the Persian Gulf. For a few days,
heart-wrenching images of family members crying
over the loss of their loved ones and painful facts
like the number of children on board are reviewed.
“The story matches well with the Islamic Repub-
lic’s 40-year-narrative of labeling the U.S. as a heart-
less imperialist power,” he said. “To this day, signif-
icant portions of the country’s authorities do not
believe the event was an accident, but a deliberate
message sent to Iran over its decision to plant un-
FROM L EFT: MIKE NELSON/AFP/GE T T Y; BET T MA NN ARC HIVE /GET T Y; AFP/GET T Y
IRAN
derwater mines in the Persian Gulf amid the Tanker
War phase of the Iran-Iraq War. The event is perfect
propaganda fodder for the Iranian regime and does
not bode well for America’s image in the country.”
The U.S. quietly expressed regret and offered
$213,103.45 in compensation per passenger, but
the U.S. military has never admitted fault, nor disci-
plined any of its own for the deadly incident.
“I will never apologize for the United States—I
don’t care what the facts are,” then-Vice President
George H.W. Bush told an August 1988 campaign rally
less than a month after the incident, widely consid-
ered his response to the Iran Air Flight 655 downing.
“I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.”
An official report released weeks later by Navy
Admiral William Fogarty determined that USS
Vincennes commanding officer Navy Captain Will
 IRA N

Rogers III “acted in a prudent manner,” believing

he and other U.S. ships present were threatened by
the aircraft. It also found that “Iran must share the
responsibility for the tragedy by hazarding one of
their civilian airliners by allowing it to fly at a rel-
atively low altitude air route” during an ongoing
battle between the U.S. Navy and Iranian gunboats.
Rogers remained in charge of the warship until
the following year, and in 1990, he was rewarded
for his “meritorious service” between April 1987 to
May 1989, as reported at the time by Newsweek. No
mention was made of the airliner shootdown and
Rogers retired honorably in 1991.
Just one day ahead of the fourth anniversary of

FROM TOP : MAJ ID SAEEDI/GE T T Y; BET TM ANN/GET T Y; GALLO IMAG ES/COPERNICUS SENTINEL 2017/ORBITAL HORIZON/GET T Y; ABOLFATH DAVARI/AFP/GET T Y
the incident in 1992, however, Newsweek compiled
an extensive account of how the hours leading up
to Iran Air Flight 655’s destruction unfolded, de-
tailing a chaotic scene that—based on declassified
documents, video and audiotape from the involved
ships and over 100 interviews—largely pointed to
Rogers being at fault and the Pentagon attempting
to cover its tracks. The investigation, conducted
alongside ABC News’ Nightline, determined, among
other things, that the USS Vincennes had strayed
into Iranian territory in an apparent violation of in-
ternational law—just as Iran claimed the U.S. Navy’s
spy drone did so last month before being shot down.
Navy Admiral William Crowe, former chairman of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, challenged the findings of the
report in his testimony later that month in July 1992
to the House of Representatives. He said his “main
criticism of the ABC-Newsweek treatment, however, is
the inflated and outrageous rhetoric employed on the
basis of very slim and often mistaken information.”
Crowe also disputed that the USS Vincennes was
in the wrong for entering Iranian territory amid a
reported exchange of fire with the Islamic Republics’
gunboats, arguing that “a warship acting in self-de-
fense has the right under international law to enter
the aggressor waters to defend itself.” He concluded
that the Navy “did not, I emphasize did not, at any
time cover up, conspire or conduct a secret war, be-
yond the knowledge of our leaders, and you who are
charged as the safekeepers for all the American people.”
In the years since, the story of Iran Air Flight
655 was largely forgotten in the U.S., apart from
the occasional retrospective feature. In Iran, how-
ever, its tragic legacy lives on. Not only of those
killed on board, but as Akbari said, “of sad memo-

34 NEWSWEEK.COM
 want to ever be in the same position,” Akbari said.
After the downing of the civilian plane, Wash-
ington has continued to lead efforts to isolate Teh-
ran, compelling Iranian leaders to seek regional
allies. It managed to shore up ties with Iraq fol-
lowing the 2003 invasion by the U.S., an operation
in which the Pentagon forced out the very same
Iraqi leader it supported in the 1980s based on
intelligence that later proved false.
In April, the Trump administration claimed that
Iran was responsible for the deaths of more than
600 U.S. troops during the Iraq War and the presi-
dent himself claimed Iran’s use of homemade bombs
has “killed 2,000 Americans,” though no evidence
was presented to support these claims. The U.S. has
also argued Iran and its allied militias presented a
threat to another murky Pentagon intervention in
Syria, the lone Arab nation to back Iran in its 1980s
war with Hussein and still a crucial partner today.
A rare break in the two countries’ mutual hostility
came in the form of a nuclear deal forged in 2015 by
the administrations of then-President Barack Obama

ries from the dark days of the Iran-Iraq War.” and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Under its
At the time, major powers such as the U.S., Soviet terms, Iran agreed to severely limit its nuclear activi-
Union, France and the United Kingdom all backed ties in exchange for billions of dollars in sanctions re-
FAULT LINES Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in his invasion of lief. The arrangement drew skepticism from hard-lin-
Clockwise from top neighboring Iran, a “new revolutionary government ers in both countries but was largely welcomed
left: Admiral William that had little resources and experience,” Akbari said. internationally and endorsed by China, the European
Crowe challenged a
report that said the USS “Iran’s retaliatory power was certainly no match Union, France, Germany and the United Kingdom.
Vincennes had, among against the United States [back then],” Akbari told Last year, President Donald Trump unilateral-
other things, strayed into Newsweek. “The reality may be the same today, but ly pulled out of the deal and left the remaining
Iranian territory; Iranians
celebrate the anniversary Iran is doing its best to raise the costs of any ag- parties struggling to salvage the agreement as ten-
of the 1979 Islamic gression by building asymmetrical retaliatory ca- sions ramped up in the Middle East. With Europe
revolution and also make pabilities. Today, Iranian officials emphasize the failing to normalize trade ties, Iranian officials
their feelings known about
U.S. President Donald country’s need for defensive capabilities, indepen- announced on May’s anniversary of the U.S. exit
Trump; Iranians with a dence and territorial integrity.” that they too would be stepping back from some
replica of Iran Air flight “Such line of thinking partially stems from inci- of their commitments, but would do so within the
655 during a memorial
ceremony; a satellite image dents such as the downing of Iran Air Flight 655. framework of the agreement.
of the Strait of Hormuz. The country’s commanders and politicians do not That same month, four commercial vessels—two

NEWSWEEK.COM 35

Saudi, one from Norway and one from the United
Arab Emirates—were damaged by explosions in the
Gulf of Oman. Almost exactly a month later, two
more oil tankers—one Norwegian and one Japa-
nese—were targeted in similar incidents. Iran has
denied any wrongdoing, but it did open fire on the
U.S.’s unmanned surveillance drone, a decision that
initially led Trump to order strikes against Iranian
targets. The president later attributed his last-min-
ute decision not to attack to fear of civilian casualties.
Trump’s favored news channel, Fox News, fea-
tured a report that same night in which retired
four-star Army General Jack Keane discussed the
“horrific mistake” that was the downing of Iran Air
Flight 655. Revolutionary Guards aerospace com-
mander Amir Ali Hajizadeh, too, said he showed
36 NEWSWEEK.COM
IRA N
restraint by not downing a U.S. P-8 Poseidon spy
plane carrying 35 personnel that accompanied the
ill-fated drone in June.
Conflict may have been averted, but Ragnar Wei-
landt, an adjunct professor at the Vesalius College
Brussels, told Newsweek, “For Iranians, the hawk-
ish rhetoric of some pundits and policymakers in
Washington must have sounded like a bad joke. TENSIONS HIGH
Clockwise from right: A
“The U.S. still hasn’t formally apologized for mural on the wall of the
shooting down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian former U.S. Embassy
Gulf in 1988. All 300 passengers including 66 chil- in Tehran; General Amir
Ali Hajizadeh of Iran’s
dren died when the USS Vincennes apparently mis- Revolutionary Guard at
took the Airbus A300 for an Iranian F-14,” Weilandt a media briefing on the
told Newsweek. “And now America should go to destroyed U.S. drone;
Iranian religious chief
war because Iran shot down an unmanned drone Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
that was either in or close to Iranian airspace? in Tehran in May.
FROM L EFT: IR ANIAN LEADER PR ESS O FFIC E/HAND OUT/A NAD OLU AGENCY/GET T Y; MEGHDAD MADADI/AFP/GET T Y; ERIC LAFFORGUE/GAMMA-RAPHO/GET T Y
How would the U.S. react if a drone operated by
a hostile state came close to American airspace?”
Weilandt argued that, while Rogers received his
award for serving on the USS Vincennes in 1990,
“millions of war-torn Iranians suffered from crip-
pling American sanctions—sanctions that got even
harsher since.” He added: “The nuclear deal that
Trump tore apart so recklessly last year didn’t pri-
marily benefit the regime in Tehran, it was primar-
ily helping ordinary Iranians.”
While the U.S. has spent much of its history with
post-revolutionary Iran trying to isolate the Islamic
Republic, Trump’s self-styled “maximum pressure”
may, ironically, have achieved the opposite, leaving his
own administration largely alone in its stance vis-à-
vis Tehran. China and Russia have vowed to defy U.S.
sanctions and, while Europe has been slower to defy
its transatlantic ally, it too launched a special trade
vehicle Friday to allow limited trade with Iran.
Iran has refused to engage in talks unless the U.S.
lifts sanctions, which recently went so far as to tar-
get Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khame-
nei—who served as president during the deadly
1988 incident. As Tehran’s embassies around the
world broadcast reminders of the Iran Air Flight
655 shooting in recent days, its Washington build-
ing has since remained vacant, with diplomacy be-
tween the two seeming less likely than ever before,
even as the State Department touted its efforts to
maintain the property should things ever change.
Khamenei referred to the airliner downing this
summer while addressing Iranian judiciary and
justice officials, calling it “human rights American
style!” Noting the history of U.S. intervention in
his country, he argued: “You cannot be an agent of
progress, but only a factor in making this country
backward. The Iranian nation will move forward
provided only that you do not get involved.”
NEWSWEEK.COM 37
Horizons SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY + HEALTH

MOONSHOTS

Searching In anticipation of the 50th anniversary of NASA astronauts

landing on the moon, Newsweek is spotlighting pioneers in sci-

Through
ence and technology, highlighting their very own moonshots and how
they hope to change the world.
Aaron Meisner, the 31-year-old NASA Hubble Fellow and cofounder

the Stars
Harvard-trained physicist Aaron Meisner
of Backyard Worlds combines the
human touch with reams of data in the
of Backyard Worlds Citizen Science project, is changing the way
humans look at the stars. Aaron has been using big data mining
techniques and a team of amateur volunteers across the world to
search for undiscovered planets and other celestial bodies, which may
include our solar system’s theorized ninth planet. These citizen sci-
entists are parsing through astronomical data sets and images gath-
ered by infrared-wavelength space telescopes. The ancient practice of
studying the universe is becoming digital, and as Aaron believes, the
NASA

hope of discovering a ninth planet discoveries are in the data, just waiting to be found.

38 NEWSWEEK.COM Augu s t 02, 2019


Can you tell me about
Backyard Worlds?
The site is based on data coming in
from a NASA satellite. We have over
50,000 registered users and about
150,000 actual participants. We
upload “image blinks” of the same
place in the sky and how it changes
over time, where people can look at
them. They are looking for things that
move, basically, because it turns out
people are really good at recognizing
subtle motion in images and are more
trustworthy than computers.
THE DISTANCE
TO EARTH
COULD BE
56,000,000,000
MILES
Where do you see the progression
of Backyard Worlds going?
We just relaunched our website
with twice as much data, so I think
the project will keep growing and
get better. We’ve made over a thou-
sand discoveries now that are being
followed up with some of the big-
gest and best telescopes on Earth
and in space. The question
is still open to whether we
really find the one, in terms BY
of potentially a new planet:
Planet 9. NOAH MILLER
Is your ultimate goal then—your
moonshot—finding Planet 9?
For now, it definitely is a dream
goal to discover a new planet in the
outer solar system. But more gener-
ally, what I like about astronomy is
that you have the potential to have a
real breakthrough discovery where,
all of a sudden, you can change the
way people look at the uni-
verse. That’s what inspires me,
whether that’s Planet 9 or some
other big discovery we make
along the way.
NEWSWEEK.COM 39

Can you speak a little more to your
inspiration?
It is a very data-driven field, and there
are vast archives that exist that haven’t
fully been searched. There may be a
“once in a century” type of discovery
just sitting there, hidden in those
existing piles of data. What inspires
me is the thrill of the hunt in trying
to find these exciting discoveries
among many other billions of stars
and galaxies.
Is there a problem you’re facing?
The problem is we don’t really
understand our own solar system
yet, which is surprising given how
40 NEWSWEEK.COM
STAR SEARCH
Citizen scientists led
by Meisner (below)
comb through the
images gathered
by telescopes
like NASA’s WISE
(left) and KPNO’s
Mayall telescopes
(bottom left).
long people have, over the centu-
ries, looked for new planets. There
are many theories and hypotheses
about the different types of planets
that could still be lurking in the outer
parts of the solar system. If there is a
planet out there, it could be Neptune-
or Saturn-sized, so we really want to
know if there is a ninth planet way
out beyond Pluto. I also think the fact
that astronomy is so data-driven is
both a blessing and a curse. We have
this great wealth of data, but need a
way to fully explore it. We have super-
computers, but even that doesn’t fully
work. So, this is one thing I explored
through the Backyard Worlds project,
MOONSHOTS
which is bringing back in the human
element to the exploration of these
big data sets.
How close are you to overall
success?
We’ve been very successful at taking
this NASA data, which is funded by
the public, and bringing it back to
the people in a fun and accessible
way. We’ve made a lot of discoveries
along the way, including free-floating
planets that are like Jupiter, but just
roaming around interstellar space
nearby the sun. We’ve had some of
the best telescopes on earth and in
space, including the Hubble space
telescope, looking at these discover-
C LO CKWISE FRO M TOP: NASA /JPL ; COURTE SY OF A ARON ME ISNE R; THE ASSO CIATION OF UNIVERSITIES FOR RESEARCH IN ASTRONOMY
ies that are made by our volunteers.
So, in terms of societal good and sci-
entific productivity, we’ve had a lot of
success, but we’re still searching for
the one big hit.
How do you picture astronomy in
20 years if you succeed?
I would hope we’ve resolved the ques-
tion of the ninth planet, or potentially
more in our own solar system, but I
also think there are bigger trends
going on in astronomy that mirror
what’s going on in other sciences
and industries. Big data is becoming
a major theme in astronomy where
you don’t necessarily need to have a
backyard telescope to participate in
astronomy anymore, you just need
an internet connection to look at
the data and help the professional
researchers make these new discov-
eries. There’s a democratization of
the science process going on, where
we have so much data for everyone
to look at. It’s inevitable that we will
unlock a whole bunch of new knowl-
edge and new discoveries. We’re comb-
ing supercomputers and machine
learning, but there’s still a role to play
from the human side.
Augu s t 02, 2019
 B Y THE NUMBERS
Extreme
Weather
Following the wettest
winter on record marked
by heavy rains and snow,
the U.S. could be in store
for its hottest and wettest
summer yet, forecasters
say. With hurricane
season just under way,
the Department of
Atmospheric Science at
Colorado State University
expects 14 named storms
to hit the Atlantic Coast
this year, including six
hurricanes. Meanwhile,
the federal government’s
Predictive Services division
sees above-average
potential for large wildfires
in California following last
year’s deadly blazes and,
according to the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, there
could be unprecedented
flooding in the Midwest.
THE 5 COSTLIEST
NATURAL DISASTERS
OF 2018
Four of the five most expensive
ANDREW MER RY/GE T T Y
natural disasters in the world last
year occurred in the U.S.
SOURCE: MUNICH RE NATCATSERVICE
9 inches 1 in 15,300 35.9 inches
The average amount
of precipitation in the
U.S. this winter, the
Chance of being struck by
lightning in your lifetime.
The odds of being struck
The snowiest single day in his-
tory for Flagstaff, Arizona, re-
corded this winter. Still, that’s
wettest on record, in a single year: 1 in 1.2 less than half the 75.8 inches
clocking in at 2.2 inch- million. Odds of win- that fell in 24 hours in Silver
es above the norm. ning the Mega Millions Lake, Colorado in 1921, still
jackpot: 1 in 303 million. the snowiest U.S. day ever.
SOURCE: NATIONAL CENTERS FOR
ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION SOURCE: NATIONAL WEALTH SERVICE SOURCE: THE WEATHER CHANNEL
The number of eyewitness reports of tornadoes logged
in the U.S. this May, compared with 100 a month
= $1 BILLION
typically. If confirmed, that would make it the fifth most
active monthly period since tracking began in the 1950s.
$51.9 BILLION
SOURCE: NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE’S STORM PREDICTION CENTER
Estimated insured
losses (in 2018
dollars) from 2005’s
54.9°F → The highest average annual temperature Hurricane Katrina, the
within the contiguous U.S.—2.9 degrees above the costliest hurricane
century’s average—hit in 2016. Overall, the last five years, in U.S. history.
from 2014 to 2018, have been the hottest on record.
SOURCE: NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION (NOAA)
SOURCE: INSURANCE INFOR­
MATION INSTITUTE
U.S. WILDFIRE (CAMP FIRE) $16.5BN
U.S./CUBA HURRICANE MICHAEL
JAPAN/TAIWAN TYPHOON JEBI
Overall losses
U.S. HURRICANE FLORENCE Insured losses
U.S. WILDFIRE (WOOLSEY FIRE) $5.2BN
in U.S. dollars, billions 5 10 15 20
NEWSWEEK.COM 41
Culture HIGH, LOW + EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN

BOOKS

Final Days
at the Beach
Reads
30 books to fill your beach bag
for the dog days of summer

42 NEWSWEEK.COM Augu s t 02, 2019

 LOVE AND FOOD
Stephanie Danler on bringing her coming-of-age story to TV » P.48

The summer of 2019 is speeding

by—and the season has been one for
the books, literally, when it comes to must-
reads. The staff at Newsweek has compiled
a list of 30 books of all genres to take with
you on these final days at the beach, the
pool or wherever you might be cooling In West Mills
off this August. Here are our top picks By De’Shawn
Charles Winslow
for fiction, mysteries, science fiction and BLO OMSBURY
PUBLISHING | $26

nonfiction. —Juliana Pignataro Winslow takes us to

rural North Carolina
in this expansive story
of individuality and

Fiction community. At the

center of this book is
Azalea “Knot” Centre,
who doesn’t quite fit in.
J ENS MAGNUSSO N/GET T Y; TOP R IGHT: DIA DIPASUPIL/TR IBECA FI LM FESTIVAL/GET T Y

A Woman Is No Man Patsy The Stationery Shop Cape May

By Etaf Rum
HARPER | $26.99
Palestinian-American
novelist Rum writes
of the complexities
inside the lives of Arab
American women. She
probes the dark and the
daunting as she tells
the story of a Brooklyn
teenager navigating
the wishes of a family
who want her to marry.
By Nicole Dennis-Benn
LIVERIGHT | $26.95
Patsy leaves her native
Jamaica to reunite
with her oldest friend,
Cicely, in America.
She leaves behind her
young daughter, Tru,
who wrestles with her
own pursuit of self, in
a way that mirrors her
mother’s more than
either of them can know.
By Marjan Kamali
GALLERY BO OKS | $27
The solace of a
stationery shop serves
as a haven in turbulent
1953 Tehran, and
the backdrop for a
powerful love story.
Spanning decades and
decisions, enduring
love and devastating
loss live side by side in
Kamali’s second novel.
By Chip Creek
CELAD ON BO OKS
| $26.99
A young couple arrives
in a desolate beach
town to celebrate their
honeymoon and shed
their innocence. Things
slowly boil over after they
meet a group of not-so-
innocent socialites who
are intent on bringing the
newlyweds into their web.

NEWSWEEK.COM 43
Culture BOOKS

On Earth We’re
Briefly Gorgeous
By Ocean Vuong
PENGUIN PRESS | $26
Vuong’s debut unfolds in
the form of a letter from
a son to his illiterate
mother. “Little Dog”
writes of secrets and
history in this stunning
and poetic story.

The Nickel Boys

By Colson Whitehead
D OUBLEDAY | $24.95
The author of renowned
bestseller The
Underground Railroad
returns with a stunning
novel of Jim Crow-
era Florida, where
two young black boys
are sent to a sadistic
reform school, based
on a real-life school
that operated for 111
years. Whitehead again
proves his abilities
in this powerful and
nightmarish story.

Ask Again, Yes

By Mary Beth Keane, SCRIBNER | $27
Two families are rocked by the unthinkable
when a mentally ill mother shoots her neighbor
in the face. As their children fall in love and
grow up, they’re haunted by the events of
their past in this complex family drama.
Fleishman Is
in Trouble
By Taffy Brodesser-
Akner
RAND OM HOUSE | $27
Searching for Sylvie Lee When Toby Fleishman’s
By Jean Kwok wife doesn’t return from
WILLIAM MORROW | $26.99 dropping their kids
When the eldest daughter off at school, he must
of an immigrant family work to understand Outside Looking In
goes missing, what what happened. New By T.C. Boyle, ECCO | $27.99
ensues propels us through York Times Magazine The master of American storytelling turns
the depths of a family’s writer Brodesser-Akner his pen to the 1960s and the early days of
secrets, complicated explores love, marriage LSD. Boyle’s trip follows Timothy Leary and
discoveries and what and divorce in this his merry band of grad students as their
makes us individuals. urgent and witty debut. research spreads well beyond the academic.

44 NEWSWEEK.COM Augu s t 02, 2019

Thriller&Mystery
Man of the Year
By Caroline
Louise Walker
GALLERY BO OKS | $26
A sinister slow burn
unfolds when a young
interloper moves into a
prominent doctor’s guest
house for the summer.
Everything is not what it
seems in idyllic Sag Harbor.
Tell Me Everything
By Cambria Brockman, B ALLANTINE BO OKS | $27
Brockman’s novel of secrets and murder at
a New England college will undoubtedly
remind readers of Donna Tartt’s The Secret
History. Dripping with drama and mystery, Tell
Me Everything is a page turner to the last.
A Stranger on
the Beach
By Michele Campbell
ST. M A R T I N ’ S P R E S S
$27.99
Caroline Stark embarks
on an affair with the
handsome young man
she sees from the
window of her luxury
Long Island beach house.
But who is he really? And
could one dangerous
decision ruin everything?
Prepare for A Stranger
on the Beach to chill your
bones, even if you’re
reading it on the beach.

A Nearly Normal Family

By M.T. Edvardsson, CELAD ON BO OKS | $26.99
Swedish writer Edvardsson’s electric legal thriller
follows a family after seemingly typical 18-year-
old Stella Sandell is accused of murdering
an older man. A Nearly Normal Family is a
uniquely organized and engrossing read.

The New Iberia Blues

By James Lee Burke
SIMON & SCHUSTER | $27.99
Louisianian detective
Dave Robicheaux must
navigate increasingly
dangerous waters after
the body of a young
woman is found on an
influential Hollywood
director’s property. Burke
is at his best and will
make you want to chew
on the gritty details
of a case over cajun
shrimp on the Bayou.
The duo behind The
Wife Between Us
returns with another
compulsively readable
psychological thriller.
Jessica Farris signs
up for a psychological
study where she just
has to answer a series
of questions. But as
those questions get
An Anonymous Girl more personal, it
By Greer Hendricks becomes clear that
and Sarah Pekkanen something more
ST. MARTIN’S | $27.99 sinister is afoot.

NEWSWEEK.COM 45
Culture BO O K S

Nonfiction
By Charles Fishman
SIMON & SCHUSTER
$29.99
Thousands of people
had to accomplish
herculean and seemingly
impossible tasks in Broken Places &
order to get us to the Outer Spaces:
moon—and it’s been Finding Creativity
50 years since Neil in the Unexpected
Armstrong took that By Nnedi Okorafor
One Giant Leap: one small step. Fishman SIMON & SCHUSTER/
The Impossible explains in dazzling form TED | $16.99
Mission That Flew just how unbelievable When the author, a star
Us to the Moon it actually was. college athlete, becomes
paralyzed, her life has the
potential to fall apart at Underland: A Deep Time Journey
the seams. Instead, she By Robert Macfarlane, W.W. NORTON & COMPANY | $27.95
transforms her limitations How much do we really know about what’s
into her greatest strengths,
Out East: Memoir of a and in doing so, sets an
beneath us? Not much, you’ll find, after
Montauk Summer diving underground with Macfarlane. This
example for others. subterranean journey through time is as
By John Glynn, GRAND CENTRAL PUBLISHING | $27 expansive and educational as it is interesting.
What better way to close out the season than
by immersing yourself in the salt and secrets
of a Montauk summer? Glynn takes us with
him to a house on the Atlantic where he spent
a season finding friendship, love and himself.

The Castle on Sunset:

Life, Death, Love,
Art, and Scandal
at Hollywood’s
Chateau Marmont
By Shawn Levy
D OUBLEDAY | $28.95
If walls could talk the
Chateau Marmont would
have plenty to say. And
talk it does, through Levy’s
history of the hotel’s
glitter and shadows. The
escapades that took place
within its bungalows will
keep you entertained
through plenty of
sun-soaked days.
Range: Why Loonshots: How to
Generalists Triumph Nurture the Crazy
in a Specialized World Ideas That Win Wars,
By David Epstein Cure Diseases, and
RIVERHEAD BO OKS | $28 Transform Industries
Is it better to be a By Safi Bahcall
jack-of-all-trades than a ST. MARTIN’S
master of one? Epstein PRESS | $29.99
probes the benefits of Technologist and
being broad through businessman Bahcall
a series of stories and investigates the nature
anecdotes that couldn’t of radical ideas in this
be more relevant in groundbreaking book that
today’s changing times. spans industries and time.

46 NEWSWEEK.COM Augu s t 02, 2019

 Science Fiction
Former NASA mission
commander Sally
Jansen is the last
astronaut alive on Earth.
Retired for years after
a catastrophic mission
Three Women to Mars, she believes
By Lisa Taddeo her spacefaring days
AVID READER PRESS /
are long behind her.
SIMON & SCHUSTER | $27
That is, until an alien
Journalist Taddeo object heads straight
explores the intimacies The Last Astronaut for humanity—and
inside the relationships By David Wellington she might be the only
of three women in this ORBIT | $15.99 one who can stop it.
fascinating and true
account. She expertly
weaves together the
stories of a high school
student, a married
restaurant owner and a Salvation Day
suburban mother—each By Kali Wallace, BERKLEY | $26
of whom represent the Long-buried and fatal secrets lie aboard an
varied and profound abandoned spaceship. When the virus that was
experiences of female hidden inside the vessel is reawakened, death
sexuality in America. hurtles toward humanity at breakneck speed.
Light From Other Stars
By Erika Swyler, BLO OMSBURY PUBLISHING | $27
Young Nedda Pappas has grown up in Florida
watching NASA race to the stars, but when
her eccentric father builds a machine that
changes the essence of time itself, she has
to contend with things beyond the scope of
known reality. An epic exploration of parental
love, with a universe hidden in every sentence.

The Mastermind: Astronaut Catherine

Drugs, Empire, Wells returns to Earth
Murder, Betrayal after a decade in deep
By Evan Ratliff space in which she lost
RAND OM HOUSE | $28 all contact with NASA.
Ratliff, a journalist, She’s the only surviving
delivers a true crime member of the mission,
masterpiece that’ll but she has no memory
keep you enthralled of the last 10 years.
until the very last page. Nichols’ eerie and taut
Multimillion dollar storytelling speeds to
drug shipments, arms Vessel its conclusion: What is
deals, North Korea—like By Lisa A. Nichols Wells hiding, and what
the title implies, The ATRIA/EMILY BESTLER/ALLOY really happened to the
Mastermind has it all. ENTERTAINMENT| $27 rest of the crew?

NEWSWEEK.COM 47
Culture I l l u s t r a t i o n b y B R I TT S P E N C E R

P A R T ING SHOT

Stephanie Danler
Written over a seven-year period, 2016’s Sweetbitter draws heavily What has Sweetbitter’s success
from author Stephanie Danler’s own experience as a 20-something swept meant to you?
up in the hedonistic lifestyle of New York’s restaurant world. Now translated I never take it for granted. A lot of
to a drama on Starz, which returns for its second season July 14, the coming-of- success is about timing. It was
age tale follows Tess, a recent Manhattan transplant who develops an advanced the right time for a female-centric
palate for drugs, late nights and sex. Danler’s not-so-perfect and wildly relat- story; to look at the sexual politics of
able antiheroine navigates a new job, new city and a new sense of self. In the restaurants; and to talk about 2006,
television version, Tess is played by actor Ella Purnell, who Danler said had the last year before iPhones.
the part the moment they met, based on Purnell’s ability to play the character
with the grit the role demanded. Danler herself is “humbled that anyone would Are you discovering new paths for
read a single word I wrote.” Building on that success, she says the Starz series Tess in Season 2?
dramatically expanded the world she had created: “I thought a show about the I was really tired of seeing 20-year-
restaurant—and everyone inside it—was endlessly fascinating and had a longer old women portrayed as sexually
life than the drama of being 22.” mature objects. It’s a confusing time
about learning what you like and then
finding the voice to ask for it. We’re
exploring that journey this season.
“I was really
tired of seeing Can you tell me a little bit about the
memoir you’re working on now?
20-year-old It’s about moving home to California
women portrayed and confronting the legacy of my

as sexually parents, who are both addicts. I

want to know what the inheritance
mature objects.” of damage looks like; this is about a
point in my life where I didn’t know
if I could transcend it. Now that I’m
a mother, the book has also become
about forgiveness.

What’s the biggest difference

between novel- and TV-writing?
The incredible collaboration in TV is
a different muscle than working out a
problem alone in the dark, like a novel.
When I’m working on a book, I miss
the chorus of voices and ideas. But
when I have to let go of something I’ve
written for TV, I miss having all the
power. Both processes make me a
better artist. —Kelly Wynne

Augu s t 02, 2019

 UNDER THE HIGH PATRONAGE OF HSH PRINCE ALBERT II OF MONACO

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