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Who Is This Guy?

My name is Klon Kitchen (yes, that’s my real name). By way of background, I spent 15 years in the U.S. intelligence community (IC) working on counterterrorism, counterproliferation, covert action, and cyber issues. I was also Nebraska GOP Sen. Ben Sasse’s national security adviser for three years. After that, I spent another three years at the Heritage Foundation as the founder and director of its Center for Technology Policy. In early 2021, I made the move to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where I’m loving life as a senior fellow in the foreign and defense policy shop.

You can click here if you want a little more on my background. If you want a lot more, however, I’ll have to kill you. (Just kidding. I don’t do that anymore.)

You can also follow me on Twitter (@klonkitchen).

The best part of me is my family. My wife Tracy and I have four kids and we’re on the cusp of gradually sending them off to college and becoming empty nesters. While we’re far from perfect, we enjoy one another and I’m proud to say all four kids are “weird” in all the right ways.

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Comments (144)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    “ My name is Klon Kitchen (yes, that’s my real name).”

    That’s exactly what you’d say if you were a spy and “Klon” was your alias.

    “ While the term was coined by Lockheed Martin, it describes the basic stages of a that which preexist this term. ”

    I believe there’s a typo in that sentence. Maybe you left out a word (perhaps “concept” or “idea”?). Normally I wouldn’t call that out since it’s after the fact, but you wrote that you wanted people to bookmark this and refer back to it in the future (ie it’s evergreen), so I figured you might want to fix that so that nobody gets tripped up in the future.

    Anyway, I’m getting to this late but this was really excellent. A helpful refresher of a few things I knew and also an elucidation of a few things I didn’t. I look forward to future installments (which, as I type this, includes at least one that’s already out, but I’m about 1.5 weeks behind on Dispatch reading). If this is outside of the paywall, I may forward it to a few people I know.

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    RR

    Glad to see you join the Dispatch staff Klon. Look forward to more incisive articles from you.

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    Jerry McKamy

    I'd like to see articles on the national security aspects related to nuclear electric power generation and also being dependent upon foreign (Russian) sources of uranium. In general, what infrastructure is national security related and how much of it is the U.S. dependent upon foreign sources?

    https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-ban-russian-energy-imports-doesnt-include-uranium-source-2022-03-08/

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    FredA

    Welcome to the Dispatch. I look forward to learning a lot from you. I don't know whether border security is of great interest to you, but if so, you could answer a question I've long wondered about. It is often said that technology can provide as much security as a physical wall. I've never understood how technology can prevent people from crossing a lonely stretch of border in the middle of the night (or broad daylight for that matter). Just because a border agent can remotely monitor and observe people crossing the border won't stop them from crossing. Perhaps you could address this question in a newsletter sometime. Thank you.

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    Ron Hawkins

    So very grateful you've come aboard and looking forward to more valuable and share-worthy content. Very cool!

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    Rebekah R

    I’m looking forward to learning a lot more about this stuff from you Klon! Welcome!

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    BrettH

    Glad to see you're adding some cyber depth to The Dispatch bench. I've enjoyed listening to your analysis on the pods.

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  8. Erik Schroder

    Is US intelligence developing offensive cyber capabilities? I'm thinking in terms of not only freezing assets of Putin's homies, but of actively ripping them off.

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    Will I Am

    Great addition to The Dispatch! Always enjoy listening to you on the podcasts. And love that your kids are weird in "all the right ways." Look forward to more of your analysis and reporting.

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    Ray Salemi

    In addition, we Siemens employees have cut off all technical exports to Russia, to the point of not sending emails to Russian coworkers.

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