When the world's at stake,
go beyond the headlines.

This week, the Bombshell ladies welcome Lauren Fish of the Center for a New American Security to talk all things FY19 defense budget, including why this big funding increase may not be all that it seems.  While finding future employment for Navy SEALs on the skeleton track, we talk North Korea’s charm offensive, how we and maybe everyone else have totally lost the plot in Syria, and why the Munich Security Conference was the party everyone wanted to bail on.  We offer everything you wanted to know about security clearances and deployability (and then everything you didn’t know you wanted to know).  And oh yeah, Erin’s seen Red Sparrow.

• Center for New American Security, “The Bottom Line,” CNAS
• David Wharton, “‘Peace Village,’ a fake city just outside the DMZ, serves as metaphor for North Korean athletes at the Olympics,” LA Times
• Motoko Rich and Choe Sang-Hun, “Kim Jong-un’s Sister Turns On the Charm, Taking Pence’s Spotlight,” New York Times
• Scott Neuman, “‘Dozens’ Of Russian Mercenaries Reportedly Killed In U.S. Airstrikes In Syria,” NPR
• Isabel Kershner, Anne Barnard, and Eric Schmitt, “Israel Strikes Iran in Syria and Loses a Jet,” New York Times
• J. Dana Stuster, “Israel Strikes Iranian Targets in Syria after Drone Incursion,” Lawfare
• Aaron Mehta, “Mattis: Unclear if Russia directed attack against U.S. allies in Syria,” Military Times
• Eliot A. Cohen, “Witnessing the Collapse of the Global Elite,” The Atlantic
• Henry Meyer and Patrick Donahue, “U.S.-Russia TEnsion Flares Over Nuclear Arms Control Now at Risk,” Bloomberg
• William J. Antholis, “Rob Porter Is a National Security Scandal, Too,” Politico
• Tara Copp, “It’s official: DoD releases new ‘deploy or get out’ policy,” Military Times
• Dahlia Lithwick, “Rob Porter’s History of Domestic Abuse Wasn’t a Secret. It’s Just That No One Cared.” Slate