Greg Myre

Nearly three decades after the Cold War ended between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, a new debate is stirring: Is the U.S. heading into a new Cold War, this time with China?

"The Chinese military has undergone a substantial program of modernization to the point now where they are a near-peer military in a number of military domains," Neil Wiley, the director of analysis at the Defense Intelligence Agency, said in an interview with NPR.

When former defense secretary Jim Mattis is asked about his relationship with President Trump, he has an answer ready.

"I don't discuss sitting presidents," Mattis tells NPR in an interview. "I believe that you owe a period of quiet."

The head of the National Security Agency, Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, has a catchphrase: "persistent engagement."

This covers a broad spectrum of cyber activities at the nation's largest spy agency. But at its core, it means relentlessly tracking adversaries, and increasingly, taking offensive action against them.

"That's the idea of persistent engagement. This idea of enabling and acting," Nakasone recently told NPR. When he took over the agency last year, he said that rivals didn't fear the U.S. in the cyber realm, and he intended to change that.

Nearly two decades into the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. suddenly appears to be nearing an agreement with the Taliban that could bring the remaining 14,000 U.S. troops home.

That's causing unease inside the Afghan government, which has been left on the sidelines as the U.S. and the Taliban have held multiple rounds of talks this year in the Gulf nation of Qatar. The latest round wrapped up last week without a deal, but with signs of progress.

Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, one of the last remaining survivors of President Trump's original national security team, will leave the administration on August 15, the president said in a tweet on Sunday.

The Defense Department wants more Americans to speak Chinese, and it provides millions of dollars to train students at U.S. universities.

China's government, through language centers known as Confucius Institutes, has been doing the same thing, for the same reasons, and at some of the same U.S. universities.

But a new law has forced these American universities to choose: They can take money from the Pentagon or from the Confucius Institute — but not both.

As a young government employee in 1975, Marti Peterson was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. She loved the social scene and it earned her a nickname.

"I was known as 'Party Marti' because I was out socializing with the Marine guards, with younger secretaries, the single, social life," Peterson said. "We did drink our share of Carlsberg beer."

Updated at 10:10 a.m. ET

John Walker Lindh, known as the "American Taliban" after his capture in Afghanistan in 2001, was released from prison on Thursday after serving 17 years of a 20-year sentence, the Bureau of Prisons said.

Lindh received three years off for good behavior, though his probation terms include a host of restrictions: He needs permission to go on the Internet; he'll be closely monitored; he's required to receive counseling; and he's not allowed to travel.

At a superhero extravaganza in Washington, comic book fans dressed the part. No matter which way you turned, middle-aged men were in Batman costumes.

Not exactly the place you'd expect a CIA discussion on recruiting foreign spies. And yet CIA staff historian Randy Burkett, wearing khakis and a polo shirt with the CIA logo, was doing exactly that.

The new International Spy Museum doesn't shy away from controversy. One exhibit room has yellow stencil on a stark, cinderblock wall that reads, "What is torture?"

A video features Jose Rodriquez, an ex-CIA official who was deeply involved in the waterboarding program of terror suspects after the 2001 al-Qaida attacks: "This was a very successful program," Rodriguez says. "It protected the homeland and saved American lives."

The FBI is investigating some 850 cases of domestic terrorism and considers it serious and persistent threat, the FBI's Michael McGarrity told the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday.

McGarrity and his fellow national security officials then went on to explain to committee members why the U.S. doesn't have an explicit law allowing the federal government to criminally charge extremists with domestic terrorism.

Virginia Hall is one of the most important American spies most people have never heard of.

Her story is on display at the CIA Museum inside the spy agency headquarters in Langley, Va. — but this is off-limits to the public.

"She was the most highly decorated female civilian during World War II," said Janelle Neises, the museum's deputy director, who's providing a tour.

To its supporters, the WikiLeaks disclosures have revealed a wealth of important information that the U.S. government wanted to keep hidden, particularly in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This included abuses by the military and a video that showed a U.S. helicopter attack in Iraq on suspected militants. Those killed turned out to be unarmed civilians and journalists.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, now under arrest in Britain, has often argued that no one has been harmed by the WikiLeaks disclosures.

At the main operations room inside the National Counterterrorism Center, the flow of incoming data never stops. Analysts from across the government sit in front of their blinking computers, all facing huge TV screens tuned to news channels.

"On a daily basis, 10,000 reports come across our ops center and eyes are put on every one of those," said Russ Travers, deputy director of the center, who has been here, on and off, since it was established 16 years ago.

Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who heads both the National Security Agency and the U.S. Cyber Command, usually doesn't say much in public. But recently, he's been on what amounts to a public relations blitz. The message he's pushing is that the U.S. will be more aggressive in confronting and combating rivals in cyberspace.

Pakistan's ambassador to the U.S., Asad Khan, says India is hastily and unfairly blaming his country for a Feb. 14 suicide bombing that killed more than 40 Indian security force members in the disputed Kashmir region.

"India pointed the finger at Pakistan within minutes. The Indian government and media went into overdrive, whipping up war hysteria against Pakistan," Khan said recently in Washington.

Congress is keeping watch and the military has introduced prevention programs. Yet sexual assaults at military service academies keep rising. The leaders of those academies got an earful when they testified before a House Armed Services subcommittee on Wednesday.

In 2006, Russian President Vladimir Putin hosted a dinner for President George W. Bush and other world leaders in St. Petersburg, Russia. In a photo, the man standing behind them is the caterer, wearing a tux and a white bow tie. His name is Yevgeny Prigozhin.

His nickname is "Putin's chef." So what's the big deal about him?

An Iranian-American woman arrested five days ago during a visit to the U.S. is testifying behind closed doors to a grand jury in Washington, D.C., a U.S. federal judge said Friday.

The disclosure by Beryl Howell, chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Washington, marked the first time any U.S. authority has provided information on the mystery surrounding Marzieh Hashemi, an anchor on Press TV, the English-language version of Iran's state television.