This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race

by Nicole Perlroth

And in a separate incident two years earlier that did not emerge until Trump singled us out for “treason,” the Times received a call from a concerned American citizen. The caller made clear he was acting on his own volition. Egyptian authorities were preparing an imminent arrest of another colleague, Declan Walsh, who had recently published an investigation into Egypt’s role in the torture and murder of an Italian student, whose body had been dumped along a highway in Cairo. Alarming as the call was, it was also fairly standard. The Times had received many such warnings from American diplomats over the years. But this one was different. The official was distressed. They told the Times that their bosses at the American embassy had already signaled to the Egyptians that they would not intervene. The Trump administration was going to let the arrest be carried out. When Walsh called the embassy for help, officials there feigned concern but suggested that, as an Irish citizen, he call the Irish embassy instead. In the end, it was Ireland—not the United States—who got him out safely. The episode made clear, Walsh would later write, “that journalists can’t rely on the United States government to have our back as it once did.” In other words, our invisible armor was gone. It vanished the day Trump was inaugurated.