Welcome to "Need to Know"

A New Substack from David Rothkopf

For a long time now, friends and colleagues have urged me to take to Substack to create a new source of analysis and commentary. Their reasons have been varied, but they have been persuasive…as the fact that you are reading this reveals.

Some have expressed a concern that I share, that there has been a disturbing shift in the ownership, biases and objectives of many media platforms upon which we all depend. Some, like Twitter, have changed their operating rules to become more favorable to right-wing, MAGA and other fringe views. Others, including major media outlets, have started to prioritize “fairness” and “balance” over reporting the facts and telling the truth. That is a trend that has accelerated with changes in ownership and leadership that are deeply disturbing—the “Murdochization” of many media brands that were once dependable sources of insight and that eschewed being platforms for propaganda or outright lies.

In fact, there are few major media outlets or social media platforms any more that can be viewed as unbiased or committed to traditional journalistic values. It is my hope that the work we do at my small media company, The DSR Network, where we produce a wide range of policy and politics related podcasts, helps counteract that. It is also my hope that using a platform like Substack will enable me to do the same in ways that other platforms I have utilized in the past—like Twitter/X—no longer does.

Others have urged that I utilize Substack to help share some of the ideas that we encounter in our work at The DSR Network because of our active interaction day-in and day-out with thought-leaders. And some feel that because I have been in Washington now for over thirty years and active in international affairs, national security, economic, tech, and political issues throughout that time that I can offer insider perspectives that you won’t get anywhere else.

Augmenting this last point has been a sense that because the moment in which are living is so fraught, that the risks we face both domestically in the United States and worldwide are so grave, that it would also be useful to create a product that is unflinching in its honesty, even if sometimes what is offered are viewpoints that are hard to hear.

“Need to Know”

I have hesitated to create a new analytical and commentary product because frankly, producing one is hard. It requires a daily commitment. It requires significant reporting. It requires digging deep into very difficult issues.

But I am persuaded that at this moment we’ve all got to use every tool available to us to help sound the alarm about the threats we face—to our democracy, to our freedoms, to our way of life, to our environment, to peace and the international order. My hope is this can be one such tool and that it is one that the followers that I have been fortunate enough to develop a relationship with over the years on Twitter, in the columns I have written, via the books I have written and via other media appearances, might find of value. It may just be the best and most direct way we can interact.

Certainly, it is worth a try.

I’ve called the new Substack “Need to Know” as a play on the intelligence community term that limits distribution of classified information to those with a “need to know” it…because it also describes my editorial objective here: to provide perspectives only on those issues that I feel there is a pressing “need to know.” The goal is to cut through the spin and the dross and the distractions and to stay focused on the big critical questions—like “will the US still be a democracy in six months” and “what happens if a new U.S. administration dismantles the international order the U.S. has spent 80 years building” and “what are the consequences of policy decisions that strengthen our enemies or weaken the U.S.” and “we are destroying our planet” and “the AI revolution will change everyone’s lives in countless ways that are profound and for which we are woefully unprepared.”

It is also to be able to address these issues directly, in language we all can related to and with no punches pulled. I’m from New Jersey. We have a reputation for directness. Also for a certain kind of colorful language. This is your last warning about that. While the issues being discussed here are going to be important ones, we’re going to talk about them as if we were sitting at the dinner table or in a bar having a beer and putting all our cards on the table. Among friends. But the kind of friends where one of the things we value most about the friendship is that we don’t hold back.

Not for the Faint of Heart

So, “Need to Know” will not be for the faint of heart. But, by the same token, I hope that will make it more useful and bracing. There are times we all need a wake up call or motivation. I hope you will find some of that hear. I know that by meeting here with all of you, I will find the kind of inspiration I need to grapple with some of these issues directly in a way I cannot do on other platforms.

If in the past, you have read a Tweet or a Twitter thread or a column or a book I have written or you have heard me on TV or one of our podcasts and you found something worth reading or listening to, I will endeavor to provide more of that every day here. If you have no idea who I am, well, come back a few times and I hope the value of becoming a subscriber here will be clear to you. It should be a good compliment to the other work I do at Deep State Radio, the DSR Network, writing columns for The Daily Beast, The New Republic, Ha’aretz and other publications, and popping up now and then as a talking head.

I will keep doing all those other things. But what you will find here you won’t find in those other places. And some of what I used to do on Twitter and other media platforms you will only find here now, so perhaps for some of you that will also be a reason show up (or as a subscriber have this new product show up in your inbox each day).

I hope so. And I hope when you find something interesting here, you will share it with your friends and colleagues.

All that will start tomorrow. Three times a week subscribers will get a column from me. Paying subscribers will get a column every week day (and perhaps another on the weekend). And we will learn together how to make the community that grow up around this Substack something that is worth showing up for, worth investing your time in.

It’ll be an adventure. Thanks for joining me on it.