Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin and her husband, NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myre, offered insight Sunday on the world’s hot spots and blind spots.
They spoke Sunday in Westville as part of the Purdue Northwest Sinai Forum lecture series, the latest of more than 350 speakers to do so since the series began in 1953.
They focused on the Middle East and Ukraine but touched on other areas as well.
In the Israel-Gaza conflict, Myre offered historical perspective.
“It’s easy to lose track of the bigger, broader historical picture,” he said. The Middle East has land that is sacred to Jews, Muslims and Christians alike, Griffin noted.
Israel fought a series of wars and prevailed since it was established in 1948. “For the first time, Israel doesn’t have an existential threat in the region that is capable of taking out Israel,” Griffin said.
But the conflict with Palestinians has worsened.
“Israel has won wars but lost the peace,” Myre said. The two-state solution over Gaza that once seemed feasible now seems a distant memory.
“Israelis would not have believed me. I would not have believed it myself,” all that’s happened in the past two years, he said, since Hamas launched a missile barrage that killed more than 1,000 people, most of them Israeli civilians. Israel has retaliated in kind.
When Griffin and Myre lived in Jerusalem for nine years, raising their children, in the early 2000s, the situation was different. It was violent, but there was more hope.
Griffin recalls not taking her children to the grocery store and following buses at a distance because of suicide bombs. “Cafes would blow up down the road from my house,” she said. Such is life when raising kids in a war zone.
In the early 2000s, Myre said, “you could not avoid interacting with Israelis and Palestinians” at restaurants in Jerusalem, but now that doesn’t happen.
Go back even further to the 1990s. “The Cold War had just ended, so that led to an attempt to end some long-running conflicts,” Myre said.
NPR National Security Correspondent Greg Myre and his wife, Fox News Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin, listen to an audience member following their talk Sunday, Nov. 16, 2025, at the Purdue Northwest Sinai Forum in Westville. (Doug Ross/for Post-Tribune)
Without the Soviet Union, some longstanding political conflicts seemed doable. Apartheid in South Africa took effect in 1948, within a week of Israel becoming a nation, Myre said. The end of apartheid in South Africa seemed to indicate a solution to the Israel-Gaza conflict was possible.
But now even the peaceniks they knew in Israel don’t seem to hold out hope for a two-state solution as the Israel-Gaza conflict that exploded on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched a deadly attack on Israel, Griffin said.
Travel between Gaza and Israel was easy when Myre and Griffin lived in Jerusalem. As war correspondents, they could easily travel to Palestinian areas to verify what the Israel Defense Forces told them. That’s no longer the case, with a 30-foot wall barring travel between the two territories.
“I hadn’t been there to cover and report since 2007, when we left. A lot of it has changed,” Griffin said.
In 2005, Jewish settlers in the West Bank were pulled out, sometimes crying, sometimes screaming, from their homes by the IDF. “There were scenes that I would remember up on the rooftops,” with paint balloons thrown onto IDF soldiers, Griffin said. “It was very dramatic.”
Hamas celebrated with a parade, deciding to have their version of a Mardi Gras float with a missile on the back of the float. The missile went off with terrible consequences. Hamas blamed Israel and shot missiles into Israel.
“It feels very circular and never changing,” Myre said.
He recalls Israel’s military calling him and NPR colleagues to show a 45-minute video of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. “I found myself just not being able to look at it some of the time,” he said. “It’s far too graphic to describe.”
The video was compiled from clips collected from dead Hamas soldiers and others.
“We see both sides escalating. We see it get worse and worse,” he said. “Both sides hold the dead hostage, for a year in many cases.”
“It’s an ingrained, horrible conflict, and it just shows how hard it is to end,” he said.
“Israel has become more isolated in many ways in the last two decades,” Myre said. In the United States, Israel has lost a lot of support among Democrats, especially younger Democrats, and some Republicans. “It was very striking to hear this,” he said.
Syria is a traditional foe of Israel.
Soon after Trump took office, he said Syria is a mess and the U.S. wouldn’t get involved there, Myre recalled.
Since then, though, Trump has lifted sanctions against Syria and hosted its leader in the Oval Office, spraying him with Trump-branded cologne. “My head was about to explode,” Myre said at seeing Trump treat a former al-Qaeda leader that way.
The situation in Ukraine is a bloody slugfest, but it’s turning into two simultaneous wars, Myre said. “You’ve got the World War I war, and you’ve got this 21st-century war.”
The first is the trench warfare fought during World War I, with both Ukraine and Russia digging in to protect their territory. “The front line is not really moving, and I’ve known that the past three years or so,” Myre said. When the Russian invasion began Nov. 22, 2022, Russia had captured 18% of Ukrainian territory. It’s now at 19%.
“Russia has lost an estimated 1 million men,” a quarter of them dead and the rest wounded.
“The Russians fight the way they always have, which is push a lot of men in,” getting them slaughtered, Myre said. Now, Russia is emptying prisons and getting troops from other countries.
“A lot of young men with resources and education in both countries have left because they don’t want to be a part of this war,” Myre said.
The 21st-century warfare has become a battle of technology.
“This is really the first drone war that the world has ever seen,” Myre said.
Jennifer Griffin, chief national security correspondent for Fox News, and Greg Myre, national security correspondent for NPR, listen to an audience member following their discussion Sunday, Nov. 16, 2025, at the Purdue Northwest Sinai Forum in Westville. (Doug Ross/for Post-Tribune)
On June 1, UK drones hidden in small mobile homes and released struck simultaneously at air bases, taking out dozens of Russia’s long-range bombers, Griffin said.
“It was such a clever operation involving drones,” Griffin said. Ukraine is building an estimated 200,000 drones per month, including 3,000 long-range drones per year.
Ukraine is also buying $500 drones over the internet and dropping grenades into open Russian gun turrets, Griffin said. That’s caused Russia to be more cautious about moving its equipment forward.
Drones from Ukraine are going hundreds of miles into Russia, hitting unprotected sites. Russia is now doing this as well.
“Remember, Russia is the biggest country by territory of any country in the world, by a long shot,” Myre said. Ukraine is no small country, either.
Russian drones in Poland’s airspace prompted NATO planes to scramble and shoot down the drones. Russia then tested Romanian airspace, then Estonia, a test of NATO’s resolve, Griffin said.
Ukraine is now making its own cruise missiles capable of traveling 1,800 miles, way past Moscow, Myre said. Several recent strikes have been identified that could have come from cruise missiles.
Presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump both put restrictions on how arms given to Ukraine by the United States could be used, Myre said. Trump has allowed sales to Europe to be given to Ukraine.
That prompted Ukraine to start building its own weapons, Myre said.
Neither side can wage this war forever.
“Who will crack first? I think there is more pressure on Ukraine since it has fewer people,” Myre said.
But Ukrainians are more motivated because they’re fighting for their homeland, Griffin said.
Looking at examples like Afghanistan, where Russia pulled out after 20 years of war, she said the Russian model is not sustainable.
Looking at the U.S. views on geopolitics, Griffin said, “There has been a change in the administration’s view on this. I think Trump has come a long way on this,” realizing Vladimir Putin isn’t his friend.
Are we going to focus only on the Americas and maybe Greenland? Or will the United States remain a global power, Griffin pondered.
Sometimes you need to use military power to leverage a cease-fire, she said.
“It’s a bluff for Putin to say he’s going to use nuclear weapons against the United States and Europe,” Griffin said. “At some point, you really need to use your military to draw a line in the sand and say no, you can’t do that,” and the sooner the better.
At the Pentagon, things are much different now than they were when Myre and Griffin began their careers.
The Defense Department is now the War Department. And contrary to the openness the Pentagon has had for many decades, things have changed radically.
In 1943, a CBS reporter had the D-Day invasion plan ahead of time but didn’t break the embargo. Having that information in advance allowed CBS to report accurately on what happened that day.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld loved the press, Griffin recalled. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates pointedly said, “The press is not the enemy.” Reporters had access to most areas of the Pentagon, with the notable exception of classified information.
This year, however, the Pentagon gave reporters a 17-page security document to sign. Some 30 reporters, Griffin said, refused to sign it because it would severely limit access to information.
Griffin told of Gates reading a story that the Marine Corps was dragging its heels on producing vehicles better armored to protect troops from improvised explosive devices. “Heads rolled. MRAPs started being made,” saving thousands of lives as a result.
“Those kinds of stories don’t happen unless you’re in the building and build these kinds of relationships with trust,” Griffin said.
“There hasn’t been a press briefing in the press briefing room since June,” and they used to be weekly or even more often, she said. All this secrecy boosts the potential for conspiracy theories, she said.
The military is changing in other ways, too.
“Since Jan. 27, four-star admirals and generals have been fired,” Griffin said. “Many of them have been women; many of them have been Black.”
None has been given a reason, she said. “It really is creating a lot of fear.” People are begging journalists not to call them because their phones are being checked routinely, Giffin said.
“There are other people who have been pushed into retirement early. It’s a brain drain,” she said, with the military losing leaders who were at the point end of the spear to counter ISIS and other military engagements.
“A lot of those senior leaders have been removed for no reason. You should be concerned. I’m concerned,” Griffin said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
