Today, President Barack Obama will describe his plans to reform the NSA. Takeaway Washington correspondent Todd Zwillich discusses the president's speech and the mood in Washington. Lawrence Wright, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of "The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11," explains why NSA surveillance wouldn't have thwarted the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and explores the communication breakdowns between the FBI and the CIA that he believes inhibited U.S. officials from preventing the attacks.

Cryptologists have their own opinions about how best to protect the American public. And because they design many of the privacy programs that the National Security Agency has thwarted, they have a unique perspective on how best to reform the agency. Joseph Bonneau, a cryptologist and winner of the NSA's Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper award for his work on passwords and encryption, discusses his profession's long history of conflict with the NSA.

Once a month, the military makes the people who are responsible for operating this nation's nuclear missile arsenal take a test, and they must score perfectly to keep their jobs. Now the Air Force has disclosed that 34 officers at Malstrom Air Force Base in Montana have been suspended for cheating on their proficiency test or not reporting cheating by others. Retired Air Force Colonel Randall Larsen joins The Takeaway to explain the details behind the controversy.

Aereo bypasses cable boxes to deliver broadcast channels that hold the rights to air events like the Oscars or the Super Bowl. Now the Supreme Court must decide whether Aereo's service is an innovation—or whether it's simply using the internet to steal creative content. Aereo founder and CEO Chet Kanojia says that while his technological innovation has been a good business so far, this case is about freedom.

A federal appeals court has invalidated key provisions of the government's net neutrality rules. In a 3-0 decision, the court ruled that the FCC overstepped its regulatory authority in issuing a 2010 order that barred broadband carriers from blocking or slowing certain websites. Scott Cleland, Chairman of Net Competition, an e-forum that represents broadband interests, applauds the court for overruling the FCC. Susan Crawford, a visiting professor at Harvard Law School, disagrees. 

On Today's Show: Congress finally revealed the new spending deal. This deal comes in at just over $1 trillion dollars...The National Security Agency has access to almost 100,000 computers around the globe. And it's able to spy on these computers and attack them even when they're not hooked up to the internet...Author and journalist David Satter was expelled from Russia this week after attempting to renew his visa. Satter is the first journalist to be banned from Russia since the Cold War over two decades ago.

Why Fortune 500 companies will end up becoming leaders in innovation—not tech start-ups like we are seeing today...In Detroit, a group of local and national philanthropists have put together a $330 million deal to save the Detroit Institute of Art collection...In Russia, 1.3 million have the life-threatening virus that causes AIDS. A look at Russia's HIV epidemic....

The challenges of helping large segments of the rural and undeveloped world are extremely complex. Joining The Takeaway in our fourth and final installment of our "Meeting the Standard" series are two women who know a thing a think or two about the conscience of engineering on a global scale. Heather Fleming is the CEO of Catapult Design, a product strategy firm designing tools for disadvantaged communities, and Noha El-Ghobashy is the Managing Director for Engineering Workforce & Global Development at ASME.

eHealth has arrived and that means more gadgets, more devices, and more apps that can look inside our bodies and our lives. And if we want a shot at accuracy—or a chance of privacy—it's engineers that must implement the standards to keep medical devices safe and secure. In part three of our "Meeting the Standard" series, Alpesh Shah of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers discusses keeping pace with digitized healthcare.

The International Monitoring System is the world’s first planetary surveillance network. The system has picked up everything from the sounds of the 2011 Japanese earthquake and tsunami to the sounds of whales near the Juan Fernandez islands and much more. Randy Bell, Director of the International Data Centre Division of the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), explains how the nuclear detection system has yielded unexpected scientific discoveries.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects jobs in computer programming will grow by 12 percent from 2010 to 2020. Soon, we might all have to learn code—whether we want to or not. Manoush Zomorodi of WNYC's New Tech City explains why coding literacy is the way of the future. Ali Blackwell is one of the co-founder's of Decoded, which runs workshops to teach anyone to code. He discusses why coding is so important.

Big news for the world of drones came late last month when the FAA announced that it was authorizing sites in 10 states to carry out drone aircraft testing. One of the sites where testing will take place is Virginia Tech. Jon Greene is Interim Executive Director of the Mid-Atlantic Aviation Partnership which is leading testing for Virginia Tech. He explains how his team is preparing drones for commercial use.

As part of our second conversation in our "Meeting the Standard" series, The Takeaway sat down with Ken Balkey, consulting engineer at Westinghouse and senior vice president of ASME Standards, where his work focuses largely on standards for nuclear power. Ken is proof of the fact that every inch, valve and screw thread at a nuclear power plant is considered and constructed carefully, with your safety in mind.

Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson stood before Congress and announced "unconditional war on poverty in America." Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban-Ki Moon, reflects on the 50 years since President Johnson declared the War on Poverty, and discusses the best policy solutions to eliminate poverty today.

Are the tech giants of today just friendly competitors with an enlightened sense of customer service, or just the same scary communication monoliths of old? In his new piece for Wired, “How the NSA Almost Killed the Internet," Steven Levy explores how companies like "Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the other tech titans have had to fight for their lives against their own government."