Speaker 1: Hey, folks, Welcome to episode three hundred and eighty nine
Speaker 1: of The Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with tonight's
Speaker 1: guest Anthony Vincey. He's the author of The Fourth Intelligence Revolution,
Speaker 1: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America.
Speaker 1: I've recently just looked through this book and it's needed
Speaker 1: a lot of topics in here to cover. Well, we'll
Speaker 1: get into as many as we can. But Anthony, first,
Speaker 1: thank you for joining us on the show today.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit, you know, getting into
Speaker 1: your background about how you came to the intelligence community.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I, like a lot of guys in my generation,
Speaker 2: nine eleven happened and I saw that I heard that
Speaker 2: call loud and clear and realized it was my time
Speaker 2: to serve. My father was a marine, he was in Vietnam.
Speaker 2: My grandfather was in the army. He was in World
Speaker 2: War Two, and this is my war. And so I
Speaker 2: signed up and became an intelligence officer.
Speaker 3: And your pathway was through the army.
Speaker 2: Correct, No, I was a civilian. I just went in straight.
Speaker 2: My brother was a marine. He went that direction. I
Speaker 2: went the other direction, and and and you know, I
Speaker 2: wanted to be a spy, So I okay, so that
Speaker 2: was my path.
Speaker 1: Talk to us about the particular path that you took
Speaker 1: and how that went.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, look like I said, I I
Speaker 2: was kind of in it to go and serve and
Speaker 2: get in the game and go to war frankly, and
Speaker 2: I decided I wanted to do military intelligence side of it.
Speaker 2: That's the direction I went, and I signed up. You know.
Speaker 2: The weird thing is, you know, you think it's going
Speaker 2: to be some crazy recruiting operation and somebody's gonna tap
Speaker 2: your shoulder, you know, at a at a bar or something.
Speaker 2: But you know, bottom line, you still got to put
Speaker 2: an application into the website. And so so I did,
Speaker 2: and uh and and signed up. It is an immense
Speaker 2: amount of selection that you go through for these kinds
Speaker 2: of jobs. The clearance, you know, where there's everything, and
Speaker 2: then lesh joint government and then when you when you
Speaker 2: want to go to training program to go to the
Speaker 2: farm midday, uh to you know, make sure personality type
Speaker 2: and you're able to handle yourself, you scrolling things like that,
Speaker 2: and UH made it through all that and UH when
Speaker 2: when went down south training.
Speaker 3: Where was that for cho where is it that they
Speaker 3: do that?
Speaker 4: Uh well, in fact, I had the specific location named
Speaker 4: in my book and I was asked to remove that
Speaker 4: location in my review process and write that it is
Speaker 4: in southern Virginia.
Speaker 1: Oh you you went to the premiere human trade craft school.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, okay, gotcha. But so this is interesting.
Speaker 1: You're a civilian, you're doing military intelligence, but you're going
Speaker 1: through case officer training as a civilian. What was this
Speaker 1: position that you took, and you know, how do how
Speaker 1: does this work? You know, sort of as a military
Speaker 1: civilian so to speak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a case officer role, and you know,
Speaker 2: there there was you know, there there's a little history,
Speaker 2: uh to it in that you know, military has always
Speaker 2: had intelligence and the you know, the the military intelligence
Speaker 2: agencies like DA and so forth have have played a role.
Speaker 2: And then you know, if you look back in post
Speaker 2: nine eleven, Donald Rumsfeld when he was Secretary, you know,
Speaker 2: wanted the military to have people who could go down
Speaker 2: Raine Afghanistan after ninety eleven, and they didn't, is my
Speaker 2: understanding reading the history. The CIA obviously did and they
Speaker 2: sent Jawbreaker and the other teams out there, and so Rumsfeld,
Speaker 2: you know, you can kind of read said, you know,
Speaker 2: we need to stand up some some capability here, and
Speaker 2: they did.
Speaker 1: And so you went through your training, and you know,
Speaker 1: are you able to say what agency you were actually
Speaker 1: working for?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was at I was at d I A
Speaker 2: when I when I went through.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what is like the roles and responsibility of
Speaker 1: a d I A case officer, Like we've had many
Speaker 1: CIA folks on here. I think probably our listeners are
Speaker 1: pretty well familiar with what they do, but yours is
Speaker 1: similar but different, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, same job, same case officer job. You know, spot, assess, develop, recruit,
Speaker 2: handle assets, right, figure out guys who have placement and access,
Speaker 2: you know, whether that's in a terrorist group or whether
Speaker 2: that's in the Ministry of Defense, and and get them
Speaker 2: to provide me with secrets and then get those secrets
Speaker 2: back to Washington or or or or to a FOB somewhere.
Speaker 2: You know. I think that the primary difference you see
Speaker 2: between c I A and d I A is that
Speaker 2: d A is there for strategic military intelligence. You know,
Speaker 2: the these are these are missions where you know, and
Speaker 2: it involves counter terrorism, counter you know, insurgency operations of course,
Speaker 2: but it also involves you know, really traditional military intelligence
Speaker 2: like order a battle, military equipment, you know, those kinds
Speaker 2: of things, preparing you know, preparation of the battlefield, all
Speaker 2: of that that's reporting up. It's it's not typically as
Speaker 2: tactical as you might get within the services, you know,
Speaker 2: where where you've got you know, you know, guys looking
Speaker 2: out just around their fobs and things like this, collecting
Speaker 2: on the battlefield and so forth. But it's sort of
Speaker 2: at the more strategic level, as opposed to CIA, which
Speaker 2: is looking really broadly at American foreign policy, at geopolitics,
Speaker 2: at strategy, also at some you know, military issues, you know,
Speaker 2: especially when they're kind of the national level military issues.
Speaker 1: It's and you know, when you say not at the
Speaker 1: tactical level, that includes you're also probably not laid up
Speaker 1: wearing a gilly suit looking through a spotter scope observing
Speaker 1: the enemy for a week on end. It's more like
Speaker 1: the adversary is developing a new ballistic missile. Can we
Speaker 1: get the specs on it? That's what I imagine anyway.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that's definitely, you know, I think where the
Speaker 2: traditional military intelligence was, you know, if you think about
Speaker 2: like the Cold War, you know, even up through the nineties,
Speaker 2: is yeah, you know, they're developing ballistic missile. They they've
Speaker 2: you know, they're looking to acquire something from US to
Speaker 2: develop a system. You know, if there's a counter intelligence
Speaker 2: angle to that Post nine eleven with Iraq in Afghanistan.
Speaker 2: You know, I went to Iraq, That's where I deployed.
Speaker 2: And you know you're in you're in traditional counter terrorism
Speaker 2: counter insurgency operations as well. I mean you're you're looking
Speaker 2: to figure out where you know, insurgents are located, where
Speaker 2: terrorist groups are located. You're you're thinking about who's in
Speaker 2: who's in command of those terrorists are insurgence groups, and
Speaker 2: and and those sorts of military things. I think everybody
Speaker 2: was just chipping in on the same mission.
Speaker 1: What was that like for you personally, because you mentioned
Speaker 1: the sort of changing roles here, but this was also
Speaker 1: your time you you joined Post nine eleven. But from
Speaker 1: what you're describing, like this kind of is a very
Speaker 1: tactical thing to sort of like build out a terrorist
Speaker 1: organization's chart of you know, how they work. It's not
Speaker 1: you know, the Chinese are developing a new strike fighter,
Speaker 1: you know, can we get the plans for the ejection seat?
Speaker 1: Like it's a very different type of intelligence I would think, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, you know, you only know what you know, and
Speaker 2: I went in, you know, I was that that was
Speaker 2: the only world I knew. Actually, you know, I I
Speaker 2: deployed in two thousand and eight, and you know, we
Speaker 2: were you know, it took took some time in training
Speaker 2: before that. And the only thing I was thinking when
Speaker 2: I joined intelligence, that's what we did, Like we were
Speaker 2: focused on coin and CT and that other kind of
Speaker 2: military intelligence kind of seemed old fashioned to me in
Speaker 2: some way. You know, it was like I was like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's in. I understood that it was important and somebody
Speaker 2: had to do it. But you know, myself and a
Speaker 2: lot of guys who signed up post ninety eleven were like,
Speaker 2: we're here to be in the game, and this is
Speaker 2: where it is. And and you know what's interesting is
Speaker 2: that sort of started to change, you know, over time,
Speaker 2: and by the time you know, we'll get into it later,
Speaker 2: by the time I came back into the government later
Speaker 2: at NGA, that was sort of ending and gone and
Speaker 2: we'd moved back into this like these great power politics
Speaker 2: and you know, Cold War style operations again.
Speaker 1: Are there any stories from that period of time that
Speaker 1: you're able to tell about being in theater chasing terrorists down.
Speaker 2: Well, you know what one thing I would say is
Speaker 2: this is, you know a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: people think about kind of the case officer job from
Speaker 2: that that Cold War approach, like, Hey, I'm gonna go out.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna find some source who works at the embassy,
Speaker 2: you know, foreign embassy or maybe they're a you know,
Speaker 2: adversary intelligence officer, like a KGB guy, and I'm gonna
Speaker 2: try to recruit him and take people to dinner and
Speaker 2: you know, doing doing SDRs and you know, pretty cities
Speaker 2: in Europe, and that's obviously not what it was like
Speaker 2: during during you know, when you're in Baghdad or a
Speaker 2: place like this and where you know you have you're
Speaker 2: bringing in. Now you're operating in a war zone and
Speaker 2: you have to protect yourself in the same exact way
Speaker 2: as as as as as a soldier would, as anybody
Speaker 2: would who's sort of outside the wire, right, So you're
Speaker 2: doing all of those things and you you have weapons,
Speaker 2: maybe have security outside of yourself. Usually typically a case
Speaker 2: officers operating alone in that job. Historically maybe maybe with
Speaker 2: an interpreter, but typically alone. You learn the language yourself,
Speaker 2: and now maybe you need to operate with security or
Speaker 2: at least driver you're you're you're armed, because you need
Speaker 2: to defend yourself if there if a situation arises, you
Speaker 2: have to be in really strong communications because if something
Speaker 2: bad happened, obviously you need to call for help. All
Speaker 2: those things are not what you picture when you picture
Speaker 2: Cold War operations, Like the last thing you want is
Speaker 2: like a radio or some piece of comms gear on
Speaker 2: you potentially because that could give away what you're doing. Right,
Speaker 2: and so you're trying to operate clandestinely, you know, in
Speaker 2: Vienna nineteen eighty six or something. But now in Iraq
Speaker 2: you're operating like a soldier in many ways, but you're
Speaker 2: trying to also be as clandestine as you can, to
Speaker 2: stay off the radar, to stay low profile. That's just
Speaker 2: a really different environment. And it's interesting we had done
Speaker 2: that before. And when I was kind of in training,
Speaker 2: I met one of the OSS guys, the Office Strategic Services.
Speaker 2: These are like the OGS, you know, they were World
Speaker 2: War Two eras, pre CIA, pre pre special Forces, you know,
Speaker 2: and and these guys were you know, they were badasses
Speaker 2: and they were operating behind enemy lines. There's a group
Speaker 2: called the Jedburghs, of which this guy I met was
Speaker 2: was one where they would send him behind the lines
Speaker 2: sabotage and so forth. And that was really kind of
Speaker 2: the last time we did we did that much, you
Speaker 2: know operation. I know in Vietnam they did some, but
Speaker 2: World War two is the last time where we did.
Speaker 2: You know, that's what the force was doing basically.
Speaker 1: Did you have any kind of like close calls you
Speaker 1: mentioned having a roll around with security. Were there any
Speaker 1: dicey situations where you're like, I don't know if we're
Speaker 1: going to make it out of here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely a little nervous there in a
Speaker 2: few situations, and you know, things things were blowing up
Speaker 2: a lot in that period of time in Baghdad. But
Speaker 2: you know, I I think like a lot of like
Speaker 2: a lot of people who are in those environments, you
Speaker 2: you sort of you do a lot of training before
Speaker 2: you go, and you're with a lot of guys who
Speaker 2: know what they're doing, and you feel like, you know,
Speaker 2: you're young, and you know, I was in my twenties,
Speaker 2: and you feel like you're invincible and I can handle it.
Speaker 2: It's going to be fine, and uh, you know, thank god,
Speaker 2: I walked out, okay, and and and people I was
Speaker 2: working with it.
Speaker 1: And after that, did you have any more like traditional
Speaker 1: assignments where I know, liked I a guys work out
Speaker 1: of the embassies a lot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't. I I did have traditional assignments. I
Speaker 2: don't want to say specifically you know where I was
Speaker 2: working out of, but but I had traditional assignments, which
Speaker 2: you know, is a real it's a it's it's it's
Speaker 2: a weird transition when you go from this environment where
Speaker 2: you're operating pretty pretty tactically, you're you're you're doing a lot.
Speaker 2: You know, you're you're just working all the time. You're
Speaker 2: you're you're just constantly running through the intelligence cycle like
Speaker 2: in real time because things are moving so fast, to
Speaker 2: like a more traditional environment in in a you know,
Speaker 2: typical world city where things slow down a lot and
Speaker 2: you start to think much more strategically long term things
Speaker 2: take a while, you know, and and for a lot
Speaker 2: of us, myself included, that that transition was hard. It
Speaker 2: was it was hard to kind of go back to that.
Speaker 2: It didn't feel that sense of mission that you did
Speaker 2: that was just paramount when you're down range or when
Speaker 2: you're supporting somebody who is. But you know, it's two
Speaker 2: very different worlds.
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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I don't need to ask where you were,
Speaker 1: but are you able to talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: how that functions because as I understand it, I suppose
Speaker 1: it depends on the size of the embassy. But there's
Speaker 1: some case officers and there's some analysts from the DIA.
Speaker 3: What is their actual job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want to get into the specifics of
Speaker 2: how they do it or where they do it, but you,
Speaker 2: I'll say the generally the way that human human intelligence
Speaker 2: collectors of any stripe could be a case officer, could
Speaker 2: be a deprieve debriefer. You know, there's there's there's multiple
Speaker 2: people whose job it is to collect information from other
Speaker 2: human beings. And you're going out there and you know,
Speaker 2: either maybe you're recruiting a source, like I said, and
Speaker 2: collecting information from them. If you're a debrief or you're
Speaker 2: just debriefing say a friendly like an American person or something,
Speaker 2: and you're bringing that back and you're writing it up.
Speaker 2: At a at a literal level, you've got a you
Speaker 2: have a set of collection requirements, and you know what
Speaker 2: you need to ask about. You know, maybe one day
Speaker 2: it's how is this laser made? And the next day
Speaker 2: it is you know, where is shake so and so?
Speaker 2: And how do I find him and and And you're
Speaker 2: you're asking those questions. You're you're you're taking notes, you're
Speaker 2: bringing that back, and you're writing it up. And then
Speaker 2: that that is the and going off to two analysts
Speaker 2: who are putting that information together ultimately combined with with
Speaker 2: other with other intelligence by all source analysts who are
Speaker 2: going to put all the pieces together and report it
Speaker 2: up the chain. And like I said, you know, with
Speaker 2: a with d I, A or other military intelligence that
Speaker 2: might go to you know, to one of the services
Speaker 2: and to their intel unit, to like a two shop somewhere.
Speaker 2: It might go directly. Some of this stuff, especially strategically,
Speaker 2: it's just going directly to generals, right, I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it goes right up the chain, but it's also going
Speaker 2: to feedback into the White House and so forth into
Speaker 2: the National Security Council because a lot of this stuff
Speaker 2: can be strategic and it can matter, you know, And
Speaker 2: that that was kind of a weird thing during post
Speaker 2: nine eleven, where things that seemed tactical, like where is
Speaker 2: this one person, uh, this one bad guy all of
Speaker 2: a sudden are strategic, like it's like president level stuff,
Speaker 2: like they want to know where these guys are because
Speaker 2: you know that was the enemy. Then it's totally different today,
Speaker 2: you know, where you know, we're worried about you know,
Speaker 2: nuclear weapons again, or worried about you know, China's going
Speaker 2: to go to war.
Speaker 3: And how many years did you spend at D I A.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was there. I was there for as a
Speaker 2: govey for for several years. I don't I don't want
Speaker 2: to get into specifics because I was in different roles
Speaker 2: and it may not match up with my.
Speaker 3: LinkedIn What what what is your LinkedIn say?
Speaker 2: I think it says I was you know, as a
Speaker 2: staff officer for uh. Yeah. That that's that's the weird
Speaker 2: thing with the book coming out, you know, all this
Speaker 2: stuff I didn't talk about at all period. And then
Speaker 2: when I joined n g A, I was sort of
Speaker 2: out it right because I was in this public role,
Speaker 2: but I still still really didn't talk about it. I said,
Speaker 2: I was an intelligence officer, and and you know, people
Speaker 2: I knew were like, hey, I thought I thought you
Speaker 2: were up to something, like it was weird that you
Speaker 2: were like gone for months at a time. But it
Speaker 2: was really only with this book where you know, with
Speaker 2: a book like this and you're you're telling your story
Speaker 2: that that all the agencies actually come in and take
Speaker 2: a look that I was able to say really anything.
Speaker 2: And so still remain a little bit cautious of where
Speaker 2: I where I draw the line, because you know, as
Speaker 2: as you know, you still want to protect those are
Speaker 2: still still in there doing doing the same job.
Speaker 1: So according to your LinkedIn, I take it you had
Speaker 1: a sort of breaking service between d I A and
Speaker 1: the n g I.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I I left, you know, I again, I
Speaker 2: was there to go down range and to serve I
Speaker 2: never really saw myself as like a lifelong government employee,
Speaker 2: that that's not what I was necessarily in it for.
Speaker 2: And and I left and I went back. I had
Speaker 2: worked in the tech community briefly right after college and
Speaker 2: I went back into the tech community and I founded
Speaker 2: a startup and kind of ran that for a while.
Speaker 2: And when I exited that, that company, I you know,
Speaker 2: was looking to get back involved again, you know, but
Speaker 2: this time maybe just advise or something like that, and
Speaker 2: I joined. I was invited to join the advisory board
Speaker 2: at NGA, and the director at the time, Robert Cardillo,
Speaker 2: and the deputy director, Sue Gordon, were looking for somebody
Speaker 2: who knew intelligence but also knew the tech industry and
Speaker 2: new kind of Silicon Valley and really the cutting edge.
Speaker 2: And today that's common, but you know, five ten years ago,
Speaker 2: it was actually pretty rare. There weren't that many people.
Speaker 2: There was this real hard line like Silicon Valley people
Speaker 2: didn't want to touch national security, and national security people
Speaker 2: didn't really have a seat to do anything in Silicon
Speaker 2: Valley world. And I had happened to kind of get
Speaker 2: into that, and so I went on their advisory board
Speaker 2: and tried to help figure out how to use AI
Speaker 2: and how to use commercial data. And then they I said,
Speaker 2: I gave them kind of a strategy to execute around that,
Speaker 2: and they just called my bluff and said, why don't
Speaker 2: you come in and execute that strategy. And so that's
Speaker 2: how I ended up going back in as a as
Speaker 2: a govy again.
Speaker 3: So tell us what the NGA is.
Speaker 1: I think it's just one of those organizations that that
Speaker 1: you know, the general public isn't familiar with, but plays
Speaker 1: a very important role.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So NNGA is National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, and they do
Speaker 2: geospatial intelligence, which is is kind of like a new
Speaker 2: form of intelligence, and it incorporates imagery intelligence. So you know,
Speaker 2: they're classified and commercial satellites in space taking pictures and
Speaker 2: using uh you know, sometimes using you know, visual imagery,
Speaker 2: sometimes using radar imagery and other forms of imagery, and
Speaker 2: they they analyze that. They they quite literally, if you
Speaker 2: can imagine it. Back in the Cold War, they would
Speaker 2: get a piece of film from a satellite and they
Speaker 2: would look at it with a magnifying glass and try
Speaker 2: to see where the Soviet bomber was. Right. That's updated
Speaker 2: now and it all goes through computers, but it's essentially
Speaker 2: the same thing, and they're trying to see, you know,
Speaker 2: is there is there a missile on the launch pad?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And you know, and and and and and how far
Speaker 2: left of that can you get even before it gets
Speaker 2: the launch pad or you're seeing some indicator that it
Speaker 2: might go to the launch pad, right, So they're doing
Speaker 2: that kind of intelligence. But and they're doing that for
Speaker 2: full motion video off of drones for example as well.
Speaker 2: And they're doing geospatial intelligence, which is I like to
Speaker 2: explains kind of like Google Maps. You know, if you
Speaker 2: if you look at Google Maps, really what it is
Speaker 2: is a geospatial information tools. So you've got a map
Speaker 2: and you've got location and and you're appending information to
Speaker 2: that location. And geospatial intelligence is about figuring out where
Speaker 2: something is and and when when it was there or
Speaker 2: is there right and what it is and making intelligence
Speaker 2: tools out of that. So for example, you know, if
Speaker 2: there's uh, you know, thinking about like maybe there's a
Speaker 2: missile on the launch pad, Well you've got it. You've
Speaker 2: got kind of a map of that area, and you're
Speaker 2: you could put and append the information about all the
Speaker 2: other facilities on there, who's there, how things changed over time,
Speaker 2: and create a geospatial product like that. And so that's
Speaker 2: what that agency does. It's hugely important. Not a lot
Speaker 2: of people think about it, but it's one of the
Speaker 2: agencies that keeps everybody safe because for some of the
Speaker 2: biggest threats in the world, like unwarned launch from like
Speaker 2: a North Korea, really some of the only ways to
Speaker 2: get intelligence out of places like that is from satellites.
Speaker 2: You can't it's real hard to send a human source
Speaker 2: to North Korea, and it can be very hard to
Speaker 2: even get signals intelligence from there. So this is where
Speaker 2: a lot of that information comes. And these analysts are
Speaker 2: coming there and keeping watch globally all the time to
Speaker 2: make sure we're not attacked, but also at the tactical
Speaker 2: level are producing targeting packages for conventional units, for special
Speaker 2: operation units and things like that that are necessary for
Speaker 2: kind of tactical operations as well.
Speaker 1: You know, as you're talking, it reminds me of my
Speaker 1: friend Sean Naylor wrote a story, one of my favorite
Speaker 1: stories about this I've ever read, about the Cuban missile
Speaker 1: crisis and how there were some Cuban assets we had
Speaker 1: recruited that went up river and took a picture of
Speaker 1: the launch site or the launcher i can't remember exactly,
Speaker 1: came back and said, hey, we we found it, and
Speaker 1: that allowed us to then send you two spyplanes over
Speaker 1: and take photographs and confirm just like fascinating stuff how
Speaker 1: that all comes together.
Speaker 2: And that that's where n GA came from. So so
Speaker 2: during the Cold War, there was ENDPIIC National Photographic Intelligence Center,
Speaker 2: which was it's it its own office, I think it
Speaker 2: reported up through the CIA at that time, and they
Speaker 2: were literally analyzing that U two footage or uh. And
Speaker 2: then there was also the d M A Defense Mapping Agency,
Speaker 2: which was that you know, under the Defense Department was
Speaker 2: making maps. Those two groups and they successors, along with
Speaker 2: some other pieces, became n g A after I think
Speaker 2: around two thousand and three mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: And is n g A in any way involved in
Speaker 1: sort of like the technology I guess development or continuum
Speaker 1: of like developing spy satellites and surveillance drones and things
Speaker 1: like that, or is it purely an analytical agency.
Speaker 2: It's an analytical agency. So n ROW National Reconnaissance Office
Speaker 2: designs and acquires and and and kind of manages the
Speaker 2: running of satellites for for the intelligence community. And n
Speaker 2: g A works very closely with n ROW and it
Speaker 2: supports the ground mission so that you know the tasking
Speaker 2: of those satellites and the requirements of you know, what
Speaker 2: should be collected and so forth. But n GA is
Speaker 2: involved with requirements for future systems. So what sort of
Speaker 2: intelligence should we be able to get off of these satellites,
Speaker 2: because you can imagine the analysts want to have a
Speaker 2: say and what is the next generation of satellite is
Speaker 2: going to want to do. But they n g A
Speaker 2: then is not making the satellite themselves. That that's going
Speaker 2: to go on to another agency. And then n g
Speaker 2: A is very very used to be very very involved
Speaker 2: and fully ran acquiring commercial satellite images and ran a
Speaker 2: big contract with Digital Globe and g o I for
Speaker 2: a long time, and then other satellite commercial satellite companies
Speaker 2: like Planet Labs and so forth. That that mission has
Speaker 2: also moved to n A ROW to actually do the acquisition.
Speaker 2: N GA remains very involved with acquiring and developing in
Speaker 2: some places analytical systems like geospatial analytical systems and in
Speaker 2: particular computer vision and things like this, which is a
Speaker 2: form of you know, imagery analysis, right, And that's what
Speaker 2: I was very very involved with when I was at NGA.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure we'll get into this in a bit,
Speaker 1: but I have to imagine that they are really looking
Speaker 1: at AI for imagery analysis that if we can plug
Speaker 1: in the profile of this missile launcher and then have
Speaker 1: the computer search hundreds and hundreds of photographs and video,
Speaker 1: that would be a huge thing for them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I mean when I came to NNGA, that
Speaker 2: that was really what I was trying to do. And
Speaker 2: at that time, you know, there had been research on
Speaker 2: computer vision for decades really, you know, going back to
Speaker 2: the even the seventies, right like, people were trying to
Speaker 2: do this, but it didn't work very well. And they
Speaker 2: were now around twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, computer
Speaker 2: vision got much much better because they started using machine
Speaker 2: learning to do this and and I sort of realized
Speaker 2: that when I came into NGA, and and that was
Speaker 2: really many ways my role was. Part of my role
Speaker 2: was to figure out how to do that, how to
Speaker 2: acquire those kinds of technologies because they were being developed
Speaker 2: in Silicon Valley in places like Stanford not it you know,
Speaker 2: in national labs, or or or by the military or
Speaker 2: by the prime contractors. For the most part, how to
Speaker 2: acquire that stuff and how to bring it into the
Speaker 2: mission because you know, what was also happening is the
Speaker 2: amount of imagery was just skyrocketing, and we had more
Speaker 2: and more classified systems because they build up over time,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, we had all these
Speaker 2: commercial satellites with all of their data, and now we're
Speaker 2: you can there's a limit to the number of analysts
Speaker 2: you can have in the world, right and how many
Speaker 2: how many billets does does an agency have? And does
Speaker 2: the Congress want a fund? And so there is a
Speaker 2: there's a maximum capacity, and so how do you how
Speaker 2: do you break through that? And how do you ensure
Speaker 2: that something doesn't slip through and that missile ends up
Speaker 2: on the launch pad and you don't just miss it, right,
Speaker 2: And so AI was a way to do that because
Speaker 2: you can identify objects in an image that you can
Speaker 2: tell if they've changed and so forth, and then automatically
Speaker 2: alert and that that was the goal, and that's what
Speaker 2: we're trying to do.
Speaker 1: And so you said you came on first as a
Speaker 1: member of the advisory board. But then if I recall correctly, yeah,
Speaker 1: you became the chief technology Officer, which normally that's like
Speaker 1: a position at like Hewert Packard or something like that.
Speaker 1: It's not something you commonly associate with an intelligence agency.
Speaker 1: Tell us about how that role came about and what
Speaker 1: it actually was for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, I started out as I was the Associate
Speaker 2: director for Capabilities, which is a less sexy title but
Speaker 2: an immensely powerful title because I had responsibility for all
Speaker 2: the technology, all the art and d all the contracting,
Speaker 2: the procurement, the strategy, and the budget of the agency
Speaker 2: and so was really managing about half that agency. And
Speaker 2: this was I was so amazing about what the director
Speaker 2: wanted to do. He took you know, somebody was forward
Speaker 2: leaning and kind of a tech guy and pretty young,
Speaker 2: I mean it was thirty nine at the time, and said,
Speaker 2: not only do you have this mission, which is I
Speaker 2: want you to transform how we do intelligence, but here
Speaker 2: are all these resources, and now go and go and
Speaker 2: do it. And we built a lot of different offices
Speaker 2: and organizations to do that. Over time. Then I transitioned
Speaker 2: into this Chief Technology Officer role, which was a piece
Speaker 2: of that which was really thinking about the big the
Speaker 2: big technology strategies. You know, how do we you know,
Speaker 2: what kind of technologies do we need, whether to develop
Speaker 2: internally or to buy from externally, and how do we
Speaker 2: get them into the system and how do we incorporate
Speaker 2: them with existing technology systems that are typically designed by
Speaker 2: a contractor, how do we incorporate them into workflows and processes?
Speaker 2: How do we train people to use these systems? And
Speaker 2: and also really be the advisor, you know, to the
Speaker 2: director on technology and on these kinds of technologies. And
Speaker 2: that's really what that role became about over time.
Speaker 1: And what were some of like the big like I guess,
Speaker 1: hurdles that you were facing at the time, whether they
Speaker 1: were technological or bureaucratic, the sort of the I guess
Speaker 1: I'm asking about, what sort of the big main thrust
Speaker 1: was of your position at that time, what you were
Speaker 1: trying to accomplish.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so if you imagine taking a step back, if
Speaker 2: you say to yourself, Okay, we've got this mission. We
Speaker 2: need to analyze all this imagery. There's too much image images, right,
Speaker 2: so what do we do. We need to use some
Speaker 2: technology to do that. So you know, at first I thought,
Speaker 2: and you would think, right, okay, I just have to
Speaker 2: go buy some technology. So part of that was, let
Speaker 2: me just go buy some technology. So we opened up
Speaker 2: an office in San Francisco where these technology companies were.
Speaker 2: We set up an OTA consortium to make it easier
Speaker 2: to buy some of these technologies. We worked with ink
Speaker 2: Tel and things like that, which is the CIA's venture
Speaker 2: capital organization, to even invest in these companies and to
Speaker 2: try to get them to do business. I would go
Speaker 2: directly talk to a lot of these companies because again,
Speaker 2: at that time, a lot of Silicon Valley did not
Speaker 2: want to do business with an intelligence agency. They really didn't.
Speaker 2: They did not want to be our customer. I couldn't
Speaker 2: even give them money.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until they realized that defence tech was recession
Speaker 1: proof investing the way real estate is that they finally
Speaker 1: got on board exactly.
Speaker 2: And you know, they actually at the time would look
Speaker 2: at defense revenue and counted as zero in terms of
Speaker 2: like a lot of investors, venture capital investors would count
Speaker 2: defense revenue as zero when.
Speaker 3: Because the risk was too high. What what was the
Speaker 3: thought behind.
Speaker 2: That that it you know, that it took so long
Speaker 2: to get government revenue that it that it every year
Speaker 2: had to be renewed, so it wasn't as sticky that
Speaker 2: that the margin was lower than than you know, commercial
Speaker 2: SaaS margin and so forth, right, and so they didn't
Speaker 2: think they were, you know, we were sophisticated customers and
Speaker 2: so forth, I kind of knew. I had been on
Speaker 2: the other side, so I sort of knew how to
Speaker 2: communicate a little bit with the investors and with the companies,
Speaker 2: and that A big part of my role was at
Speaker 2: so to go and get this technology. But that was
Speaker 2: an obstacle, you know, to to sort of convince people.
Speaker 2: A lot of what I did was give speeches to
Speaker 2: people like that and and meet with you know, vcs
Speaker 2: and so forth, and and then but then once you
Speaker 2: get the technology. Actually it turned out that was the
Speaker 2: easy part. Like that was the It just got harder
Speaker 2: from there, right because now, okay, I've got this cool
Speaker 2: you know, algorithm approach, this this computer vision system made
Speaker 2: by some cool Silicon Valley company where guys are working
Speaker 2: in hoodie sweatshirts, you know, at a we work and
Speaker 2: and then yeah and then uh they and then all
Speaker 2: of a sudden you realize, well, you can't just like
Speaker 2: plug that in right there there. There wasn't a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of cloud computing at the time. Most
Speaker 2: of what we did was still on prem It was
Speaker 2: out of servers that we own that were you know,
Speaker 2: government owned and operated, and there were the way the
Speaker 2: workflow works, the way the processes work in these agencies.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of pieces of locked software that have
Speaker 2: been made through this really long, multi year requirements process
Speaker 2: by a single contractor, and to mod that in any
Speaker 2: way requires another year, two years, you know, to say, hey, well,
Speaker 2: I just want to take the data from the system
Speaker 2: and incorporated this other algorithm. They're like, yeah, no problem that.
Speaker 2: You know that twenty five million dollars and eighteen months
Speaker 2: we got it. Just no problem. And you're like, that's
Speaker 2: just not going to work. And so like that integration
Speaker 2: part becomes really really hard and threatens people, right because
Speaker 2: companies contracting companies have those contracts. They employ people in
Speaker 2: states to build that stuff, and they call their congressman
Speaker 2: if they're threatened. People who job it is to be
Speaker 2: a pro program manager at n GA are threatened because hey,
Speaker 2: I've worked my whole life to get this system in place.
Speaker 2: You know, it's taken me years, and now you're telling
Speaker 2: me you want to remove it and put in this
Speaker 2: thing that these guys built in their garage, you know,
Speaker 2: in six months, and they've never they don't even have clearances.
Speaker 2: By the way, I don't even know if this is good,
Speaker 2: which gets into the other issue is, you know, it's
Speaker 2: got to be secure, you know, unlike a company where
Speaker 2: you know, if you get hacked at a company, it's
Speaker 2: it's it's a bad day. You know, you maybe lose
Speaker 2: some money. You know, your product fails. You know you
Speaker 2: have an unsecure system. In an intelligence agency, you know,
Speaker 2: somebody dies right like that that that soft guy in
Speaker 2: the field now has a piece of compromised you know,
Speaker 2: map or or imagery that is dangerous, right, and so
Speaker 2: you've got to take the security piece very seriously and
Speaker 2: figure out how to you know, now, how do you
Speaker 2: ensure that this kind of technology is secure? And how
Speaker 2: do you bring bring those companies in. You've got to
Speaker 2: get clearances now for companies where you know, the CEO
Speaker 2: has never even heard of a clearance. They don't even
Speaker 2: know what you're talking about. And you're saying, no, I need,
Speaker 2: I need to your guys to get a clearance. They
Speaker 2: need to come, you know, work in the Beltway now,
Speaker 2: and so you've got to go through that. And then
Speaker 2: let's just say you can make it through all that
Speaker 2: right now, you've got to convince an analyst to use
Speaker 2: it because you know, remember these these people take their
Speaker 2: job very very seriously, right. I don't know if if
Speaker 2: you watch House of Dynamite, that that that movie Catherine Bigelow,
Speaker 2: and it's it's about an unwarned launch where you know
Speaker 2: nuclear missile is coming for America and it's gonna blow
Speaker 2: up and it's killed millions of people, and it's it's
Speaker 2: it's a very intense movie. But this is a real job.
Speaker 2: People go to work every day and they worry about
Speaker 2: that day and day out. That's what an NGAA analyst
Speaker 2: is doing. They're worried somebody's going to launch a missile
Speaker 2: and it's going to hit a wahu and it's going
Speaker 2: to kill a million people. And so when you kind
Speaker 2: of walk in and you say, I know you have
Speaker 2: your system locked down, and you've been doing this for
Speaker 2: years and you've been trained to do this, you're the
Speaker 2: best at it in the world, and I know this
Speaker 2: is the way you like to do it. But hey,
Speaker 2: I have this new technology. It's going to fundamentally change
Speaker 2: how you do it. And you know they're going to
Speaker 2: be skeptical and they're going to be like, I don't
Speaker 2: trust it. I'm not sure how it gets integrated, and
Speaker 2: not just them, by the way, the customers as well
Speaker 2: outside of the agency who are sending these reports that
Speaker 2: they're going to be like, wait, you're telling me this.
Speaker 2: You know, this piece of intelligence was made by a machine,
Speaker 2: not by Joe, who I've been working with for the
Speaker 2: last fifteen years, who's the best imagery analyst. You got.
Speaker 2: It's made by a machine. They're not going to trust
Speaker 2: it either, and so you have to get over that.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of of you know, working with
Speaker 2: people to build that trust. There's a lot of tests
Speaker 2: and evaluation. There's a lot of training for people of
Speaker 2: how to use these systems, ultimately recruiting people now to
Speaker 2: help you make all these systems and integrate them. So
Speaker 2: it becomes this very big issue, and it was hard,
Speaker 2: and you know, I worked on it and lots of
Speaker 2: other people date as well. But it is starting to
Speaker 2: happen now. And I'll say one more thing, which is recently,
Speaker 2: so not this current director NGA, but the one previous.
Speaker 2: So eight nine years after I had started down this path,
Speaker 2: the director announced publicly that they are now publishing intelligence
Speaker 2: reports in which quote unquote no human hands have touched them.
Speaker 2: So it is happening, and it only took you know,
Speaker 2: eight or nine years.
Speaker 1: What did you do to get buy in, you know,
Speaker 1: institutionally within the organization, because I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 1: It's like if you're a soldier and they hand you
Speaker 1: a new rifle and they say this is going to
Speaker 1: be your rifle. Now you're like, bro, I don't need this.
Speaker 1: What is this piece of garbage? I'll just use a
Speaker 1: slingshot like I always have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, it's the same Like anybody
Speaker 2: who's used technology downrange will say the same thing. Like
Speaker 2: you basically look at a new piece of technology that
Speaker 2: somebody gives you, like a new radio or something, and
Speaker 2: you're like, look, I already know this thing's going to break,
Speaker 2: Like I already know I can't trust it, right, Like
Speaker 2: so whatever you say, So yeah, you know, how do
Speaker 2: you do it? Well? You know, one of the things
Speaker 2: is I think you got to start in a place
Speaker 2: where you are working with the analysts, for example, or
Speaker 2: with the people that are going to use it. As
Speaker 2: you're developing this stuff, as you're acquiring it. You've got
Speaker 2: to bring them in and have them be part of
Speaker 2: the process so they see it, they kind of walk
Speaker 2: down the path with you and have choice and and
Speaker 2: a lot of them when they do see it are like,
Speaker 2: oh wow, that's that's actually pretty cool, Like I would
Speaker 2: like to use that, like how do we do it?
Speaker 2: And you've got to get that, you've got to get
Speaker 2: buy in there. And I tried to, you know, work
Speaker 2: with with those folks as as much as I could,
Speaker 2: you know, and the director of the of Analysis at
Speaker 2: that time, who was also very much trying to do this,
Speaker 2: and and we would partner on these things. There would
Speaker 2: be tension because she's you know, she's worried about her
Speaker 2: people and I'm worried about what I got to do
Speaker 2: their retention. But we tried to work together. So that's
Speaker 2: the first part. And I think you have to do
Speaker 2: a lot of tests and evaluation, like you need to show,
Speaker 2: you need to have rigorous testing and really show this
Speaker 2: is how it's going to work. Here are the limits.
Speaker 2: And and the thing is it can't be the limit
Speaker 2: can't be like perfection. People aren't perfect either, you know,
Speaker 2: like analysts fail sometimes it's something you know. They they
Speaker 2: can be compromised as well, you know, yeah, and AI
Speaker 2: can be hacked, but you know, a person can be recruited.
Speaker 2: Trust me, It's what I used to do for a living,
Speaker 2: and so like you're you know, you've got to you've
Speaker 2: got to try to get to a point where it's
Speaker 2: you know, how good it is and what the performance
Speaker 2: envelope is and how close it is to a person
Speaker 2: and then and then show that and share that and
Speaker 2: be open with that with with the people who are
Speaker 2: ultimately going to use it, And then I think you
Speaker 2: you also have to. My view is is try it
Speaker 2: out in less risky missions. Some people will say they
Speaker 2: want to try AI out and like business operations, and
Speaker 2: that's where a lot of people were at that time
Speaker 2: and saying, well, yeah, we can use this for like
Speaker 2: business stuff, you know, admin HR finance. I think you
Speaker 2: have to go straight for mission because that's the thing
Speaker 2: we have to get right. But there are missions that
Speaker 2: are less risky than others. Right, you can worry about
Speaker 2: a mission in Africa rather than saying, yeah, we're gonna
Speaker 2: entrust it to monitoring you know, Russian nuclear weapons, Like
Speaker 2: we don't have to start with Russian nuclear weapons. We
Speaker 2: can entrust it to a mission that you know, if
Speaker 2: it if it fails, it is not the literal end
Speaker 2: of the world.
Speaker 3: That's uh, that's comforting.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, uh and so after this, I mean you, I
Speaker 1: take it, have gone back into the private sector. And
Speaker 1: this is this is just a little aside before we
Speaker 1: get into more serious subject matter. But I read in
Speaker 1: your book that you are sitting on the board of
Speaker 1: a company that wants to resurrect the wooly mammoth. Now,
Speaker 1: I will point out, I will point out, Anthony, that
Speaker 1: we Homo sapian men hunted that menace to extinction hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of years ago. Now you're all about bringing
Speaker 1: in new technology. Why do you want to bring this
Speaker 1: menace back into the world.
Speaker 2: There, there we go. You know, they're they're trying to
Speaker 2: resurrect dire wolves too, So you know, I uh well,
Speaker 2: when I left, I I went into investing. I went
Speaker 2: to Bridgewater Associate, it's a hedge fund, and then and
Speaker 2: then I went to Serber's Capital, a private equity fund,
Speaker 2: and and I worked for Steve Finberg, who's who's now
Speaker 2: the Deputy Secretary of War, which was a privilege. He's
Speaker 2: an incredibly smart guy and I think really helping the
Speaker 2: mission right now. And uh, yeah, it's true. I also
Speaker 2: sat on some boards. I remained interested in tech and
Speaker 2: and in particular in in technologies that I think, you know,
Speaker 2: we're either dual use where I thought, you know, these
Speaker 2: are gonna maybe they have a commercial aspect, but they
Speaker 2: also are going to help the mission, or where I
Speaker 2: felt like it was an area that we needed to
Speaker 2: compete with China on. And I think biotechnology is one
Speaker 2: of those areas, and and America really needs to compete
Speaker 2: in that area. And I think Colossal's doing that. And
Speaker 2: I'm I'm not in the company. I'm an advisor to
Speaker 2: the company, so I don't work there on a day
Speaker 2: to day basis. But Ben Lamb, the CEO, is is
Speaker 2: very strong CEO. He's doing you know, unbelievable things like
Speaker 2: Elon Musk level craziness, like saying, hey, when I first
Speaker 2: heard it, I had the same reaction. I was like, wait,
Speaker 2: what is this Jurassic Park? Are you going to try
Speaker 2: to like resurrect of wooly Mammoth? This is insanity. But
Speaker 2: he partnered with this guy, George Church, who is like
Speaker 2: one of the great you know, like you know scientists
Speaker 2: in this space in the world. He really he's like
Speaker 2: a legend. And he's like George is like no, no, no,
Speaker 2: this is this is a doable thing. This can happen.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's about the it's you know, it's about
Speaker 2: the wooly mammoth and the dire wolf, and they're they're
Speaker 2: looking at other things. But it's also about you know, animals,
Speaker 2: and we've made extinct more recently as well, and and
Speaker 2: or ones that are highly endangered and so forth. So
Speaker 2: they're doing pretty amazing work.
Speaker 1: I'm more partial to the giant armadillo, maybe the giant sloth,
Speaker 1: but you know that's that's just user preference.
Speaker 3: You No, I'm glad you brought that up there.
Speaker 1: There's a whole chapter in your book about synthetic biology
Speaker 1: that I want to get into in a minute here.
Speaker 1: But tell us about the Fourth Intelligence Revolution. Why did
Speaker 1: you write this book and what's it about?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, kind of reflects my background. Like
Speaker 2: I went into intelligence, and I saw one type of
Speaker 2: intelligence that saw counter terrors and counter insurgency type operations.
Speaker 2: And then I left and I came back and all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, it was completely different. And when I
Speaker 2: left NNGA, I really started to reflect on that and
Speaker 2: and I was like I sort of witnessed two very
Speaker 2: different forms of you know, approaches to intelligence and and
Speaker 2: was kind of there for this like new revolution beginning
Speaker 2: to happen. And so I wrote an article and Foreign
Speaker 2: Affairs about the AI aspects of this. But then I realized, look,
Speaker 2: it's even bigger than just that, and so so what
Speaker 2: I did in the book is I kind of backed
Speaker 2: up and I said, you know, let's let's look at
Speaker 2: the history of intelligence how we got here. And I
Speaker 2: really started World War two because that was really the
Speaker 2: first time we had what what we would all consider
Speaker 2: like a true intelligence agency with all the features. And
Speaker 2: then and then, you know, we shut that down after
Speaker 2: the World War Two and then stood up the CIA
Speaker 2: and all these other agencies like d i A and
Speaker 2: NSA and so forth, and that was the Second Revolution.
Speaker 2: It was an entirely different way of doing intelligence. The
Speaker 2: you know, OSS was like cowboys, you know, just out
Speaker 2: there trying to you know, collect and do ops. The
Speaker 2: CIA and the NSA, these were professional, you know, well financed,
Speaker 2: large global organizations up against AGB, you know, up against
Speaker 2: this other there very professional global organization. And we really
Speaker 2: professionalize intelligence. And then you know, nine eleven change intelligence again,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, we weren't going up against
Speaker 2: nation states. We weren't going up against the Soviets. We're
Speaker 2: going up against this decentralized enemy in al Qaeda and
Speaker 2: other terrorist organizations, and we had to intelligence had to adapt,
Speaker 2: and we had to start using a lot more commercial stuff,
Speaker 2: for example, using the Internet, using cell phones and things
Speaker 2: like that, having this kind of network intelligence and using
Speaker 2: more open source information for example. That changed again, and
Speaker 2: now we're hitting this new revolution, this fourth Revolution, where
Speaker 2: AI and China are really driving that revolution.
Speaker 1: There's a series of different topics that you cover in
Speaker 1: the book, aside from the history, but weeding into things,
Speaker 1: and since we're just talking about the biological aspect, and
Speaker 1: just because I've a person sort of a weird personal
Speaker 1: interest in it, just because for no other reason, I
Speaker 1: feel like.
Speaker 3: This topic isn't really talked about as much.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk about quantum computing, we talk about AI,
Speaker 1: we talk about drones, but I mean, maybe we could
Speaker 1: start there. Why do you think we don't focus on
Speaker 1: the biological that you know, on gene editing and some
Speaker 1: of these other technologies. Is it because of like bioethics
Speaker 1: and medical laws and things like that that we have
Speaker 1: in America that kind of prohibit experimenting with those things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels sometimes like AI like ten years ago.
Speaker 2: So people in the space ten years ago realized there
Speaker 2: was a lot happening. But day to day, if you talked,
Speaker 2: you know, if you went to two thousand and you know,
Speaker 2: fifteen and you talk to somebody about AI, they'd be
Speaker 2: like like an average person and be like, I don't really,
Speaker 2: I don't know. I know social media. I'm just getting
Speaker 2: used to social media and cell phones, Like what are
Speaker 2: you talking about? And now it's it's everywhere and it's
Speaker 2: on everybody's minds and it's changing the world. I feel
Speaker 2: like biotechnology hasn't had that like LM moment, right, There
Speaker 2: hasn't been that jat GPT. But we're seeing the signs.
Speaker 2: I mean, they made this this COVID vaccine in like
Speaker 2: months instead of years. We're seeing you know, people curing
Speaker 2: like blindness and diseases by changing people's DNA. Where Like,
Speaker 2: there is a real business in the world that is
Speaker 2: trying to resurrect the bly mammoth and that is a
Speaker 2: real possibility, and they birthed a dire wolf actually, so
Speaker 2: like it is starting to happen in a real way.
Speaker 2: It just hasn't sort of gotten big yet. And whenever
Speaker 2: you've got a technology like that, nations are going to
Speaker 2: care and they're going to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: use it for national security. They're also going to figure
Speaker 2: out a way to spy on it. And when I
Speaker 2: was you know, I partially put that chapter in the
Speaker 2: book is I wanted people to realize this was now
Speaker 2: in the game. This is part of the game now.
Speaker 2: And there are you know, Chinese companies collecting DNA information globally.
Speaker 2: There's a company called BGI Genomics. It's a massive biotech
Speaker 2: company out of China that collects people's DNA and they
Speaker 2: do it through COVID tests. They do it through like
Speaker 2: prenatal tests for like pregnant women thankfully not available here
Speaker 2: but available in Europe. And they're collecting this information. This
Speaker 2: same company has contracts with the PLA, with the People's
Speaker 2: Liberation Army and they're doing work in one of those
Speaker 2: things that they're doing work on the When you read
Speaker 2: the description, it talks about population improvement, right like like, okay,
Speaker 2: where are we going with this? And you're doing this
Speaker 2: with the PLA. And when I hear population improvement, and
Speaker 2: I hear people's liberation army. I hear super soldier like,
Speaker 2: I don't care what they say. That that's my you know,
Speaker 2: analyst brain. That's what I would say is going on there?
Speaker 3: Can you explain to people?
Speaker 1: I will first, I agree with you, like, when this
Speaker 1: takes off, it's going to be like the invention of
Speaker 1: the internet, or it's going to be one of those
Speaker 1: things that just changes the world. But can you talk
Speaker 1: to people like more specifically what we're talking about. A
Speaker 1: country that's harvesting people's DNA and mass Obviously that should
Speaker 1: scare the hell out of everyone. But the potential this
Speaker 1: technology has is to give people superhuman strength, endurance, intelligence, perhaps.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly so when you when when you have these
Speaker 2: types of tools like Crisper, for example, which allows you
Speaker 2: to change to change a gene and and how it's
Speaker 2: expressed in a person, and you can do things like that,
Speaker 2: you can make people immune to a disease, you can
Speaker 2: remove a genetic mutation of some sort, and you can
Speaker 2: absolutely do things like make them stronger or more resistant
Speaker 2: to cold, have a higher cold tolerance, for example, or
Speaker 2: potentially smarter. We're not there yet, I don't from what
Speaker 2: I read in the literature where we can do those
Speaker 2: big things because they're complicated. You know, intelligence is affected
Speaker 2: by many things. But people are absolutely working on it.
Speaker 2: Companies are working on it. But you know, governments are governments,
Speaker 2: and an authoritarian government and one that's known, for example,
Speaker 2: to have in the past performed experiments on political prisoners
Speaker 2: for example, like illegal experiments. Like you've got to assume,
Speaker 2: of course they're not going to come out and say this,
Speaker 2: but you've got to assume they're doing those kinds of experiments,
Speaker 2: and they could be used. Like you said, they can
Speaker 2: make people stronger, they can make them smarter. A lot
Speaker 2: of people think super Soldier and they think, oh, it's
Speaker 2: just like going to be in the movie and it's
Speaker 2: going to be really fast, strong guy. Actually, what scares
Speaker 2: me way more is like you give people an extra
Speaker 2: fifty IQ points, Like that's far scarier in our world
Speaker 2: of competition, where people like that could be become intelligence
Speaker 2: handlists or inventors or compete with us through robotics and
Speaker 2: other things. Right, So they could absolutely do that. There's
Speaker 2: an even darker side, which is could you create genetic bioweapons, right,
Speaker 2: and could you target a disease to a specific ethnic group, right,
Speaker 2: or could you target it to a specific individual. And
Speaker 2: this can seem crazy, but it's actually already happened. So
Speaker 2: in South Africa under apartheid, they tried. They had a program,
Speaker 2: the apartheid government had a program to create you know,
Speaker 2: bioweapons and essence that would affect black people and wouldn't
Speaker 2: be targeted at white people like they This is reported
Speaker 2: and it's scary. So there is a history of this happening.
Speaker 2: And I'll say I'll say one more thing as another
Speaker 2: signal that you can see this is happening, is that
Speaker 2: when g came to San Francisco to meet with Biden
Speaker 2: a few years ago and he got up from the
Speaker 2: table after the meeting, his guys came in immediately and
Speaker 2: wipe down every surface anything he touched with his body.
Speaker 2: Immediately they were there wiping it all down. So there's
Speaker 2: no genetic residue. Like they know, they know the danger
Speaker 2: and they're watching out for it.
Speaker 3: That's interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, based on your research and the people you talk to,
Speaker 1: where do you p receive us as a country being
Speaker 1: with this subject right now? From a national security standpoint?
Speaker 1: Do we have any real endeavors in this or is
Speaker 1: it just something that's sort of like, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: DARPA has on three x five cards somewhere.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, look, historically we were the
Speaker 2: ones doing all this research. We had the best biotechnology people.
Speaker 2: You know, Daudna won the Nobel Prize, she's an American for
Speaker 2: inventing crisper. Like, we have had the best historically, and
Speaker 2: I believe that we continue to have the best. But
Speaker 2: you know, when you're in an authoritarian country like China,
Speaker 2: the rules that we would apply to how you do
Speaker 2: human testing, for example, don't have to apply either publicly.
Speaker 2: They just change those rules, or they can do things
Speaker 2: secretly that we just wouldn't do. We just you know,
Speaker 2: we're not going to have a lab in experiment on
Speaker 2: an ethnic group. It's just not going to do that.
Speaker 2: Whereas in China they have literal concentration camps for the
Speaker 2: wigers and easily could experiment on an entire population if
Speaker 2: they wanted. And maybe they are. It's hard to say
Speaker 2: because it's kept secret, but so I think they and
Speaker 2: they're definitely investing heavily in the space and BGI Genomics
Speaker 2: and other companies have stolen American ip in this space
Speaker 2: to kind of move more quickly, and then they're investing
Speaker 2: their own money and training their own scientists and having
Speaker 2: them come over here and get PhDs and go back there.
Speaker 2: So they're definitely making a push, you know, and militarily
Speaker 2: it's hard to know what they're doing because it would
Speaker 2: be classified. Of course, on our side, you know, we've
Speaker 2: continued to do research dart Buzz, continue to have you know,
Speaker 2: biological programs for example. But I don't think that we're
Speaker 2: you know, if you ask me, I don't think that
Speaker 2: we put the level of effort into it that we
Speaker 2: should be if you just simply look at the level
Speaker 2: of the threat, and to me, bioweapons are right there
Speaker 2: under nuclear weapon as the most dangerous possible thing, and
Speaker 2: I don't believe that we spend just under nuclear weapons
Speaker 2: amount of money on this. I think, for example, we
Speaker 2: need to do far more monitoring of diseases because people
Speaker 2: saw what could happen with a major disease with COVID.
Speaker 2: Nation states saw it. Also, terrorist groups saw it and
Speaker 2: realize like, oh wow, this is how you do damage,
Speaker 2: trillions of dollars of damage and you kill millions of people.
Speaker 2: You know, that sounds great. To a lot of enemies
Speaker 2: of America, and so we need to really get better
Speaker 2: at monitoring for this stuff and then figuring out how
Speaker 2: to respond. And then I believe, and I kind of
Speaker 2: suggested in the book, like we may need an entire
Speaker 2: intelligence agency that just does this, it just focuses on
Speaker 2: biothreats and genetic engineering and synthetic biology and all of
Speaker 2: these things in the future. It's that important.
Speaker 1: I do feel that it's one of those subjects that
Speaker 1: it is sort of like, you know, the way like
Speaker 1: when chat GPT was released, Suddenly the public becomes you know,
Speaker 1: it's in their face. They understand it and they see it,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, oh wow, this is a real thing.
Speaker 1: I mean on the biological front, you shut her to
Speaker 1: think what is going to be that relevatory moment for
Speaker 1: the public that's like, oh shit, this is for real.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe it is when they see a wooly
Speaker 2: mammoth walking around, yeah, maybe you know. Or or it's
Speaker 2: when you know they see like a genetically engineered person
Speaker 2: walking around where you know, China did this. They there
Speaker 2: there was there was a scientist there who changed the
Speaker 2: genes of of of a fetus and and or of
Speaker 2: a of a of a of a child to cure
Speaker 2: them of AIDS or to make them immune to it.
Speaker 2: It apparently worked, And we don't know much of what
Speaker 2: happened after that because they kept they said that they
Speaker 2: arrested the guy. I haven't seen any reporting of really
Speaker 2: what's happened for all, you know, who knows. Maybe he's
Speaker 2: just working in a lab now, right, Like it's hard,
Speaker 2: that's the problem in an authoritarian state. You can't know
Speaker 2: what really happened, right, But you know, I think I
Speaker 2: think if people see that happening. I think if somebody,
Speaker 2: if they see, if they if we see another COVID
Speaker 2: like epidemic where it's very clear that it was designed,
Speaker 2: I think people are going to wake up and become very,
Speaker 2: very worried.
Speaker 1: M Well, let's because we've mentioned it several times already.
Speaker 1: Let's turn our attention to AI. And I think you
Speaker 1: have a whole chapter in the book about it, and
Speaker 1: much ink has been spilt on this subject. You said yourself,
Speaker 1: you wrote in Foreign Affairs about it. Cut through the
Speaker 1: fog of wars to speak, tell us how is this
Speaker 1: technology going to affect us from a national security standpoint?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'd like to baseline AI a little bit.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different AI out there. It means
Speaker 2: a lot of different things, a lot of different people.
Speaker 2: But I would say this is to me, how think
Speaker 2: about it is. It's it's a technology that's doing something
Speaker 2: like a person would do it, and as as a
Speaker 2: person would do it. So it's not you know when
Speaker 2: I say an AI system that's identifying objects on an image,
Speaker 2: like it's picking out the missiles. And so if you
Speaker 2: just feeded a lot of images, it is going to
Speaker 2: say there's a missile. That's not there's no rule, right,
Speaker 2: It's it's actually thinking in a sense, And and you
Speaker 2: can give it any image, you don't have to show
Speaker 2: it even it sometimes and it can pick it out.
Speaker 2: That's what's sort of new here. And chat GPT and
Speaker 2: these other LM models like Claude and so forth are
Speaker 2: are the biggest example ever I think in history of this.
Speaker 2: Like they they produce information like a person, and they
Speaker 2: can do things that a person that we have traditionally
Speaker 2: thought only a person could do because it requires some
Speaker 2: level of like thought and reaction and adaptation, right, and
Speaker 2: so in intelligence, look, I think just broadly people are
Speaker 2: going to apply AI to do all sorts of jobs
Speaker 2: that people do. It's gonna do. It's gonna draft contracts.
Speaker 2: It already is draft contracts for lawyers. It's gonna help
Speaker 2: teach kids, like you know, kids use this in school
Speaker 2: and learn from different AI systems. It's going to make
Speaker 2: movies like if you've gone on soorra or nano banana
Speaker 2: or something like, can make make a little movie. Same
Speaker 2: thing is going to happen in intelligence and this technology
Speaker 2: AI is going to do all of the different things
Speaker 2: and intelligence that a person does today. It's going to
Speaker 2: do what's called the intelligent cycle. It's going to help
Speaker 2: the collect information, it's going to analyze that information, it's
Speaker 2: going to disseminate it. It's going to help plan the
Speaker 2: next information that needs to be collected and so forth.
Speaker 2: And it's going to be used on sensors like drones
Speaker 2: to autonomously fly them, remove them, and to identify what
Speaker 2: they're seeing and then to collect that information and then
Speaker 2: send it to another drone or send it to another
Speaker 2: AI system to be analyzed. So I think what's going
Speaker 2: to happen is that all of the parts of intelligence
Speaker 2: are going to be done by AI over time and
Speaker 2: I sort of say in the book, within five years,
Speaker 2: ninety plus percent of intelligence will will be done in
Speaker 2: some way by an AI. And that also what's going
Speaker 2: to happen is intelligence is going to be made for
Speaker 2: and buy machines. So these AI systems are going to
Speaker 2: go collect and analyze intelligence and feed it to other
Speaker 2: AI systems, and some of them are going to be
Speaker 2: like drones feeding it to drones, or AI analytical systems
Speaker 2: feeding it to other AI analytical systems, and that's really new,
Speaker 2: and we really don't even know how that's going to
Speaker 2: work quite yet, but I'm pretty confident that that is
Speaker 2: what will happen. And people intelligence officers are going to
Speaker 2: do jobs that are very very different, Like an analyst
Speaker 2: might not just their job might not be to do
Speaker 2: traditional analysis. Is probably not going to be to read
Speaker 2: a bunch of reports and then write a new report.
Speaker 2: They're maybe going to task an AI to read those
Speaker 2: reports and write the report, and they're going to Q
Speaker 2: see it or have a vision or figure out what
Speaker 2: questions ask. But really I think what they're going to
Speaker 2: do is partner with somebody in operations or with a
Speaker 2: general or with a president to be their interface and
Speaker 2: that's what it will be to be an intelligence officer
Speaker 2: and an analyst, not to do it in the old way.
Speaker 2: Even for a case officer, I think you're going to
Speaker 2: need to use AI systems. You know, we're still going
Speaker 2: to collect human intelligence. Ultimately, we still occasionally have to
Speaker 2: go recruit another human being to give as information. But
Speaker 2: you're going to need AI to help you deal with
Speaker 2: all the surveillance for example.
Speaker 1: This is a little bit of a metaphysical question, I suppose,
Speaker 1: but unfortunately you get there very quickly with these kind
Speaker 1: of conversations about advanced technology. What do you think that's
Speaker 1: going to mean for us institutionally when we have a
Speaker 1: population of people who really don't know how to do
Speaker 1: anything that it's so phantomo logical the way that these
Speaker 1: systems work in the background and generate this information and
Speaker 1: feed into each other. And you know, you're just the
Speaker 1: guy that gets the report out of the machine, and
Speaker 1: your whole job is to like hand it to the
Speaker 1: next guy. I mean, what do you that's like going
Speaker 1: to reshape the human species? I mean, if you think
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's already happened in some ways,
Speaker 2: right like in America, we've forgotten how to manufacture many
Speaker 2: things that we used to manufacture, Like we literally just
Speaker 2: the people who used to make something, who knew how
Speaker 2: to mine and manufacture rare Earth's magnets like literally have
Speaker 2: died off where they just never trained another generation. So
Speaker 2: we'd like have forgotten things or like iron working, you know,
Speaker 2: like iron working that you used to be able to
Speaker 2: do in the eighteen hundreds, Like there are very very
Speaker 2: few people left in the world who can do that
Speaker 2: kind of artisanal craft. Right, So we've definitely this has
Speaker 2: happened before with technology, and I think it will happen
Speaker 2: with AI. It's inevitable, and we're going to have to
Speaker 2: at a minimum continue to teach people some of the basics.
Speaker 2: And I think about like long division sometimes, like when
Speaker 2: I was in school in the eighties and learning long division,
Speaker 2: and I knew there were calculators, and I'm like, why
Speaker 2: are you teaching me long division? Like I'm never going
Speaker 2: to do it, and they still stubbornly taught us. And
Speaker 2: it's true, like I can't remember the last time I
Speaker 2: did long division by hand. I just would use a calculator,
Speaker 2: but you still needed to learn it so you could
Speaker 2: understand math generally, and so we could identify mathematicians and
Speaker 2: engineers and like, you know, do you you needed those
Speaker 2: building blocks? Right? I think the same thing will have
Speaker 2: to happen where even though the AI can do this stuff,
Speaker 2: we still have to teach people, especially children, but even
Speaker 2: adults how to do this stuff. You're still going to
Speaker 2: need to learn how to write. You're still going to
Speaker 2: need to learn how to do intelligence analysis, even if
Speaker 2: you're not going to really do it that much in
Speaker 2: your day to day job.
Speaker 1: Right, Right, What was the other question about AI that
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 1: So, I guess the other one that i'd ask from
Speaker 1: more of a military standpoint is I do have some
Speaker 1: trepidation I have to say about the way the pitch
Speaker 1: decks are sent out to the public that this is
Speaker 1: like this utopian technology in a future conflict are We're
Speaker 1: still going to need soldiers that have to take the
Speaker 1: hill at some point, right. I think the war in
Speaker 1: Ukraine has shown us that ultimately, no matter how sexy
Speaker 1: your cyber ops are, you have to have soldiers taking
Speaker 1: ground and holding it. How do you see AI interfacing
Speaker 1: with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's the that's sort of the interesting thing, right,
Speaker 2: I start off the book and with this like William
Speaker 2: Gibson quote he was he was a science fiction author
Speaker 2: and he said, the future is here, but it's not
Speaker 2: evenly distributed. And so I think what happens with technology
Speaker 2: you sort of see both things at the same time.
Speaker 2: Like in Ukraine, they're these autonomous drones and there are also
Speaker 2: guys in trenches, you know, digging them out with a
Speaker 2: shovel that like literally you could take a Roman legionnaire
Speaker 2: and put him in that trench and he would know
Speaker 2: what to do. You know, he'd be like, oh, I
Speaker 2: see here's a shovel. I'm gonna dig it out, and like, okay,
Speaker 2: you don't have a bow and arrow, you have a rifle,
Speaker 2: but I get it. Like bad guy over there, I'm
Speaker 2: over here, he's shooting. I'm shooting. You know, he would
Speaker 2: get it. It still works. But then there's this drone
Speaker 2: flying over. I think that there will be more of that,
Speaker 2: and like maybe a taste of it is like Operation Spiderweb,
Speaker 2: which is this Ukraine operation where they took the drones
Speaker 2: they had to get them for deployed into like Siberia
Speaker 2: and other parts of Russia and then they kind of
Speaker 2: flew them either remotely or autonomous lead to attack, but
Speaker 2: they needed people to get downrange. So you're still doing
Speaker 2: these like super complex you know operations to move stuff
Speaker 2: and get it there and then and then you're letting
Speaker 2: the machines do it now, you know, imagine that in
Speaker 2: more of a warfare scenario where you've got maybe special
Speaker 2: operations guys who've got to get this downrange and are
Speaker 2: using these weapons or yeah, you're you're having the drones
Speaker 2: come in, but the people are you know, kind of
Speaker 2: innately flexible in a way that AI is just not
Speaker 2: there and machines are not and survivable in a way,
Speaker 2: right Like, you know, at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: if you have a United States marine on an island,
Speaker 2: like he could run out of ammunition and he's going
Speaker 2: to be like, oh, I see, I can cut down
Speaker 2: this like you know, stick and turn it into a
Speaker 2: spear and continue to fight. Right Like, We're still going
Speaker 2: to need guys downrange doing this or controlling these systems
Speaker 2: or positioning them or you know, ultimately to take and
Speaker 2: occupy a piece of land, you need to put a
Speaker 2: person there, Like putting a drone there is not going
Speaker 2: to work, Like the locals are going to be like
Speaker 2: they're just going to wait for the thing to run
Speaker 2: out of batteries, so you're still going to need to
Speaker 2: put people. I think it's going to be this mix
Speaker 2: and nobody really knows what it looks like quite yet,
Speaker 2: but we're going to kind of figure it out in
Speaker 2: Ukraine's like the preview.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, good point. Yeah, it's not going to happen
Speaker 1: all at once. Do we want to talk briefly about
Speaker 1: quantum computing and what that's going to change from an
Speaker 1: intelligence standpoint?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, quantum is interesting. I mean
Speaker 2: to me, it's a little further off than than AI.
Speaker 2: You know, like we were talking about biotech a minute ago,
Speaker 2: and it's like we're in the pre l M phase.
Speaker 2: I don't even think we're in the pre l M
Speaker 2: phase with quantum quid it yet, but when it does hit,
Speaker 2: and it is one where there could be true strategic surprise, right, Like,
Speaker 2: for all we know, China has invested half a trillion
Speaker 2: dollars in creating a quantum computer. Secretly like a Manhattan
Speaker 2: project could happen, I would be surprised. That's like by
Speaker 2: definition surprise, but at some point someone is going to
Speaker 2: make one of these computers. And the biggest thing for
Speaker 2: intelligence is that such a computer could break encryption and
Speaker 2: traditional encryption, and that doesn't just mean the encryption of
Speaker 2: what we're currently transmitting. So we could start today and
Speaker 2: you know, encrypt everything in what's called post quantum encryption.
Speaker 2: That couldn't be broken by such a computer. But it's
Speaker 2: all the old information. And they could have collected that
Speaker 2: old information, including like nuclear information for example, right like
Speaker 2: anything that would have been encrypted and transmitted over any
Speaker 2: period of time and going back to the beginning of
Speaker 2: you know, computers really and and then they'll you know,
Speaker 2: potentially could decrypt that and that that will be you know,
Speaker 2: a major turning point. I think that that information will
Speaker 2: be out there. Do you ever see that movie Sneakers
Speaker 2: Robert Redford from the nineties, great movie? You know that
Speaker 2: that's you know, spoiler, that's what it's about. And you
Speaker 2: know they're able to break into anything and and sort
Speaker 2: of look at anything, and like a world like that
Speaker 2: could be really scary and for intelligence would change everything
Speaker 2: because all of our old intelligence, which is still sensitive
Speaker 2: by the way, twenty thirty year old intelligence is still
Speaker 2: important you know, it could be it could be decrypted,
Speaker 2: and that would be a major issue.
Speaker 1: Let's get into economic espionage. There's a whole chapter in
Speaker 1: your book about that topic.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: You know. One of the other aspects of this, of
Speaker 2: this fourth Intelligence Revolution, is that it's it's not just
Speaker 2: about political and military issues, which is how you know,
Speaker 2: we traditionally think about competitions with the Soviets or or
Speaker 2: without CATA or something. It's about economics. It's about science
Speaker 2: and technology, and that includes on the intelligence side. And
Speaker 2: China has been performing economic espionage on America for years,
Speaker 2: right They're they're collecting information about American companies about their
Speaker 2: intellectual property, and they're passing that to their own companies
Speaker 2: to replicate a product, for example, or they're they're trying
Speaker 2: to slow down our companies in some way. They you know,
Speaker 2: they're recruiting people to collect information like insider threats within
Speaker 2: these organizations. So they're doing economic espionage. And we have
Speaker 2: always done a little bit of economic espionage, I mean,
Speaker 2: but it's not really been a big part of it
Speaker 2: because the Soviets weren't an economic superpower, like, it wasn't
Speaker 2: that big of an issue. After the defeat of the
Speaker 2: Soviet Union. Like in the nineties, we were the superpower,
Speaker 2: we were globalizing, we weren't focused on other you know,
Speaker 2: collecting other people's information that much. Clinton. President Clinton did
Speaker 2: ask for some economic information, but not a ton. And
Speaker 2: then during the Global War on Terror, like we were
Speaker 2: focused on counter terrorism and like they were not economic actors.
Speaker 2: So all of a sudden, now we're worried about, you know,
Speaker 2: economic issues, and I think that we need to build
Speaker 2: up the capability now to do economic intelligence ourselves, to
Speaker 2: know what Chinese companies are doing, maybe to try to
Speaker 2: stop them from doing it. Right, what if, for example,
Speaker 2: and I'll give you an example, what if there was
Speaker 2: another global epidemic that was far more powerful than COVID
Speaker 2: and millions and millions of people were dying, and China
Speaker 2: would not share with us a vaccine, which you think
Speaker 2: it's justified to steal that vaccine. Of course, like this
Speaker 2: is what you know our country does, we'd have to
Speaker 2: steal it. So or what if we wanted to know
Speaker 2: if their companies were making this quantum computer that would
Speaker 2: be able to get our information and all the encrypted information,
Speaker 2: including about nuclear weapons and things like this and really
Speaker 2: threaten us like you've got to. I think you're justified
Speaker 2: to go get that information. And I think presidents need that,
Speaker 2: and the Trump administration has made it clear that economic
Speaker 2: competition is a big part of its policy. They should
Speaker 2: be provided with the information they need to make decisions,
Speaker 2: and that includes classified secret information.
Speaker 1: Isn't also One of the interesting things my perception of it, anyway,
Speaker 1: tell me if I'm wrong, is that in other countries,
Speaker 1: like so like France, for example, the DGSE can help
Speaker 1: French companies make sales and make a profit, whereas like
Speaker 1: the CIA, I don't think is allowed to work with,
Speaker 1: you know, an American tech company or or car company
Speaker 1: or whatever else to help them sell their product abroad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, you can get a master's degree in
Speaker 2: economic warfare in France. That's cool, Like they're yeah, they're
Speaker 2: they definitely do it. And other countries do as well.
Speaker 2: China does it, Israel does it. We have we have
Speaker 2: we have not done this sort of thing. And so
Speaker 2: I break it apart into kind of like two pieces,
Speaker 2: Like one is this issue that I think you were
Speaker 2: referring to, which is picking winners and like having the
Speaker 2: government help a company. When I was writing the book,
Speaker 2: I still thought that was like for boting, like, we're
Speaker 2: not going to do that. I just wrote about the
Speaker 2: other thing, which was, well, we need to collect this
Speaker 2: economic information that's important to national security and give it
Speaker 2: to policy makers so they can make the right decisions
Speaker 2: about economic issues. Right, so they can know how far
Speaker 2: along is China with making a quantum device, how far
Speaker 2: along are they with AI or biotechnology. We need to
Speaker 2: know that information. It's national security. And their companies, by
Speaker 2: the way, are state controlled. Oftentimes they have state owned enterprises,
Speaker 2: and even if they're not owned by the state, they
Speaker 2: can be controlled by the state, so they're not purely
Speaker 2: you know, economic actors, and we need to be able
Speaker 2: to know what they're trying to do and if they're
Speaker 2: harming American companies or American people and stop that. Right.
Speaker 2: So that's what I was thinking about, and I think
Speaker 2: that's what we need to do. Since I've written the book,
Speaker 2: the rules are changing and our government now owns ten
Speaker 2: percent of Intel, and we are investing directly in companies,
Speaker 2: you know, that make and manufacture things that are important
Speaker 2: to the national security industrial base, the defense industrial base,
Speaker 2: like companies that make rare earths like MP materials, for example.
Speaker 2: So I can now whereas even two years ago I
Speaker 2: probably would have gotten on here and said, no way,
Speaker 2: we draw the line at sharing that information. Now I
Speaker 2: think we might be headed in a direction where we
Speaker 2: could share that information, and we might do so, and
Speaker 2: we would be justified to do so, because it's that
Speaker 2: important that we compete in these technology spaces or in
Speaker 2: these manufacturing and supply chain spaces, and so we'd be
Speaker 2: justified to do that now. At the same time, and
Speaker 2: this is the capitalist in me and the libertarian in me,
Speaker 2: I also don't want to break our system, which is
Speaker 2: a good system where companies compete with each other. Right,
Speaker 2: So if you're picking winners who are bad winners, you're
Speaker 2: going to get bad companies, right, and like you're not
Speaker 2: going to pick the right one, and government is not
Speaker 2: great at picking like the best technology of the best company.
Speaker 2: So I still want there to be that competition personally.
Speaker 2: So what I would love to see is a solution
Speaker 2: where there was a way, for example, to you know,
Speaker 2: get information if it was necessary, and supply it to
Speaker 2: an American company if we had to, but to do
Speaker 2: that in a way that maintained American companies competing with
Speaker 2: each other, so it didn't like a fairweb.
Speaker 1: Another topic you get into is open source intelligence and
Speaker 1: how that's kind of like rewriting the landscape of intelligence collection.
Speaker 1: What's your perspective on that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, again, there's always been open source intelligence. Even even
Speaker 2: Bill Donovan who started the OSS would talk about it
Speaker 2: and the importance, and you know, they would collect newspapers,
Speaker 2: they would they would you know, watch you know, the
Speaker 2: television of the countries we're at war with, right to
Speaker 2: see what's going on. So we would absolutely do that historically,
Speaker 2: but post nine eleven it became more and more important
Speaker 2: as we realized there was just more information in the
Speaker 2: open world than in the classified world. And now it's
Speaker 2: even more the case because again we're competing in these
Speaker 2: areas like economics or science and technology, where almost all
Speaker 2: of that information is open source. It's not classified, it's
Speaker 2: not made behind some you know, in some military base,
Speaker 2: it's it's at a company, in an office somewhere, and
Speaker 2: so the intelligence community needs to be able to use
Speaker 2: that information effectively, to obtain it and use it effectively
Speaker 2: to to compete in those areas. In particular, Now there's
Speaker 2: a downside to open source and which is, well, it's
Speaker 2: open source, so the you know, your adversary knows that
Speaker 2: it's out there and can compromise it. They could change it,
Speaker 2: right they or or if there's there's open source in
Speaker 2: the sense of like commercial satellites for example, that you know, you,
Speaker 2: you and I could go buy commercial satellite image right now,
Speaker 2: you know online, but you know, China or Russia or
Speaker 2: these other countries know that they're up there, and so
Speaker 2: they could hide their things. They could use a cyber
Speaker 2: attack to change you know, what the what the satellite
Speaker 2: sees or something like this, And so we've got to
Speaker 2: be careful. At the same time, it's secure about using
Speaker 2: this open source information, and we still need the classified stuff,
Speaker 2: right because that's really where you get your edge, Like
Speaker 2: I want an unfair advantage, Like that's the nature of intelligence.
Speaker 2: That's the game. It's it's not like this isn't there
Speaker 2: are no rules. I'm purposely trying to cheat. I'm purposely
Speaker 2: trying to get something that you don't know about. You
Speaker 2: didn't even know I was able to do it. I'm
Speaker 2: doing it secretly, clandestinely, right, And so we still need
Speaker 2: those classified systems. So I think we sort of need.
Speaker 2: I call it like a Barbell approach, right, Like we
Speaker 2: need the open source stuff, but we need the super
Speaker 2: classified stuff too.
Speaker 3: So you're going to have to find a way to
Speaker 3: integrate the two systems.
Speaker 2: And you've got to integrate the two systems and bring
Speaker 2: the data together. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: Another chapter of your book and another This is something
Speaker 1: that's also been talked about quite a bit in recent years,
Speaker 1: is cognitive warfare, disinformation, these type of subjects. And I
Speaker 1: think back to a conversation we had with somebody about
Speaker 1: the about Russia and the war in Ukraine, and he
Speaker 1: was kind of saying, how like this is sort of
Speaker 1: like the ultimate checkmate against America because a country like
Speaker 1: Russia can feed us disinformation and feed our public disinformation
Speaker 1: all day, but here in America we have the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't stop people from talking, you can't
Speaker 1: tell them don't say that. And it's like kind of
Speaker 1: the ultimate checkmate for somebody who's a dictator that they
Speaker 1: can mess with us all day and we don't have
Speaker 1: a defense.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not only do we not have a defense, like
Speaker 2: we actually don't want one because having a defense would
Speaker 2: actually break you know, our rights in some way go
Speaker 2: against our rights. Yeah, it's true to me. The future is,
Speaker 2: you know, future conflict is going to be about cognitive warfare.
Speaker 2: And what you're doing in cognitive warfare is you're trying
Speaker 2: to influence you know who you're competing against, your adversary,
Speaker 2: and get them to maybe not want to fight, right, Like,
Speaker 2: that's what propaganda is often about, like get people to
Speaker 2: not want to fight or disrupt them. You know, Russia
Speaker 2: tried to disrupt the twenty sixteen election. I don't personally
Speaker 2: think they were even choosing a side. I think they
Speaker 2: didn't care. I think they just wanted to create disruption
Speaker 2: and chaos and make Americans sort of hate each other more, right,
Speaker 2: Like that was the goal, and that's a win for them, right.
Speaker 2: And that's another form of cognitive warfare where you're not
Speaker 2: you're you're influencing people, but maybe not to an end.
Speaker 2: What's what's happening now, and what really scares me is
Speaker 2: that now you've got cognitive warfare and artificial intelligence and
Speaker 2: propaganda and information operation. Cognitive warfare in the past used
Speaker 2: to be kind of like a one way street. You
Speaker 2: could essentially advertise, right, like you could put out a
Speaker 2: flyer or an ad or on Facebook like they did
Speaker 2: in the election hack, or you could you know, like
Speaker 2: spread rumors and things like this. Right, but now with AI,
Speaker 2: AI is like a two way street. Right when you
Speaker 2: talk to an AI, you talk to it like you
Speaker 2: ask it a question, then ask you a question back.
Speaker 2: And and AI is becoming this arbitrar of information. It's
Speaker 2: where we're all going to go to get information in
Speaker 2: the future. And the danger is that if an AI
Speaker 2: system is owned by an adversary country like China owns
Speaker 2: deep Seek and it's still available here, or they infiltrate
Speaker 2: one of ours, they hack it in some way, which
Speaker 2: is not as hard as you would think. There's some
Speaker 2: studies recently by Anthropic for example, like that show that
Speaker 2: it's it's actually pretty pretty straightforward to change these big
Speaker 2: lms that they could use that to go to do
Speaker 2: cognitive warfare and to influence people using these systems, and
Speaker 2: I believe influence them subtly and even go after like
Speaker 2: kids in grade school with this kind of stuff because
Speaker 2: kids are starting to use AI as well. So it's
Speaker 2: a major threat. So we're seeing, you know, this move
Speaker 2: from these traditional propaganda like threats to the middle ground
Speaker 2: is probably like social media like threats like TikTok, which
Speaker 2: is a massive threat by the way, and should absolutely
Speaker 2: be handed over to American company or shut down because
Speaker 2: it's targeted a generation generation Z and is used. It
Speaker 2: sensors information and it influences its users, and this has
Speaker 2: been demonstrated. But we're going to move from that into
Speaker 2: AI being like the platform to perform cognitive warfare. And
Speaker 2: that's that's incredibly dangerous and we really don't even have
Speaker 2: defenses right now, and to your earlier point, we don't
Speaker 2: even necessarily want the government to censor this kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: right So who do you have? And that's partially what
Speaker 2: I write in the book of how well, what is
Speaker 2: the solution I get into a solution?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to get into solutions. Next one more
Speaker 1: point on cognitive warfare, and I want to ask you about, like,
Speaker 1: how do you think we'll have to approach information assurance
Speaker 1: as we've been talking about the public being propagandized. But
Speaker 1: I think right now today, as a soldier, you get
Speaker 1: a message over the radio over the assault net from
Speaker 1: your commander and he's giving you an order, and he
Speaker 1: tells you to go somewhere and do something, and you
Speaker 1: have confidence that in that information, that that is your commander.
Speaker 1: You saw the guy at work today, you know who
Speaker 1: he is, his commander. His orders are coming over an
Speaker 1: encrypted net. It's coming right to you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Okay, we're we know where we're going and what we're doing.
Speaker 1: And I have confidence that this information is coming down
Speaker 1: through proper legal channels. But in the future and some
Speaker 1: of the technologies you've been describing, I mean, how do
Speaker 1: I know my commander's voice wasn't modulated by AI and
Speaker 1: it's being fed to me. How do I know that
Speaker 1: the imagery on being given hasn't been doctored somehow? You know,
Speaker 1: all of these different questions that like how do you
Speaker 1: know what's real?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you don't. That's the problem. And I
Speaker 2: think that kind of stuff's absolutely going to happen. I mean,
Speaker 2: the our supply chain could be corrupted, and there there
Speaker 2: could be an attack on even a classified or secure
Speaker 2: communications system. The the you know, the voice of a
Speaker 2: person could be faked or the writing style or something
Speaker 2: like this, and what are you gonna do? And you
Speaker 2: know the thing is in warfare in particular, there's always
Speaker 2: been deception, right, Like we've always all all sides try
Speaker 2: to do that and trick the other guy. And you know,
Speaker 2: you look back even at like in in in in
Speaker 2: in in World War two, you know, the password could
Speaker 2: be compromised or something, so you know, people guys would
Speaker 2: do things like be like, well, who's the shortstop on
Speaker 2: the Yankees? Or like ask them questions where you know,
Speaker 2: you can ask multiple questions to be like how do
Speaker 2: you know you know? And and even during you know,
Speaker 2: al Qaeda actually went through this because to them, like
Speaker 2: we were the technological enemy, right, and so they're like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, these guys can listen to everything we're doing.
Speaker 2: They've got drones, they can spy on my cell phone,
Speaker 2: and so they would do stuff like they would never
Speaker 2: be like here's the operation. They'd be like, hey, you know, Mohammed,
Speaker 2: you remember that place when we were kids that we
Speaker 2: would go and you know, we would hang out with
Speaker 2: you know, so and so, and we would go climb
Speaker 2: that hill and there was a swing set. Well that's
Speaker 2: you remember the direction of that place from the village, Well,
Speaker 2: that's the direction I want you to go. And like
Speaker 2: doesn't matter how much encryption or like sneaky people like
Speaker 2: you don't know, there's a there's like two guys in
Speaker 2: the world who know that, and it's those two guys,
Speaker 2: and so how do you So there are ways to
Speaker 2: you know, exist and this. And then the thing is,
Speaker 2: it's not just going to happen to these soldiers. I
Speaker 2: think it's gonna happen to everybody. This is really what
Speaker 2: I get into the book is that everyone is now
Speaker 2: going to be spied on like this and have information
Speaker 2: operations committed against them, all of us and even kids.
Speaker 2: This is going to happen. They're gonna have those same doubts.
Speaker 2: And right now you already see like where you know,
Speaker 2: old folks sometimes have like their you know, their grandkids,
Speaker 2: that somebody will fake the voice and last them for money. Well,
Speaker 2: that could also be done, by the way, by a
Speaker 2: foreign intelligence agency if they wanted, or it could just
Speaker 2: be done as a type of disruption information operation if
Speaker 2: you did it a lot, just to get people concerned
Speaker 2: and scared, for example.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about intelligence four point zero and some
Speaker 1: of the solutions that you propose in your book. And
Speaker 1: one thing to kind of preface all this, I guess
Speaker 1: and don't I really don't mean to delve into partisan politics,
Speaker 1: but I feel like right now, we're at this sort
Speaker 1: of moment where, depending on who you talk to and
Speaker 1: what they believe, we're either in this phase of disruption
Speaker 1: and reform and we're shaking things up and we're making deals,
Speaker 1: or American intelligence is hanging by a thread. It needs
Speaker 1: to be saved, I mean, never mind reformed, Like, can
Speaker 1: we save this thing? Can we resurrect these relationships?
Speaker 3: Do you have.
Speaker 1: A Again, I'm not trying to drag you into into
Speaker 1: making partisan comments if you don't want to, but where
Speaker 1: do you see where we are like in this moment?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I you know, look, I would think about it
Speaker 2: like this, like that that problem said. I was just
Speaker 2: bringing up that we could exist in a world where
Speaker 2: like any information could be faked right at any time,
Speaker 2: including by adversaries who are trying to harm us as
Speaker 2: a nation. Right, that's the world we're going into. And
Speaker 2: they are harming us, they're trying to change information and
Speaker 2: get us to disrupt distrust things. What do you do?
Speaker 2: What do you do in that kind of scenario? And
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily want an intelligence agency to help you there,
Speaker 2: because the last thing we want is a CIA to
Speaker 2: come in and start censoring information because they're like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is disinformation, so I'm in a censor and it's like,
Speaker 2: well no, actually, even if it is disinformation, even if
Speaker 2: you know for a fact, that was created by a
Speaker 2: gru you know, Russian intelligence unit, I still like, somebody
Speaker 2: still has a right to see it, like it's crazy,
Speaker 2: but that's true and that's a fact, and so you
Speaker 2: can't censor this stuff. So actually, I think shutting down
Speaker 2: the form align the counterform Malign Influence Center for example
Speaker 2: at Odie and I was like a good idea, Like
Speaker 2: I don't think it was particularly harmful, but I can
Speaker 2: imagine this scenario where it could become harmful, you know,
Speaker 2: if any side decided they wanted to use that to
Speaker 2: manipulate information. So nobody wants that, but you still have
Speaker 2: to protect yourself against these threats, right, And I think
Speaker 2: the way to protect ourselves is that everybody now has
Speaker 2: to become that resilient endpoint, right, And you have to
Speaker 2: get trained to think like an intelligence officer and have
Speaker 2: some level of caution and say, oh, that could be
Speaker 2: you know, a piece of disinformation. This could be actually
Speaker 2: somebody just trying to collect information so they can model
Speaker 2: how I think. And this AI could use that to
Speaker 2: influence me over time. Right, And then there are ways
Speaker 2: that you can be taught to, like intelligence officers are
Speaker 2: to deal with that doubt, right, Like one way you
Speaker 2: deal with it is triangulating information. You just never trust
Speaker 2: one source, right, Like the most intelligence officers would never
Speaker 2: trust a single source, no matter how good you thought
Speaker 2: it was. It could be a satellite you built with
Speaker 2: your own hands, and you'd be like, I'm still have
Speaker 2: some level of doubt here, right, Anything could happen, and
Speaker 2: so you use multiple sources, right, or you assess the
Speaker 2: risk of Oh, you look at a piece of technology
Speaker 2: and say who owns it? And you trace that back
Speaker 2: and you're like, oh, it is owned by China, should
Speaker 2: you know, be careful about it. So I think that
Speaker 2: we have to start looking at people as the endpoint
Speaker 2: almost in like cyber security terms, and make them resilient
Speaker 2: at the individual citizen level, where you're protecting yourself, you're
Speaker 2: protecting your family and your community, and that's separate from
Speaker 2: an intelligence agency. And I almost think about it as
Speaker 2: like police versus neighborhood watch, right, Like we we still
Speaker 2: have police and we still need those guys to go
Speaker 2: out and shut down the next Internet Research Agency IRA threat, right,
Speaker 2: But we also need people who are part of the community,
Speaker 2: looking out for each other and looking out for ourselves.
Speaker 2: And so when I think about what's going on in
Speaker 2: the intelligence community today, like you know, we can argue
Speaker 2: about whether the you know, there's changes here or there.
Speaker 2: I actually think we need to actually think outside of
Speaker 2: the agencies entirely and make those agencies better. They should
Speaker 2: use AI and do all these things, but we should
Speaker 2: be building as civil society, as a group of citizens
Speaker 2: our own you know, intelligence function to protect ourselves, because
Speaker 2: that's the only way to protect yourself from some of
Speaker 2: these threats.
Speaker 1: I think in your book you say we're all intelligence
Speaker 1: officers now, which is kind of true in a weird way.
Speaker 1: Or I guess, you know, a modification of that old
Speaker 1: saying you might not be interested in intelligence, but it's
Speaker 1: interested in you. How do you think we would go
Speaker 1: about it? I mean, is this about bringing back high
Speaker 1: school civics class and media literacy or is there something
Speaker 1: something more to it? Because to accomplish what you're talking about,
Speaker 1: I think we're going to need that gene editing, fifty
Speaker 1: additional IQ points for each person in America, to navigate
Speaker 1: all of that.
Speaker 2: I mean we sort of we sort of did it
Speaker 2: in recent memory, which is we essentially taught three hundred
Speaker 2: million Americans to do cybersecurity. Right. Like if you went
Speaker 2: back to nineteen ninety five and you talk to an
Speaker 2: average American and you're like, hey, in the future, you're,
Speaker 2: first of all, you're going to know what cybersecurity is,
Speaker 2: which you've probably never heard of, and you're going to
Speaker 2: be able to do it. And they would be like,
Speaker 2: I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Like everyone using encrypted tech st apps and.
Speaker 2: Things like everybody today in America is taught to.
Speaker 3: Change their password.
Speaker 2: They're taught like children are taught like, hey, there could
Speaker 2: be a bad guy. There could be a hacker. You
Speaker 2: need to change your passwords so somebody doesn't like try
Speaker 2: to steal your computer data. Right there. We're taught at
Speaker 2: work and in school to not click on phishing emails. Right.
Speaker 2: We have taught our entire society to be somewhat resilient
Speaker 2: against cyber threats, right. I think we can do the
Speaker 2: same thing for espionage threats and information operation threats and
Speaker 2: teach them very basic skills starting in grade school in
Speaker 2: like an age appropriate way in grade school, but ultimately
Speaker 2: by high school and college and in work, like in
Speaker 2: a real way, here are some basic things you can do.
Speaker 2: Don't trust just any piece of information you see, right,
Speaker 2: You need to think about where it came from, what's
Speaker 2: the source, triangulate it with something like if it looks weird,
Speaker 2: it probably is weird, right Like, And hey, don't trust
Speaker 2: any piece of technology that you're given. Like we've been
Speaker 2: taught as a society to just trust technology because historically
Speaker 2: it's just been a consumer good that was made by
Speaker 2: another American. That's not the case anymore. Like apps and
Speaker 2: so forth come from people who don't have our best
Speaker 2: intentions at heart, right, and they're not just trying to
Speaker 2: make money, And so you need to start and look
Speaker 2: and say, Okay, I don't just simply trust technology. I
Speaker 2: think like an intelligence officer, I'm going to assess where
Speaker 2: it's from and what the threats might be and give
Speaker 2: it a second and those kinds of things they those
Speaker 2: are These are basic life skills that I do think
Speaker 2: can be taught at a literal level in grade school
Speaker 2: and in high school and at work and and so forth.
Speaker 2: But I don't even think they necessarily have to even
Speaker 2: be taught by the government. They can be you know,
Speaker 2: taught by families and you know, and and parents can
Speaker 2: teach their kids and and and so forth. Right like that,
Speaker 2: it's not rocket science, Like like you're your your you know,
Speaker 2: your trust me, your average case officer is not a
Speaker 2: rocket scientist. Like these are people who like you know,
Speaker 2: are just like good at talking and like taking people
Speaker 2: to dinner. Like this is this does not have to
Speaker 2: be you know, super super complicated, but like there's just
Speaker 2: a basic way to think. And it doesn't mean being
Speaker 2: paranoid all the time. Just means being basically cautious the
Speaker 2: way we are with crime. Right Like you you know,
Speaker 2: if you have if you have a child, you teach
Speaker 2: your child like from an early age, like, hey, we're
Speaker 2: in a bad neighborhood. Just be careful, hold my hand,
Speaker 2: don't leave stuff out in the car if it's parked overnight,
Speaker 2: you know, because if somebody might break in. Like we
Speaker 2: teach these things. I mean, we teach kids active shooter drills. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: like they understand there are threats in the world. This
Speaker 2: is another threat and let's you know, go out and
Speaker 2: show people how to deal with this threat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I strongly agree with you that we
Speaker 1: need to do a lot more to invest in individual
Speaker 1: human beings and human capital and education and all these things.
Speaker 1: I think you're right about, you know, educating children specifically,
Speaker 1: because I really think anyone who's my age or older
Speaker 1: is in some ways already lost sadly, and I look
Speaker 1: at like, you know, you can log onto some social
Speaker 1: media and see people my parents' age freaking out about
Speaker 1: what is to me obvious AI slop. It's just somebody
Speaker 1: had AI generate a picture through it on Facebook, And
Speaker 1: now these people are sixty seventy years old losing their
Speaker 1: minds about it. And it's like, I see when I
Speaker 1: see that, I'm like, I'm not sure how you knows
Speaker 1: as a society, how we recover from sort of like
Speaker 1: our feet have come off the ground. You mentioned you
Speaker 1: mentioned Baudriard in your book, and you know how there
Speaker 1: was a time where, you know, maybe in the nineties
Speaker 1: when he was writing that stuff, it didn't seem totally
Speaker 1: real or relevant. But now here we are in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, and it really does feel like we're living
Speaker 1: in that world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is. Yeah. The good, good, good
Speaker 2: pick from the book and and like yeah, he was
Speaker 2: writing about how we'd all be in this simulacro like
Speaker 2: everything would be fake and there wouldn't be real anymore,
Speaker 2: and like the internet's sort of becoming like that, like
Speaker 2: where you know, the AI is just like feeding on
Speaker 2: itself almost and it is you know, that is an
Speaker 2: imaginable world or where like there's just doubt, right, like
Speaker 2: you're just not sure what the trust. But I'll tell you,
Speaker 2: what I really worry about is actually not those kind
Speaker 2: of call them big fake things, like obvious fake things.
Speaker 2: Like what I really worry about is when it's like
Speaker 2: really subtle, right, like when you just change and adjective
Speaker 2: that someone uses, or even like the tone of their voice,
Speaker 2: that subtly influences how somebody thinks about something, right, And
Speaker 2: it'd be so hard to spot that, right if you're
Speaker 2: just changing single words or tone, right, and and but
Speaker 2: doing that those subtle changes continuously and over time, like
Speaker 2: you're talking to an AI and it never says something
Speaker 2: blatant like Tiana mins Square never happened, the Weakers are
Speaker 2: free people, Like it never says anything like that. It
Speaker 2: just always gives you like a slightly skewed answer, right,
Speaker 2: like you know, like you know Tianamen Square. Instead of
Speaker 2: saying Tianaman Square was a terrible human rights abuse, it
Speaker 2: says Tianaman Square could have been done better, you know,
Speaker 2: something like that, right, like it, like it. It just
Speaker 2: makes these subtle change or even more subtle than that,
Speaker 2: right over time, and that influences people over time. And
Speaker 2: that's what like our generation I think is going to
Speaker 2: fall for, like our parents generation is falling for like
Speaker 2: the blatant, fake ones, but like I think we're going
Speaker 2: to fall for the subtle stuff where like you can't
Speaker 2: even see it and you're like, oh, this looks like
Speaker 2: a New York Times story or a Wall Street Journal
Speaker 2: story or a news back story, whatever your preferred like
Speaker 2: media outlet is, and you're like, and everything it adds
Speaker 2: on the site where I read it through chat GPT,
Speaker 2: but there's just subtle words changed. And that that's to
Speaker 2: me the scariest thing and probably where all this goes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, it's it's hard or impossible for someone to
Speaker 1: spot a negative, right if TikTok just kind of sensors
Speaker 1: or deprioritizes any content about say Taiwan, you know, most
Speaker 1: people aren't going to realize that content just isn't there
Speaker 1: and that it isn't reaching them.
Speaker 3: There's not going to know.
Speaker 2: That's it. I mean, that is literally what's happening with
Speaker 2: TikTok right now where they do these studies. There's this
Speaker 2: group out of Ruckers that has done these it's called
Speaker 2: like a volume metric statistical study, and they show that
Speaker 2: on TikTok versus other social media sites like Instagram, there's
Speaker 2: less mention of Taneman Square, the weikers, or these human
Speaker 2: rights abuses for example. It's not that it's zero, right,
Speaker 2: it's plausibly deniable. They're like, you know, look you can
Speaker 2: see the weaker stuff here, just less. And then what
Speaker 2: they've shown these groups is that it's working because the
Speaker 2: longer they show this, the longer you are on TikTok,
Speaker 2: the more you use it, the more benevolent view of
Speaker 2: the human rights record of the Chinese Communist Party you
Speaker 2: will have. Right. And so it's like just these subtle
Speaker 2: things have an effect, and when you look at it
Speaker 2: across a generation like and millions of people, it has
Speaker 2: enough of effect. For example, that could lead to more
Speaker 2: of a not being elected who wanted to defend Taiwan
Speaker 2: in a war. And so over time, as there are
Speaker 2: more and more voters in this group and just enough
Speaker 2: of them have been skewed in this direction, America all
Speaker 2: of a sudden, China doesn't have to worry about is
Speaker 2: defending Taiwan because they have convinced an entire generation that
Speaker 2: we shouldn't defend it in the first place.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, exactly.
Speaker 1: So the book The Fourth Intelligence Revolution, this is out today,
Speaker 1: right out today. People can go and find this wherever
Speaker 1: books are sold. Anthony, are there, like we covered a
Speaker 1: lot of ground in this interview. Are there any topics
Speaker 1: that you'd really like to talk about that we didn't
Speaker 1: get into.
Speaker 2: Well, just say one thing, like it can be sort
Speaker 2: of depressing to hear about all this a high and
Speaker 2: cognitive warfare and all of these things. And I sort
Speaker 2: of end the book on this, like, look, ultimately, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, America is still the most
Speaker 2: powerful nation in the world. It's very clear on essentially
Speaker 2: every line. And now what I think we need to
Speaker 2: do is kind of keep it that way. And there's
Speaker 2: still room for people to come and serve and do
Speaker 2: that directly in government and become an intelligence officer. And
Speaker 2: by the way, you don't need to study you know,
Speaker 2: international relations and speak five languages anymore. Maybe you're a
Speaker 2: technologist or you have you have an MBA, and right like,
Speaker 2: we need MBAs because we're doing economic intelligence, right like,
Speaker 2: so there's still room to serve and help it. But
Speaker 2: even if you're outside of intelligence, like you're working at
Speaker 2: a tech company or something, you can still help that company.
Speaker 2: Like building these dual use technologies matters. It helps, like
Speaker 2: we need them. We need people who care about this stuff,
Speaker 2: and we also need people to just know what's going
Speaker 2: on in intelligence so that you can kind of be
Speaker 2: part of the system, maybe become like a citizen intelligence officer,
Speaker 2: like I said, to defend yourself and your family and
Speaker 2: your community, but also to know what our government's doing. Right.
Speaker 2: And like every time there's this intelligence revolution, there's been
Speaker 2: a backlash. We had the Church Commission, we had Edward Snowden, Like,
Speaker 2: inevitably intelligence will overstep the bounds. That just seems to
Speaker 2: be a truism unfortunately. But by paying attention, bye, by
Speaker 2: focusing on what's going on and like, you can help
Speaker 2: to ensure that it does the right things. We still
Speaker 2: need to transform, We still need to you know, touch
Speaker 2: the chalk line, and that's what intelligence does sometimes. But
Speaker 2: you know, you can play a role in elect the
Speaker 2: right people and make the right choices, and that's important.
Speaker 2: And so that's I was, you know, I hoped I
Speaker 2: sort of ended the book on that, and I think
Speaker 2: it's sort of the most important takeaway, Anthony.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find you online if they're
Speaker 1: interested in connecting with you or you know that any
Speaker 1: of the companies that you're sitting on the boards of.
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, you can hit me up. I have a
Speaker 2: website Anthony Vincey dot com and all my social sites
Speaker 2: are on there. I have a substack three kinds of
Speaker 2: Intelligence that I published, and I get into some of
Speaker 2: these types of issues and technology and national security. And
Speaker 2: you can hit me up on LinkedIn or on x
Speaker 2: and you know, would love love to hear from you,
Speaker 2: and and and you know, love to kind of help,
Speaker 2: you know, continue being part of the community and helping
Speaker 2: people learn about sbnage and what's going on.
Speaker 1: So again, the book is the Fourth Intelligence Revolution by
Speaker 1: our guest Anthony Vinci. The books available now. There will
Speaker 1: be links down the description for people listening to the
Speaker 1: podcast or watching this on the YouTube's to go and
Speaker 1: check it out. Anthony, thank you for joining us on
Speaker 1: a Friday evening and spending some of your time with us.
Speaker 2: Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it and everyone else.
Speaker 1: Will see you guys next time. Actually, we'll see you
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty six. Hey guys, I want to tell
Speaker 1: all of you today about a new newsletter that we're
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