Born and raised in denver. Coming home to colorado. Hes presently professor at the practice the university of southern california. The place that is a lot warmer than it is here. But most recently, he was chairman of the National Intelligence council. He left that job in january 2017. Im sure greg will talk about the end i see. As many of you have heard me and others talk about the every four year global trend series. The most recent version of that bears his signature. Global trends 2035. Before then he directed the Rand Corporation for global risk insecurity. Before that the intelligence policy center. He was associate dean of the rand graduate school. His Government Service includes service on the Senate Select committee on intelligence. Handling European Affairs for the National Security council. Vice chairman of the National Intelligence council that he later chaired until january 2017. At which point, he was overseeing the riding of Americas National riding estimates. Hes taught at harvard and columbia universities. He has been a senior fellow at the council of foreign relations. Hes been Deputy Director at the International Institute of strategic studies in london. He owns and maybe degree from princeton university, a masters and ph. D. In Public Policy and economics and politics from harvard university. Three books recently in the last six years. Most recently telling truth to power, a history of the National Intelligence council which he coedited with robert hatchings. Published by Oxford University press just last year. Weve been going back and forth trying to find a good time for greg to come out and talk. It is unfortunate that he could only come out now because there is nothing happening in the Intelligence Community that bears any, that merits any of our attention. Without any further ado, please join me in welcoming a long time friend, greg trump written. Thank you my friend. Such a treat to be here. Scott has already stolen one of my best lines which is sorry there is no nothing talk about intelligence. Great treat to be here. I grew up in denver. My parents, we were a middle class family. I was always trying to attach myself to their trips in broad more, i casually did. I got them to go to the broad more so we could listen to more lena the trick. When i was a teenager, she was a great idol of mine. Always fun to be in colorado. Im a little daunted by the turnout. It reminds me of the opposite. We should be work for this. This is a story that you can only tell in circumstances that make it entirely inappropriate to tell. Some of you may remember louise de hicks who is the and i was a politician in south boston. The only funny story i know about her. She is giving a speech and you will see its an anecdote that you can only tell and circumstances that you cant tell it. Shes giving a speech and is midway through it. She knows theres only one person in the audience, a woman. She turns to the woman and says, this is kind of silly. I could just give you my speech, i dont have to speak. The woman says thats fine im the next speaker. laughs i should probably start with where i am coming from. Everyone doesnt know anything about the National Intelligence council. Its the director of the National Intelligence sea arm for inner analysis. This president doesnt not want to know much of anything as far as i can tell. If there was a president who wanted to know something, he or she would ask the and i see. What does the Intelligence Community think about this . They could ask for a cia view, a state department view. But if they wanted to know what the community thought. The and i see is like a little state department. Organized regionally and functionally with National Intelligence officers for regions and functions. They come from anywhere inside or outside government. When i was hiring them, all i wanted was to make sure they were a worldclass expert on their topic. Their deputies, who like everywhere else in government make the place run, come from intelligence agencies for two or threeyear period. They were terrific. They were probably the biggest number was from cia. I had deputy National Intelligence officers who, all of the agencies. I had a cyber analyst from secret service. I did not even know the secret service did cyber even had a wonderful young analyst from nypd a great set of people and a wonderful set of people to work with. Scott has already mentioned Global Trends we can talk about that later. A wonderful kind of brand for the and i see. I ended up doing two things. My last two things, my last two tasks before i left were overseeing that Global Trends which was an unclassified publication done every four years done by the end i see looking ahead 20 years. The other was the opposite, that was the report on russian meddling in our elections in 2016. It went to both the Obama Administration and the Incoming Trump administration. I also, i was a little late we could not get Global Trends done quite quickly enough so we did not release it until january. I thought at that point i had to take it to the new administration. I was worried there would be some objection, we talked a lot about Climate Change as a major trend. I did not want to have to go back to my friends in the Obama Administration and say you have to protect this. It is your document not there is. Fortunately when i took it to mr. Flynn, the National Security adviser, he was shall we say otherwise occupied. I dont think anyone in the Incoming Administration even noticed it for better or for worse. What id like to do tonight is talk about the future of intelligence. Ill start by talking about as though these might be normal times. These are very abnormal times so it is a little bit strange to have that conversation. I was in washington last week for a 40th Anniversary Commemoration of the National Intelligence council. On the day maguire was fired. We sort of pretended that it was okay. That it was meant to be celebratory so we kept it that way. Let me start what i think about the future of intelligence for normal times and then and with comments about where we are. This is very different times, but i never quite imagined or expected might be. First on my list to kick off, five or six things. First on my list is the challenge of doing strategic analysis. Strategic intelligence by which i mean, intelligence that tries to put pieces together, say how important issues are relating to each other. Often looking forward in time. That was the Traditional Mission of the National Intelligence council when i was vice chair. As scott said i was vice chair 20 years ago. So i am a very slow rise are, 20 years to become chairman. Then we mostly did National Intelligence estimates, more forwardlooking pieces. Hard to put together. We worried were we relevant . It takes a long time to do these things and try to catch a window on the policy side. Its difficult. After the creation of the director of National Intelligence, the National Intelligence council is now the immediate Intelligence Support Group for the main policy committees in washington. The principles committee, thats the cabinet secretaries involved in National Security. More important, their deputies, the deputies committee. I do not think these communities these committees meet much anymore. During during the Obama Administration the deputies met every saturday often many times. The steady stream of questions that came out of those committees was great on the one hand. Because we knew what was going on. We were in the thick of things. It also meant, did we have time to raise our sights a little bit and say, heres a little more strategic view. We are always on the lookout for opportunities to do that. Not all the questions we got from the deputies were purely operational. Wed get interesting ones like if we do x, how will putin respond . We would do that. Thats always a case where i wanted to say you ask this question. We give you our best answer. But maybe youd also be interested in the answer to a question you did not quite ask. What is driving . What is the backdrop to these immediate actions he might do . We always tried to do that. Trying to find time to do it, hard. My National Intelligence officers in hot accounts. Russia, middle east, terrorism. They could end mostly did spend their lives preparing for, going to and following up on white house meetings. One of my colleagues used to say, black suburban problem. They would spent most of their time in black suburbans going back and forth to the white house. My last year, we did 700 pieces of paper or sets a bites on a computer. Of those, 400 were pretty directly questions that came out from the National Security adviser, the deputies committee. Not purely operational but ones we wanted to keep raising our sights. The other thing that struck me in this strategic, tactical realm was terrorism. I understand the political imperative of terrorism. But in fact if you look at jihadi terrorism, muslim terrorism in the united states. It is a trivial, its a nuisance. That is not the way its treated politically and it is not the way people think of it. They think its a big deal. I understood, we spent a lot of attention to it, but it was pretty defining of our work in several senses. When we looked at nigeria, there was never much nigeria there. It was only boko haram the terrorist group. We looked at boko haram, there was not much boko haram there either. It was mostly can we unravel the networks . Identify the bad guys and take them out. I understood the political imperative but it was deforming to our work. The second issue for me is about stories. I think of intelligence has about storytelling and story adjusting. If there is no story, then you get a piece of information and it does not go anywhere. It is hard to fit. So the story is critical. Most of the things that get called intelligence failures are examples of the story being a good story until its not. A story being overtaken by events. My favorite example, not favorite since its not a good thing, my most striking example is ebola. Im always struck by the comparisons and similarities between medicine and intelligence. This is one where the medical community had a story about ebola. The story was that people who got it would die before they could spread it. Therefore, it would flare up in little communities and die. That story worked until it got outmoded by better rural to urban communications. Those people who got ebola, did not always die before they saw somebody else or went to an urban area. Stories are critical to me. I keep thinking about some of our stories when i was chairman of the and i see. Whats the story about the middle east i kept asking . We were looking for a strategy. But a story wouldve done. I never got a very good one. Never got a satisfactory one. Its a hard and complicated place, but i never got a good story. I noticed even in the Obama Administration, we never really made a strategic choice about whether we cared more about isis or assad. In the end we rather let the russians make that decision for us. That seems to be a case where we did not have a story. You might think of north korea to where weve had a similar story for 20 years and it has not really worked. That is more a policy story than an intelligence story. But it does illustrate the importance of story. Next on my list is really transparency and big data. Transparency. The world is now full of cameras. Information is ubiquitous. My colleagues tell me my car has 12 sensors that emit things that people can listen to if they wanted to. Shortly before i left washington, i was in a meeting with some texas. They would not have a car made after 2007. Apparently that is the magic date on which cars became full of sensors. They were really worried that someone could hack into their car, lock them in their car and then demand ransom. Probably dont need to worry about that. But anyway, transparency is here. I did not do operations obviously when i was at the end i see. It is an analytic organization. Sometimes i think about the way we do intelligence operations, it reminds me the old road runner cartoons right . Where the road runner would run off the cliff and wouldnt fall till he looked down. In most of our trade crafts for spying we are off the cliff we just havent looked down. The way we typically done espionage out of embassies. That is gone. Biometrics, facial recognition, that is gone. We might not have realized yet but it is gone. One of my colleagues before i left iran was a former stations chief in a european country, he was asked by the agency to do a task for them he said yes ill do it but only under true name. Im not going to do this undercover because then i will never get back into this country for a holiday. Right . When we come to grips with it does mean in the future, espionage is going to be almost entirely done through liaison and partners. Maybe will be able to do quick operations but the idea of having people resident in the embassies that are not acknowledged to the locals, i think that is essentially gone. That is one side. The other side is big data. I think that is a great boom for intelligence. It is harder for intelligence because google basically wants to know where greg trevor ton is going to be tomorrow. They can target me with ads im interested in. Its sort of a bounded problems. An intelligence, were trying to think about certain futures. Great thank you. Its a harder analyst founded problem. I think were making some headway. Let me give you a few examples. I started to experiment with a Data Scientist in my africa account on the premise that there is not a lot of Intelligence Data about africa. Theres also not a lot of big data about africa but there is data. It was interesting to see what we could find looking at data with a good Data Scientist. It was pretty impressive. We could with social media and other things like that be pretty good at predicting famine, and disease. Indeed we did a lot of work on a bullet, im pretty good at that. My goal for that work was to say, can we give tips to analysts . Can we say maybe you should think of these two things that youve not thought of as related together. Or maybe you should look here. I also inherited a Prediction Market. You may have read about this. Phil ted lock was the author and creator of one of them. What we would do is have people bet on particular events. Whats the chances that north korea is going to launch another icbm in the next two months . People would bet. I did not much really care about the bets or the results. What i cared about was using this Prediction Market as a kind of red team. If the Prediction Market said the chances of a coup in country ex 50 and the experts said 20 . Then that was a way to have a conversation, start a conversation. I was less interested in the particular results than the differences between what the Prediction Market was saying and what analysts were saying. One of the interesting things about the Prediction Market is, it turns out just like some people are better athletes, some people are apparently better predictors than others. So phil talks about super predictors. The even better news for me was that you can get better as a predictor with a pretty small amount of training. All of the training as you might imagine goes toward helping you keep an open mind just an instant longer. Keeping an open mind just a few seconds longer. Next on my list is breaking the intelligence cycle. Forgive me if this is . Intelligence says we collect, we analyze the collection and then we disseminate would vandalized. Agencies always want the report, give me that spy report. It never quite worked that way. But it is a sort of linear process that might have made some sense during the cold war because then we had one big advisory, the soviet union. Secretive. So we had to sort of ask how do we find out about these things . Seems to be entirely inappropriate in a world where information is ubiquitous. So trying to think about how to replace it. I got excited before i went into the government with something called activity based intelligence. I will not inflict that on you. It was pretty successful in afghanistan and iraq in using data from very different sources to produce what they call patterns of life that would let us distinguish bad guys, potential terrorists, from ordinary muslims going to the mosque. What i liked about it was the spirit as much as the letter. What it did is it said we are sequence neutral. We may know the answer before we know the question. It would collect lots of data that might be useful later, when you think about life. Im so struck about how true that is of life. How many times in life you realize i never knew i was puzzled by that until i knew the answer. The other thing about it that i liked was it was data neutral. Data is good, if it isnt it isnt. It does not matter where it comes from, intelligence tends to prize its own sources. The nice thing about this is it broke down that tendency. The next big challenge for me is thinking how intelligence adds value. New ways of ending value. I give the example of the National Geo Spatial intelligence agency, or nba angie a. You only get three letters in the intelligence. Many of their products are now available on google for free. Their specialized imagery that is interesting but they faced the challenge if people can get our stuff for free, how do we add value . They have been at the forefront of thinking about this problem. My experience i had won a hot moment when i was there vice chairman of the and i see. We thought our products were National Intelligence estimates, but they were really National Intelligence officers. It was really the people. Not the paper. The paper was our homework and calling card. The real payoff was the people because they could be in meetings, and elevators and have quick conversations. Did not have to be too careful about what was intelligence and what was policy. They could just be policy. I did a study of the president s daily brief before going back into the government. All of the cia had collected a history of oral histories from policymakers. This thing that is probably the most expensive publication since guttenberg. They liked the briefers better. Because the briefers. They could consult other experts. I think more and more of adding value, client service, not a term i like too much. If i was worried that intelligence would go whole hog in that direction i would be worried. Its likely to continue these exquisite products for a very long time. Last on my list of challenges for ordinary times is about competition and colleagues. Intelligence is always worried about being scooped. Competitions. When i was vice chairman in the 1990s, we worried about cnn. Well cnn scoop us . I always thought that was kind of stupid because i thought better to get it right a little later than get it wrong a little sooner. But that was the ethos. Now what strikes me is how much there is out there that could be competition, it is in some sense, but also its a great opportunity to cooperate. Let me give you the 2016 example. 2016 came as a surprise to us what it probably shouldnt have. Later i learned there was a private group looking at jihadi websites 2014 and they discovered that many of the posters for free syria warrant syrians. There were russians. They were on to the russians in 2014. They said they came to the u. S. Government. Happily they didnt come to me. The government said, were not interested in russians, were interested in jihadi terrorists. It illustrated to me the possibilities of reaching out. In this instance, you do not need to contract with them all you did need to do was listen to them. There was great possibilities and intelligence which is a closed culture. We were prepared to reach out more, had a lot of partners out there. Its also true i think in the cyber realm. Now its complicating point allergens because if a hack occurs then intelligence is by the traditional process, intelligence would attribute or try and attribute that hack and then passed that attribution to policy in secret. The policy people would decide what to do. Now there are all these private companies doing their own attribution, they will make that public whenever they want to, that when the government wants. So in the short run it feels like a complication to many people in intelligence. And the longer run, it seems to be a great opportunity. A great opportunity to cooperate. Work with other people. And in some senses, its even good for sources and methods, something intelligence worries about a lot. Theyll have to be a little more open about intelligence has to be in how they got to their particular attribution. Let me conclude and then look forward to your comments and questions with the times we are in. It seems like, these days we are in a period where truth is subjective, personal, partisan. In some ways, it seems to me like the very concept of truth, that is the idea that spoken statements can be validated or invalidated, is under attack. That is a world i never expected to be in. Its a world very uncomfortable for intelligence as you can imagine. To be a little bit lighter, let me interject one of my favorite. I always wanted when i was in a car going somewhere to have the car pickmeup and the main entrance. I liked it because it is light and airy and because it reminded me, im in the intelligence business now. Ive always found it curious in the walls there is etched the quote from john. You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. I always thought that was very curious. Particularly curious in that setting. Really for two reasons. One because there may be divine truth, but an intelligence truth is really sort of good enough for government work. The best we could do. Its not infallible, far from it. The second thing that always struck me about that is intelligence truth, perhaps as opposed to divine truth, is more likely to constrain. Intelligence analysts are wildly fond of telling policy people that the 11 11 reasons why their best ideas cannot work. Its more likely to constrain policies and set it free. Anyways i giggled every time i saw that particular line on the wall. How intelligence responds in this period . I guess i hope that this period doesnt last but it will linger. In the short run, i dont see much alternative but for intelligence to sort of doubled down and say you know we are in the business of trying to tell you the truth as best we can write . If you do not want it or want to listen to it, that is okay, but our mission is to try and give you our best judgment on what is true and what is probably not true. I just hope somebody listens. Thank you very much. applause we have to microphones tonight. Ill be working this side of the room and my colleague will work the other side. We look for hands over here, we have a set of students over there and a set of students back over there. We will start here, we will go back and forth, what i will take the liberty of the first question to call on the point you just made. I am not talking about any particular administration because this is in democrat to several. How does the Intelligence Community protect against the politicize a shun of intelligence . With that i will start working towards a hand walking towards a hand. Guys you have breakfast plans . I could talk a long time about that. Years ago, i used to worry not much about politicize asian. In those days i would find these great intelligence analysis that were wonderful answers to questions nobody was asking. Right . Mostly we used to call them self looking ice cream cones. Now in the last years, even before recent events, i would much more about politicization. It is always a danger. And in some ways, for me, its less of a danger the more overtly and administration tries to lean on intelligence because that makes it sort of clear and makes the sides clear. The harder parts are when there is a little bit of self politicization. We think about the famous, infamous now, 2002 National Intelligence testimony on the weapons of mass destruction. That was sort of self politicized. It wasnt as though the Bush Administration pushed really hard to have an interpretation. Most people including me who opposed the war thought, yeah Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction. We were in a mindset to let us into something that later looked like politicization. But it is a worry. There is no easy answer. I used to think it was always great to have a good friend of the president as the director of Central Intelligence or National Intelligence. I have now come around to thinking of someone more like the fbi where you have terms. But that did not do mr. Comey much good. In terms of terms. Again, trying to find some protection, particularly if you imagine times like we are in now. Not going away but continuing in some form. Then probably finding ways to protect intelligence a bit is important. It is a shame because, these 80,000 people that work in intelligence, they really are throw going professionals. They work for the country and thats what they think they do. Not for any administration. Indeed my former vice chair, now is mr. Trumps briefer. Politics, i know this because we were close, but no one else we know this. Her politics were probably closer to mine but shes developed a sort of grudging sympathy, maybe even affection for mr. Trump seeing him three times a week. A real professional. She is a real professional. Before the election, i did a letter of resignation which i do not use because i promised my friends in the Obama Administration that i would stay. Later i praise my colleagues saying they are throwing professionals who work for the country not for any administration. I said i admire you but im not one of you. Ive only come to washington to work for administrations i care about. What is striking about them is they are real professionals. First question over here. Hi this is a simple question. Do the different intelligence entities with the three letters, do they share information or are they possessive of their information . Good question. Question about human nature is well right . 9 11 made a big difference. Before 9 11 the three letter agencies, if you read the 9 11 commission report, there were famous meetings in new york in the summer of 2011 where literally, the fbi and the cia did not know what they could tell each other. For the fbi it was am i going to blow a case by talking to these folks . For the cia it was, are they really clear to hear this . That was the state. When i first came to washington in the 1970s, ancient history, the cia and fbi directors were not on speaking terms. They did not talk to each other. Things got better, but 9 11 made a big difference. They now do they realize they have to talk to each other. Fbi people at the and i see. The National Counter terrorism centers. Clubhouse against terrorism that has all the agencies. I among the three litter agencies it has gotten a lot better. The dni may take some credit for that, but i think mostly 9 11 did it. We really need to talk. There is much more cross building of people. That has gotten a lot better. Cooperation between state local authorities in the private sector, that is harder. Next question here. At the start of your talk, you spoke about doing the longrange intelligence assessments. Can you say a little bit about things that you saw coming and things you did not see coming from these assessments . These have been done. The Global Trends have been done every four years since the late 1990s. First was global trans 2015, done in about 1996. I do not get to do that, but i played some role in thinking about the idea. I realized this is not only these things have to be and classified, hes in 20 years none of that secret stuff on your computers isnt much good. What you have to do is talk to people and get out there. Doing won in 2017, we talked to maybe 2000 people in 35 countries. The other thing i realized is if a document were secret and was going to look out 20 years. You give it to a policy counterpart and he or she would say terrific i already look forward to this. Never open it. Never look at it. The tyranny of the immediate. What if we get press. I release the 2017 and a museum in a daylong event at washington. My hope was to get press and then policy people would talk to their special assistance and say what the devil is the and i see up to . Then we get someone to Pay Attention to us that way. When i looked at the 2015 one, what struck me was that it was good but it was a little bit too straight lined thinking. In 1996, globalization looked pretty good. It certainly talked about terrorism and bad things but it made me realize i needed to pay more attention to things that maybe were not likely but highly consequential. My critique would be, as it is much of intelligence, too much emphasis on probability and not enough emphasis on consequence. If i look that sort of the record, i did recently this book that scott mentioned about the National Intelligence council. When i looked at its record through the years, was good in lots of things. It foreshadowed the current terms were authorities authoritarianism in china. It did a lot of work on china. It got lots of aspects of terrorism right. It talked, way before it happened, about the sort of disintegration of europe. On the whole pretty good. Studies people have done predicting the future cannot be the role of intelligence. What we are trying to do is frame interesting futures that will be provocative and help people think. But it is still nice to get it right. You still are getting it right. Hi there. So i was curious about some of the proactive policies and activities that have been enacted in the last couple of years. What are some proactive and positive things that have been going on within the Intelligence Community currently . Proactive and positive lets see. Mostly trying to stay alive i guess. For many of us, this has not been a time for shall we say lots of proactive measures right . Lots of things you might like to do. I think mostly its been trying to hold their own. Trying to do their job. Trying to say things that are true as they can. Havent always gotten protective. I got a really good scientist who worked for me. He worked on food and water and climate issues. He really got thrown under the bus for some congressional testimony he gave and was actually forced out. There i thought that was a case where the director of National Intelligence really needed to protect him but it did not happen. I dont think beneath beneath the surface initiatives are happening. But it has not been a time of them holding their own, trying to keep good trade craft alive, as much as possible. A little defensive im sorry. Hi sir i just retired after 37 years at the National Security agency, the frustration that i shared before i retired and that my former colleagues still share is most of our career we present our intelligence and the policy makers were very receptive and took what seemed to us to be the proper action. The Current Administration not so much. They dont want to hear it. They dont want to believe it when we briefed them. Got to the point where i turned in my retirement paperwork because my job to frustrating can you speak to how we bring policy makers back on board . That we dont make this stuff up. That intelligence is a real thing. A really good question. It goes to my concern about truth and the future. I thought that its one thing to not care about the truth if its the audience at your own dog ration. But its another thing to not care about the truth if you are sending people into combat in syria. One point before the transition, we were briefing mr. Trump about syria and he said gosh this is pretty complicated. I thought, maybe this is a complication with your moral duty to care for american soldiers would make a difference. Maybe it has a little bit but its been tough going. Its been rough going i think. You should probably stay in this room but my former colleague was doing the brief. They would do two versions. They would do the usual book, the post guttenberg book. Four other senior officials and then they would essentially do a table math for mr. Trump with is not a reader obviously, mr. Regan wasnt either, not that were not used to pay residents who dont read. Mostly pictures. Really careful about bad news. Goes back to the worry about politicize asian. On the one hand, no president likes bad news. But this one is extreme shall we say. And so you worry that being careful does slide into pulling the punches. I do not see much of that yet. But it is worry. Created the position of director of National Intelligence. The Job Description says the incumbent must have an extensive intelligence background. Mr. Trump has just appointed mr. Grinnell in an active capacity, what do you think about that . For me it is a travesty. Right . It says i want to have somebody there who i can rely on to do what i want basically. That is not my view of intelligence. It is often that truth constrains you, not set you free. It is a sadness and a travesty. I do not know whats going to happen next. My guess is one way trump can keep him in office is to appoint someone else to be dni who is blatantly and confirmable. Then grinnell conserve forever. For me it really is a worry. Whatever you think about the director of National Intelligence, it ought to be someone previous directors of National Intelligence have often done the briefing of the president themselves. My boss, jim clapper, did it a couple of days a week. So, worry. For me a big worry. This one over here. Could you please comment on what the u. S. Intelligence community is doing for Counter Intelligence. Meaning that some of the most historical countries that have issues with the united states, meaning russia and china, obviously have their own intelligence operations continuing out of this country. What is the u. S. Intelligence community doing to counter the cross spying . Good question. Im not great at Counter Intelligence. Ill give you a kind of a partial answer. For me, the most interesting thing is how do you think, you typically think of Counter Intelligence as protecting our Intelligence Services and organs of government fight from penetration by other Intelligence Services. But now you can imagine that Counter Intelligence is really about, in some ways, the whole country. You think about 2016. You think about the continuing russian efforts to interfere in elections. It really does dramatically broadened in some sense the gambit of Counter Intelligence. Exactly how that works out is i think very much a sort of work in progress. Counter intelligence has always been a kind of separate domain. I remember when i was introduced to it by james angleton, one of my first jobs in washington. Angleton who was a consummate Counter Intelligence, he referred to Counter Intelligence as a wilderness of mirrors where you whether you never knew if someone was a double or triple or quadruple agent. That is still there but it is the old way. Now we have the russians using cyber tools, social media tools. Its a different world. What struck me was this in New York Group that the russians had which seemed to be incredibly stupid. It made me feel much better about the russians. They sponsored all of these people to have nice lives in new york. Their children liked it. As far as i can tell, they do not get any useful intelligence. Its a nice reminder, as is russian trade craft in 2016 which they used again in the french elections was not great. Its not as though the russians are terrific at it. The chinese are so far mostly in a somewhat different game as far as i can tell. Using in the grays including students which is a challenge for us teaching it universities. But also using sort of traditional funding, funding confusion institutes. Things that are more familiar but that they can do on a scale. Quite aside from the disparagement of the community, how much actual damage has been done . Is it retrievable . I think so far, not a retrievable demings. Its not like the state department. The state department is, and i worry whether it can come back. Wholesale losses, that hasnt been the case of intelligence so far. My worry i suppose still is, if you go into intelligence you pay a financial price, obviously anything you do in the government you pay a financial price. But you also pay a lifestyle price. Who likes to be strapped up to a lie detector once every five years that does constrain your life, as one of my colleagues whose almost my age put it, i want to live my life like this. The cia once we live it like this. Shes nearly my so you imagine a kid. I worry that people tempted by intelligence might do it if they thought their work was valued. But if youre worried if your work is going to be ignored or dismissed. Thats what ive seen while recruiting overtime. Ive not seen big signs of that yet but i do worry a lot about it. What is the relationship between state department and the dni and the secretary of state and the dni . The easy answer. The rest of the answer is hard. The rest the easy answer is one of the key members, particularly from the and i see is the state department. The and i are, intelligence and research. It is small, 250 analysts. But it really typically punches above its way in Intelligence Community collaborations. Its kind of the opposite of the cia. Its much bigger, 3000 or 4000 analysts. But in the cia, the presumption is if you are a good analyst, you can analyze anything. So people move around. Particularly you want to go up, you have to move around from account to account pretty quickly. By contrast, ninr, the state department. If you want to work on germany your entire career you can and people do. Its really deep expertise versus the agency which is analytic complements. Kind of ongoing experiment. I would like to have some good anthropologist study it. Draw some conclusions from it. But it will probably not happen. That is the easy answer. The state is a valued member of the Intelligence Community. The good thing about state is they are small and the state department is not all that big. So i and our people have easy access. They can have those lunch conversations, those elevated conversations. In that sense, there is is a pretty Good Environment for intelligence. Different secretaries have different tastes. The inr used to do something called the morning summary which i loved. When colin powell was secretary he said, i get a lot of solutions from the outside, he said on bloombergs board or Something Like that. So he abolished it. So different secretaries have different tastes and different receptivity to their work. But certainly ian are is a value part of the community and we hope that it informs secretaries of state. I have a question that relates to certain aspects of john bolton. Im interested in your insights. Some people might use the word speculation but it raises some connotation, so lets assume im asking you for your insights. John bolton was in a position inside the administration as you were. If he had been allowed to go to the senate and give what he knew, in his book thats coming out in a couple of months. If he was able to get the subpoena up to the senate and be called tell us, would that have made a difference in terms of how the inquisition about impeachment came out . Would the senate have acted differently if they heard what was on john boltons mind and what he knew . Good question. I dont know bolton. I havent really crossed with him much at all. I think my answer is probably not. It seems to me what he wouldve done is tied the president much more directly to the conversations about withholding aid in exchange for an investigation of biden. But that was already pretty much on the record. He might have given it much more vividness. But i dont think that wouldve changed many minds in the senate. Too bad. Yeah. What i know about bolton is intriguing. My former special assistant whos been moved to the white house in the trump administration. He was friends with boltons special assistant. It turns out like lots of people who look like were very aggressive outside, hes very shy turns out. Bolton is very shy and likes Nothing Better than close his door and read briefing books. His special assistant was terrified then theyd run out of briefing books. But i think they ran out of bolton before that. You mentioned ebola earlier in your top. Now we have coronavirus. I wonder what your thoughts are on china and germ warfare . Also my second question, Vice President pence being appointed to be in charge of coronavirus the united states. That sounds like a good idea. Give him something to do. Keep him out of trouble. I remember when i was in the card ministration. We were at the Vice President s house and this was a point where mr. Carter wasnt doing well in the polls. And so monday, every time he went out, showed how popular he was and the president wasnt. He wasnt doing much of anything right . He turns to ice and said to the small group of us, you know its really hard to realize this is what we are going to do when we grow up. laughs so so much for mister pence. The chinese and germ warfare. No sense that theres anything, intended about this. You can say the chinese have been incompetent, i think that is right. It does show you the really the bad features of authoritarian regime. Where people are really willing to share the bad news, we lost a lot of time, it does i think that will have a long term effect in what the Chinese People think about their government. That comes after hong kong, i think it was a sideshow. What i think this does show, the inherent limitations, of an authoritarian regime. It also i seem, since she is centralized power, anything that happens in china is now him. Im surprised there arent people around him, trying to figure out how to get rid of him. Very quietly, i dont have any knowledge of that, it seems like kind of a natural thing to do. Sir i admire your education, and how you have overcome it. You are a yale person . I felt so sorry for you, help with all the softball questions and hardball questions. We takes a little bit of background, but not much. And explains why i never was interested in the intelligence business, even though i spent 20 years 20 days 20 minutes in the air force, i was a captain 15 years ago, flying light planes over the ho chi minh trail, our job was to review of supplies. Friend of mine when that one day, reported back to the debrief, that he saw 11 packed elephants, heading south along the jungle trail. This is the story, the person that relieved him and briefed him in the air, reported 13 pack elephants, then i heard about it, and talk to the intelligence major, and said well what did you report, and he said well, bill is known to lie, so maybe there were no elephants at all. And the other guy just wanted to do oneupmanship. Or maybe there were 24 elephants, first one counted 11 in the other 13. Or maybe it was the same heard, and the average number of elephants was 12. Maybe it means something else. When i heard all this rigmarole, i didnt want to be in the intelligence business, but it came to me that you might know you have the answer how many elephants were there sir. That is great that is wonderful. Lets see there should be an answer to that, something about bounded uncertainty. Thats a great story. Id give a partial answer to that, i was an interrogation, in 1966 to 67, in vietnam, talking to president ial board, the accounting, interesting thing was, i was the briefing the army regulars, at a time when they said this was an insurrection, of North Vietnam enemies in self elam. But i also saw numerous reports, of yet can, that we captured, citing the use of pack elephants on the ho chi minh trail. Thats good. The answers 24. Do you have another question that we have time for one or two more questions. Ill just pick up this point, hes a great war stories. These are students east, days vietnam is ancient history. But when i was teaching, it at the Kennedy School many years ago it wasnt. Then the inherited wisdom, was that we were clueless, we didnt understand the civil war, we didnt get it. So we will take them through the intelligence appraisals during the summer, before the escalations. And they were stunningly good. They were stunningly good. They said it would take three years, 500,000 americans, there commutation the common cherries was like why would anybody want to be involved in. It one of the johnsons had a comment later, but it was interesting, it was really on the mark. What haunts me, is i knew all this policy makers, mac bundy was a wonderful guy, smart guy, but they didnt believe it. This is reminiscent of iraq. There was some hubris, it cant be that hard, it just cant be that hard. I didnt think that we would do vietnam twice in my lifetime, but we managed to do it twice. I have a question for you, and the card ministration stance field turner, turn towards human intelligence, but what you mentioned earlier, in pause, they have all this data, we have that on the phone, step on our searches, you name it, could you unpack for me, where the Intelligence Community is going visavis human intelligence. I worked counterintelligence a while ago, and found it to be invaluable, in that you can have all points and pieces of data, but to be able to sit across from human, and read the body language, and read that communication, but versus what you might find a text or email, or a voice mail, or anything like that, but the body language and the human side of things, is extremely important. So if you can unpack it as to where the Intelligence Community is going to. I wish i knew. From my perspective, it is been a little like i said earlier it slow to embrace the torrent of information out there. Its hard, and it does have constraints, it has some constraints it accidents and use that google and others dont. So on the open source side, that is a big concern of mine. On the human side, i dont know theres been some interesting experiments. Latin american experiment, oh i just was given away a a Key Communications violation, but trying to think about how we see, well i dont see im not as close to anymore, but i dont see a lot of interesting things going on with respect to, what seems to be this very difficult espionage problem. Everybody likes spies, right, because if you like that is something special, im always reminding people that spying is like an opportunity business, even if you have a good spy, that spy may not be in the right meaning, may not be able to get information out, safely, so in my experience if you look at american spies, in foreign countries, they were all in the category people new, bout technology or, assets things that the russians or others would like to know about tomorrow or the next day. So i think were at an interesting period i just dont know enough about what is going on, and i dont want to give you a misleading answer. Any last questions . Going going, students, questions, please join me in thanking our speaker