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