Angry Planet - Talking Russia with the CIA's Former Eurasian Bureau Chief

Episode Date: December 5, 2022

We’ve talked a lot on this program about electronic intelligence—the amazing stuff you can do with satellites, user generated content and sophisticated software.Nice.But we’ve left out all the men and women who still do work on the ground, all over the world.Paul Kolbe is here to remind us about human intelligence and the role it plays. Kolbe is a CIA veteran, having worked in the directorate of operations for 25 years before moving on to private industry. He’s currently director of the Intelligence project at the Belfer Center at Harvard.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. And I'm Matthew Galt. We've talked a lot on this program about electronic intelligence, the amazing stuff you can do with satellites, user-generated content, and sophisticated software. Nice. But we've left out all the men and women who still do work on the ground all over the world. Paul Colby is here to remind us about human intelligence and the role it plays. Colby is a CIA veteran, having worked in the Directorate of Operations for 25 years before moving on to private.

industry. He's currently Director of Intelligence Project at the Belfare Center at Hart. Thank you so much for joining us. Great to be with you guys. I'd like to eventually get to the impact of human intelligence in the war in Ukraine, but you've had some unique

experiences, and I was hoping we could start there. Sure. Okay. So, you were chief Central Eurasia Division. What does that mean? What's the actual job? So at the time, CIA was broken into a couple of different directorates. So you had a director of operations, which was focused on human intelligence collection, a director of analysis, which were the folks that put together all source intelligence

to produce finished intelligence assessment for national security community and the president. You had a director of support, which was taken care of all of the business operations in the agency, how you establish facilities, how you travel, how you put it, communications, how you have security. And you had a Directorate of Science and Technology, which was focused both on big-ticket collection platforms, but also in supporting operations with things like communication devices, disguises, things like that. And so going back to your question, what was chief central area to the Central Eurasia division. So Director of Operations was broken into geographic components. And Central Asia encompassed former Soviet Union,

and former Warsaw Pact Balkan, Central Asia, so I was responsible for operations that took place, basically in areas of the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and Balkans. And what year did you start? I came on board in 1984. Under Reagan, Bill Casey was director of CIA at the time, and the agency was going through a rebuilding period after the drawdowns post-Vietnam.

So really, you lived through many different changes in both the CIA and in Central Europe. Yes, when I came on, it was full-on Cold War. No one expected the Soviet Union was going to go away, let alone collapse. And then there was a post-cold war era that period in the 90s when many were declaring end of history. peace at our time and no longer had a need for CIA because we had no more threats in the world. And then 9-11 came along and the agency switched to 20 years of primarily counterterrorism operations. Does that, is that how it operates? I mean, I just was thinking this with the FBI most wanted list.

And it sort of reflects what the FBI cares about. It's not that this person is actually more wanted than that person. It's just we're doing terror this year. So does the – No, CIA doesn't decide to do we're going to do terror this year. I mean, the focus – I mean, it's not rocket science. It's really focused on what policymakers and particularly what the president needs. So what are the things that are foremost on their agenda?

Those are the things that CIA is going to be focused on. And you can break that down into near-term exigent. you know, quite pressing matters, disrupting terrorist attacks that are going to happen, countering intelligence operations designed to steal U.S. secrets, anticipate oncoming war, but then you also have long-wave issues. You know, what's the trajectory of China technology and its implications for national security over the next 30 years? So you have both near-term, very pressing right up in your face issues that the president

needs answers to it right now. And then you have the long-term assessments of how do we need to be formulating U.S. policy over the next five, ten, twenty, thirty years. Hmm. So let's talk a little bit specifically about your job. I thought, cool with you. So, wow, what did you do? What's the actual job as a chief? And does everybody, does everybody know what you're doing?

meaning like, you know, are you living with a fake beard somewhere in an undisclosed location? Or does everybody know that that's your job? Yeah, well, I'm talking to a real weird right now. So most operations officers are working under some sort of cover. Diplomatic cover, it can be commercial cover. But when you're in the field, you don't go around wearing your CIA t-shirt and advertising where you work for for lots of reasons, right? It's a clandestine service. It's designed to steal secrets.

It's designed to conduct espionage in places that don't want you to steal their secrets. So operations officers in particular tend to spend most of their careers undercover. There comes a point in time when you're at a certain level and have a certain number of scars and exposures and things like that. That cover really doesn't mean so much anymore. and in some cases can be a burden and a distraction. So by the time I was leading a division in CIA, you know, I was declared, i.e., the official representative, to dozens of intelligence services.

It met with dozens of different intelligence officers from dozens of other countries who knew that they were dealing with CIA. So it's, yeah, there's a point where a cover is important in a point where it's not needed as much. How do you even get into this line of work? That's a great question. So it's, you know, there's a million different paths in. Mine was, you know, some ways accidental, some ways intentional.

I knew I wanted to be working overseas. I thought I wanted to be working in the State Department. Process for all of the agencies, both at the time and now can be very long. So I did a bunch of other things while I was waiting. I bartender. I worked in a ski patrol. I white water rafted. I worked in hotels.

I did chrome in a factory. I did lots of different things, which in the end I think helped prepare me for a CIA career. But most importantly, I think the agency needs folks who've been around a bit. They tend not to fig take folks straight out of college. They want some real life experience. And it's good to have, you know, a few scars, a little bit of scar tissue. and some experience with failure because the intelligence business is a really tough one. And everything, you know, all grades aren't eight and you're often, operations often fail.

So it's not like movies that show people from a particular part of Yale are selected from campus and immediately start working at the CIA. There's no sort of secret cabal. It's not all skull and bone. No, I mean, way back in the day, during the times of OSS, there was, you know, a phrase the CIA is pale, Yale and mail, and it wasn't entirely wrong. There was a lot of cell selection from high-belied schools. Bill Bonifan, who started the OSS,

which was the World War II forerunner of the CIA, conducted sabotage and intelligence operations behind lines in, in the Asia theater and as well as European theater. It did select a lot of folks from their own circles. Weirdly enough, heavily, many of them lawyers. But now the agency needs a much different workforce, being a global agency with the necessity to work everywhere in the world. We need to be able to have the languages,

the ethnic backgrounds, the cultural literacy, and the people to blend seamlessly in any number of different scenarios. What was your motivation for getting in? Why did you want to get in? I thought it was going to be really interesting and fun. It sounded like a cool job. It was pretty naive about what it would actually entail. But it wasn't wrong, and I wasn't disappointed in that.

I actually left law school to join the agency, you thought I would come back after a couple of years of bouncing around, but it was just so exhilarating. The stigs were so high. The people that you worked with were of such high quality, and it was just so satisfying to be part of something that you felt was bigger than you, and also it was focused on a mission that you felt was important.

So it was really addictive going to different places, about learning different languages, being involved in different operations was fantastic life. When I watch a show like The Americans, I'm not going to ask you, is it real, you know, it's really like, actually the question is, for me, is any aspect of it accurate? Is there any small part of something like the Americans that is what the life's like? Well, there's a couple things that were accurate. So it's obviously Hollywoodized, but the fact that there were Russian illegals, an illegal as an intelligence officer who was working without official cover or without diplomatic cover. So the Americans portrayed two persons who came over to the United States, Soviet agents, who pretended to be, I can't remember what their characters were, but one was a houseway. No, they were travel agents, right?

So pretty good cover. But they had no pretension in case of arrest. In real life, in 2010, 10 different couples were arrested. And in one of the greatest counterintelligence coups in CIA history, one of the greatest counterintelligence defeats for the Russian in history, they were arrested help for a while and then swapped for American agents, i.e. Russians who have been working. on behalf of American intelligence services who had been captured and were imprisoned by the Russians,

they were swapped for that. So there's a kernel of truth in that. The other piece that was, I think, well done were the relationships that you saw between different individuals, relationships in particular between the officers and their agents on both sides. So the FBI officer's relationships

with people he was dealing. with their relationships in terms of how they developed people, how they manipulated them, how they recruited them, how they trying to keep them safe. There is a lot of elements of reality there. Did we do the same thing? Did we do the same thing in terms of the United States? You know, I mean, we're we doing the same thing. Intelligence services all have similar methodologies, all work in similar ways, all use similar

trade crafting techniques. What does a day look like? And I guess what does a day look like in 1984? And what does a day look like now? Well, it just depends on where you're at, whether you're in the field or at headquarters. I think probably most interesting is in the field. So if you're in a, say you're in a country somewhere in Southeast Asia or in Africa, you're with a station. you're with the station.

I mean, your role is to be, if you're an operations officer, or a station, primary job is to collect human intelligence to run the agent networks that, like, you know, the plans and intentions of issues

that you want to, that they're important for national security or for national policy to be able to spot, identify, and recruit those agents to handle them effectively. So a typical day, every day is a little bit different,

but you'll have a, you know, You may have a cover job that you're working that sort of presents your face to the world. And then when that job is over at night, you may be out meeting people. You may be out developing relationships and you be out drinking late into the hours, forming long-lasting bonds. You're always trying to understand what makes people tick. What are the things that motivate them?

What are the things that drive them? things they're afraid of. What are the threats or risks of the base? What are the problems that they have? All of which can be used as you work them towards developing an official relationship, an agent relationship with the agency. How do you decompress from that? How do you decompress from that? Probably the same way everyone else does. you know, you find with friends and with family

and with activities and sports and travel and just, you know, I think it's the same as with everything. I mean, you go about in the midst, it's, I think one of the interesting pieces of it or difficult pieces of it for people is the need to compartment different parts of your life, right? So there are entire

parts of your life that you don't tell your wife about that your kids don't know about. Your best friends know about some of the best things that you do in the course of your career. nobody but a very small circle of people among your peers or within your, you know, within your unit organization I'd ever know about. And so you have to be able to, you know, handle those two things at once. So let's just say that you're working as, you know, covertly, does the person that you are supposed to be, if they need a vacation, If like, you know, if you're working like a regular job, they get vacations too.

Do you do a fake vacation then? Do you do fake vacation? Or do you actually get to go and relax? You do get to go and relax. Sometimes you do go on a fake vacation where you're ostensibly going off like on vacation, but you're actually going off to do a job somewhere. So that's that happened. There were times where I would, you know, to the outside world,

I was taking a trip to the United States to, to see family, but in actuality, I was going off somewhere else to meet someone in some dark corner. All right, angry planet listeners, we're going to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, angry planet listeners, we are back. Does the popular perception of the CIA kind of an American culture, and I know it's mixed, but especially like coming in in 1984, right? We're just kind of coming off of the church committee stuff. how did that affect you and what do you make of it? So the church folks aren't familiar. Church Committee were congressional investigations in the 70s, which uncovered abuses in the CIA, and in some cases breaking the law in the CIA in the 50s and 60s and 70s and some different programs were revealed.

They call it the family jewels. And in response to those hearings, congressional oversight was established and some additional sort of controls and restrictions. But the popular perception is that the CIA just, it's a rogue elephant, just runs out and up its own, does what it's what it wants. But actually CIA is entirely responsive to direction from the executive, i.e., the president of the National Security Council, and then the different combat and commands that need support. So the CIA is a little bit like a Swiss army knife in terms of it's pretty small, but it has a great ability to be nimble and flexible and responsive, much more than almost any other component or the U.S. government because of some of the special authorities that it has, but also because of the culture of responsiveness to mission and responsive to needs. And folks, it's what folks sign up for. It's what they want to be doing. So within days of 9-11 teams, say teams with embedded special forces going into northern Afghanistan to meet up with the

Rory Alliance to launch the campaign against the Taliban. Question about how the CIA's troops. I mean, is that accurate? How do you work with another, you know, special operations force? Is that something that's smooth? Do you call ahead and say, hey, guys, we're going to, you know, so don't bring your, you know, troops in the same location. It's just interesting because it sounds like in some ways you're doing the same job as other

parts of the government. Sure. So the one component of the CIA within the operations director are the, it used to be called Special Activities Division. These are former military operators, tier one operators, former SEALs, former Delta, former Marine recon, who've left to be. military and are now working in the paramilitary division, paramilitary component of the CIA. And how is that different with the U.S. military does?

Well, one, is they're able to operate with very low profile and conduct the operations, engagements, training, etc. Outside of the public eye, and again, with a great deal of flexibility and with additional authorities. And they were used in Vietnam, in Balkans, in

Afghanistan, in Iraq, and just about every place in the world that you've seen the threats manifest to America, particular terrorist threats. They're a very high speed, very high quality, very highly motivated group of individuals

quite small. They work very, they have very close relationships with their counterparts in U.S. military. And you'll see different missions will have different mixes. So sometimes you might have units that are working together. Sometimes you might have military officers that are embedded with those units. But it's kept separate because of the judicial authorities that CIA has that the military doesn't, and because it can operate more secretly.

Cool. So I was wondering you had worked in the Balkans. I'm going to guess that was during the various wars in the Balkans as opposed to just hanging out in the Balkans. Were there any lessons that you learned from that that then apply to Ukraine? Or am I just saying, you know, these are Slavs. Maybe there's, you know, some connection there. No, I think there's some real lessons from the Balkans that we're seeing repeat in it with Ukraine. So first, history matters, right?

Americans tend to not be that focused on history and, you know, we have a hard time thinking, you know, five or ten years back, let alone, you know, 50, 100 or 500. In many places in the world, history from 100 years ago, 250 years ago and farther back, it's still living history. It's still part of culture, still part of identity. And there are the old rages that come back. And we certainly saw that in the Balkans. when a country that had been under communist rule under Tito, you know, a unified actually one of the more successful of prosperous socialist states,

but in the thrall of Belosovich's nationalist rhetoric, splinter apart into different ethnic components, didn't necessarily have to go that way, and splinter in a very violent fashion. We're seeing some of those same lessons of history, play out with Ukraine right now. The way I think about the war in Ukraine is that folks for a long time said, well, the Soviet Union broke up and it was amazing that it was done peacefully.

Well, I think we're seeing the extended breakup of the Soviet Union and some violence that goes with that. It was just a delayed fuse, if you will. And the other piece, and I touched on it, it's the power and insidious nature of nationalism, of how addictive and destructive it can be for populations that feel aggrieved, that have resentment that maybe are looking at their neighbors and are resentful that they're doing better

and are searching for a reason for that. And we've certainly now seen Putin play on the nationalist card in Russia to such an extent that he was, you know, in a bit of sense. skewed history and dialing band to a thousand years, trying to erase Ukrainian identity, saying that there is no separate identity of Ukraine,

separate from Russia, apart from Russia, and launching a war, which is, I think, you know, much more about that identity and what Russia feels as a threat, existential threat to it, not a military threat from NATO, though that claim that exists,

but an identity threat. They think that a prosperous, Western oriented Democratic Ukraine poses a profound threat to an authoritarian, state capitalist, state-controlled society that you see in Russia now. So if you were Russia and you were getting ready to invade Ukraine, what would you do? I mean, from an intelligence standpoint, how do you get ready? What do you do for the ground? you know, to prime. Yeah, I hate to give them many pointers because they're really screwed it up, you know, on their own pretty well.

So, you know, what are, what are mistakes, I guess, you know, part of it is what are mistakes that Russia made in this? First, this was a colossal intelligence failure on Russia's part. They believed their own rhetoric and messaging that there were, you know, a million of Ukrainians who were simply waiting. for Russian liberators to roll into Kiev who would welcome them with bread and salt to serve a Slavic version of flowers and kisses

the dead wrong on that they were dead wrong on Ukraine's capability to fight and will to fight they were dead wrong on the stability and strength of Ukrainian leadership they thought

Zelensky was a clown they thought he was nothing more than the sitcom character that he had portrayed. It's also one of the great ironies of history that Zelensky, you know, essentially auditioned for his role as president of wartime Ukraine by playing an accidental president on TV. It's really something to go back and watch some of those episodes. What are the mistakes did they make? They believe their own propaganda about the strength of their own forces.

So they've gone, you know, since Putin came to power, they've been on a systematic rebuilding program to take what was the Soviet army and its equipment and to build, you know, what they saw as a more modern, more capable, more flexible force. So they had all the trappings of it, right? They didn't eliminate the draft, but they tried conscription.

Still have conscription. But instead of everyone being conscripted, they tried to form a core of a professional army, i.e. people, what they call them, contractors, you know, folks who sign an agreement and are volunteers essentially. So they try to build a volunteer force. They modernized with weapons. But they didn't change many of the things that we've now seen to be real Achilles heels for them. There's still centrally, a central command and control. Troops at the ground level, units have very little initiative,

very little authority, and huge disincentives for taking any decisions around. actions because all blame blows down. Their equipment actually turns out to be really poor, much of it coming out of poorly maintained stocks. Their leadership has been abysmal, and the effect of corruption in the services is hard to overestimate. So there were recently a member of Duma, that's their parliament, their Congress, who is complaining saying, well, you know, what?

happened to the two million wintering uniforms that we, you know, authorized and paid for. Well, I'm pretty sure that those uniforms are being sold in a flea market somewhere in Guangzhou or in Jong province because of the level of corruption and incompetence is huge. That all said, it's a big army, it's nuclear armed, has, you know, huge firepower. So while they've made tremendous mistakes, the war is not going to be over quickly, despite Ukraine's success, I believe. But just really what I'm wondering is, were they set up so that they have operatives inside,

like the Ukrainian intelligence service? I mean, do you do some kind of rep? You know, it's like, we're coming, so we better send Paul in to do X. The Russian intelligence services would have had, vast operations within Ukraine. They would have recruited agents in Ukrainian security services and the military. They would have had GRU, that's their military intelligence services, operatives on the ground, spotting Tarvigs, planning sabotage.

They would have been reporting back on Ukrainian preparations, locations of military units and fortifications and supply. And they would have been providing recording back on, you know, what they expected to happen politically. There was, there's been reporting that there were assassination units that were in place and that were working to, to kill Zelensky on the very eve of the invasion, but that they were out identified and neutralized. So, yes, there's no doubt that, you know, just as by virtual history, but also of language of family ties, of contacts and friendships. that there have been a lot of advantages for Russian intelligence services to work in and operate in Ukraine. That said, Ukrainian counterintelligence services have been really active. And it looks like quite successful in identifying and neutralizing many of those operations.

Have you been surprised at how any of this has played out? Sure, yeah, I've been surprised by a lot of it, how it's played out. I was surprised at the level of Russian incompetence, that had their overconfidence, that their belief that they could take Kiev in three days and, you know, essentially have a palace coup and that it would all be over. They completely underestimated the will of Ukrainian people to fight. I've been surprised at how slow they've been to learn lessons. So they quickly retreated to both retreated, but also retreated to old Soviet.

doctrine, which is, you know, essentially wind up massive amounts of artillery, obliterate everything within a particular geographic square, and then move in. It's what they did in Chechnya, in the Second War, Chechnya, where if you've seen the pictures of Grosney, they simply leveled the city to take out the Chechensin fighters.

I've been surprised at, I have not been surprised at their ability to repress dissent in Russia vast state mechanisms to you know to to do both intimidate or

folks from protesting to have extremely draconian criminal penalties for you know standing alone and holding a sign that you know might even suggest criticism

what it surprises me is how many people still stand up and protest. But I think over time, the support for the war is going to erode as more bodies come back and as the true economic cost comes into play. And Poland, what happened in Poland yesterday, from what I understand and correct me if I'm wrong, parts of anti-missile defense systems that were Ukrainian, landed in Poland and killed some people. So, yeah, so Russia has been, because they've been unsuccessful on fighting the Ukrainian army,

it looks to me like one of their main strategies for trying to win the war is to take out as much Ukrainian infrastructure as they can. So lights, heat, power, water, to make a cold, dark winter for Ukrainian citizens to undermine their morale and to reduce support for the war and to reduce support for Zelensky. It's had exactly the opposite effect. It's strengthened the determination of Ukrainians to fight Russia and to take back every inch of their land. They've lost. They're not being intimidated.

But nonetheless, you've got a third to, you know, up to a third of Ukrainian citizens without power as we go into a very cold winter. who is counting on that? It's really a cynical and cruel campaign. So yesterday, this is just after the G20 summit, they launched records of 100 cruise missiles, armed drones in targeting Ukrainian civilian facilities. Ukraine tries to down as many of these as they can with anti-aircraft missiles with anti-aircraft weapons. It looks like one of those systems, an S-300 serves-to-air missile system, either hit Russian munitions or ended up landing four miles inside Poland. So it does not look like it was a deliberate Russian attack. It looks like a sort of unfortunate collateral damage from the scale of air, warfare, and combat that's taking place to Ukraine.

The only thing that surprises me is this hasn't happened more. Are you worried about this thing expanding? Yes. Yeah. It's an extraordinarily dangerous situation. Look, you've got, you know, massed conventional combat on European territory with one of those combatants being nuclear arm, losing badly, and making not thinly veiled threats about use of those nuclear weapons.

And so that's why you've seen efforts across U.S. government and other governments to dissuade and deter Russia from employing nuclear weapons in any circumstance. But the potential, as we saw yesterday with, you know, the immediate conclusion that folks jumped to was that this is a Russian expansion of the attacks. This is testing NATO. You know, this is, you know, could be an expansion of the war. you could have, you know, accidental situations end up escalating quite quickly. Part of the reason why you saw President Biden and others being very cautious in their preliminary assessment saying, let's wait a while we have the vaccine. You know, we completely support Poland.

We'll pull together folks. We'll do everything we need to do to defend NATO. But we're going to determine what actually happened before we rush off. So I had only one more question. Matthew, if you have anything else, let me know. But I was curious about your career after you left the CIA. I mean, from the bio I read, it sounds like you basically created a CIA for BP, the big petroleum company. I mean, is that essentially, did you do something like that?

And are there private CIAs out there? So we'll take a step back. In the private sector, there's every bit as much of a need for intelligence, i.e., good information, for decision-making as there is in government. So when executives are deciding, is it safe, you know, for us to work in this, to send people in this location to open up a plan? do we face threats from terrorism or from violent crime or from civil unrest or political instability? These are all questions that are as pertinent for companies across the world as it is as it is for government. And so you see a quite quiet, I think probably underappreciated, but rapidly evolving and rapidly growing ecosystem of private sector intelligence companies and capabilities. Some of them are vendor companies that, you know, provides, you know, essentially outsourced services.

And that can be everything. So you think about companies like Planet Wams that provide geospatial intelligence, that provide imagery, satellite-based imagery of different locations. That's intelligence. Not that many years back, that capability would have been among the most expensive and most classified in U.S. government. So, remember the old spy satellites that. pictures of during the Cuban Missile Crisis,

but states, i.e., you know, superpowers had a monopoly on that. Now, everybody who's got an iPhone has even more powerful capability as you pull up Google Maps or Google Earth or whatever, whatever other platforming YUs. So that's an extraordinary revolution.

And companies are using that kind of capability in thousands of different ways. They're using it for environmental monitoring. They're using it to monitor methane emission. They're using it to understand deforestation. They're using it to understand water and resource issues. In the same way, you know, companies often operate in places that are, you know, dangerous, obscure, opaque, have bad governance or highly corrupt.

It's really important to be able to have a capability that lets you navigate through those environments in an ethical, legal, and safe manner. And so that's why you see these intelligence capabilities building up. Intelligence is nothing more than information collected and analyzed in response to a question or requirement. So we're not talking about hit teams. No, we're not talking about hit teams. No, but that is the popular conception. When you talk about intelligence or you talk about intelligence capability, oh, this must be, you know, espionage.

It must be criminal and illegal. It must be violent. And in the private sector, it's none of those things. It's simply using different capabilities. So social media, for example, you know, you think NSA and Russian Phapsy and GCHU, they all collect signals intelligence. Well, signals, social media is essentially open source signals intelligence that can be used to help make better decisions.

So there was, I mean, as an example, there was an evacuation in particular Middle East country which was undergoing violent change and a company needed to get its people out to safety

and so we're able to use real-time social media pictures of roads of scenes in airports of different pieces to understand where you would be more state, where you'd be less safe

to help get people out. So that's purely an intelligence mission and capability. And the limitations of matter are only limited by their creativity. The amount of data that's being generated every day that's available and that can be used and analyzed against the right questions are unlimited. And I think in many ways, private sector is outstripping government in terms of how it gets used. Bell, you're probably familiar with Belling can. Oh, you're not?

You absolutely need to be. This is a group of, you know, started out of his guy's kitchen table that was interested in what kind of munitions were being used in Syria and using, you know, pictures being posted in social media, has now turned into an unbelievably effective and powerful investigative organization that has had some reporting coups, I would call them, successes, that any intelligence agency would be proud of using entirely open source methods. in technology. Yeah, and I mean, they really are amazing. I mean, and part of it is I think that, you know, when in government agencies are so focused on secret information and on the information that they can collect through their exquisite capabilities, whether it's human or technical, highly classified, very expensive, often quite risky. But if you don't have access to that as spelling cat and private companies don't, you have to be more creative in terms of how do you answer this question

is all this is problem. And what you find out is if you're not tender to the security leash and compartmentation and secrecy leash and you let your mind roam about what's out there

and what can be collected openly. Then it's amazing what can be done. Paul Colby, thank you so much for coming on to every planning to take you through all this. It's pleasure.

Thanks, Jason. Thanks, thanks, man. Thank you. That's all for this week, Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin Nodell. It was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, please give us $9 a month on Substack. It's angryplenet.substack.com or AngryPlanentpod.com.

You get early access and commercial-free access to the mainline episodes, the bonus episodes, and the occasional post. It really does help us keep the show going. It is a labor of love. we do love doing it. We are kind of downshifting now into the holidays. Anyone who kind of works in media knows that people stop answering their emails after Thanksgiving. So it gets a little bit tougher to book guests.

We will get out what we can and we will run some of our greatest hits. We've been doing the show a long time. There's a lot of great episodes that need a little love, need some audio remastering. And we think you're going to like what you hear over the holidays. So I think we'll have a couple more before the end of the year, and then we will come back strong in January. We'll see them. Stay safe out there.