The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway - Conversation with Andrew Boyd — State of Play: Cyber Warfare and Security
Episode Date: January 25, 2024Andrew Boyd, a former CIA officer and distinguished expert in the fields of cyber operations and geopolitics, joins Scott to discuss the current cyber warfare environment. We also learn about Andrew�...�s background in the public sector and what it takes to be in the field of counterterrorism. Scott opens with his thoughts on how to quit, and Netflix’s opportunity for growth. Algebra of Happiness: lessons on being a Dad. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Support for this show comes from Constant Contact.
If you struggle just to get your customers to notice you,
Constant Contact has what you need to grab their attention.
Constant Contact's award-winning marketing platform
offers all the automation, integration, and reporting tools
that get your marketing running seamlessly,
all backed by their expert live customer support.
It's time to get going and growing with Constant Contact today.
Ready, set, grow.
Go to ConstantContact.ca and start your free trial today.
Go to ConstantContact.ca for your free trial.
ConstantContact.ca
Support for PropG comes from NerdWallet. Starting your slash learn more to over 400 credit cards.
Head over to nerdwallet.com forward slash learn more to find smarter credit cards, savings accounts, mortgage rates, and more.
NerdWallet. Finance smarter.
NerdWallet Compare Incorporated.
NMLS 1617539.
Episode 284. 284 is the area code belonging to the british virgin islands in 1984
apple released the first macintosh personal computer word is parents are worried about
people using the new apple mixed reality headset for masturbation so i talked to my son about it
told him that he might go blind if he masturbated too much and he said dad i'm over here. That's good.
Go, go, go!
I like that one.
Welcome to the 284th episode of The Prop G-Pod.
In today's episode, we speak with Andrew Boyd, the former director of the CIA's Center for Cyber Intelligence.
We discuss with Andrew his career in the public sector and the state of play regarding cybersecurity and other cyber warfare.
Okay, what's happening? I am in London. It is a balmy, what is it? It's like 42,
what's Celsius again? I forget. Wasn't that something Jimmy Carter and it died,
tried and died. I think it's about six degrees out, about 42 degrees.
I didn't realize this, but there's also wind. We have serious wind here in the UK. So it's
somehow drizzling and cold and cloudy. And now it's windy. I am thinking about going to a Barcelona
game this weekend just so I can get out of Dodge, if Dodge was London, if you will. But it's,
you know, it's nice. I'm staying home with my 13-year-old, just me and him. We start the morning
with real agita and a tremendous fight with me trying to get him out of the bed. He is like me
in the sense that he is not a morning person, not a morning person, and gets very angry and very rude. The only way I can
sort of tempt him out of bed is I make him toast with Nutella. Is that wrong? Breakfast of champions,
Nutella. By the way, supposedly the Nutella family is like the third or fourth wealthiest family in
Europe, and they deserve it. They deserve it. I'm a big fan of that. I think that's capitalism
at work. And then I load up his backpack because I like to clear out every obstacle for my son such that he develops no skills of his own, such that he's a total incompetent when he hits adulthood. And I love watching him leave the house because he has this, he looks like, how have a shit ton of coffee, let the dogs out or boot the dogs out. The dogs won't even go outside. It's so cold right now.
Anyways, what else is happening this week? The GOP race is down to Donald Trump and Nikki Haley as Ron DeSantis ended his presidential bid earlier this week. His campaign lasted nearly eight months, and he endorsed Trump on his way
out, saying, it's clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald
Trump another chance. We can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackaged form
of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents. Trump congratulated DeSantis on the
run and said he would retire the desanctimonious nickname. Well, thanks so much, President Trump. That's so good of him, isn't it, that one adult
man doesn't continue to use or weaponize nicknames against his presidential
candidates or his presidential competition? That's where we are. What a gracious guy.
What a guy. Thanks for that. And MAGA supporters are welcoming the Florida reflect poorly on the platform. I remember a couple of things that Elon Musk said, but I don't remember anything that Ron DeSantis said. And that pretty much embodies his entire campaign.
He made, well, actually made a few thousand mistakes.
But the ones that really stand out are, one, if you want to run for president, you got to go behind enemy lines.
So I think Governor Newsom actually ran the best presidential race.
Now, granted, he's running for the presidential nomination in 2028.
But he went into enemy territory.
And that is he went on Fox into a southern state and debated a Republican governor who
he knew Sean Hannity and Fox would be rubbing LaRoche-Posay moisturizer on the small of
his back and constantly attacking Newsom.
But that's what voters want.
Voters want to see you get in the ring with someone bigger
than you and kind of show your mettle. I think that's why Ambassador Governor Haley has kind of
ascended to the top or at least the number two, if you will, because she performed really well
in the debate stage and kind of everything that her competitors threw at her, she was able to kind
of clap back. People want to see that you're war tested. Now, how does that foot
to Donald Trump? It's a fair question, although I think most people would say that he's been
pretty battle tested by almost everybody, including his next battle, the DOJ. Supposedly,
the case with the most veracity is actually a documents case under the Foreign Espionage Act,
and they have him dead to rights, videotape him on recordings, witnesses.
It's just so he's literally a plaintiff or a prosecutor's dream when it comes to the case in Florida around, you know, that whole nuclear secrets thing. Come on, nuclear secrets, nuclear schminkrets.
Who cares?
What's a few nuclear secrets stored in the laundry room between friends?
Anyways, for more thoughts on the current political landscape in the U.S., you should check
out my co-host Kara Swisher's podcast. Did you know she has another podcast other than Pivot?
I did not know that. It's called On. Well, that's creativity. On. It sounds like a failed cable
company from the 90s. Actually, I think it was a failed cable company from the 90s. Anyways,
On On, she speaks to historian Heather Cox Richardson about how he ended up in the age of Donald Trump.
I think there is a big lesson here around DeSantis, especially the way he exited.
First off, this guy was built in a factory of lesser candidates to be the ultimate candidate.
Harvard, Yale, he's handsome, served his country. He was an amazing athlete, captain
of his baseball team. I think that counts for a lot. I played sports growing up. And generally
speaking, the captain was picked by his teammates and the coach and is seen as someone who is a
natural leader. He is considered a good governor. He won a commanding reelection. I think a lot of
people think he got COVID right. So it's no shock that he raised more money than anyone coming out of the gates.
What really screwed up was he announced his campaign and then started campaigning. And
unfortunately, through the course of the campaign, he revealed something awful himself.
Literally, his highest, his best moment in the campaign was the minute before he announced. There's another key lesson here, and that is how you leave.
How you leave is so important for your brand.
You can work somewhere for 10 years, establish a great reputation, be a good manager, a good
colleague.
And if you're an ass and don't handle your departure well, your entire brand is fucked up.
51% of people's impression of you is based on the last few minutes of their interaction or the last few weeks.
So what did this guy do? Let's go back to his final statement here.
I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge.
He has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old Republican nominee, and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement
because we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear, a repackage formed of warmed
over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents. Who is advising this guy? I mean, granted,
I'm glad he's gone. I think he might even, I think his career might even be over. How could he have
burnished his career and his brand? How
could he have taken chicken shit and turned it into chicken salad? Simple. Remember a basic rule.
When you're on your way out, resist the temptation to stick up the middle finger.
Be painfully, painfully gracious. What could he have said? One, I'd like to thank my amazing family and staff.
He did that. Two, go through names of all his political staffers, right? Thank them personally.
These people really went out for him. Show that he cares about them. Show that he's a good guy,
that he appreciates when people go all in and probably work 18 hours a day, which I'm sure
they did, that he name checks them and says,
I really appreciate you too. Thank his wonderful family. He did that. Also, be gracious. Something along the lines of Vivek Ramaswamy ran a great campaign. He's going to be a voice in the
Republican Party moving forward. Governor Christie. I thought Governor Christie did a fantastic job,
and he calls it as he sees it and added a lot of texture to the campaign. And also, Governor Haley, I hope that should she be the nominee, I look forward to working with, if he'd been surprisingly gracious, thanking
people, leaving on an optimistic note, I think he would have set himself up for 2028. I think
everybody, including Democrats, including MSNBC, would have been blown away by how gracious he was.
Instead, he just cemented the notion that he is an asshole. That's how people remember you. They
know you are in a position to shitpost
them. And here's what you do. You zag when they're expecting you to zig. You be gracious. If you are
leaving a job, if you are quitting or you have been fired, if they have really treated you poorly,
you'll lawyer up. But assuming in 99% of the cases that's not true, this is what you do.
You go out of your way to leave on good terms.
You err on the side of being generous. You hand over clients to the next person. That is what it
means to be a grown-up. That is what it means to be smart about your future prospects. Don't fuck
it up. Okay, what else is going on? Netflix is deepening its investment in live streaming. The
firm recently struck a 10-year deal reportedly worth $5 billion with
World Wrestling Entertainment. Didn't see that coming. Beginning in 2025, Netflix will gain
exclusive rights to WWE's flagship show Raw, along with all WWE shows outside the U.S.
Bloomberg reported that this agreement represents a more than 30% increase on the current payments
for the show, which is currently distributed by NBCUniversal. Bloomberg also noted that Raw is
WWE's most-watched program, garnering 1.5 million viewers per show. Isn't that wild how small TV
has become? A quarter of a million people listen to this thing. So we're, I don't know, one-sixth
as big as wrestling? Hmm, that was kind of a weak flex, wasn't it?
Maybe I need to put on one of those things.
What are those masks?
I like those things.
Those things feel dirty.
I'd like to have sex in one of those things.
This news also marks yet another kick to the gut for linear cable guys
as more and more programs, particularly live sports, shift over to the streamers.
Netflix is firing literally on all
7 million cylinders. I saw that. I don't know if anyone else saw this. It was an incredible
chart showing churn rates. Everyone's kind of hovering between 4 and 8 percent. And then there's
Netflix and the churn is less than 2 percent, meaning the only people who don't renew Netflix,
it's because their credit card expired and they haven't updated it. They have literally made the jump to Lightspeed and are pulling away,
and they have the deep pockets. And Netflix has adopted the same strategy as Amazon,
an incredible service that results in access to cheap capital, specifically their stock. It's a
greater multiple than its competitive set, and they take advantage of that, and they make massive
reinvestments that other folks can't keep up with. Although I will say the Peacock's investment
in Premier League football was genius. Hello, Einstein of broadcasting. Anyways, Netflix is
pulling away with it. What will be interesting is if they get into news. I think that's kind of the
next or the great unknown for them. What's another idea? What's another idea for Netflix? Something
that I think is the biggest idea, something that could potentially, it's the only idea I have for how Netflix might double
their current market capitalization, which by almost any metric is pretty fully valued,
and it's the following. Netflix should start a viable, robust competitor to TikTok. How do they
do that? Short form videos. Well, Scott, isn't Meta doing that with Reels?
Isn't YouTube doing that with its shorts? Is it called shorts? Anyways, there's other people
doing it. Yeah, yeah. But what does Netflix have? House of Cards, the Umbrella Academy, Wednesday.
They have the best block of cheese in the world. They spend more on content than any other media company in the world. And if
they start slicing that block of cheese more thinly, they're going to be able to sell it more.
I'm talking about collections as opposed to shorts, right? What if I have no interest in
the series? I'm not going to sit down and watch kind of a midstream episode, but I want to see
it in seven or eight minutes. Hello, NetFibes. By the way, that's my
name. Hashtag registration to PropG Media. NetFibes, NetShorts, whatever you want to call it.
They are the only company in a position to not only launch a viable competitor, but a viable
competitor that's differentiated based on their IP ownership. They should also partner with a
deep-pocketed generative AI company that's looking for partnerships to differentiate as they all begin to kind of bump into each other. Why? Because the white meat, the secret sauce, the ground zero of TikTok is, in fact, an algorithm that uses Netflix got to have it. They need to go 180 and go the other way. What do I mean by that? What's the
problem with Netflix? What's their Achilles heel? How do they inoculate themselves against this
Achilles heel? Their Achilles heel is the following. Choice. Specifically, too much choice.
Supposedly, consumers in America, American households, spend 10 minutes a day deciding
what to watch on Netflix. What are the
good folks in Los Gatos going to offer with NetVibes? No choice. Similar to TikTok. That is
the primary value proposition of TikTok, especially retail. They tried to do this before,
but they didn't really go all in. The technology wasn't there, and I think they were just early.
NetVibes. NetVibes, a viable TikTok competitor
from the good folks in Netflix. They have the culture, they have the differentiation in terms
of an unprecedented depth of intellectual property, and they could partner with an
unbelievable technology company that would be dying to do this and spend a great deal of money
such that they could say, we're the partner with Netflix. Boom! We'll be right back for our conversation with Andrew Boyd.
Welcome back. Here's our conversation with Andrew Boyd, a distinguished expert in the fields of intelligence, cyber operations, cyber threat analysis, and geopolitics.
Andy, where does this podcast find you?
Arlington, Virginia.
That would make sense.
Yes.
So let's bust right into it. You've had a pretty robust career, interesting career,
from spending a decade as a U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officer at various U.S. embassies
in the Middle East to recently retiring from the CIA, where you oversaw operations against
foreign cyber threats. And you've also been behind some of the major U.S. policy decisions.
Can you walk us through your time in the public sector to where you are now?
How did you get here?
Well, it's an interesting journey.
It started at age 18, believe it or not.
When I applied for college, I decided to only apply to two schools,
much to my mother's chagrin.
The Naval Academy and the Air Force Academy.
I ended up attending the Air Force Academy, did my four years there,
and then spent five years
as an intelligence officer in the Air Force.
I fell in love with the overseas environment,
so took the Foreign Service exam,
joined the Foreign Service, as you noted,
and spent all of it,
learned Arabic,
spent all of it in the Arab world,
eventually migrating over to CIA.
And honestly, I thought before 9-11 that I would be doing this sort of for about three, four or five years and then go back
to, you know, where I was from, the New York, New Jersey area and do something different with my
life. But 9-11 happened, that transformed obviously, you know, much of my generation.
But for me personally, just changed the trajectory of my professional life and what I
wanted to do. And by the end of September 11, 2001, I had concluded what I wanted my life's work to be,
to work in the national security arena, and at least for a major portion of my career in the
counterterrorism space. What do people get right and wrong about the culture and, in general,
the organization that is the CIA? You know, it's funny when I, when I revealed to my, my, my oldest daughter that I worked for the
CIA, her first question was, Hey, you carry a gun and B have you ever lowered yourself into a hole
on a rope, you know, like Tom Cruise and mission impossible. And the answer on the first one is,
yes, I've had to carry a gun in certain circumstances. I don't own a gun.
It is issued or was when I was at CIA, it was issued to me when I needed it.
And no, I never lowered myself on a rope into a small hole.
I mean, I think the movies have to have a certain trajectory.
But if you ever had to pull a gun on an assignment in CIA, that was a very bad day.
And so at the end of the day, it's, you know, CIA is a lot of very smart people
doing some very challenging work, but frankly, they're not any different than any other
professional in any other discipline who takes their job seriously and wants to be part of an
elite institution. It takes a different, you know, sort of person who wants to spend the
bulk of their adult life overseas, potentially in the third world or the fourth
world or the fifth world, if there is such a thing. And that's, you know, the major difference.
But again, it's not like the movies at all or Homeland, although I, you know, believe it or
not, CIA people do watch Homeland and enjoy it. There are better renditions of what we do in CIA,
and I could highlight a few of those for you at some point.
Well, give us one or two that you think when you saw, what piece of work have you seen where you thought somebody there really understands us?
So Zero Dark Thirty, the movie that came after the bin Laden operation. Yeah. You know,
the only fictitious part of it, it amalgamates a whole bunch of storylines into one two hour
movie script. But each one of the storylines, for the most part,
was pretty accurate.
There's some politics associated with it,
but 13 Hours, the movie that's associated
with the attack on the Benghazi,
the consulate in Benghazi,
and the death of our ambassador, Chris Stevens,
there's aspects of that that are not right.
But as far as like
what Benghazi looks like, what the compound looks like and what sort of transpired over that 13 hour
period, it's pretty accurate. So before we bust into a discussion around cybersecurity, what type
of person, when you meet a young person, two people, you think this person would thrive at the CIA, this person would not do well,
what do those two people look like? So in the director of operations where I came from,
you know, people, a lot of people say you have to be an extrovert, you have to be the kind of person
who can rapidly learn foreign languages and be comfortable in certain environments. I have not
found that to be the case. I found very
introverted people to be quite good at operations. I think the most important attribute for a future
successful operations officer is to be self-aware and to be, not brutally so, but to be self-critical
when one has to be and to understand what your skills and your limitations are professionally, that's really what I've always, as a leader in CIA,
that's what I've really looked for. I haven't looked for any specific skill set, like this guy
is a great Mandarin speaker, this guy is a great Arabic speaker. It's really that self-awareness
thing, having a foundation of skills and intelligence, but really being able to operate
in ambiguity, in difficult situations and know your limitations.
So give us a state of play around cyber warfare. What are the recent developments?
What are the key technologies? What do you see, you know, are the big forces shaping cyber warfare?
I'll go in reverse and we'll get it because I know you and you've talked about artificial intelligence and what that means going forward, especially in 2024.
So, I mean, I think AIML is going to shape where we are in cyber conflict, so to speak, in 2024.
But, you know, this is a massive debate in the technological community, but also in the policy and strategy community here in Washington, D.C.
Like, what is cyber warfare and how do we define it?
That debate is not resolved.
I mean, different countries use their cyber tools for intelligence collection, primarily in the realm of intellectual property
theft from healthcare companies all the way to the defense industrial base, and essentially
trying to leapfrog over the United States technologically by utilizing our research
and development. I like to say frequently that from a cyber perspective, the Chinese are climate change. The Russians are a tornado. The Russians really like to use their tools just to disrupt the current order But they, as we've learned since they invaded Ukraine, those tools aren't what we thought they would be.
And there are quite a few limitations. The Iranians, they use their cyber tools in a very
different, and again, this isn't a position of advocacy, it's a position of strategic analysis,
very effectively in the realm of coercive diplomacy. They took down Albanian computer systems
to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the Albanians hosting the Mujahideen al-Haq,
an Iranian opposition group, and demonstrated that you can use your cyber tools to achieve
diplomatic ends. And finally, the North Koreans, they use their cyber tools to make up for the
sanctions.
They don't have any money because they're sanctioned on almost every front you could
imagine.
So they use their cyber tools to steal cryptocurrency and then attempt to convert it into fiat currency
to fund their weapons programs and whatnot.
So that's the state for the nation state actors.
I think one of the biggest non-nation state problem we have is ransomware
and criminal activity. And back to my point on AI ML, previously ransomware actors would send
poorly worded emails to people and ask you to click on an attachment, and then that would
infect your computer and they'd either steal intellectual property or try to, you know, coerce, you know, ransom your data or whatnot.
But now with AIML tools, ChatGPT, they can actually have ChatGPT write those, you know, in idiomatically correct English and use ChatGPT or other AIML tools to build exploits, even if they don't have any hacker skills. So I think 2024 is going to be the year of
criminal activity in cyberspace, more so, frankly, than the nation state actors. And that's kind of
where I see 2024 going from a cyber threat perspective. I just can't imagine how good
it's going to be. And even worse than the con is what happens when you can no longer trust anything?
I think that's what we're going to see in 2024.
But the great thing is, as technology advances in offensive capacity for criminal entities or nation states, so does the defensive capacity. And I do think we're going to have plenty of
companies, and they're already coming above the waterline, attempting to come up with defensive
software and or security services for small businesses,
large enterprises to defend against this. I also think what's important, there's one thing,
if the private sector is focused on it, the tools have to be commercially viable, obviously.
But the policy community is actively engaging on this. And there was an executive order and a strategy put out
on cybersecurity and what we do with our U.S. government cyber tools back in the spring of 2023.
And then late 2023, an AI executive order went out, which I think it's an extremely technical
document for a document coming from the White House. But what it demonstrates is a
recognition of not only the promise of this sort of technology, but the threat it could pose,
you know, not only to the security of your business or the security of other businesses,
but also just the entire way we manage our society up to and including disinformation.
And as it relates to democracy and all the elections around the world in 2024.
So capacity and competence rank, if you will, the various nation states in terms of who does it the best or defense against it the best and how far ahead or behind are they, the other key players?
In the context of AIML or just cybersecurity writ large?
Yes.
So, I mean, I think the United States is head and shoulders above everyone else in our innovative capacity, our ability to capitalize on academia and all the work that they're doing, despite, you know, the press indicating otherwise. I think where the PRC has an advantage is just the volume of humans that can throw against this
problem set. The cyber, from just purely the government perspective in China, I mean,
hundreds of thousands of folks are applied to their cyber, their offensive cyber problems.
Similarly, they have, you know, hundreds of thousands of folks
working on the defensive side as well. What also the advantage they have is they control the
internet. The governments in, you know, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, it's not a, you know,
they make reference to the great Chinese firewall. It's sort of a mirage in a lot of ways, but they do control access to internet
protocol space in those countries. We do not. So that is a massive vulnerability. But if I had to
pick one of the two, having the innovative capacity of the United States of America versus
having a vulnerable technology sector due to us living in an open society, I think I'd take the
former.
And this is an elegant segue. You have real domain expertise around the Middle East.
I would just love to get your sense of the state of play or what you see is happening in the Middle East and what the media is getting wrong and the role that cybersecurity or AI is playing
in the conflict?
You know, so October 7th, I mean, I think we'll look back historically, you know, a decade from now as being one of the most critical historical moments in the history of the Middle East and
obviously specifically Israel. As far as the Middle East itself goes, I mean, I think up until
October 6th, the Arab world was in a trajectory,
slowly but surely, of recognizing the state of Israel. I mean, the Saudis were on the cusp of
doing that. The Emiratis, you know, were very close to basically normalizing, you know, fully
relationships with Israel. And I think in part, that is why Hamas made the decision that they did when they did,
because they were going to get left behind. And arguably, over the past decade, they've already
been left behind. Most of the Arab states have walked away from the Palestinian issue, and Hamas
didn't like that and put it on the forefront of everyone's mind. I think there are going to be
governments in the
Middle East, principally the Netanyahu government, who do not survive this. I think there's going to
be a reset in politics. And I hope for the sake of peace in the future, that it's a government
that looks at not only defending Israeli territory, but the rights of the Palestinian people destroy Hamas, okay,
but the rights of the Palestinian people have to be addressed. Otherwise, you know, it'll be,
again, an epoch of intifada and nonstop conflict. The idea that the Saudi-Israeli rapprochement is
put on ice in perpetuity, I don't think that's true.
I think by the end of 2024, beginning of 2025, those discussions will reopen as long as Israel
is not in all that war in Gaza still.
It seems as if the kingdom has been oddly quiet.
And it strikes me that the two largest economies just have a lot of mutual interest in tying up together.
And what I have seen, I've been struck by how quiet some of the Arab nation states have been
around this. And that strikes me as that they're planning to hopefully let this cool down and then
re-engage. Do you think that's a fair thesis?
I do. I don't have any concrete knowledge. Since I retired at the end of September, I'm not really in that dialogue anymore. But my assessment is that that will be back on the table.
There's some certain hubs of fantastic technological innovation around the globe. One of them is in Israel.
Some outstanding computer scientists,
cybersecurity folks, and the Saudis recognize that and they want to partner with the Israelis because of that.
Now, Saudi Arabia is not perfect.
I mean, they are,
Mohammed bin Salman has made a lot of progress,
has opened up the kingdom to Salman has, has made a lot of progress, uh, has opened up the kingdom to, to,
to a great degree, but, um, there are certain human rights issues that I do think, you know,
are worth considering, uh, you know, we can go back to a few years ago on Jamal Khashoggi and
what that all meant and the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. So, I mean, it's, it's not as if,
if the kingdom's going to become a
progressive, you know, Jeffersonian democracy. I mean, it's just not going to happen. Is it going
to be a productive economic partner for Israel, for the United States, for the rest of the Arab
world? Absolutely. I think, you know, what has been forgotten in the press to a certain extent
is the Saudis have initiated
a rapprochement, not a full one, but at least a dialogue with the Iranian.
I think that may be one of the most important things to at least nip in the bud the potential
for conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran and a cross Persian Gulf conflict, because
that would actually precipitate a larger conflict that just would be disruptive to the entire region, if not the world. turning Iran's focus away from anti-Western activity? I mean, didn't we lose a buffer
and a natural enemy when we kind of took out of Iraq? And that is we turned Iran into a superpower.
Aren't there some factions of the intelligence apparatus in Congress that would like to see
tension between the kingdom and Iran? I can say, you know, again, this is as a private citizen,
but based on my experience,
I don't think anyone in the U S intelligence community would be wanting that sort of conflict
to be perpetuated. I mean, the U S intelligence community serves the policymaker and the
legislative branch and in other ways. Um, um, if that is the policy of the United States,
which it isn't, um, that may be the case.
The invasion of Iraq in 2003 sort of flipped the boat on a whole lot of things.
I mean, I couldn't say this until the end of September of 2023.
But the fact of the matter is, I wasn't a fan of the invasion of Iraq.
It caused an enormous amount of chaos that is going to continue for a generation, at least. And to your earlier point, yeah, the government in Iraq under Saddam Hussein was a buffer for the Iranians.
And the Iranians subsequently obviously moved into Baghdad and for years really controlled the situation because we reduced our presence there. But to your point of actually actively
encouraging conflict between the Saudis and the Iranians, I think it's the opposite. I think
anything we can do to mitigate or prevent or delay a Shia-Puritan conflict with the Sunni Arabs,
I think is in the interest of everyone. We'll be right back.
So we're doing a bit of a world tour here.
We talked about the chaos in the Middle East.
I would imagine one of the biggest losers from the conflict in the Middle East right now
is Zelensky in Ukraine, because it just feels like we've taken our eye off the ball
or people just don't seem to care as much. How would you describe the state of play in the Russia-Ukraine war? And
what do you see playing out, given you no longer have access to confidential information, but just
as someone who's very good at observing this type of situation and just stealing it down to a few
points? What are your thoughts on Russia-Ukraine? So the risk of it going off the front page, and it has since October 7th,
you're correct. And I honestly think the trajectory will continue as we have our 2024 election cycle.
I mean, the main risk of that is that there's not enough momentum on the Hill to continue
to fund the president's programs and the aid programs, the military support programs to
Ukraine. I really think that's the only real issue. There is certain advantage for the Ukrainians of
not being on the front page every day and that they can, you know, not quietly in Ukraine because
everybody in Ukraine knows what's going on there, but they can continue their quiet offensive
against the Russians and, you Russians and attempt to succeed.
I don't think there's a lot of press on the offensive, the Ukrainian counteroffensive
stalling. That is a real thing. That seemed to coincide with the October 7th incidents.
I don't think that's a permanent condition. I think the Ukrainians are innovative. They have
applied technology that hasn't really been used,
particularly in drone space. I mean, I think ultimately, if we can continue to write the checks as the U.S. government to support the Ukrainians, they're ultimately going to prevail.
I think they have to prevail. I think the whole structure of NATO, the whole structure of how we
secure Europe will be upended if they don't succeed. And this idea that we're going
to encourage the Ukrainians to come to the negotiating table with the Russians is frankly
an absurd proposition unless the Ukrainians decide on their own to do so. And I apologize for skipping
around here, but I'll put forward another thesis on another important relationship.
The West is struggling with inflation. China is struggling
with low growth. We have IP capital. They have unbelievable manufacturing might. Aren't there
just a ton of incentives for a thaw in U.S.-China relations? I think there are. And I think in your
2024 predictions, you may have addressed that, that the biggest, I think you, I forget exactly
how you said it, but I think you said that the biggest tax cut we could have in the United States
was a thawing of the relationships between China and the United States. I agree, but there are,
you know, very particular things that the Chinese do, you know, again, back to my point on
intellectual property theft, you know, pre-positioning of cyber tools, what Microsoft has called Vault Typhoon, essentially the pre-positioning of tools and telecommunications networks in Guam and elsewhere.
I mean, those are all very serious issues that we have to address, but there is some middle ground where we aren't necessarily allies with the PRC, but we're not promoting an adversarial relationship.
And I agree with you.
There's too much at stake economically.
There's too much at stake from just a well-being of our respective societies.
And the Chinese economy is in decline, as you've noted, and I think it's probably in their interest as well.
Make the case for serving in the agency or more generally public service.
You're pitching a bunch of my students have gone to work for the government and specifically the agency.
Make the pitch when you're recruiting talented young people to come to work for the agency or our security apparatus.
So I had a wonderful retirement ceremony at the end of September. Bill Burns,
the director, was the host of it and was the keynote speaker. It was an extraordinary event.
And then I was allowed to say my two cents. And what I thanked the agency for, and by extension,
the State Department and the Air Force, the time I spent in the Air Force, you know, the time I spent in the Air Force was giving me an extraordinary opportunity over the course of three plus decades to live multiple lifetimes, really.
A day in Baghdad was like worth two weeks back here in Washington. I mean, the things that I
would experience, the things that I would see, just, you know, only an infinitesimally small
group of Americans get to get to experience those. Are they dangerous? Have I lost friends of mine in situations like that? Yes. But that doesn't negate from the impact that it had on my life. So that was the key messages that I wanted people in the audience to have when I retired was was just be thankful for being given the opportunity to experience such extraordinary things.
What I would say to people who are in grad school now,
and it's a little different where I teach
because folks at Hopkins,
at the School of Advanced International Studies,
they all kind of want to go into government.
But in other programs,
maybe even an MBA program like yours at NYU,
I'd say, yeah, you can go to be an investment banker
right now after you graduate, or you can make the decision to do some adventurous things around the
globe, contribute to your government. If for whatever reason, your family situation wouldn't
allow you to travel all over the world like I did, there's plenty of ways to serve the United
States government, serve the American people in capacities in Washington and elsewhere,
where you bring your talents to really complicated problem sets. And at the end of it,
no matter how long you serve, for me, over three decades, but two, three, four, five years,
you leave very satisfied that you had an impact on people.
You weren't getting paid enough, but you can always make money. So what I would say is,
you know, don't, don't burn your youth, your twenties and your thirties making money.
You can make money later, uh, do something that where you really, you know, exercise muscles that
you wouldn't exercise otherwise and give, give back to and be in a position of federal service, however you define that. upon retirement from the CIA. Andy held the rank of Senior Intelligence Service 5,
the most senior rank for career CIA professionals. In addition, Andy has earned a number of
recognitions, including the Intelligence Medal of Merit and the Presidential Rank Award. He joins
us from his home in Arlington. Andy, when I speak to you, I not only feel better about America,
I feel safer. Thank you so much for your service.
Thank you, Scott, for your time. And I've really enjoyed our conversation.
Positive happiness, just an observation around being a dad. I'm having such a wonderful time.
I'm with my 13-year-old. It's just me and him. His mother is in Buenos Aires. I want her life. And then going to Patagonia. And my oldest, who's
16, is at boarding school. And so it's just me and my 13-year-old. And just some observations on
some of the great stuff that's fun for us. I ask him to kind of be the dad. I say, all right, can you figure
out dinner for us tonight? I ask him sort of to take care of me. I say, what should we do tonight?
Can you, can you, and I've given him some responsibilities. I'm like, can you make sure
that we, now remember to take the dogs for a walk in the morning. I ask him to be sort of co-parent
with me as opposed to kind of digressing into the traditional roles where I kind of boss him around
and tell him to do stuff. And it's nice. And I think he sorts of enjoy it. And I task him with, all right,
what are we going to do tomorrow night? Are we going to do this weekend? And he uses AI to go
and plan like the perfect day. And we end up doing all this crazy touristy shit. But anyways,
it's kind of fun. By the way, Madame Tussauds is the seventh ring of hell. Anyway, but there's
some fun stuff.
I took him to something called Moonwalkers, which he found, which was this kind of IMAX-like experience.
A second observation.
I just didn't appreciate until I was a little bit older how important it is that you spend time with each of your kids alone. I can't express how different they are when it's just you and the one kid alone.
My friend David Carey, I remember it struck me, he always used to talk about he would take each
kid on a trip every year, just the one kid. And I've started doing that. And that as I task them,
I say, all right, where are we going? You have to do a trip with dad, just the two of us. I say to
each of my sons and they pick something and it usually involves football, but it's a lot-year-old is, you know,
bumping up on six feet tall. And he's, the bottom line, it's just no longer my little boy. And it's
really sad. And what it's given me, though, is an appreciation for I still have kind of a boy at
home. And I'm really trying to lean into it. And it's a position of privilege because
I have the economic security to spend a lot of time with my kids. But when I was younger,
I kind of saw spending time with my kids as a bit of a tax. I was kind of always looking for reasons
to make plans or do something else or never have them for that long. Because when they're kids,
when they're really small, quite frankly, I found they were awful and just a ton of time and
attention. It was mostly like, how do I keep this thing alive and make sure it doesn't get near a body of water? And as they
get older and they get more fun, all I can tell you is kind of four to 14, that is the golden
decade. And you really want to lean into it. My oldest is great. I still get a ton of reward
hanging out with him, but he's less interested in me. He has his own thing.
If you're fortunate enough to have a kid at home that really wants to be into you and really is into the relationship, oh my God, my brothers, just drink it up. Just seize that moment because
that moment, that moment is fleeting. This episode was produced by Caroline Shagrin. Jennifer Sanchez is our
associate producer, and Drew Burrows is our technical director. Thank you for listening
to the Prop G Pod from the Vox Media Podcast Network. We will catch you on Saturday for
No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn, and on Monday with our weekly market show.