The Team House - The Future of Espionage & Intelligence Operations | Anthony Vinci | Ep. 388

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

In this episode, Anthony Vinci shares his journey into the intelligence community, detailing his experiences as a case officer in military intelligence and his work with the Defense Intelligence Agenc...y (DIA) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA). He discusses the evolution of intelligence operations post-9/11, the impact of technology and AI on modern espionage, and the emerging relevance of biotechnology in national security. Vinci emphasizes the importance of trust and collaboration in integrating new technologies into intelligence practices, as well as the challenges faced in adapting to a rapidly changing landscape. In this conversation, Anthony Vinci discusses the implications of genetic engineering, AI, quantum computing, and economic espionage on national security. He emphasizes the need for the U.S. to enhance its capabilities in these areas to remain competitive against authoritarian regimes, particularly China. Vinci also highlights the importance of open-source intelligence and the emerging threats of cognitive warfare and disinformation, advocating for a more informed and resilient citizenry to navigate these challenges.Grab Anthony's book "The Fourth Intelligence Revolution: The Future of Espionage and the Battle to Save America here: https://a.co/d/3C7y6dJToday's Sponsors Perfect Jean ⬇️https://theperfectjean.nyc/house15for 15% offGhostBed⬇️https://www.ghostbed.com/houseFOR 25% off sitewide! For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics...JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouseTo help support the show and for all bonus content including:-live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video-early access to shows-Access to ALL bonus segments with our guestsSubscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouseSupport the show here:⬇️https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse___________________________________________________Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured__________________________________Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/——————————————————————Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouseSocial Media: ⬇️The Team House Instagram:https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_linkThe Team House Twitter:https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePodJack’s Instagram:https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_linkJack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21Team House Discord: ⬇️https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6SubReddit: ⬇️https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample"Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio"00:00 Start05:45 Roles and Responsibilities of a DIA Case Officer12:00 Transitioning to Traditional Assignments17:51 The Role of Technology in Intelligence24:01 Challenges in Integrating Technology into Intelligence33:31 Navigating Government Revenue and Technology Integration39:41 Building Trust in New Technologies46:29 The Fourth Intelligence Revolution52:00 The Implications of Genetic Engineering01:01:26 AI's Role in National Security01:11:46 The Future of Quantum Computing01:16:52 The Role of Open Source Intelligence01:28:51 Navigating Information Assurance in Modern Warfare01:40:29 Empowering Citizens in the Age of IntelligenceBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:01 Hey, folks, welcome to episode 389 of the Teamhouse. I'm Jack Murphy, here with tonight's guest, Anthony Vinci. He's the author of The Fourth Intelligence Revolution, the future of espionage in the battle to save America. I'd recently just look through this book, and it's needed. A lot of topics in here to cover. We'll get into as many as we can. But Anthony, first, thank you for joining us on the show today. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. So tell us a little bit, you know, getting into your background about how you came to the intelligence community. Yeah. Well, I like a lot of guys in my generation, 9-11 happened. And I saw that. I heard that call loud and clear and realized it was my time to serve. My father was a Marine. He was in Vietnam. My grandfather was in the Army. He was in World War II. And this was my war. And so I signed a up and became an intelligence officer. Your pathway was through the Army, correct? No, I was a civilian. I just went in straight. My brother was a Marine. He went that direction. I went the other direction.
Starting point is 00:01:14 And, you know, I wanted to be a spy. So I decided that was my path. Talk to us about the particular path that you took and how that went. Yeah, well, you know, look, like I said, I was kind of to in it to go and serve and get in the game and go to war, frankly. And I decided I wanted to do military intelligence side of it. That's the direction I went. And I signed up. You know, the weird thing is, you know, you think it's going to be some crazy recruiting operation and somebody's going to tap your shoulder, you know, at a bar or something. But, you know, bottom line, you still got to put an application in through the website.
Starting point is 00:02:00 So I did and signed up. It's an immense amount of selection that you go through for these kinds of jobs, both for the clearance, you know, where there's sats and everything, and then selection, join the government, and then when you want to go to the training program, we want to go to the farm. It's a day's selection to, you know, make sure you have the right personality type and you're able to handle yourself, do some role playing, things like that. And you know, made it through all that and went down south for training.
Starting point is 00:02:35 Was that Fort Wuchak? Where is it that they do that? Well, in fact, I had the specific location named in my book and was asked to remove that location in my review process and write that is in Southern Virginia. Oh, you went to the premier human tradecraft school. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, gotcha.
Starting point is 00:03:04 Yeah. But so this is interesting. You're a civilian. You're doing military intelligence, but you're going through case officer training as a civilian. What was this position that you took? And, you know, how does this work, you know, sort of as a military civilian, so to speak? Yeah, it was a case officer role. And, you know, there was, you know, there's a little history to it in that, you know, military has always had intelligence and the, you know, the military intelligence agencies like DIA and so forth have played a role. And then, you know, if you look back in post-9-11, Donald Rumsfeld when he was secretary, you know, wanted the military to have people who could go down range to Afghanistan after 9-11,
Starting point is 00:04:00 and they didn't is my understanding, reading the history. The CIA obviously did, and they sent Jawbreaker and the other teams out there. And so Rumsfeld, you know, you can kind of read, said, you know, we need to stand up some capability here. And they did. And so you went through your training and, are you able to say what agency you were actually working for? Yeah, I was at, I was at DIA when I went through, yeah. And what is like the roles and responsibility of a DIA case officer? Like, we've had many CIA folks on here. I think probably our listeners are pretty well familiar with what they do.
Starting point is 00:04:43 But yours is similar but different, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Same job, same case officer job, you know, spot. assess, develop, recruit, handle assets, right? Figure out guys who have placement and access, you know, whether that's in a terrorist group or whether that's in the Ministry of Defense and get them to provide me with secrets
Starting point is 00:05:08 and then get those secrets back to Washington or to a fob somewhere. You know, I think the primary difference you see between CIA and DIA is that DIA is there for strategic military intelligence. You know, these are, these are missions where, you know, it involves counterterrorism, counter, you know, insurgency operations, of course, but it also involves, you know, really traditional military intelligence, like order a battle, military equipment, you know,
Starting point is 00:05:45 those kinds of things, preparing, you know, preparation of the battlefield, all of that. that's reporting up. It's not typically as tactical as you might get within the services, you know, where you've got, you know, guys looking out just around their fobs and things like this, collecting on the battlefield and so forth. But it's sort of at the more strategic level. As opposed to CIA, which is looking really broadly at American foreign policy, at geopolitics, at strategy, also at some military issues, you know, especially when they're kind of the national
Starting point is 00:06:27 level military issues. It's and, you know, when you say not at a tactical level, that includes, you're also probably not laid up wearing a gilly suit looking through a spotter scope, observing the enemy for a week on end. It's more like the adversary is developing a new ballistic missile. Can we get the specs on it? That's what I imagine anyway. Yeah, that, That's definitely, you know, I think where the traditional military intelligence was, you know, if you think about like the Cold War, you know, even up through the 90s is, yeah, you know, they're developing ballistic missile. They've, you know, they're looking to acquire something from us to develop a system, you know,
Starting point is 00:07:11 if there's a counterintelligence angle to that. Post-9-11 with Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, I went to Iraq. That's where I deployed. And, you know, you're in traditional counterterrorism, counterinsurgency operations as well. I mean, you're looking to figure out where, you know, insurgents are located, where terrorist groups are located. You're thinking about who's in command of those terrorists or insurgents groups and those sorts of military things. I think everybody was just chipping in on the same mission. What was that like for you personally?
Starting point is 00:07:53 Because you mentioned the sort of change in roles here. But this was also your time. You joined post 9-11. But from what you're describing, like this kind of is a very tactical thing to sort of like build out a terrorist organization's chart of, you know, how they work. It's not, you know, the Chinese are developing a new strike fighter. You know, can we get the plans for the ejection seat? Like it's a very different type of. intelligence, I would think. I mean, you know, you only know, you know, and I went in, you know,
Starting point is 00:08:26 I was, that, that was the only world I knew, actually, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I was focused on coin and CT, and that other kind of military intelligence, kind of seemed old fashioned to me in some way. You know, I was like, I was like, yeah, that's, I understood that it was important and somebody had to do it. But, you know, myself and a lot of guys who signed up post-9-11, we're like, we're, we're here to be in the game and this is where it is. And, and, you know, what's interesting is that sort of started to change, you know, over time.
Starting point is 00:09:14 By the time, you know, we'll get into it later. By the time I came back into the government later at NGA, that was sort of ending. and gone and we'd move back into this like these great power politics and you know cold war style operations again are there any stories from that period of time that you're able to tell about being in theater chasing terrorists down well you know one one thing i would say is this is you know a lot of a lot of people think about kind of the case officer job um from that that cold war approach like hey i'm i'm going to go out i'm going to find some sort of who works at the embassy, you know, a foreign embassy or maybe they're, you know, adversary intelligence
Starting point is 00:09:58 officer like a KGB guy and I'm going to try to recruit him and take people to dinner and, you know, doing STRs and, you know, pretty cities in Europe. And that's obviously not what it was like during, during, you know, when you're in Baghdad or a place like this. And where, you know, you have, you're bringing in now, you're operating in a war zone and you have to protect your in the same exact way as a soldier would, as anybody would, who's sort of outside the wire, right? So you're doing all of those things and you have weapons, maybe you have security outside of yourself. Usually, typically a case officer is operating alone in that job, historically. Maybe, maybe with an interpreter, but typically alone, you learn the language yourself. And now
Starting point is 00:10:50 maybe you need to operate with security or at least driver. You're armed because you need to defend yourself if a situation arises. You have to be in really strong communications because if something bad happened, obviously you need to call for help. All of those things are not what you picture when you picture Cold War operations. Like the last thing you want is like a radio or some piece of comms gear on you, potentially because that could give away what you're doing. Right.
Starting point is 00:11:18 And so you're trying to operate clandestinely, you know, in Vienna, in 1986 or something. But now in Iraq, you're operating like a soldier in many ways. But you're trying to also be as clandestine as you can to stay off the radar, to stay low profile. And that's just a really different environment. And it's interesting we had done that before. And when I was kind of in training, I met one of the OSS guys, the Office Strategic Services. These are like the OGs. They were World War II eras, pre-CIA, pre-special forces.
Starting point is 00:12:02 And these guys were, you know, they were badass, and they were operating behind enemy lines. There's a group called the Jedbergs, of which this guy I met was one, where they would send them behind the line. to sabotage and so forth. And that was really kind of the last time we did that much, you know, operation. I know in Vietnam they did some, but World War II is the last time where we did, you know, that's what the force was doing, basically. Did you have any kind of like close calls? You mentioned having to roll around with security.
Starting point is 00:12:35 Were there any dicey situations where you're like, I don't know if we're going to make it out of here? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. a little nervous there in a few situations. And, you know, things, things were blowing up a lot in a period of time in Baghdad. But, you know, I think like a lot of, like a lot of people who are in those environments, you,
Starting point is 00:13:03 you sort of, you do a lot of training before you go and you're with a lot of guys, you know, they're doing. And you feel like, you know, you're young and, you know, I was in my 20s and you feel like you're invincible. and I can handle it going to be fine. And, you know, thank God I walked out okay and people I was working with it. And after that, did you have any more like traditional assignments where I know like DIA guys work out of the embassies a lot? Yeah, I don't, I did have traditional assignments. I don't want to say specifically, you know, where I was working out of.
Starting point is 00:13:44 But I had traditional assignments, which, you know, is a real, It's a weird transition when you go from this environment where you're operating pretty, pretty tactically. You're doing a lot. You know, you're just working all the time. You're just constantly running through the intelligence cycle like in real time because things are moving so fast to like a more traditional environment in a typical world city where things slow down a lot.
Starting point is 00:14:14 And you start to think much more strategic. long-term things take a while. And for a lot of us, myself included, that that transition was hard. It was hard to kind of go back to that. It didn't feel that sense of mission that you did that was just paramount when you're down range or when you're supporting somebody who is. But, you know, it's two very different worlds. So I want to take a minute today to tell you guys about the perfect gene.
Starting point is 00:14:46 I've been wearing them for a few weeks now and really enjoy them, and I just want to share it with our audience. You know, sometimes jeans have this problem where, you know, you guys all have seen these skinny jeans that they like crush your balls and, you know, it's just not comfortable to wear. Or the other way around, jeans are like too baggy. You know, you have that sort of like diaper in your ass area, it looks like. So there are these problems that, you know, different fits of different types of genes have. and the perfect gene strives to fix that, both the fit but also the mobility, the maneuverability. It has a stretchy fabric. Like they say it's like yoga ready, but I would say it's athletics ready.
Starting point is 00:15:30 You know, moving furniture, doing things around the house, you're not going to have that like super tight, like constricted fit that you feel like you're not going to be able to move around in. And there are over 400,000 people out there wearing these jeans. at this point, so not all of them can be wrong. I hope you guys will go and check them out. So a few scenarios where you can wear these jeans and where they really come together, everything from, you know, doing yard work or doing things around your house, if you have to move furniture around or you have to do handiwork, they're perfectly comfortable. But you can wear them, you know, getting your man spread on on the subway, if that's your thing. So the perfect Gene is great for all kinds of different environments, whether it's doing handiwork around the
Starting point is 00:16:16 house or on the job or athletics. And we really hope you guys will go and check them out. For a limited time, our listeners get 15% off their first order plus free shipping at the perfect gene.n. Or Google the perfect gene and use the code house 15 for 15% off. That's 15% off for new customers at the perfect gene.com.com with promo code house 15% After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them. Please support our show and tell them we sent you. So fuck your khakis and get the perfect gene. This time of year, the pace doesn't slow down, but you still need to.
Starting point is 00:16:57 The calendar's packed, the weather's changing, and your body's reminding you that it's time to rest and reset. That's where ghostbed can help. It's a family-run company founded by a team with over 20 years of mattress-making expertise. They've spent decades perfecting how to build a bed that's durable, comfortable, and engineered to help you recover. Every ghost bed mattress is made with premium materials, proven cooling technology, and their exclusive pro-core layer, a targeted support system that reinforces the center of the mattress where your body is the heaviest. It helps to keep your spine aligned and your back supported, so you wake up ready to take on what's next. And GhostBed's cooling materials don't just keep you from overheating.
Starting point is 00:17:41 They help regulate your temperature year-round. Each mattress comes with 101-night sleep trial and a 20-to-25-year warranty, plus fast, free shipping. Most orders arrive in two to five days, so better rest is just around the corner. Right now, during Ghostbeds holiday sale, you can get 25% off site-wide for a limited time. Just go to ghostbed.com slash house. and use the promo code house at checkout. That's ghostbed.com slash house promo code house. Upgrade your sleep with Ghostbed, the makers of the coolest beds in the world.
Starting point is 00:18:20 Some exclusions apply, see site for details. And thank you, Ghostbed for sponsoring the show. Please check out the link down in the description and support our sponsor. I mean, yeah, I don't need to ask where you were, but are you able to talk a little bit about how that functions, because as I understand it, I suppose it depends on the size of the embassy, but there's some case officers and there's some analysts from the DIA. What is their actual job? Yeah, I don't want to get into the specifics of how they do it or where they do it, but, you know, I'll say generally the way that human intelligence collectors
Starting point is 00:19:05 of any stripe, could be a case officer, could be a debriefer. You know, there's multiple people whose job it is to collect information from other human beings. And you're going out there and, you know, maybe you're recruiting a source, like I said, and collecting information from them. If you're debrief or you're just debriefing, say, a friendly, like an American person or something. And you're bringing that back and you're writing it up at a literal level. You have a set of collection requirements and you know what you need to ask about. You know, maybe one day it's how is this laser made and the next day it is, you know, where is shake so and so and how do I find him?
Starting point is 00:19:51 And you're asking those questions. You're taking notes. You're bringing that back and you're writing it up. And then that is then going off to analysts who are putting that information together. ultimately combined with with other with other intelligence by all source analysts who are going to put all the pieces together and report it up the chain and like I said you know with with the with DIA or other military intelligence that might go to you know to to one of the services and to their intel unit to like a two shop somewhere it might go directly some of this stuff
Starting point is 00:20:29 especially strategically is just going directly to generals right I mean it's it goes right up the chain. But it's also going to feed back into the White House and so forth, into the National Security Council, because a lot of this stuff can be strategic and it can matter. You know, and that was kind of a weird thing during post-9-11 where things that seem tactical, like where is this one person, this one bad guy, all of a sudden are strategic. Like, it's like president-level stuff. Like, they want to know where these guys are because, you know, that was the enemy then. It's totally different today, you know, where, you know, we're worried about, you know, nuclear weapons again or worried about, you know, China's going to go to war.
Starting point is 00:21:15 How many years did you spend at DIA? Yeah, I was there. I was there for, as a govy for, for several years. I don't want to get into specifics because I was in different roles and it may not match up with my LinkedIn. What does your LinkedIn say? I think it says I was, you know, I was a staff officer for, yeah. That's, that's the weird thing with a book coming out, you know, all of this stuff, I didn't talk about at all, period. And then when I joined NGA, I was sort of outed, right, because I was in this public role.
Starting point is 00:22:01 but I still really didn't talk about it. I said I was an intelligence officer and people I knew were like, hey, I thought, I thought you were up to something. It was weird that you were like gone for months at a time. But it was really only with this book where, you know, with a book like this and you're telling your story that all the agencies actually come in and take a look, that I was able to say really anything. And so still remain a little bit cautious of where I draw the line because, you know, as, as you know, you still want to protect those or still in there doing doing the same job.
Starting point is 00:22:44 So according to your LinkedIn, I take it, you had sort of break in service between DIA and the NGA? Yeah, so I left. You know, I, again, I was there to go down range and to serve. I never really saw myself as like a lifelong government employee that that's not what I was necessarily in it for. And I left and I went back. I had worked in the tech community briefly right after college and I went back into the tech community. And I founded a startup and kind of ran that for a while. And when I exited that company, I, you know, was looking to get back involved again, you know, but this time maybe just advise or something like that.
Starting point is 00:23:34 And I joined, I was invited to join the advisory board at NGA. And the director at the time, Robert Cordillo and the deputy director, Sue Gordon, were looking for somebody who knew intelligence but also knew the tech industry and new kind of Silicon Valley and really the cutting edge. And today that's common, but, you know, five, ten years ago is actually pretty rare. There weren't that many people. There was this real hard line. Like Silicon Valley people didn't want to touch national security. And national security people didn't really have a seat to do anything in Silicon Valley world. And I had happened to kind of get into that.
Starting point is 00:24:14 And so I went on their advisory board and tried to help figure out how to use AI and how to use commercial data. And then I said, I gave them kind of a strategy to execute around that. And they just called my bluff and said, why don't you come in and execute that strategy? And so that's how I ended up going back in as a govy again. So tell us what the NGA is. I think it's just one of those organizations that, you know, the general public isn't familiar with, but plays a very important role.
Starting point is 00:24:49 Yeah. So NGA is national geosurational. spatial intelligence agency. And they do geospatial intelligence, which is kind of like a new form of intelligence. And it incorporates imagery intelligence. So, you know, they're a classified and commercial satellites in space taking pictures and using, you know, sometimes using, you know, visual imagery, sometimes using radar imagery and other forms of imagery. And they analyze that. They quite literally, if you can imagine it back in the Cold War, they would get a piece of film from a satellite and they would look at it with a magnifying glass and try to see where the
Starting point is 00:25:32 Soviet bomber was, right? That's updated now and it all goes through computers, but it's essentially the same thing. And they're trying to see, you know, is there a missile on the launch pad, right? And, you know, and how far left of that can you get? even before it gets the launch pad, are you seeing some indicator that it might go to the launch pad, right? So they're doing that kind of intelligence, and they're doing that for full motion video off of drones, for example, as well. And they're doing geospatial intelligence, which is, I like to explain as kind of like Google Maps. You know, if you look at Google Maps, really what it is is the geospatial information tool.
Starting point is 00:26:15 So you've got a map and you've got location and you're a pending information. to that location and geospatial intelligence is about figuring out where something is and when it was there or is there, right, and what it is, and making intelligence tools out of that. So, for example, you know, if there's, you know, thinking about like maybe there's a missile on the launch pad, well, you've got kind of a map of that area and you can put and append the information about all the other facilities on there, who's there, how things changed over time and create a geospatial product like that. And so that's what that agency does.
Starting point is 00:27:01 It's hugely important. Not a lot of people think about it, but it's one of the agencies that keeps everybody safe because for some of the biggest threats in the world, like unwarned launch from like a North Korea, really some of the only ways to get intelligence out of places like that is from satellites. You can't, it's real hard to send a human source to North Korea. It can, and it could be very hard to even get signals intelligence from there. So this is where a lot of that information comes and these analysts are coming there and keep them watch globally all the time to make sure we're not attacked, but also at the tactical level are producing targeting packages for conventional
Starting point is 00:27:42 units, for special operation units and things like that that are necessary for kind of tactical operations as well. You know, as you're talking, it reminds me of my friend, Sean Naylor wrote a story. One of my favorite stories about this I've ever read about the Cuban missile crisis and how there were some Cuban assets we had recruited that went up river and took a picture of the launch site or the launcher. I can't remember exactly. Came back and said, hey, we found it. And that allowed us to then send you two spy planes over and take. photographs and confirm um just like fascinating stuff how that all comes together and that that's where nga came from so so during the cold war there was npick um national um photographic intelligence
Starting point is 00:28:34 center um which was um it's its own office um i think it reported up through the cia at that time and they were literally analyzing that you two footage um And then there was also the DMA, defense mapping agency, which was the, you know, under the Defense Department was making maps. Those two groups and their successors, along with some other pieces, became NGA after, I think around 2003. And is NGA in any way involved in sort of like the technology, I guess, development or continuum of like developing. spy satellites and surveillance drones and things like that, or is it purely an analytical agency? It's an analytical agency. So NRO, National Reconnaissance Office, designs and acquires and kind of manages the running of satellites for the intelligence community. And NGA works very
Starting point is 00:29:45 closely with NRO. And it supports the ground mission so that, you know, the tasking of those satellites and the requirements of, you know, what should be collected and so forth. But NGA is involved with requirements for future systems. So what sort of intelligence should we be able to get off of these satellites? Because you can imagine the analysts want to have a say and what is the next generation of satellites. going to want to do. But NGA then is not making the satellite themselves. That's going to go on to another agency. And then NGA is very, very, used to be very, very involved and fully ran acquiring commercial satellite images and ran a big contract with Digital Globe and GEOI for a long
Starting point is 00:30:37 time and then other commercial satellite companies like Planet Labs and so forth. That mission is also moved to NRO to actually do the acquisition. NGA remains very involved with acquiring and developing in some places analytical systems, like geospatial analytical systems. And in particular, computer vision and things like this, which is a form of, you know, imagery analysis, right? And that's what I was very, very involved with when I was at NGA. And I'm sure we'll get into this in a bit, but I have to imagine that they are really looking at AI for imagery analysis, that if we can plug in the profile of this missile launcher and then have the computer search hundreds and hundreds of photographs and video, that would be a huge thing for them. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I came to NGA, that was really what I was trying to do.
Starting point is 00:31:38 And at that time, you know, there had been research on computer vision for decades, really, you know, going back to the even the 70s, right? Like people were trying to do this. But it didn't work very well. And there were now around 2015, 2016, 2017, computer vision got much, much better because they started using machine learning to do this. And I sort of realized that when I came into NGA. And that was really in many ways my role was part of my role was to figure out how to do that,
Starting point is 00:32:13 how to acquire those kinds of technologies because they were being developed in Silicon Valley in places like Stanford, not in national labs or by the military or by the prime contractors for the most part, how to acquire that stuff and how to bring it into the mission because, you know, what was also happening is the amount of imagery was just skyrocketing. And we had more and more classified systems because they build up over time. And then all of a sudden we had all these commercial satellites with all of their data. And now there's a limit to the number of analysts you can have in the world, right? And how many billets does an agency have and does the Congress want to fund?
Starting point is 00:32:57 And so there is a maximum capacity. And so how do you break through that? And how do you ensure that something doesn't slip through? and that missile ends up on the launch pad and you don't just miss it, right? And so AI was a way to do that because you can identify objects in an image that you can tell if they've changed and so forth and then automatically alert. And that was the goal and that's what we were trying to do. And so you said you came on first as a member of the advisory board, but then if I recall
Starting point is 00:33:26 correctly, yeah, you became the chief technology officer, which normally that's like a position at like Hewitt Packard or something like that. It's not something you commonly associate with an intelligence agency. Tell us about how that role came about and what it actually was for you. Yeah. Well, I started out as I was the associate director for capabilities, which is a less sexy title. But an immensely powerful title because I had responsibility for all the technology, all the R&D, all the contracting, the procurement, the strategy.
Starting point is 00:34:02 the strategy and the budget of the agency. And so was really managing about half that agency. And this was what was so amazing about what the director wanted to do. He took, you know, somebody who was forward-leaning and kind of a tech guy and pretty young. I mean, it was 39 at the time. And said, not only do you have this mission, which is I want you to transform how we do intelligence, but here are all these resources. and now go and go and do it and and we built a lot of different offices and organizations to do that
Starting point is 00:34:40 over time then i transitioned into this chief technology officer role which was a piece of that which was really thinking about the the the big the the the big technology strategies you know how do we you know what kind of technologies do we need um whether to develop internal or to buy from externally, and how do we get them into the system? And how do we incorporate them with existing technology systems that are typically designed by a contractor? How do we incorporate them into workflows and processes? How do we train people to use these systems and also really be the advisor to the director
Starting point is 00:35:27 on technology and on these kinds of technologies? And that's really what that role became about over time. And what were some of like the big, like, I guess hurdles that you were facing at the time, whether they were technological or bureaucratic? I guess I'm asking about what sort of the big main thrust was of your position at that time, what you were trying to accomplish. Yeah. So if you imagine taking a step back, if you say to yourself, okay, we've got this mission. We need to analyze all this imagery. There's too much images, right?
Starting point is 00:36:09 So what do we do? We need to use some technology to do that. So at first, I thought, and you would think, right, okay, I just have to go buy some technology. So part of that was, let me just go buy some technology. So we opened up an office in San Francisco where these technology companies were. We set up an OTA consortium to make it easier to buy some of these technologies. We worked with Incutel and things like that, which is the CIA's venture capital organization to even invest in these companies and to try to get them to do business.
Starting point is 00:36:45 I would go directly talk to a lot of these companies because, again, at that time, a lot of Silicon Valley did not want to do business with an intelligence agency. They really didn't. They did not want to be our customer. I couldn't even give them money. It wasn't until they realized that defense tech was recession-proof investing. way real estate is that they finally got on board. Exactly. And, you know, they actually at the time would look at defense revenue and count it as zero in terms of, like a lot of investors,
Starting point is 00:37:18 venture capital investors would count defense revenue as zero when like assessing the value was too high. What was the thought behind that? That it, you know, that it took so long to get government revenue, that it every year had to be renewed, so it wasn't as sticky, that the margin was lower than, than, you know, commercial SaaS margin and so forth, right? And so they didn't think they were, you know, we were sophisticated customers and so forth. I kind of knew, I'd been on the other side, so I sort of knew how to communicate a little bit with the investors and with the companies and that a big part of my role was at. So to go and get this technology, but that was an obstacle, you know, to sort of convince
Starting point is 00:38:04 people. A lot of what I did was give speeches to people like that and, and meet with, you know, VCs and so forth. And then, but then once you get the technology, actually, it turns out that was the easy part. Like that was the, it just got harder from there, right? because now, okay, I've got this cool, you know, algorithm approach, this computer vision system made by some cool Silicon Valley company where guys are working in hoodie sweatshirts, you know, at a we work. And then, yeah, and then they, and then all of a sudden, you realize, well, you can't
Starting point is 00:38:47 just like plug that in, right? There, there wasn't a lot of cloud computing at the time. Most of what we did was still on-prem. It was out of servers that we own that were, you know, government owned and operated. And there were the way the workflow works, the way the processes work in these agencies, there's a lot of pieces of locked software that have been made through this really long, multi-year requirements process by a single contractor. And to mod that in any way requires another year or two years, you know, to say, hey, well, I just want to take the data from the system and incorporated this other algorithm. They're like, yeah, no problem. That, you know, that $25 million and 18 months, we got it. Just no, no problem. And you're like, that's just
Starting point is 00:39:38 not going to work. And so like that integration part becomes really, really hard and threatens people, right? Because companies, contracting companies have those contracts. They employ people in states to build that stuff and they call their congressman. If they're threatened, people whose job it is to be a program manager at NGA are threatened because, hey, I've worked my whole life to get this system in place. You know, it's taking me years. And now you're telling me you want to remove it and put in this thing that these guys built in their garage. you know, in six months. And they've never, they don't even have clearances, by the way. I don't even know this is good. Which gets into the other issue is, you know, it's got to be secure.
Starting point is 00:40:28 You know, unlike a company where, you know, if you get hacked at a company, it's, it's, it's a bad day. You know, you maybe lose some money. You know, your product fails. You know, you have an unsecure system in an intelligence agency, you know, somebody dies, right? Like that, that soft guy in the field now has a piece of compromised map or imagery that is dangerous, right? And so you've got to take the security piece very seriously and figure out how to, you know, now, how do you ensure that this kind of technology is secure and how do you bring those companies in? You've got to get clearances now for companies where, you know, the CEO has never even heard of a clearance. They don't even know what you're talking about.
Starting point is 00:41:15 and you're saying, no, I need, I need two-year guys to get a clearance. They need to come, you know, work in the Beltway now. And so you've got to go through that. And then let's just say you make it through all that, right? Now you've got to convince an analyst to use it. Because, you know, remember, these people take their job very, very seriously, right? I don't know if you watch House of Dynamite, that movie, Catherine Bigelow. and it's about an unwarned launch where, you know, nuclear missiles coming for America and it's going to blow up and has killed millions of people.
Starting point is 00:41:51 And it's a very intense movie. But this is a real job. People go to work every day and they worry about that day and day out. That's what an NGA analyst is doing. They're worried. Somebody's going to launch a missile and it's going to hit Oahu and it's going to kill a million people. And so when you kind of walk in, And you say, I know you have your system locked down and you've been doing this for years and you've been trained to do this.
Starting point is 00:42:19 You're the best at it in the world. And I know this is the way you like to do it. But hey, I have this new technology. It's going to fundamentally change how you do it. And, you know, they're going to be skeptical. And they're going to be like, I don't trust it. I'm not sure how it gets integrated. And not just them, by the way, the customers as well outside of the agency who are sending these reports.
Starting point is 00:42:41 Are they going to be like, wait, you're telling me this, you know, this piece of intelligence was made by a machine, not by, not by Joe, who I've been working with for the last 15 years, who's the best imagery analyst you got. It's made by a machine. They're not going to trust it either. And so you have to get over that. So there's a lot of, you know, working with people to build that trust. There's a lot of test and evaluation. There's a lot of training for people of how to use these systems. Ultimately, recruiting people.
Starting point is 00:43:11 to help you make all these systems and integrate them. So it becomes this very big issue. And it was hard. And, you know, I've worked on it. And lots of other people did as well. But it is starting to happen now. And I'll say one more thing, which is recently, so not this current director, NGA, but the one previous. So eight, nine years after I had started down this path, the director announced,
Starting point is 00:43:41 publicly that they are now publishing intelligence reports in which, quote, unquote, no human hands have touched them. So it is happening. And it only took, you know, eight or nine years. What did you do to get buy-in, you know, institutionally within the organization? Because I understand what you're saying. It's like if you're a soldier and they hand you a new rifle and they say, this is going to be your rifle now, you're like, bro, I don't need this. What is this piece of garbage? I'll just use a swing shot like I always have. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, well, it's the same. Like, anybody who's used technology downrange will say the same thing. Like, you're, you basically look at a new piece of technology that somebody gives you, like a new radio or something. And you're like,
Starting point is 00:44:25 look, I already know this thing's going to break. Like, I already know I can't trust it. Right. Like, like, so whatever you say. Um, so yeah, you know, how do you do it? Well, um, you know, one of the things is I think you got to start in a place where you are working with the analysts, for example, or with the people that are going to use it. As you're developing this stuff, as you're acquiring it, you've got to bring them in and have them be part of the process. So they see it, they kind of walk down the path with you and have a choice. And a lot of them, when they do see it, are like, oh, wow, that's actually pretty cool. Like, I would like to use that. Like, how do we do it? And you got to get, you got to get buy in there. And I, I tried to, you know, work with,
Starting point is 00:45:14 with those folks as much as I could, you know, and the director of the, of analysis at that time, who was also very much trying to do that. And, and we would partner on these things. There would be tension because she's, you know, she's worried about her people and I'm worried about what I got to do. There was tension, but we tried to work together. So that's the first part. And I think you have to do a lot of test and evaluation. Like you need to show, you need to have rigorous testing and really show this is how it's going to work. Here are the limits. And the thing is, it can't be, the limit can't be like perfection.
Starting point is 00:45:48 People aren't perfect either, you know, like analysts fail sometimes. They admit something. You know, they can be compromised as well. You know, yes, an AI can be hacked, but, you know, a person can be recruited. Trust me, it's what I used to do for a living. And so like you're, you know, you've got to try to get to a point where it's, you know how good it is and what the performance envelope is and how close it is to a person. And then, and then show that and share that and be open with that with with the people who are ultimately going to use it. And then I think you also have to, my view is, is try it out in less risky missions.
Starting point is 00:46:36 Some people will say they want to try AI out in like business operations. And that's where a lot of people were at that time and saying, well, yeah, we can use this for like business stuff, you know, admin, HR, finance. I think you have to go straight for mission because that's the thing we have to get right. but there are missions that are less risky than others, right? You can worry about a mission in Africa rather than saying, yeah, we're going to entrust it to monitoring, you know, Russian nuclear weapons. Like we don't have to start with Russian nuclear weapons. We can entrust it to a mission that, you know, if it, if it fails, it is not the literal end
Starting point is 00:47:15 of the world. That's comforting. Yeah. Yeah. And so after this, I mean, you, I take it have gone back into the private sector. And this is just a little aside before we get into more serious subject matter. But I read in your book that you are sitting on the board of a company that wants to resurrect the woolly mammoth. Now, I will point out, I will point out, Anthony, that we, homo sapient men hunted that menace to
Starting point is 00:47:50 extinction hundreds of thousands of years ago. Now, you're all about bringing in new technology. Why do you want to bring this menace back into the world? There we go. You know, they're trying to resurrect dire wolves too. So, you know, I, well, when I left, I went into investing. I went to Bridgewater Association. It's a hedge fund. And then I went to Cerberus Capital, a private equity fund and and I work for Steve Feinberg who's who's now the deputy secretary of war which was a privilege he's an incredibly smart guy and I think really helping the mission right now and yeah it's true I also sat on some boards I remained interested in tech and and in particular in technologies that I think you know we're either dual use where I thought you know these are going to maybe they
Starting point is 00:48:43 have a commercial aspect but they also are going to help the mission or where I felt like it was an area that we needed to compete with China on. And I think biotechnology is one of those areas. And America really needs to compete in that area. And I think colossal is doing that. And I'm not in the company. I'm an advisor to the company. So I don't work there on a day-to-day basis.
Starting point is 00:49:05 But Ben Lamb, the CEO, is very strong CEO. He's doing, you know, unbelievable things like Elon Musk level craziness, like saying, hey, when I first heard it, I had the same reaction. I was like, wait, what is this Jurassic Park? Are you going to try to like resurrect of Woolly Mammoth? This is insanity. But he partnered with this guy, George Church, who is like one of the great, you know, like, you know, scientists in this space in the world.
Starting point is 00:49:37 He really, he's like a legend. And he's like, George is like, no, no, no, this is a doable thing. This can happen. And yeah, it's about the, you know, it's about the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf and they're looking at other things. But it's also about, you know, animals that we've made extinct more recently as well. And or ones that are highly endangered and so forth. So they're doing pretty amazing work. I'm more partial to the giant armadillo, maybe the giant sloth.
Starting point is 00:50:07 But, you know, that's just user preference. I'm glad you brought that up. There's a whole chapter in your book about synthetic biology that I, I want to get into in a minute here. But tell us about the fourth intelligence revolution. Why did you write this book and what's it about? Yeah. Well, you know, kind of reflects my background.
Starting point is 00:50:28 Like I went into intelligence and I saw one type of intelligence. I saw counterterrorism, counterinsurgency type operations. And then I left and I came back and all of a sudden it was completely different. And when I left NGA, I really started to reflect on that. And I was like, I sort of witnessed two very different forms of, you know, approaches to intelligence and was kind of there for this like new revolution beginning to happen. And so I wrote an article in foreign affairs about the AI aspects of this. But then I realized, look, it's even bigger than just that. And so what I did in the book is I kind of backed up and I said, you know, let's let's look at the history of intelligence how we got here. And I really started in World War II because that was really the first time we had what we would all consider like a true intelligence agency with all the features. And then, and then, you know, we shut that down after the World War II and then stood up the CIA and all these other agencies like DIA and NSA and so forth. And that was the second revolution.
Starting point is 00:51:35 It was an entirely different way of doing intelligence. The, you know, OSS was like cowboys, you know, just out there trying to, you know, collect and do ops. The CIA and the NSA, these were professional, you know, well-financed, large global organizations up against AGB, you know, up against this other very professional global organization. And we really professionalize intelligence. And then, you know, 9-11 changed intelligence again. And all of a sudden, we weren't going up against nation states. We weren't going up against the Soviets. We're going up against this decentralized enemy in al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.
Starting point is 00:52:20 And we had to, intelligence had to adapt. And we had to start using a lot more commercial stuff, for example, using the internet, using cell phones and things like that, having this kind of network intelligence and using more open source information, for example. that changed again. And now we're hitting this new revolution, this fourth revolution, where AI and China are really driving that revolution. There's a series of different topics that you cover in the book, aside from the history, but leading into things. And since we were just talking about the biological aspect, and just because I have a sort of a weird personal interest in it, just because for no other reason, I feel like
Starting point is 00:53:05 this topic isn't really talked about as much. You know, we talk about quantum computing. We talk about AI. We talk about drones. But, I mean, maybe we could start there. Why do you think we don't focus on the biological, you know, gene editing and some of these other technologies? Is it because of like bioethics and medical laws and things like that that that we have in America that kind of prohibit experimenting with those things? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:53:31 it feels sometimes like AI, like 10 years ago. So people in the space 10 years ago realize there was a lot happening. But day to day, if you went to 2015 and you talk to somebody about AI, they'd be like an average person and be like, I don't really, I don't know. I know social media. I'm just getting used to social media and cell phones. Like, what are you talking about? And now it's everywhere. And it's on everybody's mind. and it's changing the world. I feel like biotechnology hasn't had that like L-LM moment, right? There hasn't been that chat GPT, but we're seeing the signs.
Starting point is 00:54:11 I mean, they made this, this COVID vaccine in like months instead of years. We're seeing, you know, people curing like blindness and diseases by changing people's DNA where like there is a real business in the world that is trying to resurrect the woolly mammoth and that is a real possibility and they they birth a dire wolf actually so like it is starting to happen in a in a real way it just hasn't sort of gotten gotten big yet and and whenever you've got a technology like that nations are going to care and And they're going to figure out a way to use it for national security. They're also going to figure out a way to spy on it.
Starting point is 00:55:02 And what I was, you know, I partially put that chapter in the book because I wanted people to realize this was now in the game. This is part of the game now. And there are, you know, Chinese companies collecting DNA information globally. There's a company called BGI Genomics. It's a massive biotech company out of China that collect. collects people's DNA. And they do it through COVID tests. They do it through like prenatal tests for like pregnant women. Thankfully, not available here, but available in Europe. And they're collecting this information. This same company has contracts with the PLA, with the People's Liberation
Starting point is 00:55:43 Army. And they're doing work. And one of those things that they're doing work on, the, when you read the description, it talks about population improvement, right? Like, like, like, like, okay, where are we going with this? And you're doing this with the PLA. And when I hear population improvement and I hear People's Liberation Army, I hear Super Soldier. Like, I don't care what they say. That's my, you know, analyst's brain.
Starting point is 00:56:10 That's what I would say is going on there. Can you explain to people? Well, first, I agree with you. Like, when this takes off, it's going to be like the invention of the internet or it's going to be one of those things that just changes the world. But can you talk to people, like, more specifically what we're talking about, a country that's harvesting people's DNA and mass, obviously that should scare the hell out of everyone. But the potential this technology has is to give people superhuman strength, endurance, intelligence, perhaps. Yeah, exactly.
Starting point is 00:56:42 So when you, when you have these types of tools like CRISPR, for example, which allows you to change, to change. a gene and how it's expressed in a person. And you can do things like that. You can make people immune to a disease. You can remove a genetic mutation of some sort. And you can absolutely do things like make them stronger or more resistant to cold, have a higher cold tolerance, for example, or potentially smarter. We're not there yet. I don't, from what I read, in the literature where we can do those big things because they're complicated, you know, intelligence is affected by many things. But people are absolutely working on it. Companies are working on it. But, you know, governments are governments and an authoritarian government,
Starting point is 00:57:40 and one that's known, for example, to have in the past performed experiments on political prisoners, for example, like illegal experiments. You've got to assume, of course they're not going to come out and say this. But you've got to assume they're doing those kinds of experiments. And they could be used, like you said, they can make people stronger. They can make them smarter. A lot of people think Super Soldier and they think, oh, it's just like going to be in the movie and it's going to be a really fast, strong guy. Actually, what scares me way more is like you give people an extra 50 IQ points. Like, that's far scarier in our world of competition, where people like that could be, become intelligence analysts or inventing.
Starting point is 00:58:22 or compete with us through robotics and other things, right? So they could absolutely do that. There's an even darker side, which is could you create genetic bio-weapons, right? And could you target a disease to a specific ethnic group, right? Or could you target it to a specific individual? And this can seem crazy, but it's actually already happened. So in South Africa, under apartheid, they tried, they had a program. The apartheid government had a program to create, you know, bio weapons, in essence,
Starting point is 00:59:05 that would affect black people and wouldn't be targeted at white people. Like, this is reported and it's scary. So there is a history of this happening. And I'll say one more thing. as another signal that you can see this is happening is that when Xi came to San Francisco to meet with Biden a few years ago, and he got up from the table after the meeting, his guys came in immediately and wiped down every surface, anything he touched with his body. Immediately they were there, wiping it all down so there's no genetic residue.
Starting point is 00:59:46 Like they know, they know the danger and they're watching out for it. That's interesting. Yeah. Based on your research and the people you talk to, where do you perceive us as a country being with this subject right now from a national security standpoint? Do we have any real endeavors in this or is it just something that's sort of like, you know, maybe DARPA has on three by five cards somewhere? her, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, you know, look, historically, we were the ones doing all this research.
Starting point is 01:00:20 We had the best biotechnology people, you know, Doudna won the Nobel Prize. She's American for inventing CRISPR. Like, we have had the best historically. And I believe that we continue to have the best. But, you know, when you're in an authoritarian country like China, the rules, that we would apply to how you do human testing, for example, don't have to apply. Either publicly, they just change those rules or they can do things secretly that we just wouldn't do.
Starting point is 01:00:56 We just, you know, we're not going to have a lab and experiment on an ethnic group. It's just not going to do that. Whereas in China, they have literal concentration camps for the Uyghurs and easily could experiment on an entire population if they wanted. And maybe they are. It's hard to say because it's kept secret. But so I think they, and they're definitely investing heavily in the space. And BGI genomics and other companies have stolen American IP in this space to kind of move more
Starting point is 01:01:31 quickly. And then they're investing their own money and training their own scientists and having them come over here and get PhDs and go back there. So they're definitely making a push. you know, and militarily, it's hard to know what they're doing because it would be classified, of course. On our side, you know, we've continued to do research. DARPAs continue to have, you know, biological programs, for example.
Starting point is 01:01:58 But I don't think that we're, you know, if you ask me, I don't think that we put the level of effort into it that we should be. If you just simply look at the level of the threat, and to me, bioweapons are right there under nuclear weapon as the most dangerous possible thing. And I don't believe that we spend just under nuclear weapons amount of money on this. I think, for example, we need to do far more monitoring of diseases because people saw what could happen with a major disease with COVID. Nation states saw it.
Starting point is 01:02:37 Also, terrorist groups saw it and realized like, oh, wow, this is how you do damage. trillions of dollars of damage and you kill millions of people, you know, that sounds great to a lot of enemies of America. And so we need to really get better at monitoring for this stuff and then figuring out how to respond. And then I believe, and I kind of suggested in the book, like, we may need an entire intelligence agency that just does this, that just focuses on biothreats and genetic engineering and synthetic biology and all of these things in the future. It's that important. I do feel that it's one of those subjects that it is sort of like, you know, the way like when chat GPT was released, suddenly the public becomes, you know, it's in their face. They understand it and they
Starting point is 01:03:22 see it. And I'm like, oh, wow, this is a real thing. I mean, on the biological front, you shudder to think, what is going to be that relevatory moment for the public that's like, oh, shit, this is for real. Maybe it is when they see a woolly mammoth walking around. Yeah, maybe. You know, Or it's when, you know, they see like a genetically engineered person walking around where, you know, China did this. there was there was a scientist there who changed the genes of a fetus and and and or of a of a of a of a of a of a of a of a of a of a uh of a uh of a of a uh of a uh uh of a uh of a child um to cure them of aids um or to make them immune to it um it apparently worked but we don't know much of what happened after that um because they they kept it secret didn't they they said that they arrested the guy um i haven't seen any reporting of really what's happened for all
Starting point is 01:04:25 you know who knows maybe he's just working in a lab now right like it's hard that's the problem in an authoritarian state you can't know what really happened right um but you know i think i think if people see that happening i think if somebody if they see um if they if we see another COVID-like epidemic where it's very clear that it was designed. I think people are going to wake up and become very, very worried. Let's, because we've mentioned it several times already, let's turn our attention to AI. And I think you have a whole chapter in the book about it. And much ink has been spilt on this subject.
Starting point is 01:05:08 You said yourself, you wrote in foreign affairs about it. cut through the fog of war so to speak tell us how is this technology going to affect us from a national security standpoint yeah yeah i'd like to baseline ai a little bit there's a lot of different AI out there means a lot of different things a lot of different people but i would say this is to me how to think about it is it's it's a technology that's doing something like a person would do it and as a person would do it. So it's not, you know, when I say an AI system that's identifying objects on an image, like it's picking out the missiles.
Starting point is 01:05:54 And so if you just feed it a lot of images, it's going to say there's a missile. That's not, there's no rules, right? It's actually thinking in a sense and you can give it any image. You don't have to show it. even it sometimes and it can pick it out that's what's sort of new here and chat gpte and these other lm models like claude and so forth are are the biggest example ever i think in history of this like they they produce information like a person um and they can do things that a person that we have traditionally thought only a person could do because it requires some level of like thought and reaction
Starting point is 01:06:36 and adaptation, right? And so in intelligence, look, I think just broadly, people are going to apply AI to do all sorts of jobs that people do. It's going to do, it's going to draft contracts. It already is draft contracts for lawyers. It's going to help teach kids, like, you know, kids use this in school and learn from different AI systems. It's going to make movies, like if you've gone on Sora or nanobanana or something, like
Starting point is 01:07:03 can make a little movie. Same thing's going to happen in intelligence. And this technology AI is going to do all of the different things in intelligence that a person does today. It's going to do what's called the intelligence cycle. It's going to help to collect information. It's going to analyze that information. It's going to disseminate it. It's going to help plan the next information that needs to be collected and so forth.
Starting point is 01:07:32 And it's going to be used on sensors like drones to, autonomously fly them, remove them, and to identify what they're seeing. And then to collect that information, then send it to another drone or send it to another AI system to be analyzed. So I think what's going to happen is that all of the parts of intelligence are going to be done by AI over time. And I sort of say in the book, within five years, 90 plus percent of intelligence will be done in some way by an AI.
Starting point is 01:08:05 And that also what's going to happen is intelligence is going to be made for and by machines. So these AI systems are going to go collect and analyze intelligence and feed it to other AI systems. And some of them are going to be like drones feeding it to drones or AI analytical systems feeding it to other AI analytical systems. And that's really new. And we really don't even know how that's going to work quite yet. but I'm pretty confident that that is what will happen. And people, intelligence officers, is going to do jobs that are very, very different. Like an analyst might not just, their job might not to be to do traditional analysis.
Starting point is 01:08:50 It's probably not going to be to read a bunch of reports and then write a new report. They're maybe going to task an AI to read those reports and write the report and then they're going to QC it or have a vision or figure out what questions to ask. But really, I think what they're going to do is, partner with somebody in operations or with a general or with a president to be their interface. And that's what it will be to be an intelligence officer and an analyst, not to do it in the old way. Even for a case officer, I think you're going to need to use AI systems. You know, we're still going to collect human intelligence.
Starting point is 01:09:23 Ultimately, we still occasionally have to go recruit another human being to give us information. But you're going to need AI to help you deal with all the surveillance, for example. This is a little bit of a metaphysical question, I suppose, but unfortunately you get there very quickly with these kind of conversations about advanced technology. What do you think that's going to mean for us institutionally when we have a population of people who really don't know how to do anything? That it's so phantomological the way that these systems work in the background and generate this information and feed into each other. and you know you're just the guy that gets the report out of the machine and your whole job is to like hand it to the next guy i mean what do you that's like going to reshape uh the human species i mean if you think about it i mean it it's already happen in some ways right like in america we've forgotten how to manufacture many things that we used to manufacture like we literally just the people who used to make something who knew how to mine and and manufacture rare earth magnets, like literally have died off where they just never trained another generation. So we'd like have forgotten things or like iron working, you know, like iron
Starting point is 01:10:40 working that you used to be able to do in the 1800s. Like there are very, very few people left in the world who can do that kind of artisanal craft, right? So we've definitely, this has happened before with technology. And I think it will happen with AI, it inevitably. And we're going to have to, at a minimum, continue to teach people some of the basics. And I think about like long division sometimes. Like when I was in school in the 80s and learning long division and I knew there are calculators and I'm like, why are you teaching me long division? Like I'm never going to do it.
Starting point is 01:11:22 And they still stubbornly taught us. And it's true. Like I can't remember the last time I did long division. by hand. I just would use a calculator, but you still needed to learn it so you could understand math generally. And so we could identify math mutations
Starting point is 01:11:39 and engineers and like, you know, you needed those building blocks, right? I think the same thing will have to happen where even though the AI can do this stuff, we still have to teach people, especially children, but even adults,
Starting point is 01:11:55 how to do this stuff. You're still going to need to learn how to write. You're still going to need to learn how to do intelligence analysis, even if you're not going to really do it that much in your day-to-day job. Right, right. What was the other question about AI that I wanted to ask you? Oh, so I guess the other one that I'd ask for more of a military standpoint is I do have
Starting point is 01:12:20 some trepidation, I have to say, about the way the pitch decks are sent out to the public, that this is like this utopian technology. in a future conflict, we're still going to need soldiers that have to take the hill at some point, right? I think the war in Ukraine has shown us that ultimately, no matter how sexy your cyber ops are, you have to have soldiers taking ground and holding it. How do you see AI interfacing with that? Yeah, that's sort of the interesting thing, right? I start off the book with this like William Gibson quote, he was a science fiction author.
Starting point is 01:12:58 and he said, the future is here, but it's not evenly distributed. And so I think what happens with technology, you sort of see both things at the same time. Like in Ukraine, there are these autonomous drones. And there are also guys in trenches, you know, digging them out with a shovel that like literally you could take a Roman legionaire and put him in that trench and he would know what to do. You know, he'd be like, oh, I see. Here's a shovel. I'm going to dig it out. And like, okay, you don't have a bow and arrow.
Starting point is 01:13:27 you have a rifle, but I get it. Like, bad guy over there, I'm over here, he's shooting, I'm shooting. You know, he would get it. It still works. But then there's this drone flying over. I think that there will be more of that. And like maybe a taste of it is like Operation Spiderweb, which is this Ukraine operation operation where they took the drones.
Starting point is 01:13:51 They had to get them forward deployed into like Siberia and other parts of Russia. and then they kind of flew them either remotely or autonomously to attack, but they needed people to get downrange. So you're still doing these like super complex, you know, operations to move stuff and get it there. And then you're letting the machines do it. Now, you know, imagine that in more of a warfare scenario where you've got maybe special operations guys who's got to get this down range and are using these weapons. So yeah, you're having the drones come in, but the people are, you know, kind of innately flexible in a way that AI is just not there and machines are not and survivable in a way, right?
Starting point is 01:14:39 Like, you know, at the end of the day, if you have a United States Marine on an island, like he could run out of ammunition and he's going to be like, oh, I see I can cut down this like, you know, stick and turn it into a spear and continue to fight, right? Like, we're still going to need guys downrange doing this or controlling these systems or positioning them or, you know, ultimately to take and occupy a piece of land. You need to put a person there. Like, putting a drone there is not going to work. Like, the locals are going to be like they're just going to wait for the thing to run out of batteries. So you're still going to need to put people. I think it's going to be this mix. And nobody really knows what it looks like quite yet.
Starting point is 01:15:26 But we're going to kind of figure it out. And Ukraine's like the preview. Yeah. No, good point. Yeah, it's not going to happen all at once. Do we want to talk briefly about quantum computing and what that's going to change from an intelligence standpoint? Yeah, I mean, you know, quantum's interesting. I mean, to me, it's a little further off than AI, you know,
Starting point is 01:15:51 like we were talking about biotech a minute ago and it's like we're in the pre-LM phase. I don't even think we're in the pre-LM phase with quantum quite yet. But when it does hit and it is one where there could be true strategic surprise, right? Like for all we know, China has invested half a trillion dollars in creating a quantum computer secretly like a Manhattan project. Could happen. I would be surprised. That's like by definition surprise. But at some point, someone is going to make one of these computers.
Starting point is 01:16:24 And the biggest thing for intelligence is that such a computer could break encryption and traditional encryption. And that doesn't just mean the encryption of what we're currently transmitting. So we could start today and, you know, encrypt everything in what's called post-quantum encryption that couldn't be broken by such a computer. But it's all the old information. and they could have collected that old information, including like nuclear information, for example, right? Like anything that would have been encrypted and transmitted over any period of time going back to the beginning of, you know, computers, really.
Starting point is 01:17:05 And then they'll, you know, potentially could decrypt that. And that will be, you know, a major turning point, I think, that that information will be out there. You ever see that movie Sneakers? Robert Redford from the 90s, great movie. You know, that's, you know, spoiler. That's what it's about. And, you know, they're able to break into anything and sort of look at anything. And like a world like that could be really scary.
Starting point is 01:17:31 And for intelligence would change everything because all of our old intelligence, which is still sensitive, by the way. 20, 30-year-old intelligence is still important, you know. It could be decrypted. and that would be a major issue. Let's get into economic espionage. There's a whole chapter in your book about that topic. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:17:55 You know, one of the other aspects of this, of this fourth intelligence revolution is that it's not just about political and military issues, which is how, you know, we traditionally think about competitions with the Soviets or with al-Qaeda or something. It's about economics. It's about science and technology. and that includes on the intelligence side. And China has been performing economic espionage on America for years, right? They're collecting information about American companies, about their intellectual property,
Starting point is 01:18:33 and they're passing that to their own companies to replicate a product, for example, or they're trying to slow down our companies in some way. they, you know, they're recruiting people to collect information like insider threats within these organizations. So they're doing economic espionage. And we have always done a little bit of economic espionage. I mean, but it's not really been a big part of it because the Soviets were an economic superpower. Like it wasn't that big of an issue. After the defeat of the Soviet Union, like in the 90s we were the superpower we were globalizing we weren't focused on other you know collecting other people's information that much Clinton president Clinton did ask for some economic
Starting point is 01:19:20 information but not a ton and then during the global war on terror like we were focused on counter terrorism and like they were not economic actors so all of a sudden now we're worried about you know economic issues and I think that we need to build up the capability now to do economic intelligence ourselves to know what Chinese companies are doing, maybe to try to stop them from doing it, right? What if, for example, and I'll give you an example, what if there was another global epidemic that was far more powerful than COVID and millions and millions of people were dying? And China would not share with us a vaccine. Would you think it's justified to steal that vaccine, of course. Like, this is what, you know, our country does. We'd have to steal it.
Starting point is 01:20:12 So, or what if we wanted to know if their companies were making this quantum computer that would be able to get our information and all the encrypted information, including about nuclear weapons and things like this and really threaten us? Like, you've got to, I think you're justified to go get that information. And I think presidents need that. And the Trump administration has made it clear that economic competition is a big part of its policy. They should be provided with the information they need to make decisions, and that includes classified secret information. Isn't also one of the interesting things my perception of it anyway?
Starting point is 01:20:53 You can tell me if I'm wrong, is that in other countries, like France, for example, the DGSE can help French companies make sales and make a profit. Whereas like the CIA, I don't think is allowed to work with, you know, an American tech company or or car company or whatever else to help them sell their product abroad. Yeah. You know, you can get a master's degree in economic warfare in France. So like they're yeah, they're they definitely do it. And other other countries do as well. China does it. Israel does it. We have we have we have we have done this sort of thing. And so I've, um, so I've, break it apart into kind of like two pieces. Like one is this issue that I think you were referring to, which is picking winners and like having the government help a company. When I was writing the book, I still thought that was like verboten, like we're not going to do that. I just wrote about the
Starting point is 01:21:53 other thing, which was, well, we need to collect this economic information that's important to national security and give it to policymakers so they can make the right decisions about economic issues. right so they can know how far along is china with making a quantum device how far along are they with AI or biotechnology we need to know that information it's it's national security and their companies by the way are state controlled oftentimes they have state-owned enterprises and even if they're not owned by the state they can be controlled by the state so they're not purely you know economic actors and we need to be able to know what they're trying to do if they're harming American companies or American people and stop that, right?
Starting point is 01:22:39 So that's what I was thinking about. And I think that's what we need to do. Since I've written the book, the rules are changing. And our government now owns 10% of Intel. And we are investing directly in companies, you know, that make and manufacture things that are important to the national. national security industrial base, the defense industrial base, like companies that make rare earths, like MP materials, for example. So I can now, whereas even two years ago, I probably would have gotten on here and said, no way we draw the line at sharing that information. Now I think we might be headed in a direction
Starting point is 01:23:25 where we could share that information and we might do so. And we would be justified to do so. because it's that important that we compete in these technology spaces or in these manufacturing and supply chain spaces. And so we'd be justified to do that. Now, at the same time, and this is the capitalist in me and the libertarian in me, I also don't want to break our system, which is a good system where companies compete with each other. Right. So if you're picking winners who are bad winners, you're going to get bad companies, right?
Starting point is 01:24:02 and like you're not going to pick the right one and government is not great at picking like the best technology or the best company. So I still want there to be that competition personally. So what I would love to see is a solution where there was a way, for example, to, you know, get information if it was necessary and supply it to an American company if we had to. But to do that in a way that maintained American companies competing with each other, so they didn't like a fair way. Another topic you get into is open source intelligence and how that's kind of like rewriting the landscape of intelligence collection. What's your perspective on that? Yeah. Again, there's always been open source intelligence, even Bill Donovan, who started the
Starting point is 01:24:55 OSS, would talk about it and the importance. And, you know, they would collect newspapers. they would watch, you know, the television of the countries we're at war with, right, to see what's going on. So we would absolutely do that historically. But post-9-11, it became more and more important as we realized there was just more information in the open world than in the classified world. And now it's even more of the case because, again, we're competing in these areas like or science and technology where almost all of that information is open source. It's not classified.
Starting point is 01:25:37 It's not made behind some, you know, in some military base. It's at a company in an office somewhere. And so the intelligence community needs to be able to use that information effectively, to obtain it and use it effectively to compete in those areas in particular. Now, there's a downside to open source intelligence. which is, well, it's open source. So the, you know, your adversary knows that it's out there and can compromise it. They could change it, right?
Starting point is 01:26:11 They or if there's open source in the sense of like commercial satellites, for example, that, you know, you and I could go buy a commercial satellite image right now, you know, online. But, you know, China or Russia or these other countries know that they're up there. And so they could hide their things. They could use a cyber attack to change. change, you know, what the, what the satellite sees or something like this. And so we've got to be careful at the same time and secure about using this open source information. And we still need the classified stuff, right? Because that's really where you get your edge. Like, I want an
Starting point is 01:26:49 unfair advantage. Like, that's the nature of intelligence. That's the game. It's not like, there are no rules. I'm purposely trying to cheat. I'm purposely trying to get something. that you don't know about. You don't even know I was able to do it. I'm doing it secretly, clandestinely, right? And so we still need those classified systems. So I think we sort of need, I call it like a barbell approach, right? Like we need the open source stuff, but we need the super classified stuff too. So you're going to have to find a way to integrate the two systems. And you've got to integrate the two systems and bring the data together. Absolutely. Another chapter of your book, and another, this is something that's also been talked about quite a bit
Starting point is 01:27:29 in recent years is cognitive warfare, disinformation, these type of subjects. And I think back to a conversation we had with somebody about Russia and the war in Ukraine. And he was kind of saying how like, this is sort of like the ultimate checkmate against America because a country like Russia can feed us disinformation and feed our public disinformation all day. But here in America, we have the First Amendment. You know, you can't stop people from talking. You can't tell them, don't say that. And it's like kind of the ultimate checkmate for somebody who's a dictator that they can mess with us all day and we don't have a defense. Yeah, not only do we not have a defense, like we actually don't want one because having a defense would actually break, you know,
Starting point is 01:28:18 our rights in some way, go against our rights. Yeah, it's true. To me, the future is, you know, future conflict is going to be about cognitive warfare. And what you're doing in cognitive warfare is you're trying to influence, you know, who you're competing against, your adversary and get them to maybe not want to fight, right? Like, that's what propaganda is often about, like, get, get people to not want to fight or disrupt them. You know, Russia tried to disrupt the 2016 election. I don't personally think they were even choosing a side. I think they didn't care. I think they just wanted to create disruption and chaos and make Americans sort of hate. each other more, right? Like that was the goal and that's a win for them, right? And that's another
Starting point is 01:29:05 form of cognitive warfare where you're not, you're influencing people, but maybe not to an end. What's happening now and what really scares me is that now you've got cognitive warfare and artificial intelligence. And propaganda and information operation, cognitive warfare in the past used to be kind of like a one-way street. You could essentially advertise, right? Like you could put out a flyer or an ad or on Facebook like they did in the election hack or you could, you know, like spread rumors and things like this, right? But now with AI, AI is like a two-way street, right? When you talk to an AI, you talk to it, like you ask it a question, then ask you a question back. And AI is becoming this arbiter of information. It's where we're all going to go to get
Starting point is 01:29:57 information in the future. And the danger is that if an AI system is owned by an adversary country like China owns DeepSeek and it's still available here, or they infiltrate one of ours, they hack it in some way, which is not as hard as you would think. There's some studies recently by Anthropic, for example, that show that it's actually pretty straightforward to change these big LLMs. that they could use that to go to do cognitive warfare and to influence people using these systems. And I believe influence them subtly and even go after like kids in grade school with this kind of stuff because kids are starting to use AI as well. So it's a major threat. So we're seeing, you know, this move from these traditional propaganda like threats to the middle ground is probably like social media like threats like TikTok.
Starting point is 01:30:57 which is a massive threat, by the way, and should absolutely be handed over to American company or shut down because it's targeted a generation, Generation Z, and is used. It sensors information and it influences its users. And this has been demonstrated. But we're going to move from that into AI being like the platform to perform to perform cognitive warfare. And that's, that's incredibly dangerous. And we really don't even have defenses right now.
Starting point is 01:31:30 And to your earlier point, we don't even necessarily want the government to censor this kind of stuff. Right. So who do you have? And that's partially what I write in the book about, well, what is the solution? I get into a solution. Yeah, I want to get into solutions next. One more point on cognitive warfare. And I want to ask you about, like, how do you think we'll have to approach information assurance?
Starting point is 01:31:56 as we've been talking about the public being propagandized. But I think right now, today as a soldier, you get a message over the radio over the assault net from your commander. And he's giving you an order and he tells you to go somewhere and do something. And you have confidence that in that information, that that is your commander. You saw the guy at work today. You know who he is.
Starting point is 01:32:19 His commander, his orders are coming over an encrypted net. It's coming right to you. You're okay. We know where we're going and what we're doing, and I have confidence that this information is coming down through proper legal channels. But in the future and some of the technologies you've been describing, I mean, how do I know my commander's voice wasn't modulated by AI and it's being fed to me? How do I know that the imagery I'm being given hasn't been doctored somehow? You know, all of these different questions that like, how do you know what's real?
Starting point is 01:32:48 Yeah. I mean, you don't. That's the problem. And I think that kind of stuff's absolutely going to happen. I mean, our supply chain could be corrupted and there could be an attack on even a classified or secure communication system. The, you know, the voice of a person could be faked or the writing style or something like this.
Starting point is 01:33:19 And what are you going to do? And, you know, the thing is, in warfare in particular, there's always been deception, right? Like, we've always all sides try to do that and trick the other guy. And, you know, you look back even at like in World War II, you know, the password could be compromised or something. So, you know, people, guys would do things like, be like, well, who's the shortstop on the Yankees? Or like, ask them questions where, you know, you can ask multiple questions to be like, how do you know? You know, and even during, you know, Al-Qaeda actually went through this because to them, like, we were the technological enemy, right? And so they're like, oh, my God, these guys can listen to everything we're doing.
Starting point is 01:34:05 They've got drones. They can spy on my cell phone. And so they would do stuff like, they would never be like, here's the operation. They'd be like, hey, you know, Muhammad, you remember that place when we were kids that. we would go and, you know, we would hang out with, you know, so and so, and we would go climb that hill and there was a swing set. Well, that's, you remember the direction of that place from the village? Well, that's the direction I want you to go. And like, it doesn't matter how much encryption or, like, sneaky people, like, you don't know. There's like two guys in the world who know that,
Starting point is 01:34:47 and it's those two guys. And so how do you, so there are ways to, exist. And the thing is, it's not just going to happen to these soldiers. I think it's going to happen to everybody. This is really what I get into the book is that everyone is now going to be spied on like this and have information operations committed against them. All of us and even kids. This is going to happen. They're going to have those same doubts. And right now, you already see like where, you know, old folks sometimes have like their, you know, their grandkids, somebody will fake the voice and ask them for money. Well, that could also be done, by the way, by a, foreign intelligence agency if they wanted. Or it could just be done as a type of disruption
Starting point is 01:35:32 information operation if you did it a lot just to get people concerned and scared, for example. So let's talk about intelligence 4.0 and some of the solutions that you propose in your book. And one thing to kind of preface all of this, I guess, and I really don't mean to delve into partisan politics, but I feel like right now we're at this sort of moment where depending on who you talk to and what they believe, we're either in this phase of disruption and reform and we're shaking things up and we're making deals or American intelligence is hanging by a thread. It needs to be saved. I mean, never mind reformed. Like, can we save this thing? Can we resurrect these relationships? Do you have a, again, I'm not trying to drag you into making partisan comments
Starting point is 01:36:19 if you don't want to. But where do you see where we are like in this moment? Yeah. I, um, you know, look, I would think about it like this. Like that, that problem said I was just bringing up that we could exist in a world where like any information could be faked, right? At any time, including by adversaries who are trying to harm us as a nation, right? That's the world we're going into.
Starting point is 01:36:45 And they are harming us. They're trying to change information and get us to disrupt, distrust things. What do you do? What do you do in that kind of scenario? And you don't necessarily want an intelligence agency to help you there, right? Because the last thing we want is a CIA to come in and start censoring information because they're like, oh, this is disinformation. So I'm going to censor it. It's like, well, no, actually, even if it is disinformation, even if you know for a fact that was created by a GRU, you know, Russian intelligence unit, I still like, somebody still has a right to see it. Like, it's crazy, but that's true. And that's a fact. And so you can't
Starting point is 01:37:25 censor this stuff. So actually, I think shutting down the foreign malign, the counter foreign malign influence center, for example, at Odea and I was like a good idea. Like I, I don't think it was particularly harmful, but I can imagine a scenario where it could become harmful, you know, if any side decided they wanted to use that to manipulate information. So nobody wants that. But you still have to protect yourself against these threats, right? And I think the way to protect ourselves is that everybody now has to become that resilient endpoint, right? And you have to get trained to think like an intelligence officer and have some level of caution and say, oh, that could be, you know, a piece of disinformation. This could be actually somebody just trying to collect information so they
Starting point is 01:38:13 can model how I think and this AI could use that to influence me over time, right? And then there are ways that you can be taught to like intelligence officers are to deal with that doubt, right? Like one way you deal with it is triangulating information. You just never trust one source, right? Like the most intelligence officers would never trust a single source no matter how good you thought it was. It could be a satellite you built with your own hands. And you'd be like, I'm still have some level of doubt here, right? Anything could happen.
Starting point is 01:38:43 And so you use multiple sources, right? Or you assess the real. risk of, oh, you look at a piece of technology and say, who owns it? And you trace that back and you're like, oh, it is owned by China. Should, you know, be careful about it. So I think that we have to start looking at people as the endpoint, almost in like cybersecurity terms, and make them resilient at the individual citizen level where you're protecting yourself, you're protecting your family and your community. And that's separate from an intelligence agency. And I almost think about it as like police versus neighborhood watch, right?
Starting point is 01:39:17 Like we, we still have police and we still need those guys to go out and shut down the next internet research agency IRA threat, right? But we also need people who are part of the community looking out for each other and looking out for ourselves. And so when I think about what's going on in the intelligence community today, like, you know, we can argue about whether the, you know, there's changes here or there. I actually think we need to actually think outside of the agencies entirely and make those agencies better. They should use AI and do all these things.
Starting point is 01:39:54 But we should be building as civil society, as a group of citizens, our own intelligence function to protect ourselves. Because that's the only way to protect yourself from some of these threats. I think in your book you say we're all intelligence officers now, which is kind of true in a weird way, or I guess a modification. of that old saying, you might not be interested in intelligence, but it's interested in you. How do you think we would go about it? I mean, is this about bringing back high school civics class and media literacy? Or is there something more to it? Because to accomplish what you're talking about, I think we're going to need that gene editing 50 additional IQ points for each person in America to navigate all of that. I mean, we sort of, we sort of did.
Starting point is 01:40:44 it in recent memory, which is we essentially taught 300 million Americans to do cybersecurity. If you went back to 1995 and you talk to an average American and you're like, hey, in the future, first of all, you're going to know what cybersecurity is, which you've probably never heard of, and you're going to be able to do it. And they would be like, I don't know what you're talking about. You mean like everyone using encrypted text apps and things like that? Yeah, like everybody today in America is taught to change their password. They're taught, like children are taught, like, hey, there could be a bad guy.
Starting point is 01:41:18 There could be a hacker. You need to change your passwords so somebody doesn't, like, try to steal your computer data, right? We're taught at work and in school to not click on phishing emails, right? We have taught our entire society to be somewhat resilient against cyber threats, right? I think we can do the same thing for espionage threats and information operation threats and teach some very basic skills starting in grade school in like an age appropriate way in grade school, but ultimately by high school and in work like in a real way. Here are some basic things you can do. Don't trust just any piece of information you see, right? You need to think about where it came
Starting point is 01:42:00 from. What's the source? triangulate it with something. Like if it looks weird, it probably is weird, right? And hey, don't trust any piece of technology that you're given. Like we've been taught as a society to just trust technology because historically it's just been a consumer good that was made by another American. That's not the case anymore. Like apps and so forth come from people who don't have our best intentions at heart, right? And they're not just trying to make money. And so you need to start and look and say, okay, I don't just simply trust technology.
Starting point is 01:42:32 I think like an intelligence officer, I'm going to assess where it's from and what the threats might be and give it a second. And those kinds of things, like, those are, these are basic life skills that I do think can be taught at a literal level in grade school and in high school and at work and so forth. But I don't even think they necessarily have to even be taught by the government. They can be, you know, taught by families and, you know, and parents can teach their kids and, and so forth, right? Like, it's not rocket science. Like, like, you're, you're, you know, trust me, your average case officer is not a rocket scientist. Like, these are people who like, you know, are just like good at talking and like taking people to dinner.
Starting point is 01:43:19 Like this is, this does not have to be, you know, super, super complicated. But like, there's just a basic way to think. And it doesn't mean being paranoid all the time. Just means being basically cautious the way we are with crime. Right. Like you, you know, if you have, if you have a child, you teach your child, like from an early age, like, hey, we're in a bad neighborhood. Just be careful.
Starting point is 01:43:40 Hold my hand. Don't leave stuff out in the car if it's parked overnight. You know, because somebody might break in. Like, we teach these things. I mean, we teach kids active shooter drills, unfortunately. Like, they understand there are threats in the world. This is another threat. And let's, you know, go out and show people how to deal with this threat.
Starting point is 01:44:01 Yeah. I mean, I strongly agree with you that we need to do a lot more to invest in individual human beings and human capital and education and all these things. I think you're right about, you know, educating children specifically because I really think anyone who's my age or older is in some ways already lost, sadly. And I look at like, you know, you can log on to some social media and see people my parents say. freaking out about what is to me obvious AI slop. It's just somebody had AI generate a picture through it on Facebook. And now these people are 60, 70 years old losing their minds about it. And it's like, when I see that, I'm like, I'm not sure how, you know, as a society, how we recover from sort of like our feet have come off the ground.
Starting point is 01:44:56 You mentioned, you mentioned Bodriard in your book. and you know how there's a time where you know maybe in the 90s when he was writing that stuff it didn't seem totally real or relevant but now here we are in 2025 and it really does feel like we're living in that world yeah i mean it is um yeah the good good good pick from the book um and and like yeah he was writing about how we'd all be in this simulacro like everything would be fake and there wouldn't be real anymore and like the internet's sort of becoming like that like where, you know, the AI is just, like, feeding on itself almost. And it is, you know, that is an imaginable world. Or where, like, there's just doubt, right? Like, you're just not sure what the trust. But I'll tell you what I really worry about is actually not those kind of call them big fake things, like obvious fake things.
Starting point is 01:45:53 Like, what I really worry about is when it's, like, really subtle, right? Like when you just change an adjective that someone uses or even like the tone of their voice that subtly influences how somebody thinks about something, right? And it would be so hard to spot that, right? If you're just changing single words or tone, right? And but doing that, those subtle changes continuously and over time, like you're talking to an AI and it never says something blatant like Tiananmen Square never happened. the Uyghurs are free people.
Starting point is 01:46:30 Like, it never says anything like that. It just always gives you like a slightly skewed answer, right? Like, you know, like, you know, Tiananmen Square, instead of saying Tiananmen Square was a terrible human rights abuse, it says, Tiena Men Square could have been done better, you know, something like that, right? Like it, like it just makes these subtle change, or even more subtle than that, right, over time. And that influences people over time. And that's what like our generation, I think is going to fall for. Like our parents' generation is falling for like the blatant fake ones. But like I think we're going to fall for the subtle stuff where like you can't even see it.
Starting point is 01:47:10 And you're like, oh, this looks like a New York Times story or Wall Street Journal story or a newsmax story, whatever your preferred like media outlet is. And you're like, and everything, it adds on the site where I read it through chat GPT, but there's just subtle work. words changed. And that's to me the scariest thing and probably where all this goes. Yeah, right. It's hard or impossible for someone to spot a negative, right? If TikTok just kind of censors or deprioritizes any content about, say, Taiwan, you know, most people aren't going to realize that content just isn't there and that it isn't reaching them. There's not going to know. That's it. I mean, that is literally what's happening with TikTok right now where they do these studies. There's this group out of Rutgers that that has done these, it's called like a volumetric statistical study. And they show that on TikTok versus other social media sites like Instagram, there's less mention of Tiananmen Square, the Uighurs or these, you know, human rights abuses, for example. It's not that it's zero, right? It's plausibly denial. They're like, you know, oh, look, you can see the Uyghur stuff here.
Starting point is 01:48:24 It's just less. And then what they've shown these groups is that it's working because the longer they show this, the longer you are on TikTok, the more you use it, the more benevolent view of the human rights record of the Chinese Communist Party you will have. Right. And so it's like just these subtle things have an effect. And when you look at it across a generation, like and millions of people, it has enough of effect, for example, that could lead to more of a hawk not being elected who wanted to defend Taiwan in a war. And so over time, as there are more and more voters in this group and just enough of them have been skewed in this direction,
Starting point is 01:49:12 America all of a sudden China doesn't have to worry about as defending Taiwan because they have convinced an entire generation that we shouldn't defend it in the first place. Yeah. No, exactly. So the book, The Fourth Intelligence Revolution, this is out today, right? Out today. People can go and find this wherever books are sold. Anthony, are there like, we covered a lot of ground in this interview. Are there any topics that you'd really like to talk about that we didn't get into?
Starting point is 01:49:42 Well, just say one thing. Like, it can be sort of depressing to hear about all this AII and, uh, cognitive warfare and all of these things. And I sort of end the book on this. Like, look, ultimately, at the end of the day, America is still the most powerful nation in the world. It's very clear on essentially every line. And now what I think we need to do is kind of keep it that way. And there is still room for people to come and serve and do that directly in government and become an intelligence officer. By the way, you don't need to study, you know, international relations and speak five languages anymore. Maybe you're a technology.
Starting point is 01:50:19 or you have, you have an MBA and right, like we need MBAs because we're doing economic intelligence, right? Like, so there's still room to serve and, um, and help it. But even if you're outside of intelligence, like you're working at a tech company or something, you can still help that company. Like, building these dual use technologies matters. It helps. Like we need them. We need people who care about this stuff. And we also need people to just know what's going on in intelligence so that you can kind of be part of the system, maybe become like a citizen intelligence officer, like I said, to defend yourself and your family and your community, but also to know what our government's doing, right? And like, every time there's this intelligence revolution, there's been a backlash. We had the church
Starting point is 01:51:05 commission. We had Edward Snowden. Like, inevitably, intelligence will overstep the bounds. That just seems to be a truism, unfortunately. But by paying attention, by focusing on what's going on and like you can help to ensure that it does the right things. We still need to transform. We still need to, you know, touch the chalk line. And that's what intelligence does sometimes. But, you know, you can play a role in elect the right people and make the right choices. And that's important. And so that's, I was, you know, I hoped I sort of ended the book on that. And I think it's sort of the most important takeaway. Anthony, where can people go to find you online if there's.
Starting point is 01:51:48 interested in connecting with you or, you know, any of the companies that you're sitting on the boards of now. Yeah, you can hit me up. I have a website, Anthony Vinci.com, and all my social sites are on there. I have a substact, three kinds of intelligence that I publish and I get into some of these types of issues and technology and national security. And you can hit me up on LinkedIn or on X. And, you know, I would love to hear from you.
Starting point is 01:52:18 and love to kind of help, you know, continue being part of the community and helping people learn about espionage and what's going on. So again, the book is The Fourth Intelligence Revolution by our guest, Anthony Vinci. The book's available now. There will be links down in the description for people listening to the podcast or watching this on the YouTube's to go and check it out. Anthony, thank you for joining us on a Friday evening and spending some of your time with us. Thanks so much for having me.
Starting point is 01:52:49 Appreciate it. And everyone else will see you guys next time. Actually, we'll see you in 2026. Hey, guys, I want to tell all of you today about a new newsletter that we're launching that encompasses both the Team House podcast, the Ais-on podcast, and the high-side news outlet, which I run with Sean Naylor. The newsletter is going to be once a week. It's going to come into your inbox, and you're going to get the most current podcasts on Aiz-on and the Team-Hour. and whatever's topical or current on the high side. So it's another way for us to get the information out to you as social media algorithms are pretty iffy
Starting point is 01:53:29 and you never really know what you're going to get. So this is a once a week email. It'll slide into your inbox and it will have the greatest hits of that week. It's really good. Checking it out. The website for it is teamhousepodcast.com. slash join. Teamhousepodcast.com.com slash join. Go there and you enter into your email list or you enter your email into the little thing on
Starting point is 01:53:56 the website and you're good to go and that'll be it. So we really appreciate your support and hope you'll consider signing up. Where's the link? The link will also be down in the description if you're looking for it there. And that's teamhousepodcast.com.kit, Kilo, India, Tango. dot com backslash join.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.