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April 25th, 2024 | 12:22 AM ET

How the Kremlin Wins by Confusing You

Posted: November 8th, 2017

By Rob Dannenberg

Rob Dannenberg served as chief of operations for CIA's Counterterrorism Center, chief of the Central Eurasia Division and chief of the Information Operations Center before retiring from the Agency.  He served as managing director and head of the Office of Global Security for Goldman Sachs, and as director of International Security Affairs at BP.  He is now an independent consultant on geopolitical and security risk.

While Russia has become increasingly aggressive on the international stage, it has done so tactically, commonly engaging in plausibly deniable clandestine operations such as the 2014 annexation of Crimea. To keep policymakers in the West guessing at what Russia’s true intentions are, Moscow has employed an adapted version of the military doctrine of deception, known as maskirovka.

The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with Robert Dannenberg, a 24-year veteran of the CIA and former head of security at Goldman Sachs, about what Russian application of maskirovka looks like, and what the Kremlin seeks to accomplish by employing it.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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