The Cipher Brief spoke with our expert John Sipher, who retired from the CIA in 2014 after a 28-year career in the Agency’s national clandestine service. His career includes time in Moscow, and running CIA's Russia operations. Sipher served multiple overseas tours as Chief of Station, and Deputy Chief of Station in Europe, the Balkans, Asia, Southeast Asia, and South Asia. What follows is a transcript of his briefing on Tuesday with Cipher Brief members. (ED NOTE: The full transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)
The Cipher Brief: Let’s start big picture. Russia has been using asymmetric tactics like disinformation, subversion and information warfare with success against the U.S. for a number of years. Give us an overview of the Russian playbook when it comes to its efforts to impede U.S. national security.
Sipher: The Russians continue to focus their efforts on weakening NATO, and weakening our relationship with Europe, and in the United States. It's a threat we need to take seriously and deal with, and we haven't really done a good job of that in the last couple of years. We have a KGB President of Russia now, and in some ways, we have an unusual situation where someone who is from the services - the brutal KGB and Russian intelligence services - is now in charge of the country, and therefore, the country almost uses its intelligence services as one of its main forms of foreign policy in the West, and we saw active measures in the 2016 election, and now.
Most intelligence services, Western intelligence services, collect intelligence overseas, and then analyze it to help policymakers make better decisions. Russian intelligence has always been different. It was different during the Soviet days, and it's still different.
They put a lot more time, and effort into things like we saw in 2016: Disinformation, subversion, sabotage, information warfare, and agitation, so it's something that they've invested in for years and these are asymmetric means, asymmetric tools to take on a bigger, and stronger power. They've done it essentially since the beginning of the Soviet state in 1917, and we also have a President of the country who calls himself a proud Chekist.
So, I'll talk a little bit about the Cheka. The Cheka was the original Soviet security, and intelligence service, and every December eighth, the Russians celebrate Chekist day, and Putin always makes a point of being in the country for Chekist day, because he sees himself as a proud member of those services, which are very different from our services.
When I was in the CIA, we'd often have visitors, and senators come to visit us. When I was in Pakistan for example, we would all start with the quip that most countries have an army, but here in Pakistan, the army has a country, and so in Russia we have almost the same situation where it's a country that uses its intelligence services as the primary weapon, and the President is someone who looks at statecraft almost like we look at intelligence operations overseas.
To give an example of what an intelligence-run state is, Russia used its very powerful internal, and external security services: The FSB, and the SVR to conduct sport doping. They doped the Paralympic games using the Russian security services. When you're using your CIA, FBI, NSA, and everybody to conduct doping schemes, you're using your intelligence services for essentially everything you can to keep yourself in power, and that's what those services are about. It's about liquidating, and keeping your enemies off balance, and it's about keeping the leadership in power at all costs.
I mentioned the Cheka, which was the original Soviet intelligence services run by Felix Dzerzhinsky. They made it clear right from the beginning that they were about organized terror. They used to call themselves the "Punishing sword of the revolution." They were the secret police that was the barbed wire that held the system together, and kept the leadership in power, and so right from the beginning, they were quite brutal. They were the judge, jury, and executioner for the state, and what we saw throughout the Cold War is this Chekist mindset.
John Sipher, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
It's been a nonstop war against the West, and defector after defector, right since the beginning of the Soviet state has come to the West, and told us the same thing: That the goal of the Soviet state, and now the Russian state is to weaken its enemies from within, to throw dust in the eyes of the educated elite overseas, and not to focus on collection as much as to use sabotage, subversion, and build false narratives, and indeed, assassination, is part of what the Russians have used, and the Soviets used before them. Throughout the Cold War, we saw them doing things that they call active measures, we tend to call them covert action.
For example, during the Cold War, they would consistently try to use forgeries, assassination, and other tactics to spread narratives, and an example that most people may be familiar with was the story told in a video series called Operation Infection, about how the Soviet KGB created a narrative that the Pentagon had created the AIDS virus, and was spreading it around what was then called the third world to weaken countries using AIDS.
During the Cold War, they had spies, they owned a number of newspapers in places like India where they could put a false story like this into the Indian press, and then they could go to other countries to pick up the story, and move it around through the media ecosystem until eventually they could push the narrative into the West, and it eventually became news in the United States, the story that perhaps the Pentagon had created the AIDS virus.
It was a fiction from the beginning that the Russians created, and they did it again, and again with stories about the U.S. harvesting baby parts in Latin America, and a variety of other false stories. We saw it most recently in 2016 when they interfered in our election.
There are just a couple of points I want to make about the 2016 election.
There are people who've said that what the Russians did against our election was no different than things they'd done in the past, and indeed, it's really true. The Russians have been doing these things - trying to weaken the West and weaken the Unites States - forever, but there were a few things about 2016 that were different that made it more successful and one of them was obviously social media.
It's so much easier now to weaponize information. Trolls, bots, algorithms can push into specific targeted audiences, and can spread disinformation much faster, and much more effectively than ever before when in the past, if they wanted to spread a false story, they might have to recruit journalists, and move it up through the media ecosystem. Now you can just punch it into social media, and let the algorithms do the work for you.
Another different is that in 2016, Putin's rage against Hillary Clinton was something that was unusual. It allowed Russia to take more risks than they might've taken otherwise. Putin really hated Hillary Clinton. He believed that she played a role in pushing what he saw as a state department effort to push people into the street in 2012 when he became President for the second time. I think he was surprised at the amount of people who showed up to protest his running for President again, and I believe he blamed that on Hillary Clinton.
One other thing that made 2016 different - that made these active measures successful - is that we weren't really prepared. We'd been so laser focused on terrorism for the last 15 years that we weren't as focused on Russia like we had been during the Cold War. There was a general view somehow that we, and the Russians both were interested in fighting against radical Islamic terror, so therefore we were more natural allies than we were adversaries.
I think people who had focused on Russia realized that wasn't true, and that Putin still saw us as the main enemy, but a lot of us were focused on terrorism, and not on Russia, whereas Russia maintained their focus on us as the enemy, but probably the biggest thing was our dysfunction in our divisions. We were dry tinder for the Russians. Active measures, these sort of covert games, they don't create divisions in society, but they can exploit them, and they can amplify them, and that's exactly what happened in 2016. They were able to push groups that might not normally vote to raise the outrage so they might go out and vote. Within other groups, they spread narratives that both sides were racist, and therefore kept people away from the polls.
John Sipher, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
They weren't trying to change minds so much as they were trying to push action, and if there's anyone to blame, it's us. Our tribal partisan nature was something that was very easy for the Russians to exploit.
The last is probably some version of collusion. The Russians have conduced these active measures and these covert operations for years. In their doctrine it's very clear that human sources are the base of their success. They need to have people helping them, directing them, and pushing them where they need to go. I don't have any sense if it was somebody in the Trump campaign, or anybody that was helping the Russians directly, but we have yet to uncover human sources that were helping the Russians. There's no doubt they had a knowledge of the United States, so they knew how to deploy resources in specific counties, and specific states.
We have to understand that this is how the Russians operate, and they're not going to change, and therefore we have to understand that a weaker power using these tools against a stronger power, using asymmetric means, sort of like a terrorist, they can't attack you head on, so they find your weaknesses.
It's not going to change, and so we have to come up with means, and policies that push back against the Russians effectively, so they feel pain, and they understand that they've pushed too far. We have to come to terms with the impact of social media, figure out how we deal in this new world. We haven't done that yet. We have to deter and defend and realize that these issues are national security issues.
John Sipher, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
The problem is, any time something happens now, it becomes a domestic political issue. Even now with what we’re seeing with Ukraine, everybody is attacking each other on either side not based on the information, but based on which tribe you happen to belong to, and so we need to somehow look at things through a national security lens, and not always through either a criminal lens, or a domestic political lens.
The Cipher Brief: How can the U.S. government and the intelligence community and mainstream media properly defend against Russian disinformation efforts?
Sipher: We have to deal with this issue with an all of government approach. We have to treat it like a national security issue, and put our heads together, and work with our allies. We have to try to look at our domestic politics and see if there's a better way of doing it.
Part of the problem with social media is that everybody seems to enter a room where there are 150 people screaming, and there's no real way to know which one of those people is the one that seems to be the expert, or have information that we can use. So, we just tend to hear a cacophony of voices, or whichever one's the loudest, and the Russians understand this.
That's the one thing the Russians have always been good at is understanding us. They've been very good about knowing how to best weaponize information to create storytelling narratives that resonate, or to just try to confuse the situation so they win if the average American says, "Listen, one side says X, the other side said Y, there's no way to know what the truth is, so I just sort of give up."
The Cipher Brief: How has the U.S. conducted political warfare, as defined by George Kennan, against Russia since 9/11?
Sipher: In General Michael Hayden's latest book, he gives a good example of how in the 90's, national security leaders got together to look at how the United States would engage in information warfare, political warfare, cyber warfare, these type of things, and it was a big discussion. He talks about it being like an almost religious discussion asking questions like, "Where are we going to go? Are we going to try to change the information landscape to engage in full-fledged political information warfare, or are we going to do something less we call it sort of cyber defense, or cyber warfare?"
And essentially, the United States came down on the less aggressive cyber warfare, cyber defense, cyberattacks side, and it wasn't really until 2016 that many Americans realized that the Russians went in the other direction. They went into trying to take action that changes the way your opponent’s think or forcing them to take actions against their best interests. It's a much more inclusive look at political, and information warfare than the United States happens to do.
At the same time, the United States has incredible resources. The NSA, and the military have incredible power, and the ability to use cyberattacks, cyber warfare and political warfare. And just like after World War II as we tried to develop a nuclear deterrence, it took a while for us to come to terms with how we were going to look at defense, and deterrence, and it's not clear to me yet that the United States has come up with a way to think about these issues in the modern age.
The Cipher Brief: How do President Trump's public statements about the intelligence community, and his desire to have a personal relationship with Putin, versus real actions the U.S. Government has taken against Russia, either help, or hurt the U.S.' ability to counter Russian threats?
Sipher: Putin is in a strange place. Most leaders, most countries are looking for stability, and the one thing they must worry about is you have the biggest, most powerful country in the world in the United States and essentially, it's not clear where it's going, and what it's doing, and what its interests are.
This has to be very difficult for Russia to come to terms with what policies they push forward as they try to figure out what the U.S. response will be, because there is a disconnect between the President's public views on Russia, and much of the rest of the administration, so it's got to be a difficult time for Putin to try to figure those things out.
The Cipher Brief: How do you anticipate that Russian tactics, techniques, and procedures will continue to evolve over the coming years? Will they continue to push if they don't receive strong enough pushback?
Sipher: I don't know if it was Lenin, or Stalin, who compared Russian policies to using a bayonet. You push, and as long as it's mush, you keep pushing until you hit bone, or you hit steel, and then you pull back. The one thing Putin uses his intelligence services for is to have an understanding of his adversaries, and enemies so he knows how far he can push.
John Sipher, Former Member, CIA's Senior Intelligence Service
If you're a weaker country with an economy the size of Italy that is trying to play ball against a country like the United States, you can push, but you have to worry that if you push too far, the much bigger, and more powerful adversary will turn against you and then you're in a world of hurt.
So, he's very careful about calibrating how far he can push, what he chooses to do to cause pain. At this point, most Americans see Russia as at worst, a nuisance, or something they don't care about at all. Whereas, if Putin pushes too far, and actually makes the United States into an enemy that's going to actually turn its power against Russia, then he's got a lot to worry about.
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