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Intelligence

Washington’s Spy Ring and Paine’s Democracy

Agent 711 was one of the most effective and least known spies in our nation's history. He used dead drops to communicate about enemy plans. He used [...] More

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CIA

DNI Day Two: Building the Intelligence Community for 2045

Author's NoteIn our first paper, DNI Day One: Three Strategic Decisions for National Security Evolution, we identified three challenges confronting [...] More

Why One Former CIA Executive Never Stopped Playing

When I was three years old, I fell in love with the violin thanks to an unlikely duet between Itzhak Perlman and a grumpy green Muppet. Watching [...] More

Cuba’s New Spy Array Raises Concerns for U.S. Security

BLUFF — On 18 June, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) researchers released a new study that says Cuba has completed construction [...] More

US-POLITICS-OBAMA-INTELLIGENCE

DNI Day One: Three Strategic Decisions for National Security Evolution

Authors’ Note:This paper is intended to frame a discussion, not settle one.Too often, debates about intelligence reform begin with organizational [...] More

The Warning Paradox: Why Correct Intelligence Often Fails

In the months before Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Intelligence Community did something remarkable. It got the call right—and [...] More

Economic Security in an Age of Strategic Competition

There is a growing perception among long-standing US allies that they need to expand commercial relations with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). [...] More

Alex Younger: An Unusually Likeable Human Being, And A Spy

Sir Alex Younger died earlier this week at the age of 62. He had been fighting cancer for some time. Alex was Chief of the Secret Intelligence [...] More

Remembering Alex Younger: The Intelligence Chief Who Shaped a Generation

I don't want to write about Sir Alex Younger, my predecessor as Chief of SIS.I want to write about my friend.I had known about Alex's cancer from the [...] More

Why the U.S. Cannot Afford to Lose Intelligence Partners

THE BLUF: Working with partners is a key intelligence tool. While the US has one of the best if not the best intelligence organizations in the world, [...] More

Radical Empathy: The Counterintuitive Skill That Made Me Better at Everything Else

There's a moment in every intelligence officer's career when they realize something uncomfortable: to be effective at their job, they must genuinely [...] More

The Limits of Human Oversight at Machine Speed

OPINION — Warfare has always operated at human speed, but we now have the capability to operate at machine speed. The risks are high, but so are the [...] More

Rethinking the Intelligence Cycle for the AI Era

There’s a profound assumption embedded in much of today’s conversation about AI and intelligence: better technology will solve our core problems. We [...] More