Xi’s Awful Arithmetic

By Mark Kelton

Mark Kelton retired from CIA as a senior executive with 34 years of experience in intelligence operations including serving as CIA’s Deputy Director for Counterintelligence. He is a partner at the FiveEyes Group; a member of the Board of Trustees of Valley Forge Military Academy and College; member of the National Security Advisory Board of the MITRE Corp.; member of the Day & Zimmermann Government Services Advisory Board; member of the Siemens Government Technologies Federal Advisory Board; and a member of the Board of BigMediaTV.

CIPHER BRIEF EXPERT VIEW — Mark Kelton is a retired senior Central Intelligence Agency executive who retired in 2015 with 34 years of experience in intelligence operations. Before retiring, he served as CIA’s Deputy Director for Counterintelligence.  He is the Senior Vice President for National Security Solution at DynCorp International; and is Board Chair of Spookstock, a charity that benefits the CIA Memorial Foundation and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation.

In the wake of yet another bloody defeat at the hands of R.E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia – this one at Fredericksburg in December 1862– Abraham Lincoln observed to his secretary that there was an ‘awful arithmetic’ to the conflict.  The President calculated that if numerically superior Union forces would fight the Rebels continuously for a week, they could wipe the Southerners out simply because the North could afford to incur more casualties than their opponents.

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