Published: Feb. 25, 2022, 3:35 p.m.
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US intelligence expert Amy B. Zegart chats with Trey Elling about SPIES, LIES, AND ALGORITHMS: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE. Topics include:
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\\n - The US intel perspective on Russia\'s war on Ukraine (1:37)
\\n - The use of cyber warfare in this conflict (3:29)
\\n - An element of cyber warfare that US intel was slow to understand (4:42)
\\n - DC and Silicon Valley improving their relationships for the good of cyber warfare (5:43)
\\n - George Washington actually proving to be an adept liar, especially on the battlefield (7:33)
\\n - Improvements to intel gathering by the American Civil War (9:02)
\\n - How the attack on Pearl Harbor shaped intelligence (10:28)
\\n - The CIA\'s original intent upon its founding in 1947 and how quickly it became something else (11:34)
\\n - How George Church and his 1970s Church Commission further shaped US intel agencies (12:41)
\\n - What it looks like when an Congressional oversight committee does well with the intelligence agencies (14:28)
\\n - Why the long-running disfunction between agencies got worse between the end of the Cold War and 9/11 (16:22)
\\n - How \'unknown unknowns\' shape decision-making (17:33)
\\n - Whether intelligence is inherently secretive (19:17)
\\n - The most common characteristic among intelligence officers (20:42)
\\n - Finding Bin Laden as an example of forgetting everything you known to learn the truth (22:56)
\\n - Asymmetrical information as a tool in making accurate predictions (24:35)
\\n - The point where the amount of information goes from helpful to overwhelming when making predictions (26:12)
\\n - Groupthink (one of Amy\'s \'seven deadly biases\') negatively affecting the US intel community\'s read on Iraq and WMDs earlier this century (27:30)
\\n - How to frame a problem in a manner that helps to avoid those biases (28:44)
\\n - The secret of \'superforecasters\' (30:06)
\\n - Whether artificial intelligence is better at analyzing data than humans (31:18)
\\n - The definition of \'counterintelligence\' (32:46)
\\n - The benefits of counterintelligence done well (33:04)
\\n - Why intelligence agencies still use polygraphs when the technology has been proven as unreliable (33:47)
\\n - How technology caused a counterintelligence crisis for the US in China a decade ago (36:43)
\\n - Why \'covert action\' is such a hotly debated topic within the intel community (38:02)
\\n - How it\'s both good and bad that intelligence and war fighting are much more connected (41:34)
\\n - What the public gets wrong about US intel agencies and officers dues to the liberties Hollywood takes with their depictions in movies and tv shows (43:22)
\\n - ZERO DARK THIRTY as an example of Hollywood taking major liberties with \'truth\' (46:04)
\\n - How it\'s decided which information gets classified and who makes those decisions (47:25)
\\n - Why chapter nine, titled "Intelligence Isn\'t Just For Governments Anymore", focused on nuclear threats (48:40)
\\n - What Amy thinks will happen with our response to Russia in the coming days, weeks, and months (51:06)
\\n - Whether China will take this opportunity to gain more of a stranglehold on Taiwan (52:31)
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