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[Music] good afternoon I'm Amanda okie director of adult education at the International Spy Museum thank you for joining us for spy dad I hope you're here again or if it's your first time welcome we're we're really glad to be able to offer such an interesting conversation to you when we'd all rather be out and about leading our paths in future lives but we have a really interesting discussion lined up for you today our speakers are going to each present about topics that they're finding you know really stimulating really engaging even worrisome and then they'll be answering your questions so a little bit of detail first of all you'll somewhere on your screen whatever you're on you'll see a question mark and that's how you can type in your question and we'll be seeing those and I'll be conveying them to our speakers I also want you to know that just like an in-person program unfortunately not every question will get answered but we'll do our best and we may be able to follow up later with some answers also as we like to say we can't ITU there's so many different platforms people are joining from tablets from phones from PCs and laptops but we do have some tips for you if you're having trouble please refresh if you can only see one of us and you really don't want to see me you can swipe left or right if you're on a tablet or a phone and that can really work well for you so I think that it gets rid of oh one more thing we can't control the construction that might be happening outside we'll try to mute our mics if something happens but as you know we're broadcasting from home so thanks for your time consideration of some of those issues all right without further ado I'm gonna introduce our first speaker who is my supercool boss Chris Kosta he's the executive director of the International Spy Museum yeah pretty exciting career that you can read about in the program description online but I do want to say he was most recently with the National Security Council so he really knows what he's talking about and Chris is gonna give it us his thoughts on truly hot topics and he might even give us some suggestions for things to read that might distract us or and engage us so thanks so much Chris hey thank you for that great introduction Amanda no one's ever called me super cool thank you everyone for supporting spot yet that we're holding virtually this is the second time that we've done our program online though the physical Spy Museum is currently closed I promise you we will reopen I just can't tell you when but our team is consistently in working on our virtual programs in continuing our education mission I'm very proud of them I also before we get started I want to extend my warmest wishes for everyone to stay healthy and well without further ado let me just jump into the first article that interests me we're the International Spy Museum I know a little bit about the Israeli intelligence services in particular Israel's Mossad I think all of us have heard about the Mossad what's interesting as a result of the pandemic the Mossad has switched gears a little bit and they're currently getting into the logistics of going out worldwide and finding ventilators and other equipment that supports Israel's health needs and you might be wondering why would they be doing that one that's what the Prime Minister wants they serve the state in two although they're not experts on logistics the Mossad they have networks in relationships across the globe so the state needs those ventilators the state needs some additional support to their health care system so that's what the Mossad is doing transitioning it a little bit to the are CIA the United States Central Intelligence Agency in our intelligence community the Washington Post and New York Times have put out pieces recently on the fact that we are redoubling the United States is redoubling their efforts to understand what's happening on the ground in China to make sure the numbers are accurate reported appropriately what is happening as it relates to the corona virus and I think some of that is evening out but certainly it informs the President on some of the decisions that he has to make some of the analytical judgments the next issue is related to China but it has nothing to do with the pandemic in fact it's a counterintelligence story it's the idea that there are a good deal of Chinese counter espionage or I'm sorry there's a good deal of Chinese espionage work as such our FBI the Federal Bureau of Investigation here in the United States along with the Department of Justice is being very very aggressive on China because they are very adept at stealing intellectual property and under a thin veneer of scientific research there are some Americans that are working with the Chinese and might be violating espionage acts as such the Department of Justice has really focused very much on those cases across the country switching gears a little bit to terrorism a very very important terrorism story you may have seen it or you may have missed it it's about a terrorist label of white supremacist for the first time the United States has called a white supremacist organization of foreign terrorists the organization is called Russian Imperial movement they operate out of Russia it is a as I said a white separatist or I'm sorry premesis organization it runs some camps in Russia it trains people to go off and fight in places like the Ukraine so sanctions are going to be levied against it by the United States and I think this is a very important terrorist story as it relates to the United States and some of our policy the United States policy initiatives also sadly in the middle of a coronavirus in southern France I was tracking last week there was a knifing attack by a terrorist it's being reported he was a terrorist and being investigated about by terrorist prosecutors in the southern portion of France fortunately since the town was shut down the police were very quickly able to arrest this terrorist who had killed two individuals and wounded tragically five so that's a reminder that in the middle of a pandemic terrorism stories do not go away another story on terrorism I want to take you back to 2002 a terrible tragedy as it related to a reporter for The Wall Street Journal a very very good reporter his name was Daniel Pearl he traveled to Pakistan to follow leads he was lured into a location it was a ruse and he was murdered brutally by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed two weeks ago for the individuals that were complicit in his kidnapping in Pakistan were released inexplicably by the Pakistani justice system within 24 hours there was an outcry and the Pakistanis reah Rus today four individuals one of them I believe is waiting on death row for participating in that kidnapping it was a tragic story that played out as I said in 2002 the final two stories just to provoke them thinking one of them was placed in foreign affairs and it's this idea that when the pandemic is over what a the lasting impact on the intelligence community on the society as we know it on the world and it's a it was a thought piece that talked about this idea that China for example not to pick on them other countries as well using digital surveillance as well as artificial intelligence to track their population what does this mean in western liberal democracies are we going to use iPhones to track people to enforce social distancing it is an interesting question and I certainly don't have the answers but maybe some of you will have some follow-on questions in the last piece I talked about it the last time we did spy chat there are some ceasefires that are playing out across the world but in war zones while health workers continue in places like Libya - very much we're very much worried about the health implications of this virus on civilians children young adults that there's also combat breaking out in places like Libya in Afghanistan there's an exploitation of that by terrorist organizations like Isis in Afghanistan there is some silver lining in places like Yemen there is a ceasefire while health workers are able to treat people that are dealing with the corona virus so I guess the point being wars aren't ending because of the corona virus except for in some isolated places in the world where we've seen some cease fires so that and those are a few of the issues I wanted to talk about in pose to you so when we get to questions maybe I can follow up thank you very much back to Amanda oh I'm sorry one follow-on so what am I reading Amanda asked me to share with you a book that I'm reading rereading actually is called anonymous soldiers by dr. Bruce Hoffman an expert on terrorism he wrote above the Palestine in the 1940s really a 30-year epic story on terrorism counter terrorism on insurgency counterinsurgency and then the creation gate so that is a book I strongly recommend you might pick up and greed Thank You Amanda thank you Chris so much and and Steve who's been sitting there thank you for that for your patience I know you were getting tricky off of some of the things that Chris had to say Stephen a cache is an advisory board member at the Spy Museum he's our outside general counsel thank you for being a lawyer that we can really get help from that we may not always want to have to get from you have had an interesting background one of your many roles you were a liaison between intelligence officers or the intelligence community and science communities so I think that might be particularly drawn upon today as everyone is so concerned about the pandemic but I know you have many broader interests so I will turn it over to you to talk for a little bit thanks Steve so much well thank you for having me and it's just it's wonderful to be it's always wonderful to be a part of the spy museum I love being on the advisory panel I love being your lawyer and I love being here on spy chat and hope to talk about a few of the things that Chris raised first I'm gonna talk a little bit more about my background to you know where I'm coming from here yes I am a lawyer even though I'm not wearing a tie today they let us take it off during the pandemic um I began my career as a prosecutor up in New York if you watch Law & Order it's my old office um but then join the Central Intelligence Agency first as a lawyer and then decided I didn't want to be a lawyer anymore and became an intelligence officer and on the operation side and worked on counterterrorism and and other matters since then done a lot of work sort of in the area where it straddles science biology and the intelligence community and that's what I think we really want to talk about today we're all sitting at home we're all worrying about coronavirus and while reading in the newspapers our national leadership tries to make decisions and this is both a great moment to sort of think about what the intelligence community does what intelligence does in the general sense and also what it's doing in the area of coronavirus which sounds a little strange when we think about intelligence collection and analysis I hope after all the spy chats we think about more than James Bond well we don't think about biology often um but let me still have a step back for just a second and talk a little bit about what the intelligence community does I'm former agency so I think about it from there there optic which is human intelligence recruiting spies but they're a whole bunch of other agencies the National Security Agency for instance that does signals intelligence but what are they collecting again so what do we mean by foreign intelligence and you'll see how this links back to two coronavirus um basically our leadership has to make decisions and those decisions are hopefully linked to what the reality of the world is now a lot of what's happening in the world we can understand and know with a high degree of certainty by basically looking at our window or reading the newspaper but there is a lot of the world at a very important part of the world which is obscure it can't be easily seen it's not out in the open now when we think about intelligence I mean here's the obvious one our adversaries overseas have weapon systems and they keep them secret we don't know necessarily how fast their planes go or how big their guns on their tanks are and we don't know when and under what circumstances they would have a war or not have a war and whether they'll sign this treaty and whether or not they will insist on some diplomatic initiative so there's reality out there which is obscure to our leaders and if you ever played poker or bought a house you can imagine or bought a car you want their information you don't know but you'd like to know what is what am i a mercenary holding their hand or what does the car dealer really gonna sell this car for does this house have termites all that stuff isn't known to you well the intelligence community is in the business of pulling back the curtain or leaf at least looking behind the curtain and observing and reporting on what reality is and historically a lot of that has focused on the traditional collection missions and brought some terminology here the requirements of the consumers two words there that don't necessarily fit with James Bond what who are the consumers they're the people who have to make the decisions that's the President and combatant commanders cabinet secretaries the Congress state and local officials in charge of homeland security they're the people who have to make decisions and they want them informed by that obscured reality um and their requirements are what they need think about ordering the restaurant your requirements are I need a hamburger they bring you a hamburger the president needs to know X Y Z the intelligence community tries to bring it to the president or to the Secretary of Defense normally and in most cases the bulk of what the requirements are revolve around things like military intelligence or political intelligence what is Putin thinking what is the president of whatever company country thinking what is he gonna do or she going to do when confronted with this situation but medicine and public health has been a part of that although it's relatively small part of that certainly for many years we've always been interested in man-made public health issues does a given country have a biological weapons program where did that anthrax come from our terrorist groups preparing to attack us using biological weapons we want to know about the plans intentions and capabilities of our adversaries they know how to make a bio of it if they do know how to make a bio weapon when and under what circumstances and even if they would use it and that's what spies do that's what intelligence collection does they try to find out the answers to those questions bring them back to Washington let our decision-makers make decisions based on that information um some aspect has involved a natural medical and public health issues why would that be you would think that you can go to Johns Hopkins up in Baltimore or to Mayo Institute in the Midwest or to the National Institute of Health you can call up dr. Fauci and ask him about viruses um we know a lot about how the natural world works what we often don't know is how is it working overseas now sometimes that's obvious Wow there's a an epidemic of measles in Paris you could probably call up the Paris health officials and they'll tell you about the measles so we have a pretty good insight into that it's like looking out your window but in some countries and it's sometimes in some places for a host of reasons public health information like how fast tanks go or how fast an airplane goes is obscured either deliberately sometimes it's obscure unintentionally there are some nations that just simply don't have the ability to gather and understand their own public health data particularly in the developing world in some other countries the government has a an interest and an ability to control that information I'm thinking of China here how many people really did have coronavirus when did they have coronavirus did the Chinese know something about the transmissibility and the mechanisms of transmissibility can we trust what the the Chinese are telling us at one point we heard that the Chinese were being completely transparent or with us at least publicly telling us everything it's that true and we asked our intelligence community to do sort of two things is what we're seeing real is it a true representation of reality and if it's not can you find out what it is what really is happening how many people really died where was the epidemic most virulent were their patterns that are being concealed do they really have it under control and all of that comes back to our decision members its analyzed it's synthesized with other information we have um we have a tremendous amount of expertise here in the United States that can add to what there are collectors collect overseas and come up with an analytic product that can really help our decision-makers come to the best decisions possible and in the area of pandemic and we're seeing it right now um go on you can turn on the TV pretty much any afternoon and you can read and see as we try to make decisions what is the course of this disease is what we're hearing from the Germans from the from the Chinese from the Iranians is it accurate what is the effect on those countries is it going to destabilize those countries Chris mentioned we have a ceasefire in Yemen but we don't have a ceasefire in Libya why is that is the evolution of this public health issue also affecting military and political and economic issues and all around the world the intelligence community is trying to get the answers to those questions and bring back an understanding for the for the consumers of what reality is I want to say a couple more words and then I think we can start bouncing back and forth here and getting some questions going um but you know I've I've been talking about something and what some people here already know these terminals this terminology but in the intelligence community we love jargon we particularly love jargon that involves initials so I'll give you some so what I've been talking about is called Fi foreign intelligence it's the information that is gathered about the plans intentions and capabilities of our foreign adversaries its observing the world and reporting back you often hear also about something else see a covert action that's when we use our intelligence entities to affect things overseas with the hand of the United States hidden when we're trying to change events on the ground as a opposed to observe them and her foreign adversaries do that as well the Russians call it active measures you've probably heard a little bit about that the Russian involvement in our elections it's a classic active measure it's their version of covert action um they're often combined we are we it's really hard to affect things overseas if you don't know anything about them so often you link foreign intelligence to covert action um both are tools that in the United States are carefully bounded by law and oversight and that's an important thing and I sort of want to leave people with that as we compare ourselves to other nations and their intelligence organizations I've often said that having an efficient and excellent intelligence entity and a liberal effective democracy at the same time is the hardest trick in the book we have some really really good tradecraft in the United States intelligence community we're pretty good at what we do um but I've always thought that the best piece of tradecraft that the United States can be proud of is that we are able to do this and still have a democracy and we do that in a lot of different ways we we write laws to govern our intelligence organizations we have oversight of our intelligence organizations both from Congress from our inspectors general from other elements of the intelligence community both inside and out and also leaving this one reason I was so proud to be involved with the spy museum is because one element of oversight in other words and the tradecraft that American uses involves all a year because an educated and understanding population of citizens are much much better able to make sure their intelligence organizations are not the Stasi and are not the Gestapo and are not the KGB and by you all participating in this and hopefully we'll be reopen coming to the active Museum um it helps us pull off that toughest of intelligence tricks which is doing it right and doing it in a democracy so let me stop there and toss it back to Chris and Amanda and see where we go wow that was both of you are amazingly informative and a lot of connections we're seeing really cool questions coming in from our audience lots of them are of course about the corona virus so there are other questions but I thought maybe we'll we'll start there many people are there are different reports about this virus and I'm going to lump a couple of questions together we talked about this last week on program where intelligence analysts were looking at the pandemic it's a report that the virus didn't originate in the wet market in Wuhan China but actually was some lab work that had gone wrong and gone astray so there's that report and then that question combined with someone else who's asking about reports that both the US and China were experimenting with the corona virus and from 2015 this mentions the question mentions that and that we stopped but they continue and I guess we should also remind everybody a common cold is a corona virus right so anyway I'll hand it over to you all as experts but every corona virus is not terrifying right guys it's true case you want me to take that do you want you take that not a follow up sure look so let me talk about the two things you said because they're really in front of mine and they're also illustrative so yes there are reports so one we have to be careful about reports there are reports about pretty much everything I can find reports that will talk about the aliens coming and that happens in the intelligence community as well collectors obtain information some of that information is not good and some of it's false it could be false and I think Chris may talk a little about this information or misinformation if you can be false because your source is just wrong not from any mal-intent because they're just not very smart or not very observant or they just don't know um and that happens obviously outside the intelligence community what is it that we know now what you're talking about is a State Department cable that speaks to a lab in the room an area that had significant safety concerns now let me I'm gonna skip to your second question because it will it links so every almost every developed nation has an extensive program of research into dangerous biologicals why because that's how they come up with vaccines that's how the medical establishment figures out how to cure the diseases so and a number of them if you're in the Washington area um there are a number of them here run by private industry run by universities run by the government because what they work on is often dangerous and has nothing to do with defense or biological weapons it's just simply dangerous um they work in specialized labs they those labs are rated bsl-3 and bsl-2 which tells you how secure they are there are a couple of them right around the Washington area it is very difficult to to run labs effectively and safely it takes a lot of money takes a lot of expertise um both for instance historically the Russians had an extensive government-run laboratory program it scared the bejesus out of us for a long time as the Soviet Union fell because they didn't have any money to keep them up and they became very dangerous we've also seen issues like that in China are they working on coronavirus they the class of viruses that make up an array of diseases are a high priority for research facilities all over the world yes lots of people are working on coronavirus before there was a pandemic and even more are working coronavirus right now that's how they're gonna get a vaccine um and the places where they're working on those vaccines are very difficult let me end by saying to the extent that there have been rumors going around that for instance that State Department Cable it's evidence that we've been sort of attacked by the Chinese um I don't think there's tending at least I don't have access to the current intelligence but I don't see any indication of that it is an example of where the collected information gets synthesized with the world outside the intelligence community because there's been a tremendous amount of work done on the gene sequencing the sequencing and the identification of Corona 19 and I believe or more died last read that the expertise largely residing in the Department of Defense and in academia are have a high degree of confidence that was not generated by human intervention now does that mean it hadn't been isolated and somebody in a lab or many labs we're trying to figure out what is this new thing we just got it from a from a patient or from an animal we haven't seen it before figure out what it is those of you took chemistry you can remember you got the petri dish and all that stuff um what is it how does it work how do we cure is it dangerous is it going to expand that's happening all the time all over the world so Chris yeah you want that Steve now everybody knows why Steve joined us today we're really lucky to have them I will just add this and Steve knew I would mention active disinformation HIV it was reported was a experiment that went poorly in a US Army lab somewhere in Maryland that turned out to be and we talked about this at the Spy Museum that turned out to be active measures which Steve already talked about it was a disinformation campaign that started with the Russians so step back and talk about the pandemic we now know and it's been reported that China Iran and Russia have all contributed to disinformation liberally to undermine our efforts in Americans confidence in their own institutions that includes all the work that's been done to get a handle on the pandemic here in the United States and the CDC so our adversaries in this information domain are going to continue to pick at that and take advantage of some of our vulnerabilities we have a polarized society without going any further that advantages those who want to take advantage of disinformation but it's all a part of what Steve talked about of active measures it's gone on for decades and decades from the Cold War through the present day in the last point I will make at the Museum we talk about analytical tradecraft and you hear from analysts and their own words analysts are trained to sift through all of the reporting and they are very very wary I should say of disinformation so I have confidence that the analysts will provide the right right analysis to our decision-makers apologies I want to add one thing if you're on the if you're listening to this this webcast and you're coming to our museum or you're just a citizen particularly in times like this we don't expect you to join the CIA and become an analyst but you sort of have an obligation as a citizen to pick up some of that I don't let a tradecraft so if you're reading about the story about there's a lab and in China do what an analyst will do what a CIA analyst or a dia analyst would do what's the sourcing is it corroborated does it make sense does it match with other information that I have how can I verify it where else can I read if you're looking at one television station and they say something put on another televisions do they say the same thing um who said it what's the source can I read original documents you don't have to be a CIA Intel officer to do you know basic good analytic tradecraft and I think there's no time at least in my lifetime where it's been so important that regular people American citizens in order to carry out your duties as a citizen I have to act like analysts so I hope you're picking up some of the tradecraft you don't have to pick up the collection tradecraft you don't need to do dead drops but you've got to start thinking like it like an Intel analyst well that's interesting it was really one of our questions where can people and we'll get back to the virus where are their other suggestions where where people can go you're saying check two TV stations are there websites are there news sources that you feel any we we all know there's bias there's liberal bias conservative bias but anything that you too particularly trust it seems to do common ground I sometimes look at foreign news sources to see you know kind of get their perspective on our country know if I can jump in I'll take that one and Steve alluded to it it's multiple sources I go to el Jazeera and during the 2000s we we thought al Jazeera was collaborating to some extent with jihadists on the ground in Iraq because they always seem to arrive at the point where Americans would be killed by an ie D whether that's fair or unfair I don't know truth insofar as Al Jazeera but I can tell you I think it's extremely valuable to understand the viewpoints of Al Jazeera to see how they were born events through their lens so Steve makes the point go to multiple sources go to multiple news i'll outlets don't consistently go to the same news outlet don't consistently go to the same social media site you've got to go to multiple sources and you have to question some of your own assumptions so Steve's point is exactly right we have a smart nation in fact anybody tuning in today are comfortable with educating themselves they're interesting and interested in hearing other people's stories question what you see question the assumptions go to multiple sources and I think those recommendations will serve everyone well let me just add to that and I'm gonna keep marketing back to sort of the the intelligence community analytic tradecraft without giving anything classified away I'm gonna you know illustrate what I some advice based on what in the pella the if you look at it many Intel reports you'll see what's called the source byline that's a description of the source of the information and that's what it's called on in the Intel world um in your life it's called the writers byline it's at the top of the news article or it's the station identification of the television station there's the author of the book you're reading or the biography of the person you're listening to I hope some of the people who are curious enough to you know if you're meeting us for the first time and go look up Chris go look up me and see who I am do you trust me um I hope you do but don't just look at me on the screen and decide you trust me look me up check my source byline what I said then true in the past is there bias if there is bias can you accept that second is corroboration corroboration corroboration all Intel analysts do it they read a report from source X and they know their source why who reports on the same area do they match is there a difference why is there a difference so having multiple perspectives being able to do corroboration or the non corroboration is an essential element of what an Intel analyst does every day in their life um now there are some good sources you can go to for certain things when people start talking about for instance internally this is how the Constitution well here's a perfect one the Constitution says X or Y well go read the Constitution it's online it's a short document it's fairly easy to read um the Congressional Research Service puts out a whole bunch of really authoritative reports um on almost every issue so if you're reading about and I'm gonna focus on the intelligence issues if you're reading about who has security clearances or you're reading about what does it mean that information is classified well you can you can there's an executive order which describes classification it's available online if somebody tells you that the executive order says X you can read it that's source co-op corroboration if they were telling you something untrue that will affect your evaluation of that source so the Internet's a wonderful thing there's a lot you can do it can take you down some rabbit holes and it's also a great source of disinformation because there's basically no transaction cost to put up anything you want but it also lets you read original documents and authoritative documents basically for free and without ever leaving your house which of course since we can sort of important well so we've talked about media we've talked about media manipulations it's information here's a here's a scary question that we've discussed before how likely is it that terrorists might take advantage of the situation that our country or other countries find themselves in right now with the pandemic we're so focused on that Chris we've talked about this a lot we're so focused on the on the corona virus what can happen when we're looking the other way so I can jump in there and we said this a couple weeks ago you know reinforce the point terrorists already are taking advantage of seams in particular Isis in Afghanistan while there are possibilities for troop reductions withdraw of US forces while we negotiate for for trading of captives between the Afghan government and the Taliban Isis is taking advantage of the corona virus and taking advantage of those scenes to exploit vulnerabilities right now on the ground in Afghanistan similarly that's happening in West Africa just remember while we're very much concerned about the the corona virus and this pandemic this plays into narratives of some extremists like Isis again they take advantage of this and suggest that this is apocalyptic meaning this is an approach to the end of times so operators who are out there terrorists are supposed to act people that are considering what to do take action now those are the kinds of tropes those are the kinds of messaging that's playing out in dark corners of the internet again a Steve pointed out the internet is wonderful but it's double-edged - there's a very negative implication of people conversing online in the dark webbing and elsewhere but the bottom line is I think terrorism is a disease that will not go away can only be arrested it 11 flow and I've talked about that as well so I think our our analysts across the counterintelligence Enterprise to include with our foreign partners are very very aware in circumspect of the possibility that terrorists will take advantage of this so I have confident that they're watching that this this language play out watching the rhetoric paying attention to the possibility for some attack planning I think that's right I think there there's you know terrorists to some extent if you're thinking about we're focused on Pat on pandemic and therefore we're not paying attention to the guns guards and gates I think that's less of an issue the ability to attack us is probably not one of the major ones what I do think terrorists are looking at here is the perception that our relationship with our allies is fraying that there's distrust between the allies that they're assessing that it's increasingly likely that there would would not be a cooperative response between the traditional countries that work against terrorism together and I my guess is that they're looking very closely at what's happening to the track particularly the transatlantic alliances and how they can take advantage of what they probably perceive as a breakdown in the in the in the in the camaraderie of the traditional allies against terrorism um this is a really very specific and interesting question directed to you Steve about your work with PSEG and other entities and mentioning that some developing countries it may be hard to get a handle either because they don't even know themselves what's going on or they're potentially obscuring it and this questioner is wondering if there anybody puts boots on the ground to go and work with those governments to help them or also to find out exactly what's going on that's pretty interesting you mentioned PSEG there be said I don't most people probably don't know what that is the Biosciences experts group is a DNI sponsored outside advisory panel that helps the intelligence community with issues related to the Biosciences it's mostly made up of scientists I served on it for I guess five or six years I'm not a scientist I was the only non scientist there so I got to pretend and I would sort of the go-between between intelligence officers and the scientists you're exactly right there particularly in the developing world often in sub-saharan Africa where one we have for a lot of disease vectors we have huge reservoirs because a lot of our diseases come out of natural wildlife particularly things like bats they there are a lot of them in Africa because Africa is the least developed of large areas of the world there's a tremendous amount of that and a much poorer health care system um boots on the ground they decreased significantly there's been a tremendous push against for instance to cut back on foreign aid things like Peace Corps USAID and foreign aid that sends people to their we have much we made a decision to have less of that people are often asking what do we get for our foreign aid and one of the things in this particular context that illustrates it is yes the US tax dollars go to pay for you know a couple scientists to go to the Democratic Republic of Congo to visit health care facilities that's not just a gift you get something back and what we get back is boots on the ground we're looking at those health care facilities they are problematic particularly in the in the more impoverished countries I remember being in a B seg meeting when somebody did a slide show I can't remember what Central African country it was and we were gonna visited one of their bio labs and we're looking at the picture it was sort of hard to figure out what it was and somebody said is that a dead horse on the floor and it was like a dead horse on the floor and we said why is there a dead horse on the floor and we at the same time we noticed that there are no windows in this facility and they said well they don't have the they don't have the money to pay the staff the horse had been experiment and basically they did an autopsy but they don't have the guy to get rid of the horse for a while so the horse is going to be there these are these are countries where there's not enough money and resources to give basic medical care to children so it's rare that there's some kind of resources to you know make sure things don't escape from a lab or that whatever killed that horse is not getting into people you would not see that in a less impoverished country people have the money to be safer I'll give you one other note of that as the Soviet Union fell we were very concerned about certain labs in Russia and and there were reports that not only had all of some of the protocols for part but yet that lab staff were basically eating the rats because they weren't getting paid and they were in the middle of nowhere and there was no food coming so if you don't have money and the you know the lock on the rat cage breaks you don't fix it just you can't fix it so yeah that's a real concern if you're in a u.s. facility um Chris mentioned there's one actually in Maryland at the highest level BSL and you know you think you're visiting NASA when you visit that place you know every possible super expensive super sophisticated way of protecting people and things is at play there it's sort of amazing to see but that's something not a lot of countries can do America can do it the Democratic Republic of Congo cannot do that all right well we're gonna there's endless coronavirus questions but we're going to take a little turn here in our last few minutes last ten minutes real good intelligence will house question how safe do you think our 2020 election is gonna be based on you know Russian interference and who knows who else might be trying to interfere jump on board and just say that there's significant awareness in the intelligence community obviously it's been released to the public that there are concerns with the 2020 elections so it is a significant concern I can tell you that the Federal Bureau of Investigation director Ray is well aware of the threats they have stood up a foreign interference task force and I am very confident that they are tracking not just Russian activities but as I said and I alluded to with disinformation the tracking Chinese activities that are inimical to US interests that are against US interests as well as the Iranians because it's not just the Russians that might interfere with our electoral process I think the the broader issue is again the fact that states one undermine our own confidence the America's own confidence in its institutions that's the broader issue we're going to get through the 2020 elections and be able to assess whether they were attacked how vulnerable were we what was the result of the interference there will be some interference it's inevitable based on what we know happen in 2016 you should note that in February also this is available online there was a National counterintelligence strategy that was published that acknowledges the threats to our very democracy so it gets at the problem and I am just sharing with you that some of the solutions are a task force that's been forged that's come together to focus very aggressively on countering this threat to the election but it happened in 2016 to some extent it's going to happen in 2020 in a long and coupled with the pandemic it's going to cause some Americans to question our very institutions and for those out there that want to disrupt the elections and want to really attack confidence in our institutions that is their broader goal and we don't want them to succeed so we will continue to to ensure that we counter those activities with the appropriate law enforcement and intelligence measures well let me just add something to that I am not reading the intelligence although I'm seeing what's what's being made public I have no question that the intelligence community has the capability to report the F I observed on the plans intentions and capabilities of our foreign adversaries particularly Russia but also Iran probably China a number of others in terms of the election um that's an intelligence problem there's then a policy problem intelligence as I said at the beginning informs policy so the intelligence community can tell policy makers here's what the real world looks like here's what we think the secrets are here is what is happening but it is not an intelligence problem to respond the intelligence community within the United States does not do anything to respond to things from the law-enforcement community again the rest of the policy we can we can make some decisions we can decide to spend money on X or not spend money or pass new laws or form a group that will do XY and Z passed new regulations there are a lot of things we can do but that's up to the policy makers the best the intelligence community can do is give them the timely accurate intelligence on what the adversaries are doing so they can make good decisions second issue is Chris is exactly right the the the Russian interference is a perfect example of an active measure one element of is to decrease confidence in our institutions so we should expect and I assume but don't know that the Intel community is is reporting that for instance Russian disinformation will attempt to convince Americans that we can't trust our elections so they will say things like there will be fraud or this won't work or you know you should expect to see you know on your Facebook feed memes if we go to mail-in voting you'll probably see a lot of disinformation largely coming from overseas that's gonna say you know it's all fraudulent if there's mail in it's fraudulent you can't trust your elections if you don't do mail in you'll probably see the same thing if there isn't mail an ex-president and you can't trust your elections the Russians have a real interest now in in denigrating and diminishing our confidence in the very institutions that we normally are very confident in question is how our policymakers going to react to the that intelligence flaw about the same thing with coronavirus intelligence flow what do you do to separate very separate things and I have to say I really love some of these short questions because I have to read them as we're talking here's a short one but I'm interested in they want to know what is your takeaway from Cambridge analytical good Steve you got that one well we have a new superpower if you follow the Marvel world the ability to manipulate and understand large amounts of data and the intersection of that with social media is a new superpower I'm not a big Marvel fan but I think the phrase is with great power comes great responsibility I think spider-man said that somebody will say that I'm wrong it's not spider-man I'm sorry um Cambridge analytically is an example of the what the technology is doing which in many cases just makes our life much easier so think for instance when you go to your physician your physician now has your entire medical record right there it's much less likely that my doctrine is going to give me the wrong medication or wait a week so I'm gonna get better care um if I get hit by a bus outside my house I'm not supposed to be outside of my house so the bus hits my house and hurts me and I show up at Sibley Hospital which is my hospital um they're gonna roll me in there and that physician in the ER is gonna know a lot about me and you know my allergies and so I'm gonna survive and that's great and our life is more convenient I can buy things easier I'm sitting at home buying stuff from Amazon right and left and one of the ways they can make that happen and get it delivered is this large amounts of data which are being manipulated it makes your life easier and on the other hand it's Chris use the word double-edged sword it can be used for nefarious purposes it de silicates active measures Cambridge analytical appears to have according to public reports provided the capability to both know about how people that's Fi and then actually allow problem the russians to take action based on that and affect the world by changing their purchase of and targeting of ads and communications on social media it's a very very valuable piece of intelligence i remember working on the project when i was at the agency and i distinctly remember thinking I wish I knew how many people in a given country had satellite dishes and that was a really big problem how do we do that you know can we you know we take pictures and then count those than satellite dishes and now I'm sure like you know probably a sixth grader could go online and you know tap a little bit and you know you could get a spreadsheet downloaded number of satellites and I'm sure Amazon knows exactly how many satellite dishes are wherever because they want to sell some more of them so it's an it's an easier problem to solve but lots of people who do you may not want solving those problems can solve them yeah did you want to add anything to that creative excellent answer I have nothing further to add oh well this is we have two minutes so I'm going for a question that um is tricky because of the topic but it brings us back to the Spy Museum because someone wants to know how we handle at the Spy Museum the case of Edward Snowden and so I want to think for a minute how wonderful it would be to be in our gallery top secret and look at our wonderful videos and displays and do you want to comment on that Chris I will just say we handle it like we handle all of the stories very carefully and objectively and we don't tell people what to think about Snowden what we do is just offer and have very heady interesting gallery secrets revealed you know what the state knows people who construe themselves as whistleblowers others especially in the intelligence community consider them traitors to their nation we don't tell people at the Spy Museum what to think we lay out part of that story the story of whistleblowers how relevant that is now in the aftermath of the impeachment process this year so we are timely we are relevant and we tell all of our stories I think carefully and factually but we don't tell people what to think we lay out the story objectively to include we touch on Snowden along with some other stories that were laid to whistleblowers and we let the public walk away and think through you know what they just read what they just saw and I think that's pretty pretty assist that's symbolic if you will of how we approached all of the tough stories that we lay out at the International Spy Museum do you have any thoughts Steve I know you're a huge fan of the museum we just said this goes back to what I said earlier what we were both talking about is we expect our visitors to the museum to act like Intel analysts unbiased look at all the data make your own analytic decisions walk out of the museum knowing more and having strong and sometimes painful thoughts there's no question about it but the museum is in the business of where your collectors sometimes literally we have an amazing collection of objects we collect stuff for you we lay it out and we expect our visitors to do the analysis that's the key to the museum and that's the approach we take Wow well I like the way this conversation turned we've had incredible information and conversation I want to thank both of you tremendously it's tough to be on the spot just looking at your computer screen and thank you for being so candid and sharing so much I want to invite all of our online guests to come back next Thursday we will be gathering here again online at noon we'll be doing one of our curator corner programs and be focusing on the notorious by Robert Hansen and we'll be talking with Eric O'Neill who worked for him undercover as a young FBI staffer and so we'll be looking at one of our galleries turncoats and traders so that's next Thursday at noon if you'd like something a little lighter if you want to take a break from the coronavirus come back at 5:30 this evening for one of our happy hours and we're going to share some really incredible stories of animal spies it is for it's for adults but kids are welcome too we're gonna have some great tales home bad joke yeah all right thanks everyone everyone be well take care see you thank you everyone thanks for having thank you everyone [Applause] [Music]