#217 - Amy Zegart on SPIES, LIES, AND ALGORITHMS

US intelligence expert Amy B. Zegart chats with Trey Elling about SPIES, LIES, AND ALGORITHMS: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE. Topics include:

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