Summit 2017: Directors' Perspectives on National Intelligence

ladies and gentlemen please welcome to the stage Lieutenant General Mary lazier United States Army retired and managing director for national and defense intelligence business at Accenture it's always nice to have a relative in the audience to start spontaneously pause Thank You Chuck and thank UFC and thank all of you for joining us again this afternoon to continue what has been a really fruitful discussion I'd like to begin by thanking Ashley and Enza for every year bringing together the team that really does work together to ensure we have the best solutions for national security for those of us who have been privileged enough to be here for a day and a half listening to the discussions between our government and intelligence community leaders academia and industry you understand that the importance of this teamwork of understanding the true challenges and the two priorities is what's going to make the difference in ensuring that these ladies and gentlemen who represent this great intelligence community have the answers that they need so thank you for being here thank you to op SIA and thank you to ends up for this important annual gathering I am proud today to represent Accenture of federal and as we say in Accenture the beginning of great solutions is under what your customers need if we're gonna help the intelligence community accelerate its progress as a digital force in a digital community if we're going to help the intelligence community take advantage of the great advances in cyber defense the great advances in artificial intelligence automation and predictive intelligence we have to hear first from the customer to have them explain the problem from their perspective and so today I know everybody's been excited all day but today we're very excited to have this esteemed group a very good-looking group very qualified group we had a vote who had the best hair I'm gonna leave it to you as to who that is but we are thrilled today to have the leaders of our national and defense intelligence organizations for a discussion about their priorities and challenges and it's my pleasure to get to do the introductions and I've practiced all their names so left to right or right to left representing the National Reconnaissance Office Frank Coviello is the deputy director representing the the Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director of Melissa Driscoll representing the men and women of the National geospatial intelligence organization or agency director robert pardillo whose nickname i've been told to say is ill jefe magnifico representing and he and Admiral Rogers has the most jobs so I always write it down because when you get it wrong for a four-star you'll hear about it later but representing the United States Navy great football team too lately the commander and probably honestly probably again but like Red Sox fans if we just get one victory every 15 years we're pretty content but representing obviously the men and women of the United States Cyber Command our commander of US Cyber Command the director for the National Security Agency the chief of our central security I got them all a service Admiral Mike Rogers and representing an hour and hour I think this is our first our first appearance with us in NZ you'll be here for the next 20 years so get comfortable representing the great men and women of the FBI director Christopher Ray now the man that we've chosen to lead the discussion today as a stranger to none of us who read great journalism mr. David Ignatius who is somebody whose name I practice he says is a good Catholic I shouldn't have had to ask but I did all obviously contributes regularly to the national security education of our country through his work with the Washington Post and did want me to mention the author of ten spy novels if you look under your chair the tenth one is there for you no I'm kidding but it's coming out and I got a I got a brief look at it it's called the quantum spy it's available just before Christmas so you can buy it and what's interesting is there is a character that is slightly resembles Alma Rodgers his protagonist is the guy that slightly resembles director Cardillo and if you really can't think of anything else to buy yourself that would be it so gentlemen and ladies thank you so much for taking the time we can imagine how busy you are difficult the challenges that you have we thank you for your commitment to ends anoxia we thank you for commitment to this summit David is all yours Thank You general Lozier Thank You authors love we love book blogs and the any reference to Christmas and something that makes a good Christmas gift we're especially happy to have I am honored to be asked to conduct this conversation that we're going to draw you into in a few in a few minutes I'm going to ask each of the directors and deputy directors for an opening assessment of their agencies and then I'll follow up with a little bit of detail and then we'll go to some general discussion and then turn to you I want to begin with our first public appearance by new FBI director director ray and I want to ask the simplest question how's it going you're you're you're back at justice you're overseeing an agency that's certainly not lacked for being in the news I give us give us a sense of what you're finding what surprises you what's working what's your what you want to fix well at first I would say I'd love to be here when I still haven't figured anything out since I'm only a month into the job so hopefully I will be able to answer as many of your questions as I can I think for me it took me about 10 seconds of walking back in the FBI building to remember how much I missed it and how excited I was to be back in the fold you know walking around the building meeting people and tried to be meeting with you know every division trying to get out in the field it's been inspiring and it reminded me you know why I love the place so much when I worked there before I would say most for the most part fewer surprises than not the things that were great about the bureau still look great about the bureau people are mission focused no matter what job they have they're very passionate about it they are determined to be the best at what they do and they cover the waterfront they're very detail-oriented and they bring the kind of integrity that I always found so attractive when I was working with them as line prosecutor and then later in main justice after 9/11 some of the things that I've noticed that have been surprising and encouraging are sort of the strides that have been made since I left it's a little bit like the analogy of when you know when you're watching your own child grow it every day you don't really notice how tall they're getting but when you see somebody else's kid you know we've all had the experience where you say oh my gosh when I last saw you you were only this tall and now look at you you know to me there's a little bit of that at the bureau right now in a few areas in particular that I would call out although there are many that I won't be able to cover in this time but the biggest one that's relevance to this group is the integration of intelligence into the overall mission and I think at this point people almost start to take it for granted but even back in 2001 to 2005 I would say the FBI in many ways was sort of the ugly duckling of the intelligence community and now the sophistication of the products that are generated the degree to which intelligence analysts are integrated with case agents in everything from the basic training to the day-to-day cadence of the place is really remarkable and you can see how intelligence is driving everything that they're doing in a way that I think is formidable so the strides that have been made I think in that department in particular I give you know huge marks to both my predecessors and kind of pushing that along I think another area that pleasantly surprised me is in the area of partnerships you know the degree to which the FBI is now partnering with state and local law enforcement the other members of the intelligence community the five eyes etc those were all those things were all happening back in the early 2000s but it was much bumpier much more episodic much more inconsistent and now it's become much more of a way of life day in day out in a way that I think is impressive doesn't mean there's no room for improvement but it's it's striking and probably the third area I would mention I think is which is a challenge is on the technology front I do think as exciting as some of the strides that we've made in the technological arena in terms of countering the threats and I assume we'll get time to talk more about the threats in a little bit here I think that our adversaries and their progress in technology in my humble view is exceeding our ability to keep up with it and so I think that's a place where we're really gonna have to buckle down and work collaboratively in a way that we're not quite yet both different agencies the private sector etc or I think we've got a very very scary road ahead of us in terms of the the role of technology for our adversaries those are just a few observations I'll top again ask you a question about an investigation that is one of many many that you have underway but it's one that the country is focused on and that's the investigation you're conducting in the Russian interference in the 2016 election campaign and I want to ask you just directly as I can whether you feel confident and comfortable that in conducting that investigation you're free of any interference or pressure from the White House or from the president I have I can say very confidently that I have not detected any whiff of interference with that investigation I have enormous respect for former director Muller who I got to work with in almost daily in the early 2000s as a consummate professional and he's really running that investigation but we the FBI have dedicated agents to it and other support to it so there's a great group of people working on it and I have confidence in them to be able to do their job professionally the FBI also has a counterintelligence mission which is more of a forward-looking mission just more geared towards prevention that is prevention of Russian interference in say a future election that so there's overlapping mission there and I'm impressed with the strides that have been made on that front as well so thank you thank you for responding to that directly let me turn that to Admiral Rogers Admiral your area of cyber cyber offense and defense is at the center of concern I would think for everyone in this audience you're finishing up a tour at at NSA which gives you well you're you're nearing during the final lap of a tour so or so they tell you David tells me so the simple question I want to put to you is tell us what you've learned in your time running running at NSA tell us how you think your agency is doing tell us what this audience needs to know about about your requirements the issues you're looking for the private sector to help you solve so after a three and a half years is the director of NSA the fundamentals remained unchanged two incredibly important missions generating foreign intelligence insight is to threats and concerns to the security of our nation that of our friends and allies as well as the safety of our citizens and the second aspect of our mission generating information assurance and computer network defense insights that help ensure the cyber security of the nation and those of our friends and allies and the second fundamental to me that's unchanged is the great men and women of the organization which is the best part of the day for me I just get to deal with incredibly motivated men and women who quite frankly could be doing a lot of other things making a whole lot more money but who believe in what they're doing and as I was just I literally just did a global townhall with the workforce this morning earlier and one of the things I said to them was with a motivated workforce that's doing something that matters I hope every day you were walking out and coming into work as I am feeling incredibly motivated and real good about what we're doing and how much it matters and I just wanted to say thanks to that workforce when I look step back here what are the challenges that I see out there the positive side for us is we continue to generate great insight the flip side is it continues to be more difficult to do it it's a tougher set of challenges again with the great workforce you can overcome lots of things the power of partnership remains incredibly important it's one of the things I like about venues like this all of us and our organizations as well as a much broader set of partners both here in the United States within the government within the private sector within the international arena it's our ability to bring together these power these partnerships to generate outcomes that's a real strength for the ISEE as a whole it's a cornerstone of the whole SIGINT global enterprise that NSA is a part of when I look at the challenges how do you sustain a workforce how do you keep it with the skill sets that it needs for a challenge set that keeps evolving keeps changing as you're looking to hire people I was just reviewing the fiscal year 18 hiring plan for us and I'm thinking to myself are we making the right bets the skill sets that we're hiring today are we're going to need them five 10 20 from now guys this is the way we have to be thinking it can't be just about what do we got to do in the next year and so we making the fundamental investments that are positioning us for success in the future and so we continue to generate the knowledge that the nation's counting on the cyber piece I would tell you I've been doing cyber on and off been a singer for about 30-some odd years I've been a cyber individual for about 15 it's the toughest problems that I've probably ever worked there's no civil bullet there's no single solution so the power is how do you bring together these partnerships do it in a sustained level and how do you get out of the normal traditional hate this is purely a government role this is purely the private sector this is purely commercial versus though this is something public that is not going to work for us here I truly believe that this is a national security challenge and it takes a national security approach harnessing the total power of our nation and all of its elements as to how we're going to deal with you and I have talked recently at Aspen about section 702 and III know that you are deeply concerned about reauthorization of that and perhaps you could explain to this audience as you as you think about the future and do your contingency planning well what would be the consequences of that not being reauthorized in terms of your ability to collect intelligence so I the vice president's visited yesterday at Fort mean we'd spent some time with him and one of the things I said to him was sir I know of no ability that this organization has to replace that which is we're able to access because of the authority under 702 sir if this were be if this was removed and it was not reauthorized it currently is set to expire the 31st of December 2017 I can't overcome that if you look at 702 I mean it generates a significant segment of NSA's ability to generate insights on counterterrorism counter-proliferation what nation-states and other actors are doing over the course of the next 90 days or so before the authority expires we and others will be part of a broader dialogue attempting to educate and inform as our Congress makes up its mind as to what they are comfortable with and that's their role hi I certainly understand that we'll be trying we'll be part of a broader dialogue designed to engender a greater sense of understanding about so just what is this statutory authority that you keep referring to as 7:02 that's the section of the FISA act that enables us to conduct collection overseas overseas against non-us persons non-us persons for a series the law outlines out a specific set of purposes and we have to show the court because we do this based on an authority then granted to us specifically by the court and we have to show how we're complying with the law I would just there's very valid concerns which I certainly understand we go to great lengths to ensure the protection of our citizens privacy and their rights we acknowledge that in the course of the conduct of 702 we will undoubtedly run into us person information which is why we have put several protections in place from a court of law to congressional oversight to who can access the data to how we're allowed to use the data to ensure that we are providing appropriate protection we take that very seriously that's part of the law it's something we believe in and so we're going to be working our way through this but I just think it would be a truly significant act not not in our nation's best interest will we to withdraw the legal authority currently granted to us under section 702 the director Cardillo I want to ask you similarly to give us an overview of how things are going at the NGA at your agency with your very specific mission set and a changing environment that you have to deal with that affects many people the audience well thanks David it is a pleasure to be here on stage again with many colleagues and friends it's also always a privilege to be able to represent the women and men of the national geospatial-intelligence agency also appropriate I think that I follow Mike because one way to describe where our profession my agency is right now is to use an analogy I think that NSA has successfully been through and if you think of the NSA mission set as the world transitioned to a digital network cyber connected network that created great opportunity for business and education and and social use in population information and as they had to change its mindset about how to engage Mike just talked about some of the challenges of that engagement but how to engage in a way that lifts up the value that NSA provides from mission insight and protection and well it's not a perfect analogy in many ways geospatial intelligence is going through a like transition and so where we once did our work with government access government security government ownership government control we now live in a world in which they're the barriers have been reduced to admission to that field which again is a good thing for many parts of our society increased players partners opportunities the challenge I then have is how do I advance our value proposition in a flatter more disruptive world and so this room is one example never could do our job without the partners that are in this room that's always been true and the mission partner to my far left on the government side at the NRO but the fact that you all now bring access to understanding of algorithmic approaches to these new data sets and this new connectivity to create that understanding and that insight we never could do it alone is even more true today will be even more true tomorrow so as as Mike does I have these key resources our human capital are the expertise that's within the agency our challenge is how do we create the right agility to work with you how do we declutter our acquisition process to enable your innovation to get to my desktop sooner how do we lift the skill set of a workforce that needs to me more data savvy and computationally knowledgeable in a way that again provides advantage on the other side fundamentals haven't changed we call it locational dominance that's what we seek to provide it's just if we if we hold on to how we did it in the past and in not advance I think we put ourselves at risk as an agency that's less important we put our mission at risk with respect to protecting the country and our allies so so we're in a similar transition I love to learn the lessons of my friend here good and otherwise because as I said I think there's much for us to benefit from the transition that Mike's been through as you said you had a near monopoly on gon and that's now exploded as you have 190 satellites overhead acquiring the constant real-time imagery question that I'm sure a lot of us are curious about is how do you keep an advantage for the United States how do you make it possible for policymakers to as I've heard you say go go into what hopefully is an unfair fight because they have it advantages that nobody else does how do you get those advantages in this new world that's that's the right question I'll start and finish the answer with our people because when data's commoditized and accesses more open and the barriers to what used to be exclusive are reduced one could imagine things could get more equal right and we don't want to be an equal business we want to be in the Advantage business and so part of the answer is is our expertise so that's the application of that's the meaning of that's the insight that's created by the lack of data what's what isn't happening that tells us of someone's intention or future activity again this room comes into play because even in even and mushy in a flat and open world the person that can most agile e apply the innovation that you create in a timeframe that's an increment faster than that adversary that's how you sustain advantage so again that goes to agility but then but at the end of the day what hasn't changed and what won't change is that it will come down to the the software that's up in the in the head that is the the meaning of the data as it as a as it comes together the the implication of a corollary of a bit of information that might picks up and then that melissa picks up that creates a moment of operational time or decision space hopefully both that gives that decision-maker the advantage when he or she needs it and that's the only definition of success it turned a deputy director Brisco and asked you you you run or help run an agency that is consuming the intelligence that's provided by your colleagues on the stage also and analyzing it making it useful for policy makers give us an overview of how things are going at DIA the issues that you're most focused on I have to say and I think my boss general Stewart would agree I think things are going well we're very excited about that we talk about partnerships he talked about it general ride Mirage he talked about it the partnerships are important we're trying to build stronger partnerships I think what's interesting for us is that we found we've had to to refocus not to de-emphasize but refocus more energy not so much on the counterterrorism but more on what the director considers to be our no-fail missions the four plus one Iran China North Korea Russia in violent extremists so we've had to rededicate ourselves and that has spread us rather thin but we're committing to that what we found is from an intelligence perspective for a null source organization we've been able to kind of come as you are to conflicts and and kind of rally and pull things together but as we face these peer and your peer at adversaries we're not gonna be able to come as you are so we've got to develop a foundational intelligence a solid foundation and continue to add to that foundation and now what that means is taking advantage of and dealing with the data you talked a lot about data and it is where we have to become much more data centric much more savvy and how we handle data the volume of data the velocity of the data the variety of data so so my colleagues are great at sending it our way both on the classified and unclassified and there's their you know their secrets there that we got to find its how do you find the secrets and that's part of what for analysts and for our collectors to take advantage of that to cue them to the next target to where they need to go so there's opportunity here obviously and I said we're recommitting ourselves this one thing I will say though is as we and we're looking at algorithmic analysis artificial intelligence machine learning we're finding is we're having to examine what's the role of the human what's the role of human analyst is and a lot of people talk about this but really it's kind of scary for our analysts and for some of our other folks but imbed business end as well not just on the core analytic collection but what's the role what do we look like in 10 years so some of that that's some of what we're doing right now as well as trying to imagine what does the analyst look like look like in 10 years and even as we try to define it does that make it obsolete even even even as we try to define it so what does it look like and then what's the value of the human being so I'm actually fascinated by that where does the value where is he human being add value and that's something we're trying to explore I think that and that and that will also drive us to making decisions about the kind of people that we hire and draw in the future we found that a lot of people we bring in now very smart very inquisitive look you know strong work ethic and tech savvy and they know how to deal with data so I'm not sure we have to radically change the kind of people we hire we bring in with a contract or government but I think we need to give them a realistic expectation of the environment they're likely to have to operate in so I talked to all of our new folks about yeah you got to leave your cell phones at the door and you're not gonna you're gonna come and you're not gonna be able to download every app you want and and so we try to help them feel like it's not so restrictive and create ways to bring in and and expose them to the art of the possible and that's that's one of the big challenges we have is to keep that creativity alive to create that environment so we're doing some things on in that regard but really what is the role of humans so what I found and I sit down with analysts and I sit down with technical collectors and human collectors and what I find personally his most valuable as those that can ask the smart questions who can interact with that data and say well what about this and what could this be and what if I move this and and so that's that's really what we're looking for and then the tools let them do this fairly intuitively so when the frustrations I have and I'll tell you all right now is somebody shows up with a tool and they're going to show me this wonderful tool and I got a pea zillion dollars to teach people constantly how to use it that's not really helpful it it kind of stifles the creativity of our analysts they're not going to play with and I constantly ask the analysts are you playing playing with some of this data how are you playing with it show me how let me play can i play with I'm an old lady and can i play with it if I can anybody can so so lady but I'm old enough so so how do we how do we deliver those things that a smart cookie can can work with and can play with and continue to iterate that as well so those are some of the things and finally one of the things we are having to look at as a business is what are those things that we need to invest ourselves up we're just we have had a lot of things lashed on to a stapled on to his velco velcroed on to us over time it was a great idea at the time probably don't need to keep doing that how do we start to make those smart in its business decision from my perspective anyway those things that we don't lead the industry in it's not really something that logically falls on our mission set as a military combat support agency so so that's another area that kind of bounced around to ask you about a specific danger that affects many of your fellow panelists and also is of interest to the audience and that is the threat that the DIA assesses to space-based assets reading general Stuart's worldwide threat assessment in May was striking when he talked about Russia and China the language that he used about the seriousness of their efforts to develop anti space weapons and I want to ask you to draw that out a little bit and give us a sense of how di looks at this problem and what thoughts you have for this audience sure well there's no doubt the Russians and the Chinese see space as an area that they absolutely want to challenge the US and in that domain and the effect it can have some say catastrophic I believe that's true in terms of our command and control of our weapons systems or intelligence systems if they were successful and and I want to talk about both on orbit and on terrestrial fronts so from our perspective we're interested in both both environments on orbit it's a very hostile inaccessible environment how do we understand what's going on and how they view that space and what they need to do from our perspective we also and it's an all source agency so we're interested in and some tech collection as well understanding what their capabilities are both in terms of reversible and irreversible when would they employ one over the other and and along that whole spectrum how good are they what are their intent to do that what would push them to that obviously we work with our colleagues here one of the things we've done recently though to answer a part of this is we've stood up an integration and this is continuing our efforts to integrate collectors and analysts together all sorts analysts into a space counter space office organization to try to draw more focus and understand not only what they want to do to us and how they but also understand to some extent how they their dependency and their vulnerabilities we need to understand that particularly dependency in terms of military conflict what are their dependencies we can try to mirror it but we really need to get some more insight into that so deputy director Covelli finally the same question to you how's it going at the NRO how do you how do you think about your future challenges you like nga or facing a world where there's an awful lot of commercial capability out there doing what you used to do pretty exclusively how do you deal with that and what does the future look like let me start first with the with the arrow itself so I'll tell you it's an absolutely great time to be at the NRO now first of all when you look at our mission in terms of building and operating the nation's spice eyelets you don't get any cooler than that so we've been very fortunate to be able to attract an amazing workforce of scientists and engineers and other folks that support our mission out that way last year I'm sorry this year actually in 17 we've already had two launches of two new assets provide amazing capabilities for the nation the one back on May 1st was our first time on the SpaceX ride on a rocket which was a phenomenal success we've got three launches coming up this fall so we're excited about the old the additional capacity and capabilities that and new features that were adding to the fight for the intelligence community if I look at my acquisitions on that I'm developing my next generation of satellites all those acquisitions are going amazingly well my scorecard from the DNI shows that I am green on cost schedule and technical performance for all my major acquisitions so that's a big success for us we receive last November or 8th clean consecutive financial clean financial audit we are the only IC agency to have a clean audit and we're working on a ninth one this year so that's a big deal in terms of proper stewardship of taxpayers dollars so we're really proud of that we continue to invest research in the dominant almost every year our new capabilities and that's paid me multiple dividends for us and on new features for our satellites and our ground systems we've actually put together a comprehensive strategy for protection and resiliency of our space assets and our ground assets are in the middle implementing that that's a really critical point David that if we're not there for the fight then we're worthless so we're gonna be there for the fight both our space and our ground systems we formed an amazing partnership with general heighten at strathcom and general Raymond at Air Force Space Command at the National Space Defense Center both so the partnership between the intelligence community Department of Defense and that's a phenomenal teamwork event across both those organisms organizations to actually be able to do indications and warning understand threats that are out there and take preventive action or a protective action together as a unified nation and then finally you know our systems are amazingly flexible and agile and we're able to provide coverage anytime anywhere throughout the globe and it's an amazing opportunity support the intelligence community let me you wanted to follow up on a question about commercial III I do it's a question similar to what I asked a director card Cardillo in this world where overhead imagery you know you buy and sell it how does the NRO keep its I'll say special sauce so it is actually an opportunity we've been building and taking pictures from space since the 60s so if commercial could actually pick that up now 50 years later and actually do basic imagery resolution from from low-earth orbit then you know what that frees us up as a nation to be investing in the more exotic things that commercial will never do capability that will actually give us an edge in the future so I'm actually excited about the opportunities by folks like Planet labs by digital globe and others as we can buy more that commercially as a service it frees up dollars invest in the more exotic stuff that we should be doing and so it's an opportunity for the nation so I want to turn to questions from the audience you have the procedure I think for submitting questions which I can see on my iPad here and the the first was one that was of special interest to me and it involves insider threats we have all seen disturbing hemorrhage of information the most secret information from our intelligence agencies and and contractors and I want to ask you how your agencies are dealing with this and in particular how you can do better in dealing with insider threats without creating a work environment that is so rigid that you'll end up driving away your most creative people maybe Admiral Rogers I know you've thought about this you could lead off and I'd be interested in other thoughts so the first thing to me is it starts out with a dialogue with oh of course as I said I literally did a global townhall with the work force coincidentally this morning and this is one of the topics I raised they said let's have a discussion for a little bit about what we're doing and why we're doing and how important this is to you and our organization as a whole and what I think the implications are for us in the future the biggest thing to me is it is both technical and a series of changes and improvements but never underestimate that cultural challenge of this part of that cultural challenge is and I have said this who are overseers I've said this to leadership we got to find a balance here if the price of security becomes that we drive away the very men and women that generate value in the first place we now have a self-induced mission killing that's a bad place for us to be but the same talking you don't want the opposite end well everything is about generating maximum outcomes so security is very secondary to your objective I reject that so it's how do we find a bit of a middle ground but how do we also talk to the workforce which is one of the things I did today about so what are the expectations of an intelligence professional in the 21st century and what is your role as an individual who has been granted access to incredibly sensitive information that if it were placed in the wrong hands not only in dangers the security of our nation but potentially also has an impact on our citizens that is not where we as intelligence professionals want to be our nation grants us great Authority and great capability because it is confidence that we are generating value and that we're doing in a way that complies with the law and also ensures that we are mindful of the privacy and the rights of every one of our individuals and so I tried it when we're talking about the insider threat piece I try to frame it and nose turns the other thing I urge is I get a lot of people who will say well the answer is this is all about contractors and I'm going stop go back I can tell you uniforms who have compromised the security of information I can name the organization FBI agent CI individuals NSA people there is not an organization that hasn't had this challenge it is government civilians junior and senior military contractors the answer is not that it's one particular class or type of individual the answer is how do we institutionally and structurally step and ask ourselves guys how do we make some fundamental change here in the last point I would make is we need to do this on a risk-based approach what is the data that is really of the most greatest concern to us that represents the greatest potential vulnerability if it were exposed do we want the same approach the same level of if you will trade offs with that which is incredibly important where it'd be to compromise versus information which while it is sensitive the reality is look it would not have the same kind of impact guys be will be leery of a one-size-fits-all approach to doing business here we need to step back and take a risk-based approach to how we're doing is we've turned a director ray and another word for insider threats is leaks something the FBI thinks about speak to this issue as as you think about it if you want to talk about the balance the people in my business will worry about of too constricting approach to information I'd be interested in in that but just tell us it as you come into the FBI how do you think about this insider threat problem so this is a topic that's a very high priority for us and something we take very seriously as Mike says you know every agency's had its issues and I think we all learn from the experiences that each other have had we try to talk about it very much in terms of a you know what is the culture of the organization there's a shared culture of security which is a part of who we are and shared accountability we've created it as a reflection of how seriously we take it a insider threat center which is designed and that was recently just elevated to have more executive oversight you know kind of in the leadership of the FBI the focus is on trying to identify sort of indicators stressors patterns behavioral signs etc that would historically be indications of an insider threat not so much as some kind of targeting a particular person but rather to try to learn are there things about the way we operate that you know create undue risk undue stress undue vulnerabilities and so I think that's part of it I do think I reject the idea that creativity and security that it's a binary thing I think you can have innovation and security at the same time sometimes the distance between point a and point B is a little more circuitous and cumbersome but having to deal with security while might be more of a challenge I don't think should and needs to stifle innovation and we talk a lot and I'm talking a lot already my first month about the need for innovation which is not something government has historically been very good at trying to encourage people to bring up new ideas that doesn't mean they should be out experimenting you know in some rogue fashion but there's a way in a place on a time for people to try to put forward new ideas and we need to be receptive to new ideas or we're gonna have the same kind of mission kill that Mike's talking about on the leek front that's something there's a deep concern I think to all of us on this stage we're focused on it from a perspective of while rec respecting very much the role of the people in your industry and the important role that a free press plays in our society my experience having done a lot of leak investigations when I was in government before more often than not the leaks are not coming from somebody who is in the inside circle of knowledge in the first instance what happens is person a in government walks down the hall and tells person B about what just happened in the meeting or on the conversation and then person B talks of person C and then through couple layers of hearsay then somebody's talking to a reporter and so I think you know respecting the importance of need to know which is a you know a tenet and a critical premise of the system of classified information that we have I think is something that we would all benefit from thinking back about and just having that shared sense of accountability and responsibility for the information that we're all entrusted with thank you I'm glad to hear the new director of the FBI speak about the importance of a free press in addition to your concern about about leaks I want to go to a question from the audience which I found fascinating and I'm really curious to hear the answers the subject line is disruptive technologies and the question is what is the single most disruptive technology affecting your agency's missions and how are you dealing with it how can industry help and maybe director Cardillo would start off with that here's what I talked about our pride in our agency in our history part of that history includes decades of trained conditioned labeled datasets that's what we have done for a long time it's what we do today in a world that's moving quickly into artificial intelligence computer learning that's fuel for that disruptive technology one of the things we're exploring now with the hill is an idea we have to take advantage of these government datasets find a way to compete them fairly amongst this room for those that could apply the most innovative algorithm or application or computer vision or learning application and then we'd cross-level I'd share those that fuel you chair the engine if you will and we both benefit so that's one way that we're trying to to deal with this disruptive technology but if I could add one more thing on AI that gives me great pause is is the a artificial the bedrock of our profession is credibility is trust and I walked in a room and I say hey boss I've got some artificial intelligence for you really you can imagine we need to deal with what's real what's not right what's the voracity what's the what's the pedigree where did you get that data from etc we all have that challenge so I would just encourage the room as we all race necessarily to this AI future it's going to be here we've got to hold on to credibility or we'll lose our lifeblood any Deputy Director come valet any thoughts about the the the great disruption that's just over the next hill that you're worrying about at NRL there's a disruption but I'm not too worried about it we're actually an advantage of it which is really the small set revolution the cube SATs and what we're finding is it's a amazing opportunity to test new things out very rapidly very quickly whether that's new materials to lightweight cables whether it's a next generation of solar cells but it provides a vessel so you know this is this Cube set type bus that can go up in multiple sizes to actually get things on orbit for testing extremely quickly it could also allow us to test out new sensors new capability so it's been disruptive in a positive way the second thing that's been disruptive which is actually really kind of cool this launch we mentioned earlier that we launched our first satellite on SpaceX booster just this past May first but the the all the new entrance into launch and commercial launch has really been a very positive disruption that allows us more opportunities and more things to get systems on orbit and Admiral Rogers let me just ask something that's been in the news Elon Musk one of our leading entrepreneurs as warned as some other technologists have that he sees in artificial intelligence in the world of machine learning immense danger and he just recently was quoted as saying he sees a threat of a third world war in AI systems that that just spin out of control what do you think about that about that argument that AI poses a real threat that we're not thinking carefully enough about it certainly represents a challenge in my my view is look it all depends where do you decide that the man or woman needs to be involved in this process and I have seen this at my own naval career in my career in the United States Navy we and we actually built unmanned engine rooms 30 years ago but we decided the risk of not having an individual walking walking around taking a look at bilges looking at oil looking at leaks fires we just decided look we got the technology we can do this but the risk is really too high likewise we've invented we're fighting combat systems that our rules-based you put the rules in and the system will from tracking analyzing and engaging based on the rules set the true a program the system it'll do everything automatically based on experience came to the conclusion so where do we need to retain the man in the liver what part of this equation where the risk gets to an unacceptable level so as I look at artificial intelligence it's the same thing to me I don't see us abrogating everything to a machine I see us asking ourselves so where does this technology make sense in terms of risk and capability versus where is the risk so high that we would say to ourselves even though we technically could do it we don't like the risk and we don't think is acceptable and we don't think it's in our best interest we're not gonna do that so I'm not quite in the same place place because to me that comes across as what we're just going to be unthinking and turn everything you know over to a machine and I just don't see it that way personally I'm gonna turn to the question of counterterrorism which has been discussed earlier today your agencies spend billions of dollars on high-tech answers to this problem to maintain surveillance to protect the nation what we're seeing as we look at Europe is that our terrorist adversaries best weapon these days is a van careening down a street or a sidewalk and so there's obviously a concern that that there's a mismatch between what we spent so much money to do and the kinds of threats that are coming at us and in particular I think a concern about whether we have the ability to detect the the homegrown so-called the lone wolf threat here at home that isn't organized by a network that can be targeted by surveillance director ray let me ask you to begin and talk about are you comfortable with our ability to avoid the really terrible problems that Europe is facing now what do you what are you doing about that what should we be doing more I mean I do think that's the right question to ask the I think the threat has I know if I would say evolved or degenerated from solely the more classic complex structured you know large cell terrorist operations you know that for example led to 9/11 and very so those plots are still there but now this the kinds of plots the kinds of attacks that you're talking about in some ways they're simpler but in some ways they're more complicated they're simpler in the sense that you're talking about fewer people involved in a particular attack easier access to whatever the weapon is more choice of soft targets as opposed to large spectacular you know ones and but most importantly much shorter time between the idea and the attack you know we used to talk about a terrorist plot having this continuum from the idea to then the planning to the preparation the fundraising all the way to the execution and the desire to detect and prevent it somewhere along that continuum well if the lifespan is much shorter which it is with a lot of these home homegrown violent extremists types of situations the need for us as a community to be more agile which is a word you heard I think several of my fellow panelists use is much greater and so to me am i comfortable that we're there we are working a lot of it's working with our partners overseas working with each other working with sane locals but it ties into something that Mike mentioned earlier that I wanted to reinforce which is the importance of 7:02 I mean the place that 7:00 or two is most important is in our ability to detect and prevent plots went in that tiny window that's getting smaller and smaller and smaller and over and over again that's where we see it being useful you know that's the that's the tool that enable us to you know detect for example an Isis you know proponent who was recruiting via social media people here in the US focused on killing you know American servicemen and women American law enforcement would not have been possible without 702 that's the tool that it you know helped us detect and prevent the New York subway plot from a few years ago and their example after example so as the as the threat becomes more condensed more ability for the adversary to call an audible and switch from a car to a gun to a knife to something else our ability to pounce during the the critical window depends on that tool I think in large part certainly I think part of the challenge here is be leery of being like kids to a soccer ball and going after the latest manifestation even as for example we have been seeing these lone wolf like scenarios play out in Europe in the exact same timeframe we just dealt with one of the most complex aviation threats we have ever seen in terms of what happened in Australia in Sydney so one of the things I talked to our team about is guys we have got to optimize ourselves to deal with the spectrum we've got to be able to go from that lone wolf individual all the way up to these very complex multi-layered time-consuming very intricate it isn't the extremes on either end is guys we have got to be capable of generating insights across the spectrum so we're always a little bit leery when everyone when I will sometimes here so it's totally evolved and it's all this mm-hmm it's the spectrum guys and we got to be capable of dealing with the spectrum just a thought just come back to director array with with one more question one of the real challenges for the FBI and for local law enforcement is is to be in good contact with Muslim communities to have regular dialogue so that when people see something they will say something and you'll have some early notice we're in a period of a pretty polarized debate about issues in our in our country are you comfortable with with that the degree of interaction that the FBI has and is that something that you'd like to work more on I think the FBI my experience this was true in the period after 9/11 and it remains very much true now largely through the JTTF so around the country but not exclusively I think it's very focused on building ties in all the communities it protects and both from a perspective of developing sources but for other reasons so the I think putting aside the sort of more visible public political discourse down on the ground out in the front lines at the professional level I think in my experience FBI and state and local law enforcement do a pretty good job having it both ways in other words building the relationships but at the same time you know being tough we're tough is what's warranted so I want to go to a very practical question from the audience there can't be a person in the room who hasn't worried about this the question is what can be done to fix the security clearance process so the community and its industry partners can hire talented personnel at a breakout session yesterday's speakers asserted that 700,000 applicants are waiting for clearances why is it so hard just to get a person's clearance transferred from one agency to another obviously this is something that our audience is deeply interested in deputy director Driscoll do you want to lead off on this question I just love to hear from from any of our panelists who have thoughts so we all be asked the same thing why should taking so long well who do we have to call to get this this person cleared through I don't know how to solve that it and it's how much it's back to the risk issue how much risky willing to are we willing to take and how many checks and balances do we need to have in terms of clearing people who do we have to talk to in terms of passing clearances it's it's a trust issue it's a as much as anything between agencies it's also differences in the degree of and I'll talk about polygraphs for example which is what we use everybody has to have a polygraph when they come in to DIA that's a certain kind of polygraph other agencies it's a different kind of polygraph there's a there's a fundamental difference of opinion about vetting people and how the tool that they use to do that so it starts there you don't use the same polygraph system that I do or the the questions the way we do it then we read it you know right off the bat we have to go back kind of go back to the start point so that's for us that's one one the area that we run into we've tried to do that any any other panelists have a thought about what to do about this I don't want to use the word nightmare lightly but when you talk to people it sounds like one what what do you think dill oh I think part of the answer is continuous evaluation we're engaged now in the OD and I lead pilot to introduce part of our workforce into this this process and again I don't know that it will fix the initial back load which is what you just described the people that are starting in line but perhaps it will if we could reduce some of the what now is a periodic investigation line that consumes the same resources that perhaps we could dedicate to that initial vetting to make sure we get that core trust and then we can get the rooms help again to do some of this in automation some of this on what is more common in the commercial practice when people are trying to seek whether their finances are being protected or their intellectual properties being protected we have the same challenges so I think the more that we can bring in that those types of applications the better ask another very practical business question on on acquisition reform notes that insa recently published a paper with recommendations for improving the icees processes for acquiring services and expertise how can your agencies make the cumbersome acquisition process more efficient what can government and industry do differently and director maybe one of the most important things is on the government side is we need to hold our timelines we need to be as get through the processes as quickly as as we can including the important process of oversight from external organizations like DNI and others those that play a critical role in our success but I think another big thing that we really need on average societies that we get really good quality proposals from industry I think as when you get really good quality proposals in-house the process goes a lot smoother and if you end up having to go back out for questions answers discussion rewrites it just drags the process on so I think there are ways to streamline things in the up front to get our piece out the door but I think it's really also critical that realistic proposals with good technical information and realistic cost proposals come back in is really key to success that's being the process as well yeah cast director Cardillo to talk a little bit about the your idea for having in effect a brokerage scheme to share ideas between NGA world of companies in this room that are developing algorithms and ways to deal with data I briefly mentioned it earlier and the basic proposition is pretty simple the implementations I'm finding is pretty complex but it's it's that we have these extant data sets that we believe there's high value in as you move to computer learning we'd like to find a way to make those competitively available to you we'd like to see if we could exchange for that access your innovative application of the same data if I could just pile on though to to the to Frank's answer is that part of what we'll lowey's buy stuff and will always buy you know hardware and software because we're large enterprises that need both I think over time we're also going to add to that more services which which I believe should be part of the answer to your question of on agility and so we we're now in our second year of experimenting with a GSA like approach to where you would vet and get accredited with GSA for your services again to the broker model we would then use once you had that approval that would be more of a transaction like exchange which would have gone through all of the requirements that Frank talked about but then once at the point of need you could you could have the interaction much more quickly you know in a row represents acquisition as a core skill set it's probably the biggest slice of your budget goes in acquisition for the rest of us acquisition not quite the same at least speaking for the organization and I'm a part of it at NSA one of the things I've talked to the team about is we've got to step back and ask ourselves what can we do to make acquisition of course skill set for us as an organization that historically that has just not been the norm I would argue for most of us outside of NRO that just hasn't been really the norm that's an area where I think within the I see we can significantly improve the other thing is it's it's all relative as a guy who straddles Cyber Command a very traditional DoD entity with the AK way up until very recently we were just granted additional acquisition authority but prior to that living in the DoD acquisition world is a military operational command and living in the IC you know in the acquisition world I kid all my IC counterparts boy we got it a whole lot better than that our dod traditional military counterparts I have a whole lot more authority and capacity in many ways for acquisition as an IC leader than I do as a senior military commander in the Deo but question from the audience that is of special relevance for director ray the question questioner asks what is the extent of Russian influence operations in the United States as well as in Europe how confident are you that the ISEE understands Russian plans and intentions there's a nice simple question is right very no I'm just kidding you know I would say that from the information that I've read I mean I read obviously the unclassified I see a when I was going through the confirmation process now I've had the opportunity to see a lot more fully highly classified information and the ICA is I think you were referring to the January 6 correct intelligence community assessment of Russian activities during the 2016 election and I guess I would say I said then and I'd say now I have no reason to doubt the conclusions that the hard-working people who put that together came to I do notice there's an enormous amount of attention focused on this issue I think a lot of people taken very seriously you know I'm reluctant ever to say that we have our arms fully around any risk or threat as anybody who's had involvement with surveillance of different source whether it's technical surveillance or physical surveillance it's extraordinarily resource intensive you start running into the prioritization that's not the word that Mike use in a different context in the counterterrorism arena but it's the same issue you know how do you distinguish when when different kinds of threats even in the counterintelligence arena aren't going away just new ones are getting added how do you make the human judgments to prioritize this one versus that one since you can't cover everything all the time and that's something I worry about but I think it's it's a known risk that I think people are trying to deal with question from the audience for Admiral Rogers how concerned are you about the cyber security of the Navy's fleet could cyber attacks have had anything to do with the two recent collisions involving US Navy vessels is the Navy more generally prepared for cyber attacks on operational assets so there's an ongoing effort to review and assess that in the case of the John s McCain situation we've had the CNO already speak out publicly about that I'm not but on the navy admiral i'm not gonna speak for the United States Navy in this case I will say that the analogy that I drew with the cyber Enterprise was guys welcome to a world in which the ability to say that cyber was or was not a factor in an accident or a situation that's the world we're living in now so how do we work our way through the processes that we're gonna put in place you're seeing this play out in the John s McCain scenario but how we good and put in place the means to ensure that cyber expertise is a part of our normal investigative processes as we try to assess how do we lose that aircraft how is that ship damaged this is the world that we're living and how and traditionally it hasn't been a primary part of our thought process but the digital age is driving us to that so I have a business question I think will be of special interest to people from smaller and medium-sized companies in the audience about innovation innovative technology companies have a hard time working through the federal procurement process how effectively is the IC incorporated cutting-edge technologies from startups and other small tech companies to what degree of entities like Inc you tell a ARPA and di UX help in this regard what advice would you give small tech companies trying to cut through the red tape director Cardillo do you want to start to start on that I mean I think the broad answer is I think we're doing better than we were and not as good as we need to be and and so you know we've already talked about some of the adjustments we've tried to make to lower the barrier and one of the barriers is to smaller companies with less established access and perhaps a foot in the door if you will if not more so you mentioned di UX and Inc util we've we've now established what we call nga outposts where we realize some of these companies one might not know that we exist might if they knew where exist don't know where we live three might not know that they should care about either of those things and so we've decided to move to where they are and of course that means Silicon Valley but it also means Austin and st. Louis and Boston and New York and so we're putting out our Scouts if you will to to begin those conversations in a way that perhaps they weren't having before but I'll I'll end with we know we can do better here deputy director Cavelli you think a lot about about this how can our o huge cutting-edge agencies super secret how does it deal with that world of a small company the startup so what's really great is on the R&D side a lot of the RT that we do is unclassified so we even do something for twenty years called the directors innovation initiative that we publicize and media we put it out out there in the news we we take unclassified from academia from industry from any unclassified firm that's out there that wants has innovative ideas that could help us in terms of our mission we fund a half dozen of those a year and the good ones end up eventually becoming classified and on to some of our space or ground systems we're also trying innovative things like our ground director recently put out an rfp unclassified and we asked only for like an eight minute video bad as opposed to proposal you know and you don't we're about a cost volume or things like that and and and and then we awarded like four or five contracts based upon that so we're always looking for innovative ways but there are lots of ways out there that we get through especially in the R&D side of the house that are unclassified and they're open to everybody so I want to ask a last question and I'm going to direct direct it to deputy director disco who's worked in different places in the in the I see and the question is this what advice do you have for the new generation starting work at your agencies what skills and experiences must young people have to succeed how can you improve the hiring process how can agencies compete for talent with contractors and tech firms when it takes more than a year for an applicant to get a security clearance what do you what advice for young would-be IC members well we do really cool work so please stick with us for us we are trying to so for di we know that the security clearance is part of the process we're doing what we can on both ends to shorten that time frame what we're looking for and what I would tell them is I talked to before but we're looking for really inquisitive really smart that goes without saying but really inquisitive and come in and I found that come in and ask lots of questions and challenge people to explain what they're doing and why they do it and there were ways to do it and yeah and just be patient and we have an obligation to set expectations I think Admiral Rogers talked about that what we expect from people but um yeah just and be prepared to do really cool work with that invitation to come do a cool work we should bring our panel to an end this is a rare opportunity to have such a high level talent running such important agencies all in this stage please join me in thanking them for being with us [Applause]

Channel: Intelligence & National Security Alliance

Views: 757

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Intelligence and National Security Alliance, INSA

Id: 5O37-5Q8ZIc

Length: 73min 33sec (4413 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 22 2017