2020 SPRING | Spying in the Cyber Age

Dole Fellow Ron Marks
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The Dole Discussion Groups are made possible be a grant from Newman’s Own

Recruiting in the Cyber World – Q or Bond or Both?
2/12/2020

Ian Fleming’s legendary suave super-spy, James Bond, has imprinted himself on the collective imagination of society as what a true intelligence gathering agent looks and acts like. While this has never really been the case, the reality today is even farther afield from the tuxedo-clad, martini-swilling 007. In the digital age, do modern spies look more like Bond’s geeky, gadget-obsessed quartermaster “Q” than Bond himself? Dole Fellow Ron Marks welcomes former Chief of the Directorate of Digital Innovations Hiring for the CIA Roynda Hartsfield, who will discuss what the CIA and the intelligence community at large is looking for in a 21st century spy.

Another misconception that lingers in the minds of the public is that intelligence operatives are always agents of a government, or “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.” In reality, the intelligence industrial complex has ballooned from $27 billion annually in 2001 to $86 billion today. Hartsfield and Marks will explore what this shift in the terrain means, the differences and similarities between what the public and private sectors look for when hiring new operatives, and what types of individuals should apply.

This discussion group is a not-to-be-missed opportunity to get world-class advice and information about pursuing a career in this rapidly growing industry. It is also a chance to dispel the fictions around what spies in our age look like, and perhaps for attendees to see themselves in a field they had previously relegated to “spies” like James Bond.

Roynda “Roy” Hartsfield is a recently retired senior Central intelligence Agency officer and formerly Chief of the Directorate of Digital Innovations Hiring. Roy has spent most of her career overseas focused on operational issues around the globe. She currently heads Talent Acquisition for Excel Technologies and is President of PTG Consulting focused on bringing more diversity and inclusion to STEM.

Speaking Truth to Power in the Cyber Age?
2/19/2020

E.C.H.E.L.O.N.
P.R.I.S.M.
M.Y.S.T.I.C.

These infamous mass surveillance programs not only dominated many a conspiracy-theorist blog, but also began shifting public understanding of intelligence gathering in the age of the internet. As the role of computers rose, the role of human beings seemed to diminish. The practical truth lies somewhere between the Rosenbergs and Facebook. Dole Fellow Ron Marks welcomes the Honorable Randall M. Fort, former assistant secretary of state for Intelligence and Research, as they delve into this new world where the purposes of computers and humans in intelligence gathering have shifted in unprecedented ways.

Fort is an expert on the emergence of artificial intelligence and other technological tools used in data mining and processing. In this discussion, he and Marks will explore how these emergent technologies change the intelligence game, but also how integral humans remain to the overall process. To that point, they will discuss how to utilize personal networks to collect information without competing with senior executives. Fort and Marks will serve as guides through a rapidly shifting landscape in which the technologically adept person may have the career advantage.

Randall M. Fort is director of Corporate Programs Security for Raytheon. He joined the Engineering, Technology and Mission Assurance leadership team in July 2009. Prior to Raytheon, Fort was employed at the U.S. State Department as the assistant secretary of state for Intelligence and Research, from 2006 to 2009. He managed the production and dissemination of all-source intelligence analysis for the secretary of state and other senior policymakers. Fort headed the department’s Cyber Policy Group and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research— a member of the U.S. intelligence community.

Before his U.S. State Department appointment, Fort was director of Global Security for Goldman Sachs, from 1996 to 2006, where he was responsible for all aspects of physical security risk management, including
investigations, travel safety, executive protection, risk analysis, access control, perimeter protection and security technology. He also served as chief of staff to the president and co-chief operating officer of the firm. From 1993 to 1996, Fort was director of Special Projects at TRW, Inc. for two of the corporation’s Space and Defense operating groups.

He served as the deputy assistant secretary for Functional Analysis and Research in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the U.S. Department of State from 1989 to 1993. He was also the special assistant to the secretary for National Security and director of the Office of Intelligence Support at the U.S. Department of the Treasury from 1987 to 1989. Prior to moving to Treasury, he served as a professional staff member, first as assistant director and subsequently as deputy executive director, of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board at the White House from 1982 to 1987.

The Lawless Cyber Frontier
2/26/2020

Nineteenth century southwestern America lit up movie and television screens and imaginations from the earliest talkies to the latest blockbusters. The lawless West and the rugged cowboy protecting the innocent are archetypes embedded in the American psyche. Westerns have, with a few exceptions, grossly romanticized a terrifying time for the men, women, and children pushing the frontier ever westward with little or no protection. The frontier a century and a half later has no oceans to arrest its forward progress, and for many, the anarchy of cyberspace has wrought havoc on their lives with few white-hat wearing lawmen to rescue them.

Dole Fellow Ron Marks welcomes Stephanie Pell, Assistant Professor and Cyber Ethics Fellow at West Point’s Army Cyber Institute, to a discussion of bringing the rule of law to a lawless frontier. Pell stands out as an expert on the existing laws of the internet, and a leader in creating new ones, particularly at the international level. As countries and companies weaponize information on a global scale, Pell and Marks will provide vital insight into how we survive the new Wild Wild West.

Stephanie Pell is an Assistant Professor and Cyber Ethics Fellow at West Point’s Army Cyber Institute (ACI), with a joint appointment to the Department of English and Philosophy. Pell is also an Affiliate Scholar at the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School.

She writes about cybersecurity, privacy, surveillance, cyber ethics, and national security law and policy. Pell’s work has been published in several law journals, including the Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, the Berkeley Technology Law Journal, the Yale Journal of Law and Technology, and the Connecticut Law Review, as well as in the popular magazine Wired. Prior to joining West Point’s faculty, Pell served as Majority Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, serving as lead counsel on Electronic Communications Privacy Act reform and PATRIOT Act reauthorization during the 111th Congress. Pell was also a federal prosecutor for over fourteen years, working as a Senior Counsel to the U. S. Deputy Attorney General, as a Counsel to the U.S. Assistant Attorney General of the National Security Division, and as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida. She was a lead prosecutor in U.S. v. Jose Padilla, in which in which American citizen was detained as an enemy combatant prior to criminal indictment, trial, and conviction on various terrorism charges, for which she received the U.S. Attorney General’s Exceptional Service Award, and

in U.S. v. Conor Claxton, a court case involving IRA operatives who purchased weapons in South Florida and smuggled them into Belfast, Northern Ireland during peace process negotiations.

In Home, at Home and Abroad – How Intelligence Is Made and Used in the 21st Century
4/1/2020

The word “spy” almost drips with connotations. From James Bond to Spy vs. Spy to Black Widow, pop culture has no end of colorful characters who claim spying as their profession. One thing they all have in common is they work for a government. In the post-9/11 world, this changed, as the intelligence industry more than tripled in value. Spies much more frequently work for private firms. The burgeoning industry saw public and private organizations casting much larger nets and scooping up oceans of data. The ability to sort through so much information remains a key struggle.

Dole Fellow Ron Marks welcomes Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis & Production and former Vice Chairman for Evaluation on the National Intelligence Council, to the Dole Institute for a fascinating study of how intelligence is gathered, made, and used in an era where information flows more like Niagara Falls than a faucet. Lowenthal has run organizations both in government and the private sector, bringing a balanced perspective to a field that governments no longer monopolize. Join Marks and Lowenthal as they examine an industry that has radically transformed in the last 20 years and forever changed the definition of a “spy.”

Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, an internationally recognized expert on intelligence, is President Emeritus of the Intelligence & Security Academy, LLC, a national security education, training and consulting company. From 2002-2005, Dr. Lowenthal served as the Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis & Production and also as the Vice Chairman for Evaluation on the National Intelligence Council. Prior to these duties, he served as Counselor to the Director of Central Intelligence. Dr. Lowenthal was the Staff Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the 104th Congress (1995-97), where he directed the committee’s study on the future of the Intelligence Community, IC21: The Intelligence Community in the 21st Century. He also served in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), as both an office director and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, and has been the Senior Specialist in U.S. Foreign Policy at the Congressional Research Service, Library of Congress.

Dr. Lowenthal has written extensively on intelligence and national security issues, including ten books and over 100 articles or studies. He published The Future of Intelligence. His textbook, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, has become the standard college and graduate school textbook on the subject. Dr. Lowenthal is a frequent public commentator on intelligence issues.

He is on the adjunct faculty of the Johns Hopkins University and Sciences Po in Paris (Institut d’études politiques de Paris), and is a Visiting Professor at the Norway Defence Intelligence School (NORDIS). He was an adjunct for 14 years at Columbia University. He is the Executive Director of the International Association for Intelligence Education and a Chairman Emeritus of the Intelligence Committee for AFCEA. He is currently a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board and the FBI Intelligence Analysts Association.

In 2005, Dr. Lowenthal was awarded the National Intelligence Distinguished Service Medal, the Intelligence Community’s highest award. In 2006, he received AFCEA’s Distinguished Service Award for service to the Intelligence Community. In 1988, Dr. Lowenthal was the Grand Champion on “Jeopardy!,” the television quiz show.

Ghost in the Machine: Being a Reporter in the Age of Total Information
4/8/2020

On June 1, 1980, the Cable News Network launched, creating the first 24-hour news channel. It marked the first major departure from the decades-old model of television news broadcast twice a day. Then the internet swept the world, splintering not only televised news but print and radio as well. In the span of only three decades, the entire landscape of journalism changed. For most, we only see the external changes, the increasing need to curate our sources of information from an ever-increasing number of choices, but what is it like for the people who work in the field?

Dole Fellow Ron Marks welcomes his guest Jenna McLaughlin, national security and investigations reporter for Yahoo News. McLaughlin will share her experiences in working in a world-class non-traditional news agency, how she deals with the demands to constantly gather information for the 24/7 news cycle. She will also discuss how she balances the need to get the information out fast and the need to get it right.

Jenna McLaughlin is a national security and investigations reporter for Yahoo News, where she focuses on the intelligence community, foreign policy, and other issues. McLaughlin previously covered intelligence and national security for CNN, Foreign Policy Magazine, The Intercept, and Mother Jones Magazine, following her graduation from Johns Hopkins University in 2014.

The Death of 20th Century Power Structures and Adapting to the Birth of the 21st Century World
4/15/2020

Few inventions so radically re-shaped the world as the internet did in the 1990s. The pillars of society, economics, information, communication and government shook, cracked, and some even crumbled, perhaps none so dramatically as the political structures that supported and ordered the world. As of yet, no new framework has emerged to replace the old. Even the foundational idea of the nation-state as a political concept and the basis for the modern definition of a country threatens to buckle under the forces of change.

Dole Fellow Ron Marks welcomes his guest Dr. Greg Treverton, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council, to examine how future leaders can cope with these tectonic changes and how to build a new framework. Treverton, the most senior intelligence analyst for President Barack Obama, will provide deep insight into what that structure might look like, as well as an understanding of how the rising power of private players, such as Facebook, challenge the power of nations.

This discussion group is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to hear the foremost experts in this field reflect on what brought us to our present state, how to get to the next evolution, and what your role in all of this might be.

Gregory F. Treverton is Professor of the Practice of International Relations and Spatial Sciences at the University of Southern California. He served as chairman of the National Intelligence Council from September 2014 to January 2017. Earlier, he directed the RAND Corporation’s Center for Global Risk and Security, and before that, its Intelligence Policy Center and its International Security and Defense Policy Center. He also was associate dean of the Pardee RAND Graduate School.

He has served in government for the first Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, handling Europe for the National Security Council and as vice chair of the National Intelligence Council, overseeing the writing of America’s National Intelligence Estimates. In addition to RAND, he has taught at Harvard and Columbia universities, has been a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and also deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

His latest books are Dividing Divided States and Beyond the Great Divide: Relevance and Uncertainty in National Intelligence and Science for Policy (with Wilhelm Agrell).

Everyone’s an Editor: Finding “Truth” in Cyber News
4/22/2020

Cronkite. Murrow. Brinkley.

In the not so distant past, these men dominated the American news landscape. With two channels (eventually three) to get your televised news, you watched at least one of them. They were the Gatekeepers. The Arbiters of Truth. The advent of cable news, and then internet, brought an end to the Gatekeepers. Many lauded a new era of “democratized” journalism. What emerged had the best and the worst of the “news,” and suddenly, no one was there to sort through it all to find the truth.

The internet has made everyone an editor. Dole Fellow Ron Marks welcomes his guest Shelby Coffey, former editor of the L.A. Times and US News and World Report, to discuss how dramatically the world of journalism has changed in only 40 years. Information is faster than ever and there is far more of it. In this discussion group, Marks and Coffey will teach how to cut through the noise and find the truth.

Shelby Coffey III began his journalistic career as a reporter at The Washington Post, later becoming deputy managing editor. He is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and US News and World Report. He was President of CNN Financial News and executive Vice President of ABC News. He was named editor of the Year by the National Press Foundation in 1995. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International advisory council of APCO Worldwide and the board of the Newseum in Washington DC.