Six-time CIA Station Chief Ralph Goff on the new doctrine of war

Ralph Goff is a 35-year veteran of the CIA, having served as a six-time Chief of Station across Europe, the Middle East, and Central and South Asia. During his career, he also held the roles of Chief of Operations for Europe and Eurasia and Chief of the CIA's National Resources Division. Since leaving government, he advises on national security issues and speaks publicly on intelligence, geopolitics, and great power competition. In this episode of Summation, Ralph and Auren discuss: Why black...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Auren Hoffman?

  Hello fellow data nerds. My guest today is Ralph Goff. Ralph is a former CIA operations officer who spent nearly 30 years in the agency's clandestine service, including serving six times as station chief across Europe, Middle East, and Asia. Since leaving government, he advises on national security issues, and he speaks publicly on things like intelligence, geopolitics, etc. Ralph, welcome to Summation.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Hey, Orin. Great to be here. Good to see you again, too.

• 0:32Auren Hoffman?

  Great to see you as well. We're friends, and I'm very excited to dive in. Now, in some ways, like, okay, give us like an overview of like, we're basically like four years into this Ukraine-Russia conflict. What are like the non-obvious secondary effects of that conflict that maybe people who aren't close to it aren't thinking about?

• 0:54Speaker 01

  This conflict, I mean, and for your listeners there, you know, during my active duty time in the agency, I spent a lot of time going in and out of Ukraine. I'm an old Russian, an old Russia guy. I learned Russian as an 18-year-old in the US Army. You know, majored in it in college, University of Connecticut. Go Huskies. Went into government service. Spent a lot of time in the former Soviet Union. Spent a couple of years in Moscow as well. You know, like I said, worked with the Ukrainians, and when I retired, I've been going there since, basically since shortly after the war started, doing several projects there. So, you know, when I comment on Ukraine, I like to think that I'm a fairly, fairly

• 1:38Speaker 01

  well-educated on the issues there from firsthand experience. And I will admit, I have a bias against Russia. Russia and I have a lot of history, none of it very good, you know, which, which I find sad because actually, you know, I started learning Russian because I was fascinated by their literature, particularly Anton Chekhov and the great writers like that. And so, there were a lot of things in Russia's past that were great. Unfortunately, there's not a lot that I see great in their present or in their future. Getting back to your question, so... You know, this war, terrible in terms of impact on human lives on both sides. But also, you know, we're seeing, you know, people, of course, are focusing on the

• 2:21Speaker 01

  the great leaps in technology, particularly in drone warfare, right? They all talk about the drones. That's that's like nonstop. I think what people are missing here are two things. One, they're missing that this is not just some sort of technological advancement. This is a complete change in the doctrine of warfighting. All right, so it's a it's a major change.

• 2:41Auren Hoffman?

  What do you mean by that major change in warfighting?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's going to change.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Everything about like, for instance, the structure of the US military in particular. Right, we we were built for, you know, we had this old thing called air, land, sea combat. We built these, you know, large divisions and, you know, battalions and divisions and, you know, built around tanks and artillery and, you know, what we call modern maneuver warfare. Right? That stuff, it's not extinct, but it will be radically altered in how these

• 3:17Speaker 01

  doctrines are applied in the future because of the impact of these new technologies. All right. People keep talking about the death of the tank, right? Oh, you can't use tanks anymore. No, you can, but they're just going to have to be used with new tech, what we call TTPs, tactics, techniques and techniques, tactics and procedures. Right? So there's going to be all these changes and and this affects everything from from research and development to procurement to fielding these new technologies and to integrating them in the existing force and coming up with a whole new force. For instance, David Petraeus, I traveled with him a number of times to Ukraine and our most recent trip was a few weeks ago where we actually took David out towards

• 4:01Speaker 01

  the front to meet with commanders and their command centers. And he came back and I thought one of the more.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Appropriate comments that he made for what we saw there was, look, he says, in the West, we talk about innovation and we say, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna stand up a drone platoon and attach it to this armor battalion. That's innovation. No, real innovation is getting rid of the armor battalion and creating a drone battalion, right, in its place. You'll still have another tank battalion because, you know, at the end of the day, warfare is about seizing and holding territory. And the drones aren't quite up to that yet. They're, they're getting there, but they're not quite up to that yet. But, so that's what I mean about changes. This is a whole doctrinal change and it's gonna, it's gonna affect everything top to bottom.

• 4:47Auren Hoffman?

  It seems like everyone is talking about like that, at least on that high level of that on the, and then, and the drones and how that's gonna affect the US military and stuff like that. Like, for someone who isn't there, who doesn't, who doesn't, is more just like reads the newspaper like myself, like, what, what are, what are people like that not understanding?

• 5:06Speaker 01

  I think they're not understanding that it's not gonna be easy. For instance, we, we have a bad, the US has two bad habits. One, we have a bad habit of fighting tomorrow's wars with yesterday's tactics and equipment. And we have another bad habit of, we always end up doing the right thing, but sometimes it takes us a while to get there, right? So, you know, I'm, I'm confident we'll get there eventually, but I don't think, I don't think we can afford to, to wait too long. And while everyone's giving it lip service and people are talking about it, I, I haven't seen the implementation. And a good example of that would be the, what's going on in the Persian Gulf, right? We, we lost US servicemen and women to Iranian drone attacks. And these are Iranian drones that Ukrainians have been

• 5:48Speaker 01

  countering for the last four years, right? They have the technology to, to go against these Shahid drones, right? Where was that technology? Why didn't we have it? How, why was it our soldiers were vulnerable to attacks from adversarial technologies that, that our allies, Ukrainians, can already counter?

• 6:07Auren Hoffman?

  What else is like being under-reported in this kind of conflict?

• 6:12Speaker 01

  You know, it's pretty well-covered. And you know, the thing with the media now is people can, thanks to algorithms and thanks to, you know, how media is set up, people can follow this war as closely as they want, or as distantly as they want, right? People who are really into the, into Ukraine and support Ukrainians can dive really deeply, like, you know, like me. For instance, I've watched thousands of Russian soldiers die on YouTube. It's probably not so good for my mental health, but, you know, like I said, Russia and I have a long, bad history. But, you know, I think what people are missing here is this, this is not just a conflict about Russia and Ukraine. This is a conflict about value systems. And that extends to the conflicts we have in the Middle East, right?

• 6:56Speaker 01

  It extends to the larger potential conflict with China. Because you look at the line, the lineup here on the east side, and you've got Ukraine with the West, you know, with Europe behind them. You know, maybe the United States officially doesn't support Ukraine as much as, as people want, but we're still there. We share intelligence, critical intelligence, we still provide them with stuff, right? There's half a million dollars or so, I mean, yeah, half a billion dollars or so in appropriations bill earmarked for Ukraine, right? Not enough, but it's, it helps, right? And then you look at what's on the other side. You've got Russia, you've got North Korea, Iran, with China looming in the background, right?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  So those are adversarial totalitarian states that not only are the adversaries of Ukraine, they're our adversaries. They're the adversaries of Israel and the Persian Gulf, right? So this is, these are two different value systems. And to go along with that, you've got, you know, we used to call them the BRICS, but now I call them the non-aligned countries like Brazil, India, South Africa, right? Big, you know, growing states in Africa, South America. They're watching this conflict, and they haven't picked a side yet, you know? Because they're, they want to see how this thing's going to turn out before they commit one way or the other. So, you know, for me, from my optic, it's important that we not lose these conflicts.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  And we can't afford to lose in Ukraine, and we can't afford to lose in, in. In the prison golf either.

• 8:26Auren Hoffman?

  At some point, we this has to end like, I mean, it we are both sides are losing a terrible loss of life. This is a this is a this is a travesty and tragedy as well. How does it end? Like, how how do we get to a point where it doesn't seem like both sides are going to have to give something to get it to end in some way? Like, I don't think Russia is just going to like, stop attacking, right? And they're not going to quote unquote, lose. It's not like you're going to think that someone's going to go to Moscow and take it over. So so how how does this thing actually end?

• 9:04Speaker 01

  So with Russia, Ukraine, I mean, this is, you know, you're right. Each side is going to have to give something up. I mean, there won't be an effective settlement unless both sides are happy, you know, that old saying, we're not happy until you're not happy, right? So, you know, both sides need to be dissatisfied in order for it to be some sort of legitimate and maybe durable ceasefire. I don't see it being a real peace agreement, but sort of more like an armistice, right?

• 9:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, we stop, yeah, stop, stop killing each other for for now.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  And people point to like the the example of the Korean Peninsula, right? And and you have, for instance, things have changed in the past few years. I remember, you know, just two years ago or so, my Ukrainian friends were all saying, we're going to take back all our territory. We're going to restore our borders from 1991. We're going to make the Russians pay, right? Nobody says that anymore, right? Eighty percent of the Ukrainian people say, look, we'll gladly sit down and sign a ceasefire tomorrow if the Russians, you know, just stop where they are today. All right.

• 10:03Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  And and and that's a big change for the Ukrainians.

• 10:07Auren Hoffman?

  They get to hold what they already have. And obviously, they hold from the 2014 stuff, but they even hold from some of the stuff that they have over the last four years.

• 10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there's pragmatism there because for Ukrainians, first of all, it would be very costly to take it back. And, you know, I remember talking to some of my Ukrainian friends in the military command saying, you know, if I were a Ukrainian father or uncle, I wouldn't want my my, you know, son or nephew or whoever was fighting to die, you know, taking this horrible stretch of eastern Ukraine that's been, you know, bombed into rubble for the last four years. And, you know, where some of the people there, frankly, if they want to join Russia, I've had it, you know? And that seems to be the attitude now more with the Ukrainians. And, you know, but the problem is that so far. The Russians aren't going to just sit down and agree to this stuff until they're forced

• 10:58Speaker 01

  to. So this is the whole new strategy of the Ukrainian command now is the high command is their goal now is to basically kill more Russians than Putin can sign up in the military so that he's kind of forced to take a ceasefire and forced to stop where he is because the Ukrainians

• 11:16Auren Hoffman?

  And at least the last few months, that does seem like that's happening, right? Like the number, like the number of kills is just so high. Both Ukrainian, both Ukrainians dying and Russians or Russian forces dying is incredibly high right now. It's as high as it ever was, right?

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah. In fact, for the Russians, higher. I mean, it's pretty much a five to one kill ratio from what I hear from the Ukrainians, although they're very careful about keeping the number of their casualties highly classified. But Russian casualties, they're quick to put out those numbers. And, you know, going back to the fall where the numbers were, you know, they were trending upwards from, you know, high 20,000, 28,000 a month to where January was like 35,000 plus, right? And I think this month-

• 12:02Auren Hoffman?

  That's insane. 35,000 people on the Russian side dying, obviously, and some number, we don't know, dying on the Ukrainian side. That is, that is way too high. Like somehow we have to get to an end on this, right?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And this month, the Russians probably will lose like closer to 40,000, right? Which is, the Ukrainian goal is to hit 40 to 50,000 a month.

• 12:24Auren Hoffman?

  So what is, if Putin right now, and you're advising Putin, you don't have the anti thing, but you're helping him. And what is the, what's the offer for him? What does he need to basically declare, he's got to declare victory, right? So what does he need to declare? And if he ends right now, you're just saying he already gets the territory, right?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  He gets the territory. He's got the land bridge to Crimea, right? So he's got that.

• 12:50Auren Hoffman?

  He's got the land bridge to Crimea. He's got, you know, maybe some coal mine. I don't know what else. He's gotten at those things and this kind of territory. He's got, he's got some ability. Maybe, maybe he's got the declaration that we can give that Ukraine will never join NATO or something, or there might be some other gifts there. What else does he need for him to just say, okay, I'm ready to come to the table?

• 13:13Speaker 01

  So, you know, look, I think to answer that, we got to look at the the cause of the conflict. And, you know, I know that the the popular version that the Russians have very skillfully put out there, in fact, you know, Russians are great at at dominating the narrative space, right? And so, you know, they've done a pretty good job of of of putting out there that that literally they were forced to invade Ukraine, that this was, you know, NATO was on the path and or rather, Ukraine was on the path to NATO membership, and this was unacceptable. It was a threat to Russia. You know, that's and unfortunately, there's a lot of people here in the United States who who buy into that narrative. I don't I don't buy it for a second, right?

• 13:55Speaker 01

  This this idea that it's our fault, the West's fault, that we we gave Putin no no offering. That's ridiculous. The real reason is that, you know, here was Ukraine, which after they ousted the the the pro-Russian government with the the Orange Revolution, right, and the Maidan protests and all that, which they still blame on the CIA, right, saying that they did it, which is ridiculous, right?

• 14:16Auren Hoffman?

  By the way, I was there touring during that revolution. It was actually pretty pretty cool to see the protests and stuff. I was in I was in Kiev at the time.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so you saw it. I mean, you know, and and and look, what happened is then

• 14:29Auren Hoffman?

  But that was 22 years ago, almost, you know?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, but, you know, what it did is it set Ukraine on this path of being more oriented to the West, right, with eventual EU membership, right, maybe NATO membership, but definitely EU membership. So economically, they'd be facing to the West. They also, they were democratizing, right? They were becoming more of a democracy. You know, the Russians started to put out the narrative that that Ukraine is not a democracy. It's a it's a kleptocracy, you know, which is it it's corrupt, but it's not a kleptocracy. It is a democratic state. There are elections before the war that worked, right? So you have this this country that 40 some odd million at the time of of Slavics, right,

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Ukrainian, with millions of Russian speakers, right, on Putin's doorstep. And as this country, this Slavic Russian country, as it became more westernized, more democratized,

• 15:27Speaker 01

  On Putin's border, right, the Russian people, they're smarter than we give them credit for sometimes. They would look at that and say, well, how come we can't have that? Why can't we have democracy? Why can't we be more like Ukraine and oriented to the West? That was a threat to the Putin regime. That would because that would be a direct threat to his power.

• 15:44Auren Hoffman?

  Obviously, what does he need? Because it will still be if, if, if he ends the war at some point, like presumably Ukraine's still quote unquote democratic. And so obviously even more left, left, west leaning because some of the key Russian folks that are support Russia already either left or they're, they're, they're, they're changing. So what, what does, what is, what does Putin need to, to basically say, okay, we're going to have an armistice. We're going to stop killing one another. And then of course, what is, what is Ukraine? Does Ukraine, if, if Russia just stops right now, is Ukraine ready to stop? Or like, what, what do they need to just stop?

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, Ukraine would stop. I mean, they're ready to stop, but you know, they want security guarantees too. They want, they want guarantees in the form of some sort of Western NATO force or US force, which isn't going to happen. You know, so that Putin doesn't just start retooling and rebuilding and launch this whole thing in, you know, two years, three years, four years from now. Right? So I think in the meantime.

• 16:43Auren Hoffman?

  Well, by the way, like, isn't that better? Like, if, if, like, if we can just say, okay, let's stop for now. And maybe they don't have any guarantees in four years or three years of this, but like they can all just like, because you're never going to have guarantees, right? Yeah, but then everyone can just at least stop the killing now. And hopefully we can do some things diplomatically over the next three years to, to reduce the chances.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's true. And I think the, the, the ground is set for that, but it's the Russians, right? I mean, the Ukrainians that come to the table tomorrow.

• 17:17Auren Hoffman?

  But so again, so what do they need? What, what, what, what, what moves them? Is, is it just like they, they can't, they can't go until more people die? Like, why, why can't we get them?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  The Russians is to make it more painful to not. Negotiate. And that's where that's the that's Ukrainian strategy now is their goal is to make it painful, so painful for Putin that he has to negotiate by by by killing more Russian soldiers than he can recruit, right? They want to force him.

• 17:47Auren Hoffman?

  I mean, oil prices have gone up. He's got dollars. He can now recruit people from all across the world to be his mercenaries, right?

• 17:55Speaker 01

  They're still in pretty deep financial straits, right? The money will help. It will cover the bills. But, you know, what a lot of people often understand is that Putin has

• 18:05Speaker 01

  destroyed Russia's long term future, right? I mean, demographically, that country is in is in deep trouble. And you've got, you know, the people that are fighting the war, for the most part, are not the ethnic Russians. They're the various peoples from the different republics, right? Where poverty rules. You know, these people, they're being they're being exploited. At some point, they're going to catch on to that, right? And this is this is the goal of the Ukrainians is to drive the cost so high that that Putin is forced to some sort of mobilization. Because so far, you know, he's left the the real, you know, the the center of his power, the Russian voting bloc, he's left the major cities, Moscow,

• 18:47Speaker 01

  St. Petersburg, Katynburg, all those major cities, he they're not they're not drafting any from one from there, right? They still have an annual draft of young, you know, dr draftees, but they don't go to war. They go maintain, you know, they do the basic training, they go, you know, they're posted to different bases, but they're not just sent to war. The guys that are going to the war are these guys that are signing up, kind of like the lottery, like taking a chance for a once in a lifetime payout, and hoping they don't get killed. And if they do get killed, their wives get the payout. So, you know, it's it's kind of a ghoulish lottery for these people. And that but what the Ukrainians are trying to do is make it so high that Putin is forcing the mobilization, which would start to erode his political support.

• 19:30Auren Hoffman?

  I have a friend in Pakistan, and he told me that a bunch of

• 19:37Auren Hoffman?

  Well, let's say, uh, uh, people from Pakistan are now moving to kind of central Russia men to, to get brides, uh, because there are so few men in these towns. And so, and they are, you know, they have decent income type people that are relatively educated. And he, he said, it's not a massive wave, but it's in the thousands of people that are now moving there to, to, to, to get brides, which is very, very like, that just shows how few men there are these places.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. And, and look, you know, Russia is not exactly a country known to embrace, uh, diversity. So, you know, there's, there's a tipping point where, you know, the Russian people, the, the, you know, the real Russians, uh, they'll look at this, you know, influx of foreigners coming to marry their women, and they won't be happy about it, right? And that's, that's another pressure point.

• 20:32Auren Hoffman?

  The only way, the only thing we can do to get, basically to end this conflict today, you're saying is just, is kill more, is kill even more Russians. So to me, this is just like a, there's no other, like, there's no other opportunity to get this thing ending. I mean, to me, it's just, I don't, I don't want to see any more Russians, I don't want to see any more Ukrainians. I want to stop people dying. That would be my objective. I, you know, people dying is bad. So is there anything else we can do besides like, kill more people to, to stop it? Or you think that's just the only way?

• 21:04Speaker 01

  No, I mean, economic pressure would work too, but it's not being exerted, right? For a number of reasons. One, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's far too easy to just blame the Trump administration and say, oh, well, you're not putting enough economic pressure on, right? Because Lindsey Graham can, you know, today says he could come up with 90 senators who would support an enhanced sanctions packet, right? And that's amazing. When's the last time 90 senators agreed on anything, right?

• 21:31Auren Hoffman?

  So, yeah, never.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there's political support there for enhanced sanctions, which would take a, take a bigger bite out of Russians' economy, right? And, uh, but, you know, President Trump hasn't given the green light yet. They're waiting for that. But also, Europe is still bombing. Buying gas and oil, right? Gas and oil is still being bought and now at these new inflated prices, then you have

• 21:52Auren Hoffman?

  Now they have to do it even more.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Temporary lifting of sanctions because of the, you know, the uh, blockage of the Straits of Hormuz there, right? So there's all these little pressure valves that are allowing the Putin regime to, to make more money and kind of postpone the inevitable, which is economic collapse, right? So, you know, other than killing people, the other best tool is to put pressure on. Cause one of the things about sanctions is they do work, right? These people who say sanctions don't work, they're just repeating Moscow's party line. Again, this, this, you know, Russian um, talent at, at dominating the narrative, where they've created this narrative that says, hey, go ahead and impose sanctions on us. We don't care. They don't work, but they, they do work, right? They just don't work quickly.

• 22:39Speaker 01

  And, and look with imposing more sanctions, I mean, there are literally hundreds of Russian banks that aren't sanctioned, right? They fall underneath the sanctioning. And there's, there's all sorts of, all sorts of economic entities out there that could be sanctioned. And, and, and just lack of political will.

• 22:56Auren Hoffman?

  How does the diaspora, where I was actually talking to a friend of mine from Serbia the other day? And he told me that he has this very weird thing in Serbia where, at least in Serbia, the, the Russians that came to Serbia um, over the last four years were anti Putin Russians. The um, the Ukrainians that came to Serbia over the last four years were uh, pro Russian Ukrainians who left because they didn't want to get drafted and stuff like that. So he said, the, the protests in Serbia are Ukrainians who are against Ukraine, against the Russians who are against Russia, which is like, kind of like mind boggling to, to think about. Uh, but there were a lot of diaspora, a lot of people leaving Russia over the last four years.

• 23:41Auren Hoffman?

  A lot of people left Ukraine. Like, how does that play out geopolitically?

• 23:46Speaker 01

  Well, remember, you know, early on, uh, there was a huge uh, um,

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Exit exodus of young Russian men out of Russia, right? Remember this just showed the borders everywhere into Georgia and Kazan, you know, borders were just backed up, right? So and Putin allowed that, right? And he did that on purpose because it was kind of a safety valve. He was, he was getting rid of the people that he knew weren't going to support his plan.

• 24:11Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. There's still remittances back like so they're, they're still helping the economy.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  And they're still helping the economy, you know, some have gone backward, a lot have stayed out and you know, they're sending remittances back. So he's kind of had this pressure valve there, right? And you know, and he could afford that in terms of the numbers of people. But again, this is short term because long term, you know, Russia is a demographic disaster, right? With the declining birth rate, the only places where the birth rates are rising are in some of the, you know, republics of so-called minorities, right? Who are going to outnumber the Russians at some point. And that's not going to play to their advantage. And meanwhile, you know, the, the big winner in all this is China. They're just kind of sitting back and, you know, watching this and, and watching Russia bleed itself away. I mean, Xi's got a very interesting position.

• 24:57Auren Hoffman?

  It does seem like the biggest winner of the Ukraine Russia conflict is China. Would you agree with that?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you know, because it seems like Xi doesn't, he doesn't want Putin to lose, but he doesn't want him to win either, right?

• 25:07Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, maybe, maybe they're the only winner. I don't know about this whole, this conflict, yeah.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  You know, Ukraine's going to produce seven million drones this year, right? Incredible accomplishment and, and real testament to their, their, you know, just, just how dogged they are and determined. But out of the, the seven million drones, 90% of the components come from China.

• 25:27Auren Hoffman?

  China, of course.

• 25:29Speaker 01

  And I asked one of my, you know, Ukrainian friends there, I said, aren't you worried about your supply chain? He goes, not really. He says, you know, the Chinese would sell us this stuff even if we were at war with them. You know, so very mercenary concept there. But, you know, so China's kind of, they're, they're, they're making up well on both sides here.

• 25:48Auren Hoffman?

  What, going back to drones, if you think about drones as just like a war doctrine, does it help the defense more than offense, or does it help the offense more than the defense? I feel like I keep changing my mind about that. Like, maybe in the Ukrainian war, it's been helping the defense a little bit more, but maybe you could see the opposite happening, or?

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Because it is, you know, it goes back and forth because it is changing. I mean, these are new. I mean, the drones are a new thing. I mean, in the first year, the, you know, the war has kind of been in several stages. The first stage was, you know, the invasion, which was kind of like maneuver warfare, and then the Ukrainian counterattack, and then, you know, the counterattack kind of petered out, and we, then you had kind of like this analogy, analogous situation with World War I trench warfare, right? Guys digging trenches and fighting over a few, you know, meters here and there. Then gradually drones started to be introduced into the, into the scenario and, you know, and now we're in this, this stage where you have this 40 mile or 40 kilometer wide zone of

• 26:51Speaker 01

  death, right? From the, over the front lines, 20 kilometers on both sides, yeah.

• 26:55Auren Hoffman?

  And just like one person could hold like, you know, a huge swath of that, right?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and again, this gets back to my opening statement about the changing, you know, doctrine where, you know, like a-

• 27:07Auren Hoffman?

  In World War II, there'd be like a little guy with a gun with every, like every tree or something, right?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  A regiment will hold a huge frontline, right? And, and like the front lines are, you know, it's, it's, it's not a line anymore. It's a zone, right?

• 27:20Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 27:20Speaker 01

  And the troops are intermingled and, and it's, it's not neat and tidy like they used to be. So, you know, the drones have been, have had impact both on the offense and on the defense, and that's still evolving.

• 27:32Auren Hoffman?

  Let's talk a little bit about tradecraft and operating. It seems, I don't know anything about this, but it does seem like it was a lot harder to operate undercover today than it was 40 years ago, right? From facial recognition to fingerprints.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, a case officer in your early days and not now. I mean, I, I, you know, I definitely admire these young officers now who, you know, have to go against what we call ubiquitous, ubiquitous technological surveillance, right? And this is, you know, everything from thousands and thousands of cameras on the streets of Beijing or Moscow or other capitals or big data.

• 28:12Auren Hoffman?

  They don't need to like tail you anymore. It's like they, they could just like, they know what's going on. And so even if, obviously, even if there's for every diplomat in the country, they could like, track them 24, at least, at least presumably one could potentially track someone 24 seven. And then, you know, for, and then if you wanted to get a spy in there to, to do something, you know, the, you know, someone who comes from a cover, let's say they're an Argentine business person or something like that or whatever, and they're going into China. You know, you would think like, okay, well, they've got the face recognition, they've got all those other things they could do.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Gate, gate recognition, face recognition.

• 28:52Auren Hoffman?

  All these other types of things there, fingerprints, et cetera. They could be collaborating with other governments of that person like, came into another, they came into Burma at some place, now they can share it or to like, how does one operate? I just don't tell them, say anything secret, but like, I like, how, how hard is it going to be in the future to operate or is it just going to be like just increasingly harder over time? And we're going to have to find other ways to, to gather intelligence and to meet with disaffected folks to turn them, et cetera.

• 29:28Speaker 01

  I'm always of the mind that human beings always find a way, right? And that the human element will always remain crucial in, in intelligence operations. And yes, there's, you know, AI, there's big data, there's all this technological surveillance and stuff. But at the end of the day, you know, humans can be pretty tricky and we'll find ways around it. We already have, right? People are still operating. We don't, we don't just say it's too hard, we can't do it. But what it does is it changes the equation to where. You know, human intelligence comes at a cost, right? Before, the agency has always been kind of a, with human, it's always been kind of a bargain, right?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Uh, human spies have always been way cheaper than satellites or way cheaper than, you know, massive SIGINT systems and, you know, and, and, and also they can be.

• 30:18Auren Hoffman?

  That seems like that's changing too. Like a human might be more valuable, more, more expensive.

• 30:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, they may be more expensive, but in, you know, they may be also more, more, uh, more worth the cost. I mean, uh, you look at, for instance, encryption systems, you know, uh, if you really want to break through to something, you know, you, you don't decrypt something, you get someone who hands you the, you know, the decryption codes and things, right? So, you know, having a human source inside there. And I, and I think it'll be, human sources will always be important, but they'll just be harder to run. And when they do run, it makes you, you have to be more selective, right? You, if you're, if you're going to recruit someone, in the old days, like when I was a junior case officer, I could have, you know, I handled multiple agents and, and, you know, tours and, you know,

• 31:08Speaker 01

  it was, it was a, it was more of a time management challenge than, than anything else, right? Now, now it's not a time management challenge, it's a technological challenge. And so, you know, you, you, you may not run 10 spies, you might run one, right? One spy and, and that's your job. And your job is to run that person as safely and securely as, as possible. And, but, you know, because of the expense and the time and the resources, you know, that, that spy, he or she has got to be worth it, right? So they got to be well placed, they got to have the kind of access that justifies the danger and justifies the expense.

• 31:47Auren Hoffman?

  It does seem like there's, at least for me not understanding it, it seems like it's a lot easier for China to recruit spies in the US than for the US to recruit spies in China. Or do you disagree with that?

• 32:00Speaker 01

  It's never a fair fight, you know, but, and, and.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  I think this is a case where in the United States, they'll have more opportunity. Frankly, just because of numbers. I mean, there's, there's millions more Chinese with college level English than there are American citizens with, you know, college level Chinese. So they're always going to have a numerical advantage. But there are things that are, that go beyond numbers, go beyond money and ideology. You look at, for instance, during the Cold War, right? The, the US intelligence community and particularly with CIA and FBI, I mean, they recruited amazing sources inside the Soviet Union, amazing sources. And these people were recruited mostly by ideology. You know, there was some money involved in there, but

• 32:49Speaker 01

  for the most part, it was ideology. Because, you know, the Cold War was basically a contest of ideologies. And, you know, which again, gets back to my thesis that these conflicts we're seeing now, these are conflicts of ideologies.

• 33:03Auren Hoffman?

  Because like they saw the corruption or they saw the, you know, they, they, they saw other things that are going on or they got passed over for a promotion. It could be more personal things too, right?

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Sometimes more personal. I mean, there's all sorts of reasons, but, you know, I've, I was privileged during my career to handle several assets who were, you know, they liked the money. They weren't going to say no to it, but they had some real ideological motivations for, you know, collaborating with the United States to the detriment of their government, right? And that, that's not going to change. But, you know, what, what skews everything is then you get a few traders like, you know, Ames and Hanson and other famous traders on the American side. And they almost like, they re-level the playing field, right?

• 33:47Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. Especially if they're super high level place like they did and had access to so much information. I've seen some things where, where, where like messaging Chinese just like en masse is, hey, if you know anything, just come to this, you know, come to this drop off point or do this thing online or go to this place for us. And, you know, let it, let us know. It's almost like advertising to people to, to betray their country. Does that work? I mean, it seems like it could work like.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  It does. I mean, they did it. They they really, you know, annoyed the Russians with a similar thing. You know, a couple few years back when Bill Burns was, you know, asked about that in some press interviews that he gave. Hey, what about these videos about recruiting Russians, right? Of course, the Russians immediately turned around and issued videos, you know, of the same thing for recruiting Americans, right? It it does work and maybe not right away, but it can help plant that seed of doubt in someone who's having, who's wavering in terms of their support for their government. And and, you know, the with the invasion with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You know, there were there were a lot of Russians who were not with the game plan, right? And the same with China. China, you know, is viewed by many Chinese citizens as a as a corrupt and unfair society.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  And in the United States, you look at some of the people in the United States who have, you know, betrayed this country and a lot of them. You know, aside, you know, most of our foreign adversaries think that money is a primary motivation for recruiting Americans, right? But there's also some ideological issues there too, where people think, you know, the US system is unfair. And they've they've gotten, you know, the the raw end of the deal. And so they they look for a way to level the playing field for themselves.

• 35:30Auren Hoffman?

  A lot of successful Russians and a lot of successful Chinese are stealing money from the state or they're doing things, at least at the very least, to avoid paying taxes to the state. They're moving money around. How effective is blackmail? Like, is that an effective way? Or is it if we if you reach out to someone and we'll say, if you don't, you know, we're going to tell the state about it like. Or is it just like if you come at that hard level, like someone's gonna, someone's not gonna play play ball with you?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  No, I mean blackmail.

• 36:04Auren Hoffman?

  It seems to work.

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Blackmail, you know, and you can never say never with the CIA. There's always, you know, exceptions and just like for all the things that we're forbidden to do. And there's waivers for everything, you know, you just have to go through it. But.

• 36:19Speaker 01

  You know, in terms of recruiting,

• 36:24Speaker 01

  you know, there's just so many different variables in why people agree to espionage. It's very human.

• 36:31Auren Hoffman?

  But you think there's like, obviously, there's a carrot, but you think if there's a stick in there, it doesn't work as well?

• 36:37Speaker 01

  It doesn't. It's very unreliable. It's, we would use it in a pinch if you had nothing else, maybe, but, you know, it's just not good in long term because you want to start relationships, these relationships in particular, you want to start them on a positive note, right? And, you know, blackmailing someone, you know, it starts it off on a negative note and they're just looking for a way out.

• 36:59Auren Hoffman?

  At least you hear these things, I don't know if it's true, but you hear these things that the Russia, like if someone visits Russia and all of a sudden there's a, you know, prostitute in their room or something, and you hear these stories that the Russians are blackmailing people. I don't know if those are true, but like if it works for the Russians, why wouldn't it work for us? Or you think those are also like not true as well?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  I think, I'm sure they've had cases where it's worked and they did have some, but you know, it's, it's just not as effective and it's more of an exception than it's a

• 37:30Auren Hoffman?

  rule. And it might be a one-time thing, but then like that person will do every, obviously, you're not going to feel good about somebody blackmailing you, right? Long-term, you know, that would be, that would, that makes sense. What else like, like what else like how, I still don't understand like how one like does run operations inside of these countries. At least China, like it seems Russia is a little bit more porous and if the Ukrainians, I know Ukrainians do run a lot of operations, but like the, the people look the same, they speak exactly fluently, they're, you know, they're, the border's already fairly porous and stuff like that. So it does seem like that, that seems like a more, and it's a

• 38:13Auren Hoffman?

  super multi-ethnic and, you know, and it's less of a, the state has less capacity than China. So there are even like cameras everywhere and stuff like that. But like, it seems like China is just a hu, would be a huge challenge to run up. Absolutely.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  They're absolutely a huge challenge, but it's not impossible.

• 38:35Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  And even things, look at like a place like Iran, right? Where over past decades, the agency, you know, has unfortunately had periods where the Iranians come out and announce that they've wrapped up, you know, networks of either Israeli or American spies, right? But one of the things I always noticed about that is that, you know,

• 38:57Speaker 01

  they wrap up a network of spies and then we recruit another one. These societies, these societies where people are unhappy, they're breeding grounds for for people to, you know, be recruited. So that, you know, there's strengths and weaknesses.

• 39:10Auren Hoffman?

  Iran has super porous borders, like all over the place, and they've got massive multi-ethnic foes and they've got a lot of other, there's a lot of advantages of operating in Iran that you don't have to operate in other places.

• 39:23Speaker 01

  There's a lot of.

• 39:24Auren Hoffman?

  That's true. Good point.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  A lot of differences there too.

• 39:27Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, that's a good point. And I don't know enough about China to know, okay, what, we talk, we're talking about China. The obvious parallel between like Russia and Ukraine is China and Taiwan. And everyone's talking about it, whether there might be a kinetic way of doing it, or maybe even a non-kinetic way of them taking over China or some, just the new election in Taiwan. And like, what's your prediction of how that kind of plays out over time?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  So, you know, I'm not a real China guy, but I follow, you know, because again, all these conflicts are linked. And yeah, and so first of all, the Taiwanese are not the Ukrainians, right? I don't think, I don't think they'll fight for their homeland like the Ukrainians. Maybe a small percentage of the elite might because they see an existential threat, but I don't think they'll fight like the Ukrainians will. Second of all, there's, you know, there's this historical idea that it is part of China, right? So there's, there's a lot of people there who probably are sympathetic. And I think that, that, that holds true for Americans too. I think a lot of Americans would say, why are we getting involved in this, you know, unfinished civil war from the, you know, the 1940s?

• 40:40Speaker 01

  So, you know, I, my, my personal opinion is that she. Just needs to be patient, right? That he can probably have Taiwan take it politically as opposed to by force.

• 40:53Auren Hoffman?

  Obviously, I assume that would be his preference and that would be.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, and one would think, but it's hard to say. Xi is, you know, the Chinese government is a very autocratic. They're all engineers, you know, they're very, you know, they do what they say. And, you know, you look at the one child policy, right? That's very clear what that is. Or the, you know, zero COVID policy, very clear what that is. And, you know, when they say Taiwan is China, right? They're pretty clear about that. So, you know, there's danger in that as well. And meanwhile, you have this, this ongoing purge of the Chinese military where Xi is literally getting rid of everyone that's not on board with his program, right? And there, there are those that say, okay, it makes war more likely because he's getting

• 41:39Speaker 01

  rid of people who would maybe say no to him for an invasion, an armed invasion of Taiwan. Others say, no, he's just getting the military in line so that he knows he can count on them if he needs them. And that, you know, in the meantime, he can continue to develop China economically, continue to put pressure on Taiwan economically and politically and just get the Taiwanese people to decide for themselves, you know, where their future lies. So I'm, I don't think war is a given, you know, a certainty there. And this, this idea, well, by 2027, Xi said he's going to take back Taiwan. Eh, I don't see that. And a lot of it's going to have to do with the economy. Plus, China has a big demographic problem themselves, right?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  They have very steep declining birth rates because of the one child policy, the zero COVID policy, right? They're, they're in a position where they increasingly unable to do things on their own, right? They're, they're going to have a population that can't consume what they produce. They need the rest of the world, right? So getting, going to war with the people that you rely on to buy your products is maybe not the smartest policy. So there's a lot of room here, I think, to see where this is going to go.

• 42:51Auren Hoffman?

  I hope not, as I was saying before, like my, my main political opinion about all this stuff is I want less killing. I want fewer people to die. I want, I want more peace in the world and, and hopefully we can, we can, we can make something like happen. If you think of the Chinese intelligence service, obviously, and or services, it's a very capable, very capable services, very, very capable adversary. What, what do they do better than our intelligence services? What are, what are they, what are they way better at than us?

• 43:22Speaker 01

  So I think it's just throw huge resources at things, right?

• 43:26Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Just huge resources and, you know, and none of that, but again, it's our lack of resources to go against them, right? I mean, a lot of the stuff that they do is out in open source, or as we used to say, it's encrypted in Chinese, you know, like the thousand talents program and stuff like that, right? This stuff was in open source and, you know, it took, took the US side years to figure out this stuff was there and to, to read it and say like, holy cow, they've just stated their whole policy of how they're going to penetrate the entire US academic system. It's right there in open source, right? But it was encrypted in Chinese, right? So I think-

• 44:05Auren Hoffman?

  But like today, like every, everything is, we can, you can translate everything in one second, right? There's no, there's no, you don't need translators, you don't need these things anymore. Like you don't, you don't have this bottleneck that we had even five years ago. All right. So that doesn't seem to be a, as much of an advantage that they would have anymore than like, they have all these English speakers and we don't have any Chinese speakers. Like it seems like we, we have as many Chinese speakers as they have because we have just as much AI as they have.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the, the playing field is leveling out. This is the thing about technology, right? It levels the playing field and, you know, makes it that small countries have just as robust counterintelligence capabilities as big countries, right? So that, that is leveling the playing field, but they still, they can still throw the numbers of people, right? They could just get, get, you know, intelligence officers out on the streets, as it were, and meeting people in person, which is, you know, critical in this, this day and age. They can do that better than us.

• 44:58Auren Hoffman?

  And especially in like, let's say, other like, let's other countries, like, let's say, mid-tier countries or something like that, like, they're they're just they just have more people throw out the problem, essentially.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you know, like, we've we've we've had budget cuts, we've retrenched, like, you know, there was times when, you know, we go through these periods where we start closing, you know, reducing our presence in Africa, reducing our presence in Latin America, right? And Chinese, on the other hand, they they can increase it, they can they can throw more people out there.

• 45:26Auren Hoffman?

  It does seem like they're they're they are much more integrated with their with the companies. So someone is actually doing like, let's say, let's say, a company's doing a legitimate thing, they're building out a port, or they're doing something that's like legitimate thing that the company wants to do, they have much more tighter integration with the state, whereas in the US, that seems like not to happen very often.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that's more a case of this, those Chinese companies don't have a choice, right? And with as opposed to US companies where, for instance, you know, with the CIA, we have what's called National Resources Division, very innocuous title there, but, you know, that's the part of the Directorate of Operations that engages with the private sector, right? And if you're a case officer and you're dealing with someone from the US private sector, first of all, you know, you cannot make any operational use of a US person without telling them who you are, right? And and, you know, and I know this because I I served several years in various national resource positions, right? And it's we have these guidelines and these laws, and they're not just, you know, it isn't just stuff that

• 46:31Speaker 01

  we we nod at and go about our business, we pay attention to them, their guideline, I like them.

• 46:36Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I'm a little bit libertarian, right? We don't need an American KGB, right?

• 46:40Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, it's a good thing, right? It's it's it's one of the secrets of our country is that we we have these these these laws.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  So if you go to a US company and you say, hey, we need your help with something, you know, they can say yes, and they can say no. And it isn't, you know, if they say no, it isn't that, you know, the IRS is going to be the next visitor to them, right?

• 46:58Auren Hoffman?

  Right, right, right.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  It's not, it's like, they say no, no harm, no foul, right? The the two, the cornerstones of our work with the US persons, and by the way, American companies. Are considered US persons, right? They're protected. You know, the the two cornerstones of our engagement there are it's confidentiality on both sides. And it's voluntary, whereas on the Chinese side, not so much. You know, they're forced.

• 47:22Auren Hoffman?

  One of the other things it seems like the Chinese do super well is infiltrate.

• 47:29Auren Hoffman?

  Big international organizations, the World Bank, et cetera. And one of the, from what I understand, they're extremely good at targeted bribes or, you know, other types of things. And and and maybe the US either isn't good at that, or that's just, you know, sometimes just outright like we're not allowed to do it.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a combination. Yeah, it's there's some where we can't make use of certain organizations, you know, clergy, stuff like that. We can overseas, but you need like waivers and it's got to be worth it. You know, international organizations, the Chinese, again, they can throw more people at it. And, you know, because they've done well economically, they could throw more money into it. And also, you know, we, the US has kind of been disdainful of international organizations, right? So we kind of like, we kind of seeded that playing field to them a little bit, right? We still worked it. I mean, you know, we've had, you know, American case officers who penetrate international organizations and work with them or, you know. But not to the same extent as the Chinese.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  And but I tend to think that it hasn't really been an advantage for them. Because they're they're just so opaque. It's just they're so obvious, you know, and and whereas we try to be a little more stealthy about it.

• 48:48Auren Hoffman?

  How has recruiting changed over the last thirty, forty years in the US intelligence agencies and CIA?

• 48:56Speaker 01

  It's changed slowly. You know, one of the things I think they really need to do is improve their process for security process and security clearances and the whole getting.

• 49:05Auren Hoffman?

  Get it done faster.

• 49:06Speaker 01

  Get it done faster.

• 49:07Auren Hoffman?

  I know people who like applied and then like three years later, like, oh, you're accepted. Like, I already have a life now. Like, I was like, like, what, like, I can't, I can't join now.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  For listeners out there who are applying, it's. It's gotten better, you know, it's it's they my friends tell me it's down to like six months to a year or something, but you know, you should always have a plan B that you can follow and then, you know, but if you're hard to set on doing the agency.

• 49:30Auren Hoffman?

  The problem is you have that plan B, but all of a sudden that plan B starts to be like exciting, then you don't wanna that when they come back, it's like, ah, you know.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  People vote with their feet. They go where they wanna go, you know, so.

• 49:39Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:40Speaker 01

  But also, you know, this these newer generations are different from my generation. I mean, when I went in, right? It's like, okay, I'm here till you wheel me out on a gurney with a sheet over my face, you know? And and this younger workforce, no, you know, they'll come in and say, yeah, this this seems like something I might do for a few years, you know, and and and and I don't mind that, you know, that some of my colleagues. I don't mind it either. Some of my colleagues didn't like that, but I'm like, no, I think they're being smart. And then the onus is on, you know, the managers was on my generation to convince these young people to stay, right? To manage them properly.

• 50:12Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, if if if people are growing, they're gonna stay. If they're growing, they're getting to do new things. If there's not a ton of bureaucracy in front of them all the time, you know, but if they if they're just like, if they feel like they're just like a paper pusher in the background, like they're gonna leave and do something more interesting, at least the good ones. The bad ones are the ones who are gonna stay.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, one of my pet pieces, though, that, you know, people would come in, and again, this is a more mobile workforce, this these younger generations, and some would come in and then they're like, you know, I think I'll go do a startup or I'll go do this or that. And and then they go and they do that and they go, you know, this is fun and I'm making some money. It's cool, but I really like that agency job. I think I'll go back there, right?

• 50:49Auren Hoffman?

  And then, yeah, it's mission oriented. You you there are things you can only do there.

• 50:52Speaker 01

  But then we would make it hard for them, right? It's like, there was kind of like an attitude that like, oh, well, you know, you had your chance here and and then you left.

• 50:59Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, really? Oh, I didn't realize that. So you would make it hard. Oh, that's sad.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  But that's how people were and, you know, I I can remember arguing against them. I'm like, no, that's what we want. We want people who like, actually could leave, right? Because let's face it, a lot of the people who stayed in government, a lot of them stay there because they know that, you know, once they walk out the door, their their chances of employment are reduced, you know, or then maybe not gonna find a job that pays as well, right? So, you know, there's kind of, I used to call it like reverse Darwinism, you know?

• 51:28Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  You know, so I like the idea that people could come, you know, learn the tradecraft. I mean, I wanted, you want the majority to stay because it costs a lot to train them and get them vetted and all that. And then, you know, it takes several tours before they really develop their talents and they're really effective. So you want them to stay, but there's a point too where people should go out, do some other things, gain some other experience and then come back. Right? It's not, it's, it's not like demeaning to everybody else. Well, we stayed here and, and suffered while you were out there earning, you know, a million dollars. Well, you know, get over yourself.

• 52:02Auren Hoffman?

  Agents have a very, it's a weird thing in their head where they are, the reason you get hired into the agency is that you are a person who is going to tell the truth to your boss and tell your truth to your colleagues, but you have to lie for a living. And so this has, I imagine it must be hard to just kind of keep it all compartmentalized in, in one's head and stuff. And it's like, it's a rare type of person who can lie for a living, but also be, you know, has to tell every, you, you got a lie detector test. You have to tell the truth for other, you know, things, right?

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you know, when you walk across the seal of the agency, you know, you're walking across the truths and you should know the truth, right? It's right there on the floor. We're all about the truth. And, and, you know, it isn't that we lie for a living. I mean, and, and, you know, people will say, well, you know, I can remember earlier in my career, you know, I had, had, you know, girlfriends who, when things got serious and they're like, how can I ever trust you? You lie for a living. I'm like, I don't, I don't lie for a living, you know? I might, you know, I, I have to hide my true employment, but, you know, from my, you know, my neighbors and my bankers and people like that, but it, it, it isn't really lying and, and, or lying for a living, rather. It, it, it's just part of the, it's just part of your

• 53:28Speaker 01

  life. And that's the other part of it is when you're an intelligence officer, right? Not an agent. When you're an intelligence officer, it's not a job. It's a way of life. And I used to tell my officers and say, look, if you've been here for a while, if you still think this is a job, you might want to think of something else because this is a way of life. And the only way to be really successful and the only way to be happy at it is to understand that it's a way of life, right? Because of the hours and because of the things you got to do. And for the most part, the people who were the most successful and who were the happiest and the most adjusted on that, they got that, that this was a way of life, not a job.

• 54:06Auren Hoffman?

  So I've had many things go wrong in my professional career, but when things go wrong, like people don't die for me, right? It's like you lose some money or occasionally something happens, whatever it might be. In your case, like, I'm sure you've lost assets. You've terrible, terrible things have happened. How do you deal with that? How do you feel when that happens?

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, you know, it doesn't happen as often as one might think.

• 54:33Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, which is great. Thanks.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is great. And I got to say, one of the most fun things I ever did was went to a retirement ceremony for an agent, not an employee, but an agent who'd been on the books for like 40 years, right, overseas. And we smuggled this person in the United States, brought him in and had a ceremony, a medal ceremony, retirement ceremony for this person, right?

• 55:00Auren Hoffman?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  You know, with a medal they can't keep, right? And it was all private.

• 55:04Auren Hoffman?

  That's great. So they were an agent for 40 years? They kind of kept it going for that long?

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I can remember other ceremonies where we had agents who retired and their retirement gift was that they had groomed like their child, their son or daughter to take their shoes, you know? And that was based mostly on ideological stuff, right?

• 55:27Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 55:27Speaker 01

  But, you know, yes, you do sometimes lose people. And if it's in a police state where they can be executed, that's pretty painful. Or even if they're just arrested and lose their job or lose their, you know, their family or lose, you know, or if we have to cut a deal with the host country and resettle them in the United States, right? And they can never go home. These are costly things. Yeah. You know, so, yeah, and you take it very seriously. And in fact, like, you know, everyone talks about in the agency, you walk in and you've got the memorial wall with the stars, right? 140 or so there, right? For our martyrs. Two more unfortunately will be put on there for our colleagues who died in Mexico recently.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  You know, there's another monument that not many people see. It's more inside. It's kind of past the security a little bit, but it's a quiet, unassuming marble sculpture dedicated to our agents who paid the sacrifice to work for the United States. And it's, I always thought that that was really a simple, very moving tribute. And, you know, I can remember times walking by it and someone had put a flower there on a certain day, maybe a little note with, you know, for an agent because they were marking, they remembered the day when that person, you know, was executed or arrested or something. It was very, very touching, very touching and very human. And again, reminding

• 56:55Speaker 01

  us that, you know, we are a human intelligence agency.

• 56:59Auren Hoffman?

  Yes. And we're dealing with people's lives at stake or every day. What is, what is the biggest thing that Hollywood gets wrong about espionage?

• 57:10Speaker 01

  They get a lot.

• 57:10Auren Hoffman?

  Besides that not everyone can do like Kung Fu and backflips and everything.

• 57:14Speaker 01

  My favorite ones are first of all, like, you know, the old show 24, right? With the ticking clock.

• 57:19Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I always joke, I said, yeah, if it were, if it were based on reality, then the first five episodes, first four or five episodes would be Jack Bauer sitting outside the, the, the office trying to get his travel voucher approved, you know?

• 57:34Auren Hoffman?

  Totally.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  With the clock ticking, you know?

• 57:38Auren Hoffman?

  Exactly. They get that wrong. Right? It's like, I gotta fill this out in duplicate, right?

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Or like when, you know, the chief of station, I always, I use this joke a lot in my poet's beak where, you know, I explained the chief, what a chief of station role is. And I say, you know, in Hollywood, the chief of station is the guy or woman who always cancels the rescue helicopter for the hero. And then the hero spends the rest of the movie, you know, trying to escape and in the end tracks the station chief down to their luxurious Manhattan apartment and murders them in revenge, you know? And then, and then I add, I've never, I never ever canceled the rescue helicopter in my career. So, you know, but, but they get that wrong. And then what, what the basic thing they get wrong is just that. It's it's it's like I said, it's it's not a job. It's a way of life.

• 58:28Auren Hoffman?

  What are maybe the opposite? What's the show or movie that gets it closest to the truth?

• 58:36Speaker 01

  So, you know, back in some of the old John Le Carre stuff is good.

• 58:40Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah, yeah, those are amazing. I love those.

• 58:42Speaker 01

  Spy is good, right? And, you know, I'm waiting breathlessly for this new, the billion dollar spy to come out about the Adolf Tokushov case in the latter part of the Soviet Union. Covers a part of the time when I was in in Russia. That should be interesting. You know, Zero Dark Thirty for all the hullabaloo over tortures. Something like that was pretty accurate too, right? Just, you know, how long it took to get things done, right? Yeah. So there's there's some accurate stuff there.

• 59:09Auren Hoffman?

  Yeah. Ever seen The Bureau, the the French show?

• 59:12Speaker 01

  I I like The Bureau. I really like. I'm a big fan of The Bureau. Yeah, it's really good.

• 59:16Auren Hoffman?

  So good. Yeah.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  And there's there's there's a show out there. One of my favorites, more modern up to date thing is called No Man's Land. And it's about Syria and it's about a and it's an international production in different languages. And it's about the Kurds and it's about ISIS and it's a it it whoever wrote it really understood that that conflict and, you know, the first episode was filmed in 2022 and then episode two kept getting postponed and finally came out, I think, last year and it was brilliant. I really enjoyed that show and it got a lot right too.

• 59:50Auren Hoffman?

  I'm definitely checking. I haven't heard of that. I love that stuff. So I'm definitely gonna check it out.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  It's really good.

• 59:55Auren Hoffman?

  You've worked with, I'm sure, all the different agencies, MI5, the MI6, the DGSE, the BND, the Mossad. Like, what what are what are the things you admire about these other agencies that you've worked with?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  Partnerships are really important. You know, the partnership between the the private sector and the government is important. Partnerships between allies is is chess is important and, you know, coming first, full circle to what we started with with this idea that the conflicts in the world are, you know, conflicts between value systems, not nation states. This is where where our allies come in, right? And we can have minor just disputes with our allies, but at the end of the day, we really need them. They are force multipliers. And you know, with the Brits, I always was impressed with, you know, they could get a lot done with a little. Right. The Israelis always, you got to be impressed with, with their single minded, you know, ability to get things done. They're a lot more ruthless than we are by necessity. Right?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  The Germans, very good technologically, the, the Dutch really good with cyber, right? So everyone's got strengths, everyone's got weaknesses.

• 1:01:03Auren Hoffman?

  I heard the Dutch are like really good at OSINT.

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, OSINT, yeah, because they, they, they, I think they're a highly well-educated society and they got people to understand that. They're also really good at cyber. So those two areas are really good. You know, and then there's, you know, services in, in East Asia that are pretty good. And, you know, again, with, with technological advances, even small services now can, can operate on a level with large nation states. Right? So.

• 1:01:34Auren Hoffman?

  Two more questions we ask all of our guests. The first one is, what is a conspiracy theory that you believe?

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  I don't believe in any conspiracy theories, right? I'm, I, I love seeing things that debunk them and, you know, for instance, when people say, what about the Kennedy thing? I'm, I'm like, well, the fact, if, if, if the agency had been involved in the, in the Kennedy assassination, someone would have leaked that a long time ago. Right? And then people say, well, what about the, you know, aliens and out in the area 51? I'm like, really? Some, some other race has mastered interstellar, interstellar travel and they're going to, you know, like make a wrong turn and crash on earth? I don't think so, you know? So, um, you know, I, I believe more in Occam's razor, right? The simplest explanation is usually the right one and more often than not.

• 1:02:21Speaker 01

  And where someone sees conspiracy, I see incompetence more often than not. So, yeah, not a big conspiracy guy.

• 1:02:27Auren Hoffman?

  Okay. Last question we ask all of our guests. What conventional wisdom or advice is generally bad advice?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  All conventional wisdom and all conventional advice is bad because. That implies that that that everything can be predicted. And I think that, you know, like leadership, people say, make sure you stick to your decisions. And then another leadership book will be all about how you need to be flexible in your decision making. Right. So, you know, I'm not a big fan of conventional wisdom. I think, you know, it's cute and looks good on a throw pillow, embroidered on a throw pillow. But for life, I like to be a lot more selective of my options.

• 1:03:06Auren Hoffman?

  You were at the agency for

• 1:03:08Speaker 01

  Thirty five years.

• 1:03:09Auren Hoffman?

  Thirty, thirty five years. I mean, you were, you were in like key leadership positions all over the world, doing many, many, many different things, right? This is like, wasn't just like one track.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I used to joke, they kept giving me chief jobs until I got it right. But, you know.

• 1:03:27Auren Hoffman?

  Well, you probably had more chief jobs, maybe than anybody in history.

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  No, no, there's, like, there's a couple of other guys that got me beat by far, but that's six is pretty good.

• 1:03:34Auren Hoffman?

  Okay.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:34Auren Hoffman?

  Six is pretty good. Yeah, I don't know anyone else's six. So usually it's two or three or something here. Like, what, what, is there some sort of like non-obvious trait of success that, you know, when you look to other people, or you give advice to other folks who are, who are there?

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, I think in my case, what it was, a lot of luck and timing when, when positions come open, the HR system is very opaque. But I think what helped too is I was never, I was never beholden to any one person or organization. I didn't have a, an abbot above me, right? Pulling strings, right? I, yeah, didn't have a rabbi. Yeah, rabbi, abbot, you know.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  And I think that gave me the freedom of being able to pick and choose my own path. And then I was rewarded by people looking at me and judging me based on my merits and not based on my relationships.

• 1:04:36Auren Hoffman?

  Interesting. Interesting. Well, this has been great. Thank you, Ralph Goff, for joining us on Summation. We covered like so many different things. I really enjoyed this conversation.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Me too. It's good to see you and a big fan of the podcast.

• 1:04:50Auren Hoffman?

  One more thing before we go. I read a blog called Summation. It's the same as this podcast. The blog is about non-obvious idea sharing on business, talent, data, longevity, and random contrarian takes. If you like the conversations on this show, you'll probably like the blog. It's free. New content comes out twice a month. You could subscribe at orin.substack.com. That's orin.substack.com.