15 Minutes

Kelly Bissell leads Accenture Security, where he oversees the full spectrum of security services including strategic consulting, cyber defense, digital identity, response and remediation services, and managed security services. He is a member of Accenture’s Global Management Committee.

In this episode we speak with Former Supreme Allied Commander and Cipher Brief Expert Admiral (Ret) James Stavridis about his new book, co-written with Elliot Ackerman called '2034: A Novel of the Next World War'. 

Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly talks to Mark Cooter & Alec Bierbauer, authors of the new book 'Never Mind We'll Do It Ourselves: How a Team of Renegades Broke Rules, Shattered Barriers and Changed The Face Of Warfare Forever.   The book tells the once highly classified story of the birth of the Predator program.  

Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly talks with William Evanina, who recently stepped down from his post as Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, a post he held from 2014-2021.  They discuss the most urgent counterintelligence and security threats facing the U.S. today. 

Welcome to the State Secrets Podcast brought to you by The Cipher Brief.  The State Secrets Podcast takes you inside the world of Intelligence and national security through conversations with experts who have spent careers working the toughest issues.  Some of the experts in our network have led organizations like the CIA and the NSA - some have held senior positions in the White House - Many are four-star generals, and others have spent their careers undercover, quietly working the issues from the ground level in the shadows of the limelight. Our guest today is Paul Kolbe.  Paul is the Director of The Intelligence Project at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, before that, he worked in the private sector as the head of BP’s global intelligence and analysis team, but before that, Paul served for 25 years in the Central Intelligence Agency as an operations officer serving in Russia, the Balkans, Indonesia, East Germany, Zimbabwe and Austria. 

This week we’re excited to welcome Jared Maples, to the show. Jared is the Director of the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness.   I caught up with Jared to talk about how he and his team work to counter threats from terrorism, cyber-attacks and most recently, the growing and complicated issue of state sponsored disinformation.

Peter Singer is co-author along with August Cole of the new book Burn-In a Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution. Peter is also a strategist and senior fellow at the New America Foundation.

In this episode Cipher Brief publisher & CEO Suzanne Kelly talks with Richard Hass. Richard is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, and author of the new book ‘The World, A Brief Introduction’ . The book is a primer designed to help experts and non-experts better navigate a complex and rapidly changing world in which global literacy really matters.  Suzanne caught up with Richard to talk about why he wanted to write this book, what issues worry him the most on the world stage, and why now more than ever, global literacy is so important.   

This week we’re joined by Cipher Brief Expert Mike Vigil.  Mike is the former Chief of International Operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. Before his retirement, he was one of the most highly-decorated agents within the agency and was responsible for numerous multi-national operations, the largest involved 36 countries. He was also responsible for developing global intelligence sharing platforms. He is also the author of three books:  DEAL and Metal Coffins: The Blood Alliance Cartel and Narco Queen. And this interesting note, Vigil was made an honorary General by the government of Afghanistan and given the key to the city of Shanghai by China, all in appreciation for his efforts battling the drug trade. Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian caught up with Mike from his quarantine base in New Mexico, to talk about: How the COVID-19 crisis is affecting the cartels. How are the cartels seeking to expand their portfolio to ensure survival during a time when normal revenues and operations are at a near st

Welcome to the next episode of the State Secrets podcast.  This week we catch up with Brian Raymond, who is the Senior Director of the National Security Group at Primer, a machine intelligence company headquartered in San Francisco.  Primer is one of our private sector partners at The Cipher Brief and is part of our daily open source collection team.  They are involved in pushing the envelope of technology applied towards national security objectives that use machine learning and artificial intelligence.  We caught up with Brian on a recent phone call to discuss a specific aspect of machine learning, known as natural language processing, and how it’s being used to enable missions across the national security community.

Admiral James Stavridis spent more than thirty years in the U.S. Navy, rising to the rank of 4-star Admiral.  He served as Supreme Allied Commander at NATO and previously commanded U.S. Southern Command.  You can imagine that someone with that kind of experience has seen a lot in his career, so to retire and then write a book about character is an interesting choice. Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher talkes with Admiral Stavridis about what made him want to zero in on the issue of character – as he does in his book – by examining the careers and the choices of ten other admirals.

This is part 2 of our border security series.  In this episode Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian catches back up with Mike Fisher, former Chief of the US Customs and Border Protection, to talk about recent developments with Mexico, the situation surrounding children in detention along the border, threats of deportations by the U.S. administration and what it will take to get the border crisis under control.  

Border security is a complex issue.  From conflict zones like Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, to geo-political hot spots like Israel and North Korea.  International borders are often where military, law enforcement, crime, politics and policy collide. Rarely do countries have the ability to control their entire borders, leaving open the possibility of smuggling and illegal immigration.  The United States is among the world’s countries facing a very challenging border security dynamic. Just in the last 12 months we’ve seen controversy surrounding the use of military troops to bolster border security, a crisis over children being separated from their families, heated political debates over budgets and walls, senior leadership in DHS seemingly at odds with White House policy, and intense diplomatic negotiations between the United States and Mexico.  Against this backdrop is a worsening humanitarian crisis that is claiming more lives and exhausting resources.    What we’re NOT talking much about in media conversatio

Richard Clarke has been on the cutting edge of terrorism and cyber issues for quite some time.  He served more than 30 years in government and was the first White House official tasked with taking charge of U.S. cybersecurity policy.  He’s written eight books, half fiction, half non-fiction and his latest book, ‘The Fifth Domain: Defending Our Country, Our Companies and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats’ was written with Robert Knake, who served as director for cybersecurity policy at the White House from 2011-2015.  Today both men serve as cybersecurity consultants, advising corporations and investors on cyber-related issues.

If you’ve done any reporting on national security issues in Washington DC, you already know JJ Green. He’s been covering national security for the city’s most popular radio station for 15 years now.  As you can imagine, he’s seen a lot of changes in that time.   I sat down with JJ recently in Washington to talk about how national security reporting works, how reporters and correspondents gain access to news and policy makers and how a they navigate the sometimes tricky task of getting the story right, and getting the story first.    The one thing JJ and I both agreed on – is the fact that the job is harder today than at any time in recent memory.  Every administration comes in with ‘gatekeepers’ – they are the staffers who decide which reporters get access to decision makers and which do not.  Which reporters get called in for background briefings, and which reporters get those exclusive one-on-one sit downs?

It seems like everyone in Washington, DC wants to write a book these days, and more of them are, even if they aren't the big names you're used to hearing.  There are stories to tell in this town, and there are sleuths who know how to go about telling them.  Keith Urbahn is a co-owner of the literary agency Javelin, which started out getting book deals for smaller names with bigger stories, but when they signed James Comey for his book released in 2017, they knew things had changed.   State Secrets sat down with Urban in his office, in Alexandria, VA.  

Christopher Krebs left his role as the Director of Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft back in 2017 and went back to work for the government.  He joined the Department of Homeland Security with a top priority to get anew Agency established- one that put a solid focus on government support for a private sector facing an onslaught of cyber threats.   Krebs saw that dream become reality last November when the President signed the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency Act- which officially elevated an existing component of the DHS to Agency status. We caught up with CISA's first Director and biggest advocate, Christopher Krebs to talk about what he hopes to do now that the Agency is established.  

Steven Hall spent more than 30 years in the CIA, the bulk of them running and managing intelligence operations in Eurasia and Latin America.  He has experience both in counterintelligence and counterterrorism and has overseen intelligence operations in the countries of the former Soviet Union.  When he retired from the CIA in 2015, he did so as a member of the Senior Intelligence Service, a small cadre of officers who are the senior-most leaders of the CIA’s Clandestine Service. Hall is also a Cipher Brief expert who was reading the president’s tweets about his Intelligence leaders after Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats delivered the IC’s annual threat assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last month.  A clearly upset President took to Twitter after media reports highlighted differences between the IC’s assessment of threats, and recent statements made by the President. Without missing a beat, the President called his IC leaders ‘naïve’, and suggested they go ‘back to school’. T

A recent worldwide threat report delivered to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence by leaders of the Intelligence Community made clear that China is the largest national security threat to the United States.   This week, State secrets talks to one of the world's most renowned experts on the U.S.- China relationship, Graham Allison.  His 2017 book Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydides' Trap? was a national and international best seller. Allison has just recently returned from China, where he spoke with Chinese officials about the State of Affairs with the U.S. We caught up with him when he was in his office at Harvard University, where he has taught for more than five decades.

We spoke with Cipher Brief Expert John Sipher, to understand the impact of the President's comments towards the Intelligence Community leaders, following a firestorm of debate after the presentation of the worldwide threat assessment by the Intelligence Community leadership to Congress.