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EXPERT INTERVIEWS - The domain of space has become essential to 21st-century life, given the extent to which communications and navigation are now reliant on space-based [...]More
EXPERT INTERVIEWS - The domain of space has become essential to 21st-century life, given the extent to which communications and navigation are now reliant on space-based systems. That reliance has made space a strategic domain as well - one where geopolitical competition on Earth is increasingly projected, and which is being weaponized in preparation for potential conflicts. It's a future that not long ago would have seemed the stuff of science fiction; today, experts say, it's all too real.
For years, the key players in this beyond-earth domainhave been the U.S. and Russia - not surprising, given the histories of the American and Soviet space programs. The new power is China, which has made strides in space much as it has in many areas here on Earth.
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EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION - I had the pleasure of delivering the opening address at the recent Cipher Brief HONORS Dinner where we recognized some [...]More
EXPERT PERSPECTIVE / OPINION - I had the pleasure of delivering the opening address at the recent Cipher Brief HONORS Dinner where we recognized some of the very best in the national security community.
I began by asking what we mean today when we say 'national security', because what we perceive as our greatest threats has changed over time.
For American colonists, the aim was security in the new land. In the first decades after the founding of our republic, national security was centered on protecting our sovereignty from foreign threats. During the Civil War, our objective was preserving the Union.
During the World Wars and Cold War, our principal aim was to ensure that a hostile power or a combination of hostile powers did not dominate the Eurasian landmass. The Cold War also brought with it a requirement to deter a nuclear attack on our homeland or against our allies.
After 9/11, our principal aim was to prevent another large-scale terrorist attack. More recently, we have focused on the threat posed by a rising China and a revanchist Russia, which many have described, correctly in my view, as a New Cold War.
A second question Americans have to ask is what is it we're securing? Is it our Constitutional Republic, or is it only our territory, our people and our international interests? What if the greatest threat comes from within?
In this regard, it is worth recalling Abraham Lincoln's warning in his 1838 speech to the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois. Lincoln was alarmed that mob violence was increasingly being used for political ends, and as a student of Republican Rome, Lincoln understood the threat this could pose to our fragile democracy and the rule of law.
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He wrote: "At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever to reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher."
That was indeed how the dominant power of its day, the Roman Republic, fell and succumbed to rule by emperors.
As I wrote in my recently published memoirs, national security begins at home.
Our national security ultimately depends on whether those charged with protecting our Republic will keep faith with the oath they took to support and defend our Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
It depends on our national unity, will, and resilience, and our confidence in our governmental institutions.
It depends on our values, and it depends on America being good, as well as being great.
And it depends on whether we are creating power and not depleting it. Good strategy creates power - political power, economic and financial power, technological power, diplomatic, military, and intelligence power, information power, and cultural power. Bad strategy depletes it.
So, what about foreign threats to our national security?
Internationally, American policy and actions are the biggest determinant of our national security. Are we in danger of becoming, as Michael Beckley and Hal Brands, recently put it in Foreign Affairs, a rogue or renegade superpower? An America where we impose protectionist tariffs above those of the global economy-killing Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930? An America where we treat our friends no better than we treat our enemies? An America where we threaten to seize Greenland and the Panama Canal?
Or, will we course correct and follow a more traditional path?
Trade wars can unravel alliances and push rivals toward confrontation.
It is always better to have allies. They are important not just militarily, but for intelligence purposes and economic purposes as well.
Like Japan before Pearl Harbor, China sees the U.S. as economically hostile but militarily vulnerable. As our Indo-Pacific Command Commander, Admiral Sam Paparo, recently testified, Chinese military actions in and around Taiwan look more like rehearsals for war than training exercises. And our rapidly escalating trade war may be moving Xi's timetable for war up considerably.
The risk of a global war - with China, Russia, and perhaps with North Korea and Iran as well - is higher than it's been in decades.
China and Russia's territorial claims don't end with Taiwan and Ukraine. Beijing lays claim to most of the South and East China Seas and large parts of India. Chinese military officials have also floated the idea of liberating Guam and even Hawaii, calling them relics of Western imperialism.
And, of course, there are Chinese threats that extend well beyond Hawaii - in cyber, in space, and in the large expansion of China's nuclear arsenal that is well underway.
Putin has not lost any of his ambition to bring all of Ukraine under his control, and he believes that time is on his side.
Peace through strength is a good strategy, but it only works if it's American strength that brings about the peace and not Russian.
Putin seeks to restore a "Russian World" - Russkiy Mir - extending from Eastern Europe to Central Asia. He is intensifying his covert campaign to destabilize Europe through subversion, sabotage, and assassination, and he won't stop meddling in elections as long as he thinks he can get away with it. He is not our friend.
Some argue that the United States should sacrifice Taiwan and Ukraine and agree to a world divided into great power spheres of influence: China in Asia, Russia in Europe, and the United States in the Western Hemisphere. But history shows that great powers only halt their aggression when stopped by force or geography.
There is no reason to believe that Xi and Putin will be exceptions to this rule.
A sphere of influence world would be governed by Thucydides' Melian Dialogue where "the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must."
It is not a world we should want.
A divided world, moreover, would not just be more violent and repressive, it would also be poor. Outsize wealth has never been created by fortress economies. It comes from open international commerce that enables trade, specialization, and compound growth.
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Finally, to add to our national security challenges, there's the ongoing revolution in technology - in AI, robotics, quantum computing, synthetic biology, and perhaps nuclear fusion. The country that wins this "tech arms race" will almost certainly be the dominant power in the international system for decades to come. We want it to be America.
The U.S. has a substantial advantage in these revolutionary technologies at the moment, but our continued lead and ultimate victory are by no means assured. A policy of economic populism will only hurt our chances of winning this competition.
So, what's the bottom line of all this?
The bottom line is that there is far more uncertainty about our national security than there has been in decades - uncertainty about the robustness of our form of government, uncertainty about whether the world is heading toward great power conflict, and uncertainty about whether we'll be able to create the power and national will we'll need to win the New Cold War.
So, as Tolstoy asked, "What Then Must We Do?"
As I said earlier, national security begins at home.
Fidelity to the Constitution, by our leaders, our national security practitioners, and our fellow citizens, will determine what kind of America we will live in.
Resilience will be key in leading the way forward - a resilience that can restore our unity; a resilience that creates power instead of depleting it; and a resilience that once again makes common cause with like-minded peoples around the world opposing the forces of darkness.
Our Founders, our preservers of the Union, and our greatest generation are all watching.
We cannot let them down.
I don't know about you but I'm not tired of winning yet.
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CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING - On January 20, the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump formally labeled Mexico's crime cartels as international terrorists. Last [...]More
CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING - On January 20, the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump formally labeled Mexico's crime cartels as international terrorists. Last month, in a sharp break from past assessments, the U.S. intelligence community’s annual briefing on national security threats put narcotrafficking at the top of the list. Multiple reports indicated that the CIA was stepping up surveillance drone flights deep into Mexican cartel-dominated territory.
All these actions have raised questions about whether U.S. unilateral drone strikes or special operations raids against the cartels would soon follow.
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EXPERT INTERVIEWS - The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) marks an anniversary today - 20 years since its creation as the top oversight [...]More
EXPERT INTERVIEWS - The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) marks an anniversary today - 20 years since its creation as the top oversight entity within the U.S. intelligence community (IC).
The ODNI was born in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks and the flawed intelligence that led to 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and given a mandate to correct "single-threaded intelligence reporting and analysis" and better integrate intelligence collected by the rest of the IC. It was tasked with other roles: a convening authority to bring the IC's disparate agencies together to confront challenges; the preparation of the Presidential Daily Brief; the determining of the overall intelligence budget; and acting as a public voice for the IC writ large.
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW - It's hard to overstate the complexity and importance of the work of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which - by its own [...]More
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW - It's hard to overstate the complexity and importance of the work of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which - by its own definition - involves delivering "world-class geospatial intelligence that provides a decisive advantage to policymakers, military service members, intelligence professionals and first responders."
As a practical matter, that amounts to intelligence collection on an enormous scale, often involving needle-in-haystack searches with no margin for error.
"We have to be correct," VADM Whitworth told The Cipher Brief during a recent State Secrets podcast interview. "This is a no-fail mission when it comes to warning and positive identification."
VADM Whitworth - who was honored Friday with the Cipher Brief's Impact through Government Innovation Award at The Cipher BriefHONORS Dinner - spoke with our CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly about how the NGA is leveraging the power of artificial intelligence (AI) in its work.
Vice Admiral Frank Whitworth is Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. Whitworth's command tours included commander, Joint Intelligence Center Central; commanding officer, Navy Element of U.S. Central Command; and commanding officer, Kennedy Irregular Warfare Center. Whitworth's operational tours included director of intelligence for U.S. Africa Command, director of Intelligence for Joint Special Operations Command, director of Intelligence and deputy director of Maritime Operations Center for Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, U.S. Fifth Fleet; director of Intelligence for a Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan during three deployments supporting Operation Enduring Freedom; and director of Intelligence for Naval Special Warfare Development Group.
The Cipher Brief: Artificial intelligence is the buzzword these days. It’s much more than that to you, as you’re figuring out new and innovative ways to incorporate the technology at the crazy rate that it’s developing into the mission at NGA. Talk to us about how you’re progressing in terms of bringing AI into that mission.
VADM Whitworth: It’s the natural question. We all want a report card, and there are some metrics. It's probably important to baseline what we do with AI and ML (machine learning) in this business, in this tradecraft of imagery analysis, and in some cases GEOINT writ large.
We train models. The idea here is something called computer vision. I think most listeners would be able to relate to computer vision when they go through TSA Global Entry. There’s a camera, it sees your likeness, it compares it to your passport, and then we all marvel as you walk through without even breaking out your passport because it has completely matched you. That’s computer vision. I wish we had an easy [task] like that.
The task that we have involves an infinitesimal amount of the percentage of a field of view. When you walk through Global Entry, your face is about eighty percent of that field of view of that particular camera. We’re searching for things that are being denied. They’re being hidden. These are secrets that people want to maintain in other countries. And secondly, they’re really, really small compared to the big field of view when you’re taking a picture from space. We approximate this at about 2/100th of a percent of the field of view, for something that we need to delineate its identity. We do that through this process called computer vision.
For years, humans have been doing this with their own processing unit known as the brain. Now we’re trying to do this so that we can do it faster, with more of the land or the sea available for the review to come up with something. In the case of our warning mission, [it] is [something] anomalous, different from the baseline that we’ve seen over the past. In the targeting mission, it's something that needs to be distinct - combatants from non-combatants, enemy from non-enemy, adversary from non-adversary. These are very important prerogatives of the Commander-in-Chief, of the Secretary of Defense, and of combatant commanders.
So we take this process very seriously, and it takes humans to train the machine to ensure that it’s right. So when we send all the data that comes from collection through these models, we run something called inference in the computer vision process that yields detections. And the best way to measure what kind of a year you’re having is to measure how quickly you’re running inference.
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At the unclassified level, it’s been a good year. This issue is called latency. Our latency has improved 80% in just one year. We’ve had this be a program of record for just over a year, so I think that’s a pretty good track record. But we’re never completely satisfied.
The Cipher Brief: You’re joining us from Colorado Springs, where you’re speaking at the Space Symposium on the relationship between Space Force and the NGA and how the two of you are collaborating. So it’s not just the Earth anymore, which used to be NGA’s mission, but now it includes space. Talk to us about that.
VADM Whitworth: NGA relies on the warfighting domain of space. And likewise, the warfighting domain of space relies on NGA. So we changed our motto to read, "From Seabed to Space." This was just about two and a half years ago, and it was the right thing to do to remind people that we look up, not just down. We’re not just looking at the Earth itself, but we are also looking up. This issue of distinction applies up there as well. And so it is appropriate for the United States Space Force Vice Chief and I to be on the stage together.
In the past, we’ve seen allusions in the media to there being some sort of strife or growing pain. I think that while that might’ve been true in the past, right now we’re on a very good run and we wanted to articulate that publicly.
The future is very good, especially when you use innovation for centers like we are talking about in the Joint Mission Management Center. The last time you and I talked, it was just a glimmer in our eye. Now it’s very real. It’s what we call IOC, Initial Operating Capability, where there are guardians working with NGA and the people who do tasking of these satellites, to ensure that we know the entire denominator, and before any pixel or any analysis is bought, any task is rendered, we make sure that as good stewards of taxpayer money, we’re not paying twice. So it’s good for warfighting, it’s good for speed, and it’s been really good for the relationship between NGA and the United States Space Force.
The Cipher Brief: How are you thinking about the private sector as a partner now, as your mission continues to evolve?
VADM Whitworth: They’re so essential. We learn from each other. I think in the issue of speed when it comes to acquisition, all of us are still learning and trying new things. We’ve been using CSOs (commercial solution offering). It’s like a pre-vetted relationship that allows you to move very quickly when something appeals to your mission. [For example] the CSO known as Project Aegir has been employed for maritime domain awareness. That has afforded us better speed than we would have had in the past. And that was in direct relationship to a requirement uttered by one of our primary combatant commands. In this case, it would be INDOPACOM.
The Cipher Brief: We heard earlier this year at the worldwide threats hearing that the new administration is putting a focus on stopping drug trafficking along the border as one of their priorities. And it seems like NGA is ideally positioned to help understand what’s happening there. What can you tell us about that?
VADM Whitworth: We had two decades of concerted activity-based intelligence during the counterterrorism years. Some of that actually does apply to the problem set that you’re describing - how to ensure that we can detect and ultimately help our law enforcement partners with this scourge. It’s happening as we speak. Many of the briefings that I take as we listen to the Commander-in-Chief’s priorities, and we react and do activity-based intelligence and behavior-based intelligence, it transports me back to the days when I was in Afghanistan. It transports me back to the days in Iraq. We were hunting terrorists and trying to localize that activity and ensure that it had a proper end. It does feel as though we’re utilizing our best practices.
The Cipher Brief: I know that NGA has also been really focused on the Arctic and mapping that region. What can you tell us about that?
VADM Whitworth: We have a responsibility to know the Arctic and to understand the navigability of the Arctic, just because we have a responsibility for safety of navigation. So it’s not necessarily about climate or climate change; it’s because we need to ensure that we monitor all the ice. We need to ensure that we understand the poles; most of the change regarding the Earth occurs at the poles, which has an effect on the spin rate of the Earth and topography that ultimately yields accuracy. So we have a responsibility to understand the Arctic.
From a strategic competitive perspective, yes, we must absolutely invest in time and energy dedicated to knowing when navigability is changing, and what that will portend either for the Russians or the Chinese and their behaviors up there. So we do have a responsibility there.
The Cipher Brief: What do you see coming in the next six to 12 months? What should we be thinking about?
VADM Whitworth: When it comes to targeting, our marquee item obviously is NGA Maven. And we’re making great progress. We mentioned latency, and that’s been demonstrated by NGA Maven. Warning is where we’re trying to take the best practices of AI, ML and targeting and applying it to the big behemoth problem that is warning, and to sight when something is anomalous on this earth of ours. And we’re also looking for ways to improve our confidence. I’ve been a targeting professional now for almost 36 years, and I’m always looking for the most positive identification to ensure that it’s not just based on one source. I’m trying to ensure that we have multiple sources overlapping that point to a high-confidence, positive identification. GEOINT is very good on its own, and I trust GEOINT and our people, but it’s always nice when you can add layers. Adding layers is where we’re making progress, as we speak, in AI and ML.
I think one year from now, we will talk about multimodal and its impact on our readiness. We have at least three multimodal tests going on right now, and they are actually showing that this is going to make a difference in our speed and the completeness of positive identification, which will in turn help us with analysis. It will help us with exploitation targeting. It will help us indirectly with our collection and our tasking, because you have to understand where to look in order to have good collection and good exploitation. It’s kind of the left-hand, right-hand relationship that we have as the functional manager for GEOINT. So I’m excited about multimodal right now, and the application of AI for the future.
The Cipher Brief: If you were explaining multimodal to someone who may not have a crisp understanding of what it is, how would you describe it?
VADM Whitworth: It’s taking several layers and ensuring that a model can actually translate a computer vision solution to what might be something in text. So generative AI, GenAI, that's a lot of text. It’s very agile, because text is light. It’s not as dense as an image. But a lot of times those models don’t necessarily understand the data inherent to what we do with location, or what computer vision does with regard to a physical image. We’re now starting to find ways that multimodal allows those things to talk to each other. Some of these are showing great promise and it will allow us simply to have a conversation with these models and applications. We’re using NGA Maven as one of the best test cases of that.
But the same is true on warning. We have to be correct. This is a no-fail mission when it comes to a warning and positive identification. So it makes total sense that multimodal, combining layers, is being done at NGA.
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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW - The Office of the Director of National Intelligence - the ODNIwas born twenty years ago this month, in response to recommendations made by the 9/11 commission, and a concern that the United States intelligence community (IC) needed a way to ensure the better integration of intelligence reporting and analysis. Put differently - as many said in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacksthe aim was to better connect the dots, and ensure that future threats to the nation would not be missed.
On April 21, 2005, Ambassador John Negroponte was sworn in as the country’s first Director of National Intelligence. Amb. Negroponte had gotten the call from the White House while serving in Baghdad, as the top U.S. diplomat in Iraq, at a moment when an insurgency against U.S. forces in that country was in high gear.
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BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT In the early days of the Trump administration, talk of peace deals and ceasefires were focused on the wars in Ukraine and in Gaza. Nearly 3 months later, the Russia-Ukraine negotiations are faltering, and a Gaza cease-fire has collapsed, but there is fresh hope on a third geopolitical front: negotiations for a new agreement to ensure that Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon.
Iranian and U.S. negotiators met in Oman Saturday, the first high-level talks between the two countries in years. The fact that the meeting happened at all was taken as a good sign; then came pronouncements from both sides that the initial conversations had been productive, and an agreement to hold another round this weekend. Perhaps most telling were comments by U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff and President Trump himself saying that the U.S. does not seek the dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program - only that it never be permitted to possess a nuclear weapon. "I'm not asking for much, they can't have a nuclear weapon," the president said. "I want them to thrive. I want Iran to be great."
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EXPERT INTERVIEW- For the past month, the United States military has been carrying out its most robust campaign yet against the Houthi militia, which is [...]More
EXPERT INTERVIEW- For the past month, the United States military has been carrying out its most robust campaign yet against the Houthi militia, which is based in Yemen and supported by Iran. Since March 15, the U.S. has carried out more than 200 air strikes against targets in Yemen, in a mission that the Pentagon says is aimed at deterring a group that has been firing on commercial vessels in the Red Sea for more than a year, disrupting global commerce in the process.
President Donald Trump said in early April that the campaign has "decimated" the Houthis, and that the American strikes would continue until the Houthis are "no longer a threat to Freedom of Navigation." But Pentagon and military officials have reportedly held closed briefings with members of Congress and allied nations saying that the Houthis' arsenals of missiles, drones and launchers remain largely intact.
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CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING - A pair of top U.S. military commanders warned Congress last week of dangers in their areas of operations which could factor in [...]More
CIPHER BRIEF REPORTING - A pair of top U.S. military commanders warned Congress last week of dangers in their areas of operations which could factor in a potential war with China: the catastrophic fallout from a conflict over Taiwan; and the risk that the U.S. is falling behind in both military innovation and non-kinetic areas.
In separate appearances, Admiral Samuel J. Paparo Jr., Commander of INDOPACOM, painted a nightmarish picture of what a Taiwan war might look like; and Army Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), suggested ways in which the U.S. risked finding itself at a disadvantage in any such conflict.
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EXPERT INTERVIEW - Other than Ukraine itself, few European countries have been as directly impacted by Russia's 2022 invasion as Poland. From the beginning, Poland, which [...]More
EXPERT INTERVIEW - Other than Ukraine itself, few European countries have been as directly impacted by Russia's 2022 invasion as Poland. From the beginning, Poland, which shares a roughly 340-mile-long border with Ukraine, has taken in far more refugees than any other nation; overall, nearly nine million Ukrainians have crossed into Poland, and three years into the war, roughly one million refugees remain. More recently, Poland has been among the many European countries buffeted by the U.S. shift to greater engagement with Russia, and its willingness to meet with Kremlin officials and adopt language and positions that had been anathema to the Biden Administration and its European allies.
The practical implications for Poland have been profound: the government has pledged to boost military spending - despite the fact that it already spends more as a percentage of GDP than any NATO nation (Estonia and the U.S. rank second and third); recently, Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk vowed to double the size of the military, including reservists; and he and other Polish officials have suggested that the country consider the positioning of nuclear weapons on Polish soil. Tusk said last month that the combination of a growing threat from Russia and "a profound change of American geopolitics" were forcing Poland's hand.
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EXPERT INTERVIEW - The visit of Kirill Dmitriev to Washington last week marked the first time in more than three years that a envoy from the Kremlin had visited the White House. Vladimir Putin's emissary wasn't a diplomat or general or senior official from his government; Dmitriev is a wealthy businessman, the head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, the RDIF, and his resume that includes deep ties to the U.S. He holds degrees from Harvard and Stanford, and has worked, among other places, at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs.
Dmitriev held two days of meetings in Washington, including a White House session with President Donald Trump's senior aide on Russia negotiations, Steve Witkoff. After the meeting, Dmitriev praised the Trump administration for hearing "Russia's position on many issues" and made clear that his talks had gone beyond discussions about ending the war in Ukraine.
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EXPERT INTERVIEWS - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this week that Ukraine plans to take an already-booming domestic drone industry and boost it to "the [...]More
EXPERT INTERVIEWS - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced this week that Ukraine plans to take an already-booming domestic drone industry and boost it to "the maximum". Zelensky used his nightly address to the nation Monday to announce a ramp up in production of a “full range of drones" - including fiber-optic and long-range drone weapons - along with an expansion of "our domestic capacity to produce ground-based robotic systems." Earlier in the day, Ukraine's Defense Ministry said it had approved a new Ukrainian-made ground robotic system for military use.
The spike in high-quality drone production has been an almost unmitigated good-news story for Ukraine. In the space of three years, Ukraine has gone from reliance on other countries for its drone weapons to low-tech domestic production, to becoming a juggernaut that now manufactures drone weapons at a scale and quality that have drawn the attention, and even envy, of other countries in Europe and beyond.
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