Jim Clapper Shares Wisdom From A Career in Operational Intelligence

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Loop.Com hello, I'm Bob Gourley, the Chief Technology officer of OODA LLC. Today on the OODACAST. James R. Clapper Jim Clapper served as the fourth U.S. director of National Intelligence, the DNI for the United States. This is the top intelligence position. He did so in the Obama administration from 2010 to 2017. He began his career as enlisted Marine Corps Reservist in 1961, serving in a wide range of operational intelligence positions after that in the U.S. air Force. He eventually became a three star Air Force lieutenant general and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. After retiring from uniform service, he would later return to government as the first civilian Director of of what was at the time the National Imagery and Mapping Agency. This was just three days before 9 11. In 2007, General Clapper was named the Pentagon's top intelligence official, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, serving as an appointee in both the Bush and Obama administrations before President Obama appointed him to the dni. He's author of the book Facts and Fears, Hard Truths from a Life and Intelligence. General Clapper, welcome to the oodacast.

Thanks Rob. Thanks for having me. And may I at the outset here, commend what you do. I'm an avid reader of OODA Loop and I really love it. Sometimes I don't completely understand it because it's pretty techie, but it's a great publication. I'm avid reader of it.

Well, thanks for the endorsement. It really makes us want to do more and better. We're very proud that we try to cover the waterfront of issues and risks globally. And knowing that you're an avid reader is very motivational for us.

Well, thanks anyway. Thanks for having me.

Well, I'd like to start with some discussion about your book if that's okay, because.

Oh sure.

Facts and Hard Truth from a Life and Intelligence. Let me tell you what I liked about it. I liked the way you started the book at the beginning, a very young age. You were essentially born into intelligence. That was the title of one of the chapters of your book, my favorite chapter, because it connected us to history. It connected us to the history of World War II and the age right after. It connected us to the Cold War. And your parents. We learned more about them and their actions and your dad was an army signature. And so I really liked that book and wanted to commend you for starting at the beginning. For a history buff like me, that's just A great hook to want to learn more.

Well, thanks, Bob. I wasn't going to write a book. I sort of got talked into it by my collaborator, Trey Brown, who was my speechwriter. The last three years I was dni and we kind of mind melded. And he really talked me into writing a book and helped me a lot with it. I never got it done without him. And I found it to be both a cathartic as well as an opportunity to be contemplative. And one of the things that I realized fully was the extent to which my parents, particularly my dad, influenced me. And, you know, in my career and, you know, whatever success I enjoyed is a huge influence by him. Right.

It was pretty clear in the book that you learned at an early age the importance of keeping secrets. There's things that you didn't talk about because you knew your dad was involved in secret things.

Well, it's true, although it's hard not to absorb a bit about the work he was in. And I guess I kind of got into it a bit during my senior year in high school, which I attended a dependent high school in West Germany, Nuremberg American High School, which doesn't exist anymore. My dad was the operations officer for a very large, what was then called Army Security Agency Signal Intelligence Battalion targeted against East Europe. And, you know, I hung out with some of the soldiers that worked for my dad because they're only a couple years older than me at that point. And, you know, kind of through osmosis, I learned some things. I learned a lot about communications theory from one of these. A couple of these guys who were ham operators, and I'd go hang out with them, and they taught me a lot about propagation theory and communications work. And, of course, that was the heyday of high frequency manual Morse. I learned a little Morse code. So I didn't get the full money exactly, but I certainly had exposure to it, I'll put it that way. And that's what kind of motivated me later.

That's cool. And I did want to mention you mentioned Ben Hill Farms in your book, Army SIGINT Station, which I live pretty close to that. And frankly, I'm embarrassed to say I had never visited there until I read your book and then was motivated to go see it. There's a Cold War museum there now that's full of great gear from the Cold War, including devices that maybe they're the same that your father had used. So it's a pretty good facility.

Yeah, it's great. I've been back a couple times in Fact, I when my dad, not too long before he died, I took him out to Vent Hill and we. It was a trip down memory lane for both of us and the quarters that we lived in, which in those days was a fourplex with four lieutenants living in, it's now they converted into a duplex. And since it was a farm when the army took it over in the early 40s, and the propagation conditions there are very suitable for long range siget operations. So that's what drove the choice. And the operations themselves were actually conducted in what used to be the barn. In fact, that's what it was referred to as the barn, which actually meant operations. And that barn, as far as I know, is still there as well. That's cool.

Can we fast forward and talk a bit about your early years as an intelligence professional in Vietnam?

Well, after I got commissioned, I went to Goodville Air Force Base, which in those days was purely SIGINT training, both officer enlisted. It was the Air Force cryptologic arm was the U.S. air Force Security Service. And that base was owned by security service exclusively for SIG and training. It's since broadened. All skill sets are trained there. So I went there and my first assignment, which was kind of a disappointment, was to Kelly air Force base, 180 miles away. And I went there as I was kind of, you know, most lieutenants, second lieutenants, kind of an apprentice, and was there about two years, I guess, or a year and a half, something like that. Two years I was a first lieutenant. Then I went to volunteer to go to Vietnam. Went early November 65 I went to Vietnam and it was probably the most miserable year of my life, both personally and professionally. And very grew very disillusioned about the war and almost got out of the Air Force after my year was up, rotated back to Kelly and essentially more or less the same kind of job I had when I left. So my intent was to finish my master's degree, get out of the Air Force and go to NSA and do cryptograms the rest of my life. But somebody intervened, a mentor. Although in those days that term wasn't used. But that's really what it was. You know, kind of plucked me out of anonymity and, you know, started helping me with assignments and, you know, kind of the rest was history. But, well, I was pretty narrowly, you know, avoided getting out of the Air Force. I was all but out.

What now you had an opportunity to brief people like General Westmoreland?

Correct, I did the arrangement. I was when I first got to Vietnam I was a watch officer and I worked straight mids from about 10 o' clock at night to around 8 o' clock the next morning. And what was secondary division later, 7th Air Force warning center, which was nothing more than an H1 van, a tractor trailer van. And we had, you know, teletype circuitry mainly connected with Air Force Security Service unit Zhenang Air Base that tracked North Vietnamese air defense, which is in turn how we kind of monitored our own Navy and Air Force strikes up there. So I did that for about four months and then became a day lady analyst, air defense analyst, and again was kind of plucked out of an anonymity from a sea of lieutenants there to go brief General Westmoreland every Saturday on sigand reflection of airstrikes. Well, I had never even seen a four star general, let alone actually talk to one. And I was scared to death. You know, the first Friday night before the Saturday morning I was go down, I was part of a, a two man tandem and I, I briefed in his office sort of a cloister on what we saw in SIGINT about airstrikes over North Vietnam. And first time I did it, you know, I was scared to death. And then, you know, after about three or four Saturdays, I began to grow kind of disillusioned because, you know, just more. General Westmoreland didn't seem to have a great strategic vision about what he was trying to do other than body counts. He loved numbers. How many people been killed, how many bridges knocked out, how many road cuts, how many truck explosions, et cetera, et cetera. He was big on numbers. But there didn't seem to be any, you know, overarching vision. What are we trying to do here? And as time went on, I started to see what it did to what it was doing to the armed forces, particularly the army, my dad's service. And I just over time grew very disillusioned with war. Like what are we trying to do here? Right.

You know, General, by the time I first saw you, you were very senior. I was very junior in the Navy, very joint of course. And you were delivering a presentation where you were making a lot of points. This must have been like in 91, maybe 92, you must have been director of DIA and you talked about things like what intelligence should be. And I remember it to this day, it's. You said intelligence cannot be a self licking ice cream cone. Intelligence for intelligence sake. You also said that intelligence professionals should never be lulled into being historians, just reporting on things that have happened we need to lean forward and be proactive and predictive. And I wonder, although I heard those kind of things from you near the end of your career, if your early formative days are where those kind of points were underscored for you.

Oh, exactly, Bob. That's a great question and very perceptive. And it's precisely because intelligence was largely historical, was very slow. You know, we would track reactions to airstrikes through by monitoring North Vietnamese air defense communications, which were high frequency, manual, Morse, very slow. And then, you know, acetate, grease, pencil, we try to recreate the tracks. Well, by the time all that elapsed, you know, the pilots are back at bases in Thailand having a beer and we're still trying to recreate these maps of what happened. And intelligence was, in many cases was sort of entertainment at the briefing and it was rarely was it anticipatory or useful for decision makers. Now that's improved a lot in my time. The technology has gotten faster and faster. We're able to move more and more volumes of data quicker. We have persistence in the form of RPVs. There's so many technological innovations that have profoundly changed the nature of intelligence. But in those days it was really slow. And as a consequence, the Air Force produced a generation of generals, three and four star generals, who were captains and majors, pilots in Vietnam, who grew disillusioned with intelligence as well. Not only because it was slow, but also because they felt that we were hiding things behind the green door. We really weren't. But that was clear the image, and took a long time for that culture, if you will, to wash out of the Air Force. Right.

You know, since you mentioned him in your book, I want to mention Rich o'. Lear. I thought you said some very favorable things about Rich. And I met Rich years ago and I have to tell you, he's one of the most forward thinking visionaries around. Spent a lot of time in the Air Force. And I know he's a personal friend of yours because you write about him in the book. I just wanted to say he is still pulling together insights through a community of people focused on the future and has many of us now thinking, what's the future of technology and what impact will it have on the intel community? And what does the intel community need to do to continue to shift, to be more relevant. So I think he must be an example of the kind of general that we need more of in the Air Force.

Oh, absolutely. Rich and I met as colonels and we were on the air staff together in the early 80s. And Rich, if memory serves, graduated from the National War College. I think he graduated in 80 and I graduated in 79. And everybody's watching what's going to happen when these two hot burner colonels get together. And, and initially Rich was my deputy, as I was chief of what was in the old days called INY on the air staff, which is all the programming and money and that sort of thing. And then Rich moved over to the other major directorate which was Director of estimates, which attended to Southern intel. And one would think, you know, we would be hot competitors. And what happened was we became close friends, we carpooled together and subsequently I went down to be commander of avtac. And then Rich, when I left there and went to Korea, Rich succeeded me and we've been lifelong friends ever since. And you're quite right in your characterization of Rich has unbelievable energy and even today we're both getting up there. But Rich has a passion for, for intelligence and its role in the national security apparatus and its importance to this country that continues yet today. And he's, you know, he's been a leader, a thought leader, I should say, with respect to intelligence. So I have great, tremendous admiration and respect. And as I say, we've been, you know, lifelong friends since it's been now 40 years.

Oh, let me get back to this topic of intelligence in history. I think another thing that happened on your watch as you were Director of National Intelligence was the Osama bin Laden raid. And I can only assume, based on what I've seen, that's an example of more proactive intelligence that was not waiting to see what we discover that was going out there and hunting for data and coming up with assessments and validating assessments and continuing to iterate.

Well, you're quite right. And I've always highlighted the takedown of UBL on 2 May of 2011 as a real highlight as opposed to a lot of lowlights. But that was, it was a textbook example, Bob, of the partnership between intelligence and operations, in this case specifically special operations. And it's also a testament to persistence and not giving up patience, painstaking patience to track down the whereabouts of ubl. So it was a real classic textbook example. I always have to acknowledge that President Obama made a very courageous decision to go ahead with the raid. And you know, there was a right up to the last minute debate about just how to conduct it, you know, standoff ammunition or special ops operation. And he, you know, opted for, I thought, the most promising option, but also one that carried probably the greatest political risk. But as I say, it was a tremendous example of the partnership what can exist between operations and intelligence. And I'll tell you, I'll never forget after being closeted in the White House situation room for 1314 hours that day, and the President was going to, when he finally had pretty confident that it was UBL and he was going to address the nation and a few of us went over the Eastern Room where he gave the address. I'll never forget walking out the door and down the portico next to the Rose Garden. And when I opened the door there was a and of course word had gotten out. There's a crowd chanting usa, usa. Usa. And boy, it really hit me emotionally what that event meant. It was closure for the country and certainly closure for the intelligence community and for all of us in intelligence. It was closing as your personal right.

And so a couple of lessons there that you just underscored. One is, you know, I have seen intelligence and decision making being done separately in terrible ways. That self licking ice cream cone of intel and I have seen it work well together. And this is the classic example of working extremely well together and being proactive when it comes to intelligence. What you just described about the UBL rate I think underscores really well the importance of ops and intel working together. I've seen the opposite too. I've seen, you know, working separately at disastrous results. But it also underscores the importance of proactive intelligence and leaning forward and collecting the right stuff and not being this historical reporter of information only, but, you know, making some projections and calls. I want to mention another topic area where I think the intel community needs a lot more work and that is cybersecurity and the cyber threat. I've tracked the intel community in this domain since 98 when I got involved in it personally. I think they do wonderful work, but most of it seems to me now to be historical. Who attacked us last month and how do we attribute that? Very little at least is being seen commercially on who is going to attack next and what are their capabilities. The greatest sources of intelligence in cybersecurity in my opinion seem to be commercial companies like FireEye who acquired Mandiant. They produce assessments, they're well read by everyone. Has always puzzled me. Is there more that the intelligence community can do to better serve U.S. policymakers and also industry in America? On what the nature of the cyber threat is? Can it be more proactive?

Well, let me get back to a couple other things before I lose the thought here. First is on the self licking ice Cream cone metaphor, which is meant to imply or convey that intelligence community should only do things that the policy community tells it to do, and by policy writ large, whether military commander, diplomats, whomever. And so that's why there is supposed to be a rigorous process by which policy needs are expressed, and then that is translated in turn by the intelligence community and its individual components into actual resources, capabilities, manpower, et cetera, that are applied against those priorities. So that's an important point I want to make. It shouldn't slip by. As far as cyber is concerned. Yeah, there's no question there can be improvement. And there's a couple of obstacles here, at least that I encountered. One was, of course, the sharing and the obstacles to sharing in both camps, whether the intelligence community on one hand and commercial side on the other, do have understandable reasons why there's reticence to share. In the case of the intelligence community, of course, it's, you know, the proverbial sources and methods and trade crimes in the case of the commercial side, there's, there's proprietary interests, you know, shareholders boards, that sort of thing, inhibit sharing. In fact, I was part of an effort, kind of dragged into it in the Congress to legislate sharing, and I didn't, I didn't succeed. So there is, I think people have to understand what the reluctance is. The other thing that prevails, that certainly in the case of the solar winds attack, if you want to call it an attack, and actually it's great espionage is the restrictions on the use of the national foreign intelligence apparatus in a domestic context. No, that's over the labor grade of the intelligence community. But something needs to be done about that because the Intelligence committee, despite what some people think, is going to try to stay within the guardrails imposed by the law. And so there needs to be, I think, legislation from two standpoints. One that would promote sharing and, or mandated, perhaps. And the other thing is how can we bring to bear the resources of considerable resources, nor those of NSA in what could be a domestic context? And that's, you know, having lived through Snowden, that's a real point of sensitivity. And that's why the Congress has got to act, in my opinion, improve this.

All right, thank you. That makes a lot of sense.

The other thing, one other point I'll make is something we ran into during the Obama administration. It's probably different now, but, you know, is the notion of responding to a cyber attack in kind. In other words, we get a cyber attack, we're going to counterattack. Well, what inhibits that I found is if you do not know how the adversary that you're attacking is going to counter retaliate and whether or not you have the ability, you're resilient enough to absorb such a counterattack. Our approach traditionally has been to be very precise, surgical and legalistic in the use of a cyber weapon. Well, you can't count on adversaries to be similarly precise, surgical and legalistic. So those are all complications that enter into the fray here when you're trying to decide to do what to do about it in these cases. You know, the SolarWinds attack and the attack against Microsoft, which are just great examples of SB9.

Right. No, I agree. That makes a lot of sense. Although from the perspective of the company SolarWinds, that was an attack. It really hurt their bottom line and their business. From the perspective of the nation, that was done for an espionage purpose. I wanted to shift and ask your opinion on something else. You spent a career providing information to super busy people, super busy decision makers. And I wanted to ask if you had any tips for us there because I see that's still a challenge today. Whether you're in government or in industry, you have a busy decision maker, an analyst has information they need to convey to that busy decision maker. Any tips or advice on how to do that effectively?

Well, yeah, I got, I thought, you know, I was pretty good at that stuff before I became dni. Well, I got come up and President Obama. I've never done a president before and obviously he was a really busy guy and also a very smart guy. And I learned to cut to the chase whether in the Oval Office or during meetings where typically Principals committee meetings or National Security Council meetings at the president presided over. You know you always start with if it's a foreign problem, you know, you start with intelligence. Until I was liken it to where we're there to be the throat clearers and. And what I learned was boy, just cut away the fluff and what are the major points here? What are the top two, three or four points I need to make? Because lots of other people are waiting to talk and they don't particularly appreciate droning on and where you're trying to cut through the underbrush to get what's the real point here? And that's, you know, CEO saw about gee, I'm sorry sir, I didn't have time to write a short message. And it's much the same, you know, picking out what is from the piece of intelligence. What is crucial here. Should the president hear about this first instance and if he should hear about it. How are you going to portray it? As succinctly and clearly and briefly as you can. Great, thanks.

Very helpful and I think relevant across multiple domains, not just intelligence, but throughout government and business. Let me ask a related question. I want to ask if you have any books that you would recommend for the busy CEO today. What are you reading?

Well, I'm big on history. I'm like you and somewhat of a World War II history buff. And as well, the Korean War. So that's what I. Now I have a little more time. I dwell on those, I guess from a management standpoint, I guess I forget the author, but the Seven Habits of Successful. That's a. That's a pretty good text. But the thing is, when I read these things, I always found them to be exercises, writing down common sense. And that's something I learned from my dad about, you know, what a great management tool common sense is and how to treat people, you know, and I learned that just by watching him. And it's not like he gave me sermonettes at the end of the duty day or something, just the way he treated people regardless of their station in life. And it's something I carried with me. And I would assume that anyone I met was competent and wanted to do the right thing until proven otherwise. And I think if you approach people that way, and a lot of times if you do, you'll help heighten their competence just by treating them that way. And of course, you know, you got to be alert to the ones that aren't. Right. Right.

You know, this brings up another story from your book. Now that you mentioned it, it seems like your mom was also that way. If I understand your book correctly, you recounted. You have a story. You were in Japan at an Officers Club function, Integrated Officers Club, but maybe not fully.

Yeah, that's. That's a very memorable vignette. And I'll explain to you why I remembered it. Yeah, it was 1952, and we were at Chitosi Air Base, which still exists. That's a Jazdaf base. But in those days, the Army's 1st Cab Division, which was huge division, had rotated out of Korea. And so there were three army bases there. And then my dad was the number two exile of a very small ASA detachment. And so the Sunday custom, you know, the social life for officers or particularly overseas, revolve completely around the officers. But back in those days, and this is 1952, which was four years after Harry Truman had issued an executive order in 1948, which legally, I guess, I'll say desegregated the military. So institutionally, the military is supposed to be desegregated, but socially, certainly it was not. So the background was that I had to go to the dentist, which I didn't like, like most kids. And dentist I went to was a lieutenant, a Harvard graduate, as a matter of fact, and superb dentist. And he was great with me. And my mom really liked his manner with me and all that sort of thing. So typically, on Sundays, we had to go to Sunday brunch. And, you know, all the officers in their uniforms and ladies all dressed up in their gloves and hats, and of course, my sister and I, we had to get dressed up and go, too. So for us, it was torture. So typically, they'd have a Japanese band doing its best to impersonate American popular music, and they had this big buffet and all that. So my mom and dad and sister and I. My sister. My younger sister and I were sitting there, the band took a break, and the room kind of grew quiet. And I think my mother intentionally waited for a moment like that to do what she did, which was to get up, walk across the room to the extreme periphery of this big dining room, dining hall, the Officers Club, and approach this lieutenant, who was, not surprisingly, sitting by himself and took his hand and brought him to our table. Well, you could have heard a pin drop in that officer's club. All these white officers, senior to my dad, my dad was a captain, looking at her and then looking at him like, can't you control your wife? Sort of thing. And I'll never forget the look on my dad's face about it was a combination of admiration, amusement, and fear. And so he, you know, we made room for him, and he had had brunch with us. And the reason, Bob, I remember that vignette so vividly, and I think it affected me later on, is that typically my mother would talk incessantly about things, but she never said a word about what she'd done. After we went home, we never had a little talk about why she did what she did. I don't know if my mom and dad talked about it. I assume they did, but out of my earshot, and I think because it was a message, a compelling message to me, and it was based on her action rather than anything she said is why I remember that. And I think that influenced my approach to equal opportunity and diversity and inclusion later on. Great.

And, you know, to me, it's absolutely a story of leadership, too. Your mom was demonstrating fantastic leadership character.

Yeah, she was. What would have been. Didn't use the term back then, but she was, she was a feminist. She had a couple years of college, and she was very, very assertive. I'll put it that way.

General, in our remaining time, can I ask you some questions about the geopolitical events?

Sure.

Because, you know, I may never get another opportunity in my life to ask General Clapper about intelligence issues. And I would just really appreciate your thoughts on some things. So what is China? If you look at what we've been writing about on OODA Loop for the last several years, China has continued to expand, and they've been telling us what they want to do, they've been expanding their influence, and they're doing it. But something seems to have changed. The 2019-2020, they intensified their actions in Hong Kong, and it's gotten to the point in Hong Kong now where they're just flat out arresting dissidents. So Hong Kong has been totally decimated just the last few months. This year, they have been increasing their rhetoric and actions against Taiwan. The rhetoric and verbal barrage comes from people like Xi Jinping himself, which has threatened the punishment of history for Taiwan's resistance to the Chinese Communist Party in the South China Sea. Things have been evolving there for a decade, but all of a sudden things are moving faster with in the news today, there are swarms of fishing and merchant ship armadas moving into disputed waters and including their navy as well. There's also, of course, the continued and blatant persecution of the Uyghurs. And I think something has changed. I believe it tracks back to this. Oh, and of course, there's taking advantage of the global pandemic, we should say also that's just happening. But the change seems to have occurred around the time when they decided they're not going to care what people think about Hong Kong. That's my thesis, anyway, and would love your assessment on that situation.

Well, I think this is not a sudden overnight development on the part of the Chinese. I think it's become, frankly, more visible to us by virtue of President Trump and the Trump administration really calling out the Chinese for what they are, which I completely agree with. I just didn't agree with doing that unilaterally. But anyway, the Chinese have long suffered from what they call 100 years of humiliation, and they never got over the colonial era and their institutional inferiority. I think what motivates implicitly Chinese actions, Chinese behavior, is recovering from that 100 years of humiliation. The Chinese have gradually become more and more assertive. And as we have turned inward and consume ourselves with our internal divisiveness, polarization. And the Chinese have seen that. And what they've done is simply push the envelope. South China Sea, the Belt Road Initiative. And in the absence of pushback from us or others, they've just continued to push. And so, you know, they've pretty much conquered, if that's the right word, Hong Kong. And certainly their moves, their rhetoric and some of their exercises against Taiwan are very, are threatening and disturbing. And I believe they're going to put us to the test. And they can back this by the strength of their economy, which is going to overtake ours soon as the largest economy economy in the world. And their military modernization, which is quite impressive and disturbing. And it is designed specifically against those capabilities which they feel are our strengths, our command and control, our reliance on space, our Western Pacific bases, carriers and carrier aviation. And they've built specific capabilities and weapon systems against those strengths. And they've been very skillful in exploiting other countries and their Belt Road Initiative, which is very exploitative and works essentially to the advantage of China rather than the client. So that's created a paralysis on the part of many countries that China's so exploited, particularly with respect to the economic control they have influence, so that these countries are very reluctant to push back. And I've often, I've long said that what would really have impact on China if ASEAN could speak with a unified voice against China's aggressiveness. But that's not going to happen. And so now we're in a mode of US with a few Japan and India and Australia. That's all good. Those are, you know, that's kind of a stretched coalition there. But we've got to do things like that to push back against China. And I do worry about, if they put us to the test with Taiwan, just what we'll do about it. Right.

And this may be an unfair question for you, but I wanted to ask, do you have any advice for the business leader who may be doing business in China? A business leader, US Corporation doing business in China needs to be aware of these kind of things if they want to sell into China or use China as part of their supply chain or they face economic consequences for their business. And how does a CEO find balance there and do business with China?

I'm glad I'm not a CEO in that position because I think they're in a very difficult position. There are obvious economic advantages to doing business in and with China. It's profitable. And, you know, this is a big difference, obviously between we and the Russian or the Soviets and we and the Chinese? Because in the case of the Soviet Union, well, those two economies are mutually exclusive. Well, that's not the case at all with the Chinese. So this gets very complicated. As an American citizen, it gets my hackles up when I see companies doing business in China, which, because of the financial advantages and making concessions to the Chinese, that complies with their tremendously oppressive suppression of their control of their population. That's another thing that impels Chinese leadership is control of that large population. They don't want to get it out of hand and they don't want uprisings and opposition or any of that sort of thing. And so when we sort of cater to that, that's very bothersome. But at the same time, I, I recognize the economic and financial advantages of doing business in China. You mentioned supply chain. Well, this is a nightmare kind of problem for intelligence and security entities in this country. And ensuring the fidelity of our supply chain is a tremendous challenge. One of the things that makes me glad I'm not responsible anymore.

Can we turn to Russia for a minute?

Sure.

Another country we write about extensively at OODA Loop, and we track a lot of what's going on there, frequently in the cybersecurity domain. But recently there have been an increase in troop movements around the border with the Ukraine and a buildup in Crimea. It's gotten so concerning that NATO has issued statements. The U.S. department of Defense just made an announcement saying that Russia needs to make clear its intentions regarding a military buildup along Ukraine's southeast border and in Crimea. Seems like another crisis in the making. My first wonder was, is it possible that Russia is creating a crisis at the same time China is moving in the South China Sea? Is this somehow connected, both of them doing this because it's a period of weakness, or is it just two unrelated crises by two different players in the world?

Well, I don't know, but my assessment is that it's separate. It's related, I guess, the Chinese pressuring us the Pacific and Russians pressure on us in Europe. But I think, you know, this partnership between the Chinese and Russians is somewhat a marriage of convenience because of the mutual adversary with us. But I think there are long standing, deep seated animosities between the Russians, Chinese. I could be wrong about this, but I don't, I don't think we're going to bode well for a long standing, intimate and trusting relationship between those two. Russia is in decline. And were it not for its military capabilities, notably its nuclear arsenal, which represents the greatest mortal threat to the United States is Russia. And you have to respect that. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't be so concerned about it. As far as the Ukraine is concerned. Well, that was always the challenge in 2014. What exactly are the plans and intentions of the Russians? Which means what are the plans and intentions of Putin? And I'm sure the intelligence community is struggling with that right now. What I hope we don't do is huff and puff, but not blow their house down. In other words, we just make statements, just, you know, fire one. Ready for a rhetorical volley. I'm not sure that's going to. And if we don't back it up, that's, that's, that's not good either. Right. Okay.

Well, General Clapper, thanks very much for the time today. It's been very informative, insightful, and very much appreciated.

Well, thanks a lot for having me. And again, thanks again for. For what you do, and thanks for your leadership. Thank you.

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