Amy Zegart
@AmyZegart
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Stanford faculty, sr. fellow at Hoover Institution & FSI, Atlantic contributing writer. Focus on espionage, natsec, & emerging tech. Views are my own.
Stanford
Joined August 2012
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ゼンゼロ
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Happy 4th of July
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1/5. The Biden Admin's unfolding
#intelligence
strategy was front and center in the
#Xi
-Biden call today. The essence of the strategy, I think, is revealing to coerce. Disclosing secrets may not stop all bad actions, but it can shape adversaries' behavior to our advantage.
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5/5 Of course, it's too soon to tell how this will work out. But we do know the alternative: NOT revealing intel would have made it easier for Beijing to play both sides, helping Russia on the sly with minimal costs to its own trade & political relationships.
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3/5 There have been 2 sets of intel disclosures ab China and Ukraine. Disclosure
#1
: Intel officials say C'se senior leaders knew about Putin's invasion and asked that it be postponed til after the Beijing Olympics. Translation: China is complicit, and everyone knows it now.
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4/5 Disclosure
#2
: Reports that Russian leaders have asked for C'se military, ec, and other assistance.This has been the backdrop/mic drop before Jake Sullivan's mtg with C'se counterparts in Rome and the Biden/Xi call today. The message: We are not looking the other way.
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2/5 How? By raising costs & decreasing room for adversaries to hide, pretend, maneuver. With the war in Ukraine, exploiting the wedge between Russia and China is critical. Disclosures that back Beijing into a corner publicly help do that. And that's what we're seeing.
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The first actual copy of my new book just arrived! Feels much more real than all those pages of Arial 14 point font
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In the past week, I heard 2 former officials (who know the intel world well) say that anything unclassified isn't really intelligence, or at least shouldn't be considered as good as the classified stuff. That dinosaur mentality is a huge liability in the emerging tech era.
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I confess, whistleblower media coverage is deeply worrying b/c it assumes fact checking works. Our Stanford info warfare group finds psychology research has long shown that frequently repeated lies are believed & that efforts to debunk them can cause people to believe them more.
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WaPo, WSJ, CNN, NYT all confirm: Trump gave Russians everything but the GPS coordinates of the allied intel source.
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First day of my new Spies, Lies, and Algorithms class
@Stanford
. So excited to be in person.
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Trump Jr. emails vindicate the Intel Community. My top takeaways from this breaking story
@TheAtlantic
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Making this public is a bad idea.
Breaking News: The U.S. provided targeting information that helped Ukrainian forces locate and strike the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet last month.
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I've written a book on intel oversight. This is worrying. Oversight isn't always pretty, but it's vital to ensuring public trust in secret agencies. The essence of oversight is dialog, the asking & answering of questions. That just went out the window.
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The Jan. 6
#Capitol
attack requires a 9/11-style commission.
@HerbLinCyber
and I flesh out why, what the top 10 areas of inquiry should be, and how the commission should be created in this
@lawfareblog
post.
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I hit send! My new
@PrincetonUPress
book manuscript -- Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence -- is off for copy editing magic. Excited to be working with PUP again, and so thankful they never said, "seriously, what's taking you so long?"
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Been thinking about
#Teixeria
's fast arrest in the
#IntelligenceLeak
case and how it showcases the changing nature and rising power of open-source intel. A thread.
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In a 2020 war game, the US lost access to digital networks almost immediately--a massive change in DOD thinking is now underway. But the big surprise is that this was a surprise. What did DOD leaders think adversaries would do? How secure did they think our systems were? Why?
‘It Failed Miserably’: After Wargaming Loss, Joint Chiefs Are Overhauling How the US Military Will Fight
#China
#Taiwan
@thejointstaff
via
@DefenseOne
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Spies, Lies and Algorithms --how tech is challenging every facet of US intelligence, and what needs to be done. My new piece with
@MichaelJMorell
In
@ForeignAffairs
out today.
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The Intel Community wasn't politicized and its report about Russian 2016 election interference was well supported, says unanimous, bipartisan Senate Intel Ctee report.
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Re-upping this important public service message from orgs like
@NSAGov
and
@NCSCgov
that normally don't go public.
The right to vote in a free and fair election is one of the foundations of American democracy. The leaders of the
#FBI
,
@CISAgov
,
@NCSCgov
, and
@NSAgov
want you to know how their organizations work together to protect your voice—no matter how you cast your vote.
#Protect2020
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I’m delighted that Spies, Lies, and Algorithms has been selected as one of the top books to understand intelligence and espionage by
@TheEconomist
!
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So excited the cover art for Spies, Lies, and Algorithms is done! Tx to the fabulous team
@PrincetonUPress
. For a book preview:
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1. All open-source investigators are not equal.
@bellingcat
is exceptional. There's quality control, a willingness to work with responsible partners. Both are key. In the amateur open-source world, errors can be costly but nobody loses a job for making them.
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Using disclosures of intelligence to quickly debunk false Kremlin narratives before they take root. And shifting the narrative to "assume the Kremlin is trying to deceive you." Smart.
New tonight: Russian claims of military pullback were fake, US intel shows.
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Coming soon: my new book about past, present, future challenges in US intelligence. And a new course
@Stanford
.
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After 20 years on the front lines fighting terrorism, it's time for the CIA to get back to its core mission: preventing strategic surprise. My
@politico
piece on the past benefits and future risks of melding intelligence and military activities .
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4. For intel agencies, the writing on the wall is clear: open-source intel is enormously powerful and it is here to stay. US spy agencies have to find new ways to harness this info and work with leaders in this space or they will fall behind and leave the US less safe.
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Russian lies aren't new. Journalists' use of commercial satellite imagery to debunk them is. Commercial satellites offer resolutions & revisit rates (flying over same place to provide before/after images) unimaginable a decade ago. Satellites aren't just for superpowers anymore.
Breaking News: Satellite images refute Russia’s claim that the killing of civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Ukraine's capital, occurred after its soldiers had left town, a New York Times analysis found.
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Oh NYT. Shark attacks? I’ll be using this in my intel course. Classic ex of availability bias: we wrongly think dangers that are more easily remembered (covered by media) are more likely to happen. You’re 60,000x more likely to die by car accident than shark attack.
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U.S. kills al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri. Justice. We will never know the names of all who made this day possible. But we should forever remember they brought justice & made the world safer through their silent service to the nation.
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This sounds like my kids avoiding the dishes.
To avoid being eaten, the eastern hognose snake will writhe in fake agony, throw up, poo itself, and finally lie still, belly up, mouth wide open, tongue out, blood dripping from its mouth.
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Years ago, the Dean of West Point grew so concerned TV was glamorizing torture & hurting cadet training, he went to LA to ask the 24 creative team to make episodes where torture backfires. He came in uniform. The show's crew thought he was an actor.
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From 2001-2016, 3 top political science academic journals published 2,780 research articles. Only 5 articles covered anything related to US intelligence. Intel issues were dominating headlines and policymaker attention but very few academics were studying them
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My new
@theatlantic
piece on intelligence challenges past and future as we mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
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@McFaul
stand firm on no pillows. Your books are awesome, esp bc you've read them all!
#mybooksarenotprops
I organized my books, making them less efficient for research & you are still not happy? Pillows in my office ?!?! C'mon man. I'm not a DC pundit. I'm a professor. & the photos on the wall of my family are for me to enjoy, not for tv world. Proud to be losing at this game. :)
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So much work to do. Yesterday at an event, I was the only person introduced by my first name, not "Dr. I was also the only woman speaker.
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I agree
@EvansRyan202
. We have whistleblower laws for a reason: to protect against retaliation. Hard to do if the Times is outting one. How about
@nytimes
assesses credibility the old fashioned way: by reading the docs and examining the claims & the IG's investigatory process?
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In policy, 30 yrs of experience makes you powerful. In tech, it makes you obsolete. Reps who think college engineering students should be grateful for a chance to shadow them r wrong. Interns on Capitol Hill answer phones. Interns at SpaceX launch rockets.
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10 years ago, open-source investigations into the Boston Marathon bombing were shoddy and scary. The wisdom of the crowd became the danger of the mob. Well-intentioned amateurs on Reddit fingered innocent people. It took more careful work by law enforcement to get the truth.
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3. Worth noting that many experts couldn't help! If you have a security clearance, you are not allowed to click on the leaked docs b/c they are officially still classified even tho they are public. DOD sent guidance yesterday reminding personnel about this.
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We are 10 days away from the publication of my new book, Spies, Lies & Algorithms! Each day, I'll be tweeting sneak peaks & fun facts from 1 chapter. Hope you'll follow along– and pre-order here: .
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@bellingcat
investigator
@AricToler
tracked the migration of classified docs across Discord servers and other Internet platforms and posted his findings online.
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What’s better than finishing a new book? Teaching it to
@Stanford
students hot off the presses! Spring quarter. First time. With simulations and guest lectures by current and former intel officials. Can’t wait.
In "Spies, Lies and Algorithms," Stanford scholar
@AmyZegart
explores espionage in the digital age.
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This is not a subtweet of any pollsters in particular and it may annoy some since I have a lot of pollster followers/friends and I'm a data girl myself, but 1 thing I've noticed is a pollster sampling on the dependent variable to make sweeping claims.
@natesilver538
This is not a subtweet of anyone in particular and it's going to annoy some people since I have a lot of PhD followers/friends and also I'm a stubborn guy myself but...one thing I'm noticed is that once someone gets a PhD, it become 10x harder to convince them they're wrong.
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Woohoo! My forthcoming book about American
#espionage
just got a starred review from
@KirkusReviews
.
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Today's America: finished meetings in LA at 3, took slow speed Amtrak to San Diego but track shut down midway, so had to shlep bags and leave train in the dark to Uber rest of the way, arriving late and costing double.
Today’s China: Finished a meeting in Nanjing at 12pm, took the high speed rail to Shanghai, arrived at Pudong airport at 4pm for 6pm flight home.
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So honored!
.
#PrincetonUPress
author,
@AmyZegart
has been longlisted for the Airey Neave Book Prize by the Airey Neave Trust! The prize is awarded to the work of non-fiction which makes significant, original, and practically valuable contribution to the understanding of terrorism.
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Accountability and unity go hand in hand. That shouldn't be seen as a distraction for the Biden agenda. It IS the Biden agenda. The greatest national security threat to America is America --fellow citizens radicalizing, inciting, and committing terrorism to destroy our democracy.
Accountability will foster unity. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in the rule of law.
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Who are the citizen-sleuths tracking nuclear threats? What are their successes & failures? What are the benefits and risks of this Wild West espionage world? Here's a sneak peak of chapter 9 in Spies, Lies, and Algorithms--coming Feb.1!
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2. Open-source investigators can often move faster than governments precisely b/c they are not operating in a bureaucracy. Umpteen deputy assistant unit managers for x don't have to sign off on every word change. Big advantage.
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The Director of National Intelligence released the annual threat assessment today & intel leaders testified before the House Intel committee. A hot take thread:
1/ The assessment is outdated, literally & figuratively. Doc is dated Feb. 7 with info as of Jan. 2022. It's March 8.
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@shaneharris
at the
@washingtonpost
got one of the members in Thug Shaker Central to speak on the record. Incredible interview full of information with key details about the alleged leaker.
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Excited to be in
@WIRED
for the first time, with an excerpt of my book that delves more into emerging tech and what it means for espionage.
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Before she was a famous chef, Julia Child served in WW II in the CIA’s forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services. She held a top secret clearance and even cooked up a recipe for shark repellent. Her role was revealed in declassified docs in 2008.
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This week was a different story. As govt investigation gears ground away, the heroes of the hunt were amateur investigators and journalists using unclassified info and clever sleuthing.
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“Can you believe the world we live in today?” Trump said, acc to official in the 2 Sergeis mtg when he divulged intel.“Isn’t it crazy?” Yes.
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Increasingly it appears that open source intel-based media reporting got it wrong and went viral. The policy consequences are significant & obvious. Less obvious: US intel agencies are having to spend valuable time and resources fact checking the sloppy work of others
While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday.
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By my count, Trump has questioned, doubted, or outright rejected the fact that Russia interfered in the 2016 election at least 13 times -- 8 before taking ofc, 5 since. There's a phrase for when someone "misspeaks" so much about a subject so sore: "What he actually believes."
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Toler then teamed up with
@nytimes
. He used telltale clues from photos of the docs to tighten the dragnet and identify Teixeira as a suspect. The FBI then moved into action, arresting Teixeira at his home. Some takeaways:
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Thanks
@CondoleezzaRice
and
@McFaul
for celebrating and discussing Spies, Lies, and Algorithms
@HooverInst
yesterday! If you missed it, the video will be available soon -- including new info about the use of open source intel (Google Earth) in the Bush administration.
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Watching
@StanfordWBB
coach Tara VanDerveer line dancing with her team after clinching the final four berth— favorite NCAA moment so far.
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Happy 75th birthday
@CIA
! In 1947, the big fights were about whether/how to unify the military into a dept of defense. Less noticed & less debated was a provision creating an agency that centralized intelligence— to prevent strategic surprise. An essential mission then and now.
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Woohoo! Today’s the day. Thank you
@fletcherco
for being with me every step of the way!
Happy publication day to Amy Zegart's SPIES, LIES, AND ALGORITHMS! "For readers raised on thrillers, here is a real-world account of the challenges that American spy agencies must confront in the 21st century." -
@WSJ
@PrincetonUPress
@AmyZegart
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A must read about one of my students now in Ukraine. She’s incredible. Stay safe, Cat!
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Honor to know
@SenJohnMcCain
, who helped my intel research for 20 yrs. Favorite moment: Visiting Stanford in 2015, he spent more time w/students than dignitaries-he rearranged the schedule & stayed late to engage the next gen. A towering man, an enduring legacy.
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I get this alot. It's esp. noticeable when I co-teach with male colleagues who tend to be called "Professor or Doctor" by students while I'm called "Amy." It's not intentional, but it's still not okay.
Hey students. If your Profs have never told you to call them by their first name, don't.
I tend to notice this with male students/female profs in particular.
It's disrespectful. Stop it.
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#Spy
agencies no longer corner the market on intelligence. This open-source world brings promise, but also risks: A thin line separates wise crowds from dangerous mobs. There's no required training. Mistakes can go viral. Nobody loses a job for being wrong.
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A must-read from Harvard, MIT, Stanford presidents: The time to act to prevent COVID-19 is now. Everyone. Everywhere. Everyday life.
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In a moment of weakness, I let my cranky 15-year-old cat hang out in my home office. He just vomited all over my covert action books-- maximizing surface area coverage by standing above them and spraying downward, swiveling his head like a sprinkler--and left.
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Three cheers for these
#CIA
changes, which hit the trifecta: Much greater organizational focus on China, much more attention to tech (how it's driving the threat landscape and how it can protect tradecraft better), and getting talent in the door better and faster.
The CIA announced today a new reorganization, creating two new mission centers one to focus on China and its reach around the globe, one on technology.
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The pace and scope of public release of intelligence in the
#Ukraine
crisis is a big deal. Spy agencies like to keep secrets secret. "There’s a cultural revolution going on in the information age,” said former CIA Dir Michael Hayden.”
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Here's the link to preorder Spies, Lies, and Algorithms. Everything you wanted to know about the past & future of American espionage.
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My new
@ForeignAffairs
piece examining intelligence, the war in Ukraine, and the need for a new open-source intelligence agency is out today.
Our January/February issue is now available online.
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#China
's ambassador to the US published this piece in the Washington Post. When is The People's Daily going to let Amb. Burns share the US perspective with the Chinese people? Um, never.
#itmatterswholeadstheworld
.
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Excited to co-chair the
#Stanford
Emerging Technology Review, a new initiative by
@StanfordEng
and
@HooverInst
to educate decision-makers about 10 emerging technologies, key developments, over-the-horizon issues. Check out our first report and kickoff!
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All of your Qs on election hacking answered— including why shouldn't assume CIA is wrong because of Iraq WMD mistake
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Showing up early pays off in everything. These early bird
@Stanford
students got extra time with Gen. Mattis in my class today, asking about everything from intel and geopolitics to leadership. Many thanks, Gen. Mattis!
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Today I found that only 2% of articles published in the top 2 history journals during the last 5 years focused on US intelligence. But I discovered a surprising number of book reviews about the history of animals and cigarettes.
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Happy 100th Birthday to my
@HooverInst
colleague George Shultz! Here he is working across parties and generations to reduce global nuclear risks with Pres. Obama. An enduring inspiration of what public service means and how we can do it together.
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New Year, new big intel challenge:
@realDonaldTrump
's hostility toward intel agencies is over an intel success, not failure. What gives?
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My
@ForeignAffairs
piece: spy agencies need to re-imagine who counts as a decision maker and how to serve them better. Voters and tech leaders need intel now more than ever.
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Sneak peak at Spies, Lies, & Algorithms Ch 4: Intelligence Basics-Knowns and Unknowns. I examine what intel is and isn't, and how it operates --with a birds-eye view of the hunt for Bin Laden (this is the famous picture of the president & advisors as the bin Laden raid unfolded)
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A thread on
#Rumsfeld
's "unknown unknowns speech," which is widely misunderstood. (I write about it in my forthcoming book, Spies, Lies, & Algorithms). Rumsfeld was mocked. Critics had a field day. Some even set it his remarks to music. But Rumsfeld was onto something important.
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Years ago, a poll of my UCLA students surprised me -suggesting spy-themed entertainment was becoming adult ed. I began researching whether, and how, spytainment influences public opinion and intelligence policy. Here's what I found
@TheAtlantic
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And if nobody believes Putin’s phony pretext for invasion, that’s an info warfare win that shouldn’t be minimized.
Critical point here by
@ngleicher
. If disclosure of Russian plans fails, it will be easy to declare that deterrence failed. But that doesn’t mean it was the wrong strategy. It may just be that Putin was never going to sway from course - and the strategy may hold allies together.
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My heart goes out to Texas, facing frigid temps without power another night.
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If you're a doctoral student or recent PhD, apply to
@StanfordCISAC
's fellowship program, where you can conduct cutting edge doom and gloom research in the Stanford sunshine. Applications:
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It's simulation time! My
@Stanford
students are walking in the shoes of intel officers and policymakers dealing with a North Korean crisis over 2 action-packed days.The NSC will be me,
@jmclaughlinSAIS
,
@jamil_n_jaffer
,
@YongLee12
, and President Sue Gordon. A thread 1/11:
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1/8 Spy agencies aren't in the secrets business. They're in the insights business. Big difference. The insights biz is getting disrupted. Open-source intel has exploded, thanks to the internet, commercial satellites, AI, other tech. The result: Spy agencies must adapt or fail.
Not just spy agencies either - Spy agencies must realise the power of open source intelligence
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Happy bday
@genmhayden
! Important to celebrate the good moments even in tough times.
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Nyt: “American intelligence agencies tracked down Mr. al-Zawahri in Kabul earlier this year and then spent months determining that it really was him hiding.” This I want to know more about. Like hunt for OBL.
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Met Andrea at a
@ucla
faculty lunch years ago. Told her I didn't understand anything about physics but my 8 year old son was obsessed. Andrea found a PhD student to talk physics & eat goldfish crackers w/him weekly. He's now
@MIT
's EECS PhD program. She is inspiring in every way!
Andrea Ghez ’87 shared the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics for 25 years of research that confirmed the existence of a supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. At MIT, she says, “I fell in love with telescopes — what you see and do.”
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The cornerstone of our democracy has always been the peaceful transfer of power when the people have spoken. This is no foreign enemy attacking the Capitol. It's Americans. And it is horrific.
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