All right. Thank you all so much for joining us here today. I am Emily Harding and i run the Intelligence National security and Technology Program here at sis. My Program Seeks out the hardest problems with what the future of intelligence work might look like given the challenge and opportunities it presents. How do we open up to allies and build trust with the American People . Todays keynote speaker has been a true visionary leader for the ic on these issues and also one of my most favorite former bosses. Also, the first woman to be deputy national, Deputy Director of cia. She has a long and it has a resume including found out she was a physics major in college. What can this woman not do . More impressive, she is a wonderful human being. She works hard, she really listens. She is decisive but also unfailingly kind. She is a steady hand on the wheel in the gathering storm. Our moderator today is another trailblazer and a woman i deeply admire, suzanne spaulding, senior director of the defending Democratic Institutions project here at csis. Many times in her career, she has looked around corners to prevent catastrophe. As undersecretary and Legal Counsel to cia with that, over to you. Thank you very much, emily. We are really excited about your new project. Looking forward to hearing more about it as time goes on. Thank you. Exactly. Thrilled to have you here. I was thinking about the first time that i ever heard about you was from our mutual friend, mary derosa who was on legal director at the time and she was telling me about this amazingly impressive woman she had worked with at the state department who was wicked smart and worked so hard and just incredibly decent person and lo and behold, she brought you over as the deputy. Surges great to have you here. Thank you for taking the time. The theme, as you know, of this conference, is gathering storm, gathering strength. So lets start with the gathering storm and give us a sense not just of the Threat Landscape but particularly in the context of coalescing which is the gathering of various adversaries as a result of technology. How do you see that storm gathering . That me start by saying how much i appreciate the excuse to get out of my office but also to be here and to have the opportunity to talk to you. You are one of the most remarkable people i have had the chance to work within the work youre doing is so important. I cannot tell you how much we rely on the expertise on the papers come on the thinking that goes on in this institution. It is really an extraordinary gift to the country, quite frankly, from a National Security perspective, so in terms of the gathering storm, which i have to say it is really it feels like the right moniker for todays moment. In so many respects. We do our annual threat assessment and one of the challenges is trying to capture the breadth of the frankly increasingly complex and interconnected Threat Landscape we are facing today and you know, as we are trying to think about how to capture it, we talk about three sets of challenges that we are facing in todays landscape that kind of get to this question i think. The first is strategic competition with authoritarian powers that are trying to undermine the rulesbased order and ultimately undermine the sort of open International System that the United States has been such a part of ultimately crafting and we and our allies quite obviously rely on that system and on the rulesbased order and our partners really for trade, for commerce, for open information flow, for all of the things that we see as being critical to actually prospering in todays world in many respects and that is sort of the first set of challenges that we talk a fair amount about and we are talking about china and russia in that context. Iran, north korea, etc. , and then the second set of challenges we describe our really kind of intensifying and rapidly shifting transnational threat, many of which interconnect with that sort of broader strategic competition landscape, whether it is in the context of cybercrime or Climate Change or terrorism or Health Security or transnational organized crime and there is a whole range of things that we try to sort of lift up in that context. Often, cybercrime can be interested in making money but it also is true that some of those same institutions can be actually proxies for state actors under certain circumstances to go after and theres all kinds of interconnections between these different landscapes. The third set of challenges that we focus in on now are really localized and regional conflict or potential conflicts that have the potential for cascading were are affecting cascading impact, not just for neighboring countries in the region but having oversight impact and the conflict in the middle east in the context of gaza is an example of this but there are many others we are watching and there is the interconnectedness and is against the landscape with key emerging trends that make this even more complicated. New and emerging technologies, economic strain in various races and environment changes. What this all kind of boils down to in a sense is first of all, it is creating a fair amount of instability. This is one of the in that sense of this gathering storm of what will happen next and how significant will it be, and the second piece is just from a parochial perspective, it makes it especially challenging for us in the Intelligence Community to actually provide you with the indication and warning that you want and expect for what is about to happen. How is it about to happen . How should we better prepare ourselves for these moments . The systemic effect of so many of the things we are looking at makes that actually quite difficult to do and the final thing i would say is that its putting a lot of burden on our institutions which need to be increasingly agile and really have the extraordinary talent and expertise that is needed to address so many of these issues and understand the implications between them. At the same time, it is also prompting i think an increasing need and all of us have seen this over the years but just for u. S. Leadership, trying to manage all of these issues with our partners and allies because there really isnt an issue we are facing that we dont need partners and allies to help us address so that is sort of the its too long. [indiscernible] we will have an opportunity for questions from the audience when we are finished with the interview. So please submit your questions online and i will get them up here and we will ask them when we have finished our interview. Shame on all of you. I do want to ask you about the information environment. In which we find ourselves. And what a challenge that is. [indiscernible] israel is not the way. So we are living in a really highly charged time and are adversaries are leaning into these divisions that are such a prominent part of our Society Today and using Information Operations as a way to exacerbate these tensions and it is a huge challenge, i think, both because we have kind of atrophied, my sense is, our capabilities in the Information Space over years, and because it is so politically charged now. What do you see in that space as we are in this runup to an election in 2024 . You know, how big a deal is this . What do you see . And what is your sense of how wellpositioned we are to address it . That is a lot. Obviously an area that you are an expert in as well and have worked on for some time. Obviously, we spent a lot of time looking at what foreign actors are doing in the space and you know, how we publish in particular in relation to the Election Security threat, Intelligence Community assessment on an annual basis, and in relation to particular elections are coming up and things like that. And what we see, i mean, russia is obviously sort of top of mind in this area. Russia has been engaging in Information Operations against the United States for decades. This is not something that is new but nevertheless, continues to focus in on effectively narratives that are intended to ultimately denigrate the United States global standing in the world and also to undermine Democratic Institutions, democratic processes, undermining democracy as a general matter, looks to sociopolitical and socioeconomic divisions in our culture and in our society and then goes after also specific policy arguments such as for example western support for ukraine. We see these as sort of major initiatives that they support. They are quite sophisticated when it comes to using new technologies in this space. They use generative ai and other tools to try to make themselves better at their messaging in this area to become more sophisticated and they are increasingly able to exploit in a sense commercial firms that are engaging in certain information, you know, activities globally, using platforms and so on. And it makes it much harder for us to really attribute, in a sense, some of the information, specifically to russia, and in a way that we are able to disclose without hurting sources in these spaces. And that is kind of a generic, you know, kind of sense of this is what we see across the board and we will come back to the impact of this in a moment and how we are positioned to deal with it. China is slightly different in the sense that they are also engaging in influence operations as we see it and they also have relatively similar narratives that they are focused on. So also about undermining democracy, also about certain grading u. S. Leadership and so on. They are more focused than russia is in promoting what they see as prochina policies and the ccp, the communist Party Efforts and so on in their space. And they are not quite as sophisticated as russian Information Operations in terms of their use generative ai and things like that. Palestinians a war crime. 15 thousand palestinian children. 15,000 deaths. Yes, sir. [indiscernible] genocidal you cant hide, you are committing genocide. Director, director, you cant hide, you are committing genocide. Director, director, you cant hide, you are committing genocide. Dr. Haynes, you said im sorry. There are a lot of questions. There are a lot of people here who have questions for the director. And we have a process for that. [indiscernible] targeted strikes on aid workers the government has killed u. S. Citizens. Are you speaking truth to power . Do your job. The biggest threat to the whole world is the climate crisis. The genocide in gaza is ecocide. What are you doing to protect people and the planet, whether they are in gaza, here, or in the global south . The pentagon is thethe pentagont polluter in the world. You were talking about young people [inaudible] you all should be protecting the worlds people, and 40,000 palestinians have been obliterated. Were just waiting to go live again, i think. One of the things we have seen, to give you the impact, we have tried to counter [indiscernible] dir. Haines sorry. How many kids have died in gaza . Talk about that, talk about that. Dir. Haines so we try to counter disinformation in the context of the invasion of ukraine, and one of the key aspects of it was really about basically russia was trying to promote a pretext for the invasion of ukraine, and we wanted to say, look, the kind of pretext they are trying to create in that context, and as we look back on how successful we were in trying to counter that disinformation, obviously, judge for yourself within the United States, but what we saw in europe was that we were actually pretty successful in countering russian disinformation in that scenario within populations within europe. We were not successful in the continent of africa or really in south america. It was very interesting as we sort of brought in a group of experts that were looking at, essentially, the polls, why werent we successful here, the way it was absorbed, and a lot of it was based on the fact that, frankly, in many of the populations we were looking at in the continent of africa and south america, they started with a narrative that russia had been promoting, which is that nato was the provocatuer, that nato was escalating the conflict and was ultimately responsible for the actions they were taking and they were sort of defending themselves against a growing nato. That put them in the position where they were much more skeptical of what we were saying about, essentially, russian disinformation and most dollars, most scholars that work in this area will tell you it is easier to essentially to compel an audience or two of them information that they are going to think is compelling if it is relatively consistent with what they already believe to be true and no. So suggesting that russia was actually creating a pretext for their invasion of ukraine was so inconsistent with the narrative they had accepted about nato as the provocatuer that it made it much harder to get through, so a rather interesting discussion. Ms. Spaulding so i think this is just such an important topic. I am sorry that you have been interrupted multiple times as we tried to discuss it. I really appreciate these insights. And i do worry a little bit that we tend to put things in boxes. You are presenting us with a comprehensive picture here on how these things relate to each other, right . So there can be multiple objectives from those who push information, operations, right, not just one. So information narratives around ukraine and the fact that nato was the provocatuer and the fact that we should not be supporting ukraine can have the effect both of denying, potentially, funding for ukraine, which was passed last night, but also then having an impact potentially on peoples views on the outcome of the 2020 for election. Of the 2024 election. It is the notion of gathering and looking at things in a holistic way. So lets talk about how we gather our forces together. Dir. Haines yeah, we gather strength. This is a time when we really need all hands on deck. Ms. Spaulding so you had the responsibility of gathering the strength of the 18 different intelligence entities. Tell us a little bit about how that is going. What are your greatest challenges . Particularly in terms of getting the Intelligence Community both to operate within joint nests that we heard, at least aspire to, by the wonderful panel, i think it is wonderful it was impressive to see all those uniforms up here. We had the entire Intelligence Community here. We did not need to bring 18 people up here. But talk to us about how you establish those priorities for the community, which is one of your key responsibilities, in a way that helps bring together the joint effort . Dir. Haines and you are such a part of our founding in many respects. It is obviously, 18 is a lot of elements, including the odni, and it is an extraordinary Intelligence Community. It does highlight, to some extent, the need for having somebody who is responsible for ensuring we are actually talking to each other and integrating and ultimately serving the nation in a kind of cohesive way. And i think in many respects, counterterrorism is a place where we have really shined in terms of our capacity to do that. It really was born out of the crisis, obviously, of 9 11 in this country and the whole reason for the institution that i sit in, but it definitely continues to teach us lessons across a range of areas. That is sort of one aspect of this, is really, when you have a very challenging problem set like terrorism in the nation, you really do need this extraordinary effort that brings together the capacity of the entire u. S. Government but certainly within the Intelligence Community, our capacity to Work Together on these issues. That is increasingly true today. One of the things i am really fascinated by is the fact that, even over the course of my sort of career within the Intelligence Community, i have seen how our different ence, human intelligence, imagery intelligence, signals intelligence, all of these different ence, they Work Together they work best when they are working together. So these are different types of intelligence that really need to cue and enable each other to give us a better picture of what is happening. And this is exactly the kind of not really very sexy or exciting things that people talk about when they think about intelligence, but it is so fundamental to us doing our job more effectively. And that is a big piece of what we try to do, actually bring together the different capabilities within the Intelligence Community so we are leveraging each others capacities and we are actually producing what is needed, then connecting it to what the policymakers, the war fighters, the operators really need to make decisions. One of the things you learn quickly in the Intelligence Community, and if you are part of this, you know this well, there are a lot of places where people are very excited about getting some exquisite piece of information that was very challenging to achieve and that you are very excited about, but it really Means Nothing unless you are able to deliver it to somebody who can ask take action on it. So this whole question of actually bringing together those capabilities in a way that allows us to deliver information to people who are making decisions so they can make better decisions is so much part of our sort of reason to live. And that is also fundamental to the type of integration that we do. We are also working on and in this moment of our history, it is challenging to imagine this, but so much of what we do, particularly when thinking about strategic competition, our l