The Intersection: Memoirs of a Life in Intelligence, Special Ops, & Strategy

Transcript

[Music] welcome everybody to the next episode of the intersection a series on the iqt podcast where we discuss topics in relating to the intersection of technology and National Security today's guest is Dr Michael Vickers a former Special Forces officer and operations officer in the cia's Clandestine Service from 2011 to 2015 Dr Vickers served as the under secretary of defense for intelligence and from 2007 to 2011 he served as assistant secretary of defense for Special Operations low intensity conflict and interdependent capabilities he's also worked at Inky killer since 2015 and currently serves as a senior fellow here in June he published a new book titled by all means available Memoirs over life in intelligence and special operations and strategy recounting his remarkable 40-plus year career today we're going to discuss some of the major themes from the book in your first-hand account about his days is a Green Beret to to his vision for victory in Afghanistan to his role in waging America's war with Al Qaeda again at the highest levels of government so Mike welcome good to see you good to see you Steve yeah so um a lot of different topics to get into here but uh let me let me start with the first question why why were you interested in writing this book well three reasons really um one you know I was fortunate enough over the course of my career to participate in three major events in one case uh kind of a world-changing event uh our defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s that helped bring it into the cold war and then later when I was a senior defense and intelligence official several of our campaigns against al Qaeda worldwide and then the operation that brought Justice to Osama bin Laden and a second reason though besides my duty to what I felt history um was duty to the American people you know I spent my life keeping the nation's Secrets uh there's a lot we for obvious reasons we can't say about them uh but where we can I think there's a duty Upon Our top intelligence and defense leadership to explain why we did what we did to try to keep America safe uh to make sure we sustain the support of the American people and so that was the second objective and then the third and perhaps most important was my duty to my fellow National Security Professionals and particularly those who will take up the cultural going forward uh the world will be a much better place it's getting more dangerous year by year it'll be a much better place if we Prevail in this new Cold War we find ourselves in with China and Russia and Russia's aggression in Ukraine and so I want to do what I can to pass on lessons I've learned and and help those current and future professionals win fantastic so he he you spoke of your uh duty to the American people um uh let's go back to the beginning why did you ultimately choose to uh uh enlist in the military and and choose a life of service so I wanted to be a baseball or football player and when I realized that wasn't happening a very a noble goal by the way yes I I thought what else am I going to do with my life and a a high school teacher my senior year slipped a copy of the New York Times uh in front of me in the school library and said you might be interested in this and it was a story about CIA secret paramilitary operations in Laos during the Vietnam war supporting uh among tribesmen and I thought leading secret armies that sounds kind of cool you know of course I'd seen a lot of James Bond movies and so I thought being a Green Beret you know this is toward the end of the Vietnam War would be a good way to start with an ultimate aim of going into CIA and then things took off after that that's great so uh you joined uh became a Green Beret tell me about that training uh process because that's a legendary yeah so you know after 9 11 our uh Green Berets you know had extensive training but really went into combat all our special operations forces and ground forces and it was kind of non-stop for 10 years in my day in the Cold War um coming out of Vietnam we didn't have as much uh operation so we had even more training and so I trained on everything from you know weapons demolitions guerrilla warfare uh counter-terrorism tactics Free Fall parachuting Advanced mountain climbing even trained uh with a backpack nuclear weapon to you know in the event award a parachute into Eastern Europe with this thing uh seemed like a good idea when I was 23 maybe not so much later but uh so lots of training that and foreign languages and uh you know the training tests you physically and mentally you know stresses you a lot um physically makes you think on your feet uh and but uh but ultimately rewarding okay and then uh what led you to move from there to uh CIA you know so it was my view I'd gone from being a special forces Soldier to an officer and commanded a counter-terrorism intelligence unit and I thought that you know consistent with why I joined in the first place I wanted to belong to organizations where individuals could really make a big difference in National Security I thought that it was more likely to come sooner uh in CIA they were really the front line instrument of the Cold War uh you know we did a lot of things through covert action that we wouldn't do through over military means with you know given the risk of escalation to a broader war and that plus collecting intelligence you know in some of the most difficult places really seemed like a great challenge for me after I had done all the Special Forces stuff so that's why I went to CIA so uh Russia invades Afghanistan uh how did you get tapped uh uh uh uh uh to play the role that you did so I was really lucky I uh you know I'd come into CIA with a lot of Special Forces experience which set me apart a little bit and then early in my training I had an extensive training program for about a year and a quarter um I had two special assignments I was picked out of training to go for the Invasion of Grenada you know this tiny little Caribbean island we we invaded in 1983 when we had uh medical students trapped there during uh uh communist coup against other communist leaders and uh and then I had a special assignment dealing with the encounter terrorism after the Beirut bombings you know Hezbollah terrorists had blown up our Embassy and then Marine Barracks in 1983 and those two things and my special forces experience uh came to the attention of the um senior Cia leaders who were overseeing the Afghanistan covert action program and then they picked me for for that job and I really called it the job of a lifetime you know the budget had just been quadrupled uh by Congress uh see I didn't ask for it Congress decided that we really needed to step up our effort and so I thought do I get to fight our main enemy uh rather than you know his proxy somewhere with this dramatically increased budget which already was the biggest covert Action Program in CI and would get even bigger and uh you know that's kind of how it came about so it's considered one of our great successes in our military and intelligence operational history uh uh uh what worked you know what was it about the uh uh uh uh uh the operation that that made us that uh enabled its success so it was really about speed and scale and then achieving escalation dominance so you know as I mentioned the budget had been quadrupled and a series of events you know led to a presidential review of the program right as I was taking over and that included uh reviewing our strategy and objectives and up until that time nobody thought we could win uh and so our political objective was just to make the Soviet occupation as costly as possible and then in March 1985 President Reagan I helped work on this but signed a classified National Security decision directive that said our aim ought to be to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan and had this phrase attached to it by all means available which I liked when I was a CI officer in my 30s and so it became the title of my book um and so we really ramped up them uh the and enabled the resistance to Afghan resistance to conduct more operations more complex operations so everything increased within 12 months by an order of magnitude the amount of weapons and ammunition we were putting in the training we were given uh and then it also increased in quality of things we started introducing Western weapons uh most famously the Stinger anti aircraft missile but a British anti-aircraft one as well and some other Western weapons frequency hopping radio so that the Soviets couldn't uh Direction fine the Afghan resistance and that really increased the cost of the Soviets and the Mikhail Gorbachev had come to power same time President Reagan signed this directive in March 1985 and he gave the Soviets a year to 18 months to win the war which had been going on for five years at that point and we essentially out-escalated them you know we um they were in worse shape uh 12 months later than they were when he gave that order and so then Gorbachev decided to start withdrawing from Afghanistan in 1986 and was out completely by early 89. so this was roughly 40 years ago uh um what lessons can we take what's still true about you know uh uh uh the environment you're operating and then that's true today as we think about the Russian conflict with Ukraine yeah so you know this was a covert action supporting an Insurgency with an army that was occupying the whole country Ukraine is a conventional War now in a more um uh congested uh confined battle space you know in eastern Ukraine and and Southern Ukraine um and so its characteristics are different more artillery but a lot of the principles are the same the need to achieve a form of escalation dominance at the conventional level uh uh is still there so you know slowly we've gotten there in terms of the quantity and quality of weapons we've provided in some of the training but it's it's taken some time and so speed this other factor I talked about besides scale and scope you know we haven't moved necessarily as fast as as we should we've got a great Coalition we had that in the 1980s we had china Saudi Arabia Pakistan Egypt uh the United Kingdom and several others on our side you know today it's different players mostly European but uh that Coalition capability is very important so you know and then the other thing that's very much in common is you need people willing to fight and we had that in the Afghans in the 80s and we have it with the ukrainians right now who are fighting for their existence we absolutely have it with Ukraine's it's unbelievable what they're doing um so one of the criticisms of the uh uh current uh effort in Ukraine is that the Coalition has trouble coming to agreement and making decisions and and thus that's one of the reasons why we're perhaps moving slower than uh uh we otherwise should be Yeah you mentioned that in your experience in Afghanistan you also had a similar Coalition that you probably had to manage at some level uh uh uh expectations you know motivations all that sort of thing uh uh what are your thoughts on the challenge because that's absolutely as we think about potential next conflicts right in in uh in in Asia in some form or another we will be operating once again as part of a coalition here how do you think about uh operating and managing a Coalition in one of these uh operations yeah well as Winston Churchill said you know the only thing worse than fighting with a coalition is fighting without one you know and it's it's part of the American way of war that we go with allies and partners and it's an advantage of ours but that doesn't mean it's easy and so during the 80s you know we had to get the Chinese to escalate the pakistanis the front line State who has taken a lot of risks the Saudis were matching US dollar for dollar they had to agree to this you know tenfold increase in program funding within 12 months uh you know Etc British to supply you know Advanced weapons that would be traced back to them and then finally the U.S to do it um and you know so it's similar in that respect you have some Coalition Partners in Ukraine who are very aggressive and bullish uh I think they've generally been right and others who uh you know want this to end and uh um but don't want Ukraine to lose and so you have challenges about the objectives you know were we really in this to not have Ukraine lose in other words more or less defend what it has now or a little more or to actually win and take back its territory um and um you know and defeat the Russian forces and uh and you know and so in some cases we've moved slower for Coalition reasons sometimes because of our own political decisions as well so in that sense it's a little different from the 80s but you know I think we're I think we're getting there so this podcast sits at the intersection of National Security and Technology we talked a lot about National Security talk to me a little bit about technology how has technology evolved from uh your experience in the 80s in Afghanistan to uh what you see from your various perspectives uh it certainly played a role you know it was recognized in the in the 80s that Western weapons were just Superior you know the Israelis clobbered Syrian air defenses in 82 we use some of these Advanced Technologies to uh defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan um and one of the reasons the Soviet military backed Gorbachev was they knew their economy needed to be rehabilitated or they would never compete over the long term um and that was a function of also of Technologies the U.S had deployed in Europe for deterrence purposes Precision Strike weapons sensors a range of things that the Soviets knew they couldn't compete with and would obsolete their World War II style strategy the pace of technological changes even greater today far greater today though than it was then you know so while it had you know some impacts on war and some impacts on relative economic power during the Cold War um you know it really is the central competition in my view right now between us and China going forward you know economic and technological you know how technological turns into both economic power and National Security power but at its core it's really these Revolutions in technology three big ones as you know you know artificial intelligence and autonomy Quantum Computing and other Quantum Technologies and synthetic biology but a lot of others too you know from batteries to nuclear fusion that really are going to transform the world over the next 20 years and the winner of that is likely going to be the winner so you get that uh uh which is unusual for someone who grew up in the military you know and was not a technologist at first uh um do you think that the defense and intelligence leadership here in the United States understands the importance of technology that you just uh are articulated yeah technological advantage has become you know the last seven since the end of World War II really you know key to the American way of War you know sometimes it converts big advantages other times not so much depending on the the role but I think at the Grand strategy level uh you know they increasingly realize this you know whether it translates all into the military systems or whether we do enough with national r d you know to translate this into policy you know we spend a quarter of our GDP as a percentage of GDP today on National r d that we did in the 50s and 60s when we had the great boom you know fueled by the the space race and and and other things and uh but I but I think there is growing awareness that this is really what matters and uh and then you know we'll see how well we can implement it and then what are you seeing in terms of the role of commercial technology developed by non-traditional you know vendors for the defense intelligence world uh playing in Ukraine and and how does that translate going forward if there are conflicts in Asia and other places like that yeah so these big transformative Technologies are really outside the traditional defense or national security industrial base and uh uh you know and they may have different impacts on National Security but if they produce great wealth you know that's an an indirect but very important effect on National Security you can just buy more of whatever you want to buy and you know all of them have National Security implications to a greater or lesser extent um and uh um let me let me just um that's a great point so if commercial technology and technology in general is going to play a greater and greater role how do we get how do we educate either folks in Congress or folks in the Pentagon I didn't grow up in a technology oriented uh uh uh uh uh environment uh understanding the potentials and uh strategies that might be involved in some of these Technologies yeah so the broader problem I think is technological literacy in general uh yeah and then the challenge is that a lot of these Technologies really the critical ones are outside the traditional defense sphere so even if you knew submarine warfare Technologies things that go into that or stealth Technologies for aircraft or maybe even things that start to move over to the commercial sector networking Technologies they're still a big chunk that's outside that traditional realm that uh but more broadly it's making sure we have more um technical talent that it in very influential policy positions in the White House and in our top agencies you know our two new warfighting domains space and cyber are fundamentally technological you know they're they're uh and you know and that's just one aspect of the of the problem so um how we do that you know we did a good job of that in the 50s partly as a result because we had so many scientists from MIT and elsewhere who helped us win World War II you know they they rallied like other Americans um to the cause that's more of a challenge today there's a bigger Gulf between the private sector the high-tech sector and you know the National Security establishment and it's something uh you know our political leadership really has to work on so so one of the other areas that you spent sort of your your career really uh uh driving and enhancing is The Enlightenment uh between the military and the intelligence communities uh how do you think we're doing uh uh with regard to that alignment you know in the station where can we go from here yeah so there's a couple aspects to that you know one intelligence or first line of defense and defense has the Lion's Share of the intelligence community and the intelligence budget uh you know there's a few that lie outside at CIA being the biggest one but FBI and then um smaller components that are inside other Cabinet departments but you know defense has NSA nrodinga and then the service and combatant uh command intelligence organizations and so making sure that uh our intelligence community of which defense is a big part can support our national leadership but also our war fighting needs you know as a challenge for the top leadership something I wrestled with a lot with USD when I was under secretary of defense for intelligence with the Director of National Intelligence Jim Clapper at the time and then operationally CIA and DOD are armed forces are really our two main operational arms um to do things and so and they're often at the Leading Edge of technology and so cooperation in those spheres uh operationally what's the right mix of that or who should take the lead on something depending on policy preferences so for instance we did the bin Laden raid with military forces under CIA authorities you know it's just one example of the of the uh marriage if you will but it's also an acquisition and Technology development you know we have common needs a lot of time so the relation it's something I worked on pretty hard given that I had you know history in both camps and uh it's it's very important to the successful functioning of our national security establishment so you've gone from being sort of the young leader to the old wise uh a veteran here what uh what advice yeah what advice or perspective do you have for uh the young up and coming next generation of the leaders uh with regard to the intersection of technology and National Security yeah so as I said I think it's really the central competition and so uh you you whether whatever field you're in in National Security you have to be cognizant of these things you know whether it's little draw if you're an infantry man that are flying over your positions all the time now as we see in Ukraine you know and that can be lethal to you to how to exploit um various Technologies and as you move up the ranks and broaden you know things like space and cyber and enabled by Ai and maybe Quantum um you know just or fundamentally technologically and Cutting Edge uh technology so you know it's it would be critical to anyone's future and then I would say too that um you know more broadly um you know find something that you're passionate about and you can make a difference you know too many people even at the top levels of government um manage rather than transform when it's necessary or lead and you know if you're given responsibility as you move up in your careers you know make a difference that doesn't mean do anything Reckless but uh you know that's what our great entrepreneurs do that's what uh you know uh Visionary Business Leaders do it and we need a national security just as much great well thank you Mike for uh joining us here today uh uh I think your uh observations and stories have been fascinating we appreciate everyone turning tuning in today's episode of the intersection please make sure you subscribe to the iqt podcast so you don't miss out on future content and leave us a review or comment to let us know what you think or what content you'd be interested to see us covering a future podcast I also encourage you to check out iqt's website www.att.org to explore more content about The Cutting Edge technology to support and deliver insights and capabilities essential for National Security Mission impact Mike thank you very much uh and thank you to our listeners for joining us at the intersection today my pleasure foreign [Music]