Spies, Lies, and Algorithms Quotes

“NSA has been penetrating foreign communications systems for over half a century. It has the highest concentration of the best cyber expertise in government, employing more mathematicians than any organization in the United States.154 As former NSA Director Michael Hayden wrote, cyber weapons descend from an NSA bloodline.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“It’s hard to overstate just how foreign the worlds of Washington and Silicon Valley are to each other. At the exact moment when great-power conflict is making a comeback and harnessing technology is the key to success, Silicon Valley and Washington are still working on working together.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Volume is key. Twitter now estimates that Russia used more than fifty thousand automated accounts or bots to Tweet election-related content during the 2016 presidential campaign. Twitter and Facebook are the best-known disinformation superhighways, but there are many others. Russian officers have infiltrated everything from 4chan to Pinterest.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“China is also believed to be behind hacks of Anthem insurance (80 million records), Marriott (400 million records), and Equifax’s 146 million credit records covering nearly every adult in America.78 All of this information can be used to blow intelligence covers and identify and pressure vulnerable targets to betray the United States.79 It’s an intelligence bonanza for Beijing and a nightmare for Washington—the largest and most sophisticated intelligence database ever collected against an adversary. “You have to kind of salute the Chinese for what they did,” noted Director of National Intelligence James Clapper after the OPM breach.80 From an intelligence perspective, it was a masterstroke.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Gen. Keith Alexander, once the nation’s top cyberwarrior, called it “the greatest transfer of wealth in history.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“because it is designed to secure national advantage. China is believed to have stolen trillions of dollars of intellectual property,67 including terabytes of data and schematics for the F-35 and F-22 stealth fighter jet programs, two of the most sophisticated aircraft in the U.S. arsenal.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“In 2018 cyber theft cost an estimated $600 billion globally. That’s about as much as the global illicit drug trade.65 If cybercrime were a country, it would rank in the top twenty-five in terms of annual GDP.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“While running a wide range, the cyberattacks perpetrated by China Russia, Iran, and North Korea come in five basic types: stealing, spying, disrupting, destroying, and deceiving.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“The most serious threats from a national security perspective don’t come from Cheeto-eating teens. They come from well-trained operatives and proxies operating at the behest of four countries: China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.62 Together, these four nations are behind 77 percent of all suspected state-sponsored cyberattacks since 2005.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“In 2018, about two billion people, or two-thirds of the online population, had their personal information stolen or compromised.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Successful deterrence has three requirements: (1) clear redlines delineating what behavior is unacceptable; (2) a credible capacity and willingness to punish violators (otherwise threats become hollow); and (3) the ability to identify the culprit quickly.55 Notice the word quickly. Identifying an offender eventually isn’t good enough.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“The Defense Department, Carter said, had three core cyber missions: protecting military systems, networks, and information from attack; providing cyber capabilities to support military operations and contingency plans when needed; and defending the United States and its interests against “cyberattacks of significant consequence.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“It’s hard to imagine now, but as late as 2007, the Intelligence Community’s annual threat assessment did not include the word cyber once.42 In 2009, cyber threats still ranked so low on the priority list, they were buried on page 38 of the forty-five-page threat assessment, just below drug trafficking in West Africa.43 Fast forward five years and the world looked very different, with cyber vaulting to the top tier of the 2012 intelligence threat list.44 In 2013, the director of national intelligence named cyber the number one threat to the United States, ranking it ahead of terrorism for the first time since 9/11.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“It’s hard to imagine now, but as late as 2007, the Intelligence Community’s annual threat assessment did not include the word cyber once.42 In 2009, cyber threats still ranked so low on the priority list, they were buried on page 38 of the forty-five-page threat assessment, just below drug trafficking in West Africa.43 Fast forward five years and the world looked very different, with cyber vaulting to the top tier of the 2012 intelligence threat list.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“In cyberspace, there are no mountains or oceans to protect people or their assets from others. Good neighborhoods and dangerous ones are unavoidably connected. We are all geographically unlucky.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Cyberspace, by contrast, is manmade and inherently insecure. The Internet was never designed with security in mind.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“The military’s traditional air, land, and sea domains are all natural, not manmade. Nature provides geographic advantages for some and vulnerabilities for others.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“The differences between oil and data are stark, and they offer insight into just how much the world is changing. Oil is valuable because it is scarce; data is valuable because it isn’t. Data is essentially infinite and everyone can get it—creating network effects. Oil is captive to geography, making some countries more powerful than others. Data is unbound by geography, making even powerful countries vulnerable to attack (more on that below). Adversaries cannot turn oil into water or make it look like something it isn’t. But they can with data, corrupting it or generating so much uncertainty that nobody trusts it. Data is simultaneously mighty and weak.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Today, by contrast, data has become much more essential for power—whether it’s the market power of firms, the domestic political power of governments, or the military power of nations. Nearly two-thirds of today’s global economy is based on intangible services,33 not tangible goods, and some experts estimate that up to 40 percent of the world’s jobs could be automated in the next fifteen to twenty-five years.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Information has always been important in geopolitics, but for most of history physical resources mattered more. Whoever had better farmland, healthier livestock, bigger armies, sturdier fortresses, better weapons, and faster ships prospered. Tangible assets generated trade, transformed societies, and won wars.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Cyberattacks are defined as “deliberate actions to alter, disrupt, deceive, degrade, or destroy computer systems or networks or the information and/or programs resident in or transiting these systems or networks.”32 Put more simply, cyberattacks involve any activity that alters the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information on digital systems.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“In 2000, approximately 15 percent of the world’s population was connected to the Internet.51 Today, more than half the world is online, and more people are estimated to have mobile phones than access to running water.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Satellites are not just getting better; they are getting more plentiful. According to then Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, the number of satellite launches more than doubled between 2016 and 2018.44 In 2018 alone, 322 small satellites about the size of a shoebox were hurled into space. The Paris-based firm Euroconsult estimates that more than eight thousand small satellites will be launched between 2019 and 2028.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Fewer longtermers means more rookies. In the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), one of the highest turnover periods, 11 of 19 House Intelligence Committee members and 7 of 17 Senate Intelligence Committee members were serving for the first time.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“From 1976 to 2005, Senate rules limited service on the intelligence committee to just eight years.116 House rules still impose term limits for the intelligence committee117 but almost no other committees.118 The result: Just when legislators become experts, they are forced to stop overseeing the Intelligence Community.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Congress has many more powdered milk experts than intelligence experts. Of the 535 members serving in the 116th Congress, only eighteen ever worked in an intelligence agency, but dozens of representatives came from dairy districts in New York, Wisconsin, Vermont, Texas, and elsewhere. That’s better than it used to be. In 2009, only two members of Congress had prior intelligence careers.114 The same year, the Congressional Dairy Farmers Caucus was founded with more than fifty members.115”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“There is no farm-state equivalent for intelligence, no geographic center of industry or interests that encourages legislators to focus on intelligence oversight to win voter support. As Michael Hayden told me, “No member ever gets a bridge built or a road paved by serving on the intelligence committee. It’s an act of patriotism.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Fire alarm oversight is less constant and direct. In this model, legislators set up rules and procedures that empower citizens, interest groups, and other third parties to monitor agency activities and sound the alarm if they see smoke. Legislators spring into action only when someone else is important enough and upset enough to ring the bell.68 From Congress’s perspective, the beauty of this system is efficiency. It provides oversight while freeing up legislators to pay more attention to activities—like district visits and constituent requests—that help them win re-election.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“Perhaps the most serious objection is what Tetlock calls the “wrong-side-of-maybe fallacy,” the risk of being charged with “failure” when an event doesn’t happen even when the intelligence estimate claimed there was only a 70 percent chance that it would. When it comes to likelihood, we tend to conflate maybe with sure thing.87”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence

“The fundamental attribution error is the tendency to believe that others behave badly because of their personality while we ourselves behave badly because of factors beyond our control. People often jump to blaming others while letting themselves off the hook. Drivers think that someone cutting them off must be a jerk rather than wondering if there’s an emergency or some other reason requiring them to drive that way.”
― Amy B. Zegart, Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence