Leaders of top U.S. intelligence agencies have signed onto a plan to centralize and take better advantage of open source intelligence, or OSINT. The new OSINT strategy aims to make open-source an “the INT of first resort.” Those words, in the title of the strategy, are a tacit recognition that spy agencies have traditionally favored gaining intelligence from highly secretive sources – human intelligence, spy satellites, and electronic signals – rather than open-source data.  I spoke with...

Women make up about 40% of the intelligence community's workforce, a percentage that ranks behind both federal workforce and civilian labor benchmarks. That's according to the latest demographics report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And women are even more underrepresented in the leadership ranks throughout the IC. But agencies aren't ignoring the issue. The National Security Agency's "Future Ready Workforce" initiative has already led to several changes that will...

The Standard Form-86, a long-used questionnaire for government positions requiring security clearance, is set to be phased out after the White House Office of Management and Budget approved a new form replacing the SF-86 and several other legacy forms. I spoke with John Berry, a security clearance attorney at Berry and Berry PLLC law firm, about some of the big changes new "Personnel Vetting Questionnaire," including questions around marijuana use, mental health history, and foreign connections.

The Defense Intelligence Agency runs the federal government's top-secret IT network. DIA is in the middle of a major modernization of that network. And in addition to running new routers and switches, DIA also wants to upgrade to more network automation and help lay the groundwork for the intelligence community to leverage AI. Cybersecurity is also essential, both to defend against outside hackers and prevent insider threats. For the latest, I spoke with DIA Chief Information Officer Doug Cossa.

More than three years ago, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency launched a “neurodiversity” hiring pilot program. The idea was to make it easier to recruit individuals with differences in brain functioning, such as people with autism, who could contribute to the mission, but may have difficulty navigating the traditional hiring process and workplace environment. Now, NGA is looking to build off its initial pilot program with a broader effort. For the latest, I spoke with Jen King, a...

Gen Z , or those born between the late 1990’s and the early 2000’s , will likely comprise at least one-quarter of the global workforce by 2025. In order to tap into that younger generation of talent, U.S. intelligence agencies are trying to be more flexible with their hiring and retention practices. For an in-depth discussion on the IC’s workforce strategies, I spoke with Cynthia Snyder, the assistant director of national intelligence for human capital.

The vast majority of employees across the intelligence community work out of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, or "SCIFs." These are essentially highly protected office spaces with restrictive rules, including a ban on cell phones and other devices. The Intelligence and National Security Agency's latest white paper, "Reimagining the SCIF Life," considers how spy agencies could make life inside a SCIF a little bit better, while also giving employees more flexibility in terms of...

The Army is making a strong push into open source intelligence. Earlier this year, the Army published its first OSINT strategy. The service's goal is to "professionalize" its OSINT workforce and use OSINT as an intelligence discipline "of first resort," Lt. Gen. Laura Potter, the Army's deputy chief of staff for intelligence, tells me in this week's show. Also joining the show is Dennis Eger, the Army's senior open source intelligence advisor.

The personnel vetting process is a major drag on the government's hiring ambitions. It can often leave candidates confused and in the dark, even before they start the lengthy background investigation process. So what if the government focused more on the "candidate experience," similar to the ever increasing focus on "customer experience" at many agencies? A new RAND report (link below) takes an extensive look at that question and offers some interesting recommendations. I spoke with Dave...

In a June 30 memo, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed Pentagon officials to take a range of actions to tighten access to classified information. The directive stems from a review of security procedures Austin ordered earlier this spring in reaction to the Discord leaks, allegedly by 21-year-old Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira. What do these new actions mean for security clearance applicants and holders? To dive more into that question, Inside the IC spoke with Dan Meyer, a security...

For this episode, I speak with Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, about NPEC's influential paper, "Over-classification: How Bad Is It, What’s the Fix?" The over-classification of national security information has been a long simmering issue in Washington policy circles. But that debate was cast into the spotlight after 21-year-old Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira was arrested in April for allegedly leaking reams of highly sensitive...

A new Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency project is looking to use psychology to thwart would-be hackers. Many cyber attacks these days use basic human psychology to get people to click on a link, for example, as part of a "phishing" exploit. But IARPA thinks it can flip that paradigm on its head and embed the "cognitive biases" of hackers into network defenses. For an overview of the effort, I spoke with Dr. Kimberly Ferguson-Walter, the program manager for IARPA's Reimagining...

The Defense Intelligence Agency is in the early stages of making major upgrades to the federal government's top-secret network, the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communication System (JWICS). DIA's "customers" - other federal agencies and military units -- increasingly want high-bandwidth, low latency digital services to be a part of JWICS. So DIA will be "expanding the highway" of JWICS by embedding cloud computing and other modern technologies into the top-secret network. For the latest, I...

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's "Tearline" project is a unique "open source" endeavor in the intelligence community. And its efforts aren't going unnoticed: Tearline recently won the inaugural "OSINT Unit of the Year" award from the OSINT Foundation. I spoke with Chris Rasmussen, the Tearline's founder and program manager, about the project's origins, what it's been up to lately, and its future as a potential OSINT trailblazer for the U.S. government.

Compensation for individuals with security clearances increased by 7% in 2022. More than half of all cleared workers now make six figures, according to ClearanceJobs' annual Security Clearance Compensation Report. I spoke with ClearanceJobs President Evan Lesser and Senior Editor Jill Hamilton about the latest report, which also shows an uptick in remote and hybrid work opportunities for cleared talent.

The National Security Agency's Cybersecurity Collaboration Center opened nearly two years ago to help the defense industrial base and other critical organizations better secure their networks. The organization works with a couple hundred of companies today, and it wants to scale that to "thousands" this year, according to Kristina Walter, chief of DIB defense at the center, my guest for this week's episode.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is in charge of maintaining the federal government's top-secret network. That global system is on the cusp of a major overhaul. I spoke with DIA Chief Information Officer Doug Cossa about his agency's plans to modernize the IT network and how the intelligence community needs to adapt, in many ways, to modern technological realities. Highlights include: 0:40: JWICS modernization 17:27: The role of cloud computing for JWICS and DIA 22:30: Risks in global telecom...

A declassified National Intelligence Council Assessment from April 2020 says "China and other authoritarian governments are using cyber espionage, attacks and influence operations to extend the coercive reach of their ideological enforcement and political control efforts beyond their borders." How are cyber threats evolving? And how is cyber threat intelligence changing to keep up? I spoke with Jim Richberg, the former national intelligence manager for cyber, to discuss those issues and...

The intelligence community has made strides in recent years across a range of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility metrics. But the IC's latest demographic report shows that intel agencies still lag behind the broader federal workforce when it comes to the hiring and retention of minorities, women, and persons with disabilities. I spoke with Stephanie La Rue, the IC's first-ever chief of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, about how she's trying to bolster DEI&A...

Congress is out-of-town for the mid-term elections, but when they come back, the annual intelligence authorization bill could get passed. There are a number of key provisions in this year's bill, including one that would allow more industry employees top receive clearance. Another would conduct a study of how agencies and industry utilize classified facilities. To break it down, I spoke with Larry Hanauer, vice president for policy at the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.

The theme of this September’s National Insider Threat Awareness Month is is "critical thinking in digital spaces" I spoke with Rebecca Morgan, deputy director of the National Insider Threat Task Force, about how new forms of social engineering, misinformation and phishing are increasingly being used to target the federal workforce and others.

The National Counterintelligence and Security Center is among the many federal offices looking to shore up the security of U.S. supply chains. Jeanette McMillian is the NSCS's assistant director of supply chain and cyber. "Everything from software to semiconductors, pipelines to peanut butter, malware to meat packing, we have seen it all with regards to how global supply chains have impacted our lives," McMillian told me in today's show.

The National Background Investigations Services program, or NBIS, has been described as the "lynchpin" to the federal personnel vetting reform efforts. The massive software project is aimed at both replacing legacy IT systems with modern functionality, institutionalizing new processes like continuous vetting, and bringing many personnel vetting systems together into one IT environment. To get the latest on the program's developments, I spoke with Jeff Smith, the executive program manager for...