The National Intelligence Council with Michael Collins

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Michael Collins: Critical thinking, a courage to speak truth, and discipline to remove yourself from the latest narrative that's pervading a conversation, to really ask yourself what's the basis for that narrative? [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: This week I was joined in the studio by Michael Collins, the current acting chair of the National Intelligence Council. The NIC is an incredibly important yet often overlooked constituent of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Among many other roles and responsibilities, the NIC is responsible for the production of the annual threat assessment and the global trends publications. With decades of experience in the IC as an analyst and a seasoned leader in the field, Michael Collins is perhaps the ideal person to help our listeners better understand the NIC and the critical bridge it builds between agencies and the intelligence they collect. In this episode, Michael and I discuss the role of the National Intelligence Council, national intelligence officers and their work around the world, the products of the NIC, including the annual threat assessment and the importance of intelligence diplomacy and objective analysis. The original podcast on intelligence since 2006, we are SpyCast. Now sit back, relax, and enjoy the show. Well, thanks ever so much for joining me to speak about the National Intelligence Council, Michael. I'm really looking forward to speaking to you.

Michael Collins: Thanks for having me. Thanks for the invitation.

Andrew Hammond: Yeah, absolutely. So I think the National Intelligence Council is one of those things that people that study this stuff have heard of, but even some of them don't really know what's going on. So I think the best way to approach this is just if you were to describe to the average American what is the National Intelligence Council and why it's important, how would you do so?

Michael Collins: Thank you. Very briefly, I would say the National Intelligence Council is the lead entity in the U.S. government charged for making sure our national security decisionmakers have the best analysis of the globe and the information informing those assessments possible across the entirety of the IC. The National Intelligence Council, within the larger fabric of the intelligence community, is the responsible agent for the generation, representation of, and maximum utilization of the analysis of global affairs from across the board. Originally founded in 1979, or actually on our 45th anniversary this year within CIA, within CIA originally it was the hub for doing more longer term estimative analysis; whereas most of the analysis on the day-to-day was done elsewhere. It is constituted by the national intelligence officers of the U.S. intelligence community. We have 18 in the National Intelligence Council currently, each one of which is responsible for some region in the world or some functional area in the world, and their responsibility is to husband together the best of what the IC is saying or thinking about on all the issues they cover and increasingly drawing in the perspective from the external community, the academics, the private sector, and pulling together the best insight we can provide for the policy makers. I'll say three things functionally. So never before, actually, has the National Intelligence Council been as much at the center of the day-to-day policy deliberations as it currently is. I think it's a good sign for our policy leadership to want to know the full range of views across the IC when they're making a hard decision as opposed to just saying what is the view of one particular agency? So the National Intelligence Council is playing that role increasingly on a day-to-day. Second point, it remains the lead agency for the National Intelligence Estimates, the signature products of the IC that are looking out 5, 10, 15 years, for example, when we're making broad determinations on things going forward, and third, we are sort of a hub as you think about the IC's analytic outreach with the private sector where we can bring together and through the National Intelligence officers, bring together a community of interest to help study and collaborate on issues. We work together. We are also the oratory that produces the annual threat testimony for the DNI, which it gives her addresses every year. So --

Andrew Hammond: So just a few things I would like to follow up on there. So 1979, so this is under Stansfield Turner as the Director of Central Intelligence. What's the initial impetus behind it? Like why does it get set up then? He's not remembered particularly fondly as one of the great all-time directors of Central Intelligence, but I think he did do a lot of quite important stuff.

Michael Collins: Yeah, I think the original basis with his predecessor being the Office of National Estimates was to hold together a smaller group that were removed from the day-to-day to do more forward-looking strategic estimates, largely at the time the foundation of the National Intelligence Estimate itself. Now CIA, of course, before the turnover in the early 2000s when the stand-up of ODNI occurred, when the National Intelligence Council moved from CIA to the DNI, that larger shift was made largely to bring together the larger IC as opposed to just having the analysis being centered in one particular agency, even if you were coordinating with other agencies. The logic before being that CIA was still, and still is, it's a center where it doesn't have a policy arm, so therefore, the presumption of potential bias with the policy, the CIA as the center for intelligence and director at the time, the Director for Central Intelligence, the former title of CIA, that's why it began there.

Andrew Hammond: And for the National Intelligence Council, so 1979 it's set up, but from 1947 until the early 2000s, the CIA director is dual-hatted. He's the director of the CIA, and he's the director of Central Intelligence. So he's meant to make sure that everybody's in coordination, but then into the 2000s, after 9/11, you get the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and then the NIC moves over to the ODNI. Did it stay the same in terms of the people that make it up? Like when it was at CIA, was it was only CIA people? Whereas now, I've heard you speak in other forums that there were people from NYPD, people from just various intelligence agencies across the government, so help me understand that.

Michael Collins: It is far more diverse. I mean, it was before. They had representatives serving for other agencies who would rotate over to the CIA on occasion to take on one of the assignments, but the core structure/organization of the National Intelligence Council constituted by the national intelligence officers has generally been the same, but increasingly, and especially since the turnover, and even so, it's really, really important for, I think so, for the NIC, for us to have representatives from across all of the agencies as national intelligence officers or as deputy national intelligence officers within the NIC supporting those portfolios, but also, increasingly so, we're trying to draw in experts from the outside, from the private sector, academia, industry, business, and we well understand that increasingly so, expertise, understanding, we need that. We need diversity. We need to challenge ourselves on our thinking and our analysis. And so, that's really, really important to bring that about, both in the genuine interest to bring in perspective from others that may have not grown up necessarily in the IC, but also to show that one of our core missions is to draw in and engage the private sector. We need them to help us better study and understand the issues of the world, so --

Andrew Hammond: And just tell us a little bit more on the National Intelligence Officers. How many did you say there were again, and they're divided up geographically and functionally?

Michael Collins: Correct, yeah. So we have 18 portfolios we've changed a little bit in recent years. The traditional ones you can understand are the national intelligence officer for Western Hemisphere, for Africa, for -- now we have a national intelligence officer for East Asia. We also just recently set up a national intelligence officer for China specifically, given the significance of China as a global issue. We have a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, for example, national intelligence officers for the Middle East, which is really busy right now as you can imagine, but then we also have national intelligence officers for military issues, for technology issues, for economics, and for weapons of mass destruction. And now increasingly, sort of signifying more of the issues that are front and center, we stood up a national intelligence officer for foreign-aligned influence, national intelligence officers for counter narcotics, national intelligence officers for terrorism, being functional issues that, you know, resonate across all those domains. One of the things that's important for me as a head of the NIC, when we do analysis that represents the NIC, we don't just write in our silos, however. The council is in fact a council. And when we write about the key forces that are affecting global affairs, to do it right, you've got to understand something about what's happening in this area that is greatly informing, likely, what is happening in this area. And especially if we go through the core themes, we talk about great power competition increasingly in the world, as well as transnational issues that we have to cover increasingly across the globe. And third, staying on top of all the hotspots that are happening elsewhere. If you're not working together, you're probably not sufficiently analyzing it all cohesively. So --

Andrew Hammond: And were you a national intelligence officer at one point?

Michael Collins: No. I've actually never been. I'm a career analyst from CIA originally. I've managed analytic programs in CIA, mostly on East Asia, a little bit on Middle East. I was the Deputy Assistant Director for the East Asia Mission Center in CIA, and then the Chief Strategy Officer for CIA for Director Burns, most recently before I came to this job, but I've worked on product for the National Intelligence Council as an analyst, for example. We encourage this as well. Even if you're not working directly in the NIC, you can take the pen on a paper, a national intelligence estimate, from where you actually sit. And in previous lives I've had, I've done that from other jobs I've had within CIA.

Andrew Hammond: Let's talk about China a little bit more just for a moment. So, you know, thinking about the first 20 years of the NIC or the first period of time, looking at the Soviet Union, you've got different norms, different values, different political systems, different relationships between the state and the market, just really different visions of what human life should be like. Is it different with China? Because tell me if you disagree, but China doesn't seem to be proselytizing. It doesn't seem to be wanting to convert every other country in the world to communism in the same way that the Soviet Union did. So what does that entail for national security?

Michael Collins: Sure. Sure. One thing is still fundamental and very similar, which is the Communist Party of China, and increasingly so under this particular leadership of the Communist Party of China, I want to stress that, is doubling down on an authoritarian model, a model that is inherently in conflict with the model that the U.S. government and our partners around the world champion. And so for that reason, there will be inherent conflict, competition at a minimum between the two of them, and as it was between us and the Soviet Union. Now it's not necessarily as strong of a competition under the prior leadership of China, when under prior leadership, those who were advocating more of a hide your capabilities; bide your time. You've heard this, leveraging the globalized system, said they were going to try a different approach. But under this particular leadership, under Xi Jinping, they've put forward a far more proactive, aggressive approach to advancing China's standing in the world, which rests critically on an authoritarian system that has to protect the Communist Party within China. I stress that. All right. So that's one. Second is, China has a financial capability that the Soviet Union never had, in terms of its influence around the world and the networks and its involvement that it has, right, that we have to take, obviously, very seriously in terms of, again, to my first point about what the underpinnings, if you will, of that inherent difference of strategic views, I'll just say, is, with what capability they have, frankly, around the globe. And third, technology and the larger international arena, what's happening in the international arena. Technology, mis- and disinformation, narratives that we're contesting, that we have to consider as -- and challenges to democracy elsewhere in the world. So I take your point, and I agree with that, that we don't necessarily see China actively trying to proselytize or export, if you will, authoritarianism, but the net effect of what the government of China is trying to do in the world to at least make the world safe for their system, the net effect of which, including with the two things I just said, their financial capability and the technology arena, is putting at greater risk democracy itself in other areas around the globe. So for that reason, I think it's a transnational issue that, again, is not just about China, but it's about our understanding of what makes populations around the globe tick, what domains within which competition may happen, technology being just one.

Andrew Hammond: And let's pivot back to the national intelligence officers. Do they all have a staff? They have a deputy, and then there is people that work alongside them? Just help me understand how this all shapes out structurally.

Michael Collins: Yeah, yeah. So each national intelligence officer probably has, I don't know, four to five or so on average, three to five, depending on the weight of the issue they're working on, deputy national intelligence officers that work for them. We also have a unified staff across the National Intelligence Council who support our outreach that we need to do, our uses of and engagement with foreign liaison partners, that we take seriously. We can speak to intel diplomacy, perhaps, as a mission as well that we support. So there's a cross-cutting administrative arm, or support arm, of the National Intelligence Council that supports every national intelligence officer, but within the NIC itself, every NIO has three to five, let's just say, deputy national intelligence officers working for them. But truly, the NIC should not be big, but what the national intelligence officer who is really as successful as doing, he or she is leveraging the rest of the analytics service across the IC, and they're also leveraging the experts in the academia and private sector. So again, their job function is not to sit in their own office with their own deputies and write the analysis themselves in a vacuum. They have to bring together the best of. So their "staff," if you will, putting in quotes, right, is broader than just those who sit within the NIC.

Andrew Hammond: So the way that they approach this as they're collating information from across the intelligence community to write products, but I guess I'm just trying to get a sense of it's not like when a product has to be written and the 18 directors all get together, and there's a big bureaucratic, you know, dogfight where, well, if you've got this in the document, I need this in the document and it's all -- it becomes the lowest common denominator. The national intelligence officers, they've got autonomy to collate and bring together the information working within the system that you oversee?

Michael Collins: Oh yes, for sure.

Andrew Hammond: Okay.

Michael Collins: We run a very flat organization. It would not succeed if it were not flat, and every national intelligence officer, also, the policy community knows that national intelligence officer is the lead analyst, if you will, for their requirements. So their relationship with the policymaker, the National Security Council in particular, is critical. It's through that relationship that we learn what it is a given AOR or policymaker may want for something. And so that drives the, I would say, the reactive requirements that we have to build for supporting a policy meeting for a particular area, and the NIO is responsible for ensuring we have those engagements with the policymaker to do so. Some of those requirements also include uses of analysis for, as I said earlier, this term intel diplomacy. How do we use intelligence to drive and open up and expose the truth about something, say around the world, for a policy purpose? Objective analysis born of the work of the NIC and the community to represent that. And also, they will learn of something on the outreach side, or the external engagement side, that they recognize, hey, this is something we also need to proactively support. We take seriously, again, the conversations we should be having with the outside. At the same time, they, themselves, proactively build a program of research analysis in each of their AORs that we then build together as a cohesive national program of research analysis through the NIC. That sort of is our contract of the deeper estimative product that we want to do over a given year. So they're not just -- I say that because they're not just reacting to the policymaker. They're also proactively initiating those enduring themes, working with the rest of the community to say, what are those particular projects we want to work on in a given year?

Andrew Hammond: Say you're a congressman or a senator. You've got a relationship with the national intelligence officer. He's telling you something you don't want to hear. Can you just go intelligence shopping and go, well, maybe the guy at the Defense Intelligence Agency will give me something that's closer to what I want to hear or the CIA? I think this is something that maybe people will think about.

Michael Collins: It's a great question and it happens. That's just the nature of the business, right? But as I said earlier, I think this is -- it's really, really helpful, and I would say the same, no matter where I sat. If I were still in the CIA, I would say the same thing. It is really, really, useful now that it's become an institutional practice for when the policy leadership wants to know what the IC thinks of something. You know, the NIC is responsible for bringing that together, including bringing together the dissents, disagreements. The NIOs who work for me know I challenge them to actually find dissent, find disagreement, so that we are representing the full views of the IC in a cohesive whole and making sure the policymaker also knows we're considering alternatives, right? But the NIC also is not attached to a particular policy agency. So not to suggest that anybody is biased, but there will be that perception sometimes. So it does happen. But I also think that we've established good institutional muscle memory for how to address that effectively. Last point, the NIC also proactively ensures that we are drawing in disagreements and dissents. The last thing I want is to neuter the analysis to such an extent that what we say is simply accepted by everybody, but it says nothing because it's too vanilla, right? You know, we want to make statements that are actionable, valuable. We'll push the line on making a call, obviously with the evidence needed to make that call. But you'll find in the process of doing so, others in communities say, well, I look at it differently this way, and that's a good thing. [ Music ]

Andrew Hammond: Here's a brief primer on the history of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. After 9/11, there was widespread consensus on the need to reform and reinvent the U.S. intelligence community so that this kind of surprise could not happen again. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, was established in 2004 as part of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act. The job of the ODNI was to coordinate with different agencies across the U.S. intelligence community. For example, the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the NSA, and the NRO. It was an attempt to address the fact that these agencies were not talking to one another as they should have been, which led to the stove-piping of information. This fragmented structure was viewed as a key factor that had prevented the intelligence community from connecting the dots and anticipating the 9/11 attacks. The current leader of the ODNI is the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines. [ Music ] [ Typewriter Typing ] Just to recap where we are, so we've got the National Intelligence Council, 1979. I've got the national intelligence officers. They've got a staff of three to five people. They're divided functionally and geographically. Build it out. Built the rest of it out for us. Is that -- and then you sit at the top of that, and you chair meetings with the National Intelligence Officers? Or help me understand how the rest of the --

Michael Collins: So yeah, we function on a recurring way with a weekly meeting we actually have in the National Intelligence Council where we talk about common issues across all of them to ensuring, again, the point I made earlier that what we're saying in one area helps to inform the other. I meet with NIOs individually, as well, to understand what they're doing in their community of analysts across the IC, what they're trying to stay ahead of.

Andrew Hammond: So all 18 of them, and you will meet like on a weekly basis?

Michael Collins: Yes. We will meet on a weekly basis at least. It can be substantive issues, or we could be talking about programmatic issues, as well, and things we want to do from a strategic standpoint, our outreach program, for example. But I think the other point worth stressing here is the NIC is an entity that sits within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, right? When the move happened, so it is an element within what ODNI is for the IC to integrate the IC together in a cohesive whole, which is why it was stood up originally in part on the terrorism side to connect the foreign with the domestic. That integrative function that ODNI services, reflected, obviously, in the National Intelligence Strategy the Director most recently put out. Those are six core elements that are not for ODNI specifically. Their goal is for helping the IC to be better at something, all of which are to help further integrate and find commonality across them. The NIC sits within ODNI as a part of that integration. We do analysis. We help to integrate the analysis literally and pull that together in such a way. But there are other elements of ODNI who, through the National Intelligence Strategy that they're governing, are trying to find best resources, capability, talent, et cetera, partnerships in an integrated way that support the entirety of the IC.

Andrew Hammond: Where is the National Intelligence Council based? Is it at the Intelligence Community Campus at Bethesda?

Michael Collins: No. It's still at CIA.

Andrew Hammond: Still at CIA?

Michael Collins: Yeah, we're still at the CIA headquarters, although I find myself going to Liberty Crossing quite often where the ODNI leadership is.

Andrew Hammond: Yeah, yeah. I can imagine. So I feel like we've got a good understanding of this now. Help me understand the products. So let's just break them down one at a time. So we have the National Intelligence Strategy. We've got the Annual Threat Assessments, and we've got the National Intelligence Estimates. Tell us about each of them, and how are they different?

Michael Collins: Okay. So let me begin with the National Security Strategy. So obviously, the U.S. National Security Strategy governs the national security community and says what it is the U.S. government is trying to accomplish. Methodically, that informs, therefore, the intelligence that we produce. I will say for the first time in recent memory, the new National Security Strategy has the word intelligence actually in it. I think it's a good thing.

Andrew Hammond: This is 2022.

Michael Collins: The 2022 one, right, where we recognized that intelligence itself is a national security asset just like military, diplomatic, economic, political, all the other are elements of power. Intelligence itself, and as I said, the decision advantage we owe our policymaker and what intelligence can do around the world is itself really, really, important to U.S. national security objectives. And so, that National Security Strategy then sets up the National Intelligence Strategy, which shows how the national intelligence community is prioritizing the things we need to be better at the requirements to support the National Security Strategy. The products that we produce, so I'm doing this from a strategic framework, right? So if I went from the U.S. Strategy to the U.S. National Intelligence Strategy and the components within that and what we need, the strategic estimates we say we want to work on, the programmatic things I said proactively that the NIOs or the NIC as a whole says, these are the things we really need to double down on because our strategy is saying this. That informs the National Intelligence Estimates that we say we're going to produce for the policymaker looking out. It can be over a five-year period. It can be a 10-year period. They can actually be very current. They don't actually have to be necessarily forward-looking. We also, by the way, increasingly, try to make those available transparently, the DNI's Transparency Initiative. Most recently, we, I think, put on our website an estimate we did on global health, for example. There's one in there on Iran we produced -- released recently, and most recently, I think as of yesterday, we put out a paper on how we think about non-state actors and international affairs. So you have to think about those as how are we identifying those longer-term ideas that we have to work on, not in silos, certainly, but what we say the National Security Strategy is saying and what our policymakers are saying in return? I would say the more day-to-day kind of product, it's not day-to-day necessarily, but there are other products that NIC produces that are not of that nature, that are more quick turnaround because of the policy meetings that will be happening downtown. There's a decision being made on something related to the Russia-Ukraine war or a decision being made on China or pick your issue, right? They will come to us to say, hey, we need some analysis to support that next week. Can you produce that? And those take different forms, but they're a more smaller scale, I would say. But they can be just as strategic. I always say the strategy is not a time-determined issue, right? It can be strategic about something you're trying to accomplish next week. What is necessary to bring that about?

Andrew Hammond: Yeah. So the National Intelligence Estimate, so that's more of a ruling product, and that can be on a variety of things. Is that correct?

Michael Collins: Yes. Yeah. Those can be on any given major topic for which we want the IC to step back and say, where is this issue trending over the next five, 10, 15 years?

Andrew Hammond: Energy, security.

Michael Collins: Energy. Yes. It can be -- I'm sorry. They can be functional or they can be country-specific. What's the state of warfare over the next five to 10, 15 years? What does misinformation and disinformation as a phenomenon actually matter? How is that playing out in what's happening in the global technology arena that we should stay on top of? And yes, we do these recurring estimates of country-specific topics that we probably need to look at. I also wanted to stress, even beyond the NIEs, we have this product we produce called Global Trends, which looks out multiple decades. We put it out every five years, right, to say, what is the state of the world trending toward? And that's one we do especially closely with the private sector, taking advantage of the work they do on similar issues. And then last, I would say the other annual thing that we're responsible for is the ATA, the Director's Annual Threat Assessment that she delivers to Congress publicly.

Andrew Hammond: The most recent one was this year, and that also has things by geography and by function like disruptive technology, the environment, China, Russia. It can be all of those things.

Michael Collins: Yes, and it's also, if you look at her delivery this year, we make sure that the audience understands the intersections across these. So the most recent, last couple we've stressed, the great power competition, clearly a factor we have to stay on top of. At the same time, we have to stress, and we spend a lot of time looking at these transnational issues that also matter to national security, and frankly, human security. And then there are these flash points or hotspots that we expect in the world. You can't analyze or assess those or even understand them in vacuums because one actually influences the other. So there's a, to my point I said earlier about sort of getting back to great power rivalry. Yeah, great power rivalry pervades a lot of what we're covering, so -- And there's an interesting part in the most recent documents. So you mentioned number one, positioning the IC for intensifying strategic competition. And here's a quote here. "The People's Republic of China is the only U.S. competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order, and increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so. So I think that that's -- it's interesting that that's number one and it really spells out what's at stake here, I think. Correct, and that explains why, as I said earlier, about what we're prioritizing, certainly in the National Intelligence Council, others are doing the same across the IC for thinking about that issue as it most consequentially affects other issues. And again, even if it's not necessarily though, stuffing a room with a bunch of China analysts as much as we need more of them, it's also to be effective at it. You've got to understand, as I said earlier, what the global coverage arena, use that term, what influences others? What are those vulnerable domains in the globe that are at risk? If we're not doubling down, which we are, positioning the IC for major-power competition, China being the leading, most consequential issue, if you will. We also really need to understand technology. We also really need to understand business. We also really need to understand media, what influences others? We have to really understand misinformation, disinformation, foreign-aligned influence as a factor, including in elections, right? Because those are all other issues, saying nothing necessarily about China, that if we're not really smart on them, we're not going to effectively manage the analysis needed on the China issue.

Andrew Hammond: And I think this is an interesting question, for your role, would you say that you're more of a coordinator, manager, leader, leader, strategist, diplomat, or all of the above?

Michael Collins: Probably all of that. I'll say this. I'll reflect on a personal note. One of the things that really attracted me to this assignment, I really enjoyed being the chief strategy officer for CIA and enjoyed the work I was doing there. It was exciting to sort of get back to analysis itself. I grew up as an analyst. That was the majority of my career at CIA was being an analyst or running analytic programs. But even in other assignments when I was, you know, a deputy for one of our mission centers where the operation analysis were integrated or as a CSO, and probably reflecting on my background before coming into the U.S. government, the scholarship of international affairs is really exciting to me. I know we're in the Spy Museum, and your audiences are looking at that, you know, the espionage piece of intelligence. And it's really, really important, and it's exciting, and I know some of the things we've done in that arena I can't speak to, of course. And that's a critical part of the information that we ultimately need to make the analysis in many unique ways. You know, for all that we say broadly about what is increasingly available in the open arena, and I mean this. To inform our analysis, there are some very critical things that the intelligence community only knows because of things we do in that undisclosed, if you will, arena. But it was exciting for me to get back to thinking about the substance and how we're studying the world. And so as much as my job on any given day, I am an administrator. I'm managing a personnel matter, or I'm being a diplomat, or I'm thinking about something programmatic, I really enjoy the time I'm able to spend with the NIOs, the deputy NIOs, or even the representatives of the IC who engage on issues to say, what are we really thinking here? Do we got this right? Have we really thought through where this may go and what it means for the policymaker? So --

Andrew Hammond: You're like the cop who became a manager in an office who now gets to go back out on the street to some extent?

Michael Collins: Yeah, I guess. That's a good way to say that, yes. For those in audience out there who appreciate that part of the intelligence, yes, correct.

Andrew Hammond: And for your role, who are some of your interlocutors? Like who are the people that you speak to like on a daily basis? Obviously, the national intelligence officers, people on your staff, but who else?

Michael Collins: Well, I mean, it's obviously the ODNI leadership for all the work product we produce, but as well, the responsibility we have for supporting the director, as I said earlier, not just her testimonies, but her engagements, her partnerships around the world. The policymaker downtown for, obviously, having a good pulse on what's important to them in the analysis that they need from us and what we're producing. Engaging the rest of the intelligence community, the heads of the analytic arms within the respective agencies so that we are, in fact, trying to do our best job to work together, and you always want elements to rate their product on a given area, right? But there's also meaning, as I said earlier, to the IC rating in a more integrated way. I also take seriously the time I spend engaging the private sector, increasingly so. This director has made it a priority for the intelligence community to be more normal, I'll use that word, with the private sector for everything I said earlier about what we need from them, the private sector, for many of the issues we're covering. I said -- I rattled off a bunch of them, technology, business. It's the private sector or the academic arena who knows that really well, and we need their insight. That's where we will need technology; we'll need innovation; we'll need talent, so we have to partner with them, and for those two reasons, we have to take seriously sort of a third way to think about this. We have to help protect them from the threats that are out there. The private sector is increasingly seriously part of this geopolitical threat arena, and so as important as they increasingly are, we have to take seriously our relationship and engagement with them. That's something I also do. And last, spend the time I can with our partners around the world, the heads of analysis in our intelligence organizations and partners around the globe for the same reasons that, you know, we're charged with giving our policymakers the best. They're charged with giving their policymakers the best, and I take seriously the role that objective analysis can actually have from an effect standpoint, collectively, from a national security standpoint, if we're challenging false narratives. For example, President Putin's false narrative about why he needed to invade Ukraine, right? The ability, the success the intelligence community had collectively with partners to say that's not -- what he's doing is not true, right? I say that because that's another important function, I believe sincerely about the role of objective analysis in international affairs. [ Music ] [ Typewriter Typing ]

Andrew Hammond: For your current job, do you interact much, or at all, with the House and Senate Committees on Intelligence?

Michael Collins: Yeah, I do when necessary, in terms of those sort of formal regular engagements, we should be having with our oversight. We take that engagement very seriously, of course, working with the ODNI leadership who synchronize our engagement with the Congress, but our NIOs also do as well. And again, to my point earlier about a flat organization, you know, they'll keep me informed, of course, of when they're called upon to go to the Hill. But they're there awful -- they're there a lot. And that's, as to my point I said earlier, that's a good thing. Again, the Congress, the White House, NS community is saying what does the IC, what's the view of the IC on something? And so when they're asking the NIO to attend, that's because they want the NIO and expect the NIO to speak for the community, represent the community. They will sometimes bring other members of the agencies that will also be in attendance, depending on the issue that's being discussed, but the NIO never goes down. I never go down as this is going to be speaking for the NIC. You're actually speaking for the IC. The NIC is an entity, but it's not an entity actually onto itself. So we do have a view, we have a view of issues we cover. But your job function is to say, what is the community's pulse on this issue? And you're representing that on the Hill quite often.

Andrew Hammond: I mean, this is a slightly unfair question, because it could easily be another entire podcast. But, you know, so just for example, so we have an exhibition next door. One day I'm walking here to the studio, I'll walk past one of the people on ground services. Quite often, they're students who do this part time. I said what are you reading? What do you think you're reading? The National Intelligence Strategy. I mentioned that you were coming in, and I know that people like him will listen to this. So the question is, what makes a good analyst? I know it's a bad one.

Michael Collins: So what makes a good analyst? And then there's what makes a good analyst, international affairs? So obviously, what makes a good analyst is a more functional question. One is you've got to have a desire to learn something and to explain it. I stress this because I think sometimes I hear too often, and we talk, we focus on programs of analysis. I stress the program of research analysis. So an analyst should want to explain something, and the real good analyst, or the impactful analyst, is trying to explain something we don't yet have an answer to. So you got to be inquisitive. You got to be -- you want to know something more. You really need to understand and be good at basing your judgments on the evidence and explaining what the evidence comes from, where it comes from. Critical thinking skill is obviously a top-notch requirement for anybody, frankly, in the intelligence community, but especially for the analyst. You just don't take something you heard the other day and say, oh, I'm going to tell the president this because I heard it on -- pick your platform, for example. So making judgments that, obviously, you can base on clear evidence and understanding the sourcing pertaining to it. At the same, forecasting, so what you're saying and explaining about what is happening in a given issue with the framework you've established saying, I think over time and space, these factors are most important to that issue. Can I apply it to looking ahead? And that's where I get to the national security analyst. The national security analyst, one, needs to really care about national security. That my job function is I'm an analyst for national security, so I should be thinking about international affairs. I should think about the United States. You should be thinking about the United States being successful in international affairs. You're not championing or cheerleading for the United States, but you're trying to take an objective course toward providing analysis that helps the United States and our partners, frankly, to succeed. But in the same lane, you've got to be thinking about in those frameworks you've built. When I look ahead, where is that phenomenon potentially going that the policymaker could tap into effectively? Critical thinking, a courage to speak truth to a given issue, and discipline to remove yourself from the latest narrative that's pervading a conversation to really ask yourself, what's the basis for that narrative? What's the basis for the information coming in? I'll say this, as well, and close on this particular point. I have young kids, and I worry every given day about stuff they see on social media, right? We take very seriously our job function to model how you critically think about the information you're absorbing and seeing coming across your screen every day before you express an opinion on something. I stress that. Before you express an opinion on something, you've thought about the information that you've seen. You've thought about the sourcing for it. You've questioned its veracity, and you've ultimately come to the conclusion this, and/or you're open to an alternative. Were it this then -- were the answer different, I would expect to see something else.

Andrew Hammond: One thing that I'm interested in, could you just explain to our listeners, you know, we've spoke about intelligence analysis and the National Intelligence Council, but not all intelligence analysis is equal. Can you tell them a little bit more about strategic intelligence, estimative, anticipatory, those types of things, and match them onto the products that the National Intelligence Council puts out?

Michael Collins: Oh, sure. So I guess it falls back to the question you're being asked or the question you're trying to answer. You could get a question that says, did that thing happen yesterday that was actually reported in the press? And so you have to apply analytic rigor based on the information you have available to answer that question without bias, obviously with, you know, with empirical basis. That could be a quick turnaround product where you're just trying to answer a question. The IC thinks this thing happened. It happened before, whatever. Then you could get a question that says, we're really wrestling with this issue downtown. We don't know how to get country X to move on this particular issue. Tell me what really influences that country, right? So you go back and you have to research over time and space, looking at similar events, what affected that country's disposition before? You're running the policymaker framework with which to think about how you could affect that particular issue. That's an example of a quick turnaround question you need an answer to, but it's more of a looking forward. How could I affect this country's disposition? Then there's the longer-term question, whether somebody's asking it or you think you need to ask it, right? As I said earlier, I don't think the NIOs nor the NIC is just responsive to questions. We have to think proactively about the questions that need to be asked and we should answer. You know, what is the state of misinformation and disinformation in the world today? So you're taking a broad look at going forward, that particular phenomena, understanding and assessing it. So the latter lend themselves more toward the National Intelligence Estimates, the more estimative forward-looking product, but this is why even the terms themselves can be misleading. I can be estimative in something I've asked my NIO to write tomorrow for something estimating what might happen two months from now on the front lines between Russia and Ukraine, for example, or I could be estimating a phenomena over 5, 10, 15, or, you know, 25 years in case of global trends, for example, 20 to 25 years. So as I said to your question, the product, it's not necessarily the product form. You know, it's sort of what the question that's been asked and, you know, what the policymaker most needs for whatever the given issue they're wrestling with, if that makes sense.

Andrew Hammond: Just a couple of final questions. One is, you know, you've spent your career in the intelligence community. What is the one thing that you have found in your career or the directors are saying to you now, they're like, I just wish the American public knew this one thing about intelligence that they don't quite seem to understand or the most misunderstood thing about intelligence? I've spent my whole life here, and here's the thing that I commonly come across or here's the thing that people commonly say to me. I just wish the person in Peoria, Illinois, knew this. Would there be one?

Michael Collins: Yeah, thanks for the question. I'll just say two, one at a strategic level, one more on a more tactical level or practical level. The first is that the intelligence officer, him or herself, and especially the analyst, the point I made earlier about speaking truth to power without bias, without being the arm of another government agency, the misperception that I often see outside of the government of what role the intelligence community is playing in something that it never actually played. We take very seriously and with very strong means of accountability, the intelligence organizations, obviously following the law, but even beyond the law to the point I said about our culture and our integrity. Bias is something we always try to avoid, and anytime we are, in any sense, feeling pressure from somebody on the outside, be it in a government agency or elsewhere, or even within organizations to say certain things for a particular reason, the blood of the intelligence community pushes back against that instinctively, whatever realm or whatever role you play in the intelligence organization. And I wish people outside kind of more understood that, that we take very seriously our independent analysis, speaking, making judgments on issues that we think the facts substantiate without any consideration for politics, motivation, other personal or other objectives people may have. And we have review chains, mentioned earlier, where we go through to ensure that is the case. To the same, at the strategic level, we're a national security asset, to the point I said about the national security strategy now having it in there. You want your intelligence community to be successful for what I just said, because increasingly, that is where the United States and the security of the United States is increasingly going to depend. The other point I was going to mention was, I know sometimes we too narrowly define the word intelligence as something secret, and that hurts us. That's the point I said earlier, I think, and define the word more literally. Am I smarter on something, however I got the information necessary to be smarter on it? And I say that because that's an open invitation for those, whether in the intel community or outside the intel community, to contribute. We need your intelligence. We need your insight. We need your expertise, and we'll be knocking on your door. You should knock on our door. And to that end, I just mentioned earlier, I think the Director's Transparency Initiative, where we are trying to more regularly and openly share our views on issues is important. We need perspective. We need people to challenge us. We are humble. We will make mistakes. We will make mistakes because, as I said earlier, we're trying to make judgments that mean something. If all we tried to do was not make mistakes, then we'll provide the least-common denominator analysis or the CYA analysis. That isn't helpful. We should be fired if that's all we're doing, right? So don't think of the intelligence organization only, as much as there are, of course, strong secrets that need to be protected and sources and methods we need to protect for all the things I said earlier. Increasingly, for the intelligence that, to the point I made earlier, the United States needs to be successful, we've got to be partnered with and engaging more with the private sector, the public sector, et cetera, for everything they, you know, they do. So --

Andrew Hammond: And final question, you mentioned that you have kids. So when you read, in preparation for this interview, I read all of the documents that the NIC produces, or the most recent ones. A lot of them, you know, can be quite uncomfortable reading sometimes just because of the nature of the world. That's just the way things are. So the question is, how do you stay rosy or optimistic about the future when you're dealing with all this stuff or when you're working in the intelligence community for 30-odd years? How do you keep your spirits up? I think it's called pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will. How do you keep going?

Michael Collins: Thanks for this question. It's just one thing I'm sort of reflecting on myself, but I'm reflecting on what others have observed in me. I think I can tend to be a little bit of a unicorn in the intel community. It's customary in the intel community for the intel officer to be pessimistic, say the world is ugly, lots of threats out there; bad things are happening. I did my job if I told you something bad is happening. I have always throughout my career taken seriously what I call the third paragraph in the analytic product. The first paragraph says here's the bad thing. Second paragraph says this is what the bad thing means for the United States. Third paragraph is what can be done to stop the bad thing, or more importantly, to identify an opportunity? I have to be optimistic. If I weren't, I wouldn't be in this job. To the point I said earlier, I take very seriously, and I expect those who work for me to take seriously, you want the United States to succeed. You want the United States to be secure, and you want the United States to be as competitive as it possibly can be. Begin with that, and if you're not optimistic, and all you can do is say things are bad, you're not being helpful. I'm not saying and trying to be overly optimistic to say, oh, don't worry. The world will lay out as exactly -- the United States will achieve. No, it won't, but it requires us, if you're optimistic and you're beginning with an outcome that says, you know what? I'm going to pretend, I would just say, 20 years from now, the United States succeeded at this thing, that the National Security Strategy was successful. How did we get there? So you actually have to be an effective analyst to the question you asked earlier. You have to be optimistic because you're trying to put yourself in a place where you're allowing the policymaker to imagine, envision how you can be successful while mitigating every threat to getting there, while at the same time, being as honest and forthright as you can be to say, here are the serious threats you face and the consequences to the United States that exist. So my long way of saying that is, I am an optimist and I have to be an optimist and to some extent, I expect every intelligence officer to be optimistic because, to the point I said, if all we're doing is warning of something bad happening, I don't know if we're being successful in helping the policymaker to actually succeed. So --

Andrew Hammond: I love that third paragraph.

Michael Collins: Yeah, the third paragraph is really important. Yeah.

Andrew Hammond: Yeah. Well, thanks ever so much for your time. This has been a great conversation. I've very much enjoyed it.

Michael Collins: Thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it. [ Music ] Thanks for listening to this episode of SpyCast. Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoy the show, please tell your friends and loved ones. Please also consider leaving us a five-star review. Coming up next week on SpyCast.

Speaker 1: Being a lawyer in this space doesn't have to just be compliance. It can be a very creative endeavor that requires of you to really understand the technology and bridge the gaps on the boundaries and guide how it underpins our society and works for us, not against us.

Andrew Hammond: If you have feedback, you can reach us by email at spycast.spymuseum.org or on X @intlspycast. If you go to our page at thecyberwire.com/podcast /spycast, you can find links to further resources, detailed show notes, and full transcripts. I'm your host, Andrew Hammond. My podcast content partner is Erin Dietrick. The rest of the team involved in the show is Mike Mincey, Memphis Vaughn III, Emily Coletta, Emily Renz, Afu Anokwa, Ariel Samuel, Elliot Peltzman, Tre Hester, and Jen Eiben. This show is brought to you from the home of the world's preeminent collection of intelligence and espionage-related artifacts, the International Spy Museum. [ Music ]