Something is changing in our country, and most
people feel it before they can explain it. Welcome
back to the Steady State Sentinel. I'm Brie Fram,
a retired Space Force colonel and astronautical
engineer forced out by the Trump administration.
Like so many of the people that we have, it's
a challenge to figure out... What is it that
we do to hold on to our oath? What got us into
national security? And what do we do with the
knowledge that we've gained? So that's why I'm
really excited today to be talking with Julia
Curley. Julia is a public service fellow at Lawfare
and a former CIA analyst with 25 years of experience
in national security. She served as a National
Security Council director in the Biden and second
Trump White Houses and as a presidential daily
brief briefer to the vice president. She completed
multiple tours in the Middle East and South Asia
and served in CIA's China Mission Center. She
holds master's degrees from the National War
College and American University. Julia, thanks
for joining us on The Sentinel. Wonderful. Thanks,
Bree. You make me sound really old. That's quite
the list of things. But no, I'm thrilled to be
here and talk with you. And, you know, full disclosure,
I not only do not represent the views of the
United States government, but Bree and I are
friends. Yeah, how dare we get into this without
saying that I actually know you. As many people
who have been tossed out do, but also who have
been in this fight for so long and are now speaking
out. Tends to be those circles close up quite
a bit. But what I really wanted to get into to
start off this with you was kind of your motivation
for... Why this kind of career? Why dive into
something that is behind the shadows that I know
you now are just letting a little peek into?
Even with that, disclaimers abound. But you jumped
into something where people are not going to
know about the vast majority of what you did
throughout your career. Why did you join the
CIA and get into something that is so challenging
for so many people to understand? You know, I
don't even know really where it came from. So
I grew up in Hawaii. I was a barefoot kid on
the beach for most of my feral childhood. And
from nowhere, I got this wanderlust, this desire
to see the world. And it probably was The Hunt
for Red October. Who am I kidding? The movie
where the analyst is the hero, I will note. And
so... I got it in my head when I was weirdly
young that a career at the CIA would be for me.
And I was very fortunate to get to live out that
dream. I did multiple tours in war zones and,
you know, there were ups and downs along the
way, but it was a wonderful career. I deeply
miss still being a part of CIA. I loved its mission.
I love its people. I love it still. And, you
know, here we are podcasting instead of working
in the national security infrastructure. But
nonetheless, public service carries on. And so
I'm happy to be able to be here with you today.
I think that's one of the big things that people
need to understand about these ongoing purges
all around and making life for federal workers
so hellish is the brain drain that we're losing
and that. Both you and I likely would have been
doing this kind of career for another 10 plus
years in an alternate universe where the value
of intelligence wasn't demeaned, where the consideration
of outside opinions actually mattered. We would
still likely be in positions supporting our national
security and the government. But that kind of
flows into what I want to talk about with you
is the bulk of our conversation is the value
of intelligence and why the production of intelligence,
that analyst piece that you saw and said, oh
my God, that's actually important. Why that matters
and why doing it in a rigorous fact -based way
matters. Let's start by telling me about how
is intelligence used at the highest levels of
government and how should it be used? There are
various definitions of intelligence, but I think
the simplest way to describe it is it's information
made useful. Information made... So that one
could not misunderstand the message. Information
put in the right context to help a policymaker
make the right decisions. And so the information
that flows out of smoky bars overseas or is intercepted
out of the airwaves by NSA, all of that is raw
reporting. And while we could call it intelligence,
it doesn't really provide the policymaker what
they need. And to jump to the end, not having
intelligence, not just being a pun here, results
in terrible decisions. As we've seen several
times in our adult lives where either intelligence
was cherry picked or alternative views were shut
out, it leads to terrible decisions on behalf
of the United States and all of us have suffered
from it. it's the Iraq WMD fiasco or all the
way to the present with the Iran war. So I'd
be happy to get into more details on how a report
makes its way through the ecosystem, how a bill
becomes a law, if that would help. Yeah, what
I think I want to dive into a little bit more
is a word you mentioned there. context. When
you get that raw report from the field on something
that has happened or something has been identified,
by the time it makes it to a president, to a
senior official in the government, there's a
lot of context that normally is added to that.
How does that occur and how Do people inject
themselves into that to decide what context is
relevant to our senior leaders? Well, putting
it in context probably takes place at every single
level of the intelligence cycle, which is the
phrase we use for it. So a meeting happens in
a bar. The case officer can tell you if they
have existing relationships. They put the meeting
and the person in context so that the individual
report comes back. Somebody back in Washington
is reading these reports. They're looking at
all of the information that individual source
has said over time, putting that in context.
Kicking it over to the analyst who made an entire
profession about putting things in context. Where
does this one report fit in with the pattern
of behavior we are seeing? from the country,
from past instances, what we know to be the trajectory
of events. And at each one of these layers, there's
an entire profession devoted to having the expertise
to do the best possible work on behalf ultimately
of a customer of one at the top who will make
the final decisions. Once the analysts have worked
through these hard problems, put things in context,
say, ah, this report doesn't work, this one does,
then it gets transmitted onward in the form of
finished analysis to policymakers, whether that
is at the National Security Council, the Secretary
of State, Defense, or ultimately the premier
product that the intelligence community produces
is the PDB, the President's Daily Brief. Despite
its name, not only the president receives the
president's daily brief, and unfortunately under
this president, the president doesn't normally
read the president's daily brief, but it does
serve as a valuable context leveling across the
U .S. government so that everybody has the same
set of facts and the same basic analysis to help
them make good decisions. You were a presidential
daily brief briefer, and I want to talk eventually
about some of the gates it reaches. before that,
but when it finally got to you and you were the
one providing that update, did you still feel
it was your job to add additional context or
what did you have to be aware of to be able to
provide this brief as the lead briefer? Right.
So to use the office space line, we talk to the
customer. We're that final step to deliver the
piece of information. And as much as analysts
like me would love to believe that you just sort
of throw the paper over the wall and there's
a policymaker waiting to catch it and they will
just do whatever you tell them to do, that doesn't
happen. A human, in the case of the top officials
of our government, receives a morning briefing.
where they have a live person, often with at
least 10 to 20 years of experience in the intelligence
community, often with deep regional or functional
knowledge themselves, that can walk them through
these reports and make their, because their time
is among the most valuable assets that they have.
And so they have a person who's already read
everything, who can help capture the most important
parts and speed them through that so they don't
miss anything. What I'll say about like the individual
briefer. This is a job like no other. This is
a job where you're rolling in at midnight, where
your loved ones will probably see the indentation
in the pillow, but not the person themselves.
where you're spending all night, like in an all
-night cram session for an exam every morning,
and you don't know what subjects are going to
be tested, but here you are. You've got to commit
to memory. And you learn both the information
consumption styles of customers to fold, because
it's their needs that have to come first, because
they're the principal. And so you mold the way
it's delivered to their needs. Famously, George
W. Bush preferred an oral briefing, and so these
were presentations, and people... would put together
a presentation bringing outside experts. Also
famously, Barack Obama was a reader. He, for
some reason, didn't want a CIA analyst staring
at him while he was reading the PDB. As a policy
customer at one point, I also felt it was a little
weird to have somebody staring at me. But what
I did is I, like in a hybrid approach, which
many... policy customers will do. I will read
the piece first and then ask them questions and
engage in that kind of dialogue. And it's in
that context that you can task out your questions,
which get scurried back to Langley or wherever
else where legions of analysts are waiting and
you give them the tasking and they're going to
work while you go to bed and you try to get a
few hours of sleep before you've got to wake
up at midnight. And hopefully there's a paper
waiting for you in the morning that will answer
the policymakers' questions. So it's a... It's
a great customer service oriented business, but
high stakes. And I was very lucky to get to travel
around the world with the vice president. When
you're presenting that information, there is
often a confidence level associated with it.
How do you convey that in particular when it's.
low. What is the challenge that these briefers
or the generators of intelligence along the way
face in providing the sort of confidence that
allows good decision making? Yeah, the use of
this estimative language and confidence levels
is often misunderstood. And I don't blame them.
It's a little bit obscure. Sometimes it's an
effort to put quantities or numbers behind the
language that we use. So, you know, you'll have
live debates over whether 25 % likely is unlikely.
Is it possible? And there's like lots of analyst
on analyst violence over what means what. So
it's very difficult, which is why having a live
human is really good. But one of the key points
that's worth making is the United States collects
a tremendous amount of information. I can't get
into the details of what it is, but we had this
joke that you could basically construct any narrative
you wanted based on what we'd already collected.
And so if your theory is that aliens stole the
election, almost certainly there's going to be
a report of an alien visitation and attempted
manipulation of voting machines. So if you were
having to present that to a customer saying,
well, we have intelligence saying the aliens
visited, you probably also offer a low confidence
estimate. And whether that's because of the subject
or the obvious issues with that statement or
the sourcing just is a little bit weak. It's
like second or third hand. So it's another attempt
to make sure the policymaker doesn't misunderstand
what we're trying to convey to them. I certainly
had some of that experience with a little bit
of our signals intelligence pipeline and just
seeing how massive it is. And that's one type
of intelligence from one area. So there is a
massive amount collected every day, every second,
and there is a natural funneling of this. We
talked a little bit about the context and about
some of these organizations where... more and
more is put in and fused together along the way.
But you had a lot of experience near the top
of that funnel. So while those analysts in the
field may be adding some context or maybe taking
two or three different sources and pulling it
together, by the time it gets to the Director
of National Intelligence or the National Security
Council, it's already passed through a lot of
gates where some is filtered out, some moves
on, and you're getting... towards the top of
what ends up in that briefing that you provided.
But I want to dig into those two organizations.
And you've recently written about both. So let's
start with the DNI. We recently just had John
Clayton confirmed, or excuse me, Jay Clayton
confirmed as the new Director of National Intelligence.
But in the meantime, for a little while, we had
Bill Pulte. And you wrote of him as the apotheosis
of incompetence and malevolence. What is the
danger of having someone that can be described
that way, even in an interim role at the DNI?
Right. So just we should do a brief history lesson
on where the DNI came from. So for most of the
U .S. intelligence community's history, there
was not a DNI, which meant that you have all
these agencies, but no one technically above
them. So you had the director of the CIA given
these community management responsibilities.
But generally, the director of the CIA was focused
on the CIA and neglecting the other parts of
the community. So there wasn't this like synthesis
across. the agencies, not bureaucratically, you
know, in a natural configuration. And so they,
after 9 -11, after the Iraq WMD fiasco, there
was a, the Congress decided to move ahead with
one idea that had floated around for some time,
which was the director of national intelligence,
who would be above the rest of the intelligence
community's 15 independent. independent agencies
and ensure that they're cooperating, ensure that
the alternative perspectives are being missed,
that we're not missing connecting the dots as
in 9 -11, but also to serve as the president's
senior intelligence advisor. which was baked
in from the beginning but is a problem when the
director of the CIA also thinks of themselves
as the president's senior intelligence advisor
or the director of the NSA thinks of themselves
as the president's preeminent expert on SIGINT.
And so there was a little bit of a problem from
the beginning where you had an individual who
didn't have much of an organization underneath
him and the people that supposedly worked for
him were all answerable in their careers to someone
else. So it was an issue from the beginning and
for the most of its history, the DNI has just
been thought of as basically ineffective. And,
you know, at the beginning of the administration,
it's actually mentioned in the Haberman Swan
book, the selection of Tulsi Gabbard was surrounded
by the idea, well, you know, she's got some ideas,
but. How much harm can she do? It's the DNI after
all. Like that was like literally what the president
said about her appointment. And I would have
said I agreed for most of the last couple of
decades. And there have been various reform proposals
to put more meat on the bones of the DNI. But
it basically wasn't thought of as a threat. Unfortunately,
under this administration, it has been weaponized.
And whether we're talking about Tulsi Gabbard's
repeated use of selective declassification, which
is a power that she has, or in order to reveal
information that would specifically hurt the
president's political enemies or provide some
narrative that he wants to hear, or it's her
getting involved in law enforcement matters,
like down in Georgia, which is not a responsibility
of the DNI. Separately, at the same time, the
DNI has accumulated some bureaucracies, which,
again, were not malicious, but were thought of
as somewhat redundant. You have the NCTC, which
is the National Counterterrorism Center, designed
to get FBI and CIA to talk to each other. FBI
and CIA already were working together and had
the information and the assets to prosecute counterterrorism.
So again, it was this, what is this institution
trying to be above them? There's also a National
Counterintelligence Center, which suffers from
the same problem, where both CIA, FBI, and other
agencies are responsible for the same mission,
and they're the door kickers. So you've had an
organization that's been adrift, looking for
a cause since 9 -11, perhaps getting too big,
and a director who has all of these authorities
that they can use maliciously. It was like a
loaded gun waiting on the table. And here we
are with Tulsi Gabbard. And then now we had Bill
Pulte following in her wake. And we're going
to have Clayton, who was confirmed by the Senate.
But in each of these cases, We're not seeing
any evidence that the DNI is going to stand up
for the intelligence community, the workforce,
and serve the broader interests of the United
States rather than just the person of Donald
Trump, the president. What should the role of
the DNI be, in your opinion? How does it either
serve as a gatekeeper, as a policy, as an organized
train and equip function for the intelligence
community? Where should it be? Or have we moved
beyond that kind of need for this coordinating
function at that level? Well, I think that there's
probably a need for a coordinator role, which
was the one thing that CIA really couldn't do
on its own and what led to a lot of resentment
of CIA for advancing its primacy in the intelligence
community. But much of else of what the DNI does
probably could be done by someone else. If you
look at important functions like the president's
daily briefing, CIA could probably run that and
with proper oversight would incorporate other
agencies' information. CIA is, according to public
reporting, already producing about 80 to 90 percent
of what goes in the book. They could probably
take that responsibility on. Most of the briefers
are from CIA. It could probably work. The NIC,
which is the National Intelligence Council. Also,
they produce NIEs. They produce the now famous
2020 election assessments. Also could be taken
in by CIA. People could could rotate in from
other agencies on on joint duty assignments.
So you have that interagency flavor, but you
don't necessarily need it to be in a different
agency. But there are other things that the DNI
does that probably make sense to be the responsibility
of someone, not someone with authorities and
perhaps idle hands leading them to taking actions
like what Tulsi Gabbard and Pulte have done.
But I think that there is a need for a considered...
look at this problem. It's one of the things
I'm working on now that I'm out of government
is trying to think about how to right -size the
DNI in the future. But one thing I would just
want to say is that Pulte and Tulsi have also
been doing this, but the mass layoffs, the mass
firings of DNI officers, seemingly with no explanation
of why or who, other than they're the deep state
enemy within, or other than the DNI should be
smaller. I thought that as being the custodian
of the government, you'd want to put some time
and thought into a zero -based review of its
functions, who is needed and who is not. I don't
know how to remind people, but we're in the middle
of a war with Iran. And there were, according
to press, potentially cyber attacks on the United
States, in the United States, that affected the
water treatment in several American states. And
one of the agencies, one of the entities that
looks at that, of foreign terrorist activity
in the U .S. is the NCTC, which is under the
gun and potentially being purged. So other than
providing a supply of people to be ritualistically,
performatively fired to create content on the
internet, I don't know what the goal is. And
so... I'm all in favor of reducing the DNI. Reasonable
people can disagree. I hope more thought is put
into this. But what this administration has done
with the DNI is to weaponize it and to turn it
into some sort of tool to be used for performance
in the media at the expense of really hardworking
people. I do want to get into that a little bit
further. And the cost of ever offering a dissenting
view, which has become very clear, is you're
gone in this administration. But before we talk
about kind of that in a broader picture, put
your other hat on. You worked on the National
Security Council. And that, if we extend this
coordination function for national security beyond
just The intelligence community was designed
to do that coordination among all aspects of
government to make sure that the president was
capable of making well -informed decisions, that
we get all the perspectives possible. And now,
of course, it doesn't seem like any perspective
is needed on anything. But I want to... quote
a phrase that you wrote in an article that said,
the breakdown of the NSC's coordination function
may be precisely what the president and his advisors
want, but has produced serious miscalculations
from ill -conceived tariffs to the catastrophic
planning failures in the run -up to the war with
Iran. Probably most listeners of this podcast
would say, yeah, of course, that is exactly what
it has done. Tell me how a healthy NSC does that
coordination function and helps prevent catastrophic
decision making. So much like the DNI, there
are many opinions on what the best form of an
NSC is. And the Biden administration in which
I served came under criticism for being overly
centralized, bureaucratic, too many meetings,
too much White House control and not enough deference
to departments and agencies. The Obama administration
had suffered from the same critique. But we have
now experienced the alternative, which is effectively
a NSC that has been neutered and not. functional
at all. I think that just to give you more mechanics
on how the NSC works, I'll just do a very brief
overview. So at the very top of the NSC would
be the actual National Security Council, chaired
by the president in the Situation Room. And below
them could be a principals committee without
the president, sometimes including the vice president,
which would be the heads of departments and agencies,
the secretary of state, defense, CIA, the director
of the national intelligence. And they would
be the sort of the key, like really the highest
non -presidential decision making body. Below
them, a deputies committee, which is where the
real work, you know, of developing options to
tee up for the decision maker heads of departments.
These are the deputies. So the deputy director
of the CIA, the deputy secretary of state and
so on and so on. And then below them, you have
assistant secretary level work, which is which
is where the real expertise resides. Above that
level, these are individuals who their days are
scheduled in 15 minute increments. They don't
have time to read a 10 page report on the state
of the war in Iran. They have people for that
and they get briefed and they don't need to do
that because they have whole staffs of experts
who have devoted their lives to becoming the
best Iran maritime expert that could provide
you expert advice on what to do about our inability
to transit the Strait of Hormuz. So if you effectively
decapitate the NSC, which is what happened in
the third day of the administration, send 160
career staffers home with no replacements in
place, you rip the wiring out of the system.
It immediately prevents a normal cadence of assistant
secretary level meetings from happening. You
get these deputies and above meetings, which
if you saw the signal gate. fiasco where they'd
been using Signal to run high -level policy meetings.
And if you just see what was there, you'll find
how amateurish it was and how these individuals
didn't really understand the options at hand
or the background of the case. So we have a system
designed to prevent that. But this administration
effectively cut off its own hands, plucked out
its own eyes. The point I was trying to make
that you were paraphrasing is the president can
want things. The president can have urges. But
that doesn't mean they will be done or done well.
And what this administration has done is it's
acting as if it is not in charge of the world's
largest corporation. It's not acting as if it's
responsible for the results and the performance
of the most complex organization on the planet,
the US government. It's acting as if it's just
a vertical. as if the words coming out of the
president don't need expert advice. They don't
need a national security council. They don't
need a coordinated intelligence community because
he doesn't need any additional information. But
that can't possibly be true that he is the world
expert on the implementation of oil sanctions
on Iran. He hasn't spent a career studying that.
And so I think the predictable result of all
of that is both bad decisions. But then when
those decisions are made, they can't even implement
those decisions effectively. And that's why I
brought up the case of the war in Iran, where
despite decades of public war games that talked
about how the Iranians would close the Strait
of Hormuz, that decapitating the Iranian leadership
would not lead to the collapse, or how the Iranians
would hit back, including potentially in the
United States, somehow none of those considerations
made it up to the top, which any functional...
NSC structure would have done. So what we're
seeing here is, I think, by design, but the catastrophic
results were predictable. The buy design has
been clear in my own experience when we were
talking about the Golden Dome missile shield
and how that was going to be implemented. When
initial ideas out of the administration showed
up, my comment as an engineer on these things
was, this is the least technologically feasible,
highest cost way of accomplishing this mission.
And when I tried to raise that point to get it
to the political appointees, One of my bosses
basically just said, we can't tell them that
because the only thing they're willing to hear
is yes. And my understanding is that was what
was happening everywhere. at the political appointee
level. Dissent was not a consideration. And in
a healthy National Security Council or at any
lower level, I'm guessing you saw dissent that
was valuable. And perhaps without getting into
specifics, can you talk about how dissent and
different perspectives come together in making
better outcomes? Right. The intelligence community
does not exist to tell the president what he
wants to hear. It exists to describe the world
as it is and what is likely to happen next. So
if by dissent we mean presenting a version of
events that he doesn't like, the intelligence
community does that every day. We had a joke
among analysts that the only consistent analytic
bias of a CIA officer is your policy is going
to fail and there's nothing you can do about
it. So that is just in the bloodstream of a...
of an organization that, that, you know, chisels
on the wall, the idea that the truth will set
you free and that, you know, truth to power.
But what has happened is when dissent has arrived.
So I'll use the case of the Trendel Aragua assessment,
which was this Venezuelan street gang, prison
gang that the administration wanted to designate
as a terrorist organization. And I was the acting
senior director on day one of the administration.
And when Stephen Miller wanted an assessment
that said, the very thing that would be the predicate
for invoking the terrorism authorities or the
Alien Enemies Act, which would open up another
basket of authorities for deportations. I tasked
it to the National Intelligence Council, who
dutifully did the assessment. And when the word
came back that, no, in fact, the street gang
wasn't directed to invade the United States,
it's a street gang, the head of the NIC was fired,
along with his deputy. They both had stood up
for the values of our organization of speaking
truth to power, and they were fired for it. And
this has happened again and again. And so whether
it was that case or it was the firing of the
director of the Defense Intelligence Agency for
rightly claiming in public or rightly testifying
that the Iranian nuclear program had not been
dissolved or had not been destroyed in the first
wave of attacks, which subsequently, of course,
the administration had to admit as it. went to
war a second time for the same purpose, to eliminate
the Iranian nuclear program. It has taught analysts
across the community that any form of dissent,
even dissent a decade ago, if you wrote one of
the Russia assessments, can be held against you.
And so we've seen with this administration a
type of politicization, which I think hasn't
been seen in the U .S. since the McCarthy administration.
And it is driving out a generation of officers.
who want to serve their country, but do not want
to be part of the president's political agenda.
And this again manifested itself in the election
speech the president gave the other day, which
we can also talk about. There is so much there
that we could dive into in another episode about
the brain drain that we're seeing, the generational
work to rebuild trust and capability that is
inevitably. going to have to follow this administration.
But because we don't have terribly much time,
I want to get into just one more topic on the
rules -based order. that this country used to
operate in. Does something like that still exist
within our relationships to organizations like
NATO or the value of the alliances that we have
as we kind of careen from one presidential whim
or grievance to another? How do our friends and
allies or our friends who... who may no longer
be or may no longer want to be our friends, see
this kind of behavior, these wild swings of policy?
And do we still have an opportunity to lead in
this environment? I'll first begin with the idea
that the international rules -based order, by
which we mean the institutions, the alliances
that we built after we won World War II, were
designed with America's national interest in
mind of cementing our primacy around the world.
And they worked for decades. And ensured American
commerce had access to countries around the world.
And we were, you know, the dollar was the reserve
currency of the world. So we could effectively
borrow unlimited money. All of that has been
based on U .S. primacy alliances, you know, military
power that and offering security to our allies
and partners by falling in under that umbrella.
This administration has gotten it into its head
that. All of that doesn't matter, that allies
and partners are freeloaders and they have effectively
shredded several of our key alliances. Now, they
might be lingering on. NATO still exists. Article
5 of NATO still exists. But does anyone believe
that if Estonia were invaded, that Donald Trump
would be interested in committing American forces?
It has been a tremendous blow to our alliances.
And, you know, I'll put it in a couple of specifics
for you. If you are a foreign government deciding
whether to share valuable intelligence with the
United States, but you believe that the U .S.
intelligence community has been politicized or
that the White House is going to plop your information
on the White House website because it serves
a political end, you're not going to give us
information. If you're a source deciding whether
to work with the United States and the White
House might plop your secret information that
you risk your lives to deliver to the U .S.,
you're not going to get that information. Beyond,
there's this idea that soft power of the United
States is some airy -fairy thing, but the power
of the United States is built on our attractiveness.
And even in the context of this administration,
I'll just put it in purely their terms, it was
a presidential priority at the beginning of the
administration to ensure access to critical minerals,
which are the key elements going into advanced
weapons systems and the U .S. economy. What did
they do in the opening? part of the administration.
They doged, they put into a woodchipper USAID,
which was the primary source of US influence,
prying open markets in the very countries that
were the critical minerals providers. And so
when you hurt an ally or partner, and then you
turn around and make demands of them, they seem
to be a little less interested in that. In the
Iran case, where we launched a war of choice.
which we couldn't finish in the end. Midway through
the conflict, we start berating our allies for
not jumping in to provide us with capabilities
like minesweepers that we needed. I traveled
in France earlier this year, and the farmers
were not planting their spring crop. They couldn't
afford the gas because they were paying double
of what they would normally pay. It would not
be economically profitable. In the local context
where you have French farmers who can't put in
their crops, they're watching local news and
local news is telling them precisely who is at
fault. They're saying the United States launched
a war of choice without talking to our countries
or considering our interests. And this is replicating
itself all around the world, whether it is basing
rights in East Asia or the future of the NATO
alliance. Countries just simply are going their
own way. When a new administration comes in,
God willing, and is trying to put these things
back together, the damage has been done because
our allies and partners will know that we are
always going to be four years away from potentially
doing a hard turn toward isolationism and tearing
up the agreements that we worked out with them.
So we're going to have to do some serious thinking
about what a future American foreign policy looks
like because it's just not going back to where
it was because of the damage of this administration.
Getting away from something that... That goes
back to the post -World War II era. It was our
enlightened self -interest to help others because
they then wanted to help us and we all benefited
from it. Where we've now transitioned to this
much more naked power, running a country like
a crime family that has a demand to say, give
me something or else. Now, with that falling
apart and with this reluctance of our allies
to support us, whether that is from a simple
intelligence product, that is basing access,
that is more longer and durable partnership.
Who wins in all of this? Who is being empowered
to act around the globe? Well, it is quite remarkable
at the time that the United States is tearing
up its own alliances. We're seeing our adversaries.
working together, you know, closer than ever
before. You have North Korea sending, you know,
support to help the Russians fight in Ukraine.
You've got the Iranians providing Shahid drones,
which are one of the main weapons that are hurting
the Ukrainians and now are being used against
us in the Gulf. I mean, you have the Chinese
weapons being sold to the Iranians. You have
all of our main adversaries now working together
on a closer basis. While meanwhile, we're tearing
up our own alliances. Now, I don't want to get
too far ahead of it. I mean, there's obvious
major differences between this type of transactional
behavior between them. But we're going the wrong
direction. And this administration, in its national
security strategy, has no understanding of who
actually America's adversaries are. They've taken
out Russia. They've marginalized China. Everything
is about some dealmaking that they can do. And
then they've elevated domestic groups as the
real enemy within. Doing our enemies work for
us. So it's been really disheartening to watch.
And I think it's just a natural consequence of
both the president's desires to not be corrected
when he's wrong and the lack of coordination
across the U .S. government that would have elevated
these concerns as decisions were being made in
a process in the first administration, in the
first Trump administration, that was largely
followed. So it didn't have to be like this.
It's going to be a long two and a half more years
to get through it unless the administration fundamentally
changes how it makes decisions. And you see no
evidence that they're going to. I think what
we are starting to see is countries and leaders
around the world stopping even responding to
us or to the latest outburst of the president.
We're saying it'll be different. two days later.
And to close out, I do want to touch on some
of this with Iran, that we are constantly in
this back and forth where we are saying one thing,
the Iranians are saying another, and there's
no even chance to get back to the status quo
ante. Is there any other out that you see that
is different than a lose, lose, lose? proposition?
Or have we basically given up the opportunity
to even get back to what was and create the conditions
for prosperity in the Middle East? You know,
after the Iraq war, I really didn't think I would
see a strategic blunder that the United States
would commit, especially in the Middle East,
that would compete with that, you know, terrible
decision to invade. I don't see a good way out.
And I just want to describe why. So the Iranians
have taken blow after blow after blow. They have
suffered tremendously. They are, you know, the
country is in ruins. But this is a regime fighting
for its survival. There are millions of people
in the Iranian government who are part of the
regime's security forces whose entire lives are
caught up in the survival of the regime. An air
campaign from above is not going to lead to the
kind of outcomes that the president has stated.
On the other side, the U .S. war aims have shifted
several times over the course of the conflict,
depending on the whims of the president's Twitter
finger. Whether it is, well, we're just going
to, you know, we want a better deal on the nuclear
negotiations. Oh, well, no, actually, we want
regime change. And then at the Memorandum of
Understanding, which has now fallen apart, we
were offering them a better deal than they had
before the conflict. I don't know what it's called
when you end up with a worse deal than when you
started the war. I think it's called losing.
And the United States is in no position now,
the greatest Navy on earth is in no position
to ensure the security of transit through the
Strait of Hormuz. You have the Defense Department.
And people have seen this emailing around to
servicemen via, you know, on their systems asking
for inputs. Does anyone have any creative ideas
of how we're going to inflict pain on the Iranians?
And I read this and I'm like, God, if only there
was some sort of council that would discuss national
security and be informed by the latest intelligence
and experts who might be able to inform a good
policy. God, I don't know what even what you
would call such a thing. Instead, it's amateur
hour. And between that and sending the president's
son -in -law and real estate developers to deal
with hardened revolutionaries or trying to negotiate
with a supreme leader who we killed his dad,
I just – I don't see the way out. And the Iranians
are famous for seeing an American president in
political trouble, which this president has been
since the moment he launched this war, facing
midterm elections in November. And I can't imagine
what incentive they have to give him a political
gift to wind up this conflict when all they need
to do is just not come to the table. And so I
expect them to basically just wait us out and
watch us as we give them more and more and more
as the political calculations of the White House
intensify. I never thought I would live in a
world where people are sharing on social media
Iranian propaganda and we're all going, well,
that's actually really good. Nice use of Legos,
Iran. It is crazy to think that that's the position
we're in where we're just hopeful for a less
bad outcome because there is no good outcome
that we can foresee. So when this outcome shows
up, I'd love to talk to you more about it because
there is so much that... We have to cover on
the continuing role of the intelligence coordination
function, putting good people in place, putting
people who live up to their oaths. So, Julia
Curley, thank you for joining us on this episode
of the Steady State Sentinel. For our listeners
out there, we hope that this episode gave you
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