True Spies Debriefs: Gina Bennett on the new paradigm for national security
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If you can hear me, take encryption button off and try. Hello, True Spies listeners. Welcome back to our new assignment, True Spies Debrief. In the True Spies episode, Blinking Red, Gina Bennett described her experience as the first analyst to issue a warning about Osama bin Laden back in 1993. After 34 years, Gina parted ways with her career in counterterrorism

And today, she's teaching and writing about what she describes as a new paradigm for national security. True Spies producer Morgan Childs caught up with Gina to hear about her latest work, to better understand how a hunter-gatherer theory might help make the United States and the world more secure.

Well, I want to formally welcome you. Thank you for being here. I'm really excited to talk to you. And I have a big question for you straight out of the gate, which is... Oh, boy. You spent 34 years in counterterrorism before retiring from the agency to focus on teaching ethics. And so I'm curious what it was about the first chapter of your career that inspired a pivot to ethics and intelligence. No, that's easy. I think...

It's really two things that come together. First, it's the common narrative of espionage, spy work, the CIA, all of it, you know, whether it's us or other countries, other parts of the U.S. intelligence community, this common narrative.

of what we do and how we do it, probably as importantly how we do it, whether it's from movies or books or just media. And I don't blame anyone for making it entertainment. And the media, of course, most media, they do their best, but it's hard for people to know what it's really like and what you really do. Not everybody is going to listen to your podcast and be informed that way.

So the common perception of what, you know, spies do, basically, there's no ethics involved. It's all about the ends. You know, it's very Machiavellian. The ends justify the means and that's what you do. So there's that. That was just always in the background. And I, you know, just felt like, gosh, gosh, this is what people really think of us. And then knowing on the inside how often we talk about the long-term effects

impact or consequences of even small decisions, I think would astound people. And so, you know, I myself, obviously, very dedicated to the Constitution. So, you know, some of my ethics course, or a lot of it actually focuses on what that means to take the oath of office. And I

swear to defend with your life if possible or if necessary to protect and support the Constitution. The two things together just were very jarring. Like the perception that we'll do anything that we can and break every law and just completely ignore laws and the Constitution and ethics and what we actually do. And so that was really the inspiration in

Trying to teach the next generation of incoming national security personnel, because, you know, at Georgetown, we have lots of people who are going to go into all avenues of national security. And I'm fortunate to be able to go around and do some guest lecturing at other universities and institutions, which is great that know it is it is very ethical education.

In the sense that it really requires and demands every single person who's in it to stop and understand the weight of their decision making, the weight of their brainstorming, like the consequences of what might come from your decision and who you, who and what you have pledged to serve. It's, you know, not yourself. It's not necessarily the mission. It's not about you.

getting the job done no matter what the costs at all. It's not, you know, the, the, the promise is to support and defend the constitution to maybe to make sure you uphold it and you have to think about the means. And so that's, yeah. Was there a turning point for you? Well, you know, I think a lot of it, so many of my turning points, whether it's about hunter gather national security or ethics, um,

hinge on to some degree 9-11. And it's not so much the, I mean, it is partially the attack, but it's also the reaction to it. So on the ethics side, realizing that, you know, with 9-11, the immediate aftermath, you saw so much debate about this issue. You know, how far do we go? What are we doing? How do we do it?

What's going to be the long-term consequence and perception of doing it that way? All of those things were in constant debate. I'm not saying that I agreed or anyone agreed with every decision that was made. I don't think that's possible. But look, we didn't have a blueprint. So the fact that it was a conversation, a constant conversation from the bottom to the top of this government was...

I think the best we could have done, you know, it was uncharted water. It was for a lot of people unanticipated. And like I said, we didn't have a blueprint for what do we do with this kind of adversary? What do we do with this kind of attack? You know, how do we do the right thing by the American people without doing the wrong thing by the America future? So, yeah,

I just felt proud that those debates occurred and they never stopped. And even now we're still going back and asking, you know, where did we make mistakes? What did we do right? What didn't we do right? You know, that's, to me, that's ethics. It's a constant process. It's not just a boom. You know, there's no right or wrong.

I'm thinking about, I've heard you say that you were never convinced that the threats that you dealt with in those 34 years were existential to America, which is such a massive statement for somebody who's worked in the environments and the situations that you have. Yeah, no, never. I mean, that is really the most jarring experience for me over the course of my 34 years and before and after really is having a very different

very different conceptualization of what security is. And I mean, I felt it immediately going into government. I was what, 21, I guess. It's hard to believe, but so long ago. But yeah,

you know, right from the very beginning, this idea of security being the absence of threats was just insane to me. Because, you know, if that's how you're defining your personal security or your national security or global security, climate security, anything, then you're always going to be insecure because threats exist. That's part of life. It's part of

whether it's animal life or plant life or human life, it's part of life. So I always felt that security was something much deeper. And yes, it makes it harder because it seems more intangible. But, you know, to me, ultimately about

autonomy and having the freedom and the right to choose who you are, you know, your identity, what you contribute, what you do in the world at a national level, you know, what government you want, how you want power to be executed over you, you know, this form of governance that you choose and securing that form of government.

That, to me, is security, and the rest of it is more safety. And, I mean, don't get me wrong, safety is very important, but it doesn't necessarily result in securing those things. I mean, I can be physically safe and not be personally secure. I think our country can be physically safe and not be secure in its governance. So maybe outline for our listeners who haven't read...

what you've written and heard what you've had to say about this paradigm and sort of what you mean when you refer to the current national paradigm and how your thinking and writing provides another frame of reference. Sure. Yeah. I mean, in, and stop me if I get too academic, but in security studies, you know, security theories, whether they're national level or international security theories, um,

They focus on defining the threats to security a certain way and the tools and instruments that you then use as a country or an international community or alliances, etc., to deal with those threats. And the predominant security theory has been, for well over 100 years, realism, which really stems from the idea that states, nations, are threats.

clear-eyed and realistic about how they view the world and understand the risks and rewards and the pros and the cons and, you know, rational actor theory about leaders and governments, you know, wanting to continue to survive. Just very kind of survivalist approach. And, you know, I mean, you can understand coming out of World War I and II where we had 100 million casualties over the course of two wars, you

and atom bombs, why we would have that realistic approach and why it held for so long. The idea of alliances and deterrence and the use of military, really having decisive force against your adversary and building alliances around that as deterrence so as to prevent the provocation that would lead to another nuclear war, for example.

All of that, again, coming out of the two world wars makes sense. Coming out of the Cold War makes sense. But, you know, you get into the 2000s, and at least in the United States...

um, you realize going into, you know, 2020, for example, the elections in 2020 were pivotal as were the 2024. And most Americans don't know that there are three branches of the U S government. Most Americans don't know anything really about how democracy works, nor do they really care. Um, but, but, you know, also they, they just don't, um,

They don't understand the risks of it. And there are a lot of people in America, I forget the numbers now, but it was like 83% who think democracy is broken. And that's, so what did we secure? You know, we, if you have a populace that doesn't know what its government is or how it's being governed, right?

doesn't understand where power comes from or how it's executed, you know, how it's delivered and isn't really all that interested in it, then what difference does it make if we were a caliphate or a communist country or anything else, right? If the government doesn't matter, then really, if all we really want is safety and security,

you know, the endurance of our borders and our people and our buildings and our transportation and all that, then the government wouldn't matter at all. And you say that out loud and suddenly it sounds insane, but that's kind of what we're projecting. And so, you know, from that, I just continued to ask why, you know, why is it?

On the one hand, why is it that realist security theories have only focused on the tangible and the physical, but also why don't they focus on the intangible and the securing of governance? Really, the securing of the chosen governance of the people. Because when you're secure as an individual, somebody says stuff about you,

it doesn't hurt. I mean, it's stupid, right? You can brush it off. It's like, yeah, whatever. I've got it good. I don't really care if you don't understand or don't like it. And if you think about that, right? Does it matter? Does it matter if another country hates us or if Al Qaeda wants us to be, you know, something different? It doesn't matter. Yes, they can hurt us, but ultimately they are not going to

destroy the United States of America unless we change the form of government that we are. Right. That's why I say they're not existential threats. The only existential threat comes from us, you know, from our deciding not to be this democratic republic that we have been for so long. And, you know, that that's really the kernel of why I think a new theory is necessary because

And, you know, I started working on the research and to build the course that I teach at Georgetown, the Hunter Gatherer National Security. Based on that, like there's something missing. Why is this missing?

And then, you know, in time, I think I found the answer. And we were talking earlier before we started recording about trying new things on and you've, among other things, tried on anthropology and neurology. I mean, sort of tell me about how all of these academic disciplines have informed your thinking about this. Yeah.

Well, you know, one thing is at the agency, one of the jobs that I had for a while, which I really am so grateful to have had the opportunity, was managing the analytic tradecraft for the agency. So really being the caretaker of how we analyze across all of the disciplines of the agency, which was very important.

substantial responsibility, intimidating, but I also loved it. And I love the, you know, love the people, love the work, but you really have to learn critical thinking. So I'm always asking, you know, why is it this way? And what are we missing? And what if we flipped the assumptions around? Of course, things like that. I mean, I just can't help myself. And

I hate it when information or knowledge is siloed because that is automatically limiting. And, you know, academia is siloed, sciences are siloed, everything is siloed because, you know, you have to have that in order to learn. But then it becomes a habit to not ask, well, what does anthropology say about, you know, my kneecap? Or what does anthropology say about security? You know, what does anthropology...

Or what does neuroscience tell us? And that doesn't happen a lot. And so I like to do things that don't happen a lot. I guess that's part of it. But at any rate, I'm trying to get to the answer of why, you know, why realist theorists like Kenneth Waltz and, you know, the, the,

all of the Morgenthau, the people who invented realism theories, all the way back to, if you want, Thucydides and Machiavelli. You know, why was it so focused on this one concept and not the other? And what had they excluded as they went along in their writing? And it didn't take long to understand that what they excluded was what was going on in the social sector of life.

You know, they were only worried about war and they weren't worried about peace. It's as if peace was the absence of war when peace itself is so much harder to build and maintain. It's not the absence of something. It is hard work. It's the achievement of something.

And going back even further, that's why I had to get back to anthropology, because, you know, alphabetic writing has only been around since about 2000 BC. So you really have to go farther and farther back. And I, you know, hit on, I think...

In my mind, it's, you know, as we became a settled societies and no longer the hunter-gatherer, nomadic hunter-gathering communities as we were for hundreds of thousands of years. So 10 to 15,000 years ago when we discovered that we could farm and stay put. One of the unintended consequences of that, that no one really thinks about, I think, is that we divided into public and private spheres, right?

The public sphere being initially where surplus food was traded and then the private sphere where everything else occurred. But as time went on, you know, the public sphere became dominant, the dominant place for trade, for economy, for then wealth and economy.

feudal systems and ownership and ruling and government and politics and philosophy and religion and law and you name it, right? That's where everything came out of the public sphere. And in the private sphere, nobody was paying any attention. And it wasn't recorded. So, it's not about, I'm not talking about genders. I know gender is part of it, but

Even if you flip them, it really doesn't matter whether it was men or women in either one. The fact of the matter is the roles of survival and thriving were separated into two different places. And one was kept private and the other was exchanged and grown and fostered and eventually recorded into writing. But that doesn't mean...

that all the work that was happening transparently in the open for hundreds of thousands of years when people were nomadic went away or were no longer important. So there's a whole body of knowledge from the people who had been gatherers, who were gatherers, caretakers, strategic planners, innovators, all of the work

to ensure survival and progress and thriving and knowledge transfer from one generation to the next that was happening inside domiciles has been lost. It's not in history. And so all of the skill sets that come with that were not incorporated into security theories.

You know, you just have so many theorists who look at what's happening there as soft stuff. Women's work or domestic care, it's just, that's what we protect. But there's nothing from that that transfers into the public sphere. And that is so backward.

Of course, you know, if what's important in the public sphere is important in the private sphere, what's important in the private sphere is important in the public sphere, too, because it was, like I said, for the vast majority of human history, all done out in the open and very transparent. So we have lost a whole set of priorities and skills there.

that, you know, had we not had that separation of spaces for those activities, I think we would have incorporated in our security theories. So really what I'm trying to do with hunter-gatherer national security is bring it back in. And like I said, it's not about gender because men can be gatherers and caretakers and strategic planners and innovators too. And women clearly can be hunters and protectors and providers and defenders. So I'm

You know, you have to get rid of the gender lens of it and really just think about it in terms of roles and the roles that we're missing in national security strategies and application in any country where, you know, if you're shoring up your own public's understanding of the government, especially if it's a chosen government like with a democracy, not just their understanding of it, but their trust in it and their desire to engage in it and be active in it.

Once you have that investment, it ensures the durability of it. You know, it's just like with children. You invest in teaching them. You invest in teaching them the, you know, good behaviors you want them. I mean, your job as a parent is to ensure that they can thrive and exist and be contributing members of society without you. Mm-hmm.

That is your job. That is the sole responsibility. And that is the security that you pass to them is their ability to do that and then pass it on to their own children and so forth and so forth. Government should be doing the exact same thing as a national security imperative, and it's not.

What is the relationship between your two National Security Mom books and this more recent work? I mean, hearing you say that you have to get rid of the gendered lens makes absolute sense, but it also makes me wonder if you reflect on those books with any kind of, if you would approach those books differently now that you're sort of reframing your thinking.

No, I mean, I see the hunter-gatherer national security theory really as building on those books. You know, yeah, their national security mom...

Because I'm a mom and I'm not a dad. And a father is not the same thing as a mother and a mother is not the same thing as a father. I mean, somewhere in the middle we can create parent. But because I really only like to write from what I know. So I'm a mom and that's where I wrote from. Although most of that advice is really just personal.

you know, the parental advice that we give our kids and why that was useful for or why that could be useful if we applied it as a country, you know, and thought about it as the government providing

the same kinds of services, if you will, to the nation and the people. Again, for me, it's about thinking of security as something beyond safety. And I, you know, as I said in my first book, you know, I can lock the doors, I can have smoke detectors, I can make sure the house is safe. I can make sure my kids have coats on when they go out, you know, in the winter, or I can try anyway. I didn't always succeed, but I can't,

stop them from, you know, falling in love and having their heart broken. I can't stop them from, you know, or prevent they're being crushed when they're rejected from a, you know, position that they want at work or I can't protect them from all of the pain that's going to happen. All I can do is make sure they're resilient and capable of going on afterwards and continuing to thrive. And so that

You know, that work that we do as a parent and we are so emotionally invested in, you know, we're very passionate about that. I want to see that in children.

our citizenry, you know, and, and that kind of investment and the endurance and the durability and the constitution of this country's ability to thrive for generations to come. That's really what national security mom and, you know, one and two was about. And I think the national, you know, the hunter gatherer national security theory that I'm starting to, you know, really build is a more academic approach.

more research version of that. It's not as intuitive. The, the national security mom was just very intuitive. How is it being received by your former colleagues? Or do you feel like you're in a bit of a void here? Uh, well, you know, it's interesting. Um,

I mean, most of my colleagues who've bothered to read either the books or my article of Lice and Men that explains the national security, the hunter-gatherer national security theory, are just like, yeah. You know, they'll say, yeah, of course. Of course. You know, you're stating the obvious, which I am. You know, I absolutely am. I mean, I think the question is, okay, yeah.

if it's the obvious, then why aren't we doing it? Like, where's the disconnect? And I have had some former colleagues who, you know, I was in awe of as a little analyst, you know, a baby analyst years ago, who've reached out and have said, yeah, I've read this, and this is amazing. And, and I rarely read anything that's like new knowledge, and you're building new knowledge. And, you know, how's it being received? And I'm like,

You're shaking your head. It just, oh yeah, sorry. It just doesn't, it's, you know, the most common response is, yeah, this just doesn't seem relevant. Oh, no. Like, okay. It's not, it's too soft or squishy or it's not relevant to me.

you know, China and Ukraine and Russia and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I'm like, well, it's relevant to America. Um, and one might argue all of those other places. Yes, I know. It is very hard, you know, on the academic side, it was a lot easier for me in government when I was, you know, at the agency and obviously where we pride ourselves on creating new knowledge, um,

It was a lot easier to get an audience that was willing to think, that was not so bought into its own biases that it wasn't willing to hear something different. I used to say, think what you think, but don't believe in what you think, because that's the only way for you to continually embrace the challenge that is necessary. So when you think something

whether it's a theory or anything else, an analytic line, you have to be willing to put it on the table, you know, and cut the umbilical cord, put it on the table and let it be its own thought and have people attack it and just tear it up because it only gets better from being challenged. And, you know, I don't see that is necessarily the case in academia where people's reputations and, you

you know, the curriculum and, you know, just everything. There's so much halo bias around, you know, the people who've created all of this. And there's so much easier to just keep teaching the same thing. And whether it's, you know, the, especially like security studies journals, all like, you know, our audience isn't going to really want to read this. And so it's like, okay, just keep reading what you already write and already know. And

don't take on anything new. I can't force people. Well, so you tell me, I mean, I know you call yourself a recovering stoic and I wonder if you feel like stoicism is perhaps endemic to the intelligence community and, and, and maybe if so, if it's kind of limiting our understanding of, of its, of its role and its capabilities. Oh, stoicism is an absolute requirement of being in the intelligence community, especially if you're an analyst, because you,

You know, it really is based on the Greek tradition of removing yourself from emotion and passion in order to reach clarity and objective thought. And part of that, of course, is trying to identify your own personal, cognitive, organizational, cultural biases so that you can

know what they are and mitigate them through various structured analytic techniques, you know, that we, methods that we would use for reducing the impact of biases. But, you know, it's also to prevent value-laden judgment from entering into your analysis that is for ultimately the president of the United States on behalf of the American people and our allies to

We want that information, we want that analysis to be as objectively created as possible. So you have to not have feelings. I mean, you can't feel when you're doing analysis because that automatically taints the objectivity of your thinking. So that's great, except we're all human beings and we do have a tendency to feel, but

So, what I, you know, the reason I'm a recovering stoic is because for a very long time, I lived by that ethos of no feeling, right? And you get good at it. You know, you just sort of divorce yourself of feeling. I mean, I always likened it to like a surgeon in the operating room. Something goes wrong, you don't want your surgeon panicking, right? They need to stay focused. And that's

And that's, you know, how you have to be in national security is certainly how you have to be in the intelligence community. So when you do that year in, year out, you know, when you're in the middle of a crisis, you're watching 3,000 people die and you cannot feel because you have to stay clear headed. You are in a group of a handful of people who know that there's a possibility of an attack tomorrow and you're working 24-7 to prevent it. You

You can't feel, you have to be clear-headed. So when you start doing that, it is, like I said, year in, year out. And I worked my entire career in counterterrorism, so I never got a break from that type of crises. So you start getting, if you get good at it, then you advance and you get more crises and you get more responsibility.

But you also find it very difficult to flip the switch when you're with normal people. Like, you know, go home and be, feel. It's hard. It's very hard. And so I suffered from it. My family suffered from it, from me not having that emotional, I couldn't demonstrate or, you know, show emotion there.

Not well, anyway. And so that's why I put myself into recovering from my stoicism and trying to create. And I teach this in my ethics course because I think it's very important for people going into national security to think about it at the beginning. What are your strategies going to be for professional level stoicism at the office when you need it?

without shoving it so far back that it works as a toxin against you? You know, and how are you going to prevent that professional stoicism from seeping into your personal life? So that reminds me of, you spoke at the Frank Church Conference last year, and I feel like for any listener who is remotely interested, it's an amazing talk and you can find it on YouTube and it's really worth listening.

seeking out. But you talked about Jennifer Matthews, who was your friend who was killed in Afghanistan, and she was criticized publicly by her own family, among other people, for going there when she had three kids at home. And you talked at the conference about being in a helicopter elsewhere in Afghanistan shortly after her death.

and thinking about what you'd want your children to know if something were to happen to you. And you held up the Constitution, and you said that at the time you wanted your kids to know that you believed in we the people. And it's a really amazing moment, but you also have a really interesting sort of self-correction moment. You were speaking in the...

in the present tense and you switched to the past tense and it made me wonder, it seemed clear that what you felt conviction for had changed and I guess I'm curious to know how you feel your priorities have changed and how you feel like the sacrifices that you're willing to make have changed.

One of the stories about Jennifer that I recount that is very painful is probably what I discussed at the conference. Just knowing that she was afraid if something happened to her that her kids would believe that she put work ahead of them.

and how it struck me we don't worry about that. I mean, it doesn't seem to be the worry that men traditionally have had. I mean, men have had the responsibility to go off and fight wars, and a lot of them obviously don't come back, but it seems more expected, I guess. And you don't really say, "Oh, well, my dad cared more about work than me."

you know, when I was in Afghanistan a few times and, you know, Iraq also, but I thought about my kids and I, you know, I believed what I was doing. I believed what we were doing.

doing. I didn't agree with every single thing that we were doing, but I believed in the United States and the Constitution and, of course, we the people. And I felt like, as I had said with my first national security mom, and the whole impetus of that book was a talk about work-life balance. And my conclusion was that what I do at home and what I do at work is the same thing. You know,

I am invested in my children's future and I want them to live a fulfilled life and I want them to be contributing members of society. I want them to put good, more good into the world. And I believe that they can best do that in a democracy. I believe democracy is because of their protection of individual freedoms and their

and the ability of the people to make the choices about power enable my children to live their best lives. So I don't see them as separate. And I've really tried since then. My children were pretty young still when I was in Afghanistan, but I've tried since then. We've had these conversations. They're older. They can now understand. I'm very fortunate to be able to have those conversations with my kids now

they can understand how I saw it that way. I mean, children want, you know, they're focused on their short-term needs. They want you right here, right now, all the time. But I was focused on a long-term need for them. And I think, you know, since retiring and, you know, especially since like January 6th and really coming to understand how limited retirement

Trust is in not just government, you know, some far off concept of elitist in power in Washington, but trust in democracy is in this country. It feels it's very painful. It's painful to hear that. It's easier almost to die for your country than it is to live for it in the sense of having to get up and choose every day to continue to believe in it.

and trust in our ability to do this self-government, it's getting harder and harder every day. And yet again, like I said before, there is no existential, there's no foreign threat as existential to the United States as we are to ourselves. So I don't know. I think I still believe in the form of government. I still believe it can work, but I'm

You know, I lose some level of hope and optimism about whether or not everybody else cares enough to make it work. I don't know if that answers your question, but... It does, yeah. Does anything make you feel better?

It's a little extraneous, but I actually thought a few, well, several years ago, in thinking about, you know, is it possible we'll get to a day where we don't know if we freely elected our president, for example, or our senator, because there's so much deepfakes, interference, you know, stuff like that, that we just don't know anymore.

And we have to, we don't know. Well, was I, did I really want to elect that person or was I influenced to elect them? And we don't know. Okay. That sounds really bad. But actually in our form of government, we have second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth chance at this. Because even if you question whether or not that person was who you actually wanted, you have the ability to hold them accountable. You know, this is good. This can be good in that sense.

It forces you to be engaged and be informed and be an active citizen as opposed to a passive one. Because if you want to hold that person accountable, you got to monitor what they're doing and is it what they said they were going to do? And is it what you thought that you wanted them to do? And what is the impact it's having on your daily life, et cetera, et cetera, so that you can vote them out, right? Or, you know, be engaged in other kind of advocacy that works in a different direction. Right.

Okay, so set that aside. When the representative from North Carolina came out with the idea of a shadow cabinet, and a lot of people were like, what? He wrote a Washington Post op-ed about a shadow cabinet, like we need a shadow cabinet like the British have. And I think a lot of people thought that was crazy, or it was just kind of a reaction to

Oh, well, then we're going to have this alternate, you know, universe or something. But when I looked at it, I thought, you know what, this is actually a great solution for a different problem if it were packaged that way.

The idea of presenting an individual, you know, a point of contact for every part of the executive and legislative and judicial branch, really, who would provide a counterpoint.

So when, and whether, I don't care what administration it is, whatever administration is in power, when their secretary of defense comes out and says something, when their secretary of education comes out and says something, when they're, you know, the CDC comes out and says something and you have a focal point counterpoint from the other party being able to say, okay, well, this is what this administration is going to do. Our policy would have been this and,

This is how we would have done it. This is why we think what we would have done would have had different consequences. And here's what we're looking for, you know, and very methodical and consistent. You would be educating the public and you would be educating the public on something that they're not currently provided. And that is the throughput, you know, from your vote.

to how it actually ends up, you know, because most people don't know. Like I voted.

And then you don't know what that person actually did. And you don't know whether or not the other person would have done a better job. You know, this is education. This is higher level, you know, information so that it's meaningful to people so they can figure out, oh, well, that would have had a completely different effect on my Medicare. That would have had a different effect on my pension. That would have had a different effect on life.

you know, the safety of my home and my town. And the voters have the right to have that information, but who's providing it? Nobody. So I thought a shadow cabinet, you know, as an institution, not a democratic shadow cabinet, but a shadow cabinet as an institution to provide that focal point conversation, which would then necessarily force the administration in power to

to debate at the same, you know, with the same information on the same points. Wow, suddenly we're getting the information to be able to do the pros and cons and decide. Because I really suspect that in America, we are all very mixed in our belief systems. And we are not uniformly Republican or uniformly Democrat. We're far more, you know, mixed.

And I think we would start to see that and then start demanding more collaboration and less fighting. That is a great fantasy. Yeah. I want to ask you about your newest book. I'm curious, why fiction? And why this work of fiction? Yes. If two of them are dead, it's going to be published next year.

I've had in my mind, you know, wanting to bring Agent 355 from the Revolutionary War to life for a long, long time. And my way also of, you know, trying to capture Jennifer and some other, you know, women in the agency that I really admired was to create these two characters and have them,

in many ways, explain a lot of what I've already said in National Security Moms and Hunter Gather National Security. Hey, this is how it's done. This is why it's important. But in an accessible way, in a story, I hope that people find compelling and thrilling at the same time. And, you know, that's really why I bring...

to life people that I admire, some of whom are gone, some are still around. And it's sort of a tribute to all the men and women and gender minorities who do this silent, hard, really hard work. And the sacrifices are so far beyond what people understand because, you know, like I said, you can lose your love, you can lose your family, you can lose a lot of things in this job.

So that's why fiction just gives you the room to say things that, you know, would be hard to say otherwise, you know, through characters. So, yeah, I have a whole series. And I also, again, because I do...

I have dabbled as a tradecraft program manager at the agency. I had the opportunity to dabble in a lot of very, very different things in terms of trying to provide analytic structure to various task force and things like that. So I love to put pieces together that other people aren't putting together that, you know, remain stovepiped and say, you know what, maybe this is actually this and not that.

So I wouldn't say conspiracy theories, but it's more explanation, you know, making the explanation of why some phenomenon seems so hard to understand. Like, probably the answer is a lot more obvious than we are willing to admit. So you can do that in fiction, too. Like give some...

Answers to contemporary questions, you know, fictionalize them and then perhaps make people think, I wonder if that's actually true and maybe we should look into that. So there's going to be a lot of that. It's clearly not written by a stoic. No, I've tried. I've tried to put the passion into it for sure.

Well, it comes across and it comes across talking to you. Thank you. I'm really grateful. Thank you. I will...

You know, I will say like one last thing on the national security mom bit, though, because now I'm a grandmother, too. And my kids, I have one still who's a teen, but the rest of them are in their 20s, even 30s. For many, many years, I would tell my colleagues, look, I deal with toddlers, teens and terrorists on a daily basis. And I can tell you right now, I'd take the terrorists any day over the toddlers and teens.

And, you know, it's funny, but it's also true. And I, you know, I think some people find it funny because they don't work in that, you know, environment. But it is so true because toddlers and teens are yours, right? You're invested in them. Again, you're invested in emotionally. It's harder work.

And it's more, it's constant. It never stops. The terrorists are more like the, like I said, defending the physical safety, you know, national safety as opposed to national security is a lot clearer. It's a lot more black and white. And you don't have the same emotional investment at all in that. And now I'm like, well...

Toddlers, teens, terrorists and 20-somethings. I'm finding they're not that much easier. So anyway, I think the parallels just keep going. Well, it is such a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you for doing this. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

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