变革的世界和情报的作用
美国中央情报局局长威廉·伯恩斯发表迪奇利年度演讲
2023 年 7 月 1 日
https://www.cia.gov/static/62739354dfed5cc1942997d3f1899d94/DCIA-Ditchley-Remarks-01-July-2023.pdf
导演威廉·伯恩斯发表迪奇利年度演讲
7 月 1 日星期六，美国中央情报局局长威廉·J·伯恩斯 (William J Burns) 发表了迪奇利的第 59 届年度演讲，主题为“变革的世界和情报的作用”。
下午好。 非常感谢您的热情介绍，并欢迎回到迪奇利。
1979 年，我第一次来到这里，当时我还是一名年轻的牛津大学马歇尔学者，身上的现金只够租一条出席正式会议晚宴的黑色领带和买一张公交车票。
我必须承认，我对这次会议本身的记忆是模糊的，但它对我的影响是深远的。 它让我对跨大西洋联盟的力量和宗旨以及英美伙伴关系的特殊意义有了持久的认识。
十年后，我成为一名职业美国外交官，为国务卿詹姆斯·贝克工作。 这是历史上罕见的“塑料时刻”之一，每个世纪只出现几次。 冷战即将结束，苏联即将解体，德国即将统一，萨达姆入侵科威特即将失败。
这是一个美国无可争议的主导地位的世界。 历史的潮流似乎无情地朝着我们的方向流动，我们的思想的力量推动着世界其他地区缓慢但不可抗拒地走向民主和自由市场。 我们有时傲慢的自信似乎在权力和影响力的现实中是有根据的，但它也掩盖了其他聚集的趋势。
我们在冷战后的统治地位永远不会成为永久状态。 历史并没有结束，意识形态的竞争也没有结束。 全球化给人类社会带来了巨大的希望，数亿人摆脱了贫困，但也必然产生反压力。
在 1992 年底我为即将上任的克林顿政府起草的一份过渡备忘录中，我试图捕捉到未来挑战的模糊轮廓。 “虽然五十年来我们第一次没有面对全球军事对手，”我写道，“但可以想象的是，俄罗斯回归威权主义或咄咄逼人的敌对中国可能会复活这种全球威胁。”
尽管不完美，我还是试图强调民主国家和自由市场在经济全球化的世界中不可避免地面临的风险，但正如我当时所说，“国际政治体系正在精神分裂地走向更大的碎片化。” 我尽力勾勒出气候变化和全球健康不安全已经构成的共同全球威胁，特别是肆虐的艾滋病毒/艾滋病流行。
在接下来的四分之一个世纪里，我仍然是一名自豪且非常幸运的美国外交官，主要在俄罗斯和中东任职，并在华盛顿担任高级职务。 随着美国单极时刻的消退，我在外交上分享了两次成功，也犯了一些错误，而我在很久以前的过渡备忘录中试图预见的一些内容开始显现。
今天，作为中央情报局局长，我不敢说，我现在已经生活和服务了足够长的时间，足以面对另一个可塑的时刻——在一个比我经历过的世界更加拥挤、复杂和充满争议的世界中。 三十年前，作为一名年轻外交官的那些令人兴奋的日子。 在这个世界上，美国不再是地缘政治区块上唯一的大孩子，在这个世界上，人类既面临危险，又面临希望。
我现在的工作是帮助拜登总统和高级政策制定者了解和塑造一个变革的世界。 因此，今天下午我想做的就是概述我们面前的新格局的主要特征，以及它对智能的作用意味着什么。
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改变的世界
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正如拜登总统提醒我们的那样，我们正处于一个拐点。 后冷战时代肯定已经结束。 我们的任务是塑造未来——投资于我们的基础优势，并与我们无与伦比的联盟和伙伴关系网络共同致力于共同事业——为子孙后代留下一个更加自由、开放、安全和繁荣的世界。
这是一个非常艰巨的任务。
我们的成功将取决于我们驾驭这个具有三个鲜明特征的世界的能力。
首先是来自崛起中、雄心勃勃的中国和俄罗斯的战略竞争挑战，俄罗斯不断提醒我们，衰落的大国至少可以像崛起的大国一样具有破坏性。
其次是没有护照的问题，例如气候危机和全球流行病，这些问题超出了任何一个国家的能力所能解决，并且变得越来越极端和存在。
第三是技术革命，它正在改变我们的生活、工作、战斗和竞争方式，其中的可能性和风险我们尚无法完全把握。
这些独特的挑战有时会相互冲突，而在共同的全球问题上的合作既更加重要，也更加困难，往往成为战略竞争的受害者。 技术革命既是这种竞争的主要舞台，也是一种现象，在这种现象中，一些基本的伙伴关系对于制定道路规则、最大限度地发挥新兴技术的好处并最大限度地减少其危险至关重要。
当今国际秩序面临的最直接、最尖锐的地缘政治挑战是弗拉基米尔·普京对乌克兰的全面入侵，这是自温斯顿·丘吉尔坐在迪奇利的卧室里向富兰克林·罗斯福口述战时信息以来欧洲最大规模的战争。 3
过去二十年的大部分时间我都在试图理解和应对普京所体现的不满、野心和不安全感的易燃组合。 这段经历不仅导致了所有这些白发，而且还导致了这一现象。 这也让我在武断地谈论普京和俄罗斯时保持了一定的谦逊。
我学到的一件事是，低估普京对控制乌克兰及其选择的执着总是错误的，因为他认为，如果没有这些，俄罗斯就不可能成为一个大国，他也不可能成为一位伟大的俄罗斯领导人。 这种悲惨而野蛮的执着已经给俄罗斯带来了耻辱，暴露了它的弱点，并唤起了乌克兰人民惊人的决心和决心。
普京经常坚称乌克兰“不是一个真正的国家”，它软弱且分裂。 嗯，正如他发现的那样，真正的国家会反击。 这就是乌克兰人以非凡的勇气和坚韧所做的事情，正如我在战争期间频繁前往基辅所看到的那样。 他们不会心软，我们所有支持乌克兰的人也不会。
普京的战争对俄罗斯来说已经是一场战略失败——它的军事弱点暴露无遗； 其经济在未来几年遭受严重损害； 普京的错误正在塑造其作为中国的初级伙伴和经济殖民地的未来； 它的复仇野心被日益强大的北约削弱了。
上周六的这个时候，我们都被叶夫根尼·普里戈任对俄罗斯国家的武装挑战的场景所吸引，瓦格纳准军事部队短暂占领了罗斯托夫，并在返回之前向莫斯科移动了三分之二的路程。 正如拜登总统明确表示的那样，这是俄罗斯的内政，美国过去和将来都不会参与其中。
令人震惊的是，普里戈任在采取行动之前对克里姆林宫入侵乌克兰的虚假理由以及俄罗斯军事领导层的战争行为提出了严厉的控诉。 这些言论和行动的影响将持续一段时间，生动地提醒人们普京的战争对他自己的社会和政权的腐蚀作用。 右
俄罗斯的侵略是一个严峻的考验。 但中国是唯一一个既有意愿重塑国际秩序，也有越来越多的经济、外交、军事和技术实力来重塑国际秩序的国家。
过去五年中国的转变非同寻常。 这是中国人民应得的功劳，也是我们两国支持的转变，因为——正如英国外交大臣克莱弗利四月份在英国大厦雄辩地指出的那样，“一个稳定、繁荣与和平的中国有利于英国，也有利于英国”。 世界。”
因此，问题不在于中国的崛起本身，而在于随之而来的行动。 习近平主席即将开始他的第三个任期，他的权力比毛泽东以来任何一位中国领导人都多。 他并没有利用这种力量来加强、振兴和更新促成中国转型的国际体系，而是寻求重写它。 4
在情报行业，我们仔细研究领导人的言论。 但我们特别关注他们的所作所为，习近平主席在国内日益加强的镇压和在国外的侵略性——从他与普京的无限伙伴关系到他对台湾海峡和平与稳定的威胁——是不容忽视的。
不容忽视的是，在这个新时代，我们的竞争是在经济相互依存和商业联系紧密的背景下进行的。 这对我们的国家、我们的经济和我们的世界非常有利，但它也给我们的安全和繁荣造成了战略依赖、严重脆弱性和严重风险。
新冠疫情向各国政府表明了依赖任何一个国家提供救生医疗用品的危险，就像普京对乌克兰的侵略向各国政府表明了依赖一个国家提供能源供应的风险一样。 在当今世界，没有一个国家愿意发现自己在关键矿产和技术方面受到一个卡特尔的摆布——特别是一个已经表现出加深这些依赖并将其武器化的意愿和能力的国家。 解决这个问题的答案不是与中国这样的经济体脱钩，这将是愚蠢的，而是通过确保有弹性的供应链、保护我们的技术优势和投资工业产能来明智地降低风险和实现多元化。
在一个更加动荡和不确定的世界里，权力更加分散，对冲中间人的影响力在经济、政治和军事上都在增长。 民主国家和独裁国家、发达经济体和发展中经济体、南半球国家和全球其他地区的国家都致力于实现关系多元化，以扩大战略自主权并最大限度地增加选择。
这些国家在一夫一妻制的地缘政治关系中看到的好处很少，而且风险很大。 相反，我们可能会看到更多的国家追求比我们在冷战后几十年的单极时期所习惯的更加开放的关系。 如果以过去为先例，我们应该关注所谓的中等强国之间的竞争——这些竞争往往会引发大国之间的冲突。
我们没有选择专注于单一的地缘政治威胁。 我们面临着共同或跨国挑战对国际秩序乃至我们人民的生命和生计的同样威胁，其中气候危机构成了最明显和最现实的危险。 我们不能再用将来时态谈论“临界点”和“灾难性气候影响”。 他们此时此地，正在危及我们的星球、我们的安全、我们的经济和我们的人民。
上个月在华盛顿特区，由于加拿大各地数百场野火产生的烟雾，从位于弗吉尼亚州兰利的中央情报局总部看不到波托马克河对岸，或者在肺部不接触有害物质的情况下呼吸。 气候变化是典型的“威胁倍增器”——加剧能源、健康、水和粮食不安全，阻碍我们在经济和人类发展方面取得的进展，加剧历史上已经最严重的被迫流离失所和移民时期，并进一步加剧不稳定 以及地缘政治紧张局势和热点。 5
这两种威胁——地缘政治威胁和跨国威胁——是不可能分开的。 我们必须诚实，正如我之前指出的那样——许多方面的竞争使合作变得更加困难。 但我们必须两者都做。
为了战胜我们的对手并应对共同的挑战，我们的领导人将需要应对另一种极其强大的力量：比工业革命或核时代的黎明更为深刻的技术革命。
从芯片到量子再到人工智能，计算相关技术的进步正在带来规模和范围显着的突破。 自去年 11 月 ChatGPT 的第一个公开版本推出以来的短短几个月内，我们已经看到新模型在研究生入学考试以及医疗培训项目中医生与患者的参与度评估中超越了人类。
我们一次又一次地看到这种“曲棍球棒”趋势线，超出了我们的期望、想象力和管理强大技术使用的能力——无论是好还是坏。 这一点在生物技术和生物制造领域最为明显——它们可以带来非凡的气候和健康解决方案并促进我们的经济发展，但其滥用和误用可能会导致灾难。
技术和创新的领先地位支撑了我们的经济繁荣和军事实力。 这对于制定维护我们的利益和价值观的规则、规范和标准也至关重要。 我们的中国竞争对手和其他人一样明白这一点，因此他们大力投资新兴技术，将其作为我们战略竞争的核心维度也就不足为奇了。
战略竞争、共同的跨国需求以及人类历史上前所未有的技术革命，构成了极其复杂的国际格局。 它无疑让我对外交和政策制定的怀旧情绪得到了控制，但它也让我更加关注改变我们在这个变革的世界中处理情报角色的方式。
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智能转型
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中央情报局和美国情报界正在努力以紧迫感和创造力迎接这一时刻。 让我举几个例子，从与俄罗斯和中国的战略竞争的挑战，到利用新兴技术的举措、投资激励中央情报局的人员，以及建立将塑造我们未来的情报伙伴关系。
我为中央情报局和我们在美国情报界的合作伙伴为帮助拜登总统和高级政策制定者，特别是乌克兰人自己，阻止弗拉基米尔·普京对乌克兰的侵略所做的工作感到自豪。 我为我们与英国盟友的密切伙伴关系感到自豪，特别是由我的朋友理查德·摩尔爵士领导的秘密情报局的男女成员，我对他怀有最大的敬意。
我们共同对即将到来的战争提供了早期、准确的预警——这是任何情报部门的基本职能。 2021 年 11 月初，当总统在战前派我前往莫斯科时，我发现普京和他的高级顾问们对我们对他计划的清晰了解不为所动，他们坚信他统治乌克兰的机会之窗正在关闭。 我离开时比来时更加烦恼。
良好的情报帮助拜登总统动员并维持强大的国家联盟来支持乌克兰。 良好的情报帮助乌克兰以如此非凡的勇气和决心保卫自己，并发动目前正在进行的关键反攻。
作为总统和高级政策制定者制定的新颖而有效战略的一部分，对我们的一些秘密的仔细解密有助于否认普京的虚假叙述，而我过去经常看到他发明这些虚假叙述，这让他陷入了不舒服的境地。 以及不习惯的后脚位置。
在国家宣传和镇压的持续影响下，对战争的不满将继续侵蚀俄罗斯领导层。 这种不满情绪为我们中央情报局创造了千载难逢的机会，我们的核心是人类情报部门。
我们不会让它白白浪费。 我们最近使用社交媒体——事实上，我们在 Telegram 上发布的第一个视频——让勇敢的俄罗斯人知道如何在暗网上安全地联系我们。 第一周我们的浏览量就达到了 250 万次，我们对业务非常开放。
如果说普京在乌克兰的战争是战略竞争中最直接的挑战，那么习近平领导下的中国则是我们最大的地缘政治和情报竞争对手，也是最重要的长期优先事项。
过去几年，我们在中央情报局一直在组织自己，以反映这一优先事项。 我们建立了一个新的任务中心——该机构的十多个组织基石之一——专门关注中国。 它是中央情报局唯一的单一国家任务中心，它提供了协调中国任务工作的中央机制，该机制如今已延伸到中央情报局的各个部门。
我很久以前就知道，除非预算遵循优先事项，否则它们是不真实的。 这就是为什么我们将更多资源集中在有关中国的情报收集、行动和分析上——仅在过去两年里，我们支持中国活动的总体预算百分比就增加了一倍多。 我们正在招聘和培训更多讲普通话的人。 我们正在世界各地加紧努力与中国竞争，从拉丁美洲到非洲再到印度太平洋地区。
我们还试图悄悄加强与中国的情报渠道，包括通过我自己的旅行。 这些谨慎的渠道是确保避免不必要的误解和无意冲突的重要手段，也是对政策制定渠道的补充和支持，例如布林肯国务卿最近对北京的访问。 7
尽管俄罗斯和中国吸引了我们的大部分注意力，但我们不能忽视当今新的复杂形势中的其他紧迫挑战，从反恐到地区不稳定。 几乎每天我都会想起中央情报局是一个具有全球责任和全球影响力的机构。 当我们今天下午在这里开会时，我们的官员正在世界各地艰苦的地方从事艰苦的工作，经常在阴影中行动，在看不见和心不在焉的情况下，他们所冒的风险和做出的牺牲很少被人充分理解。
去年夏天，美国对基地组织联合创始人和前领导人艾曼·扎瓦希里的成功打击提醒人们，美国仍然有能力和决心应对恐怖主义威胁。 在未来的许多年里，我们将必须采取微妙的平衡行动，应对新一轮的大国竞争和各种其他挑战。
与此同时，我们正在改变解决新兴技术问题的方法。 我们创建了第二个新的任务中心，专注于技术和跨国挑战。 它已经在显着扩大我们与私营部门的合作伙伴关系，否则我们将无法跟上中国等情报竞争对手的步伐，或保持领先地位。 我们还设立了一个新的首席技术官职位，这在 CIA 中尚属首次。 中央情报局实验室是另一个新项目，支持与学术和私营部门合作伙伴进行关键技术的研究和开发。
我们的内部人才仍然非常出色。 60 多年前，中央情报局率先利用 U-2 侦察机进行技术收集。 我们是现在称为 Google 地球的技术的早期投资者。 我们的专家还开发了为当今智能手机供电的锂离子电池的前体。 我们不断寻找下一个突破。
我们还正处于冷战以来间谍活动最深刻的变革之中。 在智慧城市和无处不在的技术监控时代，间谍活动是一项艰巨的挑战。 对于在敌对国家海外工作的中央情报局官员来说，与冒着自身安全危险向我们提供信息的消息来源会面，持续监视是一件非常危险的事情。 但有时对我们不利的技术——无论是挖掘大数据来揭示我们的活动模式还是庞大的摄像头网络——也可以为我们服务，并对抗我们的竞争对手。
技术收集平台在当今的情报世界中非常重要。 但总会有一些秘密需要人类来收集，以及一些只有人类才能执行的秘密行动。
这需要密集的培训、支持运营的密集团队努力、以及巨大的创造力和风险承受能力。 然而，它仍然是我们使命的核心。 人工智能和机器学习领域正在进行的革命，以及当今世界大量的开源信息，为我们的分析师创造了新的机会。 如果利用得当，人工智能可以在大量开源和秘密获取的数据中发现人类思维无法发现的模式和趋势，从而使我们的官员能够专注于他们最擅长的事情：就对政策制定者最重要的事情提供合理的判断和见解 ，以及 8 对我们的利益最重要的意义。 我们的对手正在快速行动以利用开源信息，我们必须比他们做得更快更好。
另一个关键优先事项，也是我作为局长最重大的责任，是对我们机构的人员进行投资。 虽然对新兴技术的掌握将在很多方面塑造我们的未来，但中央情报局核心的杰出男女将永远推动它向前发展。 自 9/11 恐怖袭击以来，二十多年来，他们一直以令人难以置信的速度运作，我们决心为他们提供所需和应得的支持。
我们彻底重组了我们的内部医疗团队，派遣了更多的医疗官员到现场，加强了针对家庭和双职工夫妇的计划，并任命了我们有史以来第一位首席福利官。 我们还在寻找更多方法来吸引和留住技术人才，改善薪酬方案并鼓励更灵活的职业模式，以便官员可以进入私营部门，然后返回中央情报局。
我们还在充分利用美国社会的丰富性，在劳动力更加多元化方面取得进展。 对于一个横跨非常多元化世界的情报部门来说，这不仅对美国人来说是正确的事情，而且也是明智的事情。 去年，我们在雇用女性和少数族裔官员方面达到了历史最高水平。 也许更重要的是，我们将女性和少数族裔军官提拔到高级职位，这是我们 75 年历史上最高的比例。
我们在这个新时代的最后一个优先事项是深化我们在世界各地的情报伙伴关系，并重申我们对情报外交的承诺。 从本质上讲，情报职业是关于人际互动的，没有什么可以替代直接接触来加深与我们最亲密盟友的联系，与我们最凶猛的对手沟通，并培养中间的每个人。 在担任总监的两年半时间里，我进行了近四打海外旅行，我经历了所有这些关系和挑战。
有时，情报官员更方便地穿越困难的地形或与历史上的敌人打交道，在这些情况下，外交接触可能意味着正式承认。 这就是为什么总统于 2021 年 8 月下旬派我前往喀布尔，在我们最终撤军之前与塔利班领导层接触。 有时，情报关系可以在充满政治起伏的关系中起到稳定作用。 有时情报外交可以鼓励利益融合，支持政策制定者和外交官的努力，并增强竞争优势。
我们的盟友，从五眼网络到北约和印度太平洋地区的其他条约伙伴，是我们情报外交的基石。 没有什么关系比我们与英国和 SIS 的联盟更牢固、更值得信赖。 最近几个月，我和我的朋友“C”在兰利和沃克斯豪尔举行的两次不同寻常的联合市政厅讨论中向我们的员工强调了这一点。
自从多年前我从牛津巴士艰难地来到迪奇利公园以来，我就经历过这个现实。 我把它视为一名外交官，在我们与英国外交官和情报官员的合作中，说服穆阿迈尔·卡扎菲放弃恐怖主义活动，并9放弃他的基本核计划——这是一次充满半夜奇怪会议的冒险 与卡扎菲一起在沙漠中央，卡扎菲是我迄今为止见过的最奇怪的领导人。
我在与伊朗人的秘密核谈判以及伊拉克和阿富汗的复杂危险中看到了这一点。
我在普京发动乌克兰战争之前看到了这种非凡的情报合作关系，我们两个人都感到有点孤独，在我们对即将到来的风暴的公开预测中陷入了困境。
共同面对这个变革的世界，并在我们改变服务的过程中互相学习，是令人欣慰的。 我很荣幸能够在迪奇利强调这种合作关系，跨大西洋精神在这里迸发出火花。
非常感谢。
On Saturday 1st July, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William J Burns delivered Ditchley's 59th Annual Lecture on the topic of A World Transformed and the Role of Intelligence.
Good afternoon. And thanks so much for that kind introduction, and for welcoming back to Ditchley.
I first came here in 1979, as a young and unformed Marshall Scholar at Oxford, with just enough cash to rent a black tie for the formal conference dinner and buy a bus ticket.
I must admit that my memory of the conference itself is hazy, but the effect it had on me was profound. It gave me an enduring appreciation of the power and purpose of the Transatlantic Alliance, and of the particular significance of Anglo-American partnership.
A decade later, I was a career American diplomat, working for Secretary of State James Baker. It was one of those rare "plastic moments" in history, moments which come along only a few times each century. The Cold War was ending, the Soviet Union was about to collapse, Germany would soon be reunified, and Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait would soon be defeated.
It was a world of uncontested American primacy. History's currents seemed to flow inexorably in our direction, the power of our ideas driving the rest of the world in a slow but irresistible surge toward democracy and free markets. Our sometimes overbearing self-assurance seemed well-founded in the realities of power and influence, but it also obscured other gathering trends.
Our moment of post-Cold War dominance was never going to be a permanent condition. History had not ended, nor had ideological competition. Globalization held great promise for human society, with hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty, but it was also bound to produce counter-pressures.
In a transition memo that I drafted for the incoming Clinton Administration at the end of 1992, I tried to capture the dim outlines of the challenges ahead. "While for the first time in fifty years we do not face a global military adversary," I wrote, "it is certainly conceivable that a return to authoritarianism in Russia or an aggressively hostile China could revive such a global threat."
I tried, however imperfectly, to highlight the risks that democracies and free markets would inevitably face, in a world in which economies were globalizing but, as I put it at the time, "the international political system was tilting schizophrenically toward greater fragmentation." And I tried, as best I could, to sketch the shared global threats already posed by climate change and global health insecurity, especially the raging HIV-AIDS epidemic.
For the next quarter-century, I remained a proud and very fortunate American diplomat, serving mostly in Russia and the Middle East, and in senior positions in Washington. I shared in 2 diplomatic successes, and made my share of mistakes, as America's unipolar moment faded, and some of what I had tried to foresee in that long-ago transition memo began to unfold.
Today, as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, I’m afraid to say that I’ve now lived and served long enough to face another plastic moment –in a world that is far more crowded, complicated and contested than the one I experienced in those heady days as a young diplomat three decades ago. It is a world in which the United States is no longer the only big kid on the geopolitical block – a world in which humanity faces both peril and promise.
My job now is to help President Biden and senior policymakers understand and shape a world transformed. So what I’d like to do this afternoon is sketch the main features of the new landscape before us, and what it means for the role of intelligence.
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A World Transformed
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We are, as President Biden reminds us, at an inflection point. The post-Cold War era is definitely over. Our task is to shape what comes next -- investing in our foundational strengths, and working in common cause with our unmatched network of alliances and partnerships -- to leave for future generations a world that is more free, open, secure and prosperous.
That is a very tall order.
Our success will depend on our ability to navigate a world with three distinctive features.
First is the challenge of strategic competition from a rising and ambitious China, and from a Russia which constantly reminds us that declining powers can be at least as disruptive as rising ones.
Second are the problems without passports, like the climate crisis and global pandemics, which are beyond the reach of any one country to address, and are growing more extreme and existential.
And third is the revolution in technology, which is transforming how we live, work, fight and compete, with possibilities and risks we can't yet fully grasp.
Those singular challenges sometimes conflict with one another, with cooperation on shared global problems both more vital and more difficult, too often the victim of strategic competition. And the revolution in technology is both a main arena for that competition, and a phenomenon in which some basic partnership is crucial to set rules of the road, to maximize the benefits of emerging technologies and minimize their dangers.
The most immediate and acute geopolitical challenge to international order today is Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine -- the biggest war in Europe since Winston Churchill sat in his bedroom here at Ditchley, dictating wartime messages to Franklin Roosevelt. 3
I've spent much of the past two decades trying to understand and counter the combustible combination of grievance, ambition and insecurity that Putin embodies. That experience has not only contributed to all this gray hair; it has also given me a healthy dose of humility about pontificating about Putin and Russia.
One thing I have learned is that it is always a mistake to underestimate Putin's fixation on controlling Ukraine and its choices, without which he believes it is impossible for Russia to be a major power or him to be a great Russian leader. That tragic and brutish fixation has already brought shame to Russia and exposed its weaknesses, and evoked the breathtaking determination and resolve of the Ukrainian people.
Putin often insists that Ukraine is "not a real country," that it is weak and divided. Well, as he has discovered, real countries fight back. And that is what Ukrainians have done, with remarkable courage and tenacity, as I have seen in frequent travels to Kyiv over the course of the war. They will not relent, nor will all of us who support Ukraine.
Putin's war has already been a strategic failure for Russia – its military weaknesses laid bare; its economy badly damaged for years to come; its future as a junior partner and economic colony of China being shaped by Putin’s mistakes; its revanchist ambitions blunted by a NATO which has only grown bigger and stronger.
This time last Saturday, we were all riveted by the scenes of Yevgeniy Prigozhin’s armed challenge to the Russian state, with Wagner paramilitary forces briefly seizing Rostov and moving two-thirds of the way to Moscow before turning back. As President Biden has made clear, this is an internal Russian affair, in which the United States has had and will have no part.
It is striking that Prigozhin preceded his actions with a scathing indictment of the Kremlin’s mendacious rationale for its invasion of Ukraine, and of the Russian military leadership’s conduct of the war. The impact of those words and those actions will play out for some time, a vivid reminder of the corrosive effect of Putin’s war on his own society and his own regime. R
ussia's aggression poses a formidable test. But China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so.
China's transformation over the past five decades has been extraordinary. It is a transformation for which the Chinese people deserve the credit, and one which our countries supported because -- as Foreign Secretary Cleverly eloquently said in April at Mansion House, "a stable, prosperous and peaceful China is good for Britain and good for the world."
The issue, therefore, is not China's rise per se, but the actions which accompany it. President Xi is embarking on his third term with more power than any Chinese leader since Mao. And rather than use that power to reinforce, revitalize and update the international system that enabled China's transformation, he seeks to rewrite it. 4
In the intelligence profession, we study carefully what leaders say. But we pay special attention to what they do, and here President Xi's growing repression at home and his aggressiveness abroad -- from his no-limits partnership with Putin to his threats to peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait -- are impossible to ignore.
What's also impossible to ignore is the fact that, in this new era, our competition is taking place against the backdrop of thick economic interdependence and commercial ties. That has served our countries, our economies and our world remarkably well -- but it has also created strategic dependencies, critical vulnerabilities, and serious risks to our security and prosperity.
COVID made clear to every government the danger of being dependent on any one country for life-saving medical supplies, just as Putin's aggression in Ukraine has made clear to every government the risks of being dependent on one country for energy supplies. In today's world, no country wants to find itself at the mercy of a cartel of one for critical minerals and technologies -- especially a country that has demonstrated the will and capacity to deepen and weaponize those dependencies. The answer to that is not to decouple from an economy like China's, which would be foolish, but to sensibly de-risk and diversify by securing resilient supply chains, protecting our technological edge, and investing in industrial capacity.
In a more volatile and uncertain world, in which power is more diffuse, the weight of the hedging middle is growing -- economically, politically and militarily. Democracies and autocracies, developed and developing economies, and countries from the Global South and other parts of the globe, are intent on diversifying their relationships in order to expand their strategic autonomy and maximize their options.
These countries see little benefit and lots of risk in monogamous geopolitical relationships. Instead, we're likely to see more countries pursue more open relationships than we were accustomed to over several post-Cold War decades of unipolarity. And if past is precedent, we ought to be attentive to rivalries between so-called middle powers -- which have often been the match that ignited collisions between major powers.
We do not have the option of focusing on a single geopolitical pacing threat. We face an equal threat to international order and indeed to the lives and livelihoods of our people from shared or transnational challenges, of which the climate crisis poses the most clear and present danger. We can no longer talk about "tipping points" and "catastrophic climate impacts" in the future tense. They are here and now, imperiling our planet, our security, our economies, and our people.
Last month in Washington DC, you could not see across the Potomac River from CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, or take a breath without subjecting your lungs to hazardous materials because of smoke from hundreds of wildfires across Canada. Climate change is the quintessential "threat multiplier" -- fueling energy, health, water and food insecurities, setting back our progress on economic and human development, turbocharging what is already the worst period of forced displacement and migration in history, and further exacerbating instability and geopolitical tensions and flashpoints. 5
These two threats -- geopolitical and transnational -- are impossible to disentangle. We have to be honest, as I noted before -- competition in many ways makes cooperation more difficult. But we’re going to have to do both.
To outcompete our rivals and still deliver on shared challenges, our leaders will need to deal with another immensely powerful force: a revolution in technology more profound than the industrial revolution or the dawn of the nuclear age.
Advances in computing-related technologies -- from chips to quantum to artificial intelligence -- are leading to breakthroughs of remarkable scale and scope. In just a few short months since the first public version of ChatGPT debuted last November, we’ve seen newer models outperform humans in graduate level entrance exams, and in assessments of doctor-to-patient engagements in medical training programs.
We see this "hockey stick" trendline time and again, outstripping our expectations, imaginations and capacity to govern the use of enormously powerful technologies -- for good or for ill. Nowhere is that more evident than in biotechnology and biomanufacturing -- which can unlock extraordinary climate and health solutions and boost our economies, but whose abuse and misuse could lead to catastrophe.
Leadership in technology and innovation has underpinned our economic prosperity and military strength. It has also been critical to setting rules, norms and standards that safeguard our interests and our values. Our Chinese rivals understand that as well as anyone, and it is therefore no surprise that they are investing heavily in emerging technologies, as a central dimension of our strategic competition.
Strategic competition, common transnational imperatives and a revolution in technology without precedent in human history make for a hugely complicated international landscape. It certainly keeps my nostalgia for diplomacy and policymaking under control, but it also sharpens my focus on transforming how we approach the role of intelligence in this transformed world.
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Intelligence Transformed
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Across the CIA and the U.S. intelligence community, we are working hard to meet this moment with the urgency and creativity it requires. Let me offer a few examples, from the challenges of strategic competition with Russia and China, to initiatives to harness emerging technologies, invest in the people who animate the CIA, and build the intelligence partnerships which will shape our future.
I'm proud of the work that CIA and our partners across the U.S. intelligence community have done to help President Biden and senior policymakers, and especially Ukrainians themselves, thwart Vladimir Putin's aggression in Ukraine. And I'm proud of our close partnership with our British allies, in particular the women and men of the Secret Intelligence Service, led by my friend Sir Richard Moore, for whom I have the greatest respect. 6
Together, we provided early and accurate warning of the war that was coming -- the essential function of any intelligence service. When the President sent me to Moscow before the war, in early November of 2021, I found Putin and his senior advisors unmoved by the clarity of our understanding of what he was planning, convinced that the window was closing for his opportunity to dominate Ukraine. I left even more troubled than when I arrived.
Good intelligence has helped President Biden mobilize and sustain a strong coalition of countries in support of Ukraine. Good intelligence has helped Ukraine defend itself with such remarkable bravery and resolve, and to launch the crucial counter-offensive that is now underway.
And the careful declassification of some of our secrets, part of a novel and effective strategy shaped by the President and senior policymakers, has helped deny Putin the false narratives that I have watched him so often invent in the past -- putting him in the uncomfortable and unaccustomed position of being on his back foot.
Disaffection with the war will continue to gnaw away at the Russian leadership, beneath the steady diet of state propaganda and practiced repression. That disaffection creates a once-in-ageneration opportunity for us at CIA, at our core a human intelligence service.
We're not letting it go to waste. We recently used social media -- our first video post to Telegram, in fact -- to let brave Russians know how to contact us safely on the dark web. We had 2.5 million views in the first week, and we’re very much open for business.
If Putin's war in Ukraine is the most immediate challenge in strategic competition, Xi Jinping's China is our biggest geopolitical and intelligence rival, and most significant long-term priority.
We've been organizing ourselves at CIA over the past couple years to reflect that priority. We've set up a new mission center -- one of the dozen or so organizational building blocks of the Agency -- focused exclusively on China. It is the only single-country mission center we have at CIA, and it provides a central mechanism for coordinating work on the China mission, which extends today to every part of CIA.
I learned long ago that priorities aren't real unless budgets follow them. That's why we've concentrated substantially more resources on intelligence collection, operations and analysis on China -- more than doubling the percentage of our overall budget supporting China activities over just the last two years. We're hiring and training more Mandarin speakers. And we're stepping up efforts across the world to compete with China, from Latin America to Africa to the Indo-Pacific.
We've also sought to quietly strengthen intelligence channels with China, including through my own travels. These discreet channels are an important means of ensuring against unnecessary misunderstandings and inadvertent collisions, and complementing and supporting policymaking channels, such as Secretary Blinken's recent visit to Beijing. 7
Even as Russia and China consume much of our attention, we can't afford to neglect other pressing challenges on today's new and complicated landscape, from counter-terrorism to regional instability. Hardly a day goes by when I'm not reminded that CIA is an agency with global responsibilities and global reach. As we meet here this afternoon, our officers are doing hard jobs in hard places around the world, often operating in the shadows, out of sight and out of mind, the risks they take and the sacrifices they make rarely well-understood.
The successful U.S. strike last summer against Ayman al-Zawahiri, the co-founder and former leader of al-Qaeda, was a reminder of the capability and determination still focused on terrorist threats. For many years to come, we will have to perform a delicate balancing act, juggling renewed major power rivalry with all sorts of other challenges.
Meanwhile, we're transforming our approach to emerging technology issues. We've created a second new mission center, focused on technology and transnational challenges. It is already significantly expanding our partnerships with the private sector, without which we will not be able to keep pace with intelligence rivals like China, or keep ahead of them. We've also established a new Chief Technology Officer position, a first for CIA. And CIA Labs, another new program, supports research and development in crucial technologies with academic and private sector partners.
Our in-house talent remains superb. More than 60 years ago, CIA pioneered the technical collection capabilities of the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft. We were an early investor in the technology you now know as Google Earth. And our specialists also developed the precursors to the lithium-ion batteries that power your smartphones today. We're constantly looking for the next breakthrough.
We're also in the midst of the most profound transformation of espionage tradecraft since the Cold War. In an era of smart cities and ubiquitous technical surveillance, spying is a formidable challenge. For a CIA officer working overseas in a hostile country, meeting sources who are risking their own safety to provide us information, constant surveillance is a very risky business. But the same technology that sometimes works against us -- whether it's mining big data to expose patterns in our activities or massive camera networks -- can also be made to work for us, and against our rivals.
Technical collection platforms are enormously important in today's intelligence world. But there will always be secrets we need a human to collect, and clandestine operations that only a human can execute.
That requires intensive training, an intensive team effort to support operations, and immense creativity and appetite for risk. It still, however, remains central to our mission. The ongoing revolution in artificial intelligence and machine learning, and the avalanche of open source information in today's world, creates new opportunities for our analysts. When harnessed properly, AI can find patterns and trends in vast amounts of open source and clandestinelyacquired data that the human mind can't, freeing up our officers to focus on what they do best: providing reasoned judgments and insights on what matters most to policymakers, and what 8 means most for our interests. Our adversaries are moving fast to exploit open source information, and we have to do it faster and better than they do.
Another key priority, and my most profound responsibility as Director, is to invest in the people of our Agency. While mastery of emerging technologies will shape our future in many ways, it is the remarkable men and women at the heart of CIA who will always drive it forward. They have been operating at an incredible tempo for more than two decades, since the terrible attacks of 9/11, and we're determined to provide them the support they need and deserve.
We've completely revamped our in-house medical team, sent more medical officers out to the field, strengthened programs for families and two-career couples, and appointed our first-ever chief wellbeing officer. We're also looking for more ways to attract and retain technological talent, improving pay packages and encouraging more flexible career patterns, so that officers can move into the private sector and later return to CIA.
We're also making progress toward a more diverse workforce, taking full advantage of the richness of American society. For an intelligence service stretched across a very diverse world, that is not only the right thing to do for Americans, but also the smart thing. This past year, we reached historic highs in hiring women and minority officers. Perhaps even more importantly, we promoted into our senior ranks the highest percentages of women and minority officers in our 75-year history.
Our final priority in this new era is to deepen our intelligence partnerships around the world, and renew our commitment to intelligence diplomacy. At its core, the intelligence profession is about human interactions, and there is no substitute for direct contact to deepen ties with our closest allies, communicate with our fiercest adversaries, and cultivate everyone in between. In the nearly four dozen trips I've taken overseas in my two and a half years as Director, I've run the gamut of those relationships and challenges.
Sometimes it's more convenient for intelligence officers to navigate difficult terrain or deal with historic enemies, where diplomatic contact might connote formal recognition. That's why the President sent me to Kabul in late August of 2021, to engage the Taliban leadership just prior to our final withdrawal. Sometimes, intelligence ties can provide ballast in relationships full of political ups and downs. And sometimes intelligence diplomacy can encourage convergence of interests, support the efforts of policymakers and diplomats, and enhance competitive advantages.
Our allies, from the Five Eyes network to our other treaty partners across NATO and the IndoPacific, are the bedrock of our intelligence diplomacy. No relationship is stronger or more trusting than our alliance with Britain and SIS. That's a point that my friend "C" and I have reinforced to our workforces in two unusual joint town hall discussions in recent months, in Langley and in Vauxhall.
I've experienced that reality ever since I trudged up to Ditchley Park from the Oxford bus all those years ago. I saw it as a diplomat, in our collaboration with British diplomats and intelligence officers to persuade Muammar Qaddafi to get out of the business of terrorism and 9 give up his rudimentary nuclear program -- an adventure full of strange meetings in the middle of the night in the middle of the desert with Qaddafi, to this day the strangest leader I've ever met.
I saw it during secret nuclear talks with the Iranians, and in the tangled dangers of Iraq and Afghanistan.
And I saw that remarkable intelligence partnership in the run up to Putin's war in Ukraine, where it got a little lonely for the two of us, way out on a limb in our public predictions of the coming storm.
It is comforting to face this transformed world together, and to learn from one another as we transform our services. And it is an honor to highlight that partnership here at Ditchley, where so much of the Transatlantic spirit found its spark.
Thanks so much.
