Former Deputy DNI Sue Gordon: ‘it is conceivable that the world order has already been broken’

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Click Here – "Former Deputy DNI Sue Gordon: ‘it is conceivable that the world order has already been broken’"

Podcast: Click Here (Recorded Future News)
Episode Air Date: November 28, 2025
Host: Dina Temple-Raston
Guest: Sue Gordon, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence

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Episode Overview

This episode features an in-depth conversation with Sue Gordon, a veteran intelligence official who served as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the first Trump administration. Amid ongoing upheaval and reductions in national security digital expertise, Gordon provides candid and urgent insights about the fragility of U.S. intelligence, the destabilization of global alliances, and cyber threats. The discussion, originally recorded in April 2025, takes place during major shake-ups within key security and cyber agencies, and reflects on what happens when intelligence systems—and the world order—are at risk of breaking down.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Intelligence in Chaos: A View from the Inside

(01:16 – 02:17)

• Sue Gordon reflects on her lifelong career in intelligence ("came right out of school and got a job with the CIA. That turned out to be a fit. Like peas and carrots").
• Context: The interview was conducted amid major government disruptions — Tariffs paused, sudden firing of NSA Director Tim Hawk, and looming layoffs at CISA.

2. How Adversaries Perceive U.S. Government Disarray

(02:20 – 02:37)

• Gordon emphasizes adversaries see U.S. instability as an opening:
  "I think they see opportunity. If I went back to my real intelligence roots, I'd say this is a great time for mischief." — Sue Gordon (02:27)

3. Briefing President Trump: The Unique Challenges

(04:00 – 07:33)

• Gordon describes daily briefings with President Trump as unusually challenging due to:
  • Trump's economically-driven worldview ("he was our first president that was disproportionately economically, not politically military driven" – 04:36)
  • Lack of understanding about government structures: "He really didn't understand the government at all. Zero." (05:16)
  • Distrust of intelligence over advice from friends ("he trusted others more than us...a guy that will call up a friend of his and he believes them more on South Africa than us" – 05:20)
• "I don't think you have to be malevolent to cause damage." — Sue Gordon (07:34)
• Gordon warns that reforms made without understanding can "break things that you don't understand."

4. The Value of Quiet Competence in National Security

(07:43 – 08:15)

• Gordon uses SpaceX as an analogy:
  • The achievements "create the quiet that things happen in." If disrupted, "I just worry after that."

5. The Fracturing of the World Order

(08:35 – 10:04)

• Gordon posits economic priorities and changing alliances have eroded traditional U.S. advantages: “It is conceivable that the world order is not being challenged, but it’s already been broken and two sides have chosen a place and the US is trying to decide where it’s going to go.” — Sue Gordon (09:09)
• Smaller nations are being forced to choose sides for survival.

6. The Threat of Purges and Cuts to Digital Expertise

(11:56 – 13:33)

• Dina discusses a Trump-era initiative (“Doge”) that led to government firings and the hollowing out of digital infrastructure.
• Gordon warns of the dangers when professional staff are undermined:
  "When you don't include them, you don't connect them, or worse, you undermine them...I just feel it's so destructive." — Sue Gordon (13:07)

7. Cyber as the Defining Realm of Modern Conflict

(14:13 – 15:54)

• Gordon calls this "a consequential moment in the cyber realm" ("Holy smokes, yes." – 14:14)
• The digital world means "anyone for a buck 380 can go any distance...do anything with volumetric effects." — Sue Gordon (14:17)
• Ransomware and cyber-attacks aren’t just about economic loss: "Cyber is fundamentally assaulting trust." — Sue Gordon (15:11)
• Past attacks (Ukrainian power grid, JBS meatpacking, Colonial Pipeline) demonstrate attackers’ ability to disrupt non-obvious targets, amplifying social and economic effects.

8. Rethinking Risk and Cybersecurity Goals

(15:54 – 18:23)

• Gordon argues for resilience over the illusion of total prevention:
  • "You can't stop cyber attacks...but you can build resilience."
  • The U.S. has been too focused on compliance and not enough on understanding risk and collective responsibility.
  • "Putting so much pressure on companies to defend themselves against nation state attack is just myopic." — Sue Gordon (15:57)
• Calls for public education about the systemic and interlinked nature of cyber threats.

9. The Perils and Responsibilities of Offensive Cyber

(18:23 – 19:50)

• The Trump administration’s increased focus on offensive cyber is risky for a country with massive attack surfaces.
• Gordon advises: "Think about what our vision is about what we need to do for both deterrence, for the ability to respond when we must" (18:52).
• Stresses the importance of standards and considering unintended consequences.

10. The "Signal Gate" Controversy and Secure Communications

(19:50 – 23:59)

• Gordon addresses the controversy over using Signal (an encrypted messaging app) for government work.
• She is more concerned with the lack of professional staff to advise on secure practices:
  "I think it shows they're not using their professional staff or the professional staff has been so denuded..." (20:35)
• Signal is appropriate for dinner plans, not state business:
  "With Signal, I would tell every leader that that's what you should use to arrange your dinner plans." — Sue Gordon (22:15)
• Even encrypted messaging is vulnerable if the device is compromised:
  "You just don't know. And all our devices are so complex now, it's hard to even back into all the processes..." (22:51)

11. Cyber Policy Gaps: The National and Local Disconnect

(24:10 – 25:30)

• The technical expertise exists, Gordon says, but policy and authority lag behind—especially beyond the federal level.
• Example: Post-2016 investments in state/local election security.
• Recommends a focus on critical infrastructure: energy, transportation, communications, health.

12. Reimagining Intelligence for the Modern Era

(26:04 – 27:42)

• Gordon urges a reinvention of intelligence, not just incremental change:
  "I would love it if it reimagined itself as though it were newly designed today rather than in 1947. Because this is a very different information world." (26:04)
• Intelligence must become faster, more collaborative, and adept at “second and third order effects.”
• Cyber should be seen not just as "a technical thing" but as "a modality," integrated into all facets of security.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "I think they see opportunity. If I went back to my real intelligence roots, I'd say this is a great time for mischief."
  — Sue Gordon (02:27) on how U.S. adversaries perceive government turmoil

• "He really didn't understand the government at all. Zero."
  — Sue Gordon (05:16), on President Trump

• "You don't have to be malevolent to cause damage."
  — Sue Gordon (07:34), on unintended consequences of uninformed leadership

• "It is conceivable that the world order is not being challenged, but it's already been broken."
  — Sue Gordon (09:09), describing the fragility of global alliances

• "When you don't include them, you don't connect them, or worse, you undermine them... I just feel it's so destructive."
  — Sue Gordon (13:07), on the loss of institutional expertise

• "Cyber is fundamentally assaulting trust."
  — Sue Gordon (15:11), summing up the deepest impact of cyber threats

• "Putting so much pressure on companies to defend themselves against nation state attack is just myopic."
  — Sue Gordon (15:57), warning against unrealistic expectations of the private sector

• "With Signal, I would tell every leader that that's what you should use to arrange your dinner plans."
  — Sue Gordon (22:15), on the appropriate use of encrypted messaging

• "I would love it if [intelligence] reimagined itself as though it were newly designed today rather than in 1947."
  — Sue Gordon (26:04), on the need for intelligence reform

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Key Timestamps

• 01:16 – Sue Gordon describes her entry into intelligence
• 02:27 – Adversaries' perspective on U.S. instability
• 04:36 – Briefing Trump: economic focus, lack of government knowledge
• 07:34 – Dangers of ignorance in leadership
• 09:09 – The world order might already be broken
• 13:07 – Systemic risk from undermining expertise
• 14:14 – Cyber as a defining, transformational threat
• 15:11 – Assault on institutional trust
• 15:57 – The need to shift from compliance to risk management
• 18:52 – Standards and vision for offensive cyber
• 22:15 – Signal and secure communications: risks and best practices
• 24:10 – Policy gaps and the need for local resilience
• 26:04 – Intelligence needs reinvention for the digital era

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Final Thoughts & Tone

Throughout the interview, Gordon’s tone is frank, analytical, and occasionally wry. She expresses respect for the intelligence community but a sense of urgency about its need to keep pace with change—warning that the threats facing national security and the very order of the world are already upon us, not looming in some distant future. The overarching message is clear: reinvention, not just evolution, is urgently needed if the United States is to maintain its resilience and leadership in an age where digital threats are everywhere and alliances more unpredictable than ever.

Transcript

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Chatgpt AI Machine satellite engine ignition. Click here and lift up. Hey there, it's Dina. The Click Here team is taking a short break to get ahead on reporting for 2026. And we have a surprise coming for you in January, the sort that involves transmitters and antennas and maybe a new way to find us. More details on that later. But for now, today's Mic Drop. We wanted to return to an interview that's been echoing in our heads ever since we aired it. We've spent a lot of time this year looking at how cuts to national security agencies are hollowing out digital expertise at the highest levels of government. And few people understand that better than Sue Gordon. Sue was the principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence during the first Trump administration, and she's spent decades thinking about how intelligence should evolve and what happens when it doesn't. I spoke with her back in the spring, and she shared with me her concerns about what happens when intelligence is stuck in the past. Take a listen. Sue Gordon spent her life working in.

[Sue Gordon]

Intelligence, came right out of school and got a job with the CIA.

That turned out to be a fit. Like peas and carrots.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

She rose through the ranks, held every big intel job you can think of. CIA, NRO, ODNI. And in 2017, she landed a role that sounded more powerful than it probably felt. Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, which.

[Sue Gordon]

Is perhaps the worst title in the world.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

We caught up with her in Nashville at a summit on the future of war at Vanderbilt University. It was mid April, and the headlines were coming fast and furious. Tariffs paused. NSA Director General Tim Hawk fired without explanation. And cisa, the cybersecurity agency tasked with protecting the country's critical infrastructure, was bracing for more layoffs. And that's where we started.

There seems to have been a little more churn than usual in the early.

Days of the Trump administration.

How do you think our adversaries. We could pick China or Russia. How do you think they're seeing what's going on?

[Sue Gordon]

I think they see opportunity. If I went back to my real intelligence roots, I'd say this is a great time for mischief.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

From recorded future news, this is Click. Here's Mic Drop. A longer listen to one of our favorite interviews of the week. I'm Dena Temple Raston, and today a former career intelligence officer weighs in on chaos cyber and what happens when a government seems to forget how its own systems work.

Where were you when General Hawk was fired?

[Sue Gordon]

Reliving my time in the previous administration when each morning you wake up and you go, oh, my God.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

We'Ll be right back.

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

If you're looking for a daily guide to cybersecurity news and policy, sign up for the Cyber Daily from Recorded Future News. It serves up today's most interesting and important cyber stories from our sister publication the Record, and then aggregates all of the big cyber stories you might have missed from news outlets around the world. Just go to the Record Media and and click on Cyber Daily to get all you need to know about the world of cybersecurity right in your inbox.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

I'm Dina templewest and this is Click here's mic drop. When Sue Gordon was principal Deputy Director for National Intelligence, she had one job that few people ever experienced. Briefing the President every day.

Give us an idea what that was like.

[Sue Gordon]

What was that like? Every president is different.

And since the job of intelligence is simply to present the best view of what is not what we prefer because we have no policy responsibility, it's just, can we communicate the best of what we know in a manner that can be heard? And so every time you have a different president, you have to do that differently. What was interesting about President Trump, I'd probably say three things.

Number one, I think he was our.

First president that was disproportionately economically, not politically military driven. And so his questions fell into areas that we weren't as practiced about talking about as his interests were. Right. So you can ask me about order of battle for foreign nation states and capabilities and alliances, but the questions about.

Leverage, I think that was a hard thing for us. The second difference was he really didn't understand the government at all.

Zero.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

What does that mean, how it works.

[Sue Gordon]

Who has what responsibility, how you move it to achieve what you want. And you kind of have to know that. And then the third piece is he had, particularly for intelligence, he trusted others more than us. So that was almost for the first time the intelligence community having to say, we're used to being sacrosanct and now we have a guy that will call up a friend of his and he believes them more on South Africa than us. And so if you put those three things together with the impatience and confidence of a Donald Trump, you can see how we think we're trying to help him get where he wants by sharing what we know. And he's like, I just want to.

[Robert Smith]

Do.

[Sue Gordon]

Was a romp.

I mean, I love the intelligence community and I love the kind of purity of our mission, which I think he didn't understand. I think he conflated off times with the FBI and he can make whatever policy he wants. But we would like him to know what we know and to understand how not to misuse what we don't know.

We thought he had the what and.

We had the how.

I think what seems to be done now is he's got the what and he tells them how. Now, listen, if you've got a career.

Government employee sitting here, here's what I'll tell you.

So slow. Too costly, probably too big. Not responsive enough to a changing world. But you do have to have a vision of what you want to do, and you do have to have an idea of how that system works. Like, would you hire me to be the CEO of ExxonMobil?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

I don't know.

We'll wait till the end of the interview.

[Sue Gordon]

But you're doing pretty well so far, right?

I'm not a professional CEO. I might be good enough to be a start CEO, but I'm not good enough. And so I think that's the problem, is government does have a sense to it, even if it needs to be modernized. And when you don't see that and you just have people who just do things because they can, you run the risk of breaking things that you don't understand.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Not out of malevolence, just.

[Sue Gordon]

Yeah. I don't think you have to be malevolent to cause damage.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Exactly.

You just have to be maybe not understanding something.

[Sue Gordon]

Elon Musk, I think America is awesome. I think what he has built with SpaceX and what we've done in terms of putting things in space at lower cost and Starlink, I think, is absolutely awesome. And when that rocket blows up, who the hell cares, Right? Right. There are going to be a lot of people who. Who care, who have come to count on something that is produced by people who simply create the quiet that things happen in. And when that isn't there, I just worry after that.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

The quiet things happen in.

That's a nice phrase. One of the things, as an intelligence officer I think you do is you kind of see things from maybe an adversary's point of view. How do you think our adversaries. We could pick China or Russia. They're different, I think, in the way they're seeing what's going on. How do you think they're seeing what's going on?

[Sue Gordon]

I think they see opportunity. I think for the longest time, the United States has had kind of a stranglehold on global actions and global integrity. And putting aside any of the political discussions about tariffs and the need to rebalance trade and all those things. Yay, we. But the greatest strength America always had was friends, that people would choose to be friends with us. And I think that was clear. Now, in a digital world, economic forces.

Are more important than political.

Military protectionism is more economic. As we've changed our priorities, I think alliances have become more situational, and when we become more stable and economically less dependable, I think you will see people going toward other centers. Said more grossly is conceivable that the world order is not being challenged, but it's already been broken and two sides have chosen a place and the US Is trying to decide where it's going to go. And all the other people that around the world are looking to say, I'm too small to be one of these big players. Who am I going to align with to make sure that I can be as sovereign as I am? And I think so. I think that's created an opportunity.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

When we come back, Sue Gordon on the Doge Cuts signal gate and the surprising decision to fire NSA Director Tim Hawk. We'll be right back. Support for Click Here comes from GiveWell. When it comes to issues of health and poverty around the world, there's so much going on, it's hard to know how to help. For starters, how do you find organizations that are truly making a difference? That's where GiveWell comes in. GiveWell is an independent resource doing rigorous and transparent research. They figure out which charities do the most good for every dollar donated, and they only recommend programs with the biggest impact on saving. Over 150,000 donors have already trusted them to direct over $2.5 billion to great causes around the world. So check out GiveWell next time you're giving to charity. If this is your first gift through GiveWell, you can have your donation matched up to $100 before the end of the year or as long as the matching funds last. To claim your match, go to givewell.org and pick podcast and enter click here at checkout or make sure they know you heard about GiveWell from click here to get your donation matched. Again, that's givewell.org, code clickhere to donate or find out more.

[Robert Smith]

You should tell the people who we are and what our new show is. I'm Robert Smith, this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast about the best ideas and people and businesses in history and some of the worst people, horrible ideas and destructive companies in the history of business. We struggled to come up with a name, decided to call it Business History. You Know why?

[Recorded Future News Announcer]

Why?

[Robert Smith]

Because it's a show about the history.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Of business, available everywhere you get your podcasts. We heard from someone inside the US Digital Service who described what it felt like when Doge, a Trump era efficiency initiative, moved in. She said it didn't feel like reform. It felt like a purge. People were being fired, systems were being gutted, and the people making those decisions didn't seem to understand how fragile the government's digital backbone really is. And that is one of the things that keeps Sue Gordon up at night.

[Sue Gordon]

President is just not the national security decision maker. The work of national security is done by the thousands and thousands of people.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

The people who do the daily work of protecting the country, who don't make policy, but need to understand it in order to implement it. If they're left out, or worse, undercut, the system suffers.

[Sue Gordon]

When you don't include them, you don't connect them, or worse, you undermine them. How does the system work? How do we have any conversations with our allies and partners to do things? How do you get the American people to willfully suboptimize their lives so that something good can happen? If you're telling them that none of that is working, I just feel it's so destructive.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

And when the system actually breaks, our adversaries are watching.

What went through your mind from like an IC perspective, an intelligence professional perspective.

[Sue Gordon]

Okay, so again, this is a really consequential moment where everything that was doesn't work anymore.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

She compares it to an invisible earthquake. Everything looks the same, but none of it works anymore. The problem, she says, is that evolution won't fix it. It needs reinvention. And for the cyber world, that moment of reinvention isn't coming. It's already here.

And do you feel this is a consequential moment in the cyber realm in particular?

[Sue Gordon]

Holy smokes.

Yes.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Okay, tell me about that.

[Sue Gordon]

Well, cyber is just. It has changed everything. It has changed the projection of power. Now anyone for a buck 380 can go any distance across any barrier to.

Do anything with volumetric effects. And then we have nation states that have the power of nation states behind.

Them that are mature political, military institutions.

That know what to do with that.

With the resources that they have.

And so there is just no doubt that it isn't just the economic impact of the ransomware, but is also the insinuation into our institutions that we know exists. I mean, you know, the Russian attack on Ukraine that took out that power.

Grid wasn't about taking out the power grid.

It was about showing that they could.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

You mean years ago, before the war.

[Sue Gordon]

2000, seven years ago in Western societies, because we depend on a default trust. And cyber is fundamentally assaulting trust. Look what they've done with influence as well as attack. So what worries me the most about this is just because no adversary has effected something with systemic outcome doesn't mean that they could if they either needed to demonstrate their power or if they just decided to create advantage. And I just don't think we're talking about it in the way that will help American decision makers, whether that's the population or whether that's a business leader or even the government saying, how are we going to do this?

[Dina Temple-Raston]

How should we be talking about it? That is a major threat.

[Sue Gordon]

First we have to understand what we want to do. I mean, now that we're in a digital world, you can't stop cyber attacks because you need to be able to communicate, but you can build resilience. We could build the capability to achieve what we wanted to do. We need to talk more about risk than compliance because you can't stop everything. So what risks are we taking when we make the choices we have? Putting so much pressure on companies to defend themselves against nation state attack is just myopic. We still talk about cyber as though it's this capability. What it is is just the new means to achieve the objectives of any interested party said differently, advancing their interests at the expense of ours. And we need to start talking about it in that way because if we understood some fundamentals of what people want to get and achieve, then we would say that now all that is being done digitally. Now how do we think about that? So everyone who is insecure in their connected device has created a pathway for someone who wants to use it to go to somebody else. And at one point in my career I was on the cyber actor side. Legally, of course. That's what we do on the cyber actor side. And we're lazy. I'm not going to go after the hard thing. That's resources I don't have. I'm going to find the easy way to. So what was it? What's the Meatpacking?

[News Reporter]

The world's largest meat supplier is coming back online today. After making significant progress against a ransomware attack, Brazil based JBS was forced to cease cattle slaughtering operations at 13 of its meat processing plants in the United States.

[Sue Gordon]

Who would have ever thought. And the answer is. But it was right at the time that supply chain really mattered. And so it was both an actual effect and a terroristic effect.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Colonial Pipeline, too.

[Sue Gordon]

Colonial pipeline, great example. We caused the shortfall because we didn't have enough wisdom there to understand the difference between the business system and the system. So we actually caused the shortage because we didn't. So I just think that there's this need for education, for people to understand that it isn't just a technical thing that is reserved for obvious targets, but it is ubiquity. And so to talk about each person's risks and interests and then the collective responsibility. So, as with almost any topic we're going to talk about, I think we need to have better conversations with the American people.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So what we're hearing from the Trump administration is they want to lean forward a little bit more on offensive cyber. And this has always been a bit of a third rail for people. It is for lots of good reasons.

[Sue Gordon]

And for lots of good reasons.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Right.

Including that we have an incredible attack surface here, meaning the United States. Do you think the way to go.

Is to lean forward on offensive more than we are?

Has that sort of been baked in now, you think?

[Sue Gordon]

What a great question.

I think we have to have a vision of what our interest and what our objectives are. One of the things I'm proudest of about America is that we do actually have a standard. I mean, there are reasons that we haven't done some things that have done is that we do worry about coupling effects in the digital domain, much as our military cares about civilian casualties different from others. And so I do think we need to think more about a world where this is the threat surface. Think about what our vision is about what we need to do for both, deterrence, for the ability to respond when we must. But I hope that where we're starting is from that place. Rather than give me a cyber action.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Let me talk to you a little bit about signal. When you were in the ic, did you ever use Signal?

[Sue Gordon]

No. Signal was nascent. You know, did I.

Did I use whatever.

Instant messaging? Yes. Never for business, for God's sake.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Right.

So what was your reaction when you saw that?

[Sue Gordon]

I am really loathe to assign bad intent to anybody.

I do think new administrations.

Do suffer from not understanding why things are done certain way.

Back to this. What weight of responsibility. This isn't new.

We had to take President Obama's BlackBerry.

So, you know, the horror just, you know, is misplaced.

There are a couple things that are worrisome about it. Number one is at some point when it turned to that conversation, somebody needed to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's go to another channel. Right. And there were people. One, this is a great rule for intelligence because we have no dog in the fight. So. So Director Gabbard, I would have loved it if that had been her role. But Mike Walz and Marco Rubio, they're seasoned professionals, they could have. So I guess that's what could have happened. I think it shows they're not using their professional staff or the professional staff has been so denuded because this is where you call get me insecure thing. I know it's inconvenient, but this is what you have your teams to do. And so whether you don't know that they can do that or whether in the some of the churn we have in the ranks, they, they don't exist. And then I think the, the piece that for me was the most disturbing was the suggestion that it was inconsequential. And I'm an intel officer man. That was a target rich environment. Right. And it was a target rich environment just in the conversations that they had after about it. But I wouldn't presume that our adversaries and competitors don't have the ability. And just because there was no action on that operation, which yay, I'm so glad it was successful and yay, doing those things, I don't think that necessarily means that it hasn't been penetrated. The one thing I'd say to the question of why do people have signal? It's because with signal, I would tell every leader that that's what you should use to arrange your dinner plans.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So signal for dinner plans.

[Sue Gordon]

Yeah, so that you don't get pattern of life.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

We don't.

[Sue Gordon]

Or who your friends are or what routes you take.

I mean, so.

So there's a really good reason for.

SIGNAL being used by people who are of interest to our adversaries and competitors, but not for that kind of conversation.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Tell me if I'm wrong about this, but if say for example you had spyware that was dropped on a personal cell phone, even though signal is encrypted, you would be able to see everything.

Right.

[Sue Gordon]

It depends on where it is in.

The stack that it's located.

But you don't know.

You just don't know. And all our devices are so complex now, it's hard to even back into all the processes that are running in.

All sorts of places. Now I will say when Dave Petraeus was the director of the CIA, he was absolutely relentless on the insufficiency of secure communications at the speed he wanted to operate. And I was his director of support and we had tussles over, but you must be secure.

And he's like, but I must move fast. You know what that interaction cost? We got better technically on the secure communications.

And so if what comes out of signal is. It just wasn't responsive enough to what had to happen.

Now that isn't seemed to be the.

Conversation that was actually going on. That was not.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

This is nothing to see here is what we're hearing.

[Sue Gordon]

Yeah, but. But I do think let's not forget that things move on, that there could be exigencies that mean that our secure infrastructure isn't what we need. Yeah, people in 2025 and beyond, you need to be able to operate from where you are at the speed you need to operate. So let's get on with that development securely.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

So if you were whispering to NSC Director Waltz about what the the cyber plan would be, what kind of advice would you give him? What should our cyber plan be?

[Sue Gordon]

We have all the capabilities we need, probably we are incredibly technically capable. We are largely unprotected because the gap between what we can do governmentally versus what can be affected locally is huge. To choose an example that isn't super popular right now, but it's what Chris Krebs did with CISA post2016. We realized that our state and local governments that actually do run our elections were woefully underprepared for it. And so we invested in it. So that's one is that we have the capabilities you need to make sure it's connected all the way through it. Take a really hard look at our infrastructure, especially in that light. And I would say I'd probably start with energy, but transportation, communications and health would go. And then the last thing is we don't have the policy to support any action we want to take right now, particularly if we're under attack.

And so what I would say to them is think about use cases, address our ability to use it and to deter it and to defend it.

And.

Then put all the things in place that you need in order to affect that.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But sue says there's a gap, a dangerous one, between the technical expertise we have and the policies that enable us to act. The targets aren't just federal. They're state, local, commercial, and the defenses haven't caught up. So she says start there with elections, with hospitals, with the grid. Then give people the authority and the rules they need to respond. She says intelligence is still her favorite part of government, not because it's perfect, but because at its best, it's a kind of flashlight in a dark room.

[Sue Gordon]

So I told you, intelligence is my favorite, but I would love it if it reimagined itself as though it were newly designed today rather than in 1947. Because this is a very different information world. It's a very different partnership world.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

It's not 1947 anymore, it's not even 2007. The rules have changed, the adversaries have changed, and so has the information itself. Now it's faster, fuzzier and everywhere.

[Sue Gordon]

So I think they need to double down on all the information that the world has, double down on finding patterns so that you can have more understanding than capability knowledge and find ways to present that information so it helps decisions at the speed you have.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

Intelligence isn't just about knowing what's true, it's about knowing what's coming.

[Sue Gordon]

We are too slow at showing second and third order effects of decisions being made. So I think there's a lot of that can be done there. And then lastly, I think we are still applying with volumetric effects. We still think of cyber as a technical thing being applied by technical people. And I think we really need to break out of that and just see that it's a modality and get that to be more in our wheelhouse. But I think intelligence has has the potential to be the hero of this moment's story, just as it has so many times in the past.

[Dina Temple-Raston]

But for intelligence to work in 2025, it can't be a Cold War relic. It has to be reimagined. It has to be faster and more collaborative, less about secrets and more about the signal and pattern and second order consequences in order to be the hero of this moment. From Recorded Future News, this has been Click Here's Mic Drop. It was written and produced by Megan Dietrich, Sean Powers, Erica Gaeda, Zach Hirsch and me, Dina Temple Reston. It was edited by Karen Duffett. We'll be back on Tuesday with another episode of Click Here. Have a great weekend.

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