Spy Craft, Russian Espionage and KBR: A Conversation With Sean Wiswesser

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0:53Hello, I'm John, and this is In Orbit.

1:16Welcome, everyone, to the podcast. Wherever you are, whatever walk of life you're from, new or long-time listener, we're just glad you're with us and staying in our orbit. We have what I think is a very cool episode and one that is a little bit of a departure from our normal fare. This is a podcast for anyone that's interested in the latest in science, engineering, and technology across areas like national security, space exploration, the energy sector, AI, and a whole lot more. And as of this moment, it's also a podcast that covers areas like espionage and spycraft. In addition to its work supporting active duty service people around the world, KBR is also a proud partner to the U.S.

2:01intelligence community. That means helping protect the U.S. and its allies from adversaries that work from the shadows, launching cyber attacks, creating online disinformation campaigns, or running good old-fashioned cloak and dagger operations. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And I am thrilled and honored to welcome to the podcast today, Sean Wisswesser. Sean is KBR Senior Technical Advisor, Foreign Material, and 28-year National Security and United States Intelligence Community Professional, formerly worked with the Central Intelligence Agency. Sean is an expert on Russian espionage and spycraft, among other things, and has written a new book published just this year called Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks, Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War, which is available now wherever you get your physical or digital versions of books.

2:55Welcome to In Orbit, Sean.

2:57Sean Wiswesser: Thanks, John. Honored to be with you. Honored to have a chance to do this podcast for and with my colleagues at KBR. So this is great. Thank you for doing it. You had a lot of people reaching out, telling me about this, and I have not finished the book yet, but I've loved every page of what I've read so far. So excited to talk about that and excited to talk about how your work in national security and intelligence translates to the work that you're doing with KBR. But before we get into your career, I would love to hear about how a lad gets interested in Slavic languages and culture. What was that progression like for you?

3:33Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, sure. I'll add my usual disclaimer. CIA always wants me to say my views are mine alone. Don't represent the views of CIA nor the U.S. government. They ask me to always say that in every podcast I've been on. Yeah, so, you know, I started Russian language in 1988, John, a long, long time ago. I was 14 years old, got a really good chance to go to an all-boys boarding school prep school on a scholarship. I was not a wealthy kid, but I had a chance to go to a prep school, and they offered great language programs. there. Just a quick sample, what I mean by great, when I went to the Foreign Service Institute run by State Department over 10 years after that, they had the exact same recording software, the hardware, the exact language lab we had at our boarding school.

4:17Sean Wiswesser: I was like, wow, we had really primo stuff. Foreign Service Institute uses the same stuff. So yeah, we really had excellent language training there. But Russian was the one that was kind of out of the mix. They had French, German, Spanish, and then they had Russian. And I was interested in the military at the time. And so I was starting ninth grade and had a chance to pick a language. I thought, why not learn the language of our main adversary at the time, by the way, which is the term that the Russians still refer to us as. They say the Glovniy Pratyvnik. They never got past that. And I mentioned that in my book, you might recall.

4:46Sean Wiswesser: So I decided to learn the language of the Glovniy Pratyvnik, or our main adversary, the Soviets and the Russians at the time. And then I just continued on from them. Continued on in college. Got a second BA in Russian. I was a history major first and continued on then with my career using Russian in my entire career. That's fascinating. I love to hear about how things like that work in people's lives. Well, how did you said you were interested in the military at the time, even at 14 years old? How did the path work for you going into the broader intelligence community and the kinds of work that you were doing in nearly three decades in the intelligence community there?

5:24Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, so thanks for the question, John. Yeah, I always try to talk to and share experience with the next generation, too. And so I'll push this podcast out to a lot of – I work with a lot of college students that I mentor, and I talk to high schools as well. I guest instructed some summer camps focused on intelligence. I did one at Atlanta's Best Summer. Yeah, so you know what I always say is, like, you know, it's never too early to get started on your career aspirations and sort of do your homework. So all through high school, I was a voracious reader. I was always reading both fiction, like the Clancy novels, and then I was reading nonfiction, pretty serious stuff.

5:59Sean Wiswesser: I had a chance in Cambridge last month. I lectured at Cambridge as part of an experience there at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. I got to meet Dr. Christopher Andrews. So he wrote the seminal study, KGB, The Inside Story, in 1990. So I just had a chance now to meet him last month. But I was reading serious books like that in 10th grade. And so I was doing my homework. But then, you know, it's all about finding the right match, John. That's the hardest part, right, for anybody aspiring to serve, whether it's a military or intelligence. I realized later things worked out the way they should because I thought I was interested in a career in the military.

6:33Sean Wiswesser: I applied to Annapolis coming out of high school. I got into Annapolis, went through the nomination process, got an appointment, had a couple waivers left. But then I won a scholarship, a full ride to University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, and I took that scholarship. I found out later when I had to work for a general directly that that career would not have suited me. I like to speak my opinion. And sometimes in the military, as one general famously told me, I said, sir, wouldn't you like to know my opinion? He said, no, I would not. If I want your opinion, I will ask you. Well, in the military, that's part of it.

7:04Sean Wiswesser: I felt like my entire career generally with CIA, I was allowed to express my views. I didn't have to necessarily blindly follow an order. I know a lot of military officers will say, oh, no, we don't have to blindly. But if it's a lawful order, you better follow it. I did joint duty assignments with the military, served in a war zone, embedded to the military. So if it's an order, you're going to follow your order. I didn't have to follow orders in CIA. I was able to give my opinion. I was able to object at times. I was able to say, isn't there a better way forward? So I think the intelligence community was ultimately a better match for me.

7:35Sean Wiswesser: And so that's the path I pursued, coming out of college for State Department for a few years and then CIA for the bulk of my career. Outstanding. how does your expertise translate to the work that you're doing today with KBR? Yeah, I think the best way that it translates is intelligence community experience. Again, I mentioned my JDAs. I had five joint duty assignments in my career, three of them with DOD, one with FBI long-term, one CIA doesn't want me to talk about. But I had a lot of time, John, better part of a decade embedded to other intelligence agencies. So what I do now for KBR, our contract for the test evaluation threat resource activity under the Pentagon Office of Testing.

8:14Sean Wiswesser: It's an important joint effort between Office of Testing and Evaluation and the intelligence community. And so I think it's, I believe what my bosses have told me is it's an asset to have all of those three decades of intelligence community experience and then a lot of time embedded into DOD, understanding our military colleagues, and then understanding our adversaries. That's a big part of it, particularly the Russian adversary I spent most of my career on. So I'm going well into my third year now with KBR. I enjoy it. It's a great chance to continue serving my country in a different way. I'm honored and I'm privileged to have the job.

8:50Yeah, KBR is proud of that legacy of providing former service members and members of the intelligence community further opportunities to continue offering that kind of expertise to the U.S. and its allies. So thanks for being with us and doing that.

9:05Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, you're right, John. You know, KBR, it's a great company that, you know, I knew of it, of course, from my intelligence community experience. So I was already sort of comfortable with the idea. And then I have to thank our program manager, Rodney Yerby, who I work for now, and our government boss as well, both of them, for giving me the opportunity to serve coming out. Now, it's not always easy for folks to figure out. You come out of CIA, our resume is kind of broken. We have to get it cleared. It doesn't make a lot of sense to folks. So I appreciate a program manager that said, you know what?

9:35Sean Wiswesser: I'll bet you we can use this guy. We can use his experience. So again, thank you to Rodney Irby and the team that brought me on board. That's awesome. Our listeners might not know, but if they've even read the Bible, they know that spycrafted espionage have been around for millennia. Empires can't keep power unless they know what their enemies are up to, right? So at the beginning of your book, you give a great overview of the history of the modern Russian intelligence apparatus or what we're in, quote unquote, the West aware of. That's from the czars to the Bolsheviks to the KGB and now the Putin regime.

10:06After the Cold War proper, which many would argue never ended, was there a feeling that Russia might embrace the West more fully? Or was it clear that it was going to be more or less the same politically and from an intelligence perspective?

10:22Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, it's a great question, Sean. So as you know, you correctly said, you know, the first part of my book, the first chapter, one of the driest, admittedly, chapters in the book, but it's, I got to give the history, 100 years history of Russian intelligence, you know, going back through the Soviet times, the continuum back to the Tsarist days. The Russians have always understood intelligence, espionage. These are things that don't come naturally to a democracy. They really don't. The very idea, for instance, of being followed around, you know, chapter four of my book, I then move on to more exciting topics, as you know, 10 chapters on all the tactics of Russian espionage.

10:53Sean Wiswesser: So chapter four, Narushka, for instance, surveillance. The very idea of surveillance is an anathema and a democracy, right? We're offended by it as American citizens, right? How dare you follow me around? How dare you listen to my phone calls, right? You can see the debates right now over the reauthorization of the various FISA authorities. And it should be a lively debate within democracy. No such thing in Russian society, really, John. Anybody that's traveled, spent a lot of time in that part of the world, understands Russian Soviet culture before it. Russians are not surprised to be followed, to be listened to, to have their phones tapped.

11:28Sean Wiswesser: It's just part of they accept that, that that's what the government's going to do to them. It's a shame, really, but that's been, unfortunately, the history of repression in Russia, Russian society, Soviet society, and then going back again all the way to the czar. So that they have expressions like I relate in the book, you know, the walls have ears and the Russians mean it. You know, they always believe they're being listened to, followed. It's part of sort of their upbringing. I also joke, I quip at one point in the book, I mentioned my mother-in-law, who's Lithuanian, my wife's half Lithuanian and the other half, she's Russian, Ukrainian.

12:01Sean Wiswesser: and she grew up in the Soviet Union. I say, you know, my mother-in-law could have, I joked with students at CIA's training academy, my mother-in-law could have taught a lot of the fundamental aspects of our espionage tradecraft because they grew up in the Soviet Union. All of the movies in the 1960s were all about, you know, CIA and the West trying to infiltrate the Soviet Union and sabotage their factories. And it was a constant upbringing and paranoia and vast conspiracies that really didn't exist against the Soviet Union. And no doubt we were engaged in a deep, deep Cold War. But it was mostly from their side, John.

12:34Sean Wiswesser: And so to your question about the Cold War, Mike Solik, our former deputy director of operations CIA, I had the honor of him writing the foreword to the book he mentions in the foreword. We fellow Cold Warriors, Sean Westchester and myself, I was honored he put me in a category with himself. But separated by a generation, we knew in CIA what Putin represented. OK, a first chief director and officer of the KGB, a former FSB director. You know, this was not a Democrat. This was not somebody that we believed anything good would come out of. But I do believe, John, he fooled the West. He really did.

13:05Sean Wiswesser: If you look at now, there's a lot of media they point out, you know, Hollywood stars singing and dancing with Putin, literally. President Bush, you know, famously said, I looked into the soul of the man. I got a sense of him. You know, it's a decent human being. He's not a decent human being. He's a butcher. I don't fault President Bush for that. I think President Bush was a great president in a difficult time in our history. Tony Blair in the UK, the same sort of thing. All the Western leaders to this day, you know, the German Chancellor Cole stands by Putin, you know, seen as a great Putin ally to this day.

13:34Sean Wiswesser: So I think Putin suckered the West and leaders in the West, told them what they wanted to hear. And then look at what he's done since, invading Georgia, invading Ukraine twice now. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, deaths on his hands. So that's who he really is. Interesting. As we've discussed, you are a student of Russian culture. You spent a lot of time in country in the 80s, 90s. You said that the Russian people were aware of what's going on. It's just kind of accepted. Is the country too big and too complex to, you know, one way or the other to just kind of accept that? Or is the prevailing feeling that they're okay with it?

14:09Or is it just, you know, they're sort of pragmatic about it? It's just the way it is.

14:13Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, John, I think there's two things going on right now. First, you have a propaganda machine like it's never been seen in history. Literally. Never been seen in history what's going on in Russia right now. Absolutely no freedom of the press whatsoever, but all the machinations of the state and state propaganda leveraged right at the people squarely to get them to believe, especially right now in the Ukraine war. They play on themes like World War II, the great patriotic wars the Russians talk about. And I mention it quite a bit in my book because it's so much a part of Putin's narrative. He's told the Russian people, you're fighting for your survival against fascism.

14:44Sean Wiswesser: You know, the Ukrainian president, who's Jewish himself, whose family members he had lost in the Holocaust, he's accused of being a fascist, of course. And for the Russians, though, there's no irony in that because that's what the state propaganda told them. They have stories like I laid out in the active measures chapter in my book, Chapter 9. The propaganda is strong. The dark side is strong in this one, John. It really is. They tell stories like in 2014, they claimed that a Russian boy was crucified in eastern Ukraine by the fascist, evil Ukrainian fascists. No such thing happened. Complete propaganda.

15:16Sean Wiswesser: It got heavy traction in Russia. Russians believed it. Tears on national TV. How dare they do this to a poor Russian boy? Didn't happen. It's falsehood. 100 % falsehood. But that's the kind of propaganda. So I said in an article out this week, you know, talking about the myth of Russia's imminent collapse, this is a multilayered security state with a very strong propaganda machine that Dr. Goebbels from Nazi Germany could only dream of the resources of the Russian state, devoted towards every aspect of the media, TV, print, everything is behind the regime. Every cell phone in Russia remembers a personal beacon.

15:51Sean Wiswesser: It's a personal surveillance tool that they listen in conversations. For 20 years now, John, as mentioned in my research, for 20 years, they've had laws in Russia. We talk about FISA. They don't need warrants. The FSB has automatic access to all the ISPs, all the cell phone companies in Russia. So that's what you're dealing with. That's what you're dealing with, a true surveillance state in Russia today. And And they're a formidable adversary for the United States for all those reasons. That's mind boggling to me. And I guess, you know, just one of the products of growing up in a democracy that's mind blowing.

16:22In reading your book, one gets the feeling that Russian intelligence could barely be called intelligent just in the ways that you're describing it. I especially love where you talk about Russian operatives, handlers telling them, just send us the bare minimum. Like, these people are using it as an excuse to get out of country and live elsewhere or live abroad. And their handlers are saying, just send us something so it looks like you're working. Why is it that Russian spycraft seems less disciplined than in the U.S. and other allied nations?

16:54Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, John, good question. A related one I often get from a lot of journalists now, but unfortunately I have a lot of media appearances the past few months. A lot of journalists will ask me, how can you argue in your book that they are so incompetent? As I point out, as you noticed as an astute reader. Yeah, there's incompetence, bungling fools, these stupid, stupid tradecraft. They know better, they're trained better, but they don't use the best tradecraft. How do you reconcile that with this layered, formidable surveillance state that you're talking about, Sean? Well, remember, John, there's no accountability.

17:21Sean Wiswesser: Right. So when you have no accountability whatsoever for your failures, you can do whatever the hell you want in that system. Look at the Ukraine war. You know, no one is more responsible for the Ukraine war. their prognostications of success, their faulty prognostications, than the Russian intelligence services, and in particular the FSB. I detailed Chapter 10 of the book in great detail. The FSB laid out the case to President Putin. Yeah, we got this, boss. Chest-pounding, literally, you know, we got this one. They planned the war. Their operational department laid it all out for the president.

17:51Sean Wiswesser: Here's how we're going to do it with hybrid war, weakening Ukraine. Then we're going to go in and it's a quick, it'll be a quick one, boss. It'll be over in a week. There's no accountability. There'll never be a Ukraine commission. in Russia, John. There isn't now four years into the war. There never will be. Whatever our failures in the West, whatever our failures in the United States and the intelligence community and for CIA, I saw them in my career. 9-11 was a huge one for all of the intelligence community. Iraq WNT was another huge one for CIA and the intelligence community writ large. We had egg on all of our faces.

18:20Sean Wiswesser: We have accountability though, too. We had commissions, John. We had lessons learned. I personally had a chance later to work at a community collaboration training center as one of those GDAs, the JDAs I mentioned, where it was 9-11 mandated. We will train on collaboration. We will teach agencies to work better together. And we're 100 % better off as an intelligence community than we were prior to 9-11. No such thing in Russia. Not going to happen. No accountability. They get whatever they want. They get all the resources they need. They come first. In that system, the intelligence services come first.

18:51Sean Wiswesser: So when you have that, and then you also have, John have numbers and monolith bureaucracies of the, of the likes of which we can't even dream of. That's the problem. The FSB number is somewhere around 400 ,000 officers. That's about, that's probably about the size of nearly of the entire intelligence community. When you start adding up all of our agencies, our largest law enforcement agency, I think is CBP at 75 ,000. FBI is about 65 ,000 according to public records. FSB is 400 ,000 officers. So again, giant, giant bureaucracies, man. That's, Again, mind-blowing. Well, you know, and this question is not, you know, relegated solely to Putin, but since we're, you know, focusing on him and your expertise, I mean, this goes back to Stalin.

19:35It goes really to any dictator. Like, what's the deal? We know that he and Xi Jinping would like to live forever. We've heard them say it on Hot Mike, and I guess that's, you know, the case with megalomaniacs. But just as far as the endgame, what is the endgame for somebody like Putin.

19:52Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, I've been asked about this a lot lately. I think Putin's perfected the dictators of the world sort of curriculum. John, I put it to another journalist once. He's gotten straight A's in the Autocrats of the World course for 26 years. He's really good at this. You watch other dictators fall. He paid attention when Gaddafi fell. Reportedly, that was one that really upset him. Gaddafi literally ripped to pieces from his people. Putin looked at the color revolutions in the former Soviet Union, Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, a mortal threat to him. And of course, the notion that they put out from the Russian security services and some of the Russian military wrote about 20 years ago, started writing, oh, these were plots by CIA in the West.

20:35Sean Wiswesser: Well, I would love if my former agency could have pulled it off, John. The reality is we had nothing to do with, those are democratic movements. These were revolutions to throw out dictators, corrupt traitors like Yanukovych in Ukraine, who literally had golden toilet seats and a tiger running around his yard while his people were suffering. That's who they got rid of. But for Putin, that's a mortal threat. Can't have democracies. Can't have people choosing their own leaders, because he knows if that would really happen in Russia, he and his Syloviki aren't in charge anymore. That was the greatest threat, by the way, John, Navalny.

21:06Sean Wiswesser: Why was Navalny killed? And we know conclusively he was killed now. The Germans, French, Brits, they did an autopsy on his body. they found a very rare toxin the russian intelligence services by the way this is one of the things you know chapter uh eight of the book the book talk about the assassinations they do what the russians call wet work hope some of your listeners will pick it up and read they always sort of want to leave the trace don't they they always want to leave the uh understanding yeah we did this by the way polonium killing litvon yanko in 2005 and could have just stabbed him make it a mugging on the street no we got to do with polonium with sergey skripal in 2018 the gru defector to the uk they uh use novachok a state-produced chemical agent and then with a very real toxin from a tree frog why do they do this john as i lay out in my reach for my research historically they've always done this they want a message to be sent and the message is we'll find you and we'll kill you okay you betray us it's a coercive extortive message we'll kill you and they have and they've done it repeatedly so um that's what we're dealing with we're dealing with thugs.

22:11Sean Wiswesser: We're dealing with, we can't make any illusions any longer, but we're dealing with Putin and his ruling Sylviki. I call them a thugocracy. These are mafia-like organizations that are running the Russian state today. And until we present a more credible deterrent, John, they're going to continue to escalate their hybrid war. They're going to continue to kill thousands and thousands in Ukraine until they're stopped. So we know that Russian society is rife with oligarchs, thugocracy, as you call it. Is it money? Is it power? Is it just staying on top as long as you can until you die? Is that it? Is that the goal?

22:45Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, back to your question. Sorry, John, back to your question, though, about what does Putin fundamentally believe? Remember, he stated many times the greatest disaster of the 20th century was the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not World War II, where they lost 25 million people. He lost his own older brother. Putin was born after the war. His older brother starved to death. He's of one of the many diseases of starvation and suffering. The Russian people suffered horribly in World War II. His mother almost starved to death. But that's not what he thinks, though. He doesn't think of World War II like most Russians would.

23:12Sean Wiswesser: My own wife lost members of her family in World War II, killed, and some of them executed by the SS. But no, not for Putin. The greatest disaster was to collapse the Soviet Union because the KGB were running that system, the KGB elite. Putin and his seal of Ike, John, they have a very Orwellian view. There are some more equal than others. And in Putin's mind, we're more equal. We, the KGB elite. We deserve more. He stated it many times. We were the elite of Soviet society. If you watch Russian news, TV, dramas, soap operas, action thrillers today in Russia, it's all about the FSB, the GRU, the SBR.

23:46Sean Wiswesser: They're the elite. They're protecting us. Meanwhile, they're stealing from society. They're a bunch of inept, bungling fools. But the Russian people don't know that. They're told, oh, they're out there defending, doing great things for us. What have they done in Ukraine? How have they distinguished themselves in Ukraine? Other than atrocities, they haven't distinguished themselves at all. The Ukrainians, for the most part, are cleaning their clocks when it comes to special operations. So Putin wants to live as long as he can, John. And he wants his Sileviki, the KGB veterans that came along with him.

24:10Sean Wiswesser: They have a right to rule. They all have a right to not one palace, not two, but five or ten palaces around the country. It's not enough to have ten golden toilet seats at your palace. You've got to have 20. They're always one-upping each other. He's got tigers. I've got to have lions in my palace. It's literally that bad. It's literally that level of corruption. And that's why Navalny was killed, John. Back to Navalny. That's why he was killed. His exposés on corruption, Putin's corruption, the corrupt ruling elite, they were very popular in Russia. He posted them on YouTube and other sites. That's why he was hated by the regime, and that's why he was killed.

24:44That's amazing. So, I mean, we've mentioned a few. There are far too many examples of recent Russian aggression to discuss them all. But I'd like to highlight two or three and have you speak about them. First, election interference, both here and abroad. We saw it in Brexit. We saw it in the 2016 election. What is Russia up to with election interference? I read a Times article just in the last couple of days talking about how Russia and China are both kind of licking their chops as the debate around AI unfolds in the U.S. And there should be a debate about AI and its uses in data centers and things like that.

25:17But what do we have to look forward to with election interference now that AI has become ubiquitous and people can't tell the difference between a deepfake and reality?

25:27Sean Wiswesser: Well, I wrote a piece last month. I have a column for the cipher brief. It's called Kremlin Files. Last month, I wrote a speech, expect more attacks on our democracies from Russia. So I'd mention to your listeners, check out that piece I wrote for the cipher brief. What it talks about is active measures, John. Their information warfare, they call activnia miripriate. And nowadays, they have another term they call the measures of support, supporting their malign policies around the world. The Russians and Chinese are both very good at it. The Russians have been doing it for 100 years. It's, again, one of those 10 main tactics I focus on in the book in Chapter 9 on active measures.

26:00Sean Wiswesser: I lay out the case from my research. The attack fundamentally in 2016, John, was against our democracy, not for or against any one single candidate. That's low prey for them. That's low-hanging fruit. They were going after big stuff. They're big game hunting. Their big game hunting prize was to get Americans fundamentally to believe that elections don't matter. Can't believe in free and fair elections. Don't bother doing it. It doesn't work. I talk to a lot of university groups and high schools too, and I tell them, You are the target for Russian and Chinese intelligence. They want you to believe fundamentally.

26:32Sean Wiswesser: Don't bother to go put your vote in. Free and fair elections can't exist. That's their cynical view of the world. The great leader Xi Jinping, his people don't get to really decide, do they? Vladimir Putin, you don't get to decide. In Russian, there's a concept that I lay out from my research of the Vojt. In Russian, the Vojt is an all-ruling, all-encompassing leader, much like the czars were. Well, that's Putin's understanding of who he should be. He gets to make all decisions. He wants the simple people to say, just let him decide. Let Badi Yimitiv Lidyevich decide. I'm just a poor, simple person.

27:03Sean Wiswesser: I don't know what to do. Just let him decide for me. That's what they want. And so the attacks in Brexit, the attack in Europe recently that some organizations, reporting sources have called cognitive strikes. I contacted those journalists and some of them I get along with. Some don't like me because I pointed out, hey, guys, this is not new. I know you want to say it's a new thing. They call cognitive strikes. I said, hey, cognitive strikes is called active measures. The Russians have been at it for 100 years. Let's recognize it for what it is. It's just a new evolution. And so, John, what I believe fundamentally is this is the greatest danger from our intelligence adversaries is the leap forward that cognitive warfare is giving them, that AI has given them.

27:42Sean Wiswesser: What they did with trolls in 2016 that were largely human beings and human-enabled meddling, social meddling, that Facebook said took place, the DNI report said it happened, the SSCI report from Senate that Marco Rubio was chairman of, we all agreed. At that time, nobody contested their social meddling. Again, against our democracy fundamentally, not for or against anyone in Kennedy. What they did then with human beings and with proxies, organized crime, and other hackers enabled by the security services today, they can do with computer programs, John. They can get they can get AI programs to write it and the Russians and Chinese are doing it and they're doing it heavily right now.

28:17Sean Wiswesser: And this is the greatest threat to our democracy. Ukraine war. I read recently that the drone strikes is that big summit was happening in Moscow. The Ukrainian drone strikes have started to make Putin sweat a little bit. How, in your estimation, does Ukraine end? Yeah. So this is an area where, you know, I attended I went to Air War College and this is an area where my current experience for KBR. They kind of bleed together, what I enjoyed doing, what I did in the intelligence community, you know, with weapon systems and understanding the war. So I've been publishing the Ukraine war. I was in a book in 2024 from a Cambridge publicist called The Air War in Ukraine.

28:53Sean Wiswesser: A lot of really smart people. Mike Kaufman from War on the Rocks had chapter one. I had chapter two in that book on the air war in Ukraine. So I've studied it quite a bit. I've been published on it. Here's what I believe fundamentally, John. We have not in the West provided. We didn't provide a credible enough to turn in 2022 to stop the Russians. We told them, don't you do it. Don't you dare do it. You know, they did it in 2008 in Georgia. We didn't do anything to stop them. They did it in 2014. We didn't stop them. So why should they have taken us seriously? And they didn't. So they did a full-scale invasion.

29:23Sean Wiswesser: And ever since then, it's been half measures, John. It's been equivocation. It's been, you know, well, geez, maybe we'll give them higher Mars. No, we're not going to give them higher Mars. Maybe we will. A few higher Mars. Abrams tanks, we're not going to give Abrams. We're not going to get Abrams. No, maybe we'll give the Ukrainians Abrams. So we've been diddly-daddling. Quoting Churchill a lot from my visit to the UK last month, you know, Churchill said in the 30s, he tried to wake people up. We live in a time of consequence where decisions are going to have consequences. And so we need to provide to Russia a credible deterrent against further aggression against NATO.

29:55Sean Wiswesser: We need to teach them a lesson that what they did in Ukraine is too much, but we haven't to date. So there's all those. How's the war going to end, John? Hundreds of billions of dollars in assets that the EU could have seized by now, and they haven't. right right again recently they said oh well belgium doesn't want to do it alone and the u decided collectively they don't want to do it the u.s could be doing more frankly i i leave it up to our politicians and our president to decide that policy uh but i believe there's a lot more we could be doing what are the ukrainians doing on their own to their credit they're providing the ultimate cost against the energy sector for russia because oil and gas right they drive everything for russia right so the ukrainians are smartly using their long-range assets to go after the energy sector.

30:34Sean Wiswesser: I believe fundamentally that will ultimately bring about an end to the war, but not until Putin suffers enough to realize he's not going to get ahead. He's all about territory and seizing territory. Destabilizing NATO. I believe in your book or certainly in some of the other podcast interviews that I've listened to you give recently, you mentioned as being the most important alliance in history. So what about Putin's efforts to undermine NATO? Appreciate the question. You know, I've been speaking on this a lot. I'll mention my media content page. folks can check out on YouTube. Just search my name.

31:05Sean Wiswesser: I have all my media content. I had an interview with the Sun newspaper in the UK. It's got 400 ,000 views now. We talked a lot about this in that interview. Listen, we are the very envy of China and Russia for the alliance we have with NATO. It's the foundation of our security and Europe's security together. Those five eyes relationships that we have in the intelligence community with our partners are the foundation of our intelligence relationships, the bulwark of our security. So we're lucky to have them. And we have 80 years of tradition going back to World War II in both cases. So we shouldn't so lightly cast it aside, nor should Europe.

31:39Sean Wiswesser: Some of this talk, oh, well, Europe needs a plan B. There is no plan B, nor should there be for the United States. Okay, we're in it together. We need each other now more than ever. Russia and China don't fundamentally have a strategic alliance, John. They talk about it a lot, but they don't have that. They're not doing – last year they did the first time ever they did air defense exercises together. It was reported on the media. The first time ever. We do that every single year, multiple times a year, joint exercises, sharing intelligence. So I believe fundamentally never more important for the alliance than to stand together now.

32:05Sean Wiswesser: I was gratified to see in the recent summit, it looks like allies did stand together across the Atlantic. I believe, too, that fundamentally deterring Russia, John, the next step is all about setting a precedent now that the cost be extremely high on Russia for the aggression they took. My next book I've written, hopefully get it published out soon. I've already completed a manuscript. It's about Russia's next war and an attack on NATO. So I'll leave it at that. I won't give too much away, but that's what my next book is about. That's very exciting. Can't wait to dive into that one as well. I would like to bring all of this back around these examples that we were just talking about.

32:39And with the amount of information that you were allowed to give, how is KBR and the work that you're doing with KBR helping our customers address these kinds of problems?

32:49Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, I think, you know, unclassified, you know, what I can say, you know, the unclassified mission of the program I get to work on. It's an honor to work on testing evaluation threat resource activities to make sure that we have the program is a 50-year-old program to make sure that we have authentic, credible threats that we're testing against foreign material and otherwise, software, hardware in the loop, software in the loop, all these aspects. I'm not an engineer, John. I work, as you know, my title is foreign material expert. So we need to make sure that the equipment that our servicemen and women are fighting with, that the systems that they're deploying with and fighting with, the aircraft, the tanks, that they all have credible and authentic tests of the foreign threats against them.

33:30Sean Wiswesser: And so I think it's a neat program to work on. I'm honored to work on it. We're helping save lives when we do our jobs right. I think it's a great example of what KBR does writ large, right? We help provide a critical service to our nation, helping our warfighters in the fight for freedom, keeping them alive. And so I feel motivated every day that I do this job that we can make a difference. So that's awesome. How are you feeling? One more off the cuff. How are you feeling about the upcoming spinoff of the mission technology solutions business? For the listeners that don't know, that was announced several months ago that KBR spinning off mission technology solutions into its own standalone company, which is expected to happen in January, 2027.

34:07So that's a little background. So please go ahead. Sorry for interrupting you.

34:10Sean Wiswesser: Yeah, no, that's okay, John. I'll be honest with you. The great thing about my work for KBR almost three years now is I've always been encouraged, you know, be focused on the customer, be focused on DOD and be focused on getting what our customer needs. And my bosses at KBR have always been great about saying, hey, don't take eyes off the mission, focus on the mission. I'm a hundred percent when I, when I do my work for KBR, I'm always on site or I'm traveling. I travel quite a bit for my job across the community and to DOD facilities. And so that's the best part of my job is I don't sort worry about that.

34:40Sean Wiswesser: I have to trust that that's in good corporate hands. I'm sure it is. Right. Absolutely. What was the impetus behind this book? And what are you hoping will be some possible takeaways for the average citizen reader? Yeah, thank you, John. It gives me a chance. Thank Naval Institute Press. The book, again, is called Tradecraft Tactics and Dirty Tricks, Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War. The subtitle of the book, you know, I wanted Americans to understand it's the book's intended to educate and to do as much damage to our Russian adversaries as possible. John, it's, it's unique in that I got CIA to clear a lot of stuff on tradecraft that, uh, of our adversary and don't really talk a lot about our tradecraft.

35:19Sean Wiswesser: So that's my, that's my mission with the book. And when I talk about on social media, folks that follow me, they know I'm talking about the mission. I talk about the mission all the time because it's not just the book. It's the mission against our adversary to inform, to, um, to educate, but also to thwart the malign work of our adversaries, in particular Russian intelligence services. So that's the goal of the book. I feel like largely we're accomplishing that so far. It's a constant mission. I really appreciate all those that have helped me get the word out. The book's getting great reception.

35:50Sean Wiswesser: It's on its second reprint. It's a bestseller internationally. And so I hope some of your listeners will consider picking up now that they understand what it's about and why I wrote it. it's gratifying to see that. I've always believed Americans are very smart. If you give them nonpartisan, evidence-based argument about our adversaries, I've had overwhelming support, John. And thank you again for this opportunity to talk about it. Oh, it's been a pleasure. One more question. As a practical method, I guess, for readers, what are some steps that they could take to not be duped or to do the best that they can to prepare themselves against the Russian intelligence apparatus that is working against all of us on social media and elsewhere?

36:32Sean Wiswesser: Great, great question, John. Thanks for asking it. So this is what I tell university students. There's two things we can do. How do they target us? They target us based on emotion. So the Russian intelligence, the SVR, the Foreign Service, they have an entire directorate developed towards information warfare, thousands and thousands of officers. This is all they do every day. And then they use organized crime groups, they use proxies, and now they use cognitive warfare to amplify their social media and their other cyber attacks. So they appeal to emotion. So they come after the issues they know.

36:59Sean Wiswesser: And they did this in 2016 during the election, John. They're coming at the issues that they believe divide Americans. Doesn't matter to the Russians or the Chinese for that matter. They're not sentimental. They don't care about the issues. But I'm talking about, you know, abortions, rights, LGBTQ issues, Black Lives Matter, all of these issues that can be emotional for good reason to a lot of Americans. Guns rights is another one. So what I tell college students is when you see something that particularly aggravates you, upsets you on a social media post, stop for 10 seconds and just say, wait a second, wait a second, why am I so emotional about this?

37:35Sean Wiswesser: And then before you repost, before you immediately reply with vitriol and keep it going because that's what they want, if it is AI generated, if it is our adversaries. And then two, is this even a real person? Is this even a real organization? I'll share a quick story, 30 seconds, John. There was an incident our federal partners had to deal with. It was in the Midwest. I forget the actual state, where a flash mob came at it. And I don't remember what the issue was. I think it was guns rights to this point. Flash mob was set up. One group said, they're trying to put guns in the schools. They said, they're going to give the guns to the children.

38:06Sean Wiswesser: And that's what they were told. They came out of flash mob. The other group was told, they're trying to take away our guns. They're saying that they're not going to allow guns in the city limits anymore of this town. And they got together, and they were fighting and arguing each other. And the cops showed up. they said, who the hell's running this protest? Who's on your side? I don't know. I was told to show up and I'm screaming and yelling. And the other side too, hey, who's in charge over here? And you know what the cops figured out? And the feds looked at it later. Nobody was in charge. It was completely generated online.

38:31Sean Wiswesser: This is the danger, John. We have to be smarter as Americans in this. We can't allow our adversaries to do that type of stuff to us. And it's happening. It's happening a lot, unfortunately, in the country. I had a good conversation with someone and made that very point that the information economy, the attention economy is built to keep us online. And it's crazy to think that it's not just an attention economy, but it very well could be nefarious actions by a foreign adversary. Sean Wisswesser, is there anything you'd like to leave, any final thoughts you'd like to leave our listeners with before I let you go today?

39:06I could talk to you for another two or three hours, I know, but we'll keep it short.

39:10Sean Wiswesser: Appreciate you. You're an astute reader. You ask great questions. We went longer than we planned, right? But hopefully listeners will enjoy it. Not probably the usual fare discussing defense issues. But again, honored to work with KBR, to have the chance to serve our government customers, do important work, as I know you are, John, all of our colleagues at KBR. Appreciate the opportunity. And thanks for giving me a chance today to talk about some things I'm passionate about for my CIA career and my three decades now in the intelligence community. Thank you. Sean Wisswesser, the author of Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks, Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War, out now wherever you get your books.

39:45Thanks so much for being on the podcast.

39:51I told you this episode was going to be a little different. I want to thank Sean Wisswesser for joining us. Again, his book Tradecraft, Tactics and Dirty Tricks, Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War is out now. And it sounds like there's another book coming soon, so be sure to check out this first one in the meantime. I also want to thank my awesome colleague, Kelsey McCarthy, for helping put this episode together. If you're interested in learning more about the myriad ways KBR helps the U.S. government and allied nations, you can go snoop around on KBR.com. And if you have an idea for a future episode, please let us know about it by emailing inorbit at KBR.com.

40:26Finally, as always, we want to thank you, our listeners. You didn't need this episode to prove that the world is a pretty crazy place, but it can also be a pretty beautiful one. Wherever you are, whatever you're up to, we're grateful to you for tuning in and for keeping us in your orbit. Until next time, be kind to each other and take care.

41:07Thank you.