State Secrets

One man knows better than most, just what cyber tactics Russia has been using to attack Ukraine – not just since the full invasion in February of 2022 – but since the war began in Crimea in 2014.  Since then, Ukraine has served as an unwitting testing ground for Russian cyber aggression with an impact that has often spread well beyond the country’s borders.  State Secrets host Suzanne Kelly sat down in Kyiv with the head of Ukraine’s Department of Cyber and Information Security at the Security Service of Ukraine to dig in on Illia Vitiuk’s frontline perspective on what he calls the first cyber war in history.

Cipher Brief CEO & Publisher Suzanne Kelly interviews the former Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen Robert Ashley to discuss Ukraine, Russia, China, and the impact of technology on todays complicated world. Listen in on what Gen. Bob Ashley has to say about the private sector’s mission in today’s security landscape. 

State Secrets Host Suzanne Kelly is joined by co-host Brad Christian in this conversation with Lt. General Michael Groen (Ret.) on the basics of AI and how it’s impacting U.S. National Security. 

In this week’s State Secrets, host Suzanne Kelly talks with Dr. Trent Maul. Dr. Maul was appointed to Director of Analysis for the Defense Intelligence Agency in May 2021. Dr. Maul discusses the Defense Intelligence Agency’s global outlook on the Russia-Ukraine war and the possibility of Russia trying to expand its influence in the region to other neighboring countries.

Ambassador Joe DeTrani has spent much of his career centered on China. He is not only a former Special Envoy for Six Party Talks with North Korea, he is also a former director of East Asia Operations at the CIA. In this episode, Cipher Brief COO Brad Christian sits down with Ambassador DeTrani to discuss senior leadership changes in Beijing and a potential phone call between Xi and US President Joe Biden.

Former Senior CIA Officer and Cipher Brief Expert Marc Polymeropoulos was in Moscow in late 2017, when he woke up in his hotel room with a blinding headache.  It was the beginning of a 5-year journey that landed him in Walter Reed’s Traumatic Brain Injury Program.  What happened?  Marc believes he was the victim of a targeted microwave weapon attack – something that’s become known as Havana Syndrome, after US government employees working at the Embassy in Cuba reported similar debilitating symptoms.  Now, the Intelligence Community has issued its latest assessment on Havana Syndrome, which it refers to as Analogous Health Incidents and Polymeropoulos says the report leaves a lot to be desired.

In this episode of State Secrets, Suzanne Kelly talks about the ways in which the war in Ukraine is changing the world with author Rajan Menon. Menon, a nonresident scholar in the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is co-author of the book, Conflict in Ukraine: The Unwinding of the Post-Cold War Order. Menon, like Kelly, recently returned from Ukraine and shares his first-hand impressions about what’s happening there and how this war is changing the world.

State Secrets host Suzanne Kelly and guest co-host Brad Christian talk with the former NATO Allied Supreme Commander (and former F-16 pilot) about what comes next in Ukraine and what is actually needed in order to win.

In this week’s State Secrets Podcast, Host Suzanne Kelly talks with The Hon. Susan M. Gordon, a career Intelligence Officer, former Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence and current member of the Defense Innovation Board, about Balloons, China, Ukraine, Russia and the new world order as well as the role that AI plays in all of it.

In this week’s State Secrets, host Suzanne Kelly talks with former Deputy Director of National Intelligence and Presidential Briefer, Beth Sanner about the discovery of classified documents in the homes and offices of former and current political leaders. Beth shares first-hand accounts from her time serving as former President Donald Trump’s briefer and helps pull back the curtain on where the gaps are in securing classified information.