Vikram Sharma is the founder and CEO of Canberra Australia based QuintessenceLabs. His company provides solutions based on quantum technology to strengthen cryptographic key creation and management at scale. This is an urgent need in this era of increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, and key to protecting data now and into the future. Q-Labs uses the world’s fastest random-number generator to create the strongest possible encryption keys, and integrates them into advanced key management and encryption capabilities, protecting banks, governments, and other enterprises around the globe. In this OODAcast we ask Vikram for his views on what every CEO, including non-technical CEOs, need to know about the world of quantum effects. He provides explanations in very clear ways that can help inform business strategies. For example, years of theory and research followed by decades of scientific experiments show these four unusual concepts at play at the quantum level: A particle can be a wave and a wave can be a particle. Two particles can behave as if they know what the other is doing, even when separated Measuring a particle changes it At totally random, unpredictable intervals, sometimes small bits of matter come into existence and then go away again Vikram provided an easy to follow description of many other aspects of this nature of reality at its lowest level, and then led us to a deeper understanding of how quantum computers leverage physics of the real world to change the ways humans can compute. For more see: Quantum Computing Sensemaking: Guide to other OODAloop research on Quantum Computing and Quantum Security. The Executive’s Guide To Quantum Computing: What business decision-makers need to know now about quantum superiority The Executive’s Guide To Quantum Safe Computing: Take these steps to make your enterprise quantum proof Is Quantum Computing Ushering in an Era of No More Secrets?: Context from OODA’s Matt Devost on the very near future of quantum computing. What To Do About Quantum Uncertainty: Guess what, besides uncertainty at a quantum level there is great uncertainty among business and policy makers regarding Quantum Computing. AI, quantum computing and 5G could make criminals more dangerous than ever, warn police: Quantum is one of many emerging technologies that law enforcement professionals are tracking Intel offers AI breakthrough in quantum computing: This article is more about quantum simulations for AI, but shows the ecosystem that is developing around the technology Quantum Computing That Can Crack Modern Encryption More Than a Decade Away: When we see reports like this we wonder what qualifies the experts to say this. But in this case the experts are the National Academies of Sciences. Could quantum computers render current bitcoin and most blockchain cryptography powerless?: There is a worry that new algorithms that could run on quantum computing could attack blockchain and asymmetric encryption.

Rob Richer is a highly regarded advisor to international executives and global government leaders including several heads of state. Rob has a well informed perspective on international risks and opportunities and an ability to analyze and distill observations in a way that is meaningful for your decision making process. In this OODAcast we cover the current state of global and domestic affairs, key leadership and decision-making lessons learned derived from Rob's extensive CIA career. As a bonus, we talk to Rob about how the character Mitch Rapp is based upon him. Rapp is the main character in a 18 book series by the late bestselling author Vince Flynn. One of the books was also produced into the film American Assassin. Rob Richer retired in November 2005 from the Central Intelligence Agency as the Associate Deputy Director for Operations (ADDO). Prior to his assignment as the ADDO in 2004, Richer was the Chief of the Near East and South Asia Division, responsible for Clandestine Service Operations throughout the Middle East and South Asia. Mr. Richer has been awarded numerous awards and commendations from a number of foreign governments. Additionally during his Agency career, he has received commendations and awards to include the Intelligence Commendation Medal in both 1993 and 1996; the Director's Award in 2004 and in March 2006, Mr. Richer was awarded the Distinguished Career Intelligence Medal. Additional Information: Mitch Rapp Series A State of Mind: Faith and the CIA A Quiet Cadence: A Novel The Spymasters: How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future Word of Honor

This week's OODAcast features an interview with Camila Russo, the author of the book "The Infinite Machine: How an Army of Crypto-hackers Is Building the Next Internet with Ethereum". Camila is also the founder of the Decentralized Finance (DeFi) site The Defiant, which tracks developments, emerging trends, and news in the fast moving DeFi space. In this interview, Camila shares how her experience covering fiat currency issues as a reporter for Bloomberg sparked her interest in Bitcoin and how she focused her attention on the Ethereum project early in its development. We discuss Camila's book and the emergence of Ethereum as well as the most interesting applications of Ethereum, future disruptions, and the general trends driving the DeFi space. Apologies for the dog barking. We did our best to minimize it, but a shared reality of our work-from-home existence. Camila's book was one our picks for top 10 Security, Technology, and Business books of 2020. Additional Resources: The Defiant Camila on Twitter The Infinite Machine on Amazon

Former Congressman Will Hurd joins us on this episode of OODACast to discuss what he has learned about business and entrepreneurship from a diverse career in the intelligence community, elected office and the private sector. Will has successfully leveraged the skills of a CIA operations officer in a variety of contexts, including the founding of cybersecurity firm FusionX with OODA co-founder, Matt Devost. Will most recently served in Congress as the representative for Texas' 23rd district from 2015 to 2021. In our OODACast discussion, Will provides practical, motivating guidance on how to develop new contacts and leads, cultivate client relationships, make an "ask" confidently and effectively, and close deals. He has leveraged all of these skills in his capacity as an intelligence officer overseas, a fundraiser for political office, a co-founder of FusionX, not to mention his parents' cosmetics business when he was a kid! Will explains how to prepare to meet new contacts and make client meetings purposeful. He shares that one must be specific and concrete when making an "ask" of a client, partner, donor or any professional interlocutor. He emphasizes that practicing, even role-playing, is the key to shedding the discomfort of pitching and negotiating. Tune in for this robust conversation if you want to become better at selling, negotiating and closing, and learn how from a leader in intelligence, politics and business.

Kathy and Randy Pherson both had successful careers in the US Intelligence Community, where they pioneered new analytical methods and would later help bring those methods to widespread adoption in the community. Both are also successful business leaders who created companies that build value for others. In the OODAcast we discuss the third edition of their book: Critical Thinking for Strategic Intelligence. They provide their context on what a good intelligence program in industry or government looks like, how to avoid out for cognitive bias and cognitive traps, how to be proactive in data collection and processing, and how to produce intelligence in ways that can be consumed by decision-makers. The also provide insights from the latest cognitive science and do it in a way that can help any analyst in any enterprise improve. We also examine what critical thinking is, and how to teach it. Kathy reviews what she calls the "5 habits of the critical thinker", which includes: Examine your key assumptions Consider multiple alternatives Look for disconfirming data Look for drivers underneath your topic and finder indicators of future action Understand the context and how the issue is framed, through framing seek to understand Kathy and Randy have had a very interesting career together (they were the first married couple to join and spend a full career at the CIA). One aspect of their career I found particularly interesting was their work with the famous Richards (Dick) Heuer. Dick had taught Randy on topics like counter deception, and was later a contractor under Kathy. Years later Dick and Randy would work together on books including one on Structured Analytic Techniques for Intelligence Analysis. We hope you enjoy meeting them and learning from them in this OODAcast. Other related reading: A Practitioner’s View of Corporate Intelligence: Organizations in competitive environments should continually look for ways to gain advantage over their competitors. The ability of a business to learn and translate that learning into action, at speeds faster than others, is one of the most important competitive advantages you can have. This fact of business life is why the model of success in Air to Air combat articulated by former Air Force fighter pilot John Boyd, the Observe – Orient – Decide – Act (OODA) decision loop, is so relevant in business decision-making today. Useful Standards For Corporate Intelligence: Discusses standards in intelligence, a topic that can improve the quality of all corporate intelligence efforts and do so while reducing ambiguity in the information used to drive decisions and enhancing the ability of corporations to defend their most critical information. Optimizing Corporate Intelligence: Actionable recommendation on ways to optimize a corporate intelligence effort. It is based on a career serving large scale analytical efforts in the US Intelligence Community and in applying principles of intelligence in corporate America. An Executive’s Guide To Cognitive Bias in Decision Making: Cognitive Bias and the errors in judgement they produce are seen in every aspect of human decision-making, including in the business world. Companies that have a better understanding of these cognitive biases can optimize decision making at all levels of the organization, leading to better performance in the market. Companies that ignore the impact these biases have on corporate decision-making put themselves at unnecessary risk.

Ric Prado has been described by CIA leadership as the closest thing to 007 that the United States has ever had. Ric's life is packed with more adventure and operations than your favorite spy novel series. Coming out of the shadows, this is Ric's first video interview and covers his career, operational decision-making lessons learned, why we need a next generation of CIA agents, and we even dive into some more obscure topics like CIA knife fighting and how he came to train the King of Jordan. Arriving in the United States as a Peter Pan refugee from Cuba, Prado dedicated himself in service to his county in many capacities that culminated professionally with a 24 year career in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). During his tenure at the CIA, Ric was involved with dozens of operations including spearheading the CIA's operational response to 9/11 as the Director of Operations within the CIA's Counterterrorism Center. For this response he worked with the National Security Council and FBI, as well as with elite U.S. military representatives from Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. Earlier in his Agency career his service included 36 months in Central America jungles as the first CIA officer living in the anti-Sandinista "Contra" camps and Subsequently running counter-terrorism/insurgency operations in Peru and in the Philippines. He has also held operations officer posts in six countries and was a plank-owner of the CIA's original bin Laden desk in 1996. Upon leaving public service, Ric worked at as an executive at a Private Military Contractor where he built a specialized operations team for a U.S. government customer and is currently the co-owner of Camp-X Training and continues his service training and supporting the "SPECOPS" Community as Subject Matter Expert (SME) at the SWCS' ASOT (Advanced Special Operations and Techniques) and ASOT Managers Course, Dragon Warrior, Emerald Warrior, among others. Additional Links: Ric's Bio CampX training

In this OODAcast, Bob Gourley and Matt Devost discuss Matt's picks for the Top 10 Security, Technology, and Business Books of the year. Now in its 5th year, Matt's top ten book list is one of the most popular posts of the year and we look forward to interviewing several of the authors on OODAcast in 2021. Also see the full write up of the Top 10 list here: https://www.oodaloop.com/archive/2020/12/07/top-10-security-technology-and-business-books-of-2020/

In this OODAcast we interview Michel Kwon, the founder and CEO of W@tchTower. She is a leader who has proven herself through an ability to success in three different career fields, first as a developer and programmer creating enterprise grade solutions, then as a government executive who would eventually lead the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT)during a critical period in its transformation, and now as an entrepreneur and CEO adding value to enterprises seeking to reduce risk and improve cybersecurity posture. We discuss Michel's foundational story and extract lessons relevant to those starting a career today, and also dive into how she leveraged her technical skills and desire to create into a winning presentation of a new type of WiFi antenna at Defcon. This event would prove to be pivotal for her next career in the Department of Justice, and makes a clear point of use to any who may be seeking opportunities to switch careers (her focus on continued learning and intention to always be herself were at play here). We also discuss her government career and lessons learned for any professional government who would like to advance and make bigger differences for the nation.  There are also lessons from Mischel's story for any leader who needs to motivate action across organizations when you are not in command. Her approach was to provide threat briefings and visions for the future that would motivate other leaders. This may be the only way that works on cross organizational efforts like those she had to lead. She also provides eye-opening anecdotes about the importance of knowing the rules (in her case, including the Constitution and the laws in place for how we protect privacy). She shares lessons and recommendations that flow from this for any commercial cybersecurity professional as well. As CEO of W@tchTower she has led the firm from its formation to a highly performing value adding partner for any business which is in need of a security operations center (SOC) or with a need to improve current SOC operations. Watchtower provides the technology, guidance and expertise to enable security operations and mitigate problems of too much data, disorganized processes, overworked analysts and hard to measure metrics. Additional Resources W@tchTower Mischel Kwon on Linkedin OODA Research Reports: Cyberwar Was Coming: A Reflection on the 25 Year Old Thesis that Predicted a Generation of Cyberconflict “You’ve got to read what this kid is writing out of his basement at the University of Vermont…” – recently retired CIA officer to intelligence and military colleagues in 1994. A candid 25 year retrospective on a thesis that launched a tremendous amount of dialogue and action on the issues of information warfare, cyberterrorism, and cybersecurity. See: Cyberwar Was Coming: A Reflection on the 25 Year Old Thesis that Predicted a Generation of Cyberconflict Deception Needs to be an Essential Element of Your Cyber Defense Strategy In the cyber defense community, we talk about a wide-range of risk mitigating technologies, strategies, and activities.  We talk about attacker deterrence and increasing costs for the attacker.  We invest in endpoint agents, threat intelligence, DLM, and other mitigating technologies on a daily basis. Here’s why one of the most compelling emerging use cases for increasing attacker costs is through the use of deception. For more see: Deception Needs to be an Essential Element of Your Cyber Defense Strategy Traveling Executive’s Guide to Cybersecurity: Traveling executives are frequent targets for cyber espionage. This report provides guidance for executives and their security teams on how to protect their information and technology while on the go. Produced by OODA co-founders Matt Devost and Bob Gourley, the report provides best practices, awareness of threats, and a deep understanding of the state of technology. A tiered threat model is provided enabling a better tailoring of actions to meet the threat. For more see:  OODA Releases a Traveling Executive’s Guide to Cybersecurity

Juan Enriquez has succeeded as a businessman, academic, author and lecturer. For those who might not have met him via any of his many appearances and presentations, he can be succinctly described as an authority on the economic and political impacts of life sciences and a thinker able to help frame the much needed discussions we all need to have on ethics. He serves on the discovery council at Harvard Medical School and was the founding director of Harvard Business School’s Life Sciences Project. He are currently the managing director of Excel Venture Management, a life sciences VC firm. OODA is a community of practitioners so we want to underscore that he doesn't just write and talk about tech, he founds and leads companies that create tech, including the firm that made the world’s first synthetic life form. His many books have all stood the test of time. The now 20 year old "The Future Catches You" is a very prescient look at the world of biological sciences is still a good introduction to the field. The book lead to an important conclusion, that the many changes in the biological revolution will fundamentally alter everyone's relative economic status and life expectancy and this will have consequences because only a few understand what is coming. He offered motivation to improve our collective ability to adopt and adapt to the coming era though agility in ethical, political and economic actions. His 2005 "The Untied States of America" provided a new framework for looking at the many economic, political and social dynamics underway in North America and started frank discussions on where polarization and its dynamics were taking us, providing motivation to mend existing rifts when possible. The book is now important foundational reading for anyone who wants to understand our collective situation. It is also a good reminder that just because something has not changed in a while does not mean it will endure forever. His book Evolving Ourselves takes on the fact that the old ways of evolution, driving by natural selection, is not the driver it used to be. Business leaders today need to understand that artificial selection and proactive engineering of life are forces in our new reality. His latest book, Right/Wrong: How technology transforms our ethics, makes it clear that technology advancements are connected to how humanity interprets and applies judgement on what is right and wrong. Technology changes ethics. So now in an age of exponential change in technology, we need to understand and prepare for exponential changes in ethics. Leaders in business and government, as well as citizens, need to understand this will cause issues that disrupt markets and even our legal system. In the past, right and wrong and justice was something we tried to code into our laws. Laws already can’t keep up with changing tech and ethics. What will happen to our legal system when changes in ethics goes exponential? In this OODAcast, Juan provides his personal context and useful mental models business leaders can put in place to anticipate how these many changes can impact business. For more see: Excel Venture Management Right/Wrong: How technology transforms our ethics The Executives Guide to the Revolution in Biological Sciences

Masha Sedova is an award-winning people-security expert, speaker, and entrepreneur focused on helping companies transform employees from a risk into a key element of defense. She has been a part of our OODA Network for years, including speaking at our legacy FedCyber event, where she introduced the behavior-based and gamified cybersecurity training and awareness she put in place at Salesforce. She is the co-founder of Elevate Security delivering an employee-risk management platform that provides visibility into employee risk while motivating employees to make better security decisions. Before Elevate, Masha Sedova was a security executive at Salesforce where she built and led the security engagement team focused on improving the security mindset of employees, partners and customers. In addition, Masha has been a member of the Board of Directors for the National Cyber Security Alliance and regular presenter at conferences such as Black Hat, RSA, ISSA, Enigma, OWASP and SANS. Before Elevate, Masha Sedova was a security executive at Salesforce where she built and led the security engagement team focused on improving the security mindset of employees, partners, and customers. The scope of her work ran the gamut from general awareness such as phishing and reporting activity to secure engineering practices by developers and engineers. In addition, Masha is a member of the Board of Directors for the National Cyber Security Alliance and a regular presenter at conferences such as Blackhat, RSA, ISSA, Enigma, and SANS. Other Resources: Masha Sedova on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mashasedova/ Elevate Security: https://elevatesecurity.com OODA Network Interview with Masha FedCyber Interview with Keynote Speaker Masha Sedova RSA Innovation Sandbox Finalist Presentation