In a Thursday speech at Georgia Tech, Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns called China a “silent partner” in Russia’s war against Ukraine and outlined how the spy agency is enhancing its commitment to innovation to address new challenges in a world undergoing rapid technological change.
In his first public speech since being appointed spy chief just over a year ago, Mr. Burns denounced Russia’s “raw brutality” and the “cruel pain and damage” it has inflicted upon the Ukrainian people. Last November, President Joe Biden sent the CIA Director to Moscow to dissuade Russian President Putin from attacking Ukraine.
“I was troubled by what I heard,” said Mr. Burns, who served 33 years in the U.S. diplomatic service before taking up his new post. “While it did not yet seem that he had made an irreversible decision to invade Ukraine, Putin was defiantly leaning in that direction, apparently convinced that his window was closing for shaping Ukraine’s orientation.”
Mr. Burns recounted how Putin seemed “convinced that this winter offered a favorable landscape.” In Putin’s view, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zolensky and the Ukrainians were unlikely to put up effective resistance; the Russian military seemed capable of a quick and decisive victory at low cost; the U.S.’s European allies appeared distracted by their internal politics and were risk averse; and the Russian economy would be resistant to sanctions due to its large foreign currency reserves.
Yet Putin was “proven wrong on every count,” Mr. Burns said.
Throughout the conflict, U.S. intelligence agencies played a “critical role,” he said. Sharing U.S. intelligence with allies and partners in advance “helped cement the solidarity of the alliance,” contributing to support for “much tougher sanctions than they may have originally imagined against Russia.”
The public disclosure of intelligence also has helped to “preempt the false narratives and false flag operations which Putin has used so often in the past.”
Last April, U.S. combatant commanders implored the intelligence agencies to declassify and release intelligence in the information war against Russia and China.
President Biden’s decision to strategically release intelligence was “unprecedented,” Mr. Burns said, and reflects “a need for new thinking and new tactics in this new and demanding era for intelligence.”
“Releasing the information as the U.S. intelligence agencies did tactically threw Putin off, but the strategic impact was limited,” said Adam Stulberg, chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Tech, who opened the event with introductory remarks. “The question is: Do the lessons learned from this experience extend to China?”
The China Challenge
President Xi Jinping’s China has been a “silent partner” in Russia’s aggression, Mr. Burns said, calling China “the most profound test” the agency has ever faced.
He warned that China lacks “neither ambition nor capability” in seeking to “overtake us in literally every domain, from economic strength to military power and from space to cyberspace.” Beijing is intent to strengthen its ability to “bully its neighbors” and to supplant the United States as the leading power in the Indo-Pacific region, he added.
Mr. Burns balanced his assessment of China’s ambitions, saying that China’s rise itself is not a bad thing. He cited the hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens who have risen out of poverty and into the middle class. He also noted that the United States has benefited economically from China’s rapid growth.
But Mr. Burns also noted China’s threatening behavior: over the past few years, China has hacked at least 150 U.S. companies to steal secrets, expanded its nuclear arsenal to 1000 warheads, and detained one million Uighurs, “simply because they are Muslim.” Chinese authorities have arrested thousands in Hong Kong “for peacefully supporting democracy” and “lured countless countries into crushing debt, data exposure, and democratic backsliding.”
Last October, the agency established a new mission center, devoted exclusively to China issues. Mr. Burns noted that it is the only such mission center focused on a single country. The CIA also increased its budget for China activities and is aiming to double the number of Mandarin-speaking officers in the next few years.
“There are few parts of the agency that are not engaged in some way with the PRC challenge,” said Mr. Burns. “At the same time, it’s important to be clear that our concern is about the threat posed by the People’s Republic of China, not about the people of China, let alone fellow Americans of Chinese or Asian descent. It is a profound mistake to conflate the two.”
Keeping Up With the Tech Revolution
Another area that has touched nearly every part of the agency is the “revolution in technology,” Mr. Burns said, noting that nearly a third of CIA officers work primarily on technology, digital or cyber issues.
Yet the CIA director also highlighted the need to better engage with the private sector to understand the “dizzying speed” of technological change. Last October, CIA also created the Transnational and Technology Mission Center and established a chief technology officer position, a first at the CIA. The agency also started a technology fellows program to attract professionals in the tech sector to spend a year in public service and to offer CIA officers the chance to spend time in private industry.
Mr. Burns admitted that he came to Tech, in part, for a “shameless recruiting pitch.” He addressed a crowd of several hundred people, mostly students, drawn from Tech, historically Black colleges and other nearby universities. Faculty, media, and the general public also attended, as well as former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, the namesake of Tech’s school of international affairs.
The CIA director recognized that the agency needed to be more competitive with the private sector. He wants to streamline the hiring process, reducing onboarding time from 500 days to 180 days. The agency also aims to strengthen diversity in its workforce. “We cannot compete successfully on that landscape if everyone looks like me, talks like me and thinks like me.”
“The promotion list I approved for the senior intelligence service, the general officers for CIA, was the most diverse in our 75-year history,” Mr. Burns said. “Forty-seven percent women and 27 percent minority – for the first time in our history, those senior promotion percentages actually exceeded the overall proportion of women and minorities in our workforce.”
Mr. Burns noted that both the CIA and Georgia Tech focus on “progress and service,” and students and faculty found other similarities laid out in the speech.
“It’s no coincidence that the CIA director made his first public speech at a premier technical university,” said Mike Ceci, a Ph.D. student in the Nunn School. “I read it as a clear sign that the CIA cares about investing in the future of technology and values its intersection with social science and policy.”
“The CIA is an interdisciplinary research institute,” said Dr. Stulberg. “That Director Burns would inaugurate his public outreach campaign at Georgia Tech makes sense, because Tech is where STEM and humanities and social science all come to a head. To address 21st century challenges, you need renaissance type of people.”
Daniel Aum, the author of this article, is a PhD student in international affairs, science and technology at Georgia Tech
See the full speech here:
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