David Kapler

Yeah, the head of the European- Right, he was also head of the Croatian external service.

I do.

Why are they so important?

I don't mean to diminish any other role in intelligence because they're all critically important, but I think as a former analyst, I think a few things are true.

First, you see across a tremendous amount of the work and of the content, depending on your topic, your seniority, your role at that particular time.

And I think that does give you quite an interesting perch because eventually we do learn quite a bit even as analysts about the collection and about the management and about the resourcing.

Because it's not just important to understand the facts and be able to put them in some coherent structure, but also a bit of, well, how did we get that?

Because that gets to the confidence potentially in the information.

But I also think being an analyst sets you up.

I mean, I was an enterprise mission manager within the US intelligence community for quite some time also.

And I think the preparation as an analyst was quite good for that role as well because analysts are taught how to think and how to think in a very particular structure and to have the rigor and the discipline when we think and when we analyze and when we advise.

Yeah.

I mean, look, it's a very interesting role, probably just about any time, but very rewarding to be there to be able to make a significant contribution at a key time in the alliance's history.

I think three things really stand out to me.

I think the first is that

The performance of the Joint Intelligence and Security Division and the cooperation across those 85 intelligence services from the 32 allies could not have been better at a more important time.

So I think that's one thing I'd say.

I think the second thing I would say is, as came up in the panel last night, nations handle their intelligence in different ways.

But the point I would make here is that nations also take widely different approaches in the way that intelligence contributes to national security decision making.

There's a model in the US and the UK that's very similar, probably no small part because the UK trained us on how to use intelligence, but it can be deeply cultural.