Ned Price

Well, I think the clips you played were instructive.

There are lots of concerns when any American president, let alone Donald Trump, is going to meet with Vladimir Putin, who has an intelligence background, who's been on the world stage for decades now.

Yes, of course, you have to be worried about the concern that they might play some sort of technical listening device.

in the B store take advantage of technological means to further their intelligence goals against the White House.

I'm actually much less concerned about that.

Number one, how much are you going to learn from listening to Donald Trump rabble in the beast?

But number two, I think this, you know, more seriously, there's another tactic, I think, that

Putin was prioritizing here, and it's less about surveillance, and it's more about, as you heard from Rob Dannenberg, manipulation.

That is really, as Rob was saying, the key skill that intelligence officers learn when they're going through their training, whether they're KGB, whether they're CIA, whether they're any other intelligence, worthy intelligence outfit officers.

the world over.

And it's not about, you know, technology that will make you appear invisible or learning how to see through, you know, hidden eyeballs in the back of your head.

I think there are lots of misconceptions about what intelligence tradecraft is.

It is really the art and it is the art of, as Rob was saying, understanding someone, assessing someone, and then most importantly,

blending the false impression to your target that you care about him or her, that you're interested in what they're talking about, and that you're on the same team.

And I fear that's exactly what President Putin did from the moment he got into the beast with Donald Trump.

We heard about some of that, including from Trump himself.

He said that Putin raised

Mail-in voting, he said that Putin complimented him on some of the greatest hits from the campaign trail and really endorsed some of what he'd been saying.

Obviously, so much of that was about manipulation.

But then I think yesterday, there was something really startling that hasn't gotten enough attention.