John O. Brennan: uncertainty

Transcript context

…A major foreign power hacked into an OPM database in, I think, 2015. Is it harder today to hack again into OPM or to hack into Facebook? Which is better protected? [laughs] That’s a good question. I know OPM has done some things, but some US government systems or legacy systems — trying to transform them and transition to new, updated, and less vulnerable systems takes time, effort, and lots of money. Facebook — it has loads of money, but also, I don’t know how concerned it is about ensuring that there are no vulnerabilities in the system that can be exploited by actors, either domestic or foreign. I think this is a challenge for the public, private, and not-for-profit sectors in the coming decades. How are you going to ensure that your data is going to be protected, while at the same time making sure that it’s available so that you can leverage it the way it’s designed to be used? As you know, Bob Gates has argued that the director of National Intelligence position has some problems. It creates a new bureaucracy. If you were to look at the flow chart of the post-9/11 US intelligence community, it seems to be a highly complex nightmare. Is that just the way things have to work? Should it actually be that way? Do we need to simplify? Are there too many positions? Are there too many chefs in the kitchen? What’s your view?…

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