Javed Ali:
There's just so much to unpack even on the leak's front.
Why would someone that young in the position that they had, have access to those very sensitive materials? The response that I've given in all these different media interviews is that it's less about the age and more about the access and placement that [the Airman] had.
He could have been a middle-aged person, like myself, and theoretically done the same thing inside the Beltway. So the age in and of itself isn't the red flag here, but it's the fact that he had a top secret, SCI clearance, or appears to have had one.
[He] had access to a facility, in this case a military base. That access provided his clearance, and gave him the access to a secure facility, which [is] known as a SCIF inside the base.
Then the third prong here, which created the vulnerability or created the leak, is that he had access to this very controlled computer system that only resides in these SCIF facilities. You have to have the right clearance in order to access the computer in which all very sensitive intelligence resides.
That is how he managed to pull this off.
It's a pretty remarkable story when you think about it, and it's so brazen. But what I thought about when I was in government, and now that I've been out for the last few years, [is that the] system is pretty fragile. The reason why most people don't commit those crimes or engage in that activity is because it's illegal. There's this perception that you're being watched anyways.
Most people who show up to do work in these jobs, and I would put myself in that category when I was doing it, you're there for the right reasons. You're there to serve the country, you're there to help keep the country safe.
These are important roles and we're entrusted with this really sensitive information. That's why 99.99% of the people, you don't have to worry about. But with all that said, one person managed to expose the fragility of the system. Now, I think there needs to be a serious re-look at this enterprise-wide level of security to prevent a next time.
Federal Newswire:
Was there anything truly damaging in what was revealed, anything that could impact ongoing operations or U.S. foreign policy?
Javed Ali:
That's hard to know from the outside because we don’t know the full scope of what was disclosed and uploaded in Discord, and then shared on social media. But even the secondhand media reporting that I've been following suggests that there have been some strategic level perspectives on different issues and different regions of the world.
That may not be the totality of what was disclosed.
I'm not minimizing the extent of the damage that the leaks potentially have resulted in or could result in, but I don't think they were as damaging to ongoing operations or really sensitive collection methods [and] sources.
If he was only taking out these slides that are put together every day through this joint staff intelligence briefing…[which are] very sensitive, but even if disclosed it's [not] going to lead to grave harm, thankfully.
I think the damage, as far as we know, should be pretty limited. I also don't think it's going to cause too much consternation at the diplomatic level. That's why I default back to this notion that the most significant damage is internally in the intelligence community.
He doesn't seem to have the same motivation or intent that Chelsea Manning, Reality Winner, or Edward Snowden did. The people who've been responsible for these, what I would argue, more damaging leaks over the past decade.
Federal Newswire:
Do you think maybe if you are part of a Discord server and you have access to classified intel, maybe you don't get to have a top secret clearance?
Javed Ali:
Yeah…the intelligence community needs to take a step back and reevaluate how people maintain clearances or get reinvestigated once you have a clearance. I wrote an op-ed about this that landed in the Cipher Brief platform, if any of your readers are familiar with it.
In this plan that I laid out…for people who have top secret SCI clearances, you actually have to engage in some level of mandatory reporting of your social media activity. Because there's no way for the intelligence community to know that on its own. So this would put the onus on people who have the clearances to declare, here are the accounts I have or here are the platforms I'm in, and that may deter this type of activity in the future.
Federal Newswire:
Do you think there's a generational issue at work?
Javed Ali:
There might be, but there are lots of folks who [are] either former intelligence community professionals, or perhaps even ones that are in, that also have social media accounts. So you can't just say, well it's only this much younger generation that will only engage in social media activity. I think it's a question of responsibility in social media.
Federal Newswire:
Where do you think things stand at one year plus into this conflict between Russia and Ukraine?
Javed Ali:
Like any conflict, nothing ever goes according to plan, either on the aggressor side or the defender side. I think that's what we've seen over the past year.
Whatever Putin thought this campaign–or what he still calls a special military operation–was going to achieve, I have a hard time believing that…this is successful.
It doesn't look good if you're sitting back in Moscow. The human toll for the Russian military is staggering. I don't think anybody knows what the true number is, but even the US and the British military have said it's probably over 200,000 casualties in less than a year.
That is a World War I type of loss, and it's hard to wrap your head around that in terms of the destruction to the Russian military. Beyond the manpower, it's the equipment and the material and all the things that they have just thrown into this ferocious type of combat in Ukraine. So that's surprising.
I wrote an op-ed at the beginning of the campaign and said that if you compare what happened in Afghanistan in the eighties,…the Soviets suffered about 10,000 casualties in about a decade. That is basically what ultimately led to the withdrawal of the Soviet military from Afghanistan.
They thought in that period of time that 10,000 was just too much of a cost to bear, and they wound up occupying the country–that probably wasn't the plan either. The longer they stayed, the more unpopular they got.
Multiply that amount of manpower losses by 20 in a year. So just the math is completely different. At the same time, diplomatically they're more isolated, economically there's significant impact to the Russian economy, although it looks like they're able to withstand some of that.
But nobody knows where this is going to end and when it's going to end, and what victory looks like for Putin or even on the Ukrainian side. These are all really tough questions that I don't think anybody has the answer to.
Federal Newswire:
Russia wanted to take Ukraine whole, and now it’s changed to Eastern Ukraine and maintaining hold of Crimea. Is that victory for them?
Javed Ali:
That certainly seems like a plausible scenario for Putin because he has got to be able to go back to the population of Russia. It has to be worth something tangible and physical.
Russia is a bigger country. It has four to five times the population of Ukraine. I also think there's something culturally to the Russian mindset where, in their history, they have suffered even greater calamities and losses in the name of the Motherland or the Russian Federation.
So I think Putin is playing on that sense of Russian history too, that the country is willing to engage in these kinds of hardships and this kind of suffering to its own people to achieve its objectives.
But the reality is, it's coming at a terrible cost inside Russia.
How long can Putin withstand this before things become so unpopular, like they were in Afghanistan? [Perhaps] he's either forced out–some new generation of leaders come in–or the Russian military literally just breaks.
Federal Newswire:
What could ultimately bring Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table, if anything?
Javed Ali:
We're at a stalemate right now and because of that stalemate, it's just this daily grind of combat where you have human suffering and physical destruction on both the Russian and Ukrainian side. If a successful Ukrainian counter offensive happens, and I'm not the military expert here, but if that were to happen, is that something that would make Putin eventually relent and sue for peace?
He has to walk away with something tangible. I think he's lost the case on NATO. NATO is not only expanded already, it's probably going to further expand.
It wouldn't surprise me if [Ukrainian President] Zelensky makes the bid to have Ukraine be the next country that gets NATO membership, because he has nothing to lose at this point.
Federal Newswire:
Could Ukraine join NATO?
Javed Ali:
No NATO country is going to accept Ukraine’s bid now because it would pull NATO into the fight. But eventually if there can be some kind of resolution to this current conflict, I would have to believe that whoever the Ukrainian President is at some point, that they would make that case.
Another one of these wild card scenarios that I don't hear a lot of people talking about is, Russia has been able to withstand these military losses just because of Russian identity, history, and the sheer size of the country. But Russia has also been able to hold the line, so to speak, because they've made these transactional relationships that may become more enduring and strategic with China, Iran, and North Korea.
So while NATO has expanded under the framework of this conflict, this is the downside, I think, of the conflict.
Russia has moved even closer to the other countries that the US and the West consider to be adversaries; and that's probably not something that people thought was going to happen when this conflict started a year ago.
Federal Newswire:
According to a recent survey of international relations professors around America, climate change is the greatest threat facing the world, China is second, and Russia is fifth or sixth. How accurate do you think this is?
Javed Ali:
When I was in government, we were hyper-focused on counter-terrorism – first with Al Qaeda and then ISIS several years later. But in that span of time, these other really prominent national security issues started to emerge as well.
The challenges from Russia and China, climate change, COVID in 2020. So now, if you look at the national security priorities of the US, yes, they are very different from my time in government. We had almost the luxury of focusing on one problem and trying to go really deep on that one problem.
This has got to be hard for the Biden administration. Their national security strategy from last year is a reflection of this much more diverse National Security landscape where counterterrorism is barely mentioned in that document. I mean, it's mentioned, but it is not the prominent feature of it.
If you were to compare the national security strategies of the Bush, Obama, and even the Trump administration–and I was there from 2017 and 2018–counter-terrorism wasn't number one; it was in the top three.
Now, even counter-terrorism is definitely probably at the bottom end of 10. All these other ones are competing for the top three.
So it's hard, is climate change number one now? It might be. Is China number one now? I think the Biden administration has been more hawkish on China than even the Trump administration was.
Things are moving faster and more rapidly in the national security landscape since 2018 when I left government.
Federal Newswire:
Can you explain your idea of designating drug cartels as terrorist organizations?
Javed Ali:
Yeah, it's taken me a while to get to this place.
When I was in government, this was a fairly controversial issue, because we were dealing with so many of the traditional and classic terrorist groups. Now we have to put drug cartels into that mix. How do we reapportion our limited resources to go against the Al Qaedas and ISIS’s and Lebanese Hezbollah’s of the world and perhaps tackle the Mexican drug cartels too?
But the international terrorism threat is–not eliminated and not [quite] zero–but not as prominent as it was when I was in government. Perhaps this is the moment in time to reconceptualize what counterterrorism looks like.
This would be a really interesting conversation about using the authorities that the Secretary of State has, coming up with a designations package for one of the nine cartels, if not all of them. I think [U.S. Senator] Lindsey Graham has said we should just designate all of them and then see what effect, if any, it would have on these cartel operations on both sides of the border.
But to me, the red line that was crossed was the murder of the two Americans.
I think it was in late February. Whether that was deliberate or not, that to me is something that should be met with a forceful response. I'm not suggesting military operations, I'm just saying use this tool that we have, that we haven't used before against cartels, and it would put financial pressure on them. It would open up more investigative and law enforcement authorities, and it could also have some benefit on the intelligence side.
So I think now might be the time to be more serious about this because if we want to confront this drug threat, why not use the tool that we have.
Federal Newswire:
You’re saying, if the old ways don't work or if there are ways that we haven't tried that might work, maybe we ought to go about trying them?
Javed Ali:
Right, because [the] status quo is not working. The drugs are still flowing into the United States and we're limited in our ability to stop that flow. The Mexican government, likewise, hasn't been able to shut things down on their side of the border.
So even with the designations, it's not like this would be the panacea to the problem. It would not completely eliminate the threat that these cartels present. But again, it just gives the US government another tool to apply in addition to the existing tools.
I think also, there's a labeling effect here.
If you start describing them as terrorist organizations, that's bad for [their] business. That might get them to change their behavior as well. Now, that might be a little too optimistic on my end, but I do think from a labeling perspective, there's value in that too.
Federal Newswire:
Can you comment on your recent statement about designating public schools as critical infrastructure?
Javed Ali:
That was another one of these 3:00 AM ideas that I have. That's usually where my op-eds come into play. Something happens, usually it's a crisis or some awful event. Then I think what else could we do as a country or within the government that could potentially have an impact on this problem and prevent it from happening again or deter it.
Thinking about mass shootings in the US, a terrible phenomena that's been going on for years now, we don't seem to be making much progress.
Every day you pick up the headlines and there's a mass shooting somewhere. But when it comes to schools, that's something I think we can all agree, as educators, parents, members of communities, we need to keep our kids safe. So this whole issue of critical infrastructure in the US has been an evolving process both before 9/11 and now after.
But I don't think we've ever really thought about K-12 schools as part of critical infrastructure the same way we think about the telecommunications, water, nuclear energy, power, gas sectors, and everything that seems to fit that classic conception of critical infrastructure. It sounds cliche, but children are incredibly precious resources. I have a son who's in junior high school and I teach at a big college, so I understand the importance of protecting these younger generations.
Interestingly, the Secretary of Homeland Security has the authority to designate different sectors in the United States as critical infrastructure. There would have to be a lot that would need to be accomplished from an implementation perspective. But still, this might be something that DHS, under one of the sub-components of DHS known as the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CISA is responsible for critical infrastructure protection. Is this something that CISA could think hard about? I would argue, we should at least think about it.
Whether Secretary Mayorkas wants to do this, that would be really interesting. I think there's a lot that could be done when it comes to hardening schools from the threat of these mass shootings. If there's going to be any focal point for that in the federal government, it would be CISA through DHS.
Federal Newswire:
When the FBI came out with the warning to not use public chargers, why did you focus less on the warning and more on what it said about the FBI?
Javed Ali:
What I thought was interesting about that is the bulletin wasn't from big-FBI. Normally, these sort of security warnings come from corporate FBI, the Washington, DC headquarters.
This one came out from FBI Denver. I thought, well, that's interesting. Why did FBI Denver put out this warning about this perceived vulnerability with airport charging stations or other public charging stations or devices? Why didn't it come from big-FBI, FBI cyber division, criminal division, or the gears that move inside of FBI headquarters?
I don't have an answer to that, but I did think it was interesting that this came from FBI Denver. [It] spoke to this potential vulnerability that's out there. This is now one of just several cyber-related vulnerabilities you have to think about when you're operating in the public world.
