Inside Russia's Broken Intelligence Machine

Corruption, dysfunction, and the hidden weaknesses behind Putin’s security state.

What happens when an intelligence system becomes consumed by corruption, fear, and loyalty to the regime instead of truth? In this episode of At the Boundary, former CIA operations officer Sean Wiswesser argues that the dysfunction inside Russia’s intelligence services is not an exception to the system – it is the system.

Discussing his new book, Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War, Wiswesser explains how the FSB and SVR have become organizations shaped by cronyism, politicized analysis, and institutional decay. He and Dr. Jeff Rogg examine how those failures contributed to Russia’s disastrous assumptions before the invasion of Ukraine and why authoritarian intelligence systems struggle to deliver honest assessments to political leaders.

The conversation also explores Russian active measures, disinformation campaigns targeting democracies, and the growing role of intelligence services in sustaining Putin’s rule.

This is a candid examination of how secret police culture, corruption, and information warfare continue to define Russia’s confrontation with the West.

Links from the Episode:

Sean Wiswesser's Book: Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War

GNSI Video Series: Former Vice Chairman Joint Chiefs, John Hyten

GNSI Research Initiative: The Price of Credible Peace, Episode 3

GNSI Student Research Fellows Applications for Fall 2026

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GNSI on YouTube

At the Boundary  from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida,  features global and national security issues we’ve found to be insightful, intriguing, fascinating, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about.

A "boundary" is a place, either literal or figurative, where two forces exist in close proximity to each other. Sometimes that boundary is in a state of harmony. More often than not, that boundary has a bit of chaos baked in. The Global and National Security Institute will live on the boundary of security policy and technology and that's where this podcast will focus.

The mission of GNSI is to provide actionable solutions to 21st-century security challenges for decision-makers at the local, state, national and global levels. We hope you enjoy At the Boundary.

Look for our other publications and products on our website publications page.

Transcript

At the Boundary (EP 131 Sean Wiswesser, Dr. Jeff Rogg)

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SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Russian Intelligence, FSB, SVR, Putin, Russian Corruption, Intelligence Failures, Ukraine War, Active Measures, Information Warfare, Strategic Competition, Espionage, CIA, Intelligence Studies, Counterintelligence, Russian Security Services, Political Warfare, National Security, Disinformation

SPEAKERS

Jim Cardoso, Dr. Jeff Rogg, Sean Wiswesser

TRANSCRIPT

Jim Cardoso  00:03

Jim, hello everyone. Welcome to this week's episode of At the Boundary, the podcast from the Global and National Security Institute at the University of South Florida, I'm Jim Cardoso, senior director for GNSI, and your host for At the Boundary. Today on the podcast, our special guest is author Sean Weiswester, who's recently written a book exposing the dysfunction inside the Russian intelligence system in a comprehensive study of Russian espionage and subversion tactics, he'll reveal stories about the structural culture some might call corruption embedded throughout Russia's intelligence system. Bribery, coercion, extortion, and lies are all the coin of the realm, and he'll lay it all out for us in just a few minutes. For some updates, we've dropped a couple new videos on our YouTube channel. The latest episode of our research initiative, The Price of Credible Peace: Security Guarantees, Deterrence, and Ukraine's Future, features a compelling interview with retired US Ambassador Christopher Hill. He spent many years in Eastern Europe serving as US ambassador to Poland, Serbia, and North Macedonia, and was a key negotiator in the Dayton Accords to end the war in Bosnia. The second video is our latest episode in the GNSI video series, as GNSI non-resident senior fellow Chris Hunter interviewed the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired US Air Force General John Hyten. It's a direct, compelling discussion with a former senior leader who rose to the highest level of US national security. Finally, there are only a couple weeks left to apply for the Student Research Fellows positions at GNSI for the upcoming fall semester. We're looking for students, both graduate and undergraduate, who are interested in the following research areas: one, resilience and resistance as part of irregular warfare; two, strategic competition; or three, society and the military. You must be a currently enrolled student to apply, but it's not limited to just USF students. We're looking for both resident and non-resident candidates. There may also be course credit available for the resident positions. You can find more information and application details on our website. Deadline to apply is june 1. We'll drop a link in the show notes. Okay, now we're going to get a look inside Russia's broken intelligence system from someone who spent 30 years deeply involved with it. Former CIA senior operations officer Sean Wieschwesser. His new book, Tradecraft, Tactics and Dirty Tricks: Russian intelligence and Putin's secret war, goes into detail with many great stories of the dysfunction and corruption that is now deeply rooted in the Russian intelligence machine. Our own intelligence expert, Dr. Jeff Rog, senior research fellow here at GNSI, sat down for an interview with Uiswester last week. Let's listen in on the conversation today on At the Boundary.

Jeff Rogg  03:19

Thanks, Sean, for joining me.

Sean Wiswesser  03:22

Well, thanks, Jeff. It's an honor to be on with you, and I appreciate the chance to talk about these issues. I know we're both passionate about, so thanks.

Jeff Rogg  03:30

That's right. And I think I'm going to start with the question everyone does now. I know your career won't let you write this book any sooner, but why did you choose to write the book, and why now?

Sean Wiswesser  03:41

Yeah, so I retired in 2023 It was another six months. CIA gets to decide if I can affiliate or not with CIA, and thankfully they said yes, because if they didn't, this book never happens. But they said yes, you can. And then I always had this idea, you know, when I was at War College, and War College is great leadership program, also great writing programs, where I got my master's, a master's at Air Force Air War College, and so that was a few years back, and that kind of gave me the faith that, you know, I could get back into writing, because they, they helped me get published in the Army War College. Also, a professor there, Dr. John Nogle, took an interest in my research on the Ukraine war, so I got published in British Journal Small Wars for my thesis, and then I was in a couple of books. I had a chapter in an Army War College book on Ukraine and on Russia's air power failures, along with the role of their special services. And then I was in a book with Cambridge Publishing House called The Air War in Ukraine. I had chapter two with a lot of people, a lot smarter than me, academics like Mike Kaufman, Justin Bronk was the editor on that book, but yeah, folks, a lot smarter than me. But I was lucky to have chapter two in that book, so I got to thinking, you know, maybe I can pull this off, Jeff, maybe I could write a book, and they always say, "Write the book only you can write. So I was a trade craft expert, retired as a senior expert in our cadre, in the return of. Operations, you know, people decided to go the management route. I had managed a lot. I was a chief of station overseas. I managed about half of my career, but at a certain point I decided I'd rather focus on my expertise, which was Russian intelligence and what we call denied area operations, which is trade craft. And so I started thinking, if I'm going to write a book, I'll write it on trade craft, and that's what led to the book on Russian tradecraft, which I think, as you know, Jeff, it's pretty unique in the field. You know, people will write about an espionage case, or they'll write a survey of a service like CIA or KGB, but to my knowledge, and, and the expertise of Mike Zulek, who was our DDO, and wrote the forward of the book, he also said, I think it's, you think it's the only one like this, so, so that's kind of led to the inspiration to write the book,

Jeff Rogg  05:44

and I'll add to that, you know, I saw a lot of finesse in the book, you could see that you had good writing experience and foundations there, but then you brought the practitioner perspective, and especially the contemporary practitioner perspective, which, you know, for intel historians, as you said, there's a lot of work on Russian intelligence history, Russian intelligence organizations, but to really make it contemporary and then make it accessible, you know. Hats off to you for that. I'd like to back up a little further before even your war college preparation. How did you find your way to CIA, and you know, I know you had a background already in Russian and Soviet history and language. How'd that help you both in your career and then in writing the book,

Sean Wiswesser 06:21

yeah, so I studied Russian language, starting in high school. I had four years at a boys' prep school I went to, called the Hill School in Pennsylvania. I was very fortunate to get a chance to go there. I want a scholarship to go there, was not from a family of wealthy means, but I got to go to this great boarding school that had awesome language programs. So I did four years of Russian, and that really gave me a leg up for my later career in the intelligence community. Continued on with Russian college, I got a double BA, history was my first focus, but then Russian and Slavic linguistics, and so what Russian, the difference Russian made for me, Jeff, is you know, my later career, I, if I was trying to meet a Russian, what we call a bump, you know, the diplomatic circuit or otherwise, they didn't immediately know I was an American. They could tell I was a foreigner, of course, but they were usually taken aback that I was an American. They say, "Whoa, wait a second, would you have Russian family? You know, they're very, they're very suspicious, but in a good way. They were curious. Well, then in my career, debriefing Russians, which I detail a lot in the book, and I mentioned in the book, you know, it led to instant rapport, particularly when I could explain to Russians that I wasn't an emigre, because they, intelligence officers, don't necessarily trust fellow Russian immigrants or anybody with that history, but when I explained that, I just studied language when I would use it during debriefings, and when I used it in operational work, it was a huge asset to be able to speak their language, as Russians say. Chimlecia Chilovec, you know, what does a person breathe? How do they understand? It was a huge asset in my career. So, the language was critically important. I always tell young folks out there, anybody listening to this interested in careers intelligence, you have to have the language and understand the culture. It's so important to being a really good case officer. There are those that don't have it and still succeed, but I think in really to get into this profession and be a good intelligence operations officer, in particular, you have to have the language. So, so, yeah, that's a little bit about my background. How the language kind of bled into my career. Started as a foreign service officer for a bit, then I continued to bulk on my career. The other two decades plus of my 30 year career in intelligence was with CIA's Director of Operations.

Jeff Rogg  08:30

You know, that's great background, and I actually have Russian in my background too, on my grandfather's side, and I still have a lot of his Russian books, and that was something that I noticed you made an effort to distinguish between the Russian people and Russian intelligence, and the Russian people are fiercely proud, their heritage, their culture. You know, when I interact with Russians and talk about Russian literature, Ivan Chardon of Nikolai Gogol, you can see their eyes kind of light up because they're also not really used to it. How can you go back to explaining how that understanding and distinction helps you dealing with both the Russians as a people, and then separating that from the Russian intelligence services, but also recruiting them.

Sean Wiswesser  09:10

Yeah, good point, Jeff. Very good question. Thank you. You know, I make the point in the book, as you know, from the very start of the book, I quote Lemon Tough, you know, in the dedication. I was, I was a Russian literature major. I studied studying 19th century Russian literature, and I love it. You know, we're not at war with the Russian people. The Russian people and the Soviet people, for that matter, suffered more from their security services and still do than anyone else, except arguably the Ukrainians, right now, because the Ukrainians are suffering horribly in an unjust war Russia started. But listen, the Russians suffered too. So, I'm not, you know, I'm not. I don't preach hatred against the Russian people. My own wife is part Russian and Ukrainian, along with Lithuanian, but it's their security services that have kept the people down. It's their security services that are waging this secret war against the West, and have been for decades. And that's the focus of the book, and the trade craft in the book, but I think it's important. To make the distinction, you know, we're not them, we don't, we don't hate people. Russian intelligence services are bigoted, they're racist for the most part, sex certainly very sexist, they're xenophobic, they're very Russia-centric as services, and that's their fault, that's their weakness. You know, our strength is a diversity of our culture, the diversity of our intelligence community. The fact that we've been able to get past a lot of those problems in our own services. When I came into the intelligence community in the mid 90s, let's just say we've come a long way in terms of diversity since then. So, those are our strengths as democracies, that's what they don't have going for them. But, yeah, we don't hate the Russian people, that's not what this is about. This is about a secret war with their intelligence services, and they declared it on us. Jeff, it was declared a long time ago against us.

Jeff Rogg  10:46

Let's dig into that point, because something else that's a theme throughout the book is the corruption, the corruption of the Russian intelligence services, and that seems to be a key vulnerability, as well as just their like MO. Can you talk more about how you exploited the corruption in the Russian intelligence services, and perhaps you know related to the vulnerability that they might have today.

Sean Wiswesser  11:08

Yeah. Thank you, Jeff. Well, you know, all of the cases I discuss in the book, I give a lot of the anecdotes and experiences, as you mentioned earlier. Thanks for noting, and it is a unique thing about the book. I was kind of an afterthought to me, by the way, including all that lived experience, I first wrote the book, so CIA would clear it. I documented, I cited it heavily. It was fairly academic style, even though I'm not an academic. But then I added in a lot of this lived experience, and that's what a lot of people write up in reviews, including professional reviews. Now we've had a number of them where folks have said, you know, wow, this is a real strength in the book, this is how they think. So corruption bleeds through everything they do. Jeff, any Russian intelligence officer I've ever met, worked with, debriefed - all of them know it. It's just a part of their services. I detail, as you know, so many anecdotes in the book, starting with at their academy. Lynn, I give that story in the, in the just for a flavor for your listeners. I hope they'll buy the book and enjoy it. It's a great read at Benefits Naval Institute Press, which is a nonprofit, by the way. Jeff, you know, none of us make books writing for academic presses, but I'm honored to be with Naval Institute. But how about that story from the Academy? You know, a Russian, young Russian intelligence officer telling me from the very get-go at the academy, they're conditioned, "Hey, this is the way it works, there's corruption. You know, he was told he can't get the top grades on an exercise because one instructor bribed another, and and then they can't use their vehicles for their surveillance exercises. Why? Because the instructors take them on the weekends to use with their lubovnizi, excuse me, they're mistresses, so it's that corruption, you know, that that bleeds through everything that they do, and later on in their careers, it's a much higher level. It's a feudal system. They have to feed their bosses wallets and pockets. And then, at the service level, giant vast corporations of wealth and wealth networks, it's not made up. Catherine Belton has a great book about it. Putin's people, you know, the C-Lavigie, they help one another. They're all beholden to Putin in the system that he built, all the way from people like Syatin, who's that of Rosneft, former KGB officer, to the heads of the services, all former KGB, Naryshkin, Bordenakov, FSP, and SVR heads. You know that they're all part of the system, and so their entire kind of pyramid networks, just like mafia clans, they feed up to the top, and everybody's a part of it, and everybody has a stake in it. But that's also Jeff, the final point is I'm making the point in my research and my work in the book, it's a weakness too, because not everybody wants to be corrupt. There are Russians who generally want to serve their country, generally love, you know, the Rodina, love the motherland, and they come on board like one of those defectors I mentioned, who said this is ridiculous, I'm not going to be a part of this, and then he was made fun of and picked on for it, or Sergey Trejikov, that I mentioned, I had honored to give debrief, former deputy resident in New York, sadly passed away a number of years ago, but had a great career as a defector too, helping the United States as an American, then after he decided to work with us, and he couldn't stand the corruption, he hated it. So,

Jeff Rogg  14:04

something else that already said it stuck out, a story that you gave about a young recruit who was made to go clean the kitchen, and you know, any of us who served in national security, the military, you understand that there's a certain degree of, you know, I don't even want to use the word hazing, but that's the popular term, but you know, you have to pay your dues, you have to be willing to pick up a broom and clean, but there it's almost like it's to establish a caste system or to establish a hierarchy, and a lot of what we do too with GNSI is directed at students, so could you distinguish, especially for our students who want to enter American national security institutions or the intelligence community, the differences that you see between, you know, training, recruiting, training, selecting, and also just, you know, cultivating intelligence officers in the United States as professionals versus in Russia.

Sean Wiswesser  14:55

Yeah, Jeff, good point, especially for your younger listeners, those interested. I encourage your interest in the intelligence community. I mean, we need smart, talented young Americans to choose to serve in the intelligence community and our military, for that matter. So, I certainly commend any that are thinking of that. There are no comparisons really to be made between our system, which is built, excuse me, so our system is built as a meritocracy, whatever faults we have. Jeff, you and I both know, you know, I have young, I have young talented applicants come to me, talk about CIA, and they say, "Hey, could you, any connections you got? I say, "No, sorry, we just.. we don't work that way. You know, you're gonna have to apply on the internet and be glad you can apply on the internet. Back in my day, by the way, the 90s, you wanted to apply the intelligence community. There was no internet like that. You had to get a paper application. It was hard, but the Russian services is the polar opposite. It is who you know, as I relate in chapter two of the book. You know, it is who you know. Can somebody put in a word for you? Do you got a relative? You know, Anna Chapman, the famous ghost stories, Russian illegal who was a disaster with her tradecraft. Her father was a KGB officer, so in their system it's all about the networks, the extended networks, just like Putin's power is held on to by those sea level key, those inner KGB veterans that he worked with. So again, whatever faults we have, I used to tell the story at the farm that you were just mentioning about hazing, and I tell my officers at the farm one of the story I just related, you know, you think you have a tough, you think we're difficult to farm, as our training academy, by the way, won't say where it's at, but that's the term everybody knows, it's on the media called the farm, and I was an instructor there, and I said, you know, you think you have it hard, how about this story of a Russian intelligence officer I worked with, he got top grades on an exercise, and he was told, 'Nope, you're not getting cat bolof, you're getting the equivalent of a bee. Says there's instructor Y. Well, because the FSB surveillance teams you were working against were being evaluated by their equivalent of an Inspector General today, and their instructor gave me a case of vodka. They can't make them look bad. Here's two bottles for you. Keep your mouth shut and get used to it. That's the way it's going to work for your whole career. I mean, imagine, like, not only would we not do that, but be an IG investigation, but huge scandal. But that's just the way the Russian intelligence services work. That's part and parcel over there. So, the hazing that you talk about, there's hazing in the Russian military, brutal hazing, they call it the other Sheena, and it's notorious. The Russian intelligence services have a different version of that. I think in some of the elite tier one units that they have the equivalent of, like Jerry, you Spetsnaz. I'm sure it's exactly the same as the Russian military. I'm sure they literally beat their recruits, hazed them that way. But the hazing I related was mental hazing, you know, picking on this young officer, "Go clean the kitchen, kitchen boy. And is he related to me later as a defector. He's like, you know, I.. I guess I got even with them, showed them who Kitchen Boy was, didn't I? I said, Well, yes, you did. You most certainly did. Talented, smart young officer who wanted to serve his country, and he was picked on because he didn't go along with the corruption. He didn't want to be a part of it, just wanted to be a talented young officer, and that's not enough in the Russian system, and that's why, Jeff, we're always going to win, because our message is better. It's not idealistic. I say that sometimes. I had, in foreign interview last week, I mentioned in one of the comments in the chat. I try not to look a lot, because there's sometimes a lot of Russian trolls, by the way. But one of the comments is, "Oh, you expect us to believe doesn't exist in the CIA? Well, it doesn't. Okay, I don't, I don't know if single instance in my career where a manager would get away with telling a junior officer, go clean the kitchen, kitchen boy doesn't happen. So we do try our best to take care of our officers, we try to encourage a meritocracy, and that's our strength, and that's that's not their system, that's not the Russian system.

Jeff Rogg  18:38

Thanks for speaking directly to the students, too, Sean, there, because it's, you know, it's hard to convey, and it's a message that, you know, even as an American historian, I always try and underline, which is, we're still the good guys, and you have to understand that going in, and having that, that comparative understanding that you have from observing it actually does help, because then you really understand who you're dealing with on the other side. This brings another question, it raises another question, though, and it's a very contemporary one, both in the US intelligence community, but also as we see the way Russian intelligence has perhaps steered Putin in the Ukraine war, and that's politicization, so you know that that's a common concern in the US intelligence community is politicization with American policymakers, how does politicization work in Russian intelligence? Because, again, it almost seems like corruption - it's just baked into the system, like you're expected to politicize intelligence for the government or the regime.

Sean Wiswesser  19:37

Yeah, good question. So, I think this is most evident in the, in my research on the Ukraine war, you know, which I detail in chapter 10 of the book, one of the largest in the book, you know, the Russian intelligence service's inability to give unbiased, balanced analysis to the president, especially the FSB, whose fifth service within the FSB, that's how they call their departments now, of course, their. Fifth department, now it's called a fifth service, because they're so huge, by the way, as a bureaucracy approaching a half a million officers, that's how giant they are, you know, 400,000 officers, including 200,000 from the border guards troops under the USB, we have nothing compared to that, Jeff, you know, as large as our bureaucracy is, so we are the good guys, they're the bad guys, because they're corrupt again, and they're corrupt in their thinking, and everything, everything flows from the poison tree, you know, all the fruit from the poison tree. So, in the run-up to the Ukraine war, what we know is that the USP is fifth service was was giving the president a lot of false prognostications of quick victories and quick easy success, and we pounding their chest, you know. We got this, mr. President. This isn't just Sean's opinion. This leaked out in the Russian blogosphere quite a bit, as you know, Jeff, and it's the only form of any freedom of the press, I believe, left in Russia at all, is what you occasionally see in the Russian intelligence and military blogosphere, and it doesn't stay up very long before it's taken down, or they're scared, but they will. These veterans will post, and they'll talk about it, and it was talked about early in the war. It was leaked, and you know, FSB generals and senior officers had already picked out apartment blocks in Kyiv. They were planning to take over. This will be our, my FSB units, apartments. I want these right here. I claim these. You know how immature, how childish, how this is war we're talking about. This is aggression on the largest scale since World War Two, and these petty corrupt idiot Chenomicsy, you know, Christian word for bureaucrats, idiots, they're picking out their apartment blocks before they've even won the war, you know, so they are corrupt, they're corrupt in their thinking, and I think more and more Jeff Putin suffers from a bunker mentality like Hitler did at the end of World War Two, he's surrounded by SP generals and military generals. Nobody's willing to tell the boss the bad news, and that's why they call him, by the way. It's also there for he's the chef in Russian, the boss, also very much a mafia clan style structure, you know. Can't disappoint the boss. The boss said that he wants this done. We're taking care of Ukraine. Boss gets what boss wants. Shows the danger, by the way, of intelligence services not having their independence and getting caught into group think, and we've been guilty that too. Jeff, well aware, you and I both remember Iraq, WMD debacle, CIA headache on its face as much as anyone else, but you know we have commissions to deal with the outcome, we learn from it, we grow the entire intelligence community. United States changed because fundamentally of our errors with our ACT WMD and the 911 commission, not going to be in a Ukraine commission in Russia ever, not under this type of government, not under Putin. So there's no accountability whatsoever for their for their intelligence failures.

Jeff Rogg  22:41

That brings me to a question, too, about continuity versus change. You mentioned just the long-term trend, calling the boss Stalin the boss. You just noted I was reading in another interview the bunker mentality, and one of the ways that Putin, who was an intelligence officer, is trying to, I guess, re-secure himself is appealing to Russian intelligence history, and especially, you know, I think years at just in the remind me, in the fall, the Soviet Union statues of iron Felix Jujinski, the original checkers, were taken down, but then with Putin it was the resurgence of the Tchaikovsky, the Russian intelligence officers who trace their lineage all the way back to the Russian Revolution. How do you think Russian intelligence has changed versus what remains the same? Like, what are the bottom lines Americans need to know about how Russian intelligence has operated and will continue to?

Sean Wiswesser  23:36

Yeah, Paul Colby, former boss of mine at CIA, very smart senior officer at CIA, and a senior fellow at Harvard's Belfer Intelligence Project. Very proud, I had his endorsement for my book, and Paul's endorsement, I told him afterwards, was also one of the best, best synopsis of Russian society and government today, of any of them. Paul said, you know, if you can't understand Russia today without understanding the role of the Russian intelligence services dominating that society, and then he goes on to compliment my book, which I appreciate it very much. But Paul knows, you know, he spent a lifetime, also like me, and at even more senior levels than I ever achieved. Paul understands he was the chief of station in Moscow, you know, you can't understand Russia today without understanding checkism, the cult of the checkists that Putin is so much a part of. You know, Jeff, this started off.. this is mythology. It really is. It's mythology, because Putin places the checkists and the KGB as the elite of Soviet society. Well, they were running the damn thing, they were running the show, right? And the Soviet Union was a disaster. Nothing worked, and my wife was brought up in that system. She's Lithuanian. Her father worked in the Ministry of Interior. Her mom worked at a rocket factory, and they'll tell you, like that generation knows, nothing worked. Everything was falling apart, everything was corrupt at every single level. The Soviet Union, the saying was, if you don't steal from the state, you're stealing from yourselves, so. Everybody knew they had to do something to get ahead, because the stores were empty. You couldn't get anything on the shelves. My wife remembers standing in lines for much of her childhood. Her mom would go put her in a line and put her sister in another line. She'd go in in a third line. So, what the hell is there to be proud of in that culture, in that society? That was the broken Soviet Union, and that was the Soviet Union that KGB helped build, but in Putin's myth, Putin's mythology, you know, the KGB, they were the elite of society, they, they helped win World War Two. Again, no, no reverence for the real history, no respect for the real history, which is that the NKVD under Stalin, they decimated the Soviet military, their purges killed some of the most talented officers, that when the Germans attacked in 41 the Russian military was naked, bare of any real professional officers. They had to rebuild their entire military officer cadre, and that's why they took millions in losses early in the war. So, again, this is all mythology. Putin cultivates this myth. What does the myth say today in Russian society? Jeff, here's the salient point: why they're pulling on this history. Why they're resurrecting the statue of Iron Felix now at the SSB Academy last month. It's now the Zerginsky Academy. In the 1990s you couldn't get away with that, not under Gorbachev, not at the end of the Soviet Union, not under Yeltsin, because everybody knew these are bloodthirsty, you know, tyrants. Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky terrorized the early Soviet people. There's memos, historical fact. Lenin told Jazinski, "We need the terror. His exact words, "I need you to institute the terror as fast as possible, as thoroughly as possible in our society. We need the people to be afraid of counter revolution. So, when Putin talks about reverence for the checkists and check his culture, that's really what he's talking about, and that's what you see in Russia today. You see fear, people aren't even allowed to call the Ukraine war a war, it's not even a war, they're not even allowed to say those words, and so that's the total control, that's what they're aiming for. What did we see recently in the news, Jeff? Just more evidence of this, I mentioned in my article I had out this week for Foreign Policy magazine. Hope some of your listeners will check it out. I talked about, unfortunately, don't believe the rumors about Putin being weak. Now the SSB is attacking Telegram, one of the only apps in Russia very popular among the youth. Why? Because it's a threat to them. Can't have apps out there that the youth are using to talk with one another and exchange views and have any, for any type of, you know, democratic free debate, or no, gotta clamp down on that, that's a threat to the regime, right there. So, yeah, yeah, it's telling, Jeff, those signs are very telling. It's also telling, by the way, that the FSB never left Lubyanka prison, where 10s of 1000s, if not hundreds of 1000s, Soviet citizens were killed in Lubianca. It's still FSB headquarters in the middle of Moscow. Alexander Botnikov, head of the FSB, it's where he reports to work every day. You know, in democracies we'd be ashamed. In Lithuania, by the way, tribute to my wife's people, Lithuanians. They turned the KGB headquarters there into a living memorial. It's a museum to the atrocities, and I took my sons there. I said, "Don't ever forget what happened to your mom's people, her own great grandfather was executed by, unfortunately, the SS. They suffered at both ends of oppression, the Germans and the Russians. So, don't ever forget it. This is the cost of oppression. This is the cost of repressive regimes. So, good for the Lithuanians. The entire building is a memorial, and as you walk around the building, there's names of those 1000s of people that died in the building. Too bad they don't have that in Russia, Jeff. Too bad they don't have that as a remembrance,

Jeff Rogg  28:23

and I'll add that my grandfather was Lithuanian, so that I understand exactly that.

Sean Wiswesser  28:28

You were like, you know what I'm talking about. Yeah,

Jeff Rogg  28:30

that's right. And that makes me.. I want to bring it then back to the United States, because I do think it's important for listeners to understand what is going on there, the terror that Russians experience, the pride they still have in their culture, so how do you see Russian active measures? I mean, that's what we're all talking about, you know, here in the United States, and use a term that I like, politology. How do you see Russian active measures trying to basically like drag us down? Here is demoralize us, make us feel like the bad guys. How's that working, and what do you think the success is? Possibility,

Sean Wiswesser  29:03

Paul. Thanks for being an astute reader of the book, Politology, what I call SVR Politology. It's my term, because I don't know a better way to say it, but they train their officers in the, in the Russians Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR. They have an entire directorate devoted towards information warfare. It's also telling, as an, as an information warfare tactic, they changed the term for decades of the KGB, and in modern times they called them active measures, activ niya mirpriatti. Now they call them mirpriatti satyasfya, you know, these are measures of support. Excuse me, the the directorate in the SVR is called the Directorate of MS Mira Priattia Sadies. I don't think that's, I don't think that's, you know, not so subtle change. They don't want even the term active measures to be used anymore. They know there's more awareness after the 2016 election, particularly in the US. What are we talking about here, Jeff? Active measures, I believe it's one of the most important messages I'm trying. Get out with the book. Democracies are an existential threat to the Putin regime in Russia today. They're also a threat, by the way, to Xi Jinping in China. Same thing, but I'm a Russia person. I focus on Russia. Active measures, information warfare by the Russians is intended to subvert our democracy, not for or against fundamentally any one individual candidate. My book's apolitical, you know that, Jeff. I don't mention any presidents in my book. That's right. The attack is against our democracy. The attack is to get Americans to fight one another, to fight over ridiculous, stupid myths like Venezuelan voting machines. Were they rigged or not? Former Attorney General Barr said, in his words, "It's bullshit, it's complete bullshit, his words, but we still have Americans now, years and years after that election, still debating, oh geez, can we trust our election systems? Can we trust the states? By all means, we need to be vigilant, but we can trust the states. They carry out free and fair elections. These are dedicated workers who don't deserve to be attacked, by the way, in any form or another. Why do the Russians attack them? Why are they coming at them with active measures? They don't want Americans, and particularly the youth listening out there. I talked to a lot of university groups nowadays, and I stress to them, you know, you're more the target of Russian intelligence and Chinese intelligence than any other group in the United States, because they want to convince young Americans, don't bother going to the polls, or young Brits. The Russians attacked Brexit in 2016 They have a government report on it, a finding, which I cite in my book. They don't want Brits to go to the polls. They don't want Europeans to trust democracy. Look at how the SVR was attacking the elections in Hungary most recently. The services there were reporting on it. The SVR are active measures again, trying to attack their elections. So they want, they have that cynical view that there are no such things as free and fair elections anywhere, so they don't have them in Russia, but nobody really does anyway, right? That's their message, Jeff. That's what they want to try to push out. The best thing we can do as Americans is be aware of their tactics, be aware that they're out there meddling in social media, they're out there trolling, and what they did in the 2016 election, which was documented by the DNI report and the Senate SSCI report that Marco Rubio was a part of. He signed off on that report. Those were bipartisan reports. What did they find? Yeah, they were meddling by the millions and millions of impressions on sites like Facebook, but what they did back then, Jeff, in 2016 largely by human fake personas on fake personas on social media, cognitive warfare now amplifies 10,000 or 100,000 fold. So this is an existential threat to our democracies. Jeff, I'm glad we had a chance to talk about, especially towards the end of the podcast. I appreciate it.

Jeff Rogg  32:36

Yeah, I couldn't ask to end on a better note than that, and that message, so you know. Thank you very much, Sean. I want to say to the listeners, you know, I have an intelligence history background, and both from an intelligence history standpoint, from contemporary intelligence studies, and then through the lens of a career professional, it's an excellent read that brings all those strands together. So, I highly recommend

Sean Wiswesser 32:57

it. Well, thank you, Jeff. Thanks for the opportunity to talk with your listeners and your very esteemed followers and audience, a lot of respect for your group. Thank you for you and your team putting this together again. The book's called Tradecraft Tactics and Dirty Tricks: Russian intelligence and Putin's secret wars, a war being waged against us. I wrote the book for awareness about it. The book's out with Naval Institute Press, and you can find it on all your sites out there, Amazon and others. Proud, it's been a seller on Amazon for about two months now. So, thank you, Jeff. It's been an honor.

Jim Cardoso  33:28

Special thanks to our guest today, former CIA senior operations officer turned author Sean Weiswester. His new book, Tradecraft Tactics and Dirty Tricks: Russian intelligence and Putin's secret war, is currently ranked number three on Amazon's bestseller list in the Russian and Soviet politics category, and ranked in the top 20 in several other categories. Our thanks as well to our own Dr. Jeff Rock for conducting that interview. Next week on the podcast, we're diving into a topic that would have seemed unthinkable as little as a year ago, the national security risk posed by prediction markets, while technically not gambling, the betting community now has the chance to wager on things like say missile strikes in Israel. That exact scenario, in fact, was the central theme of a New York Times article three weeks ago. The authors of that article, Dr. Sean Guillory and Amy Nelson, will be our guests next week. You don't want to miss that episode or any other episode. Be sure to like and subscribe to At the Boundary on your favorite podcast platform. And we thank you for sharing some time with us today. You can find GNSI on YouTube, LinkedIn, and X. Be sure to follow, like, and subscribe. Tell your friends and colleagues as well, and be sure to sign up for our monthly newsletter. You can find all this on our website at usf.edu/gnsi at. Going to wrap up this episode of At the Boundary. Each new episode will feature global and national security issues we found to be insightful, intriguing, maybe controversial, but overall just worth talking about. I'm Jim Cardoso, and we'll see you at the Boundary