The Grey Dynamics Podcast welcomes you back. Today, we have an amazing guest: David Priess, a former intelligence officer, intelligence manager and daily briefer of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Bill Clinton and George Bush administrations. Additionally, David Priess worked at the State Department as a desk officer in the Near East Bureau.

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• How to Get Rid of a President: History's Guide to Removing Unpopular, Unable, or Unfit Chief Executives 
• The President's Book of Secrets: The Untold Story of Intelligence Briefings to America's Presidents

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Welcome back to the Grey Dynamics podcast. Today we are honoured to have John Fowler, founder of the global affairs start-­up International Intrigue Media and former Australian Foreign Service diplomat. During his diplomatic career, he served and lived in Beijing and Shanghai after a lengthy training in Mandarin. John Fowler also holds a Master of Business Administration from the London Business School.

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• Chinese Maritime Militia: Little Blue Men Fishing for Trouble
• China’s Rising Military Capabilities
• The Inner Workings of Wagner with John Lechner
• Chinese Espionage Against the West: No Sign of Letting Up
• Beijing’s Security Balancing Act: The China-Myanmar Economic Corridor
• AIC: The Australian Intelligence Community
• Grey Dynamics Podcast Episode 35: Australian Intelligence

We are the first fully online intelligence school helping professionals to achieve their long term goals. Our school with tons of new material is currently under construction and will be out there very soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up and be the first to know when we launch, plus get exclusive tips and offers.

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Grey Dynamics welcomes Thomas Pecora, a former CIA/GRS Senior Security Manager with over twenty-four years of experience working in protective operations, crisis management, physical security, and counterterrorism missions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq, Sudan and the Philippines.

Tom was awarded both the Intelligence Star “for voluntary acts of courage performed under hazardous conditions ”and the Career Intelligence Medal for “exceptional achievements that substantially contributed to the mission of the agency”. He is also an adjunct professor at Wright State University and the author of the book, “Guardian: Life in the Crosshairs of the CIA’s War on Terror”.

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• Guardian: Life in the Crosshairs of the CIA's War on Terror

• The Global Response Staff (GRS): CIA’s Covert Paramilitary Unit
• CIA Special Activities Center: The Third Option
• Former Paramilitary Operations Officer Ric Prado on his life in the Shadows

We are the first fully online intelligence school helping professionals to achieve their long term goals. Our school with tons of new material is currently under construction and will be out there very soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up and be the first to know when we launch, plus get exclusive tips and offers.

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Grey Dynamics welcomes John Lechner to the podcast. He is a journalist and researcher, focusing on security issues with a heavy approach to on-the-ground coverage. John is also an expert on Russia’s growing influence in Africa. He speaks fluent Russian; advanced French, Turkish, and Georgian; and conversational Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), Chechen, German, and Sango.

You can find his articles published in Foreign Policy, War on the Rocks, Kyiv Post, The Diplomat, Africa is a Country, African Arguments, The National Interest, and Defense One, among others. Additionally, his book on the inner workings of the Wagner Group is for sale on Amazon

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• Death Is Our Business: Russian Mercenaries and the New Era of Private Warfare

• Wagner PMC Activity in the Central African Republic: A Geospatial Analysis
• PMC Wagner in Africa: Forecast

We are the first fully online intelligence school helping professionals to achieve their long term goals. Our school with tons of new material is currently under construction and will be out there very soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up and be the first to know when we launch, plus get exclusive tips and offers.

With security clearance, you can take a crucial role in our intelligence community. As a cleared member, you get access to Secret & Top Secret grade publications. If you are a Top Secret holder, you also get access to our community area, where you can interact with other members and with our analysts! Subscribe today!

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Welcome back to the Grey Dynamics podcast! This week we are speaking again to Bryan Stern, founder and head of Grey Bull Rescue Foundation. Bryan has 25 years of military experience, including combat tours with the US Army and Navy. His specialisms include unconventional warfare, hostage rescue, and counterterrorism. During the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, Bryan organised flights to evacuate 117 US citizens after the US military had left. Since then, Grey Bull Rescue has conducted thousands of missions and rescued over 7,100 people from crises around the world. We spoke about breaking a US citizen out of a Russian FSB prison, operating where other won’t, and much more.

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• Warzone Extraction, China vs Taiwan and Project Dynamo with Bryan Stern
• What do Humanitarian NGOs and the Private Sector want from Intelligence? With E.

We are the first fully online intelligence school helping professionals to achieve their long term goals. Our school with tons of new material is currently under construction and will be out there very soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up and be the first to know when we launch, plus get exclusive tips and offers.

With security clearance, you can take a crucial role in our intelligence community. As a cleared member, you get access to Secret & Top Secret grade publications. If you are a Top Secret holder, you also get access to our community area, where you can interact with other members and with our analysts! Subscribe today!

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Ric Prado teamed up with Grey Dynamics to give away signed copies of his book. The only thing you have to do to win is to comment “blackops” under the episode of this post. You will receive a DM with instructions!

Welcome back to the Grey Dynamics podcast! The week we are talking to Ric Prado, a former CIA paramilitary operations officer and clandestine Special Activities Division (SAD) operator. Ric spent 24 years in the CIA, operating in the Middle East, Latin America, and East Asia. During the war on terror, Ric served as Chief of Operations at the CIA Counterterrorist Center (CTC), as well as setting up the Bin Laden Task Force. Previously, he served as an elite US Air Force Pararescue man. His New York Times Bestseller book, “Black Ops: The Life of a CIA Shadow Warrior”, tells his life story and extraordinary experiences along the way. We spoke about leaving Cuba as a refugee, experiences on operations, being in the CIA as 9/11 unfolded and much more.

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• 0:00 Ric Prado’s background
• 2:50 Leaving Cuba alone at the age of ten after the revolution
• 6:26 Having a mischievous streak and not fitting in
• 7:54 Ric’s first day at CIA headquarters
• 10:14 What was the onboarding process and first mission like?
• 13:32 What makes Cuban-Americans so patriotic?
• 17:53 Ric’s experience working with the Sandinista’s in Nicaragua
• 21:43 Studying to become a CIA officer and going to “the farm”
• 24:48 Going to work in Costa Rica
• 27:51 Experiencing 9/11 from inside the CIA
• 35:13 Experiencing the culture change in the CIA during the war on terror
• 40:10 Discussing Billy Waugh
• 45:50 Why do intelligence professionals in fiction get such a negative reputation?
• 48:17 Advice for young people
• 53:19 What Rick does now he has retired from the CIA
• 56:35 Cultural recommendations
• 1:00:34 Book Giveaway

We are the first fully online intelligence school helping professionals to achieve their long term goals. Our school with tons of new material is currently under construction and will be out there very soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up and be the first to know when we launch, plus get exclusive tips and offers.

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Welcome back to the Grey Dynamics podcast! This episode looks at how to write a Killer Intelligence Report. It builds on many of the skills students learn in our intelligence fundamentals course. This is from our live workshop from the 6th of November. Presented by Marcel Plitcha, lead instructor of the Grey Dynamics Intelligence School. He is currently completing his PhD at St Andrews and is a former DOD Analyst and FBI contractor. We cover the key elements you need to understand how to write an effective intelligence report!

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• 1:31 Introduction
• 2:49 Who are we?
• 5:03 What’s the point of an intelligence report?
• 7:12 Is there a right way to do an intel report?
• 8:15 Front matter of a report
• 15:11 Introduction to report
• 20:03 The body of your report
• 20:44 Assessments
• 26:59 Evidence
• 33:40 Visual Elements
• 44:24 Structured Analytic Techniques (SATs)
• 53:07 Concluding a report
• 59:19 How strict are these rules?

We are the first fully online intelligence school helping professionals to achieve their long term goals. Our school with tons of new material is currently under construction and will be out there very soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up and be the first to know when we launch, plus get exclusive tips and offers.

With security clearance, you can take a crucial role in our intelligence community. As a cleared member, you get access to Secret & Top Secret grade publications. If you are a Top Secret holder, you also get access to our community area, where you can interact with other members and with our analysts! Subscribe today!

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Welcome back to the Grey Dynamics podcast! This week we are talking to Christoph Stegemann, former head of the Bundeswehr's HUMINT school. Christoph has worked across the German intelligence community in both the military and civilian agencies. In 2019, he moved on to work in Germany’s private intelligence sector. Since then he has gone onto to work corporate intelligence teams and worked to counter the use of performance enhancing drugs in professional sports. We spoke about working alongside different nations, not overly relying on technology, how the German private intelligence sector looks and much more.

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• 0:00 Christoph’s background in the Bundeswehr and how he got into HUMINT
• 5:57 Differences in culture and approach compared to allied nations
• 8:55 Becoming head of HUMINT training in the Bundeswehr and understanding the tradecraft
• 10:54 Being trained to as both an agent handler and as an interrogator
• 12:14 How has German military intelligence changed over the war on terror and not overly relying on technology
• 18:16 What were the differences Christoph felt after transitioning between military intelligence and civilian agencies
• 21:02 How do you build a network in the private sector after working in public sector intelligence?
• 27:21 Christoph’s anti-doping work in the professional sports world
• 32:50 How does the German private intelligence sector look?
• 36:20 How was the war in Ukraine impacted the German private intelligence sector
• 38:53 Being able to communicate with stakeholders effectively in German corporate intelligence
• 41:42 What advice Christoph has for young people looking to work in the private intelligence sector
• 44:55 Christopher’s advice for those looking to work in government 
• 46:04 Tradecraft and Cultural recommendations 
• 54:03 Final Thoughts

We are the first fully online intelligence school helping professionals to achieve their long term goals. Our school with tons of new material is currently under construction and will be out there very soon. Meanwhile, you can sign up and be the first to know when we launch, plus get exclusive tips and offers.

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Welcome back to the Grey Dynamics podcast. This week we are talking to Lewis Sage-Passant about the obscure and understudied world of private sector intelligence. Lewis is the Global Head of Intelligence at a major pharmaceutical company and an Adjunct Professor at Science Po. Previously, Lewis served in the British Armed Forces and worked in private intelligence roles in the energy, banking and software sectors. His new book, “Beyond States and Spies: The Security Intelligence Services of the Private Sector” provides an overview of corporate intelligence structures and functions. We discussed how intelligence interacts with different industries, industrial espionage, controversial firms and much more.

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0:45 Lewis’ background

4:28 The differences between working in government and private intelligence

8:37 Lewis’ previous experience with a travel risk start-up

13:32 Why Lewis wrote his new book, Beyond States and Spies: The Security Intelligence Services of the Private Sector

18:06 What is the difference between in-house corporate intelligence teams and private intelligence vendors/service providers, and how do they interact?

21:23 The variety of private intelligence service providers

24:48 The role the oil and gas industry has played in developing in-house intelligence capabilities

26:40 Pharmaceutical companies have developed intelligence capabilities, how do they use them?

31:20 How does private sector intelligence interact with the professional sports industry?

34:15 What role does government play in the private sector in cases of state-sponsored industrial espionage

40:17 Is the line between state and private intelligence capabilities blurring, and will it lead to regulation?

44:25 How much can governments influence the activities of the private sector?

45:48 Cooperation on dual-use technologies and supply chain risk

48:29 Controversial private intelligence firms and tactics

52:05 Advice for people trying to get into private intelligence

56:28 Cultural recommendations

1:00:44 What did Lewis not cover in the book?

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Welcome back to the Grey Dynamics podcast! This week, Marcel Plichta, the lead instructor of the intelligence school, joins us to discuss writing a killer intelligence report, the future of the course, and the feedback we have received.

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• 0:00 - How to write a killer intelligence report workshop
• 4:02 - Discussing the Grey Dynamics Intelligence School (GDIS) and feedback
• 14:54 - Future GDIS courses on HUMINT and Crypto Intelligence

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