Chatter: Intelligence Analysis, Intuition, and Precognition, with Carmen Medina

Carmen Medina defies simple description. She spent more than 30 years at the CIA, rising to the leadership team of the Directorate of Intelligence, despite her iconoclasticism and vociferous evangelism of new technologies. Since retiring more than a decade ago, she has co-written a book about rebelling within bureaucracy--and advocated the exploration of precognition for intelligence purposes.

She joined David Priess for a wide and deep conversation about her analytic and managerial career, the process and pitfalls of analytic coordination, cooperation between US and UK intelligence, the CIA's incorporation of publish-when-ready technology in the late 1990s, the downside of extensive editorial review of analytic products, the importance of including more intuition in intelligence analysis, why precognition should be taken seriously, and more.

Works mentioned in this episode:

The book Rebels At Work by Lois Kelly and Carmen Medina

The book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The article by Carmen Medina, "The Potential of Integrating Intelligence and Intuition," Cipher Brief, June 10, 2022.

The book American Cosmic by D. W. Pasulka

The book Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie

The book How To Be a Renaissance Woman by Jill Burke

The book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed by Eric Cline

The book The Infidel and the Professor by Dennis Rasmussen

The book The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

The book The Chronoliths by Robert Charles Wilson

Chatter is a production of Lawfare and Goat Rodeo. This episode was produced and edited by Cara Shillenn of Goat Rodeo. Podcast theme by David Priess, featuring music created using Groovepad.