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General Paul Nakasone · Five Questions for a General

• 0:03
  Speaker A: You're listening to Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern Morses at West point. I am Dr. Charles Feint, the team lead for this podcast series which features interviews of senior military leaders conducted by specially selected and trained West Point cadet hosts. These exchanges produce timely, relevant, and inspirational insights for professional development of leaders at all levels.
• 0:25
  Speaker B: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Five Questions for a General Podcast. I'm Cadet Zach Olson, your host, and it's my pleasure to be here today with General retired Paul Nakasone. In addition to many other assignments over the course of his career, General Nakasone previously served as the commander of U.S. cyber Command and the director of the NSA. He joins us today for a discussion about vigilance, intelligence, information sharing, and leadership. General, welcome to the show.
• 0:47
  Speaker C: Hey, Zach, thanks so much. It's great to be back at the United States Military Academy. And I'm particularly pleased to be here with you at the Modern War Institute.
• 0:54
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. General, you spent the last few years of your career in charge of both U.S. cyber Command and the National Security Agency. The NSA's webpage features a public statement you issued in November of 2022 that began with the statement, vigilance, today and every day isn't just a watchword. It's a matter of democracy. What kinds of external threats do you feel the young leaders need to be most vigilant about today and in the future?
• 1:16
  Speaker C: Zach, if you were going to walk through the headquarters of U.S. cyber Command and National Security Agency, the first thing you would see is a statement. Defend our nation, Secure the future. Now, when I talk about vigilance, my thought is the threats will change. The threats changed over my career. Think about where we began in the 1980s and where we ended up when I retired in 2024. It's not necessarily that these are the threats today. It's the idea of having a vigilance, having an idea to ensure that we can protect against everything that has coming to us, whether or not it has to be China, Russia, North Korea, violent extremist organizations, Iran, or it could be such things as COVID 19. There was no one in my ROTC class that said, hey, here's how you handle a global pandemic. Yet this is what we were faced with in March of 2020. So again, the idea of vigilance is a mindset. It's an idea that you, as a young leader, think about not only today, but also the future.
• 2:12
  Speaker B: Vigilance is defined as watchfulness in respect of danger. And you said it's a mindset how do you cultivate that kind of mindset to be prepared?
• 2:20
  Speaker C: You know, Zach, you're as spent the past day at West Point. It's just insightful to understand what cadets are talking about and thinking about. Let me give you an example. When I was an undergrad, I spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about what I needed to major in. Yet over the past three decades, I don't think there was a single person said, hey, Paul, what did you major in in your undergrad studies? What they were looking for is this idea of, can you think critically? Can you define a problem? Can you look at the facts and the assumptions, bring together some ideas, test those ideas, and choose an alternative to answer the problem that you're trying to get at? That's critical thinking, and that's the essence of vigilance. It's the idea that you can look at a wide variety of data, you can ensure that you test that data and then come up with feasible, alternative, and sustainable solutions.
• 3:06
  Speaker B: Sir, keeping with the theme of vigilance, how do you balance the need for vigilance and the concept of need to know against the responsibility to share in a coalition or interagency environment?
• 3:16
  Speaker C: This is a great story, Zach. One of the things that I learned as the director of the National Security Agency is there always is a very important balance between civil liberties and privacy and national security. Here is the director of the National Security Agency that's provided among the most intrusive surveillance powers our nation has. The American people have to have trust in that leader, and they have to have trust in that agency. So how do you build that? You build it through transparency. You build it through oversight. You build it through engaging the public. That's one of the things that I think our agency and U.S. cyber Command did very, very well over the past six years. We engaged with the public, we talked about what we were doing, and we ensured that what we were doing mattered. Let's return to the fall of 2021. In the lead up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the National Security Agency, as part of the greater US Intelligence community, is releasing some of our most sensitive intelligence to the world. Now think about this, Zach. The director of the NSA is having this conversation with his lead analysts, his lead leaders at nsa, and saying, hey, we want to go ahead and share this intelligence with the world. Okay? So there was a little bit of culture change, but at the end of the day, what we were able to do there was to build a coalition, disrupt an adversary, and enable a partner. That's what you're getting at. That's the delicate balance. That's the idea of a nation like the United States of America needing to be able to have leaders that can balance that idea of civil liberties and privacy ingrained in our fourth amendment along with national security.
• 4:42
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. At a major cybersecurity conference In September of 2023, you spoke about the three Ps, which I'll paraphrase, as people's republic of China, public, private partners, and people. Could you explain the 3Ps to our audience in more detail?
• 4:56
  Speaker C: When I took over In May of 2018, we were very, very focused as a nation on counterterrorism, violent extremist organizations. At the same time, our existential challenge to our democracy is not necessarily from violent extremist organizations, but from the people's republic of China, the nation that has the diplomatic, information, milit, military, and economic power to challenge our own. And so when I talked about this idea of three Ps, I began with, hey, we need to make sure that we're focused on our pacing challenge as a nation. At u. S. Cyber command at the national security agency. This is where we have to focus the majority of our efforts. The next thing I said is it's all about partnerships. It's about, this is what our competitive advantage is as a nation. Everyone wants to partner with the United States. Who does China and Russia partner with? Hmm. Countries that are not like NATO or Australia or Japan or Korea or Singapore. Major democratic nations in the world want to partner with us. But it's not just the international partners. It's also us being able to do interagency partnerships. Perhaps my greatest partner in the interagency, director Chris Wray of the FBI. How does the nsa, cyber command and FBI come together? Make one plus one equals ten. That's what partnerships give you. And then, of course, the private sector. When you think about what we do as a nation, the incredible ability that we have to look in and be able to generate ideas and insights and bring that to an economic wherewithal. That's a strength of our nation. And so that second element of partnerships always has to have this tie to the commercial sector. And the last piece is people. Now, if you think about our most valuable resource at the command and the agency, some people would say, oh, it's your technology. Oh, it's your tradecraft. No way. It's our talent. It is all about people. One of the things I learned over three decades is how do you lead, motivate, and be able to get at the heart of what's going to give you success as your people. And so what my communication was to the agency and command is, hey, this last piece is the most important piece. How do you recruit? How do you train? How do you retain the most valuable resource, which is or are your people?
• 7:01
  Speaker B: You talked about people and how important that is. And that's such an axiom here in the army as well as, you know, how did your army career and leadership throughout your army career prepare you for leadership of large organizations like the nsa?
• 7:14
  Speaker C: You know, Zach, when I started at, in my ROTC program, it was interesting. I led my fellow classmates. I spent one three week period as a cadet troop leader training leader to be able to lead the small platoon. And that was my extent of being able to really kind of have an experience with leading other individuals. What I found out through my platoon time, my company time, my battalion, my brigade, you know, my corps and higher is the fact that it's really all about people. What is it that you can do to engage your people? How do you provide purpose, drive motivation to your people to achieve the almost unachievable things that you're trying to drive them towards? And how do you build that organization? That's the essence of the definition of leadership in our Army. This is what West Point does so well. It builds leaders of character. You know, and if you take a look at, you know, our, our success as an army, it comes back to this art of leadership. And so my experience is, is the fact that I have been a student of leadership from the day I began, when I was commissioned, to the day that I retired. And I never felt like I mastered it. But the fact that it was really the art of being able to understand people, being able to motivate people, and then being able to drive outcomes.
• 8:24
  Speaker B: I've heard there's two sides to that coin. You have the art of leadership and the science of leadership. Did you see yourself transition a little bit more away from the art of leadership into more of a science when you get into these very large organization leadership roles? Or did you find some type of balance?
• 8:41
  Speaker C: Yeah, it's a great question, Zach. I mean, think about when I was learning leadership. It seemed like, well, just what's the algorithm, right? Hey, what's the algorithm to be a successful leader? If I be. No. Do you know if I can provide purpose, drive, motivation? It seems like I can master this. Hey, what are the top five books? Let me read these books and I'll be really good at it. And then you deal with people, you deal with soldiers and their families. And you see that they have incredible, you know, desires and wants and challenges and opportunities. That's the human side of it. And you quickly learn that the human side of it eclipses the science side of it. And we'll Talk today at PL300 about be, know and do. And we're going to talk about characteristics and attributes and they're important things in that. But at the end of the day, it's how do you engage people? You know, how do you understand these people, how do you motivate these people? And then you know, how do you drive towards outcomes?
• 9:27
  Speaker B: Leading with that last point, the primary purpose of your visit to West Point today is for a lecture and discussion with the cadets in PL 300, which is west Point's core course on military leadership. What thoughts are you going to share with those cadets today, sir?
• 9:39
  Speaker C: Okay, spoiler alert, right? So spoiler alert. Right? Now let me tell you what I'm going to share with them. First of all, that leadership is a lifelong study. This is my first part of a three part premise. The second is that you have to have the fundamentals to understand what you're doing as a leader. So I talked about characteristics and attributes. I talked about purpose, drive, motivation, right? To drive outcomes and to build organizations. But the last piece is I'm going to talk about. You also have to be able to navigate being within a profession and a professional. You have to be able to successfully engage your soldiers. And finally, you have to build partners and partnerships. That's the art of it. It's, it sounds easy, right? But what I'm going to try to share with the class today is a series of stories and say, hey, this, this was my experience as a lieutenant. It's a long time ago as I was a lieutenant. But I will tell you, while the doctrines change, while the threats change, while the equipment's changed, while the demographics have, the one thing that hasn't changed is leadership. And the leadership is not going to change for some cadet in that audience today who's going to be back in 37 years to talk to the class of 2062 at PL300 and talk about leadership. And so that's what I'm going to hit today.
• 10:43
  Speaker B: Critical thinking from a cadet perspective is very, very used here. And a lot of instructors and a lot of course directors love to push this idea of critical thinking. And I think it's invaluable. But a lot of cadets struggle to find a very specific way to develop critical thinking, whether it's just sitting in class or Whether it's not using ChatGPT to write your paper or what have you, how would you see cadets being able to develop critical thinking while they're here at West Point?
• 11:10
  Speaker C: Let me give you a really good example. I attended a lot of meetings in my day, and a lot of times people would say, hey, Paul, I want you to go attend this meeting. What I learned pretty quickly is during this meeting, can I summarize exactly what took place during this meeting? Can I come back and tell my boss, hey, here are the specified tasks. These are the things we need to do. But importantly, here are the implied tasks. What are the things that we need to be thinking about that are opportunities and challenges? How is this going to impact our organization? And then finally, can I give them a bottom line? Right. And so for any class, any lecture, can you do that? That's a really good skill to develop your own critical thinking abilities. Because I will tell you, the longer you stay in any organization, what they are going to prize most is your ability to think through very, very difficult challenges. And summarize those.
• 11:53
  Speaker B: Sir, how are you spending your time now that you're retired?
• 11:55
  Speaker C: Well, I would tell you, Zach, that one of the things that I've found is that my schedule has a lot of white space, and I like that. And from the fact that I went from six years of having no white space to doing things that I want to do is great. Spending time with my wife, seeing my children, being able to read books, things that I've wanted to do for quite some time that I haven't been able to do. It's enjoyable.
• 12:15
  Speaker B: So what kinds of things keep you up at night?
• 12:17
  Speaker C: Absolutely nothing. I would tell you that I am sleeping. Fantastic. A fantastic sleep pattern. I've learned how to sleep again. I would tell you, though, that perhaps the corollary to the question is what kept you up at night? Here's what kept me up at night. And there were a lot of things when I was the director of NSA and commander, U.S. cyber Command, ahead of my mind. But the one thing that always kept me up was losing talent. Our competitive advantage as a command, as an agency, is our people. We have incredible abilities to attract the best and the brightest to come work for us. But even when you attract the best and the brightest and you train the best and the brightest, the challenge is to being able to retain the best and the brightest, because everyone wants the best and the brightest. And so I would think a lot about that. How do I create an atmosphere? How is there an ability for me to be Able to outreach to ensure that they understand what they're doing matters to the nation. And how do I ensure that the culture that they're into really is a culture that they want to continue to thrive in.
• 13:11
  Speaker B: So this evening, you're going to meet with West Point cyber military intelligence officers and cadets. What advice do you have for people seeking to join one of these branches?
• 13:19
  Speaker C: So, again, spoiler alert. Today I'm going to talk about two things that I think are really important. Humility and empathy. Okay, humility. The best leaders I've ever served with in the army, folks like Keith Alexander, folks like, you know, Stan McChrystal, folks like Scott Miller, Incredible, humble people that have taken the most difficult challenges our nation have presented to them and have been successful at it. Guess what? They didn't talk about themselves. They talked about their units. They talked about the fact that they were able to lead people that could, you know, do amazing things. That's the humility piece of it. I think that's a really key construct. I like my leaders that are humble. The other piece is empathy. One of the things that I would tell you that I perhaps wasn't as adroit at when I became a lieutenant was being empathetic. Empathetic is being able to understand other people, understand their challenges, understand what they're going through. What's the opposite of empathy? It's apathy. I've seen a lot of apathy in the Army. I like empathy a lot better. And so it's not that you're taking on their problems, but it's the understanding that this is the treasure of our nation, our sons and daughters. You could to be able to lead them. And so I think it's just a great opportunity. So I'm going to probably emphasize those things today.
• 14:25
  Speaker B: Thank you, sir. For our last question, I'd like to ask you, knowing what you know now, what advice would you give to your younger self if you were starting your career over today?
• 14:33
  Speaker C: Wow. If I was going to start my career over today, I think the first part of a piece of advice that I would say is I think about a lot of things in what I've done over my career. And I think the most important thing is that people ask me to be a critical thinker. Hey, Paul, what do you think about this? Or what's your impression of that? Being able to master this idea of critical thinking is important in terms of what's going on. The second thing is that I would tell myself, as you think about what you're going to do in the Army. You always want to remember you're part of a profession, you've sworn an oath, you're part of a body that has been able to accomplish a series of standards. You are self studying. But what you are trying to do is be a professional, technically and tactically proficient, understanding officership and giving back to your service. I think the last thing that I would hit, and I've emphasized this a bit in my discussion points before, is it really is all about people. If you can lead people, you'll be a tremendous leader, you'll have great success in the army and most importantly, you will enjoy it. That's the one thing that I would tell you that as I look back on my three decades of service in the army, it's the people I remember most. I don't necessarily remember the missions, I don't necessarily remember the places, but I definitely remember the people and they've left an indelible mark on my experience in terms of being able to lead them.
• 15:48
  Speaker B: Sir, thank you for sharing your time with us today and for the great discussion on partnership and leadership. On behalf of Colonel Pat Sullivan, the director of MWI, and Dr. Charlie Feint, the director of this podcast series, I'd like to present you with this rare and coveted MWI engraved Ammo can as a token of our appreciation.
• 16:04
  Speaker C: You know, Zach, the self seen in for only one highly coveted modern institute at West Point, Ammo can is I will treasure awesome.
• 16:15
  Speaker A: This has been an episode of Five Questions for a General, a production of the Modern War Institute of West Point. If you like what you heard today, please download, like, subscribe and share this podcast to help us reach an even larger audience. All statements in this podcast represent the personal views of the speakers and do not represent an official position of the United States Military Academy or the United States Government.