RichardAClarke

Sometimes the only explanation for Trump's actions seems to be that he is intentionally trying to harm this country. Picking fights with our EU and NATO Allies is something that only Moscow would want us to do. Abandoning what we stand for, what differentiates us from Russia, values like human rights and democracy, only diminishes our power and thereby benefits Russia. I know it sounds overly paranoid and conspiratorial, but there is a pattern of Trump actions that are patently not in our national interest. If he walks away from the Paris accord on Climate Change, that will be another example. Few nations will benefit from climate change and sea level rise. Russia, however, just might be better off in a world where its competition is flooded and Russia's frozen wastelands are suddenly made accessible and useful.

Of all the future risks we examined in our research for the book, the one I can not stop thinking about is Sea Level Rise. If the minority view is correct, we could see 6-9 meters rise by 2100. To deal with that kind of relocation, resettlement, reconstruction...we would have to stop spending on almost everything else (including defense and social services.) No one is really planning for that kind of event, but it could happen in the lifetime of people alive today.

I personally think that the polygraph is ridiculous and counter-productive. It is not admissible in court. In most states it is illegal to use it as a hiring procedure. Yet CIA thinks it is some sort of magic box. We have ample evidence that real spies can evade it. And many examples of innocent people "failing" the procedure. US intelligence agencies use this specious test as a surrogate for real investigation and continuous monitoring of personnel.

I am very much against NSA stockpiling Zero Day attack tools involving widely used software. If they find a vulnerability, they should tell the software developer so that the problem can be patched. If NSA can find the vulnerability, so can Russia and China. It is more important that we have secure networks on our critical infrastructure than that we are able to attack others' systems. This was the recommendation that President Obama accepted from the Review Group on Intelligence and Technology. Clearly, NSA did not comply with that policy.

I have some sympathy for the British police and security services. They have 20,000 people on their Watch List. When someone is reported too them, they try to check them out, but if there is no evidence that they are planning an attack, the security services can not monitor them closely. Someone can go from being radicalized to being willing to die in a terrorist attack with a matter of days. How can security services know when this state of mind has changed? Inevitably, some attackers will slip through the cracks of any system designed to detect them.