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Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
We started the OODAcast as a way of highlighting insights and lessons learned from leaders and decision-makers in the OODA Network including former intelligence community leaders and operators. In 2023 the video version of the OODAcast grew to 2100 subscribers on YouTube. Our 242 videos have generated 260,000 views, half of which were in 2023. Find them all at https://www.youtube.com/
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1 – Jimmy Soni on Why PayPal Was Successful – A conversation with Jimmy Soni, the author of the book “The Founders: The Story of PayPal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley”. The Founders was one my Top 10 Security, Technology, and Business books of 2022, and is one of the few books I read last year that qualifies for each category. Jimmy takes a deep, historical look at the founding story of PayPal with detailed analysis, interviews, and access that you won’t find in any other telling of the PayPal story. PayPal is a fascinating company to look at, not only to examine the PayPal business, but in looking at what emerged out of the PayPal founding team in the future. A list of companies that includes the likes of SpaceX, Tesla, Affirm, LinkedIn, YouTube, Yammer, Palantir, Kiva, Yelp, and Yammer!
2 – Former Head of National Intelligence Council and Deputy ODNI Neil Wiley on Intelligence Analysis – Neil Wiley has lead some of the US Intelligence Community’s most important analytical functions. His career in intelligence began as a Naval Intelligence Officer in an operational intelligence center focused on support to critical operational naval missions. He would later serve joint intelligence missions in Europe, would rise to lead all analytical activities at the Defense Intelligence Agency and in DoD Combatant Commands, and would later serve as the Chairman of the famed National Intelligence Council (NIC). Also served as a senior leader at ODNI, including leading the entire intelligence community as the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence from May 13, 2020 until February 2021. In this OODAcast we learn some of what made Neil tick, diving into his education, his early career intent, the role of serendipity in helping him transition to the intelligence community, and his approach to leadership and management. We also dive into big issues of optimizing intelligence including ways organizations can help guard against cognitive bias.
3 – Spencer Ante on Creative Capital and Disruptive Innovation – Spencer Ante is the author or “Creative Capital: Georges Doriot and the Birth of Venture Capital”, which was on Matt’s Top 10 book list for 2022 and a portrait of Doriot hangs on the wall at the Hack Factory start-up studio in Reston, VA. Doriot is a compelling figure with an incredible story as told in Spencer’s book. He was a Harvard Business School professor, responsible for launching the modern American industrial management movement, served as a General in World War II where he solved critical supply chain and logistics issues while also inventing things like sunscreen, and then formed the first venture capital firm that operated with much success and launched the modern VC market. In addition to discussing Doriot, we delve into lessons learned from his experiences and then a general discussion on innovative and disruptive technologies like AI, issues like privacy, and insights from Spencer’s career in journalism, at Meta Foresight, and as a consultant.
4 – Bob Zukis and the Digital Directors Network: Helping corporate boards mitigate systemic risk – Bob Zukis is a man on a mission to improve the ability of corporate America to succeed in a complex digital world, even when under constant cyber attack. Bob is the CEO and founder of the Digital Directors Network, the global pioneer in helping corporate directors advance their understanding of systemic risk. We consider Bob to be the world’s leading advocate for improving cybersecurity governance. His many articles published in major business journals and impactful books on the topic make this case well. Bob has worked with, studied, and been on corporate boards for years and now teaches corporate governance as an Adjunct Professor of Management at the USC Marshall School of Business. He is co-author of the book The Great Reboot. We examine the book and Bob’s approach to helping corporate directors mitigate cyber risk in this OODAcast.
5 – Sebastian Mallaby on How Venture Capitalists and Hedge Funds Achieve Success – Sebastian Mallaby joined the OODAcast for a discussion about the Power Law in venture capital and the rise of the global hedge fund and private equity industries. Sebastian’s book “The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future” is one of the most insightful books on the venture capital industry I’ve read to date and was included in my Top 10 Security, Technology & Business books of 2022. In this conversation, we discuss the differences between different investment companies like venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds and discuss the financial and geopolitical mechanics and decision-making approaches that allow for success in each variation.
6 – Serene: The Hacker Pianist Saving Cyberspace – Serene is a hacker in the truest sense of the word. She’s applied a hacker mindset to learn coding, piano, and blend art and engineering in fascinating ways. You’ll find her collaborating on-stage with Grimes one night and coding censorship resistant technologies the next day. As a self-taught coder she was the first engineer hired into Google Ideas when she was just a teenager. At Google she pioneered work on WebRTC proxies that she continued as a fellow at the Open Tech Fund and was eventually released as a Tor-enabling tool called Snowflake. Serene took a hiatus from working as a full-time engineer to pursue a career as a concert pianist where she quickly gained recognition for her incredible talent. She became one of the few self-taught concert pianists to perform Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 (which I highly recommend checking out on YouTube). Serene is also known for the audiovisual artistry of her shows which is drawn from her own experiences with synesthesia that results in her seeing music as colors. As the conflict in Ukraine started, Snowflake started to see exponential usage patterns as Russian citizens looked to circumvent state censorship and Serene decided to build a company around the technology to enhance development and build independent deployment models. That company is called Snowstorm. With Snowstorm, Serene is focused on saving cyberspace from balkanization and censorship and ensuring that all global citizens have unfiltered access to the Internet. In this OODAcast, we explore Serene’s career and then dive into ways we can preserve the original intent of the Internet with censorship resistant and privacy enhancing technology stacks that can be easily deployed and scaled.
7 – Joe Sullivan on Navigating Complex Security Challenges – Joe Sullivan has been at the forefront of managing security risk in rapidly growing high tech companies over the past 20 years serving as the Chief Security Officer at Facebook from early start-up through the IPO, CSO of Uber and Cloudflare, and as a security leader at eBay/PayPal. Joe was also involved in a landmark legal case for a breach at Uber which resulted in a criminal conviction that serves as a precedent for executive liability in cybersecurity going forward.
8 – Michael Gibson Wants to Light the Paper Belt on Fire – This OODAcast features a fascinating conversation with Michael Gibson, the author of the book “Paper Belt on Fire” who is also the co-founder of the Thiel Fellowship program and the 1517 Fund, both of which focus on identifying unconventional ideas and individuals that can drive disruptive innovation in technology, arts, and science. In this interview we dive into the establishment of the Thiel Fellowship which attracted a lot of attention and detractors with a grant program that paid $100k to college aged students to skip the degree and work on passion projects. Michael followed this up with the formation of a venture capital fund that had a comparable investment thesis and has successfully invested in entrepreneurs emerging through unexpected channels and without college degrees. Michael’s book, and this conversation, resonated with me as I can’t escape the feeling that he is onto something pointing out the declining value and increasing cost of a college education, but also his thesis that a new period of innovation is required and that the disruption will come from unlikely sources. We take a deep dive into some of the areas requiring disruptive innovation and also a few of the exemplars from both the Thiel Fellowship and the 1517 fund. This conversation is a call for revolution in how we think about entrenched organizations and the potential for their inevitable decline.
9 – Adam Shostack on Cybersecurity and What Every Engineer Should Learn From Star Wars – Adam Shostack is widely known in the cybersecurity world for his pioneering work on disclosing and discussing computer vulnerabilities (the CVE (common vulnerabilities and exposures) list). He also helped formalize and train leading approaches to threat modeling and wrote the foundational book on the subject (Threat Modeling: Designing for Security). In this OODAcast we seek lessons from Adam’s career and experiences (which range from startups to nearly a decade at Microsoft, as well as the Blackhat review board, as well as being an Affiliate Professor at University of Washington). We then dive deep into Adam’s most recent book, Threats: What Every Engineer Should Learn from Star Wars Just what does Star Wars have to do with security engineering? Turns out the movies are full of analogies that can really underscore the importance of good design and operational security. The very beginning of A New Hope shows a space fight where the empire is seeking to recover data from a breach. The carrier of that breached data, R2-D2, makes it to the planet below. But somehow knows not to show a special recording to Luke, only to Obi-Wan. That is some high end identity management and authorization there. From this lens Star Wars is not just a space western, it is a cyber espionage thriller. Adam uses the many analogies from Star Wars to make good engineering concepts more memorable and in doing so is doing us all a service.
10 – Mark McGrath: John Boyd Is Far More Than The OODA Loop – Mark McGrath has applied the teachings of John Boyd to a career that began in the Marine Corps, included leadership positions in financial services firms and consulting with businesses with a need to learn to thrive in volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environments. He co-founded the consultancy AGLX and serves as its Chief Learning Officer. He is the co-host of the popular podcast “No Way Out” which is dedicated to examining and advancing the use of the theories of John Boyd to help both individuals and businesses seeking to improve their capacity for free and independent action. Mark is also a continuous learner. He has examined the works of John Boyd from as many perspectives as possible including visiting the archives of his books and papers at the Marine Corps University library at Quantico. In this OODAcast we ask Mark for his perspectives on Boyd and OODA, resulting in some unique and at times surprising insights.
It should go without saying that tracking threats are critical to inform your actions. This includes reading our OODA Daily Pulse, which will give you insights into the nature of the threat and risks to business operations.
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The greatest determinant of your success will be the quality of your decisions. We examine frameworks for understanding and reducing risk while enabling opportunities. Topics include Black Swans, Gray Rhinos, Foresight, Strategy, Strategies, Business Intelligence, and Intelligent Enterprises. Leadership in the modern age is also a key topic in this domain. Explore Decision Intelligence
We track the rapidly changing world of technology with a focus on what leaders need to know to improve decision-making. The future of tech is being created now and we provide insights that enable optimized action based on the future of tech. We provide deep insights into Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing, Quantum Computing, Security Technology, and Space Technology. Explore Disruptive/Exponential Tech
Security and resiliency topics include geopolitical and cyber risk, cyber conflict, cyber diplomacy, cybersecurity, nation-state conflict, non-nation-state conflict, global health, international crime, supply chain, and terrorism. Explore Security and Resiliency
The OODA community includes a broad group of decision-makers, analysts, entrepreneurs, government leaders, and tech creators. Interact with and learn from your peers via online monthly meetings, OODA Salons, the OODAcast, in-person conferences, and Slack forum. Explore The OODA Community.
About the Author
Daniel Pereira is research director at OODA. He is a foresight strategist, creative technologist, and an information communication technology (ICT) and digital media researcher with 20+ years of experience directing public/private partnerships and strategic innovation initiatives.
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence
Informing your decisions with actionable intelligence