Two Doors That Lead Into One Room: Michael Hayden at Opening General Session

You don’t know what America’s top intelligence officer will be willing to share with you when you invite him to speak at NECA’s Opening General Session, but General Michael Hayden was extremely open and direct with his assessments of the U.S.’s changing place in the world today.

Hayden is a retired Air Force four-star general and former director of the National Security Agency and director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He has been the highest ranking military intelligence officer in the armed forces. He is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group and visiting professor at the George Mason University School of Public Policy.

He summed up his experience as the nation’s leading intelligence officer as a process of a fact-based, inductive, pessimistic analyst working with a vision-based, deductive, optimistic policy maker. “Basically, everything I was going to say was going to make that person’s day worse,” Hayden remarked.

Hayden is pragmatic about the world we live in. He discussed the threat Iran poses and international disappointment in how many “Arab Spring” democratic struggles have floundered since their start. “Those autocratic dictators were on the wrong side of history,” Hayden said. “They were going to fall. And we desperately wish the time since had been used to build up the necessary institutions of democracy.”

However, China’s rising dominance doesn’t rattle Hayden. “China is not a threat – they just are. China is a rising power, and America is a status quo power. We simply need to be smart in how we deal with each other.”

Whatever pessimism may be part of Hayden’s intelligence analyst nature, he offered optimism in America’s abilities to respond quickly and innovate our way through challenges. “Ours is a diverse country, which is an advantage when we’re dealing with a diverse world. There is great strength there.”