People have a right to privacy, but they also have a right to live. Fundamentally, we need cybersecurity and need to secure communications as well.
Michael HaydenRead
Global security can be formed or threatened by heads of state whose wisdom, folly and obsessions shape global events. But often it is the security practitioners, those rarely in the headlines but whose craft and energy quietly break new ground, who keep us safe or put us in peril.
Interpretation
Heads of state can influence global security, but the true impact often comes from unnoticed security practitioners.
This quote emphasizes the crucial role of security practitioners in maintaining global safety, suggesting that while political leaders are often in the spotlight, it is the dedicated professionals behind the scenes who truly affect our security. Their expertise and commitment can either protect us or expose us to danger, highlighting the importance of recognizing their contributions to global events.
In practice
In a speech on the importance of security professionals during a conference.
People have a right to privacy, but they also have a right to live. Fundamentally, we need cybersecurity and need to secure communications as well.
Al Qaida changes; Al Qaida adapts. We have to adapt as well. We rely on resources to do that. Reducing resources beyond a certain point will make us less able to adapt as our enemy adapts.
Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it's the job of intelligence to adjust.
The question is how much of your privacy and your convenience and your commerce do you want your nation's security apparatus to squeeze in order to keep you safe? And it is a choice that we have to make.
American political elites feel very empowered to criticize the American intelligence community for not doing enough when they feel in danger, and as soon as we've made them feel safe again, they feel equally empowered to complain that we're doing too much.
The prince who relies upon their words, without having otherwise provided for his security, is ruined; for friendships that are won by awards, and not by greatness and nobility of soul, although deserved, yet are not real, and cannot be depended upon in time of adversity.
The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.
Management by results is confusing special causes with common causes.
I never did ask more, nor ever was willing to accept less, than for all the States, and the people thereof, to take and hold their places, and their rights, in the Union, under the Constitution of the United States. For this alone have I felt authorized to struggle; and I seek neither more nor less now.
My grandmother was kind, but she knew what she wanted and she wasn't afraid to give a command. When, eventually, I ran my own kitchen, I realized I had a leadership model reaching back into my earliest memories.
I would rather hire a man with enthusiasm, than a man who knows everything.
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