Coffee & Conversation with Natalie Laing

Ms. Laing opened by discussing her 30-year tenure at the NSA, where she has witnessed seismic changes in both emerging technology and global geopolitics.  Ms. Laing highlighted several geopolitical shifts, including 9/11 and the resulting focus on counterterrorism; the Arab Spring a decade later and the resulting regional instability, which further exacerbated the terrorist threat and created multiple Middle East hotspots; and the pivot to Asia a decade later.

However, Ms. Laing commented that the current geopolitical era is now changing much more rapidly, with major developments such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Hamas attack on Israel occurring only a year and a half apart. She also noted the importance of strong alliances for intelligence-sharing, emphasizing that the shifting nature of current geopolitics means that it is important to maintain strong alliances that can come together and respond quickly.

Ms. Laing credited the NSA Strategic Communications team with the launch of “No Such Podcast,” discussing how the podcast provides a platform to highlight the world’s best codemakers and codebreakers. Ms. Laing was a guest on a recent episode discussing NSA’s role in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden, which provided an opportunity to discuss NSA’s role in the SIGINT production cycle and walk the audience through a real-world, well-known event.

Ms. Laing also discussed key priorities for the next few years, including workforce training and retention, ensuring that NSA remains ahead of US adversaries on the quantum computing front, and leveraging data analysis tools to sift through complex data systems and reduce it to the substantive data for human analysts.

In closing, Ms. Laing said that she would “heartily encourage” anyone to apply for the NSA and encouraged potential applicants to think about the kind of impact they want to have on the nation.