Young Americans and the Intelligence Community

A few days ago I travelled down to Orlando – just escaping the last days of the DC winter. I was invited to participate in a conference hosted by the Intelligence Community’s Center of Academic Excellence (IC CAE) at the University of Central Florida.  The title of my speech was “The Internet, 2015-2025: Business and Policy Challenges for the Private Sector.” But I actually learned as much as I taught, maybe more.

First, several surprises I learned while preparing for my presentation. UCF is now the nation’s second-largest university, with over 60,000 students (second only to Arizona State University). The size of the undergraduate/graduate student population obviously translates into a robustly diverse set of student activities. Among those we met with were several leaders and members in the Collegiate Cyber Defense Club (see their site at HackUCF.org), which has hundreds of members, weekly meetings, and is fresh off winning the national 2014 Collegiate Cybersecurity Championship Cup, beating out more than 200 schools based on performance in competitions throughout the year.

IC CAE conference, photo by Mike Macedonia

Another surprise was the full extent of the umbrella activity within which the conference was organized.  The UCF IC-CAE is one of several such centers (overall info page here) established over the past decade, since a 2005 congressionally-mandated mission “to increase intelligence community job applicants who are multi-disciplinary, as well as culturally and ethnically diverse [via] grants to competitively accredited U.S. four-year colleges and universities to support the design and development of intelligence-related curricula.” There are some two dozen colleges now participating, including Duke, Penn State, and Virginia Tech.

One more significant thing I learned: young Americans today are not hostile to the nation’s intelligence mission and those who perform it. In fact, I published a short piece today at SIGNAL Magazine on some startling recent poll results, which I reviewed while preparing for the UCF visit. From my piece:

NSA’s negative coverage [over the past two years] was driven by a long series of front-page stories covering Edward Snowden’s leaked documents, including their impact on technology giants such as Facebook, Apple, Google and others. Many pundits have opined that young American millennials are horrified by the revelations and angry at the NSA for “domestic spying.”

Yet the 2015 national survey by the respected Pew Research Center asked specifically about the NSA, and it reveals that, “Young people are more likely than older Americans to view the intelligence agency positively. About six in 10 (61 percent) of those under 30 view the NSA favorably, compared with 40 percent of those 65 and older.”

 – excerpt from “NSA’s Biggest Fans are Young Americans“

I didn’t know much about the IC-CAE program before my campus visit, but it strikes me overall as a valuable channel for the Intelligence Community to remain in close sync with the nation’s values and societal changes.  And, as I wrote in SIGNAL, I learned that “students at the nation’s second-largest university reflect the Pew poll findings, and on balance hold a positive view of the intelligence community and its efforts in the national interest. They admire our nation’s intelligence professionals, and they’re supportive of a robust foreign-intelligence collection program.”

I’ve posted the slides that accompanied my talk below, though of course much of the discussion isn’t reflected in the slides themselves. Smart audience, insightful questions.

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IC-CAE – Shepherd: The Internet 2015-2025 from Lewis Shepherd

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I must mention that the other presenters at the conference were great as well. In sum it was an enjoyable and enlightening experience, and it was reassuring to observe that America’s next great generation will be eager and expert recipients of the reins of national security.

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