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North Korea Talks: Falling for the Same Tricks, or
Uncharted Waters?
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Photo:
iStock.com/alexkuehni
After North Korea
threatened to withdraw from the upcoming face-to-face summit
between President Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, some media outlets
reported that Trump was becoming concerned about the political risks if
the talks were to fall through—and considering not going ahead with them.
Many experts
believe North Korea’s recent warning it would pull out of
the talks is a shift in rhetoric fully consistent with past attempts at
serious dialogue with the Hermit Kingdom—and demonstrate it is unwilling
to negotiate in good faith. But is there reason to believe this time will
be different?
The Cipher Brief asked its experts to weigh in:
- Amb.
Joseph DeTrani, former U.S. Special Envoy for Six Party Talks with
North Korea: "In
past negotiations with North Korea, agreements made with their
negotiators were always contingent on obtaining their leader’s
approval...Currently, it’s Kim Jong Un who’s doing the direct
negotiations, first with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and in
June, with President Donald Trump. Thus this is an
unprecedented set of negotiations for the U.S. It’s also the type of
negotiation North Korea had requested for decades – a meeting of
their leader with the U.S. President, claiming that all issues could
then be resolved expeditiously. So, we’re in uncharted
waters for the upcoming summit between President Donald Trump and
Kim Jong Un."
- Amb.
Richard Boucher, former Assistant Secretary of State for South and
Central Asia: "Normally
I’d say withdrawal from the Iran deal would give others concerns
about signing agreements with us, but in this case I’m not so sure.
If Iran and Europe stick to the deal and figure out how to do OK
without us, it may lead Kim Jong Un to conclude if he gets a peace
treaty and the support of China there will be little the U.S. could
do by tearing up a deal with him.
"Should
Trump go to the summit? Yes, but with a clear idea of what he
needs—and what he’ll give."
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Robert Cardillo: Racing to Secure Our Future
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Robert Cardillo,
director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), says the Great
Powers — the U.S., Russia and China — are locked in
an artificial intelligence arms race. But fortunately, he says the NGA
"was founded on the belief that innovation is the key to our
success."
Today in The
Cipher Brief, Cardillo explains how he sees this challenge...and
how NGA is prepared to meet it, with the help of the academic and private
sector communities:
- "As
I see it, the GEOINT community finds itself at the same juncture the
SIGINT community was at the advent of the computer age – a move from data scarcity
to data abundance, and from intermittent sources to a torrent of
source material collected, processed and stored by these new
machines."
- "As
we continue this journey, we know we need to rely
more on industry and academia than ever before – to mature our
current efforts into long-lasting and accessible capabilities, but
also explore and develop new capabilities together. We are making
good progress. In the last year, NGA launched dozens of automation,
augmentation and artificial Intelligence projects."
- "This
is all about empowering our analysts. It’s about developing
technology to best meet the needs of the geospatial intelligence
officers of the 21st century. We must give them the
tools to compete – and win – in today’s escalating AI arms
race."
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