I thought that this lecture was very interesting, although it didn’t really focus on what I thought it was going to focus on. Instead of talking about the debate between surveillance and privacy, they mainly focused on political issues as well as the art of on the ground surveillance. The general was the former director of the CIA, and he talked a lot about how the new presidency has shaped intelligence gathering. I thought he made an interesting point when he categorized the presidents by “archetypes,” and showed that most presidents fit into one of a few categories. He characterized President Trump as a “Jacksonian” and President Obama as “Jeffersonian.” By this, he meant that Trump was a populist that was holding America back from the inevitable. He compared Trump to William Jennings Bryan who ran in an election where he pushed that the US currency should be based on silver and not gold and how the US should be more agrarian and less industrialized. Now, he said he believes that industry as we know it is changing and that the US needs to adapt to these changes.  He said that industry that Trump is only delaying this process. It was also interesting how the General thought that Trump was going to change intelligence gathering. He said that as of right now, the US relies on a lot of liaisons for intel gathering and that in the future, due to the America first policy, it may be necessary to have more autonomy when it comes to on the ground surveillance. Although this debate didn’t focus on the idea of privacy vs. surveillance, the General did talk about the work that the CIA does on the ground and how the President and the government, in general, can influence the way that this has to be carried out. Although this lecture was not what I was expecting and didn’t really relate to our class that much, it was still very interesting.