David Ignatius

A globetrotting, on-the-ground journalist, David Ignatius has been making sense of the world for over 40 years. With his unique ability to access the CIA, the Pentagon, the NSA, and Capitol Hill, Ignatius gives his readers a rare look at the world rarely covered by the evening news and takes them inside the stories and issues shaping the world. In this discussion, Ignatius draws from his long career in journalism to reflect on the current state of the world and shares his view on how we got to where we are, and where we may be headed. With the growing distrust of governments and institutions worldwide, Ignatius makes a case for the increasing importance of fact-based reporting, especially as the changing nature of journalism the overall spread of information is jeopardizing the truth. Ignatius will also touch upon the most controversial stories he’s covered recently, such as the gruesome murder of his colleague and friend, Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and what the implications of his death mean for ties between U.S. intelligence agencies and foreign governments, bringing to light a covert, worldwide information war.

Collecting intelligence is a truly dirty business. Whether at home or abroad, the rules are never the same and protocol is never quite clear. According to foreign affairs columnist David Ignatius, in the investigative world, integrity is almost entirely up to the reporter. In column after column, Ignatius reframes our view of the world and redefines what it means to be a journalist, from the 1983 Beirut embassy bombing to his award-winning investigative work of the death of his colleague Jamal Khashoggi. In this speech, Ignatius shares the hard-earned tips and rules he has formed from more than 40 years of reporting, including the long process of building relationships with potential sources, the importance of travel to acquire information firsthand, and maintaining objectivity to avoid becoming a partisan voice. With his keen ability to make sense of and explain the complex forces shaping the world, Ignatius also reflects on how he has learned as much about acquiring information from writing novels as writing foreign affairs columns, as he travels to every place referenced in his fiction and speaks to the locals and the experts to gain as much information as he can.

As a new age of warfare dawns, with artificial intelligence and other forms of high-tech conflict as the primary mode of combat, it’s easy to miss this inflection point: Foreign adversaries have repeatedly conspired to undermine the American political system and the U.S. responded, after several false starts, with an overt effort against a covert enemy. As the Pentagon continues to play catch-up in a rapidly evolving battlefield, it must also learn how to work with Silicon Valley and the global tech giants who pay fealty to no single state. According to David Ignatius, Washington Post foreign affairs columnist and author of ten spy novels, including The Quantum Spy about the arms race of super computers; now that the battle has been joined, the world we live in will be a contested information space with no clear enemy, target, or goal. Drawing from his coverage of the global charge toward technological dominance, Ignatius presents a sophisticated game of cat-and-mouse where the winners own the future of warfare and security and the losers forfeit everything, including their privacy and economic stability. With his wide-ranging knowledge of the CIA, national security, and policy, Ignatius delivers an in-depth account of what’s at stake and poses possible outcomes and solutions. He dispels common myths about the future of cyber and highlights the legitimate dangers, the future of 5g, and the hyper-fast quantum computer which he says is the digital equivalent of a nuclear bomb. As Ignatius wrote in The Quantum Spy, “In a world where everything is written in zeroes and ones, nothing can be trusted.”

We are at a global inflection point and a new economic and political order has disrupted the world and the risks for the United States and its allies are increasing. As the U.S. wanes from an era of unparalleled economic growth it is entering another structure whose rules and rewards aren’t yet clear. And in an economy where confidence leads to investment — and political instability undermines confidence, there is a likelihood that burgeoning political instability across the world will slow down investment and economic growth. The next five years will see rising tensions within and between countries. In this speech, David Ignatius draws from over 40 years of on-the-ground reporting on foreign affairs, Capitol Hill, global politics, and economics to address the forces at play in a disrupted world, and analyze the implications of growing uncertainty and risk.