I'm a big advocate of drones.
From Robert M. Gates
When I was the director of Central Intelligence in the early '90s, I tried to get the Air Force to partner with us in building drones. And they didn't want to, because they had no pilots.
Well, Israel, obviously, thinks of the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel.
There is no international problem that can be addressed or solved without the engagement and leadership of the United States and everybody in the world knows that, its just fact of life. So sometimes I think we could conduct ourselves with a little more humility.
I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.
I think that Iran with a nuclear weapon is extremely destabilizing. I think it could precipitate a nuclear arms race in the region.
No president is well-served by groupthink or by everybody singing from the same sheet of music they think he's on.
Even when I was at CIA, I'd go to visit foreign leaders and I'd say, 'You know, I'm not a diplomat. I'm just an old CIA guy'... I said, 'If I wanted to be diplomatic, I'd have been a diplomat.'
There's a lot of books out there about how you lead change in business, but I've certainly not seen any... on how you do that in public institutions.
I've seen, all too often in my career, people coming in to lead agencies and organizations and trying to impose change from the top down. Never works. You never have enough time.
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