Spy Balloons and National Intelligence

Over the past week, military forces have shot down multiple suspicious objects over North American airspace, including a Chinese spy balloon. What does this mean for national security?

 

Join us on Friday, February 17 at 12:00pm ET as celebrated broadcaster Peter Mansbridge is joined by Vincent Rigby, former Canadian National Security and Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister, and Melanie Sisson, Brookings fellow, and a leading expert on U.S. national security strategy, and the military use of emerging technologies.

 

 

Peter Mansbridge is an award-winning journalist and a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.  He is best known for his five decades of work at the CBC where he was Chief Correspondent of CBC News and anchor of The National for thirty years. He has won dozens of awards for outstanding journalism, has thirteen honorary doctorates from universities in Canada and the United States, and received Canada’s highest civilian honour, the Order of Canada, in 2008. He is the former two-term Chancellor of Mount Allison University, now its Chancellor Emeritus, and is the President of Manscorp Media Services where his work includes documentary film production.

 

Vincent Rigby is the Max Bell School of Public Policy's McConnell Visiting Professor for 2022-2023 at McGill University. He recently retired from Canada’s Public Service after 30 years in a variety of departments and agencies across government, including the Privy Council Office, Global Affairs Canada, Public Safety, the Department of National Defence and the former Canadian International Development Agency. His career focused on security and intelligence, foreign policy, defence, and development issues. His last position was as National Security and Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister from 2020 to 2021. In addition to his position at the Max Bell School, he is also a senior fellow with the Norman Patterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, as well as a senior advisor with the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. He holds an MA in history from Carleton University.

 

Melanie Sisson is a Brookings fellow in the Foreign Policy program’s Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology where she researches the use of the armed forces in international politics, U.S. national security strategy, and military applications of emerging technologies. Sisson’s current work focuses on U.S. Department of Defense integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities into warfighting and enterprise operations.