The Trust Exchange | Nicole Ash

Dani Ng-See-Quan: Hello and welcome to TRUST FASTER - a Clearspeed podcast about the ways that risk and trust intersect in our day-to-day lives. I’m your host, Dani Ng-See Quan.

Sometimes, in our discussions about trust, we talk about it like it’s a binary - you either trust someone or you don’t. But for our guest this week, it’s not always that simple.

Nicole Ash is a retired federal executive and intelligence professional. She served for 31 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, and was the Executive Director of the Center for Cyber Intelligence. She now works as an executive coach, board advisor, and board director.

In my conversation with Nicole, we talked a lot about the subjectivity of trust - how trusting someone can mean different things in different circumstances; or that you may trust a person in some situations but not in others.

Nicole’s time in the CIA really informed a lot of her perspective and the expertise she brings to this subject… and while I’d love it if we could just spend this episode listening to juicy stories about high stakes foreign ops… that’s not really how national security works. So, you’re not going to get much about the nuts and bolts of Nicole’s time in the CIA, but what you will hear are Nicole’s big picture takeaways, and how they’ve really shaped her ideas about trust.

Nicole started her career at the CIA as a propaganda analyst - better known today as an Open Source or OSINT analyst. I started out by asking her what that entailed, and what it was like to work in such a high stakes, high security environment.

Nicole Ash: Well, I'd love to say I worked in a high-stakes, high-security environment, but basically I worked in an office just like everybody else. My early days at the agency were fascinating. You're getting insights. You're learning your craft. I was hired to be a propaganda analyst. That was my training. It was the basic training on how information moves in the world, how it influences people. I spent most of my time learning to think differently about news media.

So we have a free press. Many countries do not. The media is controlled by the government entirely, particularly in autocracies. So one of my focus areas was to understand particularly those media arms that were controlled by the government. What is the message that they're trying to send? And so as a propaganda analyst, you're sort of looking at that information to assess it and move it as quickly as possible as we collected from around the world. It was a great entry into the career. It really did help me to think about all types of information and how we trust, how we decide to trust the information that we receive.

DNSQ: Nicole’s career with the CIA lasted for three decades, and it led her to live, work, and lead in Africa, the Middle East, and North America. As a leader in the CIA, she learned a lot about how trust is built.

NA: We have a lot of decisions that we're trying to make on a daily basis about what we believe, who we believe, why we believe, and what motivates us, right? And it all plays into the factors of sort of trust and and trust meaning you're willing to accept something with an acknowledgement that there is still some vulnerability to you. There's some risk. So if I am meeting a person for the first time, how do I decide if I believe what they're saying out of their mouth, right? What information they're sharing with me in this first conversation? Is it true? How would I know it's true? So I'm sitting there having a conversation, I'm asking, sort of just general questions and seeing the response. And I tend to, over time decide, well, I actually believe what they're saying. I think I can trust them. I hope I can trust them. I do think it goes a lot faster if we're introduced to the person by someone we already trust because they're vouching for that person in some ways and so maybe our decision to trust can go faster and depending on how we're introduced to that person. It's the same way with information.

If we have a pre-validated source, if this is my favorite newspaper or my favorite newscaster or my favorite webpage and information is shared with me via that source, then I'm going to give it more credibility than a source that I have not ever checked out before or verified before. And so there is danger in that because everybody can be wrong.

There's a lot of choosing about trust. We choose to trust people. We choose to trust companies or organizations. We choose to trust beliefs, belief systems, faith. We choose to trust and believe and have faith.

DNSQ: Nicole has also spent time thinking about gaps in trust… how they affect organizations, interpersonal relationships, and even a government’s ability to lead. I wanted to know what her time in the CIA taught her about the consequences of a trust gap.

NA: Well, I think there are serious consequences. I mean, if you have a trust gap on your leadership team, one, your whole staff is going to know it and the confidence level in your organization and the decisions being made are going to be affected. If you have a trust gap between you and your whole staff, like everyone who works for you, and I mean, the things that you need to get done and and then the understanding between your organization of whether or not you're all on the same page as to what needs to be accomplished, the mission that you're trying to get at, the priorities of your organization, which resultingly affects everyone's bottom line. Those are in jeopardy.

If you are in the government and you have a trust gap between organizations and or in the national security realm, that's a problem because you're dealing with things that are not only timely but critical to safety, life safety, health issues. And if you have a trust gap that for a company with your clientele, right? So we have some companies right now that have had major breaches that have put doubt in the minds of the the very clientele they're trying to engage and they have a real crisis, a crisis of is this company going to be able to sustain itself because of that now exist large existing trust gap, especially in a competitive environment where people are living in choice.

DNSQ: I want to go back to something. I want to get your perspective. People would say trust can be subjective. you know like You might have a different value system than I do, but does that mean we can't trust each other? you know As an example, like how do you kind of risk you know respond to this idea that trust can also be an intangible thing and quite subjective. Like you said, it's a choice. So how do we kind of wrap our heads around that if there is in fact a trust crisis and we kind of want to get to a place where we're trusting more?

NA: It's not all or nothing. Let's start with that. It's not all or nothing. I may trust you to walk down to the corner and come back with a Starbucks that I'm willing to drink because I don't think you poisoned it.

But I might not trust you, the same person, to drive my car a mile to a Starbucks and to pick me up because now we're involving my car. I mean, that's a simple way to think about it, but it's true. Every day, even with the same person, we are deciding there are things that we trust them to do based on prior experience, reliability, the person's performance capability, the person's performed this before, and they've done it successfully.

I may trust my company that does my phone that when I turn my phone on, it's going to work. But I wouldn't trust that same company with my health questions or something because that's not their expertise. That's not what they're there for.

DNSQ: I think that's a great way to frame it, Nicole. And one of the ways that we've talked about this internally around this trust exchange, like there are those moments in time, right? Or we've called them trust events. So like in every one of those events at different times in your day, you're making that decision on whether or not to exchange the trust. So I think the examples that you just gave are great ways to frame that for an individual every day.

So now let's, if we can move away from the subjective, I want to talk to you a bit about technology in trust building. So can you share your perspective, maybe drawing on your own experience of how technology today facilitates trust?

NA: I was just in a leadership retreat in San Francisco. And the driverless cars, which I had not seen on the East Coast, actually were terrifying. They were there in full vole all over San Francisco, driving around, looking like the cars from Back to the Future. And just the image of these cars driving past you with no one in the driver's seat was surprisingly to me, it's so much almost a visceral shock because I just wasn't used to it. And so I had zero trust in the safety of these cars. I had zero trust in you know wanting to ride in one to see what it's like.

Which was interesting because I wasn't alone, of the women that I was with in the leadership retreat with, there was like literally only one out of 20 that was even willing to attempt to ride in the driverless vehicles just to experience it. Everybody else was like, “No, that's a leap too far.”

Some people are early adopters and they will jp in right away. Their trust is fast and furious and other people are not going to trust for years and years and years until they have no other choice - because all other technology ceased to exist and so they have no choice.

DNSQ: So, part of a leader’s job is to not only weigh the pros and cons of how technology might benefit the organization, but how to best implement that technology. How do you make a systemic change while being mindful of people’s bias and lived experiences? How do you convince people to come along for the ride in the driverless car? Especially when sometimes at least, getting in means turning over extremely personal information about yourself?

NA: As we think about those of us who are in positions of power or leadership or especially in companies as we're adopting new technology and introducing it to our stakeholders or our clients that we have an element of trust that we have to think about as far as, okay, if we're asking for their information and personal information, how are you protecting it? We know the cyber attacks are real, cybersecurity breaches are real, and you know everything from people's personal PII information of things that can be changed is under attack and it's painful for people to have to change certain elements, like passwords or things, but once somebody has your DNA records, there's no changing that.

So when we think about technology, everything as it's moving forward can benefit us. And people are really attracted to it and wanting to share and trust, but it also can hurt us. And so we're always making the calculus through choice, what is the benefit to me long-term and what is the potential damage this could do if I shared this, if I trusted this source or if I trusted this capability. I think that's that with technology, we're seeing that with AI, trusting, you know, where is it getting its information? How is it getting information? How was it programmed? If it's programmed by hans and hans have bias, does AI have bias? There's conversations about that. So how are we building that trust and the confidence of the conser in using it? And the same thing works for government as well.

DNSQ: Nicole says that when she entered government service at age 20, her training reinforced the idea that strong interpersonal bonds are the foundation of trust. And there’s good reason for that.

When you’re dealing with national security, you have to trust your team, your leadership, the system, all of it. There’s no room for second guessing when you’re making split second assessments of life-or-death situations.

NA: I think that my organization, my former organization and the CIA and the US military are just really good at providing leadership training and other kinds of training to make sure that people have the skills they need to be successful. I actually am surprised that not everyone invests in their people that much.

I think that's really important to understand training and team-building and practice. To be honest, it's kind of like a fire drill. How often does your leadership team practice how they would deal with a crisis or a tough situation or a tough decision? Because having that time where you're actually thinking about, okay, let's practice it. Let's see if everybody does what they're supposed to do.

And then going back and doing that hot wash to say, okay, it didn't quite work the way we did it. How do we fix that? Or there was someone who wasn't quite as skilled as we needed? Or there was an information gap that we didn't understand we had. Or a technology gap that we didn't know we had. How do we address that so that when the real crisis comes, we can handle it? So it's something between this sort of training, the skilling, the fact that we're also recruiting and hiring people of a certain caliber for this purpose. So we're kind of starting with a high bar. If you're starting with a high bar and then adding to it, then there's a pretty secure confidence in the capabilities of those officers.

DNSQ: Nicole’s time in the CIA also taught her a more nuanced understanding of bias and how it affects our ability to trust one another.

When we hear the word, we usually think of it as a synonym for “prejudice.” But to hear Nicole describe it, that’s not always the case. Bias is a thing that’s there in all of us, and it’s a thing that needs to be recognized - especially by people in leadership positions.

How we engage with bias has a lot to do with our ability to build trust, especially when it comes to people whose lived experiences may not be the same as our own.

NA: I think bias is part of han nature. It's there for a reason. All humans, actually all animals, want to be alerted to potential danger first. That is the instinct, that is the survival need, right? And negative information. We always say, why do we believe the negative information first? Why do we want to hear that first? Why is nobody ever out there looking for positive information, positive stories? Well, it's part of our nature in that the negative stuff could actually harm us physically, and so we need to know it first.

But bias really plays a part in even technology and how it's introduced into an organization. Some folks are like, I want to introduce this technology because it's going to control my people. I will have more insight into what they're doing every day. And other people are like, I'm introducing this technology because I want to free my people so that they are not bogged down by administrative tasks and can have more time to think or have more time to spend with their families because that makes them happy and happy workers are more effective. And so that's an important thing.

DNSQ: So, for Nicole, it all comes back to this idea that trust isn’t just an either-or kind of thing. It’s subjective. And, most importantly, it’s an exchange.

We’re constantly weighing our willingness to trust someone against the potential risks and potential benefits of doing so.

If I give this company my extremely personal information, does the potential benefit outweigh the risk?

Do I trust this web site enough to enter my credit card information?

Do I believe this organization has the security protocols in place to be trusted with my DNA?

What’s in it for me if I opt in?

Am I making my life difficult by opting out?

These are big scary questions, and after 30 years in the CIA, Nicole knows that there aren’t easy answers. Trust isn’t a yes or no.

Nicole believes that those in positions of power - whether they’re CEOs or government officials or business owners - those people need to ask themselves the same kinds of questions. Failures in leadership are often the result of making the assumption that their products or their programs are going to be perceived the same way by everyone. And that’s simply not true.

We all carry our own lived experiences with us at all times, and those experiences leave us with biases.

NA: We know this from interviews with criminals or people who shoplift is they send brown people in their team into the store. And then the security cameras all go and chase the brown person who's just walking throughout the store. And meanwhile, the same person on the team who's Caucasian comes in and robs them blind. And they weren't even looking at that person. And the person wasn't even discreet in how they even took the stuff out. Because all security was looking at the brown people. It's a tactic.

But the idea being it's a known-known that certain populations are more scrutinized, more followed, but in reality the statistics show something different and that's a sad thing because that bias makes it very uncomfortable for those of us. We're just trying to survive or thrive in the countries we belong in. I know I was talking with a company head. His company was creating stores where there will be no people working in the store.

So there's nobody following you shoplifting, you're going to come in the store, there'll be no humans. And the moment you come in, it will know who you are. And everything you take out of the store will be charged to you automatically, right?

I thought that was very curious, because you still have the trust thing, right? So you're saying I could go into a store and take anything I want out and nobody's gonna like throw me to the ground. Like I could walk out with an iPhone and I'm not gonna be shoplifting because it's gonna be a minute before you can convince me that's safe, because my every little experience tells me as a brown person that's not safe but once you convince me that it's safe as a brown person and I now am not going to be subjected to anybody thinking I'm stealing, then maybe that's the store I am going to shop in because I don't have to worry about how I'm being treated or whether there's bias against me. They're just going to look at my platinum whatever and say, oh, look at that credit card. She can pay.

So that's kind of the equity and equality that people are looking for, but we don't necessarily experience it. And I think the conversations that we want to have as communities, that we need to have is, for a lot of people, especially I will say in the majority group, since they've never lived the experience, they don't understand it.

They don't believe it's happening until they see it happen. Or someone they love and know that they're friends with, when it happens to them, maybe they'll be a little bit outraged. I mean, that's really what George Floyd did for us as a world, right? It was on video.

It unified people who had not had a lived experience of this happening to them. And maybe they in the past weren't really sure they believed that it happened on such a regular basis. But seeing the video and understanding what really happened became the lived experience in a way of a whole world. And so many people came up to me who were, you know, colleagues who were like maybe fence center sitters, maybe me in a way and said, I had no idea. How can I help? I want to be part of the solution. Now I see. I believe. I know you've been saying, but now I see it. I saw it myself. And now I understand that this is something that uniquely happens to Brown people in this part of the world. First you have to believe me. You can't help me if you don't believe me. And that's the thing I think that is important, especially when trust comes in is I need you to believe me.

And it's an act of trust on your part to believe me that when I had this experience, this is how it made me feel. And it wasn't right, and it has a psychological impact. It has an impact on everyone that experiences these things. I mean, you go to work every day and you work with people who are having a lived experience different from your own. And you need to build trust with those people. And if they don't trust that you will believe them, they're not going to trust you in other things, either.

DNSQ: Long before Nicole started looking at the ways autocracies and foreign regimes use propaganda, she had her own first-hand experiences with the media's power to shape beliefs.

But for Nicole, it was less about indoctrination and more about challenging authority. And it wasn’t newspapers or tv news that had her questioning the status quo… it was science fiction and comic books.

NA: Well, from a little Black girl growing up in rural Virginia, American television, science fiction was the first real integration that you could see, right? Star Trek had, you know, Uhura and we had a black woman who was on the leadership team. So it helped you to see that in the future, it will be possible, even if it's not possible right now.

But the idea was finding a way to share information in a subtle way that was creeping in and changing culture, but it wasn't obvious, right? It had to be science fiction for it to even be allowed. Because we can talk about strong Black women leaders leading white men into engagement at that time, right? So I think I read that one of the first images of an integrated school that went to the South was because Spider-Man had lived in New York and his school was integrated. And so all of these things, got under the radar of the censors and were allowed to sort of permeate the culture through science fiction, through Star Trek and Star Wars and other types of things because it was seen as, for me, the calling to me and the voice I responded to because I realized wow, there are in the future, or it is possible for little Black girls to be in charge when they grow up someday and and to women to lead.

DNSQ: To be clear, the worlds she discovered in science fiction - worlds full of powerful black female leaders, worlds where being different was seen as an asset - it was all very different from the reality of her everyday life.

NA: I grew up in rural Virginia, but I was only 50 miles from the capital of the United States, the free democracy that it is, the greatest nation. I grew up in the 80s and 90s and they didn't close down the last restaurant in my town that didn't serve Blacks or Brown people until I was 18 years old. That was 1988.

And so the thing about trust is interesting because I lived in a small town. Everyone knew everyone. Everyone knew what everyone drove. So when you drove past that restaurant and you saw the vehicle that you knew belonged to the principal of your school, to your doctor, sir to the sheriff,

Knowing that that restaurant doesn't serve minorities, these are people you need to trust, but how can you trust them? They're supporting an organization or supporting a company, an industry, or whatever that is actively racist. If you're a Brown person, why would you trust them?

But he was also the only doctor in town or the sheriff. I mean, you also still had to trust them for some things. It's a really tough choice. Right. Do I trust? Do I not trust? And it was interesting. You know what? I always say it depends. My answer is it always depends on the situation and the time and what's happening because some of those same people were allies of mine. I was a young Brown girl in a rural part of the state and my future could have been one thing, but it wasn't. I was destined for something else, but I didn't get there by myself. I got there because I was raised by a village. I had strong parents in the home. I had a community where I had teachers who actually engaged me differently. They saw my potential.

And so they may have been racist leaning, if you wanted to say, but at the same time, they found it in their hearts to figure out how to help me. I don't necessarily understand all of that, but I'm saying, there's different levels of trust, always. And it depends on what's happening and it depends on the human connection, right? So people don't help strangers that often, but they do help the people that know.

DNSQ: Nicole recently made a trust calculation for herself that I think really illustrates a lot of what we’ve been talking about in this episode.

She mentioned earlier that there are some pieces of personal information that can be changed pretty easily - like our PINs or passwords. But there are some things that are fixed - we’re born with them and even if they fall into the wrong hands, we’re stuck. Things like DNA. Which is exactly what Nicole decided to turn over to a company online.

NA: My spouse will tell you it's the single stupidest decision I've ever made in my whole life. Like, why would you do that? The DNA security and the fact trusting these companies with your DNA is probably irrational. It probably is because nobody's security is that safe. And this is your ultimate fingerprint, right? And technology hasn't even gotten to the place where it can act, where it can actually imagine how people having your DNA can use it, right? And part of that is my lack of imagination about how in 20 years somebody with my DNA will be able to exploit it in ways they can't do right now.

There is going to always be some risk because you're now making yourself vulnerable to something. And so in my case, as many African-Americans, we are the lost tribe. We were brought here in slavery as a people. We are unsure of our connection to Africa. We don't know where we came from, or our tribes. Family members throughout slavery were sold, children sold away from their parents, siblings broken up.

There was a lot of disruption in our world and a lot of people were lost to each other for all time. And so I think for a lot of African-Americans who are willing to engage in ancestry research and especially genetics is because we're trying to find each other after all this time. We are trying to make those connections. We're trying to understand our origin story.

I had family members born into slavery who died in slavery who lived their entire life birth to death and their children then lived their entire life birth to death and their grandchildren lived their entire life birth to death in slavery

But at the same time, knowing where I come from, knowing my contributions into this national birth and the contribution of my ancestors and my role and and what they dreamed for me and knowing that I have a teacher that says I am my ancestors wildest dream because I literally am. And maybe their imagination, like my imagination earlier where I couldn't have imagined this, they couldn't have imagined me.

DNSQ: Thanks so much to Nicole O’Neill Ash for joining me on the final episode of this season of TRUST FASTER.

I’ve been your host, Dani Ng-See Quan. It’s been a pleasure speaking with all of our guests, and I hope all of our listeners enjoyed it as much as I did.

If you enjoyed the show, don’t forget to rate, review, and share it with your friends. Thanks for listening, and take care.