Episode 359 – The Trump administration seems to be undermining expertise
If there is one thing I know about ‘expertise’ – a term that is vastly overused IMHO – is that it takes time, a lot of time to acquire. One does not become an ‘expert’ in anything overnight (no matter what Holiday Inn Express tried to tell us years ago!). Expertise gained is valuable and once it is lost it can be all but irreplaceable. So why is the Trump Administration firing hundreds of seasoned specialists from its law enforcement and security intelligence agencies? I talk with a former US presidential daily briefer and CIA analyst on this dumbfounding phenomenon.
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About my guest
Julia Curlee is a Public Service Fellow at Lawfare and a former CIA analyst with twenty-five years of experience in national security. She served as an NSC director in the Biden and second Trump White Houses and as a PDB briefer to the Vice President. She completed multiple tours in the Middle East and South Asia and served in CIA’s China Mission Center. She holds master’s degrees from the National War College and American University.
Canadian Intelligence Eh
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world.
In these half-hour podcasts, 32-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in jihadi terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015. He also ran Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting from May 2015 to May 2025.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019 and the Director of the National Security Programme at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute from 2020-2022. He has also taught on national security issues at George Brown College, the University of Ottawa and Georgian College. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world and is actively sought by Canadian and international media on national security and intelligence issues. He has written hundreds of op-eds on these matters for several Canadian media since 2016
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism (Rowman and Littlefield 2018), When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019), The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022), The Fenians: Brotherhood of fools or Canada’s first terrorist threat? (Double Dagger: 2025) and 9/11: the Unfinished Battle – Why jihadi terrorism is stronger, wider and far from over (Optimum Publishing 2026). He regularly blogs and podcasts (Canadian Intelligence Eh!), and posts on Bluesky (@borealissaves.bsky.social) on terrorism and intelligence matters.
