Richard Thieme

A white middle-aged male who has lived as a "minority" in five cultures illuminates how to live with dignity and power in a diverse world. A unique "diversity" presentation that builds bridges between "dominants" and "minorities" and connects a better future to the realities of the past.

Security is not about applying the latest fix, using buzzwords, or patching broken platforms. Security must be understood in light of the new global battlespace in which boundaries are more like moebius strips, context is content, and the mind of society is both target and weapon.

Security is intrinsic to the architecture of every system. Any link in the critical security path can be the weakest link in the system, including the definition of the problem. And the real definition of the problem is often not what we think.

If wisdom and insanity are contextual, as Thieme claims, how can we tell one from the other? What does real security look like?

Do you have the feeling that the very ground is shifting under your feet? That change is not only happening faster and faster, but that YOU are changing faster and faster too? That the way you frame the world and think about yourself is changing from the inside out?

Identity Shift explores what was and is and is to come – why the very definition of what it means to be human is being shaped by contexts that never before existed – and why self-examination is not an option but a necessity for individuals, organizations, and nation states ... as well as for ill-defined “clouds of power” that increasingly determine our destinies.

The edges of our thinking, the edges of consensus reality, the edges of organizational structures - that's where new ideas first show up. Those we call "geniuses" see them first and give them names. Using the insights and wisdom of the best and the brightest of the infosec and hacking worlds as well as the practice of the craft of intelligence, this presentation demonstrates how creativity infuses the best practices of security and intelligence, how to tend it and make it more likely to happen, and how to capture it on the fly.
The questions for information security practitioners include: How do you generate your creative best in a world driven by cyber attacks and down-sizing? How does creativity fit into the big picture we all know is true in the Dilbert-world of the real work place? This keynote responds to those questions with deep and real insights, grounded in the nitty-gritty of life in the trenches. Thieme argues persuasively that you must tap into your creative potential to succeed as a person-of-interest and a security professional. This talk helps professionals recontextualize how they think about challenges in security by seeing the deeper context of their work

We know we should work together to fight the bad guys. But in a world of porous borders, melting boundaries, and geopolitical restructuring, how do we know who is who? How do we play the great game of intelligence when the board is disappearing?

This speech confronts the challenges of soft boundaries and the transformation of the structures in which we live, identifies the consequences of identity-shift and distinguishes the business of security from the myths of the security business. It is a keynote for security, intelligence, and hacker cons.

The technical details of information security can be described, checklists generated, policies approved ... but true mastery of the art of information warfare and system security is more subtle than that. Drawing on conversations with many of the best and brightest in the infosec field, Richard Thieme illuminates the core concepts of this subtle art and craft and shows why wisdom is often found in out-of-the-way places.

A keynote for security, intelligence and hacker cons and for everyone who wants a better understanding of how the world of information has changed their lives.

“You’re over the line,” an intelligence professional told Richard Thieme recently. “You know enough to know what’s not true but you can’t know enough to know what is. You’re well into the wilderness of mirrors.”

Ever since a USAF fighter pilot with the “right stuff” told Richard Thieme (who was then his Episcopal clergyman) in 1978 that “we chase the things and can’t catch them” -- Thieme has explored this domain with beginner’s eyes and an open mind. He has interviewed astronauts and NASA psychologists, physicists and social scientists, and scholars in “the invisible college” who conduct serious research and rigorous historical analysis. He has compared notes with intelligence professionals who believe that the least unlikely hypothesis for some of the data is, as one said, “a cultural intrusion” over many decades.

In this presentation, Thieme shows how “hacking the system” of data, disinformation, and “true believers” in an environment which has been saturated with ridicule since 1952, when critical elements of the government made a decision to debunk reports and those making them, is like hacking any complex system in our world of huge black budgets, appropriate paranoia, psy ops and wrap-around propaganda, and obsessive secrecy.

This presentation will make you think. It will make you re-examine your presuppositions about what is real. It will lead you to the edge ... and give you a push ...

The intelligence community of the United States and the intelligence communities of the world, linked in cooperative anti-terror activity, are responsible for maintaining social and global order at a level of understanding beyond that formulated in the past by any one nation. The intelligence community in the aggregate, as is where is, is a global community of practitioners who share an ethos and modalities of operation not available to ordinary citizens; it has thereby created for itself an intrinsic vocation or calling to maintain global order. The issue of accountability, however, during this transition, has not been fully addressed.
This presentations explores the deeper implications of identity-shift in the Intelligence Community and what it means for the rest of us.