The Singapore Summit and Understanding North Korea’s Calculus: NSI Podcast 02

Speaker: Gause, K. (CNA Center for Strategic Studies)

Podcast Preview

In NSI’s second podcast, Mr. Ken Gause (CNA Center for Strategic Studies) discusses the development of the historic Singapore summit between President Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un and provides his analysis of how the participating leaders came to meet. He then describes in detail the key assumptions of the traditional Korean analytical community and explains his take on why these perspectives are flawed.

Mr. Ken Gause is the director of the International Affairs Group and is the senior foreign leadership analyst for CNA’s Center for Strategic Studies. With over 30 years’ experience researching adversary leadership dynamics and decision making, Mr. Gause has personally directed studies on the North Korean, Iranian and Russian leadership over the past few decades. He has written several books on North Korean leadership and security dynamics, the most recent being “The North Korean House of Cards: Leadership Dynamics Under Kim Jong-Un.”

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If you are interested in being featured in a NSI podcast, please email Ms. Nicole Omundson (nomundson@nsiteam.com).

***Coming Soon***

Stay tuned for NSI’s next podcast, which will feature a SMA speaker session presented by Mr. Vern Liebl (Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning (CAOCL)) that focuses on informal governance structures of Afghanistan, as well as an exclusive interview with Mr. Liebl on reconciliation efforts, population dynamics, and other topical issues.

Speaker Biography

Ken Gause is the director of the International Affairs Group, a part of CNA’s Center for Strategic Studies. He is CNA’s senior foreign leadership analyst and has spent the last 20 years developing methodologies for examining leadership dynamics of hard-target, authoritarian regimes. In particular, he is an internationally respected expert on North Korea who has written three books on North Korean leadership. His latest book is “North Korean House of Cards: Leadership Dynamics Under Kim Jong-un.” Leadership and opposing force (OPFOR) analysis are core areas of expertise within CNA Strategic Studies and Gause has personally directed studies on the North Korean, Iranian and Russian leadership and decision-making. His work on foreign leadership dates back to the early 1980s with his work on the Soviet Union for the U.S. government. Over the last three decades, he has devised analytical techniques used to understand adversary decision-making. These techniques span a five-tier set of methodologies that range from biographical analysis to studies on how to impact and shape an authoritarian or totalitarian regime’s actions. These studies include a range of approaches from sophisticated game design to proprietary analysis based on a “virtual network” of researchers around the world dedicated to providing analysis on regimes of interest, their leadership, and how they make decisions. Gause has also published numerous articles on leadership structures for such publications as Jane’s Intelligence Review, Jane’s Defense Weekly, and the Korean Journal of Defense Analysis. He has a B.A. from Vanderbilt in Russian and Political Science and an M.A. from The George Washington University in Soviet and East European Affairs.