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# Covert Contact 95: Covert Contact is Back
- URL: https://johnwlittle.com/covert-contact-is-back-episode-95/
- Published: 2020-07-19T00:27:24.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-17T01:02:30.000Z
- Description: Dean Baratta joins me as we return after nearly two years away. We discuss the pandemic, geopolitical change, the pressures on intelligence teams, and how to keep doing useful work when the problems feel overwhelming.
- Author: John Little
- Tags: Covert Contact, Dean Baratta

Dean Baratta joins me as we return after nearly two years away from the microphone. A great deal has changed in our work and in the world. We catch up on our moves into new roles, the challenges of restarting the show, and the questions we want to explore as the pandemic reshapes the security environment.

We discuss the strain of dealing with several major problems at once: COVID-19, political and geopolitical change, pressure on democratic institutions, and accelerating technological and economic disruption. Long-range forecasts offer a useful reminder of how difficult it is to anticipate the world we will actually face. We consider how the pandemic may compress changes that had seemed much further away and what that means for analysts early in their careers.

There is also room for guarded optimism. The worst behavior circulating on social media does not capture everything happening in a society, and many people are working to preserve stability and help those around them. We talk about the difficulty of spending a working day immersed in threats without becoming overwhelmed. Dean recalls advising an analyst to focus on the people and decisions she could influence. Recognizing small successes, sharing them with a team, and taking a break when needed can make sustained work possible.

The conversation then turns to the growing demands on private-sector intelligence teams. Companies increasingly find themselves exposed to foreign intelligence services and influence operations, sometimes without having understood why they would be targets. That creates new challenges in communicating risk to decision-makers and helping organizations see beyond their immediate commercial concerns.

Those are areas we plan to keep exploring: building capable teams, developing analysts, improving intelligence processes, and communicating with customers. The problems are substantial, but there is useful work to do within each person’s reach. Returning to these conversations is one way to keep doing it.