Cryptology has gone back through millennia. If you had a reason to write it down, you had a reason to keep it secret.

We make code to protect US government communication from those that would want to listen in. We also break codes used by our adversaries, and we do that to intercept their communications.

Women have been involved in cryptology since the beginnings of the United States, back into the Revolutionary War. Primarily, there's Elizabeth Smith-Friedman. Through paper and pencil crypt analysis, she was able to solve the wiring for the German cipher machine Enigma twice.

Welcome to No Such podcast from the National Security Agency. I am one of your hosts, Christie, and I'm joined by my co-host. John. Today we're talking about cryptography and the NSA's history of making and breaking codes with the focus of women who have kept our nation safe for years. We're joined today by Jen. She is the Director of Education at the National Cryptologic Museum. And Amy, she is the Chief of USA's Crypt analysis Organization. Welcome, guys. Thank you for being here.

Thank you for having us. Thank you.

A little background, Jenn, did you want to start?

Well, I have been with the National Security Agency since 1986, and 25 of those years I've spent at the National Cryptologic Museum with a heavy focus on the women that have been involved in cryptology.

Awesome. Amy?

Hi, I've been at the National Security Agency for over 20 years. I started as a mathematician, and I've been part of the mathematics community here ever since. Okay.

Well, Amy, let's start with you. What is cryptography?

Cryptography is the practice of securing communications so that other people can't read them. And this is done by making codes and keys. So a code is the method of changing original information into another format that can't be decoded unless you have the right information to do so. And we talk about that information as the key. And that's the process of encryption. And on the flip side, being able to use that key to read that code would be called decryption.

So it's almost like reading zeros and ones.

It is a lot of zeros and ones.

I bet. I guess in layman's terms, you could say it's a process for securing information or communications that we don't want other people to know about. That's right. And then on the other side, it's a way for us to then decrypt that information so the right people see it.

That's right.

But, Jim, what is an example of a cipher?

Well, cryptology has gone back through millennia. If you had a reason to write it down, you had a reason to keep it secret. And in the early days of the ancient Greeks, they had devices that they would use, Eschatali and Aneas desk. But the Caesar's cipher is probably the most famous of all the cipher systems. In today's world, it was a very simple system. All he did was he took the alphabet and he shifted it three places. Instead of the letter A, he would write down D, B became E, and so on. It was a very simple system. It's what we call a shift cipher, a monoalphabetic shift cipher. It worked great for him because nobody had ever done it before. But today, it's extremely simple and Nobody uses it except for entertainment purposes.

So, Jen, something as simple and basic as that really started in SA, the National Security Agency.

Cryptology can take its history all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome, but We actually date ourselves to the Civil War and then predominantly into the World War II.

Nice. Thanks. That's a really helpful example. I bet we've come a long way since then. It's been, what, 2000 years or so?

Yes. Although for centuries, much did not change. We didn't even get into machine encryption and crypt analysis until the 20th century.

Can you provide an example of women in history of cryptography at NASA?

Women have been involved in cryptology since the beginnings of the United States, back into the Revolutionary War. But if you want to look at their involvement in more recent years, we would go to the middle of the 20th century and World War II. Primarily, there's Elizabeth Smith Friedmann, and she actually had a degree in English, not mathematics. She was originally hired to work at a place called Riverbank Laboratories on the Shakespearean Ciphers. There's a thought that Shakespeare was written by Francis Bacon, and there was a cipher in there. But anyway, that's how she got introduced into codes and ciphers. She met and married William Friedmann, and that's how she came to be working for the US government. In the Prohibition era, she was working against Rum Runner codes. But when World War II rolled around, she was asked to look into Nazi codes in South America. They were using similar codes to the Rum Runner, so she was able to break into those. She learned that the Nazis were giving away the location of Allied shipping there in South America. And so through her efforts, they were able to warn those ships and protect them against being attacked.

She was also able to reveal Nazi spy rings down in the South America. And through paper and pencil crypt analysis, she was able to resolve the wiring for the German cipher machine Enigma twice. Initially, the FBI took her information and captured some of the spies, but not the leaders. And so they just started over and started with a new cipher system, and so she had to figure out the enigma again. Through her work, the Americans were able to push some of those South American countries to openly side with the allies and protect US supplies and natural resources that we were getting from that area of the world.

Wow. This is all with an English degree. Yes. Wow. That's very interesting.

That's a huge impact. I got to say, I'm a history nerd myself, and it's a shame. We don't really do a good job telling these stories. I mean, even here at the agency, we've got buildings named after them, and I really haven't heard any of this.

Well, Elizabeth was best known for her work with the Rum Runners. It wasn't until very recently that we've uncovered through doing a four-year request, the work that she did with the Nazis firing in South America. That's fairly recent. We'll give you a pass on not knowing that information. Yeah.

So, Amy, Jim brought us to the end of World War II. Amy, how was and why was NSA founded?

So NSA was founded after World War II in 1952 to make and break codes. We make code to protect US government communication from those that would want to listen in. And then we also break codes used by our adversaries, and we do that to intercept their communications of groups like terrorists and nation-state actors like Russia or the People's Republic of China.

And that keeps us safe and our troops safe. It continues to make an impact on our mission. It does.

And thinking about what Jen just said about how things hadn't changed for thousands of years, I think maybe that's a little bit different today. You see the evolution of technology There's rapid evolution here. And how, think back when I started at the agency, I didn't have a smartphone, and now everybody's got a smartphone, right? And so if you think about that change in communication methods, You can see that along with that, we have to evolve to make sure that we're still successful in making and breaking codes to address the technology challenges of today and tomorrow.

Now, just to tie it back into one of the themes of the podcast, Women in the USA. Now, we were founded in 1952, and I got to be honest, the world looked a lot different back then. With that in mind, we mentioned Elizabeth Friedmann, but is there anybody else that you'd like to talk about from that time?

We should definitely be talking about Dottie Bloom, one of the pioneering crypt analysts and computer scientists that has made tremendous impact for the agency.

So Donnie Bloom probably got her start in machine crypt analysis when she joined the Army Security Agency in World War II and was introduced to it with a machine that the Army was using to break into German enigma messages. After that, in the 1950s, she was the representative that would go out to the conferences and conventions on this new field of computing and then bring that information back to USA and say how this could be applied to what USA needed it to do. She was encouraging other employees to become computer programmers at a time when computer programming was not taught in colleges. In 1972, she was named the Chief of the Computer Operations Organization, and she was the only woman in that chain of command at that time. She continued on and became the Chief of the Procedures and Policies for Computing. She's best well known at the agency for her mentoring. She was always encouraging young people to study computers and particularly computer programming.

Jenn, thank you so much for telling us that story. It really sounds like Dottie laid the foundation of where we are today as an agency. You mentioned that she was a cryptanalyst. Amy, I'm actually going to kick it over to you since you're the chief of the NSA's crypt analysis organization. What exactly does that mean to you, to the agency, to the world at large?

This is really the discipline that we call code-breaking. We have adversaries ranging from countries like Russia, to the PRC, to these terrorist groups, and they're all using some form of cryptography to secure their communications and to secure their computer networks. My team is charged with finding ways to get around those protections and acquire information that the United States needs for our own national security purposes. We talked about how technology has changed a lot, but you're absolutely right that the principles that Dodie Bloom established about leveraging computing and programming to be effective in the crypt analysis code-breaking space are exactly the kinds of things we do today.

So it's really the crypt analyst, the skills and expertise, they help mitigate these threats.

That's right.

And I guess we can't go too deep into it, but they are really the core of an essay's mission, and they help keep us going. And again, keep DOD safe, keep the nation safe.

That's right. And it's really not very straightforward hard to break codes. I wish it was like some of those earlier days, to be honest. But we have to be very creative. We have to take a variety of approaches. The problems that we face are complex, they're unique. But I really like to think of crypt analysis as both an art and a science, and it's really a discipline well suited to people that just like to tackle hard problems.

And that's the agency we are. We tackle hard problems, and we have a lot of women who do that. That's so exciting. Can you talk more about the day to day of a crypt analyst?

Every day is a little bit different. We're making progress on various types of mathematical problems. We're making engineering decisions, architectural decisions, versions. We're doing things like data science, computer science, and we're combining all of these fields of knowledge to be effective in reading the communications of our adversaries. So I love it, honestly. Honestly, I love that everything is different, and I love the idea that we can use math and computer science and engineering to keep people safe. If you had told me that when I was growing up and I really liked math, I never would have believed that this would be an opportunity that I could have.

I'm assuming there's not really too much specifics that you can talk about, given the nature of your work.

That's right. We don't want our adversaries to know the tradecraft, our sources and methods, because that can really lead to some security risks. We might end up not being able to access the information that we need to protect ourselves, or we might create risk for our own system. But we're still working it. We are still behind the scenes. We are under pinning some of the stories that you might hear.

Amy, you had mentioned that we need to protect our sources and methods. I wanted to go back to Elizabeth Friedmann on that. When she was breaking into the Enigma messages down in South America and the FBI took it over and captured some folks, she did not want that, nor did the Coast Guard, because they knew that if these spies were captured, they might look back and say, How could they know we were here? Oh, they must be reading the Enigma. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened. We lost that source. The Germans just picked up and went on, and we had to basically start over again, forcing Elizabeth to break into the system again.

Wow. How did we recover from that?

The next time around, when they wanted to capture those particular spies, they found a cover story, and they captured one person and interrogated him. And so it made it look like the information came from this interrogation. And so they had a cover and deception story already lined up.

Wow. That's interesting.

Thanks for providing that real-world example of how fragile the tradecraft that we have here is and how important it is then to be thoughtful about how we use it.

Absolutely. And it's all about mitigating the threat. They were a step ahead at mitigating that and making sure that they covered their tracks, so to speak, to make sure our sources and methods weren't uncovered.

Exactly. Another story would go back to the shoot done of Yamamoto. It doesn't pertain to women, so I didn't mention it here. But again, we had broken into the Japanese naval messages. We knew exactly when and where Yamamoto would be flying, and we had to come up with a cover story to make it look like, Oh, we just stumbled across his flight, and not say, Hey, they must have known he was here and they must be reading our messages. So, yeah, we always have to take that into consideration, the risk assessment of acting on the information that we have. What damage can it do to our sources and methods?

And that's why we're so closehold with our sources and methods. And it seems like a lot of the women who came in had liberal arts degrees. It's so interesting to hear that, and they become mathematicians and code makers and code breakers.

Not all of them. I mean, Elizabeth was one, but I could name a dozen others that were either science or math or physics majors. Okay.

I think what they have in common, though, is that they really like problems, solving problems that help keep people safe. I think it's fantastic that people with liberal arts degrees can be successful in this space because there's rarely a problem that we work that is only done by an individual. It takes this team, and it takes a lot of people with these different disciplines. I welcome the idea of having that diversity of thought and experience on that team to be making it more possible to break the codes that maybe otherwise we wouldn't have a shot at. Absolutely.

That's what makes an essay so unique.

And that's the thing I don't think a lot of people realize. When they think of an essay, they think of math, they think of stem. I was a history major in college. I had that same viewpoint when I applied. I was like, I probably won't get in. Lo and behold, here I am. And I think that's just a testament to the quality of mentorship here at the agency and the education opportunities available to us.

I think so. I think what we've done a really great job of as an agency is really cultivating community of inclusion and diversified thought and experience As a woman, I've really seen that evolve over the last couple of decades. We have communities and societies now aimed at sharing knowledge, building tradecraft for women, not just in STEM, but across the agency's community and I see a lot more women now in senior leadership positions, leading the technical efforts here in ways that maybe hadn't always occurred in the past. I think that's fantastic.

We've heard about some of the skills and expertise that go into the role we've heard about, Elizabeth Friedmann and Doddie Bloom. Could you give us an example of maybe somebody who worked here a little bit more recently?

Well, there is Deborah Pullen-Plunket, and she is from Towson University in Natural Sciences. She joined the agency in the '80s and came in through the internship program. On her very first rotation, she was in a target area and realized that the call signs of this country were using the French spellings of animal names, and no one had realized that before. She was off to a brilliant start. At the end of her rotations, she decided to move into the Soviet area. That was, of course, the big country at the time. Then In 1999, and she's decided to move on into the leadership field, and there was a problem known as Y2K, which some of us old folks remember, and it was a very valid concern that when we rolled into the new millennium and the year 2000, you couldn't just use two zeros to indicate the year the computers would freak out and collapse. She was sent to President Clinton's committee to mitigate this Y2K issue, and that brought her to the attention of the White House. She served under two administrations at the National Security Council, becoming the director there. When Deborah came back to the National Security Agency, she was eventually named as the Director of what was then Information Assurance Directorate, and that is today's cybersecurity.

In that position, she was able to create or guide the policies that would be used until today for how we are protecting US communications and computer systems and networks.

Jen, I love that you're sharing the story about Deb because at the time, she was one of the few women to have a top leadership position at the agency and really setting that bar of achievement for women and leading the field for us so that we can have more people coming and rising up into these leadership positions.

She was not only the first woman at that position, she was also the first African-American in that position. She was really blazing the trail. Her final job at NSA was involved in the diversity and inclusion. She said that it wasn't a matter of just checking the box. We need to allow people to do the things that they have the skills to do.

Absolutely. We talked about cryptography, its history, how an essay uses it today. Jen, can you talk to us about where it's going? Where are we headed with that?

Well, just looking back at history, it's clear that innovative, out-of-the-box thinking. I mean, that's one of the reasons why Elizabeth Friedmann might have been so good, because she was not coming at it from a mathematical point of view. She was looking at it from a different point of view and might be able to see things that others didn't see. And innovation plays a large role. One of the things that I try to teach the young people that come through the museum is that crypt analysis is a team effort, and they don't have to struggle alone because somebody might have an insight that you don't have or be able to supply that missing piece to the puzzle. So it's definitely a team effort, and we all work together. If I could bring up yet another woman, Hilda Faust-Matthews. In the 1970s, she was looking at computer networking, and she realized that, yes, we need to protect the computers, but we need to protect the network as well. And then she proposed to the director, maybe other target countries are not realizing this, and maybe we can exploit their networks. So that innovative thinking is something that we really need and need to continue on into the future.

Again, finding ways to protect our communications and exploit enemy communications.

Thank you so much for that, Jen. Amy, did you want to chime in?

Yeah, I can think of several things that will impact our future and the way we go about making and breaking codes. I think the first thing I want to mention is our partnerships. We are successful as NESA as leading the intelligence community for code-breaking, but we don't do it alone. We work with a variety of other government agencies and partners to be successful here, and I believe that will only continue and be more and more important In the digital age that we have here, there's so much data now, and when we think about what do we do with all of that data, this is where things like machine learning and artificial intelligence are going to be even more and more valuable and important to us as we move forward. We have a lot of opportunity there to take advantage of that tradecraft, that computing, to be effective at figuring out what types of information do we need to look at to be able to protect the security of our country. And then there's the disciplines that are evolving and going along with that evolution of technology. And so data science and data analytics, these weren't really terms and skill sets that were well defined when I started at the agency.

But now they are very much high in demand for us because we believe that's the science that combined with mathematics, computer science, and engineering, can can really help us shape and move through this vast amount of information that we have today.

Amy, you mentioned those partnerships. I know General Hawk is really encouraging an essay to move into the realm of partnerships with academia, the private sector. Can you talk a little bit about how we're navigating those waters?

We are. We are continuing to build and mature relationships with universities across the country and support curriculum for highly technical careers and make sure that the next generation of crypt analysts and cryptologists that we're bringing into the agency are best positioned for success here.

I think that also is a way to point out that cryptology and technology have always pushed each other in their development, whether it's the need for secure communications, pushing the development of secure phones and easy processing. We've pushed the development of computers or the other way around when technology has improved and cryptographies had to keep up, for example, with the invention of the radio, and now we're having to secure radio communications. And so the two really are pushing each other to better themselves. And we're looking into that, into the future, into other realms of where technology and cryptography can work hand in hand.

I was going to say it works hand in hand. You mentioned AI, Amy. How is AI playing a role in crypt analysis?

I think what AI offers us is the opportunity to identify the key problems that we really need to be focusing on in a wide set of information. So it allows us to hone in on the areas that really need the deepest technical attention up front and helps us eliminate the things that are going to be less useful or less relevant to the national security and foreign intelligence information that we're seeking.

So is there a push to train more crypt analysts on AI?

Absolutely. We do a lot of work, again, with the academic institutions, but we also do a substantial amount of training within the agency. So Jen mentioned that coming in as an intern, we hire a lot of individuals into what we call development programs. And these are three-year rotational programs where you really get your master's degree in an NSA discipline. And during these programs, you receive a lot of training about our internal tradecraft and approaches. And we use that training to then help folks be successful on problems that we have. These are real-world problems of national security importance. And it is the training that augments the academic institutions, but you can't really get it anywhere else. And so it's a really rewarding experience. I myself started the agency in one of these development programs, and it was a very important experience for me to gain knowledge and then apply it in the real spaces.

Yeah, I love hearing that because it's a rapidly changing environment. Technology is advancing in ways that we couldn't even imagine. You always hear leadership talking about attracting top talent and partnering with universities. But what you don't really hear about, not really here, even in the private sector, you don't really hear about places investing in their employees once they're there. So to see these educational opportunities, these internships, these development programs, it's It's a breath of fresh air. Now, over the course of the podcast, we spent some time now talking about the real pioneers here at the NESA. But I wanted to pivot. I wanted to give you both some time to talk about some of the challenges that you might have faced here at the agency and some of the rewards that you've had?

Well, rewards come to mind easier. I've had the opportunity. I've been here for a long time now, and I've had the opportunity to try several different things within the agency. I wasn't just put in one spot told, This is it for the rest of your career. There's so much to do here at the agency. Many of the women that I've talked about actually started on one side of the house and flipped over to do the other side. They've gone from protecting systems to breaking into enemy systems or vice versa. Or moved on into leadership. I have found in my experience here that that has been an opportunity for me to always progress and move on into fields that looked intriguing or something that I've grown to love, which is why I've been at the museum for so long. I found my place.

If you don't mind me asking, how did you get your start at the museum? I feel like that's a big jump to go from this closed world of classified information to going to that public-facing role.

I have a degree in broadcasting from Michigan State University, and I actually started here in the TV center. Oh, wow. Then I moved over into what was then the NSA library system, back when we actually had books on shelves. That is where I learned to do real research. But I also I'm a very outgoing person. When the agency started a museum, I had the opportunity to do one of the diversification tours there, loved it. When a position opened up, I was able to go over and basically created the position of education coordinator director at the museum. As I say, I've been there for 25 years because it is something I have loved deep in my heart.

You can tell you love it. So inspiring.

But I am so amazed at the people that have gone on to careers in the mission, doing what I consider to be very difficult work. Here you are, the chief of crypt analysis. That blows my mind.

You started in the development program?

I did. Started as a mathematician, I have no idea what to expect. When we talk about challenges, I was a little intimidated by the level of complexity of the work, the amount of work, the amount of diversity of problems. I really felt like I didn't know what my voice would be necessarily in that space. And so I really cannot thank the mentors in my life enough for helping me find that voice and being able to articulate how I can contribute and take on new leadership positions over time. That guidance has been so important to me just as a sounding board, as advice and encouragement to step a little bit out of my comfort zone from time to time, stretch myself and see how I can succeed in that role. So I came here actually because of 9/11. There was a career fair early on and I had applied and I was in graduate school. And after 9/11, when I was offered a position here, I thought, I got to come here, right? Because it was terrifying and something that we obviously don't want to ever happen again. And so you can use math to help keep people safe?

Yes. Like, sign me up, right? And so that was really what landed me here. And it's been so rewarding. You asked about rewards. And I think Jen is spot on the fact that we can move around within the agency. And and build our skills, work in different positions, work in both the cyber security and the foreign intelligence aspects of our mission. That's amazing that you can, over time, you can have all sorts of different experiences, work with different people. And that's the second biggest reward is the talent that we have here and the working with people that are just amazing. I'm so grateful for that, learning from them and all, honestly, of the community that we have here. And that's just been truly beneficial. And I've made some of the best friends here, honestly. And so it's really that community spirit that I think helps the agency thrive in our mission.

Absolutely. Jen, Amy, any parting thoughts?

I just want to say that the history of cryptography is important to the work that is being done today. We don't want to make the mistakes that may have been made. We want to build on what we've done in the past and continue to move forward. I think that the women and the other folks that have been involved in past cryptography allow us to stand on their shoulders and move forward.

Yeah, I just want to say thanks. I really am so grateful that we are able to highlight those who's these wonderful and supremely talented women in our history and highlight how their work has really affected the way we do our work today and is really aspirational for those of us now working in the discipline to achieve at even the future and next levels based on their accomplishments of these wonderful predecessors. And as Jen said, we didn't hear a lot about them maybe in the past. I think you said that, John, but I'm really excited now that we're taking these steps to really show that women have had just as important a role as men here in protecting us and securing our national security interests.

So refreshing to hear this. I know the women who've paved the way, the code makers and code makers will be so proud of where NSA is going, where we're headed.

If I can put a plug in for the museum.

Sure.

Absolutely. We are open to the public, and it's all free of charge Monday through 10:00 to 4:00. But what I want to say is one of the tours that we offer is a women-focused tour. We'll talk about the women that I've mentioned today, but there are so many others that we can point out in that tour that I'm sure many of you have never heard of. It's a joy for me to give that tour and show what women have done in the past.

Well, for the listeners who are interested, how can they set that tour up?

They can go to the website, nsa. Gov/museum, and click on Tours. There's a form to fill out. You can also give us a call, 301-688-5849, and we'll be happy to set that up for you.

Awesome. Jen, Amy, thank you so much for joining us. Again, this is another episode of No Such podcast. If anybody out there who is listening is interested in joining the NSA, go to nsa. Gov/careers and look up job opportunities. Again, I am Christie, and I'm joined by my co-host again. I'm John. Thank you guys so much for joining us.

Thanks for listening to this episode of No Such podcast from the National Security Agency. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a review and make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss our next episode. For show transcripts and other information, please visit nsa. Gov. Ca./podcast..