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In-Person
Seminar

Russian Intelligence and New Generation Warfare: Russia's New Threats and the Challenge for Democracies

RSVP Required Harvard Faculty, Fellows, Staff, and Students

Join the Intelligence Project for a seminar with former Senior CIA Operations Officer Sean Wiswesser on Russian intelligence. Drawing on three decades of experience and his best-selling book Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War, Wissesser will provide insight on how Russia's intelligence services are using hybrid war and the war in Ukraine to reshape the intelligence battle between Russia and the West. This session is open to Harvard ID holders. Registration is required.

RSVP
Date: Time: -
Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War

Join the Intelligence Project on Wednesday, December 2nd, to hear about Russian intelligence and the changing nature of warfare, and how this creates new threats and challenges for democracies. Sean Wiswesser, a former CIA Senior Operations Officer and Chief of Station, will share experience from his three decades in the U.S. intelligence community and draw on his new book with Naval Institute Press (2026): Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin's Secret War. This discussion will focus on how the Russian intelligence services are using hybrid war and the war in Ukraine to rewrite the high-stakes intelligence battle between Russia and the West.

Location: R-G-21 NEUSTADT, Rubenstein Building

This session is open to Harvard ID holders. Registration is required.

About the Speaker

Sean Wiswesser has thirty years of experience working as a national security professional with intelligence, foreign service, and defense organizations. As a senior operations officer with the CIA, he served on multiple overseas tours and numerous temporary-duty deployments, including in conflict zones and denied areas. He was a Chief of Station and had multiple joint-duty assignments with intelligence community partners.

Sean currently consults for the Department of Defense and a number of companies, working on various programs, including weapons testing, intelligence support, and training.

Sean was a Morehead Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a bachelor's degree in History and Russian & Slavic linguistics. He was awarded a Master of Strategic Studies in 2023 from the Air War College, where he received the Russia Integrated Deterrence Award.

Sean’s book Tradecraft, Tactics, and Dirty Tricks: Russian Intelligence and Putin’s Secret War, was released with Naval Institute Press in April 2026. Sean has published chapters in collaborative volumes with Army War College Press and Taylor and Francis (UK), as well as articles in the Journal of Small Wars and other publications.

He has a column Tomorrow’s Affairs in the UK and a previous column, Kremlin Files, with the DC-based Cipher Brief. 

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