Daniel Zygiel-Clague (’23): Intelligence Analysis for Global Security

“My IWP experience provided a lot of insight into how things work and how to get a job in the national security space. But – importantly – it also taught us how to ask and address moral questions that may come up during this work.”
– Daniel Zygiel-Clague (’23)

Daniel Zygiel-Clague (’23) came to IWP with a goal in mind: to fight against the international influence of authoritarian regimes that spread misinformation and terror. Thanks to his studies at IWP, he has been achieving this goal, both in his intelligence work with Pinkerton and his volunteer work exposing and documenting the activities of bad actors.

In this interview, he describes how he developed a passion for international affairs and human rights, how lessons learned from IWP impact his current work, and what inspired his nonprofit startup, Linea Rubra.

Inspiration to Work in Counter-Extremism

Daniel grew up in Massachusetts, where he developed a keen interest in international affairs, human rights, and cultural interaction, as well as a desire to serve, inspired by the people around him.

His grandfather on his father’s side developed gyroscope navigation systems for the Apollo program at MIT. On his mother’s side, his grandmother was a nurse, and his grandfather was a detective who investigated the Winter Hill Gang.

His own parents continued this tradition of service. His father works with the unhoused and used to work with heavily traumatized kids, and his mother is a civil rights lawyer who often supports survivors of domestic abuse or police brutality.

Daniel said, “I’m a firm believer in accountability, truth, and the importance of standing up for those without a voice.”

He became interested in countering extremism and authoritarian regimes after witnessing  neo-Nazi imagery and ideologies resurfacing in dark places around the web, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.

Daniel went on to study political science and Russian Studies at the College of the Holy Cross, where he also took courses on the U.S. Constitution, international resistance to authoritarianism, occult beliefs and their influence on various political movements, and Russian culture and history. He studied abroad in Moscow and spent a semester in Washington, D.C., during which time he wrote a thesis on internal Kremlin politics and the major figures influencing Putin’s foreign policy.

Graduate Studies at IWP

With Daniel’s focused interests, it wasn’t hard for him to identify IWP as a graduate school that could help him achieve his career goals.

“I knew I wanted to study at IWP after attending an event on disinformation campaigns and speaking to some current students,” said Daniel. “As a school of practitioner scholars, I felt IWP represented a unique opportunity to get more than just a degree on paper, but a real education in national security. I was correct.”

At IWP, Daniel particularly enjoyed Prof. John Sano’s courses on human intelligence and covert action. The course most helpful to his work was Dr. Christopher C. Harmon’s course on terrorist organizations and propaganda campaigns.

Daniel remembers one exercise where Dr. Harmon encouraged students to examine their personal biases. He described some art and music by the Palestinian Liberation Front and by the Irish Republican Army. The class then discussed whether each of these groups is a terrorist organization – an organization targeting civilians to gain a political goal.

Daniel recalls, “This exercise helped me consider the question of defining a terrorist organization less from a political standpoint and more from a moral and analytical standpoint. When do the actions of a group make it transition from an activist organization to a terrorist organization? It is an interesting and important question. In the modern day, the label of terrorism is applied to organizations that are not terrorists, and there are other groups organized to conduct terrorism that escape that label. This question has helped inform my study and research.”

In addition to building his knowledge in national security topics, IWP helped Daniel in his career progression.

“After I had my IWP degree, a lot of doors opened for me that had not been opened before,” he said. “I was almost immediately able to get a job with a federal contractor.”

Intelligence for Cybersecurity

Daniel now works as a full-time intelligence professional for Pinkerton, where he collects and analyzes open-source climate and security intelligence globally to incorporate into risk assessments for a cybersecurity company.

“We conduct the whole intelligence cycle on behalf of this company and work around the clock to ensure that both its physical and digital assets are protected globally,” said Daniel.

In addition to keeping this company secure from cyber threats, Daniel and his team coordinate protection for personnel in the company, at home and when they are on travel – especially in high-threat areas.

“I have my finger on the pulse of developing stories around the world,” said Daniel.

Reflecting on how his IWP education has impacted his work, Daniel said, “I am much more aware of best practices for organizations dealing with insider threats, counterintelligence risk, and managing human assets.”

Nonprofit Intelligence Work

In his free time, Daniel uses knowledge gained in his education to make the world a better place.

He started out by volunteering for the Khthon project, a global nonprofit dedicated to using open-source intelligence, satellite imagery, and human sources on the ground to investigate alleged war crimes, atrocities, and human rights abuses all over the world.

There, Daniel led the transnational issues team, which he organized and founded to focus on atrocities that may cross borders or involve multiple groups of interests at once.

Today, while he continues to do some security support for Khthon, Daniel has transitioned most of his volunteer time to a startup project called Linea Rubra (Red Line). This organization conducts investigations into international or decentralized extremist organizations and their connections with regimes that are conducting bad activities. For instance, they are looking at digital threat actors in the U.S. and their connections to groups in Russia.

The goal is to identify these connections and their sources of funding and report on them in a way that gives international law enforcement the ability to prosecute them more quickly.

Making the World a Better Place

In all of his endeavors, Daniel strives to have an impact in the most effective way possible. “When I take on any sort of personal or professional endeavor, I want it to be something I can look back on in ten years and understand how I have made a positive difference.”

Daniel feels that his biggest impact has been in protecting the vulnerable. He said, “At almost every organization where I have worked, I have taken the time to learn their policy on managing intelligence and working with at-risk groups. If it seemed to me their current methods had a blind spot or weak point, I have sought to innovate these methods to better protect those who were vulnerable. IWP gave me the knowledge and confidence to succeed at this.”

Because most of his work involves protecting assets and shining a light on bad actors, he sometimes sees the results of his work: “When we make people who are doing very bad things angry, I know we are doing something right!”

Reflections on Morality and the Purpose of Work

Daniel has found that his IWP education prepared him for his professional life not only with concrete skills but with a preparedness to ask and wrestle with the moral questions that arise during this work.

“In the last several decades, there has been a deemphasis on the study of the humanities,” observed Daniel. “While it is good to have highly skilled STEM experts, many universities did not create the room to ask moral questions. IWP is the sort of institution that empowers students to ask these critical questions of their own work.”

Daniel’s studies of moral philosophy at IWP have led him to begin a novel looking at this topic through a fictional lens. The story will explore what it is like for practitioners on many sides of an issue to examine their moral stance with their work and try to find the right path within the grey zone of international conflict and backdoor bureaucracy.

Daniel’s deep thinking on topics like morality and the purpose of work has also given him a useful perspective when looking to the future of work in the national security field, despite the current climate of uncertainty. “In the second half of the 20th century, many entered federal service because they admired the ‘greatest generation’ who served in WWII or the OSS. Those who did serve in the OSS were a part of something wildly uncharted and had to break new ground. Today, many people may enter national security work with a specific idea of what they want to be doing and then find themselves somewhere else. The lesson to take is that we must be unafraid to break new ground and forge our own path, as the annals of history are lined by such unexpected pioneers, and by those who were later inspired by their work.”