Jack Barsky is a former KGB deep-cover agent who became a successful corporate executive in America. Born in East Germany, he was recruited by the KGB during college and deployed to the United States in 1978 under a false identity. After ten years of service, he quit the KGB out of love for his daughter. He later cooperated fully with the FBI and went on to a career in corporate IT leadership. His story was featured on 60 Minutes, and he appeared as an extra on The Americans.
Host: Richard Lowe | Guest: Jack Barsky
Summary
Richard Lowe interviews Jack Barsky, a former KGB deep-cover agent who became a successful corporate executive in America. Their conversation covers espionage, leadership, and the art of reinvention.
Barsky was raised in East Germany and recruited by the KGB during his junior year of college. His exceptional talent for speaking other languages without an accent led the KGB to deploy him to the United States in 1978 with a false Canadian passport. Three days later, he assumed the identity of a real person who had died at age 11. After five years of training and ten years of service as a deep-cover agent, he quit the KGB out of love for his young daughter, faking an HIV/AIDS diagnosis to make his exit believable.
His intelligence background proved invaluable in corporate life. He describes being able to assess most strangers within five minutes for trustworthiness and competence, a survival skill from his agent days. His first major corporate role was crisis management at United Healthcare, where he walked in, made immediate decisions, improved the team, installed his successor, and completed the mission within six to seven months.
On leadership, Barsky’s primary advice is to know yourself: understand who you are, accept your weaknesses, and use your strengths. He emphasizes that engineers and technical talent work for love and recognition. If they respect you for understanding what they do, they will go through fire for you. He identifies trust as the most crucial element in espionage and in any leadership role, but notes that love is even more powerful.
Barsky points to the HBO series Chernobyl as a leadership case study. If you lead with an iron hand from the top, people will not tell you the truth. That dynamic destroyed a nuclear reactor and continues to damage organizations today.
Today Barsky is completely legal, having cooperated fully with the FBI. He describes himself as probably more patriotic than many people born in this country. He also brings his unique background to current geopolitical discussions, particularly regarding Russia and Ukraine.
Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.