Matthew Berrett

Biography

Matt Berrett became a cofounder of Utah State University’s Center for Anticipatory Intelligence (CAI) in 2018 after retiring from the Central Intelligence Agency as an Assistant Director. From 2017-26, he was Director of Analytics for Space Dynamics Lab while also helping to manage CAI and design, teach some of its courses. His leadership roles in intelligence beyond Assistant Director included heading three analytic offices and serving as Director of the President’s Daily Brief, the premier, multiagency enterprise that informs US presidents and their top national-security officials on key global developments. Mr. Berrett has been invited to speak at a range of US universities and Oxford and has been a repeat guest expert on the Middle East for ABC News. In November 2025 he published, in and at the request of The Cipher Brief, a piece on former Vice President Dick Cheney, with whom he met daily in 2002-03 as Cheney’s intelligence briefer. He also once made a US President rise out of his chair in anger in response to unwelcome (but accurate) analysis. A methodology he created with CAI cofounder and Director, Professor Jeannie Johnson, has been taught to officials across several USG agencies and departments as well as within the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense. CIA duties took Mr. Berrett to nearly 30 countries, mostly on temporary assignments, but he also lived in the Near East for two years and another two in East Asia.