said that Iran wants "to be the hegemonic power in the region" and Arab states of the Persian Gulf are "pushing back against that". In December 2016, Morell suggested that the interference of Russia in the 2016 United States presidential election was "the political equivalent of 9/11". He added that President Obama should retaliate imminently with harsh sanctions, in spite of president-elect Donald Trump's doubts about the allegations of Russian influence. In March 2017, Morell said: "On the question of the Trump campaign conspiring with the Russians here, there is smoke, but there is no fire at all. There's no little campfire, there's no little candle, there's no spark. And there's a lot of people looking for it." In April 2019, Morell, along with Stanford professor Amy Zegart, wrote a piece in Foreign Affairs titled "Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: Why the Intelligence Community Must Adapt or Fail". In the article, Morell and Zegart argue that the intelligence community is falling further behind in the technology race, a development that poses a significant risk to the country. The authors say that this lag has already caused a significant intelligence breakdown, the failure of the community to see in a timely manner Russia's weaponization of social media during the 2016 presidential election. Advisory groups Since retiring from CIA in 2013, Morell has served on a number of boards or advisory groups related to national security. He currently serves on the board of the Atlantic Council, a Washington, D.C. think tank on international affairs. He serves on the advisory boards of the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund, the American Media Abroad group, and the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics. Morell also serves on the board of CyberDome. He served on the Advisory Board of the Committee to Investigate Russia, a group organized by Hollywood director Rob Reiner and The Atlantic senior editor David Frum. Teaching Since retiring from the CIA, Morell has also spent time teaching and mentoring at a variety of colleges and universities. He is currently a distinguished visiting professor at the Michael V. Hayden Center at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, where he teaches classes on intelligence and moderates on-the-record conversations on intelligence, including a March 2019 event on Congress and the Intelligence Community, titled The Hill Has Eyes: Congressional Oversight of Intelligence. He was later named Distinguished Senior