Kent's Imperative

Weather intelligence – snowfall edition

2011-01-27T15:52:00.002Z

Reaction to snowfall in the greater DC metropolitan area has always been legendarily poor, like many other matters related to transportation investments, traffic conditions, and driving behaviors. Some insightful commentators have linked these persistent problems to clashing cultural expectations in a city where most hail from other parts, a hypothesis that seems particularly consistent when considering drivers in winter conditions. The mix of general inexperience clashing with a smaller number of more aggressive “snow ego” drivers whose assumptions based on road conditions in harsher but less congested climes rapidly prove seriously flawed.

However, the effects of recent weather events on regional movement have been particularly amplified by poor timing – and arguably worse decisionmaking – regarding government operating status. This key announcement also drives many of the private sector closures in the area, due not least to the predominance of government contracting activities in the local economy. The latter also tends to display a noticeable lag effect – accepting closure announcements, but typically also facing commitments to meetings and other deliverable deadlines that force many individuals to push boundaries of transit windows based on clock schedules rather than weather conditions.

The question for many students of the art and science of intelligence then becomes whether the clearly suboptimal to outright catastrophic consequences of such decisions is influenced by the decisonmakers information environment, and in what fashion do any such influences play out. In short, the selection of appropriate operating status changes - open / unscheduled leave, early release or delayed start, or closure – is in many ways a classic warning problem. Like many intelligence issues, however, the information and analysis provided to the decisionmaker regarding “threat” action is only one aspect of the decision problem. The forecast of an event hostile to friendly assets must be weighed against both operational information, operational objectives, and environmental factors. These are potentially very costly decisions in either direction – cost if closure or delay is unwarranted, and time / morale / safety if individuals are forced into travel during dangerous weather conditions. While the most prominent of these decisions during any weather event is that made by the Office of Personnel Management, the challenge is replicated hundreds of times in school districts, community centers, and smaller businesses. In fact, OPM is so influential precisely because of the number of other decisionmakers – both organizational and individual – who follow the “official” lead, out of deliberate reaction to signaling, litigation considerations, or herd effects.

It is generally far easier to reconstruct the substantive content and timeline of information available to the decisionmaker regarding weather events than other types of intelligence challenges, which make these cases more amenable to further study. Further, at least in the context of Washington DC area forecasts, weather reporting is also often communicated with explicit analytic confidence, and updates framed in terms of changes from last forecast. However, the political issues involved in after-action review of any specific decision may greatly complicate the discovery of what specific information, or even what general information sources, were actually consulted by a decisionmaker prior to operating status determination. Moreso the challenge of understand what considerations drove these decisions in the calculus of cost and face, although we see hints in public statements.

While the specifics of yesterday’s incident might indeed make for a good case study, given the intense dislocation and exceptional cost it is more likely that after action review may occur before a Congressional committee rather than a more academic forum. And to give Dr. Agrell his due, while not every weather event and associated decision requirement is an intelligence event, the impact of these events in the National Capital Region certainly seems to cross that threshold, particularly for those carrying homeland security “all hazard” accounts – and likely also for adversaries seeking to advance denial and deception or other operational actions which count on increased friction within friendly intelligence machinery. If nothing else, however, these remain useful examples for consideration in the abstract of intelligence theory.

Once and future intelligence challenges: labor

2008-10-15T22:24:00.000Z

As we contemplate the prospect of a sustained global downturn – be it recession or even depression – there are a number of issues which will raise their ugly heads in an environment where the forward press of globalization may no longer obscure underlying tensions of instability. These are by no means new issues – although they will play out in new ways among the changed technologies and altered relationships of this new century. In the best tradition of unevenly distributed futures, many are already here with us, although they often go unremarked or unrecognized.

Among the issues that may re-emerge as profoundly important to senior decisionmakers – be they in Cabinets or boardrooms – is the age old question of control between those that work within the enterprise, and those that manage the industry and its capital. The end of history was thought to have changed this with the rise of the creative class, the global middle class, the universal investor class… or whichever other descriptor one would apply to a post-Marxist analytic framework that recognizes the fundamental irrelevancy of old rhetoric in an age of unprecedented opportunity. However, the old lies still seem to have their appeal, as one might now witness in the offshore financial centers of the world, or the major infotech hubs of the emerging markets as Marxists and Maoists and other charlatans of all stripes begin to gain ground.

Even the United States itself is not immune from the renewed tensions between the workers and the structure which provides them their employment. It would have been hard if not impossible to predict, even a few short years ago, that the question of whether or not to eliminate the secret ballot for unionization votes could ever be taken seriously in a free and democratic society. And that such a question is now a linchpin of a Presidential election – albeit one of many, and a poorly understood linchpin at that, even among the chattering salons who routinely comment on such matters – is in its own way almost as baffling.

Unfortunately, this also a subject which has been taboo for generations, at least so far as the intelligence field has been concerned. In the domestic context, from the perspective of national intelligence, this is certainly proper. From the perspective of law enforcement and homeland security agencies that must grappling with the kind of convulsive protest and sustained low level kinetic conflict that marks the most severe of union difficulties (to say nothing of their radical anti-globalization counterparts further to the left along that single issue spectrum), this is perhaps something that might require revisiting in an atmosphere of informed debate. (Regrettably, we fear that such issues may be too rapidly politicized, particularly given the current tenor of the times, for an objective and cool headed debate to flourish before a major crisis might erupt). From the perspective of the corporate entity, it is certainly a topic that ought never have been forgotten – but history seems very long when one’s future is measured in quarterly earnings reports. We note anecdotally that the unions themselves have certainly not forgotten these lessons, as one of the best intel gigs we have ever been aware of was once bankrolled by a particular union’s leadership in order to attract the best and the brightest it might find for its own research and analysis.

For those that have forgotten, a small dose of history to refresh the institutional memory, this time drawn from the writings of the International Labour Office in 1922 (itself certainly no bastion of the bias of industrialists’ privilege): “The attention of the Industrial Intelligence Officer during the last 18 months has been occupied almost entirely with the widespread unrest in the labour.” So too may we as a profession find demands on our collective attention in the coming months of this newly uncertain time, in support of a wide range of clients.

Be it the labor violence of the developing world, the politically convenient rhetoric of entitlement, or the industry destroying burdens of legacy pension obligations, labor issues are a once and future intelligence challenge.

Actual environmental intelligence in history and practice

2008-10-13T11:11:00.000Z

Given the escalating emphasis on various forms of weather intelligence that continue to occupy parts of the intelligence community, and the robust debates over the proper role intelligence should play in tracking environmental issues, we think it appropriate to remind those now entering the field of the actual rigors of “doing intelligence” as an activity concerned with matters in the real world itself.

While we remain skeptical regarding the utility of applying modern intelligence resources against the account, particularly in light of far greater and more immediate challenges within the transnational issue space, we have noted with interest new experiments that may identify future value for other long range analysis tasks.

However, we remain convinced that a great deal of interest among the younger analysts we interact with has much to do with the comparatively different lifestyles enjoyed by professionals that current address weather intelligence versus those on more traditional accounts. While serving in the Long War, a young entrant into the field has nothing but austerity and violence to look forward to. Those entering the field with the intent of pursuing environmental issues seem to think they will enjoy the European jet set lifestyle in Rio, Davos, Rome, Bali, and the other classic venues of the green political scene. We seriously doubt that this will be the case for a good many of the junior staffers, who are inevitably destined to be buried in the bowels of major agencies.

A more accurate picture of the life of an intelligence professional covering environmental accounts more closely resembles that of the academic’s research assistant – a particularly challenging fate for those who often lack the fundamental scientific education required to parse complex documents and reams of sensor data. We have already found supporting evidence for this proposition in the historical record. The 1978 NFAC paper we previously discussed very much represents a task typical of the field – interacting with contractor subject matter expert specialists in order to produce dense tomes of questionable value when viewed across the time scale these papers purport to address.

Yet there are a number of accounts addressing issues linked to the environment that remain of current relevance to the intelligence community, and offer the potential for a far more interesting career pathway for those inclined toward such deployments. These include examination of the illicit markets for fish and wildlife, as well as assessment of environmental damage from illicit drug cultivation and production, illegal logging, and foreign industrial activities. Like many other aspects of the intelligence profession, these are not the kinds of products that are always in high demand. But they are certainly fitting projects for an analyst’s own private war, especially if given discretionary time to pursue the kind of intel one would wish to do, vice that which one must immediately answer for.

These intelligence activities - particularly involving forestry, fisheries, and wildlife – nonetheless have a long and often overlooked history of their own, albeit one outside of the traditional boundaries of the IC. Early environmental intelligence was for the most part less concerned with potential damage from human action as much as the effective exploitation of natural resources, and understanding the economic aspects of industries in these areas.

Among the earliest environmental intelligence identified in Canada involved supporting settlement efforts on the frontier as early as 1888, and registration of land use for the government’s records. A contemporaneous text reports that “The office at Winnipeg of the Chief Intelligence Officer, Mr. J. H. Metcalfe, has proved of material assistance in protecting and advancing the interests of newly arrived immigrants, directing them to localities where they may find suitable homesteads, or, if not at once prepared to take up lands, to employers who require their services. The scope of the information in this office accessible to persons intending to make homestead entry will, in a short time, be very largely extended. It is proposed to keep there an accurate record of the position of every quarter section in Manitoba and the North West, so that with the least possible labor and delay, intending settlers may be advised upon arrival at Winnipeg where suitable homesteads may be secured.”

In Newfoundland environmental intelligence supported commercial fisheries, offering at least as early as 1892 a “Bait Intelligence Service”, which was “established for the purpose of informing the captains of vessels engaged in the Bunk Fishery, on touching at any port, where bait was to be obtained, thus saving much time which would otherwise have been spent in searching for bait.”

Intelligence was likewise concerned with the fishing fleets which came to call in such ports. In 1914, it was reported that the existing Fisheries Intelligence Service would be extended to the Pacific coast of the United States. “The Bureau has for many years maintained at Boston and Gloucester, Mass., the two principal fishing ports on the northern Atlantic coast, a service for collecting and diffusing information regarding the extent and condition of the vessel fisheries centering there. In compliance with the recommendations of the Bureau, Congress has authorized a similar service for Seattle, the principal fishing port on the Pacific seaboard, by providing for a local agent. Steps hate been taken to institute this service, but difficulty in securing a properly qualified man has delayed the inauguration of the work.”

By 1917, the Fisheries Intelligence Service was extended to Alaska. However, its mission had changed to a fundamentally commercial intelligence mission, with contemporaneous reporting stating “The Bureau has continued to carry out the wishes of the Legislature of Alaska, as set forth in a memorial asking that the Bureau of Fisheries, in conjunction with the Washington- Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, arrange to have the prices of fresh fish at Seattle and Ketchikan bulletined every day at the cable office of every town on the Alaska coast where fishing vessels call for the purpose of shipping fish southward and to have once a week the prices of salt fish of the varieties caught in Alaska waters bulletined at the cable offices of the Alaska coast. The War Department, which operates the Washington- Alaska Military Cable and Telegraph System, expressed its willingness to receive, transmit, and post bulletins furnished by the Bureau of Fisheries, and early in July, 1917, the service was initiated, the information thus furnished including (1) the forwarding each day, Sundays and holidays excepted, to Juneau, Petersburg, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Sitka, Valdez, Seward, Cordova, and Skagway the noon Seattle prices for fresh halibut, sablefish, and red rockfish: (2) inclusion with the Seattle quotations on Monday of each week the prices of pickled sablefish, salmon, and herring; and (3) the furnishing from Ketchikan of local information, corresponding to that furnished from Seattle, to the other Alaska towns supplied with the Seattle quotations. The purpose of this service is to keep the fishermen of this remote coast in touch with market conditions, so that they may dispose of their catches more profitably, and thereby be induced to increase the production of fish. The service has met with general favor.”

Fish-finding was likewise a key function of these early intelligence activities. Overhead collection missions were first explored following World War I, no doubt leveraging the military reconnaissance experience gained in that conflict. The experiment does not appear initially to have caught on. As reported to the Secretary of Commerce in 1922, “The daily patrols by seaplanes of the Naval Aviation Service of the menhaden fishing areas in Chesapeake Bay and along the coast between Assateague and Bodie Island Lights begun in June, 1920, were continued until October, when the Navy Department abandoned them on the ground that the experiment had fully demonstrated the commercial value of planes in this fishery. This service was very beneficial to the menhaden industry and was the first thorough test of the value of seaplanes in spotting schools of fish. Under the present unsettled conditions in the fish oil and fertilizer industries it is not to be expected that a service of this kind will be established by the fishery interests.”

However, additional experiments were conducted to leverage other, presumably less expensive assets, for similar collection tasks. “The Bureau has obtained the cooperation of the Director of Naval Communications and the Commissioner of Lighthouses whereby reports of the presence of schooling fish are transmitted daily by radio by the keepers of certain New England lightships to shore stations from which they are forwarded to the Bureau's local agent in Boston. This service was begun about November 1, 1920. Reports of schooling fish are forwarded to the Bureau's local agents in Gloucester, Mass., and Portland, Me., by the Boston agent. Lightkeepers have reported the presence of such fish as mackerel, menhaden, and pollock. The subject has not received a sufficient trial to determine its practical value to the industry or the desirability of extending it to include a number of advantageously located lighthouses.”

For those not acquainted with modern maritime industries, the search for productive fishing grounds through overhead imagery continues to this day. Such fish finding intelligence was (and remains) a key product of the commercial satellite imagery industry. Arguably, the success of the current generation of high resolution systems would not have been possible without earlier commercial revenues from these products. The recently operational Geoeye-1, for example, is a descendent of Orbimage’s earlier SeaStar service, which provided imagery products to some 300 commercial fishing clients. The mission was also inextricably linked to current environmental science, as the platform’s sensor take was also sold to NASA and supported an estimated 2200 oceanographers and other researchers.

Fisheries were not the only environmental intelligence of the period. The forestry service likewise required its own intelligence function to support its firefighting mission. A 1920 text describes the position of the intelligence officer, “His duties are to secure information in regard to the behaviour of fires and the progress of control work”. Forestry intelligence positions could also be found overseas, including a position identified in India in 1924.

The geographic scope and field conditions of the forestry service demanded a particular focus on robust communications architectures in order to convey intelligence information in a timely fashion. These architectures included semaphore, code, and telegraph signals. One 1920 author also proposed the use of carrier pigeons, citing their extensively employment in military and naval operations.

The large areas of interest and limited staffing of environmental intelligence also demanded the recruitment of volunteers to augment official efforts. From 1919 to 1921, fish and game enforcement reported that “It has become possible to build up a very considerable volunteer
intelligence service which is steadily extending over the country, and proving of the very greatest value in putting a practical point to patrol work by focusing attention upon centers of violation. In a territory so comprehensive as southern California, and one whose fishing waters and game-fields are so widely separated, something of this sort is an essential preliminary to effective accomplishment.” However, legal issues apparently prevented the more effective employment of the volunteers in a direct role, proving that even in the earliest days of public-private partnerships, no good effort was safe from meddling by ambitious lawyers. “There was a time when deserving volunteers, desirous of aiding directly the enforcement of fish and game conservation laws, could be specially deputized; but all such unsalaried help has now become impossible owing to the Employers' Liability acts which are construed as placing a fair charge against the conservation funds for any injury that might befall even an unsalaried officer, if operating under authority conferred by this Commission. Since no man can waive the rights of enlisted, so far as possible, as informants and cooperators in such other lines as were possible…”

Like many aspects of the intelligence profession over the years, a number of these historical roles are simply no longer the domain of the intelligence community, but rather have been normalized within the civil agencies and privatized in the commercial world. While they may no longer carry the explicit titles of our profession, and no doubt have been changed as significantly by the introduction of new technologies and new organizational forms as any other activity, the core foundations of intelligence tasks no doubt remain present. For this reason, many of these modern functions may merit closer study, with a particular focus on areas of parallel evolution which may offer benefit to the intelligence community as a whole. These functions may also offer potential gainful employment to those students wishing to pursue the environmental account for its own sake.

Initial operational capability, GeoEye-1

2008-10-10T02:24:00.004Z

Congratulations to the GeoEye team for a successful flight and successful first light. We hope their bird will fly for years to come, and peer deep into the shadow which surrounds our enemies.

We recall waiting anxiously for news of earlier payloads carried aloft for the old Orbview constellation, and the bitter shock of the failures which only contributed to the phantoms of the imaginary constellations. We are glad to see that this time around there appear to have been no mishaps.

We do find the initial target selection amusing, and we are sure that there is a backstory there somewhere waiting to be told. There is something about small, out of the way Pennsylvania colleges and the intelligence community, isn't there?

We also continue to be impressed by the rate at which spatial resolution capabilities continue to advance within privatized capabilities, which at 16 inches is certainly nothing to disregard. (By way of comparison, this is roughly the equivalent of published resolution figures for the KH-8 GAMBIT series, active in the early 1980’s).

We are pleased to note that far from arguing that commercial capabilities have nothing to offer the intelligence community, a substantial part of the mere $502 million price tag – including satellite, launch, insurance, financing and four ground stations – was paid by the National Geospatial Agency. The fact that additional funding was provided by Google – no doubt to improve the future of its Earth application series and the advertising revenue stream provided thereof – merely reinforces the fact that the commercial satellite imagery industry has certainly come a long way in the past decade. Much of this progress is due to the impact of the Long War, but equal credit is due to the fundamental changes in the way the average consumer now uses overhead imagery derived geospatial products.

Imagine what kind of constellation could have been orbiting, however, had even half of the $18 billion or so publicly reported to have been wasted on the disastrous Future Imagery Architecture instead been allocated towards a common architecture populated by Space Imaging, Orbimage, and Earthwatch / DigitalGlobe in the late 1990’s. It is the ghosts of these constellations which might have been that will most haunt us in the coming decades, we should think.

So as the engineers, mission specialists, and managers of the GeoEye program continue their celebrations in the coming days, we hope they will also lift a glass to the the birds who didn't make it, and those that never were. We certainly shall.

Intelligence and financial crisis, historical edition

2008-10-09T20:26:00.002Z

It is our contention that troubled times demand increased investment in intelligence activities by private firms, who cannot rely upon the agencies of government or the media to adequately address their interests. This is by no means a new phenomenon – rather, it is a rediscovery of much older principles that were in common practice prior to the 20th century.

The debate over intelligence failures in the current financial crisis thus continues to attract our attention. There are those serving, or having served, in a variety of institutions which claim that intelligence may have indeed staved off the worst of the impact to a specific firm or another. We shall see what to make of these claims once the business schools begin to compile their histories.

It is clear, however, that good intelligence served financial institutions well in earlier times. We find quite early reference to this in a text on the Theory and Practice of Joint-stock Banking, dated from 1836.

“The system of mutual espionage and rivalry which exists amongst joint-stock banks is another source of security to the public. That a system of espionage exists upon every joint-stock bank, at least in Scotland. by their sister banks, who exchange notes and checks with them, must be admitted, after what took place with regard to a joint-stock bank establishment in the west of Scotland. The agents of the joint-stock banks, both in London and Edinburgh, being in constant communication with each other, have early intimation of any departure, by any joint-stock bank, from the true and safe principles of banking. In fact, so long as a joint-stock bank can maintain its credit and good opinion with its sister banks, the public are tolerably safe; and so satisfied are the public in Scotland of this circumstance, that no run took place during the severest period of the panic, in 1825, on a single Scotch bank — the public being well assured that the other banks would give (by a refusal to accept the notes and obligations at the exchange) a clear and distinct notice, that danger was to be apprehended.”

This forthright discussion of commercial espionage would not doubt send many of the current practitioners of competitive intelligence into hysterics. One must note that no distinction was made at the time between the collection of information by overt means versus that of illicit provenance. The legal status of such information, and its use, was also far less clear than in today’s environment. (We must remind our more genteel readership that the first case in law on such a matter – at least that we are aware of - for the first time conclusively draws the line between legitimately obtained information from public or private sources, versus unspecified illegitimate methods, only in 1916.)

Regardless of the means by which it might have been obtained in accordance with the standards of the day, the precedent of relying upon intelligence to avert financial crisis has long been a maxim within the financial industry. Given the perspective of time, one may look back on the recent troubles as much as a failure of institutional memory as a failure of the profession itself.

Plus ca change, edition naval

2008-10-08T19:45:00.000Z

Recent coverage of the after-effects of the Russian military occupation and what one mightt call the “de-militarization with extreme prejudice” of the Georgia naval facility at Poti has been exceptionally thorough, not least of which due to the effects of the new media and the emerging class of citizen journalists who work within this media. Via Wired’s Danger Room, we note the exceptional detail offered by Gavin Sheridan, following onto earlier reporting and video via Georgian media channels and the incomparable Armchair Admiral.

The reporting brought to mind one of the early publicly disseminated products from the Office of Naval Intelligence. The piece was itself an early OSINT product, a translation of a German commander’s comments on a naval engagement which occurred at Santiago, Cuba during the Spanish – American War in 1898. The contemporaneous open source information environment had already seen American narratives of the action published, alongside detailed order of battle and combat effects. The German account circulated shortly thereafter, during the early months of 1899. With the concurrence of ONI’s Chief Intelligence Officer, a translation of the work was reprinted in the 25th volume of the Naval Institute’s Proceedings that March, providing extensive observations that were no doubt of significant intelligence value regarding the disposition of forces and TTP which featured in the engagement.

The following excerpt captures well the flavour of the account:

“The three ships inspected had all their guns on board. The only ones that could not be found were the two 7-centimeter rapid-fire boat guns, but pivots had been provided on both sides of the stern, where these two guns were apparently intended to be installed for use against torpedo-boat attacks at night. From the slight losses which the American ships claim to have sustained, it may be judged that the training of the Spanish gun crews must have been very inadequate. This is not surprising, in view of the statement of one of the Spanish naval officers to the effect that no target practice is held in Spain in time of peace. Other circumstances also give evidence of very inefficient handling of the guns. The turrets and their guns, with the exception of the forward turret of the Almirante Oquendo, were found entirely intact. The loading apparatus for the 28-centimeter guns (Whitworth, Manchester, 1895) was of the hydraulic order, and the loading time was about two minutes. The 14-centimeter rapid-fire guns also were probably not used to their best advantage, owing to want of experience. There was evidently no lack of ammunition, for near some of the guns a number of cartridges were found, and some of the guns were still loaded, but had not been fired. To what circumstance it is due that the breech-blocks of two of the guns were found lying in the ear of the guns with their pivot bolts torn off, could not be explained. Perhaps this may also be attributed to inefficient handling of the projectiles. Only the port side of the ships was fired upon. The star-board side shows but a few holes, where shots have passed out. Where the course of projectiles could be traced, it was usually ranging from port aft to starboard forward. The destructive effect of the American projectiles is mainly due to the conflagrations caused by them. Aside from a shot through one of the turret roofs, no hits were observed in any of the armored turrets. Neither have any projectiles pierced the side armor, which shows no injuries. Only indentations are noticeable in places where projectiles have struck the armor. Projectiles of 15 centimeters and larger calibers that had hit the ship had in many instances gone out through the other side, making holes about 1 meter square, but without bursting. As the same observation has been made in the bombardments of Santiago and San Juan, it may be assumed that it is due to the uncertain functioning of the base fuse. It is not probable that the Americans used armor-piercing shell, as fragments of projectiles of different sizes found in the vicinity show that explosive shell and not nonexplosive shell were used. Projectiles which had hit smokestacks and masts had gone clear through, making only small, round or oblong shot holes. Hits of small-caliber projectiles (5.7-centimeter) could be noticed in large numbers, and this was corroborated by the statement of an American officer to the effect that they were used in great quantities. The question whether the Spanish had any intention of making use of the torpedo weapon may probably be answered in the negative. The torpedo armaments of the ships, although including a large number of tubes, were so defective that there could hardly be any chance of success as against the powerful American ships. The armaments consisted of two bow, four broadside, and two stern tubes, all above water and of antiquated design, with large cartridges, band-brakes, etc., all located above the armored deck and entirely unprotected. In a very primitive manner the tubes had been partly protected by grate bars lashed with chains. The projectiles were 35-centimeter Schwartzkopff torpedoes with large depth-regulating apparatus. No war-heads were to be found, with a single exception. According to the statement of an American petty officer, the warheads had been left at Santiago, where they were to be used in connection with the mine obstructions. It is true that this does not agree with the fact that a torpedo head exploded on board the Almirante Oquendo. It is possible, however, that the ships retained one or two war-heads to be used in case of necessity as against rams, since the broadside tubes were adapted to be turned in any direction, or perhaps it was the commander's wish to take a war-head along. The following points support the assumption that it was not the intention to make use of the torpedo weapon : a. Not one of the tubes still in existence was loaded, and all the tubes were closed. In the tubes destroyed by shots or otherwise no remnants of torpedoes were found. b. The remaining torpedoes, almost without exception, were lying in their places along the ship's side. No torpedoes were found lying back of the tubes, with the exception of the bow tubes of the Almirante Oquendo. c. There was no pressure in any of the flasks. This is shown by the fact that the flasks were entirely uninjured, although the heat had partly melted the tailpieces of the torpedoes. d. In several of the torpedoes lying on top, the protecting cap for the depth-regulating apparatus had not been taken off, while it is necessary to remove it in order to put on the war-heads. e. In a few of the torpedoes the sinking valves had been put in place, but in most of them they were still found soldered, with connecting links raised. The tubes for filling the launching cartridges were not connected and only on the Almirante Oquendo was the powder charge in readiness.”

Of course, there is little chance that an open source intelligence product of a similar nature would freely circulate today from ONI (or even OSC). ONI was somewhat unusual in this regard, and it is certain that a substantial percentage of the readership of its early products – available through the Government Printing Office – served the private sector as well, given the importance of maritime commerce and its shipping to the Republic. Consider it among the earliest public-private sector critical infrastructure protection partnerships. (We have already documented the interest from a variety of business entities in this kind of intelligence coverage, for which industry sectors had already established their own independent private intelligence functions. These shops were no doubt grateful for dissemination of related government production on matters on mutual interest.)

However, high quality direct access reporting from bloggers and privatized intelligence shops is far more readily accessible in this digital age than the laboriously copied and translated pages of one hundred and ten years ago. While there is a certain quality missing that marked the earlier accounts of professional naval officers, one must admit that raw data conveyed well carries its own sort of quality, particularly when handheld and motion imagery are available. No doubt translations of such reporting will circulate for some time to come among the various European naval forces concerned with potential future action on the Black Sea.

It is examples such as this which increasingly convince us that we are not undergoing a revolution in intelligence affairs, as some commentators might suggest, but rather the re-emergence of older intelligence forms in new contexts enabled by technological innovation.

Glimpses into agent psychology

2008-10-06T01:46:00.003Z

We have long held the opinion that the British writers of the intelligence novel have offered the best examplars to be found of the psychological experiences of agents recruited for espionage. (That is, the classic intelligence definition of the term, and not the disastrous usurpation of the designation for the law enforcement community). Among the unique insights have been the often striking similarities between the subjects and those officers responsible for handling them, something particularly more visible in certain accounts and historical case studies than others.

We speak of course of Len Deighton, whose works remain classics, and of John le Carre, whose early pieces well captured the tenor of his time (despite the increasing gap between his later fiction and the realities they allegedly represent). A more recent entrant is Charles Cumming, whose depiction of the post-Cold War British intelligence establishment from the perspective of a partially witting asset is striking in its tone, not least of which is the result of the author’s semi-biographical approach. (This has been true of most of the better intelligence fiction writers).

It takes a certain personality to write fiction of this sort. Some insights are only the result of lived experiences. We are unsurprised, then, to hear recently of Le Carre’s early intent to defect to the Soviet Union. One can easily see the life-long hints of such intentions throughout much of his work, and most notably in the characters which in fiction carried out that which the man himself never did. It also provides an underlying cause to explain the often excessive intricacies found in the novels’ plot lines, which a number of years ago caused a former Russian intelligence officer to remark in despair regarding the negative impact that such fictionalization had upon younger professionals in his service attempting their own approaches along such models, without regard for the inevitable imposition of Mr. Murphy’s Russian equivalent in the real world. After all, after spending so long considering what one does not act upon, it is only expected that the resulting planning takes a tangled and impractical shape.

For students of intelligence as an activity and a profession, it is a subject perhaps best handled through fictional characterization. In this form, certain features may be exaggerated for the purposes of the narrative – and over time, a composite constructed to reveal the whole. Consider this sort of fiction perhaps the intelligence community’s version of the morality play.

We do wonder where the next century shall find the literature to play the same role. In this, we are reminded of the most insightful essay by Charles Stross, The Golden Age of Spying, in which he quite neatly characterized the unique cultural pressures which brought such works to the published market. We do not see a modernized parallel anywhere on the horizon, and we think the profession poorer for it.

2009 IAFIE essay contest

2008-10-03T18:49:00.001Z

We have long had mixed opinions regarding the International Association of Intelligence Education. While we are exceptionally glad an organization of this nature exists, and feel that it plays a valuable role in networking and ongoing conversation in the field, we have been quite discouraged regarding attempts to interpose the association as an arbiter of professional standards. The professional standards of the intelligence community cannot be governed by academics and outsiders – particularly when the organization itself has show that it has a long way to go towards understanding the full scope of the community’s tradecraft and many of its sub-disciplines.

However, we continue to believe that IAFIE can play a valuable role in spreading best practices identified by currently serving professionals throughout academia. We also see it as one of the organizations which could be fundamental in advancing the literature of intelligence, if it ever lives up to its true potential. There is much work to be done here, but expansion of the association out of Erie to a wider range of venues and institutions is an excellent start.

To this end, we are pleased to see the announcement of an essay competition for its 2009 conference. The full text is reproduced below:

The International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE) is pleased to announce its Essay Competition for 2009. This competition promotes IAFIE’s goal of providing a forum for the communication and exchange of ideas and information for those interested in and concerned with intelligence education.
Competition is open to everyone having an interest in furthering intelligence education. (IAFIE officers and staff are not eligible to compete.)

Awards
First place finishers in each category will receive a $1,000 cash award and be invited to speak at the Annual IAFIE Conference, May 27-28, 2009 at the University of Maryland. IAFIE will pay for travel, accommodations and conference registration costs.
Second place finishers in each category will each receive $500 in cash. First and second place finishers will have the opportunity to publish their essays on the IAFIE website.
First and second place finishers will also receive a one year free membership in IAFIE.

Categories
Professional – An individual who is working or who has worked as an intelligence analyst, or an individual who is or has been involved in teaching intelligence studies or providing intelligence training (teacher, trainer, consultant, private citizen).
Graduate Student – A full-time or part-time graduate student currently enrolled with a college or university.
Undergraduate Student - A full-time or part-time undergraduate student currently enrolled with a college or university.

Essay Questions
Please answer one of the following questions in your essay. Essays may be written from the perspective of national security, law enforcement, academia, business or private citizen.

1. What impact have major events of this decade had on the role of the intelligence professional in national security, law enforcement or competitive intelligence? (Select major events based upon your choice of field.)

2. Intelligence-led policing is in practice in several countries on several continents. Using real-world examples, what, in your opinion, are the strengths and weaknesses of intelligence-led policing?

3. What do you think are the most important challenges facing the intelligence community over the next 10 years?

4. What advantages do strategic analysis and futures thinking hold for the future of the intelligence professional and how can they be incorporated into the intelligence professional’s skill sets?

Submission Guidelines
Submissions must include a cover sheet with the author’s name, contact information, category (Professional, Graduate Student or Undergraduate Student), essay title and, for graduate or undergraduate students, the name of the college or university they are attending. Those submitting in the Professional category must submit a biography of 50 words or less. Do not include your name on the essay.
Essays must be no longer than 2,500 words, excluding endnotes and bibliography, double spaced, Times New Roman, 12 point font.
Essays must be submitted in English using Word or PDF format.
Essays must be original and not previously published. Submission constitutes permission to publish.

Deadline for Submission: January 9, 2009, midnight, EST. Email your submission to: submissions[at]iafie[dot]org

Notification: Award winners will be notified no later than April 2, 2009

Evaluation Criteria: A panel of intelligence professionals will judge all entries and select the winners for each category. Essays will be evaluated on their relevance to the question, creativity, strength of argument, and writing quality.

To those that will participate, bonne chance. We hope to see a robust response, and (hopefully) an edited collection can be circulated that will include both the winners and substantive runner-up entries.

Technical OSINT innovation contest: the 2008 Malware Challenge

2008-10-02T18:09:00.000Z

While the worlds of most OSINT analysts do not typically overlap with those working in the more rarified fields of digital network intelligence, forensic analysis, and network warfare, there are a highly specialized subset that may be interested in testing their skills as part of a challenge of their own. While clearly not as high profile as the recent DNI OSINT contest, the 2008 Malware Challenge promises interesting responses of its own.

The winners of the malware challenge will be announced at the 2008 Ohio Information Security Summit on 31 October 2008. We had not previously seen this conference, but it appears to be a small regional conference that is unusually well attended by the usual round of ex-spooks and ex-cops that have moved into the cyber security industry as of late.

The challenge scenario is reproduced below:

"A system administrator within your organization has come to you because a user's PC was infected with malware. Unfortunately, anti-virus is unable to remove the malware. However, the administrator was able to recover the suspected malware executable. Your job is to analyze the malware.
Participants should download the malware sample and analyze it. The end result should be a document containing details on the analysis performed. The analysis document can be written in any form, but the questions and statements below should be answered within it. Participants should note what questions are being answered.
The questions...
* Describe your malware lab.
* What information can you gather about the malware without executing it?
* Is the malware packed? If so, how did you determine what it was?
* Describe the malware's behavior. What files does it drop? What registry keys does it create and/or modify? What network connections does it create? How does it auto-start, etc?
* What type of command and control server does the malware use? Describe the server and interface this malware uses as well as the domains and URLs accessed by the malware.
* What commands are present within the malware and what do they do? If possible, take control of the malware and run some of these commands, documenting how you did it.
* How would you classify this malware? Why?
* What do you think the purpose of this malware is?

Bonus questions: (These questions are not required to be answered but could be used to break a tie for prizes.)
* Is it possible to find the malware's source code? If so, how did you do it?
* How would you write a custom detection and removal tool to determine if the malware is present on the system and remove it?

Analysis documents should be submitted in PDF format to 2008challenge@malwarechallenge.info by 12:00 Midnight EST (5:00 AM GMT) on October 26, 2008."

Additional information, including other contest rules and FAQ, can be found at the challenge website.

Interestingly, we note that Steve Jackson Games is among the sponsors providing prizes for the winners. SJG was most famously the victim of a botched Secret Service raid in 1990, which seized files and texts that were part of one its published gaming lines. For those that are not familiar with this disastrous episode from the earliest days of the cyber intelligence account, it was best recounted in Bruce Sterling’s still timeless book, The Hacker Crackdown. (In our opinion, this is also a text which should be mandatory reading for those involved in SIGINT, MEDEX, or eCrime analysis. And while the USSS has indeed come a long way since then, we do from time to time encounter other shops still grappling to come to terms with the new threat environment with often equally absurd results.)

h/t Spy Logic

Vacant intelligence posts at the start of the financial crisis

2008-09-30T09:30:00.002Z

One of the benefits of having become a strange attractor in the highly networked world of privatized intelligence is that our little skunkworks is frequently passed notice of vacancies and tenders. For us, this is largely an academic exercise, and we eventually soon to publish our thoughts regarding the trends that we see from this perspective. However, this does offer other additional benefits. Knowing the landscape helps our students, both those entering the profession and those changing shops (especially since most of the major intel studies academic programs have simply not done well in this area – but that is a discussion for another day.)

But occasionally the items that cross our desks are also more directly of interest to ongoing questions of intelligence import than merely the problem of allocating scarce human capital more efficiently across a complex privatized intelligence market. In this case, it is a vacancy notice from late August 2008 for a competitive intelligence professional to serve the senior management at the now failed Washington Mutual bank. We had asked yesterday what kind of intelligence support was provided to the executives of the institution, and have at least a glimpse into their aspirations – if not their reality.

The position appears to have been offered as part of the card services division, which while at first blush seems separated from the questions of real estate solvency that plagued the house, may indeed have been impacted by higher order effects created by the complex instruments through which the institution’s various debts were packaged.

The position vacancy announcement is very typical of its kind in a number of ways. The level for which the billet was positioned is clearly more senior than the typical competitive intelligence role, but very much in line with the recommendations of most consulting professionals who advocate that internal units have direct access to senior management. (Of course, one must weigh the fact that at many banks, nearly every executive is a vice president of some flavour or another, but we have known a few where intelligence is relegated almost entirely to a support function, removed from the executive level entirely). The candidate requirements are accordingly scoped to a somewhat more senior individual than the run of the mill applicant, although one might question the actual effectiveness of an individual with only two years’ management experience in a ten year career in such a role.

The position’s focus on the regulatory and competitive environment would certainly have lent itself to addressing the underpinnings of the current financial crisis, had the shop’s strategic responsibilities been met. However, it is unclear whether such a shop, structured to meet consumer demand from a variety of internal clients and external business partners, could indeed get beyond the inevitable tactical level demands. Much would depend on senior management, and many at these levels are rarely interested in the views of a “strategic partner” but rather a staffer who can compress complexity and provide insight in support of difficult decisions. One also notes that warning is never explicitly identified as a responsibility for the position or its direct reports.

The full text of the vacancy announcement is reproduced below.

Manager I, Market Research, Vice President. Competitive Intelligence Team

At WMCS, the Competitive Intelligence team works collaboratively with the senior leaders across the organization to support their research needs, monitor changes in the regulatory environment, and determine competitive best practices. This key position will develop, create, and communicate the strategy for the Competitive Intelligence team in key areas of interest to WMCS. This role will partner with senior leadership to identify key competitive intelligence requirements, analyze information from different sources, assess the value of these sources, and merge with insight related to WMCS.

RESPONSIBLITIES: The Manager I is responsible for providing regular updates on the changes in the competitive environment and working closely with other functional areas (e.g., Acquisitions, Customer Marketing, Portfolio Management) to meet their research needs. This person will leverage competitive data to identify industry trends and implications to WMCS’s pricing, product constructs, and creative treatments. This person will be responsible for integrating external data and internal business expertise to determine market trends and their implication on WMCS’s strategy and offers. More specifically, this role will assume the following responsibilities:

* Act as a key contributor to the ongoing monthly investment decision process for both New Accounts Acquisitions and Customer Marketing campaigns by providing information on competitive pricing, mail pressure, and offer constructs across our target customer segments
* Build out the vision for the Competitive Intelligence team and oversee all relevant competitive intelligence activities
* Act as a strategic partner to senior management by fulfilling research requests and by proactively identifying key changes in the regulatory and competitive environment and their implications to WMCS
* Provide regular updates on the changes in competitive strategies, mail pressure, offers, and pricing and identify relevant insights for WMCS’s business practices and marketing strategies
* Partner with the Portfolio Management and Customer Marketing teams to benchmark WaMu’s portfolio performance vs. other leading issuers and identify opportunities for improvement
* Serve as the key source for competitive intelligence information for specific products/lines of business at WMCS
* Partner with the senior management team to create reporting infrastructure and executive level dashboards
* Provide regular updates to senior management and/or business partners on the meaning and application of research findings

The successful candidate will possess the following attributes:

* Candidates must have a minimum of 7 to 10 years professional experience in a marketing, analytical or consultative role at a major Credit Card issuer, or at a major consulting firm supporting a major credit card issuer
* Must have demonstrated ability to insightfully set the vision for projects that require the proper mix of qualitative and quantitative research methods
* Must have 2 or more years experience guiding research – market or competitive -- for a significant business line
* Must be able to thrive in a team environment, by contributing expertise as well as soliciting/integrating input from subject matter experts throughout the company.
* Proven ability to simultaneously manage multiple teams of researchers/analysts
* Proven competency with sharing research results at the Sr. Manager and Executive level
* Must have creativity, tenacity and enthusiasm
* Must possess an analytical mind, strong written and oral communication, the ability to work with individuals at all levels, the ability to manage multiple projects
* Excellent project management, leadership, teamwork, communication, and organizational skills
* A Masters degree or higher is preferred, ideally in a social science or a business field
* Proficiency in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint

In short, this billet well represented the current state of thinking in the competitive intelligence field. Such a shop could easily have been part of a distributed warning responsibility, which might have had an impact even at such a late date in the crisis had the billet (and its supporting analytic teams) been fully staffed earlier. The question here appears to be at least in part one of execution. We shall leave it to our counterparts in the business, economics, and history academia for the case study of how intelligence flows actually occurred.

However, such a clear alignment with accepted best practices in the field we believe also points back to the failure of the current paradigm. It is not sufficient to relegate warning to a simply structured occasional effort timed to coincide with some window of management attention, or as a “lesser included” responsibility generally considered under the mandate to “provide update on changes” in areas of interest. Warning has to be baked into the intelligence shop’s most basic foundations, alongside opportunity / action analysis. The very nature of warning's tradecraft must also be re-assessed, to revisit once again the process by which scenarios are created and indicators modeled. This is not to cast aside warning as we know it - but rather to revisit warning's earliest implementations, and rebuild its function for a new era.

Financial crisis and changing paradigms of warning intelligence

2008-09-29T00:03:00.001Z

The continually interesting competitive intelligence forum at Ning has surfaced a discussion which has been much on the minds of a variety of intelligence professionals in both the government and private sector given the cascading collapse of a number of major financial institutions: Was this financial crisis a warning failure? And if so, the natural corollary inquires into the cause and origin of the failure.

In our view, these recent events very much represent intelligence surprise. If nothing else, the unexamined higher order effects of complex financial relationships involving vast sums of cross-border capital flows is far outside the traditional realm of political and economic intelligence, at least as it is usually practiced in the government world. And the rapid contagion dynamics within the financial markets prove that the events are likewise beyond the traditional scope of competitive intelligence, where it is rare that analysis takes into account such sweeping changes across the landscape and its players. Whether this surprise truly rates elevation as a Black Swan, as some commentators have suggested, is itself also open to debate.

There is ample evidence that early indicators were visible, and even that many commentators had previously weighed in on the mounting risks and dangerous uncertainties inherent to the increasingly complex layers of traded instruments, derivatives, and debt that lurk at the center of the current crisis. However, warning is a process – not an event. It matters little that in hindsight one can call out the prescient among the punditry and politicians, and cast blame on those that assumed business would continue as normal against the backdrop of ever increasing housing prices. If warning did not reach, or impact, the right decision-makers – as there is mounting evidence that it clearly did not – then the process of warning failed.

But let us examine this more closely for a moment. Who exactly were the right decision-makers in this crisis? The primary lending institutions? The traders and market makers that were the primary players in moving these instruments? The investors, fund managers, and sovereign wealth entities which funneled so much capital into fundamentally unstable market positions? The risk managers at any of these firms, responsible for anticipating the potential downside of complex financial positions? The world’s various central bankers? The regulatory bodies or their political masters in the parliamentary and executive branches?

These are not questions easily answered. There will be anecdotes aplenty regarding the lack of warning communicated to a wide range of these decision-makers. The first that comes to mind is the ill-fated CEO of Washington Mutual, who was allegedly incommunicado aboard a flight while the most significant transactions in the firm’s collapse were being finalized. This mirrors the earlier circumstances of the CEO of Bear Stearns. While a certain level of plausible deniability may be key to these positions, one wonders what kind of intelligence support these executives enjoyed.

Likewise, if warning was to be issued to an identified group of executives, who would have been responsible for giving such warning? Only a scant handful of the firms involved in the recent waves of disruption could be considered to have a dedicated intelligence function. Of these, few were likely oriented towards a warning posture, as opposed to the many other intelligence functions that constitute the duties of privatized shops within modern enterprises. Among the commercial consulting intelligence providers, the problem can easily have been defined by the lack of articulated customer requirements, and the lack of access and expertise that clearly prevented a more sophisticated appreciation of ongoing events. And one can question whether a warning account focused on what was largely a domestic financial market – despite the dramatic international implications – is at all a proper role for the intelligence community (at least in the United States). Certainly, as it is currently structured, it is nearly impossible to address – and no homeland security function has ever envisioned market shocks as a component of critical infrastructure protection. More damningly, the insights which would have unlocked these mysteries were not secrets to be stolen, but lay in perspectives which were never cultivated.

Again, there are likely case studies to be found in the after action reviews of the wreckage. Lehman Brothers, among the first to fall, most famously hired a former Deputy Director for Intelligence out of CIA to head its Sovereign Risk shop. But the structure and focus that geopolitically focused shop appears not to have been relevant to the manner in which the current crisis developed. Given that Bear Stearns itself allegedly was a leader in providing analytical research and other intelligence products to its investors and clients, the dissemination of these products to the executive level is worth exploring from more than an academic perspective. One can likewise point to other intelligence functions on the Street and elsewhere, stovepiped for threat analysis or market research or technology investment.

What few warning shops which may have existed to cover the sector likely followed the dominant paradigm of competitive early warning, focused on their competitors’ actions, positions, technologies and blind spots rather than the wider political and financial situation. The required optic was simply too large for most shops, whose production is typically serialized in daily or weekly form, no matter how strategic they might otherwise claim to be.

In sum, can one then consider this a failure of warning? There are no simple answers, and we certainly believe that this question will be revisited for years to come in future studies of intelligence surprise. The underlying causes are complex, but are clearly rooted – at least in part – in the lack of systematic warning intelligence coverage of the issues. Whether it was the role of warning intelligence shops to cover these issues is open to debate. However, this may be as much the result of the failure of a warning paradigm developed for a time and place now forever changed. One may liken this change to the decreasing relevance of the traditional state based indications and warning model, now replaced by the emerging strategic reconnaissance paradigm being explored at the cutting edge of the tradecraft.

There are also signs that this is far from over, as we move from the weekend into another turbulent week on the Street (and in financial centres around the globe.) While we may arguably have seen a strategic warning failure (or not), there is still ample need for operational and tactical level warning as the crisis continues. This need creates new opportunities for both the rare successes and failures that will make or break firms and fortunes. Unfortunately, it is exceedingly difficult to surge warning assets to these kind of non-traditional accounts in short order – particularly given the scope of the political, regulatory, and other uncertainties which plague the markets. This is a unique time – and a unique problem set – that will task the professionalism of involved intelligence practitioners beyond measure, given the excessively politicized atmosphere surrounding the issues. There are many intelligence professionals now treading virgin ground, far past the last signpost reading “HC SVNT DRACONES”.

We are reminded of Joseph Nye’s comments about that terrible day seven years ago: “September 11, 2001, was like a flash of lightning on a summer evening that displayed an altered landscape, leaving U.S. policymakers and analysts still groping in the dark, still wondering how to understand and respond.” Lightning has struck once again in New York, and again without effective warning. We expect the impact to the intelligence community – particularly the community beyond the traditional wheel of the major agencies – will be in its own way as profound.

Commercializing clandestine insertion

2008-09-26T20:53:00.002Z

The flight over the English Channel by personal jet wing was a sight to behold, and warms our futurist’s hearts. We cannot help but contemplate the uses to which such a technology might be put, especially given the historic resonance of the channel crossing for the earliest members of the community.

The night run into France from 1944 until Normandy carried 523 members of the Jedburgh, Operational Group, SO paramilitary and radio operator sections. In addition, some 5,000 containers of supplies and ammunition would be dropped each month to support these men. By the end of the operation, 18 would be dead, 17 missing or taken prisoner, and 51 wounded or injured.

The ten minute flight would no doubt have been far different if it required navigation by instrument alone in unknown weather, into the teeth of prepared defenses, which at the time consisted of up to 40 Fliegerabwehrkanone AA guns per battery, guided by searchlights and radar units. We have no doubt that a low level flight path and the limited radar cross section of the small personal unit would have helped to limit the enemy’s engagement window, but it certainly puts the concept in an entirely different light. Of course, the jet engine had yet to be perfected – and could never have been so miniaturized; making such thoughts nothing more than idle divergence (as opposed to the more respectable counterfactual analysis).

Today, the same insertion faces a far more robust threat environment. No doubt those four 200lb thrust engines generate quite the infrared signature. We would not wish to be on the receiving end of even a SA-7 MANPAD shot, let alone something more sophisticated than the Strela.

The Swiss exercise also reminds us that most of the significant innovation we have recently seen in these areas have emerged from the private sector. One has only to look to the supply drops being executed in Afghanistan by Blackwater, which happen to also offer significant cost savings over classic Air Force profiles.

We still eagerly await smartwheel equipped all terrain remote supply pods (first predicted by jester Bruce Sterling). But then again, we also have been waiting for cost effective cargo carrying cruise missile for quite some time longer, with little result – although the concept of UAV cargo drop payloads may at last bring that concept to reality. Again, these are commercial innovations from far outside of the classic defense and intelligence space, proof that the kind of creativity needed for these operations will rarely be found in career civil service.

Online education and the new literature of intelligence

2008-09-24T08:57:00.000Z

We have recently become aware of a fledgling new journal that will offer its own contributions to the literature of intelligence, sponsored by Henley-Putnam University. This institution is one of the newer of the online intelligence studies programs currently growing to fill the gap in traditional university offerings. The new journal’s inaugural issue is to address “The Future of Intelligence Education”, a timely and relevant subject of great interest to ourselves – and we are certain, many of our readers. We look forward to its forthcoming publication.

It is fitting that this topic should be addressed by one of the newer distributed online programs. Virtual education has for too long been an ignored but game changing force in the professionalization of intelligence. The most significant of these efforts is without a doubt the unique Joint Intelligence Virtual University, but JIVU lacks the key outcome of credentialing (and is largely invisible to those outside of the core IC). We have long been aware of the other major such effort, American Military University, whose program relies heavily upon instructors formerly of the Joint Military Intelligence College (now National Defense Intelligence College). We confess a greater degree of familiarity with those efforts, if only due to their longer histories, but remain interested in new programs and the different approaches that other institutions may bring to the table. However, Henley-Putnam also deserves mention for having signed one of the few “star” intelligence professors currently in the game: Robert Clark, the author of the target-centric approach (which we would rate as one of the most consistently misunderstood and misused texts in intelligence education.)

The volume of students handled by these new institutions each year is absolutely transformative – in the order of multiple thousands per year. (By way of comparison, the longest running of the traditional civilian intelligence studies programs at Mercyhurst boasts a student body of a few hundred overall, with a score or so graduating each year.) One of the key distinctions between these academic programs and many traditional intelligence studies offerings can be found in the composition of their student populations. A significant percentage of those attending virtual courses are currently serving professionals, many deployed widely across the globe in support of ongoing missions. These students bring decades of practical experience to the classroom, and challenge educators to make theory relevant in ways that distinctly improve learning outcomes. This also keeps such courses far “fresher” and more closely in tune with the needs of the intelligence community, as many of these professional students are quite vocal when they feel that they are not receiving adequate value for their investment in time and money. (This unique blending could also go a long way to helping improve the research agenda of the intelligence studies academy, but that is a topic for discussion another day.)

The commitment required of such professionals to continue their education - despite the operational and logistical challenges brought on by the press of current operations – is quite impressive. Answering this commitment in kind is one area where we are certain many traditional intelligence studies programs have failed. Most schools are not friendly to the deployed, nor to those who wish to continue their studies through alternative formats – no matter how many times “independent study” options are thrown about during recruiting pitches. Frankly, this has been the great shame of the intelligence academy for too long. It is unconscionable to punish students academically who offer service in the Long War and other crisis missions, while their counterparts who have never served easily breeze through degree programs in the absence of other pressures. We – and many other employers – know which graduate we would prefer to hire, but it is not always easy to bring individuals onboard who have yet to complete their foundational degree. Online education options offer one of the few solutions we have yet seen to address this failing.

The new generation of virtual institutions we hope will also be a catalyst for the greater involvement of intelligence professions in the development of the literature in a form that can be shared more widely with the academia as a whole. We firmly believe that publication models such as Small Wars Journal will be the future of the literature. We have also already seen the impact of the virtual on the traditional, as the editorship of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence passed to Richard Valcourt of American Military University. No doubt we shall see other similar effects in the near future, and look forward to the improvement of the literature.

A new IC CAE and a new intelligence ethics conference

2008-09-23T14:26:00.002Z

While the inimitable Dr. Jan Goldman will no doubt still retain his pre-eminence in the sub-discipline of intelligence ethics, we are pleased to see the discussion expanding outward throughout the academy. We note an upcoming conference at the newest of the IC CAE programs, University of Texas Pan American. The focus on border issues – no doubt a result of the proximity of the institution to the mission - we hope shall help to avoid some of the usual distractions of the endlessly rehashed arguments over interrogation methods that has significantly derailed much of the intellectual energies afforded the topic as of late.

If nothing else, we see with some amusement that this program takes the award for innovation in naming, being the first non-DOD program we are aware of to incorporate a superscript character in their acronym. (We look forward to future algorithmic naming permutations as time passes). More significantly however, the school’s program offers language instruction in Arabic, Chinese, and Portuguese – language families not always easily found in other institutions. We should have liked to see a greater emphasis on analytic tradecraft and intelligence professionalization in their program – a complaint we have regarding many of the IC CAE structures - but nonetheless we wish them well in their endeavors.

We repost below the call for papers issued by the conference organizers, for those that might be interested in the venue and feel unable to wait for the annual association’s event in February. (And while the timing of the events is nicely spaced, we do hope that the identical paper deadlines will not result in cannibalization of a limited scholarly output, but rather a greater flourishing of the area of inquiry. We hope next year that any similar efforts are better coordinated, as the intelligence studies discipline is frankly too small to long endure competing stovepipes.)

"Call for papers: “Ethics in Intelligence, Security, and Immigration: The Moral and Social Significance of Gathering and Managing Information and Borders in the Global Community”

The University of Texas-Pan American in Edinburg, Texas will be hosting a conference on “Ethics in Intelligence and Immigration” November 20-22, 2008. We invite submission of papers on any subject related to ethical issues in the fields of intelligence gathering, global security and immigration. Abstracts should be no more than 500 words. Send electronic submissions to: pace [at] utpa.edu

Topics include, but are not limited to:

Ethical issues in global intelligence
Ethical issues in competitive intelligence
Ethical issues in immigration
Ethical issues related to the collection, storage, and retrieval of intelligence
Ethical issues in privacy and global and national security
Codes of ethics in private and public intelligence
Open vs. closed borders
Ethical implications of a border wall

---Submission deadline: 1 October 2008---

Conference dates: 20-22 November 2008

There is a strong possibility that some or all conference papers will be published in a volume of conference proceedings.Sponsored by the Integrated Global Knowledge and Understanding Collaboration (IGkNU), the Pan American Collaboration for Ethics in the Professions (PACE), and the Office of International Programs at UTPA"

We look forward to the published volume, as well as the future scholarship of the IC CAE.

Deliberately ignoring the human terrain

2008-09-22T01:32:00.003Z

We have rarely seen such a work of profound analytic fallacy as the now much circulated study “Baghdad nights: evaluating the US military `surge' using nighttime light signatures”, which has been making the rounds throughout the blogsphere as of late. This paper purports to declare the Surge a failure based on the lack of increase of overnight artificial lighting, as measured by the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) sensors.

This sensor data has previously been used to illustrate the profound gaps between the quality of life in North Korea, when compared to the prosperity and wealth of the South. Electrical usage can generally be considered a proxy for economic activity, particularly in areas where public utilities must be augmented by private generation capacity.

The Environment and Planning paper provides night lights data only to December 2007. And while it briefly displays intensity mapping of sectarian deaths in Baghdad area neighborhoods, it largely ignores the decrease in such violence as the final outcome of “a vicious process of interethnic cleansing” rather than the result of the change in US counterinsurgency strategy and force commitments which was the surge. This is an assumption which cannot be supported merely through imagery analysis.

Needless to say, such an assumption ignores much of the literal reality on the ground – valuing remote sensing over the contemporaneous and local accounts of human sources, military commanders, and reconstruction agencies that have lived through the tumultuous progress of the latter stages of the Iraq intervention. It also conflates economic indicators with stability and security – a fatal assumption that invalidates any conclusions that might be drawn; an observation even an entry level intelligence professional would be expected to note. Further, one might very well question reliance on the relatively low resolution DMSP data for assessing complex urban terrain, particularly given that electrical availability has been a key topic of study for reconstruction planners. At the very least, a comparison of DMSP data against this ground truth baseline would seem to have been required.

Unfortunately, this is the very model of politicized intelligence; a study designed to create a single outcome through the selection of data it chose to present. It is also a profound argument against recent attempts to crowdsource analysis tasks to those who are not intelligence professionals by trade or training.

Against this approach we would cite a far more useful model for integrating the work of GEOINT professionals with that of ongoing counterinsurgency and civil reconstruction efforts, first offered by the National Defense Intelligence College. The paper, “Registering the Human Terrains: A Valuation of Cadastre” offers a far more productive means by which remote sensing data may be used to assess ongoing operational effects in a conflict theatre.

The night lights study is instructive, if only as a teaching case to illustrate the kind of error that self-reflective practitioners must identify and avoid in their own work.

h/t Creative Class

A glimpse of a future naval (and network) special operations mission: Google edition

2008-09-19T21:28:00.001Z

The jesters and the futurists have long featured offshore structures as the future of human activities. Reality continues to bear out these predictions. We have previously discussed large scale offshore habitation structures and their potential impact for future intelligence and unconventional warfare problems. This time around, it is the concept of the maritime data center – previously discussed as a moored vessel – recast as an offshore terminal type platform.

We are enthused by the possibility of seeing a real life data haven come into its own – and run by a professional multinational entity (rather than the sad sort of anarchist disgrace that was Sealand). But one can easily see the fascinating potential for convergence of a whole range of threats directed against such facilities, involving both naval and network conflicts.

Once again, our froggy friends will no doubt be forced to ponder such actions. And while there are no doubt legions of would-be hackers just waiting to strap on a wetsuit to live out their own episode of the Rock against a network contagion, they are apt to be disappointed. One suspects that the signals intelligence folks will be far more likely to have to come to terms with what the widespread proliferation of such offshore datacenter platforms will mean in an environment where bandwidth and storage are nearly infinite and entirely cheap, and may be rented from the cloud through a complex and shift network of shell companies, taking advantage of low staffing levels and limited oversight incentives. The Russian Business Network’s latter day successors will no doubt be wet.

h/t Futurismic

Contagions and their higher order effects

2008-09-18T21:14:00.000Z

Anyone who attends conferences or tradeshows on a routine basis is painfully aware of the risks of common illness created by bringing thousands of strangers together in a small series of rooms for several days – especially when programs seemed entirely designed to keep participants on the move, and consuming either the typical rubber chicken plates – or worse yet – boxed meals.

Thus it was from the recent DNI OSINT conference. There seems to our (admittedly anecdotal sample) that most attendees last week have fallen ill within a short number of days. Of course, there has been significant overlap with enough other events within the relatively small conference circuit for intelligence professionals, creating a more ideal environment for incubating pathogens. After all, September has been the INSA’s Analytic Transformation, NDIA Disruptive Technology, DNI OSINT, and DNI Proteus conferences.

However, while this year’s sicknesses are merely the usual expected issue, our Red Cell attuned eyes do wonder what the potential impact of a targeted, small scale biological attack would be for such an event – particularly given the highly cross disciplinary, interagency nature of these kinds of conferences. Of course, this is exactly the value which brings participants together, but a longer incubation strain could inflict significant damage.

This potential for damage is nonetheless offset by the nature of who typically attends such conferences. After all, the working level grunts usually can’t break away for an event, nor get travel approvals through layers of management. Perhaps the net result might even be an increase in productivity, assuming that the chain of infective transmission doesn’t spread too widely within the vaults once participating managers are back at their home agencies…

While this has been an idle thought experiment, and we are rarely given to commenting on the reasons for our little band’s absence from blogging, suffice it to say our group’s interest in the abstract is driven by personal experiences (admittedly of an entirely more mundane nature) in this matter. At the very least, it was the conversational upside of inevitable biological realities. And we would not be surprised if next year on the conference circuit we see the comeback of the Asian style designer medical masks, as well as the increased presence of indoor biodetection sensors – if only for the experimentation, modeling & simulation folks to mull over in a very different kind of crowdsourcing exercise.

Document marking and handling systems in private firms

2008-09-15T07:09:00.000Z

We have long been fans of exporting the concepts behind document marking systems from the public sector to private firms. Many problems created by the improper handling of sensitive corporate information could simply have been avoided by such a system, and the cultural indoctrination that accompanies these systems. When conducting wide ranging and multi-domain analysis, security markings help provide a sense of boundary between the internal and the external. In some cases – particularly with analysts not yet attuned to the impact of cognitive biases and priming effects – this can create issues if the boundary is allowed to become an artificial distinction within the analytic product itself. However, for those that understand underlying purposes and intent, such systems allow for a degree of liberation – enabling more robust conversations during analytic outreach given knowledge of the essential elements of what must be protected from public knowledge, and what may be safely discussed without risk to client or reputation.

Yet we abhor those firms which have adopted wholesale the same language of classification used in the government itself. Those specific words have driving legal force - and for those individuals which may work between both the commercial and government world, such as defense industry firms or intelligence contractors, these words carry significant psychological freight when it comes time for the inevitable polygraph.

We are reminded to the increasingly widespread nature of this problem in a recent news item regarding an industrial espionage case involving the chipmakers Intel and AMD. (H/t to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, who deserve mention as they continue to offer increasing utility through their situational awareness efforts in the industry). Among the documents in question in the case are those which originated from Intel’s most closely held programs, carrying a specific marking first used by the government.

While we understand that such markings allow lazy information technology professionals to simply adopt wholesale the information processing systems used to protect classified information from inadvertent disclosure over open networks, and to enable more rapid review of document discovery requests. Nonetheless, the problems such markings may create are legion – and best avoided.

We thus greatly appreciate the efforts that a number of firms have gone to in order to avoid creating conflicts in this area. We particularly like several of the marking structures we have seen in firms that do business across the Commonwealth countries, as these mirror to a historically pleasing but not otherwise problematic degree the older markings from the dawn of the intelligence community itself. We think this carries a degree of gravitas that is otherwise too often lacking from many commercial endeavors, and is a subtle reminder of the history that both the public and private sector’s intelligence activities share. Such markings, including “Most Sensitive” or “Commercial in Confidence”, are clearly observable yet do not invoke the same considerations as “Company Confidential” or more directly copied national security marking systems.

Memory and the Long War

2008-09-11T08:46:00.000Z

Patriot Day.

Never forget.

No end until victory.

Crowdsourcing OSINT

2008-09-10T15:12:00.002Z

UPDATED below

Now that the deadline for submissions is passed, and thus our comments cannot unduly influence responses to the DNI’s Open Source Innovation Challenge, we wish to revisit some of the strategies that emerged in response to the exercise.

The 1995 Burundi exercise sought to use a direct privatization model, in which contractor resources and analysis were directly compared to the IC’s production. Subsequent production level OSINT efforts have rarely involved such an either / or choice, but rather focused on augmenting community capabilities. The original model was largely collection focused, as were most OSINT efforts of the day (and regrettably, far too many even now). The choice of a single firm (admittedly, one of the only in the USG facing OSINT game back then) offered a degree of centralization of efforts and commonality of response. In reality, that single firm pursued an acquisition strategy which leveraged a number of other commercial vendor’s products in specialized areas, from gray literature exploitation to commercial overhead imagery re-dissemination and analytic outreach.

Thus far, we have observed that responses to the latest challenge appear to have fallen into roughly three categories. The first were the highly competitive offerings by subject matter experts and related small teams with prior intra-group connectivity and affiliations, typically executed rapidly and in a low profile manner. The second were the aspirational offerings, typically by individual practitioners, interdisciplinary academics, or smaller firms. These offerings often involved those without direct community expertise covering the identified target set, but who acknowledged a desire to participate in the field. Neither were unexpected responses.

The third class of response, however, is destined to perhaps be the most controversial. It has been described as a “crowdsourcing” approach. To date, we are aware of a singular such effort out of Mercyhurst College’s intelligence studies program, which has also been something of an outlier in the field. Now, the term crowdsourcing brings immediately to mind its alternative label, the LazyWeb – and we are also reminded of the comments by the bright folks over at Oracle’s think tank AppLabs, in which the subtext of such efforts to leverage the wisdom of crowds are revealed.

However, one can rarely call the highly motivated students at Mercyhurst lazy. And while application of this new aggregation model for open source acquisition – we would hesitate to call it production, at least as we currently know it – is indeed innovative, it raises as many questions as it might produce answers.

In this, the crowdsourcing model reminds us of an earlier effort at Mercyhurst to trial new intelligence production approaches using another Web 2.0 technology. We do sincerely hope this effort is more successful than the last. UPDATE: And so it came to pass, with the Mercyhurst effort taking a win alongside the submission from the commercial intelligence firm iJet, out of twenty four total entries. Congratulations are in order - and the first round for the winners is on us.

The most critical issue that we see in crowdsourced OSINT strategies is the problem of denial and deception. One of the enduring tenants of OSINT tradecraft is that the sources consulted ought not ever know the use to which the information will be put. The divorcing of content from use context goes a long way towards reducing the problems created by sources which may attempt to influence rather inform (at least in terms of deliberate active messaging tailored for IC audiences). Rigorous analysis must still be applied to identify and eliminate the effects of source bias and implicit messaging directed at other audiences, but it is far harder for an adversary to coordinate a passive deception campaign seeded into open sources if they are unaware of the OSINT effort, its key intelligence questions, and its collection methods.

Crowdsourcing seems particularly vulnerable to denial and deception given that it relies on explicit calls for participation. Further - beyond mere knowledgability of project topic and intended audience - the publication of the specific indicators sought by the project coordinators essentially provides a roadmap for potentially successful deception themes and associated messaging, as well as the essential elements of information to be protected by adversary operations security and other denial measures. While source validation measures may provide some defense against such deception, it is unlikely to defeat a well crafted campaign executed through appropriate cover organizations and other agents of influence.

Timelines do play a role – short deadline production efforts are less likely to attract deliberate deception. However, if crowdsourced OSINT becomes commonplace, it may serve an adversary’s interests to establish latent architectures which would enable rapid response active measures campaigns designed to exploit the lack of time available for validation and other testing. One could particularly see such a structure evolving in advance of planned actions which an adversary foresees would provoke a high profile international crisis. The information advantage that could be offered in such a situation should such deception efforts influence a targeted decisionmakers' response would be priceless – especially in the critical first hours of a 3 a.m. moment that developed without earlier warning.

One could easily envision an experimental research series which would evaluate the potential susceptibility of crowdsourced OSINT to denial and deception. We hope to see some young researcher take up this effort in the near future.

We would also be remiss if we did not note that another contemporaneous effort – the Gray Goose project - has emerged to address a similar real world OSINT problem using a very different production strategy, one that might be termed rapid community of interest formation relying upon self-affiliation of interested subject matter experts. This effort bears greater examination in depth, particularly as it deliberately – and hopefully more productively - channels behaviors we have previously observed in surge intelligence responses to other crisis events. It also appears to be at least in theory more resistant to denial and deception, but that is a discussion for another day.

While the DNI’s challenge has overall generated a great of discussion, it remains to be seen whether that energy translated into truly innovative finished OSINT products. We eagerly await further conversations on the topic at the conference later this week, along with what we hope will be a future overview level assessment and compilation to be published under the DNI’s auspices. From the perspective of intelligence studies theory, it has been a most fascinating exercise to observe, and no doubt much will continue to come of it.

The privatization of intelligence history

2008-09-09T08:26:00.001Z

The preservation of iconic history is one of the most important cultural and institutional tasks that the intelligence community can perform to ensure the continued relevance of its traditions as an intellectual pursuit among the generations of professions which follow. A shadowed profession needs more than most the few tangible symbols of what it is we stand for, what we have accomplished, and what we ought to emulate – if not in strict form or function, than in spirit and ideal. It is these few tokens (and their stories) – whether the odd item somehow passed down from those that were there, or the unique place which by virtue of the accidents of geography and function became key to a major program or structure – that also help to cement a shared vision of an increasingly distributed profession.

Many IC leaders agree to this principle in theory. Yet when the heart of the World War II cryptanalytic effort at Bletchley Park was left to decay, the international intelligence community of the Allied powers paid little attention. Of course, this is not a new problem, but efforts to preserve the history of intelligence have ranked low on the priority list in the face of unprecedented wartime demands coupled with the critical need to re-capitalized aging operational infrastructure neglected during the lean years of the 1990’s. And while some might say this is strictly a British problem, the long history of the special relationship – and particularly the key role played by shared signals intelligence efforts in creating that relationship – dictates American concern (and like concern for the rest of the Five Eyes partners).

Thus we find privatization emerging in a new and unexpected manner. In this case, it is a fundraising effort led by the IBM and PGP corporations, designed to remedy with private donations the gaps left by government abandonment. This is a development which resonates on multiple levels.

PGP as a firm arguably exists as a privatized solution to another government shortfall – the need to protect sensitive corporate and critical infrastructure communications from unauthorized intercept. In the early days of the Cold War, this was considered an inherently governmental responsibility – and one that early cryptographic policy reserved only for an exceptionally small segment of the corporate world, usually only directly associated with a highly limited number of defense industrial base or Federal level financial institutions. This deliberate omission of protection for the vast engine of much of the countries economy led to innovation and the re-birth of an entire commercial market. For like in many aspects of intelligence, the state monopoly of the WWII and early Cold War era was a historical anomaly. Commercial codes had long been in use for protection of sensitive international business communications. Yet the advent of professional cryptanalysis organizations – and the computing resources that they developed to aid them in their tasks - would destroy most pre-war systems based on too simple substitutions or primitive algorithms.

While the techniques of public key encryption by which PGP became the world’s standard for commercial communications security were indeed invented anew without prior knowledge of government activities in the area, it is now well documented that these techniques originated much earlier in the darkest corners of the intelligence establishment. However Non-Secret Encryption, as it was then called, merely serves to illustrate the gap between protection offered to the public versus the private sector. (One can make allowances, however, for the desire to keep all aspects of technology possibly used to secure nuclear weapons Permissive Action Links entirely out of the public view in any form. But thus has the world changed now.)

While contemporary industry's interest in Station X is no doubt driven more by the history of computing itself than the preservation of an intelligence icon, it is fitting to see the structures which emerged from the Black Valley step up to ensure that this monument will continue to endure - especially given that no such symbols remain of their own struggles.

h/t Slashdot

Correlation of academic performance to professional success in intelligence studies education

2008-09-08T23:26:00.000Z

Courtesy of Trinity University’s Intelligence Center (a program which few may recall pre-dates the success brought by the more prominent IC CAE now hosted there) comes a piece which surfaces the fascinating history of the less distinguished of the graduates from one of the most elite institutions in the country, the US Naval Academy.

These are stories well worth the read, and we are grateful to the good doctor for recounting them. And while we remain strictly and professionally apolitical as to their import in the current election cycle, we however would ponder the perhaps unintended parallels one might draw regarding the students emerging from the intelligence studies academia itself. In this new enterprise, it has been all too easy to focus on the bright young things and rising stars. But is success in the cloistered ivory tower really a determinant of future excellence in a profession which has grown increasingly distant from the sterile models and dated theories too often propounded by those outside the walls of the vault?

This is a question which truly remains unanswered. There simply has not been a sufficient sample size across an adequate longitudinal depth given the emergent dynamics of the field. Further, the unsettled nature of the generally accepted unclassified curriculum has also worked against such observations. A number of institutions once focused tightly on producing graduates capable of answering the requirements of the working intelligence professional now seem to be increasingly at variance from the community’s needs, while a number of newer schools are simply untested. While we have great hope that from out of this current state the engine of creative destruction will drive new and better approaches, we have yet to see but faint indicators of regeneration.

However, while the plural of anecdote is not data, we do have a few observations that might be called out for future study against the fullness of time. For example, Trinity’s program itself has produced more than its share of intelligence scholars – including those recently minted undergraduates accepted directly into further academic studies at the National Defense Intelligence College, a singular and rare achievement which is clearly indicative of great potential. And the older program at Mercyhurst has produced a number of alumni who were brought into the community even in the leanest years of the hiring freeze by virtue of exemptions granted to those with exceptional academic records.

Yet the concept resonates with the experiences we have seen in others. There have been the equivalent of the anchormen and goats from those institutions (and others in the intelligence studies field) over the years, and many not by virtue of insufficient talent but rather the inevitable result of efforts focused more intently outward against real world objectives vice the acknowledged artificial standards of the classroom. The challenge, of course, lies in distinguishing between those individuals and their counterparts who truly lacked the preparation, initiative, and raw intellect to perform in this demanding field. At the same time, the task is not really easier for those who face the disappointment of having invested in a promising and high scoring young candidate only to find that the professors’ pet cannot perform under real world pressures where the right answer is not simply repeating a canned school solution.

We would daresay the best means of addressing this dilemma is to ensure that the intelligence studies academia always tests its candidates in conditions which mirror as closely as is possible stressors found in the professional intelligence environment. It is for this reason that we emphasize the need for an intelligence crucible when cultivating new professionals.

Regrettably, it appears that this is an idea which has not been popular as of late, especially as class sizes balloon and attrition rates shrink at many programs. While this may be profitable for the institutions concerned, it may prove to be a disservice not only to the agencies and firms which hire untested candidates but equally so to the candidates themselves. Failure in the classroom, even one which may cause an individual to re-assess the course of their future professional options, is far easier than dramatic self-destruction in the face of a burden the individual simply cannot carry. Unfortunately, this is a thing we have seen all too often – especially given the hiring surges of recent years.

While this is not a phenomenon unique to the intelligence profession, we think that it is indeed more pronounced. For this is a field of thinkers and of talkers, and therefore values these skills highly, as a result often seeing such competencies mirrored in the strong academic performers. Yet there is a greater gulf in this profession between the accomplishments of insight or communication, in contrast to the mimicry or sophistry which underlies some successful but otherwise hollow academics. The same can be said of some instructors in the field, as much as of the students. Indeed, one is often found at the root cause of the others.

Theory derived from lived experiences is all well and good, but validation is needed through more rigorous empirical research. That, we fear, will be a matter that must be left to the historians of the generation after next, for only then may the full measure of a cohort’s deeds be taken.

Forecasting through games

2008-09-05T11:34:00.001Z

There is a long history of modeling, simulation, and gaming within the intelligence community, dating back to the Prussian General Staff’s Kriegsspiel, wherein the intelligence of the day, such as it was, would be used to determine the enemy strength and disposition to be set for the initial conditions of the map board. (An early American adaptation of the wargame – itself arising out of the intense interest in military professionalization in the latter half of the 19th century - can now be found in the digital stacks. It is worth a glance for those inclined toward matters historical but lacking either access to the original text or the German language skills with which to comprehend it.)

One can trace a direct lineage from such explicit gaming structures through the modern evolution of many forms of exercise and drill. Such efforts are increasingly reflected in new training and education efforts within the IC, such as the recently publicized virtual incarnations of several analytic exercises at DIA. The exercise materials themselves have a far longer history in more prosaic incarnations. The tanker war exercise that is the heart of Vital Passage, for example, has been used for teaching analysis of competing hypotheses for years using nothing more than paper and pen. The new immersive formats are clearly of value in capturing the attention of those students who have not yet been caught the more abstract means of envisioning crisis. It also serves as a good transition towards the application of the methodology in more complex, non-deterministic problems – particularly given the new emphasis on using assistive software to help track larger scale issues. (We unfortunately continue to encounter a number of younger analysts –products of the civilian university - that are unable to distinguish between ACH as an analytical methodology and the software used to automate that methodology. But that is another matter, and points to a failure of instruction at certain institutions rather than flaws in computer aided analysis or exercise).

For too long, though, gaming has stagnated essentially unchanged from its earlier incarnations. It has been left to the jesters and the speculators to push the boundaries of the tool, pointing the way to new directions and new uses. The most provocative of these suggestions – as is frequently the case – came from a jester at the futurists’ court, examined the potential utility of an alternative reality game structure as a recruiting and coordination mechanism for HUMINT operations involving unwitting participants.

A more immediate implementation has also now appeared, attempting to use massively multiplayer structures for long term analysis challenges. The Institute for the Future will launch its new project, Superstruct, on 22 September, which will attack what appears to be a catastrophic scenario using an alternative reality gaming architecture for distributed participation. It is a unique approach, described further through a FAQ here, and we can already see the benefits that the transparent and free form ludic design brings to the table. (We would note this to be a distinct difference from other crowdsourced analytic projects that we have recently seen attempted). We also have high confidence in the intellect and insights of the team that is executing the Superstruct project, having followed their work for some time, as well as having attended a fascinating discussion with other ARG designers from the original "I Love Bees" team at a Second Life salon hosted by The Electric Sheep Company a number of years ago.)

We have long been on record as highly skeptical of the efforts to use the intelligence community as the instrument by which to assess the uncertainties of future climate change, and have debated the issue with others of discernment who hold differing views. Yet the IC responded to the requirements levied upon it by Congress – as it always should. The resulting assessment, and public testimony, is a model of intelligence professionalism in the face of intense politicization. We find Dr. Fingar’s responses during questioning – clearly outlining the uncertainties of the scientific data, and the limitations of the IC’s resident expertise on the topic – a perfect teaching example of effective intelligence communication.

We think however that efforts such as Superstruct may be a better venue for exploring these questions, at least until the window of likely impact falls within the long range horizons of the intelligence community’s estimative views – be that fifteen, thirty or fifty years hence. It is also a fascinatingly cross-account and interdisciplinary issues – as well as a frankly lower priority intelligence problem – that is perfectly suited to experimentation with new analytic methodologies, novel analytic outreach, and new distributed production models.

We wish the project good fortune, and look forward to the after action assessment for any lessons learned that might be applied to future analytic tradecraft.

h/t Smart Mobs, and the Business & Games Blog

Commercializing the honey trap

2008-09-03T12:27:00.000Z

Japan has long been one of the world’s leaders in the privatization of intelligence functions. Hand in hand with this privatization comes the blurring of the distinctions which define intelligence as a profession itself, and that which are incorporated across a range of interdisciplinary areas. In the 1980’s, the rest of the world most famously became aware of the commercialization of these activities in the realm of scientific and technical intelligence obtained through a variety of joint venture structures and other business alliances. The trend has continued, albeit in new areas and different forms.

Japan is also noted for the relentless consumerization of ideas and concepts into marketable goods and services. Their retail sector evolves at a blistering rate, making the Tokyo schoolgirl the most sought after youth demographic to test new fashion trends and other memetic products.

Thus we are unsurprised to note the intersection of these two trends, profiled in a recent UK article regarding professional sexual entrapment services. The cases are interesting in that they demonstrate both classic human intelligence approaches across a variety of cases, but also in that they represent an apparently profitable market segment. In the United States, private investigators have long known that spurned spouses – and their lawyers – are an easy source of income. Such has been the stuff of a certain genre of crime novel for decades. However, the Japanese incarnation is more subtle, in that the primary focus is on influence operations designed to alter the target’s behavior and perceptions – typically to overcome cultural factors in what is still largely a conservative and tradition oriented society.

It seems to us there is a growing body of lessons learned that might be culled from the cases handled by such services. No doubt none of these lessons are new, nor terribly unique, as the lusts of men and women change little over the years. However, the experiences of these professionals (and equally importantly, the handlers which conduct the equivalent of targeting analysis and other operations management functions) do represent a unique aggregation of unclassified examples which could be used to augment academic studies of what is otherwise the most clandestine of intelligence activities.

No doubt for a young researcher such studies might also be uniquely rewarding. One should hope however that the debriefer is otherwise unattached prior to embarking upon the project.

Intellectual property claims as denial & deception measures in medical intelligence

2008-08-29T15:44:00.003Z

Following yesterday’s clear demonstration of the official embrace of open source intelligence comes a sharp reminder of that discipline’s limitations. The field of medical intelligence – and in particular, epidemiological intelligence – has been one of the areas in which OSINT has seen great successes. These successes are all the more important as they have involved the integration of specific scientific and technical expertise into collection, analysis, and visualization of extremely hard problems across very large scale geographies and populations. However, much of the underlying open source information and reference materials have only been made available due to the predominate ethic of free information exchange which prevails in scientific sharing and peer review. A recent Washington Post article (via Futurismic and Open the Future) highlights a new concept that may threaten the fundamental availability of those underlying materials.

This concept - viral sovereignty – immediately brings to mind the worst days of the Cold War, in which the Soviets sought to conceal information regarding large scale disease outbreaks to preserve the illusion of a superior socialized medical system, and in some cases such as the 1979 Sverdlovsk outbreak, prevent revelation of their clandestine biological warfare programs. The newest iteration of these ideas couple the same statist impulse towards censorship with a distorted view of the intellectual property market, resulting in a truly poisonous brew. One might consider such paranoia- and profiteering- driven claims a unique type of denial & deception measure aimed directly at the OSINT mechanisms of governments, pharmaceutical firms, and international organizations.

We would not wish to see a future where fundamental medical information regarding new disease outbreaks is simply not available in certain high risk countries. The potential higher order effects of such short-sighted decisions are readily considered – including the “surprise” global emergence of highly virulent new infection strains from unreported lower level outbreaks. Such a state of affairs could simply not be permitted to exist unchallenged, and as a result it is likely that a number of nations (particularly regional neighbors most likely to be impacted by such outbreaks) might then turn to clandestine collection means to acquire what previously was the open domain of science itself. This raises serious proliferation concerns, if new disease variants are obtained by BW aspirant countries (or non state actors) but are not otherwise widely known among nations which have abandoned biowarfare programs. One could also anticipate a surging demand for such clandestine collection measures for industrial espionage purposes, especially in countries where the legalities and ethics of an open competitive intelligence profession simply does not exist.

Such frictions would not only distort legitimate markets for pharmaceutical advances, but also would fundamentally impact the iterative and collaborative nature of modern medical research. And the first victims of these negative effects would likely be the unfortunate citizens of the country seeking to employ spurious intellectual property claims in this manner.

DNI Open Source Innovation Challenge 2008

2008-08-28T07:33:00.000Z

We are unabashed believers in the unique contributions offered by open source intelligence as a discipline, and have been greatly pleased to see the increased prominence of such efforts within the Intelligence Community over the past decade. Today’s OSINT is a far cry more advanced from the early days of the 1990’s, when the first glimpses of the potential offered by the information revolution were visible in the newly opened media markets of the Soviet Union.

One of the most dramatic shifts since that time has been the development of OSINT as more than a mere data gathering function, increasingly focused on providing insight through rigorous analysis and imaginative exploration. Analytic outreach naturally goes hand in hand with open sources. And while the intelligence community is still grappling with the best manner to encourage and develop such efforts, this evolution is a fascinating space to observe and participate in.

Thus we are immensely interested to see the results of the DNI’s Open Source Innovation Challenge for 2008. This is a frankly unprecedented effort - and long overdue. Announced via email and on their public blog, the invitation speaks for itself:

Special Announcement

The Open Source Innovation Challenge

We are pleased to announce an exciting opportunity in conjunction with the DNI Open Source Conference 2008: "The Open Source Innovation Challenge." This is a unique occasion for representatives from academia; think tanks; industry; the media; federal, state, local, and tribal government; and other diverse sectors to use open source information to address real intelligence challenges. Subject matter experts from any field can apply innovative research techniques, thus giving new insight to the Intelligence Community.

Can you provide the most innovative and relevant answer to the Challenge questions?

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has provided two Challenge questions (below) and instructions to all conference registrants. Those who choose to accept the Challenge can submit a answer for one of the two challenge questions posed. Entries will be reviewed by a panel of judges consisting of senior IC representatives. The three entries judged to be the best answers to Challenge questions will be announced during the opening plenary session of the DNI Open Source Conference on September 11th and the answers will be presented at the concluding conference plenary on September 12th. The Challenge is open to all conference registrants, including those who are not able to attend due to overwhelming registration demand.

Challenge Questions

1. Using the best open sources to inform your answer, is Al Qaeda a cohesive organization with strong and centralized control, intent and direction?

2. According to open sources, who will be the global leader in alternative fuels and why?

Challenge Guidelines

1. Challenge Participants and Entries: Entries can be submitted either by individuals or teams, with no limit to the number of individuals on a team. Teams can consist of individuals from any number of organizations, rather than representatives exclusively from a single university, company or organization; multidisciplinary teams are encouraged. Each person, however, can only enter the Challenge once—as an individual or part of a team, not both. At least one member of each team must be a registered conference attendee and entries from individuals must be submitted by a registered (not necessarily a confirmed) attendee. Entries should address one of the two Challenge questions proposed; entries attempting to address both questions will be disqualified.

The remainder of the full guidelines may be found here.

This seems to us an excellent opportunity for a number of academic and private sector shops to demonstrate their mettle in front of a very serious – and no doubt quite attentive – audience. The timing – and timelines – reminds us more than somewhat of the Burundi exercise of years past. This is certainly no coincidence, and we have long felt it was time to update the original work performed for the 1995 Aspin-Brown Commission on Intelligence in a modern context.

To all those participating, bonne chance.

Considering a research agenda for intelligence

2008-08-27T13:29:00.004Z

One of the consistent problems that has bedeviled the academic exploration of the intelligence profession is the constant attempt to re-invent what has already come before, rather than refining accepted tradecraft or exploring new ground. Too many in the field seek to create their own buzzwords and diagrams, and elevate citation over substance. We have long disagreed with this approach. First, we believe that we simply do not need a second incarnation of a Sherman Kent to define the field itself for further study, this already having been accomplished over fifty years ago. Nor do we need to endlessly rehash old arguments over the definition of the fundamental activities which we pursue in the profession. There is a body of best practice out there, and while the profession may indeed be under-theorized it is not for a lack of first principles, but rather for the lack of reflective practice.

We have long argued that a wider discussion of the means to assist academia in focusing on subjects responsive to the intelligence community’s needs would go a long way to breaking the barriers between theory and application. For this we were politely taken to task in March by a learned doctor who disagreed with our insistence that practitioners remain involved in teaching intelligence. (To which we owe a long overdue reply, we should add with contrition. We have not been the best of correspondents as of late). Needless to say, we feel there is ample room for disagreement on this point, as purely academic efforts divorced from practical concerns have thus far in our opinion led the field too far astray at a time when it can ill afford the yet another endless series of definitional arguments, reform studies, or attempts to impose a single arbitrary finished intelligence product format.

We would however agree with another of the good professor’s points: “Academic teaching must be closely linked to research. The huge challenge is to develop a research agenda that is relevant to [intelligence] - this has hardly been done to date. The unique contribution of academia is the development of theories that are generalizable and teach us more than the occasional case.” It is in the hope of such contributions that Sherman Kent first declared the imperative for an intelligence literature, envisioning a robust discussion between both academics and professionals (and in many cases, with both roles embodied in the same persons, given the kind of scholar-spooks which inhabited to community of the day.)

Thus we were greatly encouraged to hear of the modest proposal put forward by another gentleman of great insight and energy at a recent conference of the International Association of Intelligence Education. This gentleman had already proven himself to be well worth listening to, given previous efforts to explore forgotten intelligence history and its implications for the emerging missions of the one of the IC’s newest members, and his proposal likewise deserves further attention. Simply put, he offered the National Intelligence Priorities Framework as a model for exactly the kind of research agenda that had been lacking. The proposal seemed to us a great step forward in satisfying both sides of this argument, and a means of integrating practical considerations in a means of directing the academics efforts in directions offering clear utility to the intelligence community, but sufficiently defined in a broad brush that would encourage the pursuit of individual academic interests and creative options.

Unfortunately, the NIPF is not readily available in a form that encourages dissemination to academics due to classification and handling restrictions. Selected programs which routinely work with government data may already have a means of reviewing these requirements, and there is quite a body of writings discussing the older requirements of Presidential Decision Directive 35, but this leaves quite a number of other educational institutions out in the cold. This is not entirely conducive to good research.

And while we firmly believe that the NIPF is a good baseline for building out a more comprehensive research agenda, it does not address a number of the pressing “meta-“ questions of the field, which naturally draw inquiry into the means and methodologies by which we conduct the practice of the profession, organize its affairs, and develop its new members. This is a key shortcoming in the theorization of the field, and a robust research agenda must also reflect these requirements.

There are institutions within the khaki tower of military academia that have sought to pursue the question of these requirements from time to time, in a manner adapted to their mission. The most notable of these is the US Army’s War College, which publishes its annual Key Strategic Issues List to direct its students, faculty, and outside researchers. A similar research theme is set each year at the National Defense Intelligence College, although these have traditionally been published only for circulation within the intelligence community. The DNI’s IC Postdoctoral Research Fellow Program has issued its own research agenda, but this covers only a small subset of substantive scientific and technical questions. Likewise, the National Geospatial Agency has issued a rather weighty volume on its own priorities for GEOINT research.

All of these ought to be incorporated into the wider IC research agenda. There is a clear gap here that could be easily filled by the National Intelligence University, or another similar effort within other academic focused organizations such as the National Defense Intelligence College Foundation, given that it is a topic that body has already taken up. There is also ample room for contributions from the private sector, including perhaps the august publishing institutions of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence and the Small Wars Journal. (We might have also mentioned the Journal of Competitive Intelligence and Management as well, had its recent untimely demise not robbed that segment of the field of its own academic literature).

The project also seems ideal for collaboration through one of the newer technology platforms such as a wiki. Perhaps one of the newer but growing intelligence studies academic program might find themselves to be the ideal home for such an effort.

We look forward to an expanded debate of this topic, and sincerely hope that the discussion will lead to a more productive harnessing of intellectual energies for the advancement of the profession, and the growth of its literature.

Requirements management for the new generation

2008-08-26T12:20:00.004Z

We frequently revisit the question of how the generation after next will change the activity of intelligence. It is ground that others have also slowly begun to come around to as the realities of the J-shaped workforce dawn across the community. As in many other areas of the workplace, generational changes tend to manifest themselves most visibly through technology. Thus it is the wiki and the blog which has more readily captured the imagination, while the less visible growth new models of ongoing production through informal networking brought about by the lists or the subtle changes in dissemination models driven by the Wire go largely un-remarked.

However, occasionally some changes are entirely striking not merely because of the realized technologies which have crept into the business of doing intelligence, but due to the aspirations of how a consumer would wish to see the activity done better (or at least, in a manner that better serves their particular cognitive and working style). These often frustrated desires for change are quite often poorly expressed, and rarely conveyed to the intelligence producers in any event.

Despite this, every once in a while there is something that a consumer may bring to the table from another life experience – typically outside of the intelligence domain entirely – that convincingly encapsulates both the shortcomings of the current approach and a possible model for examination of a new innovation. We enjoyed such a conversation the other day, the result of a highly technology savvy consumer’s attempt to grapple with a restricting “classic” intelligence structure that simply did not conform to the manner in which they had come to rely upon to satisfy other content needs.

We speak of course of the now standard approach to requirements management wherein a new consumer is asked to define collaboratively their Key Intelligence Topics (popularized in the private sector by the notable work of Jan Herring, having been drawn from the gentleman’s experiences as a National Intelligence Officer at a time when similar approaches drove national intelligence priorities). This is a valuable exercise, both for its role in drawing out a consumer’s concerns, pre-existing baseline knowledge, and assumptions as well as in helping set expectations regarding capabilities and deliverables. (There is a reason it first came into use and subsequently thrived after all).

The consumer in this particular case simply did not wish for the exercise to be a one time affair, or even something periodically revisited in accordance with some calendar schedule. Rather, having been taught by other information delivery environments that such a thing was possible, this decision-maker asked for a queue to which he could add, delete, and re-prioritize his own requirements as he chose. The model he cited for this was the Netflix video rental service, which offered this kind of flexibility.

This model is actually quite insightful. While one must overlook the key difference that good intelligence is not simply a pre-packaged mass market product sitting in some warehouse waiting to be sent out upon demand, and that intelligence questions should always be accompanied by scoping discussions, it is actually quite easy to modify and present such an interface for validated requirements that have been accepted by the intel staff (and to capture the additional conversations regarding objectives and terms of reference). The model also provided an unexpected benefit, in that the consumer already was willing to take into account the delay between request and production, having been trained to expect a few days turn around time for the postal mail delivery of the familiar red envelope. (For our British friends, the parallel to the equally classic red box presented to senior ministers is inescapable.)

Unfortunately such requests are infrequently captured by those in a position to implement the requisite changes even when a consumer does at last find a way to articulate what they are seeking. And while national requirements management exercises are far more involved things under the National Intelligence Priorities Framework, the back and forth of production on a smaller and more situated scale is entirely within the realm of the possible. Answering the inevitable next demand of delivering such an interface over their Blackberry – classified or otherwise – may however be entirely harder, at least in government service (commercial intelligence counterparts will likely be less constrained).

For those consumers that do not wish to actually use such an interface themselves, a periodic copy of the queue can be provided for discussion, and changes made by a briefer, unit manager, or other consumer outcomes oriented professional. In this it is little different than the classic requirements model, but it does offer additional opportunities for more dynamic engagement with the ongoing concerns of the policymaker. And we strongly believe that as the generational shifts also take hold within the ranks of key intelligence consumers, so too will the willingness to embrace already familiar processes in new contexts.

Additional layers in the forgotten history of commercial intelligence

2008-08-25T01:09:00.002Z

As part of our continuing interest in the privatization of intelligence, we have sought to surface a number of long forgotten antecedents to the modern incarnation of professional intelligence activities that were conducted in both the early government contracting environment and the purely commercial world. Through this research we have come to believe strongly that the prevalent conception underlying many of the current controversies over privatization is based an inaccurate perception; namely that intelligence is historically (and some argue, only the proper) province of the state monopolies which emerged from World WWII until the immediate post Cold War era.

However, nothing could be further from the truth. History in this case has been written by the official agencies, and as a result the wider community beyond the wheel has largely been downplayed or entirely left out. While this may have helped to build the necessary mythology to cement organizational culture in the early years of many a new government agency, it is unhelpful from the perspective of professionalization - and even moreso when attempting to understand the dynamics of resurgent privatized intelligence activities. This has also led to a number of significant fallacies in recent discussions regarding the current state and future trends of the field, most notably in academia.

We continue to find indicators in support of our case. We have identified commercial intelligence units with histories dating back as far the contemporary literature of “official” intelligence itself, and have traced the evolution of terminology and duties throughout the decades. Some of this research has previously appeared in these pages.

To this evidence we would add the following commercial intelligence activities which also ought not to be lost to time, identified in brief references throughout a number of texts buried in the forgotten archives.

An intelligence office of the National Insurance Convention of the United States, proposed in 1871 to track fraud and risk from New York offices, as a fee based service for the industry as a whole. This effort no doubt was intended to provide an American alternative to the famous and longstanding intelligence service operated by Lloyd’s of London.
The Commercial Intelligence Department of the Associated Trade and Industrial Press in Washington DC, established in 1885 and referenced in multiple publications from 1896 to 1899 advertising its intelligence products for sale. These included a “neatly type-written” list of the “leading hardware dealers in Mexico, Central and South American countries” that had been “compiled from first sources”, available at a cost of 5s.
An Intelligence Department of the English Fisheries Board, referenced in 1886, whose services included “weekly statistics of the fishing-industry, the appearance and disappearance of certain fish at particular spots, the number of fishing-boats employed, the methods of fishing employed, and the meteorological condition”
A “Special Intelligence Report” on the “Progress of the Work on the Panama Canal during 1885”, published in 1887. Among this product’s consumers were the American Geographical Society of New York and the Institution of Civil Engineers in Great Britain
The biography of the Managing Editor for a publication entitled “Commercial Intelligence” from 1898 to 1903
The Commercial Intelligence Section of the Canadian Manufacturer’s Association, referenced in 1904
An Intelligence Department of the American Electric Railway Association, referenced in 1915 as part of the claims organization
An unnamed “commercial intelligence firm in the Netherlands” identified in an advertisement published in 1920, seeking information regarding mahogany and oak lumber exporters.
The Chicago Intelligence Bureau Inc., advertised in 1922 after having been founded by three former “newspapermen”
An otherwise unidentified Market Intelligence Service at Montreal, referenced in 1925
The Intelligence Department of Midlands Bank in the United Kingdom, first identified in the obituary of its founder in 1926 and subsequently referenced in multiple publications from 1951 to 1956
The Commercial Intelligence Department of the Imperial Bank of Canada, referenced in 1947
The appointment of a Market Intelligence Officer at the Gas Council in the United Kingdom, announced in 1968
The appointment of a Market Intelligence Manager at International Janitor, Ltd. announced in 1968
The Economic Intelligence Department of Bank of London and South Africa, referenced in 1967, 1971 and 1972
Economic Intelligence Department of Norges Bank, referenced in 1981
A “Market Intelligence Center” in Taiwan, referenced in 1988
An Intelligence Department at the Salvage Association in the United Kingdom, referenced in 1989

None of the activities of these groups are entirely unfamiliar to the modern eye. While many primarily involved the collection and dissemination of basic and current intelligence often without any further analysis, one must remember that so too did most contemporaneous government intelligence activities of the day – a style of production that persisted largely unchanged until the 1950’s (and continues even to this day in a number of shops in both government and corporate practice).

The fundamental business models of privatized intelligence are also visible in this history, whether in the form of pay for product, subscription, industry association, or corporate department. The success – or failure – of certain variants over others (as clearly indicated by prevalence and longevity) points towards some of the core determinants which shaped the contemporary market for intelligence . One can argue that the same dynamics impacted even the (comparatively) distorted market within the state level monopolies, but that is a discussion for another day.

There are no doubt reams of documentation as yet uncovered, particularly within the larger of these institutions which remain extant, and within the archives that may have passed into the hands of libraries and university collections. This is a mine for fundamental research in the intelligence field that has yet to be fully tapped. There is no doubt that it will be the future source of much value in the literature of intelligence.

Unintended learning objectives

2008-08-21T15:31:00.001Z

We have recently had several occasions to ponder the unintended higher order effects that seem to be cascading from academic intelligence studies programs. These chances have come as a new cohort of students inevitably begins to join the workforce from the ’08 classes (at least at those institutions where a graduating class is still measured primarily by spring year group), and as a number of the previous years’ students begin to emerge from the initially overwhelming stages of integration into the community, during which time they were typically near invisible amongst the press of current matters far more serious.

It is usually a good thing to meet a newly minted graduate from any of the intelligence studies programs across the country – and particularly from one’s own institution - as they tend towards an enthusiasm that inevitably and infectiously refreshes one’s own commitment to the mission at hand. In a small but distinct way, it is easy to see in many of these recently graduated students the echo of one’s own early entry into the profession. This is indeed a transferable thing, no matter how one came to the field, for we have seen the dynamic at work even in those for whom intelligence was (as it historically has been) the furthest from the first thing an individual considered as a career path. But intelligence as an activity and a profession has always tended to enmesh those suited for its demands, especially those that spent time as a square peg in other environments – and those individuals are often the first to recognize the same qualities in others. Upon such a dynamic is the entire mentorship structure built, and indeed, as is the nearly feudal system of career progression that marks the professional guilds of the community.

However, we have been disturbed by a marked trend observed in such recent encounters – observations which are reinforced by similar reporting from others of great insight and independent accomplishment in the field. A far too high percentage of these students seem now to be emerging from the sheltered cloister of their institutions bereft of key competencies that one would expect from an entry level intelligence professional, yet implacably infected with a degree of arrogance that is simply breathtaking in its scope and ignorance. And in a profession whose practitioners are not often noted for their humility, this is surely something indeed.

We thus take well Megan McArdle’s recent comments on the perils of graduate education. To her scope we would also add undergraduate education focused intensely on the same subjects. (For unfortunately, the great shame of too many intelligence studies graduate programs is that they offer little different from the same courses taught to undergraduates, compressed into a far shorter dwell time. And while graduate students may in some cases come to the task armed with better core skills – among them ordinary research and basic writing – as well as a presumed level of experience and maturity, the decline of the university system does not always assure this is true.)

“The new graduate student, bolstered by the opinions of their professors, tends to become extraordinarily indignant at the notion that anyone would challenge them. Since no one without a graduate degree could possibly have mastered the requisite knowledge, disagreement becomes a sign of willful malice. They stride forth confidently into arguments with professionals armed with the three books they have read on the topic, the opinions of their professors, and enough arrogance to power a high speed monorail between Moscow and Vladivostok. That's when they get their asses handed to them. Even worse, they are often too dumb to recognize this has happened; at the nadir of the disease, they are simply constitutionally incapable of recognizing that a slot at a good school is not the same thing as omniscience.”

We have struggled to characterize the conceits which plague more than a few particular members of these newer generations, in the hope of diagnosing the source. This has proven remarkably difficult to do, not least for the sheer variety of ways in which their hubris seems to manifest. Given that we are perhaps among the most non-denominational of participants in a number of the ongoing debates over current controversies in the community, it is nonetheless disturbing to see so many points in which new professionals deviate from the most basic principles of the craft, while at the same time proclaiming their genius loudly in a most unseemly and self aggrandizing fashion. Unfortunately, we suspect that this is in many cases largely the result of many of these students never having truly learned first principles. In a subset of these cases, the blame may not even lie entirely with the student, given that there is more than anecdotal evidence that many of the foundations of intelligence as a professional activity are simply not now being taught (although blame for lack of humility can certainly be fairly apportioned, even if it is to some degree an inherited trait).

This is perhaps a seasonal disorder, and we could merely wait in hope it shall soon pass. Certainly, it is a disorder in which seasonal changes highlight the observable impacts. But we fear that the symptoms worsen year after year in the nascent intelligence studies academia. There are undiagnosed tumors in the body, and the warning indicators are growing clearer. We do not yet despair, but fain would see the physicians soon attend to their own house.

The uncanny valley and the virtual briefer

2008-08-19T19:18:00.004Z

We have long had a soft spot for the idea of virtual briefers – that is, interactive software agents which can deliver customized presentations to intelligence consumers. While nothing will ever likely beat the effectiveness of a real mind delivering insight regarding issues on which they have directly worked in a manner tailored the consumer’s interest, and being available for discussion and debate in real time, the virtual briefer could take the place of a large segment of the other briefing cases. Anyone who has spent time in the community knows these well – the interminably long, bullet point by bullet point monotone recital of someone else’s key judgments by a speaker who ought never have been placed in that position.

There have been multiple experiments along these lines, dating back ill-fated virtual newsreaders in the comparative dark ages of the Internet. Recently, lightweight video and audio production capabilities have seen a resurgence for delivery of prerecorded briefings and lectures (for which we are grateful, given the need to fill otherwise unproductive downtime in the friction of travel or commuting.) We are also aware of one relatively recent academic experiment at Mercyhurst’s intel studies program to create a new style of video briefing (or rather, a modernized lightweight version of the kinds of products frequently seen in the Reagan era White House, or even in visually dominant shops such as NGA) – although the results of that study have still regrettably not been made public. While these efforts all have their place, and have provided valuable lessons learned – especially when it comes to the gaps which must be overcome – the concepts are simply not sufficiently advanced to allow for effective widespread implementation.

However, the need for alternatives to the classic briefing continues to grow, especially as the range of consumers outside of the traditional spectrum served by the IC also grows. How many otherwise productive analysts have been sapped on a more or less fulltime basis by the need to support the multiple times daily briefings given in the many watch & warning oriented shops around the community? How many thinkers are burning themselves out at 3am to prepare for a consumer’s morning ritual? And how many of those briefings continue to be delivered to ever lower echelons of consumers merely interested in avoiding having to read a written product rather than in the true back and forth discussion and engagement of well executed briefing?

We thus continue to feel that there is a strong case for the further development and implementation of virtual briefers, at least in certain situated instances. We have been encouraged by advances in the key enabling technologies that would be required to make a robust implementation of this happen. Among the most critical are those that overcome the previous gaps in the cartoonish delivery offered by previous generations of avatars. However, most attempts at photorealistic avatars have thus far foundered in the uncanny valley – the response of the audience to appearance and behavior which is nearly, but not quite, entirely human.

Recent news out of the video gaming industry may however offer a potential solution to at least this part of the problem. At least of one firm has made exceptional progress – at least by evidence of the demonstration video – in bridging the uncanny valley.

Of course, conversational agents still have a long way to go. Without such agents, we would reiterate our previously expressed our concerns regarding the removal of the opportunity for human interaction between analysts and high value intelligence customers.

As a stopgap, one can however easily envision a hybrid structure evolving, in which basic briefings are delivered in a syndicated fashion by virtual talking heads, while a lightweight response interface captures any comments or questions from the consumer for routing to the appropriate analyst. It is certainly not real time, but for a wide variety of consumers such asynchronous but more tailored service may be exactly what they have been looking for when they cannot afford – or sustain – the level of analytic effort required for full time briefing support.

We have reason to believe that it will be the private sector intelligence shops that may adopt such virtual briefers first, as they have also been the early adopters of podcasts, webcasts, and other innovative delivery options. (We would not venture to lay odds on whether it will be a Stratfor, an iJet, an Economist Intelligence Unit, or some other entirely unknown shop - perhaps in the competitive intelligence arena - that takes this plunge first. And we would be even more foolish to predict which one might first succeed.) Yet one can easily see how a subscription based service could easily syndicate the dissemination of selected products – crafted by the usual suspects who lurk in the cubicle mazes or darkened basements – but delivered in a unique format tailored for the busy consumer. Likewise, one might envision a successful offering by a small competitive intelligence department located an otherwise large organization with extensive demands as yet unmet by traditional product formats. And with the new options for flash based video available from smartphones (including the increasingly ubiquitous iPhone), such a service - in whatever form it may emerge and evolve to thrive - is likely not too far off in the distant future.

Medical intelligence and the PRC Olympic gymnastic team

2008-08-15T12:17:00.003Z

The controversy over the allegedly altered official age records for the PRC’s Olympic gymnastic team has provided an excellent teaching example for the benefits of medical intelligence. There are a number of indicators which have been surfaced through open source reporting, including missing baby teeth, biometric anomalies, and altered official records and state agency news stories. These are compelling evidence in their own right to support further inference.

Of course, more sophisticated techniques are available for intelligence professionals. Such techniques have long been a staple of leadership analysis, in which foreign figures are closely examined for potential medical anomalies. The importance of accurate assessments of the health of foreign leaders was driven home after the failure to understand the severity of the Shah of Iran’s illness, which directly led the United States to underestimate the revolutionary climate of the country in 1979.

The discipline has been covered repeatedly in the intelligence literature, first in a (now declassified) Studies in Intelligence article, Remote Medical Diagnosis. The history of the methodology and its use was also revisited in an article published in the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, “CIA’s Medical and Psychological Analysis Center (MPAC) and the Health of Foreign Leaders”. There is a robust and well tested tradecraft available to help address these outstanding questions, even based solely on media recorded to date.

One particular analyst of our acquaintance leveraged practice honed in the far less rarified world of gossip magazines into an uncanny talent at spotting plastic surgery in handheld imagery. Needless to say, it is competency that one does not often find listed in human capital inventories – even in leadership analyst or medical intelligence vacancy postings - but yet one that has numerous uses in the intelligence profession. (Including, one might add, settling informal wagers taken over particular points of dispute that from time to time circulate through the vault.)

The application of these analytic methodologies is certainly not infallible, particularly when assessing the age of young females. A number of high profile mistakes have occurred in cases involving online pornography (albeit mistakes usually made by less well trained criminal investigators carrying with them a host of cognitive biases, rather than objective medical professionals focused on the art and science). However, the International Olympic Committee could certainly avail itself of far more robust diagnostic options than remote analysis alone might otherwise afford in order to reduce the potential error rate.

Regardless of the outcomes of further medical assessment, the controversy itself offers additional insight for political and leadership analysis. The insecurities of an authoritarian leadership - so desperate to prove itself on a world stage that it resorts to unsportsmanlike conduct and faked ceremony - demonstrate the impulses of the Communist government’s decision-making process as clearly as any other operational code yet documented. The reaction – or lack thereof - from a disconnected internationalist body mired in its own Utopian fantasy has also been instructive (and equally, could easily have been predicted by anyone who has spent any amount of time in the cloistered and anti-intellectual environment of Lausanne).

The truth will out. If nothing else, the case also demonstrates the value of intelligence to a wide variety of non-traditional consumers in this new millennium.

The Jesters tackle counterproliferation

2008-08-14T22:33:00.002Z

We have several enduring interests that our longtime readers will have noted us discuss before. The first - consumption of interesting audio media - is based on the inevitable realities of the Beltway commute, frequent extended travel time, and long periods of enforced downtime at various airstrips, motor pools, and other transient spaces around the globe. The second is the conviction that better insight can often be generated by the jesters at the futurists' court than the professional prognosticators – or at the very least, the clowns utilized for illustration and the divergence analytic methodology.

It is not often these interests converge. However, there is apparently a growing and vibrant podcasting scene occupied by speculative fiction writers of all sorts, and it is from that space that we were given (by a more science fiction oriented colleague) a story which illustrates – as only a fictional vignette can – the potential difficulties of future counterproliferation activities in the expeditionary and post-conflict environment. Thus we also recommend highly to our readers the short piece “Clockwork Atom Bomb” produced over at the Escape Pod “podcast magazine” (an entity which we had not previously been familiar with, and do not otherwise attempt evaluate). We think the piece will also be of particular interest to those which routinely must argue the effects of perverse economic incentives in transnational issues, and those that handle accounts related to sub-Saharan Africa.

The piece is not recommended for those that take their analytic tasks too literately, or their futures intelligence within too narrowly constrained boundaries of simple linear projection. But it is perfect for a short diversion to recapture otherwise lost time.

What’s in an intelligence professional curriculum

2008-08-13T14:49:00.002Z

In the wake of the summer conference season, and in particular the recent events hosted by the International Association for Intelligence Education (IAFIE), we have been left to ponder one of the enduring challenges of the field’s ongoing professionalization: the widespread disagreement regarding what exactly prospective candidates and serving practitioners ought to be taught in an entry level and continuing education programs. (Note that we deliberately emphasize the need for an intelligence professional curriculum, vice entering into the debates over intelligence education versus intelligence studies. While such discussions have their place, we do not wish to address them here, and have chosen a third terminology as a proxy to encompass both the theory and application intended to serve the practitioners’ needs in order to address both training, education, and the meta- or comparative study of the field.)

One would think that this should be a largely uncontroversial matter. After all, there is widespread agreement regarding a number of the common skills and tasks required of intelligence professionals – particularly in the analytic side of the house (which admittedly has been better explored from the perspective of intelligence theory). There is even a growing consensus on the other qualities required by an intelligence professional, developed as part of a number of human capital competencies modeling efforts that are occurring both within the government and its private sector contractor and competitive intelligence counterparts.

This is not the first time the question has been raised. Several contemporary model curriculum efforts came out of the United Kingdom’s National Intelligence Model, translated in the United States under the Generic Intelligence Training Initiative to the law enforcement realm of the then dominant counterdrug mission circa 2000. Such efforts eventually culminated (through a fascinating pathway of memetic diffusion) in the now popular International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts’ Foundations of Intelligence Analysis Training standards. This has essentially displaced the previous standard curriculum model, at least in the criminal intelligence discipline, a defacto mix of the 1970’s era Anacapa training coupled with limited GEOINT and quantitative methodologies that grew out of the NYPD’s COMPSTAT. By default, this is also the dominant paradigm for the emerging discipline of homeland security intelligence, given the now overwhelming participation of state and local law enforcement in the new structures that have emerged in the strange evolutionary turns of the domestic mission and its capabilities.

Other models have been developed and presented from the academic perspective over the years since, involving separate deliberative efforts at four universities, the National Defense Intelligence College (formerly the Joint Military Intelligence College), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Yet none have been widely adopted, even in principle - and the debates over the topic remain exceptionally heated.

We should note that controversy is of course a matter of perspective. While the latest evolution of curriculum within one particular institution sparked such a degree of debate and dissent that upon the recent departure of one of the significant players involved in implementing these changes, it was joked that the traditional hail and farewell meal was held at an undisclosed offsite location in order to prevent a prominently vocal critic from arriving driving a VBIED. And although this little jest was made without the knowledge of any of the involved individuals that had participated in the debate, it would certainly not be the most contentious faculty meeting we had ever observed. For a real civil war level dispute, one must look to the tenured staff at in other disciplines.

Yet none of these differs markedly in content or kind from the first intelligence curriculum design attempt that we are aware of, a modest but nonetheless foundational study authored in 1965. Those unaware of the true history and impact of intelligence privatization might be scandalized to learn that this was a contractor led effort, explicitly designed to create the government curriculum for the then emerging Defense Intelligence College that resulted from a recommendation contained within the 1946 Gerow Report on officer’s education. The latter is widely considered to be the origin of current military professional education. We would like to see its role in establishing the concept of intelligence professional education likewise remembered, particularly given that it encompasses both education and training concepts.

To be sure, the profession has evolved since this time. Entire new disciplines within the field have emerged, and pedagogy likewise has come a long way. But somehow, practitioners are constantly confronted by those wishing to re-invent the wheel when it comes to implementing a new program. In no other field would it be possible to credibly ignore all antecedents when it came time to discuss program objectives and outcomes, especially when these are ignored in favour of long debates over first definitions. It should not be thus in the intelligence profession.

Likewise, we strongly object to the oft-heard statements that an intelligence curriculum ought to merely concern itself with teaching the basics of critical thinking, writing, and briefing. While these are indeed vital skills, and their mastery strongly correlated with success in the field, they are by no means the only things an entry level analyst needs. And despite the claims that the IC will provide all further necessary instruction on tradecraft topics, we would venture to guess that these claimants have not led a line unit for some time. Similarly, those that have never served outside of the cloistered confines of the most established of the big sixteen may not always appreciate how little training budget (and time) is available to those in other agencies and elements. Again, in few other professional endeavors does one anticipate that college educated entry level candidates are merely blank slates, waiting to be imprinted with the One True Way.

Lastly, we would offer one final consideration for those developing a new intelligence curriculum. Pay no heed to those that demand that the study of intelligence be the academic discipline that dare not speak its name, or that this name be somehow muted and altered to provide greater attraction for interdisciplinary students. Such programs are inevitably a confused pastiche, and fail in the most important function of the educational process: the cultivation of personal passion and the all consuming interest that drives the best professionals. A muted program under a politically sanctified name merely mutes its students, not critics. We cannot as a profession allow the prejudices of those critics to dictate the terms under which new generations come of into the field – particularly given the vital importance of the generation after next at this historic turning point in the community.

The literature of cryptologic intelligence, declassified

2008-08-12T09:13:00.001Z

Whole volumes of the intelligence literature produced within one of the oldest of the nation’s organizations are too often ignored by academics and other practitioners outside of the narrow field of signals intelligence. The literature of the technical side of the house tends to be exceptionally arcane – even by the eccentric standards of the rest of the IC – littered with mathematics, circuit diagrams, and radio propagation sketches. Its historical materials assume a familiarity that many outsiders cannot broach. And above all, this literature remains exceptionally protected, often for decades longer than counterpart publications in other agencies.
But the reader would be remiss to ignore the recently declassified series of articles taken from the various in-house journals and historical studies of our friends at Fort Meade. While still a small collection, it is a remarkable aggregation of materials of great potential value for those engaged in the hard task of teaching intelligence to the next generation of budding young professionals.

We are particularly hopeful that this round of declassifications will also spark a new interest in the history and theory of this venerable discipline. The second wave of publications that result from such interest are often invaluable companions to the primary works authored by practitioners, as academics attempt to interpret and re-contextualize material which has often long ago passed into the domain of the unexamined assumptions of common knowledge.

So hie thee hence, dear readers, and we hope to see new life emerge in the commentary and discussion of these thoughts of those that came before, and who laid the foundation for the practice of the art and science as we now know it.

Intelligence and the 300 at 3 a.m.

2008-08-11T23:40:00.001Z

Much has been made of the extended cadres of foreign policy advisors employed by the Obama campaign – purported to exceed some 300 subject matter experts and other assorted wonks, organized into a virtual think tank of sorts.

From a professional (and entirely apolitical) perspective of intelligence theory, the existence of the 300 is enough to give pause, especially since such innovations in political campaigns tend to be rapidly adopted in future election cycles. Shadow policy structures directly advising future candidates – perhaps even semi-permanently organized, as in the British model – may well become a recurring feature of the US party system. It is not our place to comment on the appropriateness of such a structure. However, these individuals are more or less entirely disconnected from the US intelligence system, and are relying on unknown information source of uncertain validity (presumably much if not all derived from the open source domain) to advise future leaders on matters in which there likely exists a substantial body of classified reporting. This classified view likely presents a far different picture than the open source would on a number of key issues. (One can look to the Mitrokin Archive’s revelations, for example, as but one hint of the re-evaluation that must necessarily occur in foreign policy relations when intelligence information is taken into account.)

This time around, it appears that the McCain campaign’s advisors are fewer in number, and being loosely organized likely play a lesser role in determining the candidate’s stance on any given issue. And the sitting Senator has long had access to classified intelligence (as does his opponent by virtue of the same office, albeit for a far shorter time period). This decision advantage is likely somewhat akin to that enjoyed by incumbent Presidents against outside challengers in previous elections. And while there are those who have been named as part of the 300 that were previously consumers of classified intelligence products, in most cases these individuals have been out of access for at least a decade. Again, from an apolitical intelligence theory perspective, this is quite sobering. To paraphrase CIA’s former Balkan Task Force - whose original comments came against the backdrop of the dispute between different factions arguing over the conflict in that troubled region - each campaign is entitled to its own policy, but not its own version of history.

The question of what intelligence support a campaign ought to receive, and how far that support should extend (beyond the traditional briefings provided to the candidate himself), are not easy to objectively address – particularly in a hyper-politicized election season. It is perhaps among the thorniest of aspects of intelligence – policy relations that have yet arisen in the new millennium. But it is nonetheless a critical consideration, and especially so in cases of crisis situations. For while intelligence theory recognizes that the community is not the only voice advising decisionmakers, most theoretical discussions assume that intelligence is part of the process – something that is not assured in the campaign stage. Among the questions which should be examined include how such intelligence support can be delivered, how to avoid politicization of that intelligence in the atmosphere of a hotly contested campaign, and how arrangements can be constructed to prevent leaks in a temporary and highly transient environment of moving facilities, rotating staff, and constant media attention.
The manner in which these questions are answered may well set the pattern for a subsequent administration’s use of intelligence, and shape key relationships between decisionmakers and the community. And more importantly, the international impact of any candidate’s actions during the early stages of a crisis event – such as the now infamous 3 a.m. call - is magnified by the instant global media environment moreso now than at any time in previous history.

Such 3 a.m. moments particularly highlight the need for (and the potential problems of) providing warning intelligence support. The first reaction of a surprised campaign has international impact, and may well be a significant factor in foreign responses during the early hours of a crisis depending on how those abroad view any particular candidate’s prospects for electoral success. (For a historical example of such an assessment by foreign decisionmakers, one need only recall the covert overtures made by the KGB’s Washington residentura to the Kennedy campaign at Kruschev’s request, which occurred against the crisis backdrop of negotiations over the fate of two RB-47 reconnaissance pilots downed in Soviet territory in July 1960). The Georgia / Russia incident provides a more contemporary example, and future analysis will by necessity have to consider the influence of both the official US reactions and the candidates’ responses on the Russian view of achievable conflict objectives in the first days of the fighting.

US Presidential candidates have not lacked for those former intelligence officials now willing to offer policy advice - and even their own visions of intelligence community reform. However, true professional intelligence support has been far less consistent. This merits greater attention.

Taking stock of the blogged literature of intelligence

2008-08-10T22:05:00.002Z

Since starting this little project in January 2006, we have seen a frankly explosive growth in the blogged literature of intelligence – that is, the online discussion of the profession, its theory and its practice through texts circulated using lightweight publishing tools.

It has been a tumultuous time within the intelligence community itself, and also within the wider profession outside the boundaries of the traditional wheel of the sixteen primary agencies. This has very much been reflected in the literature that has emerged during this time period.

We are most heartened by the continued emergence of the practitioners – both retired and those currently serving – that reflect upon their lived experiences through this new and most accessible medium (recognizing, of course, the inevitable limitations of discretion required in such an open forum).

In particular, we are fascinated by the rapid development in 2008 of a large number of increasingly active bloggers addressing the private aspects of competitive intelligence and business intelligence. This community has never suffered from the same restrictions placed upon those in the service of the national interest, and had the means and history of rapidly adopting technologies to new ends. Yet these practitioners remained for the most part strangely silent until this year. Much credit for surfacing this growing community’s online writings should be given to the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals (SCIP), who now makes the highlights of this literature a centerpiece of the organization’s own online presence. And while the theory of these aspects of the profession has a long way to go before it can equal the more robust corpus of other elements of the field, both in national intelligence and homeland security / law enforcement intelligence, we are pleased to see great strides being made. We have also found that the experiential epiphanies reported by these individuals as they struggle with problems common to the practice of the art and science have great value as accessible (and unclassified) examples when teaching any new practitioners.

We have also remained cautiously optimistic regarding the emergence of the classified blogsphere, written within the restricted realms of other networks. For those practitioners who cannot discuss the subjects of their passions in open literature, it is essential – and is the only way many have to capture insights into theory and application that might otherwise be lost. And while one might view this material as useless to the academics and those private sector professionals outside of the classified realm, one must remember that much of the foundation of our current day literature is built upon those materials which were properly declassified in the fullness of time. So too will this material one day surface through the normal mechanisms of release and review – providing a rich trove for future historians and educators.

As much as we are pleased to see the development of a robust community of interest within the intelligence blogsphere, we would also wish for a greater level of original research to appear in this medium. Unfortunately, the incentive structure does not appear to be present for many academics, and there are far too many other pursuits conferring greater legitimacy to practitioners that serve to divert energies elsewhere. This must change, both for the sake of the blogsphere but also we believe for the sake of the profession itself. We are the first to recognize that blogging is not a public utility – it is the outgrowth of a personal passion; and it frequently must give way to other operational demands when it is solely a labour of love. This is perhaps the intelligence profession’s version of the eternal debate within the media blogsphere over primary news reporting versus punditry. However, we hold out hope – particularly example set by original research among the legal bloggers, who tend also to publish in more traditional channels, thus also proving the symbiotic relationship of these activities. Good blogging encourages good literature.

We also realize that starting – and maintaining – a good blog requires a tremendous commitment of time and energies, despite the many barriers which the lightweight publishing technology itself has already overcome. It is for this reason we re-iterate our offer to circulate the thoughts of those professionals – both those in practice or in the academy - who would wish to occasionally offer items of interest to the wider audience (respecting, of course, the requirements of non-disclosure agreements and the other sacred oaths sworn by those who still serve. In this, we follow the well considered lead of the Association for Intelligence Officers, reminding any contributors that “authors are responsible for compliance with restrictions and regulations regarding the publication and clearance of materials dealing with present or past employment”.)

Insight problems, red cell mindsets and alternative analysis

2008-03-21T14:14:00.001Z

We have long held mixed opinions regarding the computer security guru Bruce Schneier. While he often says interesting and provocative things, and has a distinct flair for memorably naming common phenomena (including introducing nomenclature such as security theatre, which even senior Transportation Security Administration officials have adopted in their own verbiage). At the same time, his off the cuff commentary frequently reaches far beyond his area of expertise into things of which he clearly has limited knowledge, but which he asserts with the same confidence – with less than useful results. It is a classic problem of the expert’s paradox, one frequently seen in those SME’s that spend a great deal of time in the media’s limelight.

Despite this caveat, we do commend to our readers a recent piece in which Schneier has brought to our attention an interesting course in computer security. The course attempts to inculcate the “attacker’s mindset” into new students, teaching them to view problems from the adversary’s perspective in what intelligence professionals will recognize as a classic red cell fashion. He notes that this kind of thinking is quite alien to most engineers. We concur, and to this category we would also add lawyers, most economists and political scientists, as well as others of like inclination which have been educated within the formal strictures of similar academic disciplines that do not value alternative models outside of their own recognized boundaries.

We are happy to see such matters being discussed in the otherwise normally disconnected halls of the academy. We feel it crystallizes an approach to addressing one of the core problems of the intelligence profession – that of teaching analysts about insight problems, and in particular the kind of insight problems that require experiential epiphanies to begin to understand. Much of the lack of creativity and loss of imagination in the intelligence field can be attributed to attempts to bound non-deterministic problems too tightly within the confines of a given methodological approach. While structured analytical techniques are vital to exploring the fleeting quicksilver of insight, those who try to squeeze too hard will find that quicksilver escapes their grasp. You cannot teach insight – you must inspire it, and teach the methods which can reliably generate such inspiration.

We view this as a vitally important and almost entirely neglected aspect of current intelligence education and training. Given that alternative analysis has been enshrined as a requirement to meet community standards, and that formal red cell efforts continue to proliferate throughout many agencies and organizations, cultivating the kind of analysts which can perform well in those environments is vital. And unfortunately, most current instruction falls woefully short of that which is needed to accomplish such a task.

Of lawyers and hammer fixation

2008-03-20T23:42:00.002Z

We have condemned the too frequent intrusion of the lawyers into the realm of foreign intelligence on many previous occasions. From a perspective of policy and of practicality, it rarely results in good outcomes – especially when it comes hand in hand with the kind of toxic politicization that has so corrupted the contemporary environment. We can think of no better example than the continuing travesty which has been the leak plagued and talking point distorted scandal that is the attempt to apply unprecedented restrictions on foreign intelligence collection, brought about by a single un-reviewed FISA court decision and the political football that has resulted over corrective legislation. We need not revisit the matter here, as other commentators have spilled countless pixels on the topic, and we think the exceptionally candid statements by the community’s most senior leadership should have laid the matter to rest. That the debate continues is bitter testament to the folly of politicization too common in today’s national security decision-making abetted by ill starred over-lawyering.

It is against this backdrop we find yet another attempt to introduce the unelected judicial branch into matters which have long been properly held to be strictly questions for the elected officials of the executive and legislative branches who are themselves accountable to voters in questions of policy. In this case, the intrusion comes in the form of a paper which presents a "modest" proposal to hold the war-making powers of the elected branches hostage to an adversarial court process, in which the case to be presented will be composed from intelligence take. We initially would have thought this a jest in very poor taste indeed, but we unfortunately see it was seriously argued.

Presumably such intelligence would be inevitably demanded in its most raw form. This is a sure prescription for even more damaging leaks than have already cost significant investments in blood and treasure through the loss of the unique capabilities that such investments had purchased. It is also a sure prescription for intelligence failure, not merely due to the loss of those capabilities to leaks, but also due to failures of analysis. Prior to World War II, a good many legal minds attempted to act as their own analysts – and failed in ways which demonstrated just about every form of cognitive bias and logical fallacy that has ever been documented in analytic tradecraft. The parsing of law and the insight required of intelligence analysis are entirely different creatures, and do not mix well – especially under the conditions of great uncertainty and implacable time constraints which are found in international crisis situations.

Given the dysfunction which has so characterized what is among the most vital and timely of national needs in this Long War, to great and unfortunately continuing loss. Not every problem in the arena of national security and international relations is amenable to the lawyer’s hammer (or more appropriately, the judge’s gavel.) There are other instruments of national power, and making these subservient to a courtroom process is a certain path towards rendering them entirely impotent in a complex, dynamic and continually evolving threat environment.

h/t Volokh Conspiracy

No greater love…

2008-03-18T23:54:00.000Z

There have been too few honours accorded those who walk furthest in harm’s way, and face nearly unendurable hardships and danger in the service of this Long War. Too often their sacrifices have been denigrated, or wrapped tight behind the cloak of secrecy.

But on rare occasion, the magnitude of a man’s actions may speak louder than the silent profession. The example set by such a man rises far above the fleeting fashions of the chattering classes, and demonstrates the truth of a warrior’s lasting legacy.

Michael Monsoor is such a man. And in him see all those who served in the shadows, to suffer for their comrades in arms without a word of any faint praise. In him know the willing choice to bear the full brunt of war’s energies so that others might fight through to victory. He was among the best of them all.

In the words of that oldest of warrior's poetry:
Here dwell I no longer, for Destiny calleth me! Bid thou my warriors after my funeral pyre.

Remember him.

h/t Haft of the Spear

Considering immunity

2008-03-17T23:46:00.000Z

While there are those that believe the world of polite conversation and “good faith” in arms control and disarmament can trump the hard realities of proliferation, we see a world in which the technologies required to assemble and deploy a credible threat are increasingly within the reach of the most mundane of non-state actors. While we are rarely given to dwell exclusively on issues of threat, as threat is not always in fact the most interesting aspect of a particular problem account (despite what many outsiders may believe), there are a few areas in which our nightmares are never far from fruition in the hands of the wrong actors.

This is especially true in the areas of emerging biological threats. While we are very much aware of a particular academic effort that examined the matter recently, we found its results disappointing, to say the least, largely because its work focused far too much on an assessment of the present vice a truly predictive and forward looking estimate – one that would help to bound the future space of uncertainties, and would identify the drivers and forces moving on the horizon.

Nonetheless, we continue to see the faint indicators of these forces from time to time. These are best captured not in some formulaic collection of wiki pages dedicated to a highly geographic scope – as if disease somehow respected national borders. Rather, one looks for the trend lines, and those areas in which black swans may emerge without warning as sudden shocks to the unprepared perspective. And while there are those that will insist that a black swan event is inherently unpredictable by nature, we are reminded of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s original formulation of the turkey’s day. The black swan event of meeting the butcher is only a shock to the turkey after a thousand days of being fed and cared for by other humans; it is an entirely normal course of a day’s work for the butcher. Likewise, for those who shift their perspective to the edges where the future is not evenly distributed, there may one find the first seeds of those events sown.

The difficulty of course lies in winnowing the signals of true predictive value from the noise of the overwhelming range of possibilities and potentials. This is fundamentally an insight problem. And the difficulties faced in approaching these problems are the epitome of the danger of treating mysteries as if they were puzzles suited for deterministic approaches and linear solutions that can be tied up neatly in sections and a nice cover page.

We happened to glance today at just such a faint indicator in which the merest hint of future insight might be reflected. It comes to us by way of the scientific community – always fertile ground for an intelligence professional to mine when examining fundamental issues of the physical and the living (as opposed to our more usual domain of the virtual and the dead). We find the development of simple replica immune systems for rapid testing of vaccines quite interesting in its own right, with the prospect of accelerated (and more accurate) clinical trials as the first clear benefit.

But our darker minds also take hold of the concept, and ponder the dual use implications that such a technique might offer in the hands of an adversary seeking to accelerate testing of modified biological agents designed to defeat immune resistance - whether human or otherwise. The footprint of such a facility would not be large, and would pose a very different kind of challenge to the intelligence community of tomorrow than the classic concept of an offensive bioweapons program. Threats abound in most futures that are easily envisioned.

At the same time, the technology presents the potential hope of opportunities not yet conceived. Just the other day before the University of Maryland findings began circulating, we found ourselves listening to an interesting discussion of the value that captive wildlife populations might bring to large scale bio-surveillance programs, both for sentinel warning as well as novel agent detection. The potential for cultivating accelerated immune responses as test models by which we might know the signs of outbreaks through wildlife (or domestic animal) populations is quite intriguing, especially given the other utility brought by captive populations in the urban settings of major zoos.

We ponder this as case study not solely in pursuit of any account in its own right – as that is more properly the domain for the line analyst, but rather as a teaching example. The case illustrates well the difference between intelligence done off a checklist which presumes a puzzle to be assembled from some mythic collection of dots, vice the kinds of implicit linkages that can only be found through creative exploration driven by fruitful obsession. Whether that which has been sketched here has any true value is a matter for the more disciplined application of analytic tradecraft. However, if one is not preparing analysts to begin to find reflections in the endless stir of these echoes that they may seek to later crystallize through more formal methodology, all that they will have to work with will be checklists and formulaic incantations - which alone will not keep the dark at bay.

A glimpse of a future naval special operations mission

2008-03-14T14:13:00.000Z

Thanks to the jesters at the futurist court’s table over at io9, we note a most interesting concept in circulation for new urban development project – at sea. The environment will be a tailored cross between luxury resort, cruise ship, and a small city. Throw in a casino and conventional center, and you have an interesting playground for what the designers presumably hope will be the rich and famous.

Should such a vessel ever be constructed, however, one can imagine its prominence as a target for maritime terrorism and piracy. And while authoring that threat assessment would be quite interesting, we are not sure we would want to be in the company directors’ shoes when briefing those results to an insurer such as Lloyds of London.

More interestingly yet, this inevitable threat raises the distinct possibility that a future naval special operations mission would be required to respond to a potential incident aboard. With anywhere between 20,000 to 50,000 souls on board, and what will likely be an internal architecture quite different from other maritime vessels, such a mission would no doubt be taxing in the extreme for even the most capable unit. Even the barge-like hull structure and high rise type construction envisioned by the ship’s builders would impose its own complications on such an operation.

While the concept itself looks slick enough, it is far from certain whether it would ever be ready for primetime. However, the idea does provide interesting fodder for intelligence professionals seeking to explore future scenarios for unconventional warfare and counterterrorism. And one cannot beat that back to the 80’s feel of the whole endeavor, even if one should include the more modern elements of Somali pirates and radical Islamist terrorist actors in the scenario itself. After all, it has been some time since considering the response to a vessel hijacking incident has been new enough to occasion comment.

For those future operators which may one day be tasked with this kind of mission, at least there is some solace to know that it will likely occur in a pleasant climate. After all, the rich do not generally favour less hospitable weather – which makes this a far cry from the typical oil rig takedown.

The intelligence community and technological surprise in the Cold War

2008-03-12T15:10:00.000Z

It has long been a maxim in the intelligence community that despite other types of intelligence failures – created by both collection shortfalls and analytic errors – the one remarkable area of success was the “fact” that no Soviet weapons system was deployed during the latter period Cold War without the US being aware of it in advance. In this version of the telling, the initial period of uncertainty regarding Soviet capabilities was ended by new technical collection methods, and the analysis to derive insight from those collection systems. From that point forward – usually dated to around the time of the introduction of the U-2 platform – the US intelligence community allegedly never again faced strategic technological surprise.

This story has been repeated so often that it is no longer even questioned, particularly given the fact that multiple DCI’s and their deputies have also supported the statement. Despite this, a recent conversation regarding certain the post-Cold War discoveries regarding certain historical intelligence controversies gave us reason to revisit this old success story. The public history regarding the IC’s true knowledge of the main enemy’s scientific and technical intelligence advancements has become more clear as declassification continues to bring these topics back into the realm of academic discussion. One can also now make far more useful comparisons the increasingly public statements of former Soviet scientists, defense planners, and other professionals that are now recording their own services’ histories.

And from these comparisons, we find the old maxim gravely wanting in the revised judgment of history. Perhaps the most serious area of strategic surprise were the revelations first made public by Ken Alibek, the defector who formerly headed the Soviet Biopreparat program, of an unsuspected strategic biological warfare capability. This capability included weaponized anthrax and smallpox warheads deployed on R36 / SS-9 SCARP and R-36M / SS-18 SATAN ICBMs. This surprising revelation was however preceded by an earlier intelligence failure regarding Soviet BW programs, which missed the development and first operational deployment of T2 mycotoxins - yellow rain - in Laos and Cambodia. That alone should have provided warning that all was not well with the IC’s supposed scientific and technical intelligence superiority, as also should have the Sverdlovsk anthrax release accident. However, the rapidly and intensely politicized public debate over these latter two cases in particular serves to illustrate well the long term damage that can be done to the community by the failure to remain objective, independent, and apart from the media-led scrum.

US technical intelligence regarding Soviet chemical weapons programs also allegedly suffered from similar surprise, failing to initially detect the development of the entirely new class of Novichok nerve agents – again learning about the capability only from post-Cold War defector reporting. What might have been in this matter is far less clear, but as an exception it certainly disproves the rule.

It is important that when holding up a standard for new intelligence professionals to emulate that we choose one that has actually been met before. Absolutely avoiding all forms of strategic surprise in the scientific and technical area is a laudable goal. But that is not the bar that was set by the Cold War era – despite what others may claim - and measuring today’s efforts through that prism does a great disservice to those who are responsible for chasing an impossible mission under what are arguably the far harder circumstances of the contemporary operating environment.

This does not in any way detract from the excellent service given by those responsible for the assessment of Soviet weapons programs, and for the countless successes which initially gave rise to the myth. While the IC does not need aggrandizement, it does have ample legends that have more than earned bragging rights never exercised in a quiet profession. History owes those that never sought recognition in their own time an accurate accounting of the deeds of their day.

OSINT and faint indicators in the new cyber environment

2008-03-11T13:29:00.001Z

For all of the sound and fury regarding the potential OPSEC implications of military and intelligence blogging, we must continually remind those mired in the old ways of thinking that there are far more pressing problems which inflict damage on the enterprise - be that enterprise government or commercial. While indiscretion will always remain a cardinal sin, the worst indiscretions are rarely committed by those that put pen to paper with proper foresight and consideration of the potential higher order effects of the discussion. The prohibition argument also rarely takes into consideration the kind of deliberate self-censorship that is routinely practiced by those with an active stake in the reputation market of the blogsphere – one that increasingly crosses into normal professional life in much the same manner as do one’s writings in an academic journal. The higher order benefits, on the other hand, of a robust and evolving literature, can be clearly shown to outweigh the actual problems identified in the kinds of studies which call for widespread prohibition of online writings on topics of relevance to the field. Worse yet, if such a prohibition would come to pass, the community will essentially have yielded the floor entirely to those who write without true understanding, and who increasingly lead the discussion further astray from the real issues and opportunities that today’s intelligence professionals face – as well as those critics which seek to deny entirely the legitimacy of the profession itself.

We have recently had occasion to note counter-examples which prove by comparison the vast gulf between the discretion of those current and former professionals engaged in active current debate in furtherance of the literature, and the kind of negligence and errors of the “official” discussion that if the shoe were on the other foot would provoke widespread (and justified) outrage. The first of these comes from the commercial world, at the Corporate Intelligence blog, where a case study examining the inferences which can be drawn from job vacancy postings is presented. We can recall quite a few similar issues emerging in the national security space, particularly with certain less than discrete contractors that tend to advertise in the major regional papers for rather explicit position descriptions, revealing rather more detail than one would like to see in public. These are rarely cited in prohibition discussions, however, but in the aggregate have likely done far more damage to the community than all of the public deliberative literature over the past sixty years.

We also recommend highly the analysis over at In From the Cold of a recent and much publicized incident involving the F-22 Raptor program, in which a pilot was less than discrete in online discussions. While we certainly feel that the individual responsible for disclosures deserves a long counseling session on appropriate standards for representing oneself in public, we take well the number of points in which supposedly “protected” information was previously disclosed through official public affairs channels. We also find observations of the interest displayed by certain parties more valuable than the information provided back to them, especially when the alternative pathways for those parties to obtain the same answers could have been used through entirely passive means, of which the community might never have been aware.

Of course, OSINT does have its dark side in that the adversary is always capable of using it against friendly interests. However, it requires a level of effort, understanding, and skill to parse through the overwhelming volume of noise to find those faint indicators – a task not unfamiliar to those that have ever worked with publicly available source information. In our view, it is better our adversaries waste that time – not knowing the wheat from the chaff – than they should spend efforts pursuing real collection against more sensitive activities that might yield a return on that investment that is more damaging to friendly interests in the long run.

The modern information environment is increasingly complex, and now that the genie of those technologies is out of the bottle, there is no chance of returning to a simpler era. It thus becomes all the more critical that the discussion regarding the effects of new media and online public discussions focus more narrowly on those areas which are truly essential elements of friendly information that must be protected with exceptional caution, rather than a blanket of prohibition that will harm our own side’s sensemaking and adaptation more than it will impair the enemy’s collection efforts.

Applications in commercial overhead imagery for stability and support operations

2008-03-10T15:50:00.000Z

We continue to be impressed with the uses for commercial overhead imagery which the private sector now increasingly relies upon in an astounding array of situations. While none of these applications are new from the perspective of an intelligence community which has been employing national technical means to similar ends for decades, their independent re-discovery in the outside world, and operationalization in support of crisis situations, remains fascinating from the perspective of intelligence studies scholarship.

The most recent example comes from the conflict in Chad - which provides an excellent and evolving unclassified teaching case to explore the issues involved in small wars and destabilizing countries, particularly for the unique kinds of intelligence support required in noncombatant evacuation operations and other stability and support missions. UNOSAT has recently released a series of products derived from commercial satellite data which attempt to estimate the scale of urban evacuation of the capital of N´Djamena.

In the long ago forgotten history of commercial satellite imagery in the 1990’s, many early papers were written describing the potential impact that the availability of these then futuristic capabilities would have on the international community’s attempts to assess these kind of crisis events – which were frankly the dominant mission of the day. While many crises have come and gone since then, we have seen only a few efforts truly utilize open source imagery analysis during such events to produce truly effective intelligence support. This is a fundamentally different order of thing than how most NGOs and press organizations have attempted to use imagery, and the team which generated it is to be commended for their work. It should also be held up as a model to be emulated in future crisis situations by both the NGO and the PMC sectors; and as such studied by future generations of analysts that may find themselves employed as intelligence professionals in those sectors.

h/t War and Health

Vision and error

2008-03-08T16:55:00.000Z

We have long been proponents of more predictive analysis in intelligence, and of increasing the prominence of truly strategic and futures focused assignments in order to get beyond the firefighting approach in which current and tactical accounts dominate more than the lion’s share of resources and energy. But this is not to say, as some critics might, that there are not extant attempts to elevate the line of sight.

The recurring debate regarding such matters has once again surfaced in a series of blog posts at Global Guerrillas, Fabius Maximus, Zenpundit, and Opposed Systems Design.

We must take exception with John Robb's comment that there "isn't a single research organization or think tank that is seriously studying, analyzing or synthesizing the future of warfare and terrorism”. Such statements, of course, are a common enough type of criticism which stems from what is also unfortunately a common error - the assumption that because one is not aware of a particular effort, then it must not exist. While not every shop which concerns itself with the problems of contemporary asymmetric conflict looks up from the current fight, there are a number of efforts which have attempted to answer the question of "what next" alongside the other work exploring the "what" and "so what" which tends to dominate current publications. Among just a few of the recent public aspects of such efforts that we can name off the top of our heads are the Proteus project, JFCOM’s Deep Futures project, and several of the publications authored by folks at the USMC’s Center for Emerging Threats and Opportunities, the Naval War College and Army War College, the Naval Postgraduate School, the Air University, West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, the National Defense Intelligence College, and many other elements within the khaki tower. Of course, to this we should also add the Global Futures Forum effort where it touches upon related areas of interest.

Robb goes on to say that "Fatally, most of the big thinkers working on the future of warfare do their critical work in their spare time, usually while working other jobs to put food on the table for their families." There is some truth to this statement, but only insofar as the best work in futures intelligence tends to emerge from an analyst's own private war, and from their notes in the margins of other endeavors. Real insight tends to be generated not by those individuals who are given the blessing (or funding) from above to focus exclusively on pontificating unknown futures, but rather from those which are most fully immersed in substantive tasks - typically interdisciplinary in nature - which form the basis for illumination through a unique perspective. There will also always be a natural tension between the kind of research one wishes to conduct, and what is most needed at any given point in time.

Opposed Systems Design also weighs in with a line of thinking in support of a solution to this problem (be it perceived or real) that to us sounds very similar to Michael Tanji’s concept of Think Tank 2.0. We would certainly support such an effort – not because we are foolish enough to believe that no one else is considering the future problems which may arise in the dominant accounts of the 21st century – but because we strongly feel there is a need to better leverage the intellectual energies devoted to private crusades in support of a greater unified thrust.

We would also argue that this is already occurring to some extent within the intelligence community itself, particularly given the emerging style of smaller, more specific papers circulated in an almost academic fashion as discussion points. Indeed, we see this beginning to reshape coordination efforts prior to more formalized, and more visible assessments for major publications. We certainly see a greater role for outside subject matter experts and other thinkers in the process, but while far from perfect, this is quickly evolving given recent emphasis on analytic outreach.

In short, the there that these gentlemen appear to be reaching for is already there – just not evenly distributed. We would always agree that it could be better – but our focus for improvement is not on reshaping the org chart and mission statements to make some sort of new dedicated home for an “approved” effort, but through creating incentives around which positive effects in the field can begin to accrete.

Novel underground facilities revisited

2008-03-05T23:41:00.000Z

We had previously covered the kind of unusual civil construction which makes for good unclassified teaching examples in consideration of the intelligence challenges posed by hard and deeply buried targets. Thus we thought it appropriate to also note the excellent example surfaced by the fine gentlemen over at Coming Anarchy, which appropriately notes the difference between the uses to which sophisticated underground construction techniques are put in an oil rich democracy versus its kleptocratic and autocratic counterparts in other places also graced with the geologic accident of such resources.

More importantly, the site also demonstrates the difference between construction at a true civil site – extensively documented, widely discussed, and exceptionally transparent – vice that of the kinds of subterfuge that can be observed at other suspected dual use or known bad actor facilities.

While we are not fond of the political purposes to which the seed vault itself has now been put – the issues of exceptionally long term climate change being the least of our worries in futures scenarios; we cannot argue with the idea of a genetic Ark as insurance against a future Black Swan event. However, our thinking on the matter trends much more towards concerns regarding the other high consequence / low probability events that may occur with far less warning, such as pandemic multi-crop agricultural disease.

We also note that this particular underground facility does indeed perhaps now truly merit our earlier erroneous application of an acronym drawn from the same convention as that of the Dining FACility (DFAC). Bon Appetite.

The problems of prophets and jesters

2008-03-04T11:07:00.000Z

The need for more predictive intelligence is one that has seen a great deal of debate over the years. The first area of argument is as always (particularly when academics are involved) the definition of what prediction actually means, in the context of intelligence as both a process and as a product. (As much as we hate arguments over definitions, occasionally they ought to be revisited as first principles in a discussion, especially when a matter may be otherwise subject to misinterpretation.)

Our preferred view on this is that predictive intelligence means bounding the space of future uncertainties within an estimative framework. Good predictive intelligence therefore are estimates (and the tradecraft used to develop such estimates) that accurately, coherently, and pragmatically provide a view of bounded uncertainties that provide actionable insights to decision-makers that correspond closely to the actual course of future events. Good predictive intelligence also addresses the potential shocks - such as Black Swan events - that may emerge in future scenarios, in much the same way that well crafted capabilities intelligence addresses linchpins and milestones.

This is by no means an uncontroversial definition. There are those that would remove the term “predictive” entirely from the lexicon of intelligence, favoring only the specific verbiage of estimative intelligence. This we believe is a fallacy – first because the term is already in common use, formally or otherwise, and without seeking to distinguish good uses of the concept from those taught by false prophets one does a great disservice to those individuals which must work through the wider body of literature – or multiple agencies’ doctrines, where the concept may be favoured. The second reason we support discussion of predictive intelligence is because many intelligence consumers have articulated the need for improvement in the area as a key objective. There is certainly a common misunderstanding by consumers regarding the nature of what can be reasonably expected from prediction within intelligence, with the consumer’s desires leaning more towards the impossibilities of fortune telling. However, this makes it all the more critical that the purpose (and limitations) of predictive intelligence be communicated effectively to prevent such misunderstandings from colouring a consumer’s perceptions of products which are crafted to the best possible (realistic) standard – especially analysts are not issued a crystal ball with which to meet unrealistic and Hollywood influenced standards.

We see no conflict with the classic view of estimative intelligence in this discussion (although in some circles, we acknowledge that we may be a distinct minority of this opinion). After all, no less a luminary than the esteemed Harold Ford wrote that the among the questions that estimative intelligence seeks to answer are “what trends seem likely for the future, and how those trends might be affected in the event certain contingent events should occur” and that “the purpose, character, and significance of these courageous estimates of future unknowns has been recognized by many observers.”(The quotes are taken from his 1993 AFIO monograph on the topic, for those keeping score.) This very clearly refers to predictive intelligence in the same fashion that we describe it.

In a way, the debate over terminology and concepts – and in reality, the underlying purpose of what intelligence should seek to be – reminds us of the same debate over whether or not intelligence professionals should be responsible for examining questions of adversary intentions. While that debate has largely been settled conclusively in favour of that purpose, it was not always so. A good deal of literature – particularly that written in the earlier Cold War military context – made many of the same kinds of arguments regarding the impossibility of divining intention as we hear made regarding the prediction of future uncertainties. (And we should note that we still occasionally hear the arguments regarding intelligence on intentions when talking with law enforcement folks or others outside of the community.)

Having spent the foregoing establishing context, we recently also encountered a post by Charles Stross, one of our favourite jesters from the futurist court, which discussed the increasing difficulties of understanding technological drivers in out-years predictive scenarios given the accelerating pace of change (and adoption of that change). The points is well made by a chart taken from the Economist, depicting the deltas of technology penetration throughout history.

While technology drivers are often overstated in many futures intelligence exercises – particularly those conducted by individuals with their own stake in a given development or industry sector – there is no denying that from the perspective of certain intelligence accounts technology is often the defining feature around which other social, political, economic, and military events develop.

And it is not merely the rate of adoption within general societies that must be considered by intelligence professionals seeking a greater level of predictive analysis. The pace of hostile innovation has also radically accelerated, particularly when it comes to adoption of new technologies that enable asymmetric engagement, and which support the resilience of non-state actors under intense selection pressures. Many of these innovations are decidedly less than high tech – but as little as a decade ago still would have been the stuff of science fiction and laughed out of the briefing room had any intelligence analyst been foresighted (and naively foolish) enough to raise them as potential issues. We would do well to ensure that our current analytic environments do not likewise encourage such a narrow minded focus that would miss the sweeping rate of change that is bearing down on us, even as ridiculous as any given manifestation sometimes may seem from our current vantage point.

This is one of the reasons we seek to encourage the jesters, and to exhort the courtiers and fops to admit a bit more levity into their dance. For somewhere in the scullery there is a hard working young analyst that listens, and nurtures their own private vision of a future that may well be more probable than any included in the official powerpoint decks. If that analyst does not come forward for fear of the reaction within his shop’s environment, or is not given the opportunity to cultivate and explore those ideas, the loss of that concept may well contain the seeds of the next failure of imagination.

RAND views analytic tradecraft

2008-03-03T09:52:00.001Z

The new RAND study “Assessing the Tradecraft of Intelligence Analysis” has been out for more than a few days now, but deserves an in depth look by those that may have merely given it a passing glance. It was brought to our attention by the Analyst’s Corner, which has become increasingly consistently interesting (although we knew it would be, given the earlier writings of its author.)

What is interesting is that the report is very much a snapshot of a transition period – one might even be temped to say one that was taken at the height of the revolution in intelligence affairs. We agree with our virtual colleague Michael Tanji in his statement that “The dominant pattern in the U.S. intelligence agencies has been not stasis but almost constant revision, even to the point of disruption.” It is for this reason we have tended to look upon the cottage industry of intelligence reform with great suspicion, as too often of late we have had more than our fill of academics and other outsiders writing in with inspiration from what those in forward deployed locations often call the good idea fairy.

However, RAND’s study brings to the debate a number of important concepts, that while not new, certainly need to be circulated more widely. In part, this is due to the commendable methodology chosen for the study, in conducting formalized interviews across the community, targeted against not merely the ever changing organization charts (which as RAND itself noted “names have been a moving target”, given reorganization), but against the National Intelligence Priorities Framework and the Analytic Resource Catalog.

Among these critical concepts are the emphasis that analytic tradecraft is about the management of tradeoffs. There are few other human endeavors where this is not true, but for too long the community has focused on the ideal state, rather than maximizing the best possible outcome from the existing states. The ideal picture approach is very much an academic conceit, and assumes a mythical power to create organizational change simply by redrawing organograms or renaming offices under some centralized directive from on high. The real community simply does not respond to such abstracts in the clean and dispassionate fashion that many reformists would wish for. These tradeoffs are also one of the reason initiatives which begin organically within the working level line analysis shops are the most successful, as they allow those with the greatest stake in the outcome to balance their tradeoffs to the best possible effect.

The RAND study addresses interesting aspects of the increasingly dominant focus on current intelligence at the expense of longer term deep analysis. It also touches upon the issues of compensation and human resources that we have so often mentioned in these pages. We are quite pleased to see an increasing recognition of the importance of targeting analysis as a distinct discipline within the field – and given the delay between the interviews and the release of the public paper – one that we feel has been increasingly internalized within the community.

Collaboration and data sharing issues are discussed, but fall far lower in the spectrum than discussions of intelligence quality and value – quite in line with our own experiences.

The need to strengthen analytic training and education throughout the community is likewise emphasized, with the idea of a standard curriculum model again surfacing. We are aware of at least one quite promising effort in that regard, that goes far beyond what is typical academic fare; and hope to see further aspects of the model developed for mid-level and journeyman class analysis audiences in future iterations.

All in all, the RAND study is an excellent contribution to the literature which we are grateful now sees the light of day. There is much food for thought, which we will no doubt revisit again in due course. We did initially give pause upon a day’s reflection, fearing our agreement with the paper stemmed too much from a potential echo chamber effect of seeing similar views reflected back at us. However, these are things that are rarely formally captured in discussions of reform or the future of intelligence (at least, those written by outsiders). It is important to get them onto the table in a more formal setting – for as much as we believe in the value of the blog, it is a different vehicle for inquiry and scholarship than that of a more rigorous study approach.

Wx-ing historical

2008-02-25T22:40:00.000Z

We have addressed the recent fad towards addressing climate change as an intelligence issue several times over the course of this blog. We still remain convinced that while weather intelligence – Wx – will always remain a key factor in many accounts, climate change as a long term issue is simply beyond even the horizon that can be expected of the deepest of futures intelligence looks.

We are apparently in the minority in this view. We recently acquired a copy of an unclassified 1978 research paper from Central Intelligence Agency’s National Foreign Assessment Center (now republished by the University Press of the Pacific in 2005) which examined this very issue under the title “Relating Climate Change to its Effects”. For those younger analysts unfamiliar with the misty back history of old bureaucratic battles and therefore older acronyms, NFAC was the renamed Directorate of Intelligence (DI) under DCI Turner in 1977 – a designation which lasted only until reorganization under DCI Casey’s tenure in 1981.

We think perhaps this product might have best been buried with the old name. As a paper, it is almost entirely uninspiring – a mere 8 pages of substantive text, followed by hundreds of pages of tables and statistics that are the hard copy rendition of a contemporaneous data tape, mostly consisting of temperature and precipitation measurements assembled by a university contractor on behalf of USDA. These form the inputs to a simple climate model that was intended to provide for long term predictions of weather effects given specific outcomes, such as global cooling - a key concern of the day. (However, to their credit, the designers did examine the potential for global warming as well – which speaks well of the analytic rigour of the DI under any name, even if the paper is mute testament to just how badly scientific and technical experts can be at communicating with their readership through written intelligence products.) A speculative product such as this can be expected to offer no real conclusions – rather simply serving as a possible set of boundaries within the uncertainty space of future scenarios. However, it might well have made more explicit the effects it claimed to consider within the range of those scenarios.

But again, this serves to illustrate both the waste and the foolishness of attempting a futures intelligence estimate so far into the out years. We are not issued crystal balls when we are granted entry into the profession. It also serves to illustrate the perils of the arbitrary application of quantitative analysis as a fig leaf over unsustainable judgments. The model – no doubt painstakingly assembled and hard fought at the methodological level – is by its very nature the product of 1970’s era computer science. In the face of Moore’s Law, it is therefore over 20 generations obsolete.

Let us hope that this little musing upon the history of the account gives at least slight pause to modern practitioners seeking to enshrine climate change as a permanent account for long range intelligence analysis. At a point in time when supercomputational problems that take longer than a few months run time simply are not run at all until the next generation of architecture advances its inevitable order of magnitude or more, it is after all more than a bit presumptuous to assume that any community entity would be able to beat or even match the kind of big iron thrown at these problems in the civilian science world. It also very much begs the question of what better use such resources might be put to for other intelligence accounts – perhaps in the classic roles that the IC has always employed supercomputing resources: cryptanalysis, automated signal processing, or even exploring the new boundaries of potential offered by quantum intelligence.

If nothing else, this bit of history has also more firmly reinforced our opinion that climate change issues are a matter best left to the academics. Perhaps once the Long War has been won – and given the timescale we believe will be needed to accomplish this monumental, generational task – then the community’s attention can turn more to the matter once again. And if the current crop of speculative forecasts prove correct, at that point in time the issue may properly fall within the window of an actionable long rang estimate.

Obsolete intelligence professional skills

2008-02-22T20:34:00.000Z

One of the newer of the memetic ideas sweeping through the blogsphere is the recent trend towards listing those obsolete skills of yesteryear which were once considered basic aspects of professional life, yet now are dead in the face of technological and social change. There is even a new wiki set up to catalogue them.

We have briefly been considering those which apply to the intelligence community. Of course, in a profession as conservative as ours, many of the skills which were initially considered for our own list are actually still frequently taught within the community on the off chance they might be employed at some point. And given the far flung enterprise of the Long War, many once obsolete skills are actually being used out in the field, whether out of simple expediency or out of a lack of any alternatives.

Thus inclusion of a skill as obsolete on our list does not necessarily mean it is without any further value. However, we might venture to say that it might not be the first skill we seek to inculcate in basic professional coursework, despite many models which currently seek to teach new analysts as if they too were undergoing the chronological developments of the profession’s technological support.

Hand stenciling network analysis link charts
Annotating developed imagery prints by hand
Developing handheld imagery in a darkroom
Loading and unloading imagery satellite film canisters
Maintaining card indexes
Carbon paper copying
Conducting pigeon reconnaissance operations
Transmitting morse code
Operating hand crank cipher machines
Memorizing poem codes
Sending coded postal letters
Telexing cables
Changing the road signs outside of headquarters building
Inking overhead transparencies
Delivering pneumatic tube memos

Submissions from our readers are welcome. Several that might have made our list, such as operating reconnaissance balloons, servicing dead drops, or donkey riding, have enjoyed a recent renaissance due to new developments in the contemporary environment. Such items are still welcome as submissions in their own right.

Imaginary constellations meet visionary capabilities

2008-02-21T22:39:00.000Z

We rarely comment on ongoing matters in the intelligence world due to the natural restrictions which accompany a professional’s responsibilities. However, the very public intercept of USA193 does touch upon an issue that we have previously discussed in these pages – the disconnect between what assets those planning for the future intelligence community thought they would have, and those that exist in an IC in which we have gone to war with what we actually have.

The shot itself has been extensively discussed by others, including In From the Cold, Arms Control Wonk, Ares, Danger Room, and many of the more mainstream blogs. We will not rehash these public details.

However in this particular instance, we find the contrast between the notional pieces on the chess board (and the detritus they left behind when the model came tumbling down) quite striking against the very effective real world capabilities offered by one of the most condemned warfighting concepts of recent history - hit to kill. These differences are also at the heart of the classic tensions between intelligence and operators. But it also demonstrates the value of innovative vision – and the need for persistent effort towards what may seem an unachievable goal. The operation also shows the adaptability of those capabilities towards missions that may never before have been conceived – particularly when the tools to execute them were first on the drafting boards.

The debates of the past few decades across all of the systems involved, and last night’s operation itself, also brings to mind the Bill Whittle’s now seminal essay on Tribes. The defense space community gave the public an unprecedented glimpse of world of the Gray at the high frontier. The press briefing (found here) is as specific a discussion as ever has occurred regarding a once entirely classified area. One has to remember that only a few short years ago, even the name of the National Reconnaissance Office was not publicly acknowledged – let alone the kind of systems of systems approach evident in this operation. But the briefing also displays strong analytic tradecraft, and an excellent use of estimative language to communicate intelligence and operational information in a transparent manner. It was indeed an impressive display, and is well worth studying for those that are in the business of facing tough talks.

Altogether, this was a unique mission, and those involved will be able to look back on the operation with pride. They have most deservedly earned the drinks being poured last night and this morning. Space control has a new face. Let us hope that this will also be the symbol that inspires future generations of capabilities on the intelligence side of the house, and the desire to avoid any other holes in the imagined sky.

On analytic environments

2008-02-20T16:31:00.000Z

It has been a while since we have revisited this subject. We are still strong believers in the adage that if one stares long enough into the cubicle, then the abyss stares back. However, long gone are the halcyon days of an IC influenced by the dot com era, seeking to implement revolutionary new space designs for a more creative atmosphere. Now, we face constant compression, and the ad hoc creation of new kinds of environments in the far flung realms of our forward deployed edge, as well as the unique spaces of the watch and fusion centers that now proliferate throughout the community.

But it is occasionally worth reflecting on what might be, if one were to challenge the dominant archetype of the current analytic environment. New spaces are being built all the time, and the further one goes from the Beltway, the more potential one finds for innovation – especially in the face of decentralization pressures.

We are not looking for something so radical as to be out of place even in modern corporate culture. Certainly nothing like the brooding industrial era estates one finds out in the wilds of “other” Virginia that might be readily re-purposed to the cause, but would remind one of a nearly HP Lovecraft atmosphere better fitted to the home of the fictional Laundry (or perhaps more appropriately, its American Black Chamber counterpart.)

Rather, we look to the best in class commercial entrepreneurs whose primary business is that of the mind. We have written many times before about the approaches taken by Google, and think enough has been said for that comparison. We would this time around seek to highlight the new spaces created for Microsoft’s Research division, also as iconic an institution of thought as any in modern America. We are fortunate that the roving blogger Robert Scoble has profiled this unique environment in a recent photo series.

We think there are lessons in these designs which can be distilled for the new IC. We are certain that given the option, many of the best and brightest would vote with their feet in favour of such environments - should they ever become available in an enlightened organization.

The dark history of those wearing orange (and tweed)

2008-02-19T13:52:00.000Z

We are lucky to count among our correspondents an officer and a gentleman who has sought to enlighten us as to a little known aspect of the history of the Office of Strategic Services –the involvement of the United States Coast Guard in maritime clandestine operations through WWII. Guardian Spies is the result of these efforts – and an excellent resource well worth the reader’s time.

Given the importance of port operations to the early OSS, this should not be surprising. After all, one look at the map of WWII era stations throughout Europe and Asia should have been enough to validate the requirement for the kind of experiences that the Coasties could bring to the dark side. Yet this is an area which has been consistently overlooked - in a fashion regrettably typical of the shabby treatment usually afforded the "other" service, and we are glad now to see the effort to surface it. This is truly a best of class endeavor to rescue an otherwise lost history, through a combination of primary source documentary work as well as an oral interview series. It is a model by which other, also lesser known aspects of military support to intelligence structures might also be explored. We very much look forward to further developments out of the program.

The OSS has been very much on our minds as of late. We have recently also had occasion to pick back up the excellent treatise Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services by Barry Katz, which recounts the unique circumstances of those present at the creation of R&A. The line of influence of many of the decisions taken under the political and operational environment in which that office first came into being has rarely been more clear, and as such the volume is a must read for those contemplating transformation within the community. Many of the same tensions faced today – under the exceptional circumstances of wartime expansion and pressures – were very much the stuff that mere academics of earlier service had to contend, and without even the benefit of being afforded an overarching professional framework to unify the various threads of their activities.

We think that this body of history can provide a rich set of case studies for those that now seek the further professionalization of their own tradecraft – in both operational and analytic contexts. We are inclined to believe that the general overviews with which most students are now presented – the history everyone knows – has served as an intellectual obstacle to a deeper understanding of the very real, and very relevant, aspects of these events which still translate directly across the decades to the concerns of today. It is our fortune that this state of affairs is now changing.

An alternative film for intelligence analysis exercises

2008-02-15T11:10:00.000Z

We have been surprised at the level of discussion sparked by our previous consideration of the classic 12 Angry Men and other films, for teaching the fundamentals of intelligence analysis and writing to entry level candidates. Apparently, the technique is more widespread and popular among instructors than we knew. Frankly, we have found that it is something possible only in professional in service sessions, where there is usually enough contact time to permit such hands-on practical work. Typical academic environments rarely afford sufficient engagement to lose the several hours involved, and we have found that most students assigned to view the same film on their own will tend to present remarkably similar work product (although the assignment tends to be very popular with students, particularly prior to weekends and in coed classes.)

We have thus given the matter some consideration, seeking a better replacement for the now classic Joint Military Intelligence Training Center exercise which utilized the film The Hunt for Red October (briefly mentioned in our earlier post on the topic.) That film was an excellent choice for the time, insofar as the limitations of Hollywood typically permit – and was even used as a teaching aid at the submarine school in Groton for a time after its release (though albeit moreso for its counterexamples). Its utility was no doubt derived from the unique historical basis for Clancy’s original book – a composite of several real world cases of great strategic importance during the Cold War.

The purpose of the film exercise was to provide the analyst student with a chance to practically apply basic tradecraft dealing with ambiguity, and to create a collaborative analytical product using simplified unclassified material. Each student would be assigned to a smaller group, which would then be tasked with a specific intelligence component to focus on. The students would then seek to answer a key question regarding the factors which influenced the defection of the fictional Russian submarine captain in light of these larger strategic issues within the Cold War. The film material itself was treated as authoritative narrative – requiring a degree of suspension of disbelief, but not terribly so if the students were unfamiliar with actual undersea warfare. This typically led to some excellent discussions and more than a few unique analytic outcomes.

Replicating this exercise in a more modern context has proven to be no easy task. There simply have not been films which encapsulate the unique factors which made the Red October exercise such a good choice. But as much as we liked the case, its value is limited for students who will be engaged in the Long War for some time to come.

We considered – and rejected – quite a few other options. The 1996 film The Peacemaker was one possibility, but for most students the Balkans conflict is as remote as its World War I antecedents, and WMD terrorism and homeland security issues are now viewed through a far different lens in the post 9/11 world. The 2005 film The Great Raid could offer potential, but was a more limited tactical scenario in a far less ambiguous information environment, from which actual historical materials would be far better suited as a source of instruction. We briefly contemplated the film Spy Games, but it is far more suited for a history of intelligence class than an analysis course. Syriana too came under consideration, particularly given the involvement of a former case officer in its scripting, but the explicit politicalization of the film also ruled it out. The drug film Traffic was rejected for similar reasons. Most of the other contemporary drama or action films can be dismissed out of hand, being little more than flights of fancy – something that removed films such as Swordfish, the le Carre works, and all of the Bond pieces from our list.

This left us with few options. Thankfully, our dilemma appears to be solved – for the time being – by the 2007 release of The Kingdom. It is unsurprising the film’s early releases were trialed in the greater Washington DC metro area, and that a high number of community professionals were among those early audiences. While the work suffers from the usual Hollywood inaccuracies and the insufferable modern politicization, it does present a narrowly scoped case which is itself a composite mélange of historical incidents of ongoing relevance. While we hate to be seen promoting the Bureau – particularly through the fantasist version of that organization presented in the film – if one ignores those aspects, there is value in the sense of realism otherwise conveyed across the piece through a good application of the director’s art.

Again, the key to turning the film into a good analytic exercise – rather than just a several hour long break from lecture – is to encourage deeper discussion of the underlying factors that led to, and would result from, the incidents depicted. The students should be able to pull out a number of specific points that can be summarized and expanded with additional open source research into unique finished analytic papers. The film offers a variety of these springboards – from the tactical aspects of attack TTP, to terrorist propaganda operations, to the role of re-integration programs for former terrorist prisoners, to profiles of host nation CT capabilities, or to the issues of radicalization within specific industries, geographies, or societal segments. The instructor may need to assist the students in settling upon these aspects during post-screening discussions. This is less a group product, although a collaborative framework can be created in which individual papers support a larger work, especially using a wiki production environment.

Despite finding what we feel is a good solution for the time being, we will continue to seek out alternatives for use in other areas of the contemporary intelligence domain beyond the CT sphere – and will of course welcome any suggestions (along with reasoning in defense of the choice) that our wider audience might contribute for general circulation.

Evidence inferred

2008-02-14T21:32:00.000Z

In the rush to focus on new analytical techniques and methodologies, particularly the more complex and arbitrarily numeric variants, we think that the fundamental aspects of inferential reasoning are too often overlooked. This is by no means the stuff of such modern vogue as complicated algorithms or cutting edge research into cognitive developments. Nor is it the drumbeat of “critical thinking” applied absent real problems or even properly constructed examples.

Rather, this is the meat of what separates the analytic mind from that of the mere reporter. The problem occurs not only when building new analysts, who are too frequently shorted on the fundamentals which are vital in cultivating this distinction, but also when developing analysts’ tradecraft at the journeyman level.

Part of the reason why inference is so often given such a short shrift is that there is rarely new material of interest in circulation on the topic, when one can easily find a few hundred other resources for just about any new “hot” topic. But then again, one supposes it is hard to muster funding for a proposal described as an attempt to revisit and extent the work of a lawyer from the late 19th century.

It is for this reason we were delighted that the folks at University College London have put together an excellent cadre of interdisciplinary researchers to tackle the problems of evidence and inference, including the esteemed Professor David Schum (who first brought the phrase into common usage within the intelligence profession). The Evidence Science group is clearly seeking to forge new ground from what others have long ignored as well trod paths. Their publication set is indeed well worth reviewing, as it covers a wide range of topics central to the profession of intelligence: the persistence of discredited evidence, exploration of belief formation, and the use of rhetoric and argumentation, among many others. While only a few of the pieces focus explicitly on the intelligence domain, these exist within a selection of interdisciplinary material which also can provide its own value to the judicious reader. (It is for this reason that we can recommend the site despite the number of lawyering and quantitative analysis publications).

We think this might be just the thing for some of those in the Beltway contemplating a long weekend away from it all and looking for some not-so light reading in the wider literature.

Another for the wall of dead terrorists

2008-02-13T14:50:00.002Z

Once upon a time at a particular institution, new analysts were assigned to a simulation course which involved a model joint terrorism task force. Over the course of time, they built up quite a collection of handheld imagery of various prominent targets, many of which came out of historical case studies. This collection was for a time assembled into an infamous “wall”, in which the sole factor for inclusion was that the target has been serviced and resolved.

Via MESH –Middle East Strategy at Harvard – we learn that the infamous Lebanese Hezbollah leadership figure Imad Mughniyah is dead in a classic Beirut style car bomb. His brother was previously killed in the same fashion.

This one has been a long time coming. We are sure that many of those former junior analysts – now having progressed for quite a number of years in the field, and with many a now forgotten face having been posted to that wall since – may be quietly ordering a round as a toast to a small measure of victory. It does not matter, in that moment, whether this was merely red on red violence, or if some unknown covert action element of the international great game achieved the decisive checkmate. It only matters that the faces now change, and the benefits of Mughniyah’s long operational experience has been denied to the terrorist adversary.

In good Buenos Aires fashion, we think our drinks for celebration shall be the Bellini – perhaps accompanied by a fine bife de lomo.

The use of leaked documents in intelligence studies education

2008-02-08T02:47:00.000Z

This issue has been weighing upon us for some time, and has sparked perhaps the most violent debate of any subject within a field already crowded with passionate viewpoints. It takes on new prominence this week with the actions of another intelligence studies professor (names are omitted to protect the guilty) at one of the more prominent institutions out there.

We are unabashed supporters of the use of declassified intelligence documents – including finished intelligence papers, raw cables and other message traffic, and any imagery that might be available. These are almost without exception historical in nature, and thus we also advocate the use of unclassified notional intelligence documents produced in the model of current approaches (differing only in those areas that classification requirements dictate). We admit that the latter requires a lot of hard work – both in finding the unclassified or declassified examples from which to build templates, as well as creating the notional products that the students will rely upon in class or in an exercise. Many academic programs simply forgo this altogether for this reason – understandably so, but frankly in our opinion to the detriment of students that need exposure to “real world” intelligence in a form that may be properly used in a classroom.

However, the use of leaked classified documents in education is another matter entirely. Too many prominent names in intelligence studies publishing pad out their books with leaked documents, many of which can be said to be exceptionally damaging to United States interests in the subject under discussion. We have over the years grudgingly assigned these texts, as the better authors still offer some value to students despite the damnable offense of perpetuating leaks. What is most unfortunate in these cases is that those authors – by virtue of unique analysis or concise presentation of complex topics – would be entirely compelling without the leaks, yet apparently do not have the confidence to stand on their own, or the intellectual integrity to present their own work unaided by stolen secrets.

Such matters have long troubled the field – and frankly, have done much damage to the establishment of a respected intelligence studies academia that interacts with its professional counterparts in a mutually beneficial fashion, instead of through parasitic and self-serving profiteering.

There is however a more disturbing recent trend, one abetted by the evolving issues that come hand in hand with widespread electronic dissemination of intelligence products, and the inevitable friction that occurs when attempting to cope with the proliferation of classified networks and channels under wartime conditions. This new issue is the unprecedented availability of still classified documents (and other media) in their original form; leaked from improper handling - or worse yet, deliberate disclosure - onto the public Internet. These are becoming distressingly common enough that there are even now sites dedicated to the propagation of such leaks.

Without commenting on any specific incident, it is understandable that some civilian academics might see these are rare opportunities to provide a window into current intelligence practices for their students. It is also entirely likely that the “cool” factor may have overwhelmed good judgment when dealing with these cases. But we are exceptionally concerned that these classified materials not be routinely incorporated into unclassified academic instruction. Nothing will do more damage to the discipline as quickly as such an outcome.

First, among those students in many unclassified classrooms there are those that hold current clearances or other professional affiliations that impose a proactive and affirmative burden on the individual to report the improper handling of classified materials. It is unconscionable for an instructor to impose through their own deliberate actions this burden of time, paperwork, and ethical dilemma on a professional student.

Secondly, for those students that do not hold current clearances, many will one day face the polygraph process – and the discussion of a half remembered document from a long ago professor is not the most productive way to encounter the less than tender mercies of that process. As it is, too small a percentage of those students will successfully pass vetting; the intelligence studies academia does not need to be encouraging additional obstacles that will further negatively impact those numbers.

Lastly, we fear the creation of perverse incentives for future leaks should this practice become more widespread. We could easily see such pressures being placed entirely inappropriately on serving professionals who are alumni of major intelligence studies programs by their former instructors, or anonymous leaks occurring at the end of a professional’s tour in anticipation of a future academic posting. We cannot condone any activities that would potentially create any similar incentives – especially when such pressures might well result in the end of meaningful professional and academic collaboration partnerships in the intelligence studies field.

We know the difficulties in crafting an intelligence curriculum to be taught a the unclassified level, but have long felt strongly that to do so forces a focus on the fundamentals of tradecraft unhindered by the restraints of specific organizational niches. While there are many things that simply cannot be taught at the lowest levels, most are frankly more appropriate to a professional in service training and education program as opposed to the outside academic environment in the first place.

It is in part due to these actions that many community professionals entirely discount the role of outside academics – and we fear that with each passing incident, this perception becomes harder to fight. Given the behavior of some academics, it is a perception that may not even be wrong. We recall one particular foreign born instructor who, prior to his dismissal with prejudice from a particularly prominent program, had set out to deliberately acquire as many leaked materials as he could lay hands upon. This created serious difficulties for other academics and students in the program – many of whom were employed in consulting capacities for various official institutions. This is an example that should never have been allowed to be repeated – and current incidents are a slippery slope on that road.

Let us be clear: we at Kent’s Imperative condemn leaks in all forms, and those that would find benefit from them, in the strongest possible terms. Each academic institution which hosts an intelligence studies program should address this issue through internal policy – preferably tied to its academic code, which should consider the improper use of classified information as damnable as the kindred crime of plagiarism. If there is any role for the International Association For Intelligence Education in the promulgation of best practices throughout the field, it is in such matters.

Revisiting analytic rigour

2008-02-07T11:56:00.000Z

The research currently being done at Ohio State University into the problems of intelligence analysis – including information overload, cognitive processes, and other aspects of the methodology – has from time to time caught our interest. Among the more interesting of these items now in circulation is an excellent lecture that we most highly recommend to our readers, recorded last year during the too often overlooked Google Talks series. The discussion focuses on the evaluation of analytic rigor, and means by which analysis may be strengthened.

We particularly favour the philosophy that Dr. Woods presents, which seeks to avoid dictating a single best methodology or process. We are more than willing to listen to the methodologists, but too often we find a dictatorial approach significantly at odds with the realities of line analysis. We think that the observed case study technique used in the Ohio State team’s research – something too infrequently done by many academics – is key to the validity of their findings. One cannot discuss analytic ideals without involving those who are actually involved in applying tradecraft to real problems. It is also not enough to conduct such research in artificial environments within student populations – real line analysis is too different.

We certainly cannot agree with the apparent off-hand condemnation of “folk” psychology of intelligence analysis – clearly aimed at taking on Heuer’s “bible”. While we think that there is a clear role for the methodologists and their research into strengthen analytic tradecraft, there is also a very real need for interdisciplinary adaptation from other areas of social science, as well as the kind of internal discussions that make up a key part of the maintenance of those oft-criticized, but entirely vital, guilds that are the backbone of the community.

We do however find several key concepts of great interest that deserve wider attention, including the concept of the Supervisor’s Dilemma – the balance of customer outcomes requirements and analytic resource opportunity costs against the relative depth of analytic rigour. We also find the study techniques themselves of interest, especially the concept of elicitation through critique – something we feel will likely have a far greater applicability in capturing the kind of intergenerational knowledge that the community is in danger of losing. We see the technique as one means of making more formal – and scalable - some of the kinds of subtle interactions that characterized the experiences of apprentice and journeyman analysts under the mentorship of a master.

We also find great merit in the good professor’s comments regarding the overconfidence of new analysts, and the satisificing biases that result. We definitely have observed a level of arrogance in too many new hires – and especially those coming out of the intelligence studies programs. The first lesson that an analyst student should learn is the fear of God – and of their own error. Too many programs of instruction are not affording the student the chance to learn that fear from the visceral experiences of their own mistakes, and to take away from the experience a humility that will cause them to productively question their future work toward its improvement. Such experiences are far better gained when the consequences are not fatal, in line with the lessons taught by Red Flag.

There is much food for thought in this lecture, as well as the contributions to the literature that the Ohio State program has generated. We will no doubt have further commentary on the subject in the near future.

123 Meme, with variation

2008-02-06T13:48:00.000Z

Thanks to Mountainrunner, we have been tagged with one of these random interweb memes that seem to us to be a deliberate attempt to spark a convulsive degree of self-consciousness within the restless stirring of electrons that is the Parallel Universe. (And given the gentleman’s interest in all things UxV, one cannot discount his role as agent provocateur in welcoming the new robot overlords – after all, he is the individual that inserted reference to Cylons into a serious DOD briefing.)

For those that may have been thus far spared exposure to this particular viral idea

Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
Open the book to page 123
Find the fifth sentence
Post the next three sentences
Tag five people

Given that our group format by its very structure creates a different response to this question for each participant, we found ourselves internally cross-tagged. After some discussion, we also decided to introduce an additional element of randomness in the passages selected – within a moderate degree of ambiguity near to the canonical 123 meme segment – just to stir the echoes a bit more (and no doubt as further evidence of our contrarian nature). After all, intelligence professionals should not become accustomed to too high an artificial measure of certainty in anything.

Thus we offer a few of the more notable passages from the various and sundry texts offered by our contributors:

Ransom, Harry Rowe. Central Intelligence and National Security. Harvard University Press. 1958.

“’New concepts’ earlier mentioned in State’s intelligence organization are partly the result of the influx of Foreign Service officers into intelligence – ‘Wristonization’ – and partly the result of a redefinition of intelligence requirements of the Department. Effort is being made to assure that the intelligence produced is attuned to the real needs of State’s policy makers and operators. Through various administrative devices closer daily operational contact exists between officials responsible for making and implanting policy and those supplying intelligence.”

Earley, Pete. Comrade J. GP Putnam’s Sons. 2007.

“Having tasted the reforms sparked by perestroika and glasnost, Soviet legislators were not willing to turn back the clock. This left the KGB chairman and his cronies with only one option. If they wanted to stop the Union Treaty, they had to remove Gorbachev with military force before the August treaty was signed.”

Sageman, Marc. Leaderless Jihad. University of Pennsylvania Press. 2008.

“Unlike traditional terrorist organizations that have physical sites and more territorial ambitions, there is no incentive for a leaderless virtual social movement to moderate or evolve beyond terrorism. Because there is no formal organization, with assets, sunk costs, physical commitments, or other stabilizing elements, participants who become more moderate in their views simply leave the forum and move on, or are banished from the forum by the webmaster. But their legacy lives on; their previous commitments and activities (writings, videos, and terrorist operations) are still archived in the forums and could continue to inspire new generations of dreamers to capture the glory that had inspired the old stalwarts in the first place.”

Anderson, Terence; Schum, David, and Twining, William. Analysis of Evidence, 2nd edition. Cambridge University Press. 2005.

“The logic is simple; the complexity lies in the materials to be analyzed and in identifying the relationships between the propositions in an extensive argument based on a mass of conflicting evidence. The logic is binary: every relevant proposition either tends to support or tends to negate a single hypothesis or conclusion (the ultimate probandum). The technique is dialectical: the aim of the chart-maker should be to construct the most cogent possible argument for and against the ultimate conclusion and to relate the opposing arguments within a single coherent structure.

But we do also wish to tag a few others, for we are far more interested in thoughts which originate outside of our little skunkworks. Thus:

Deborah Osbourne, of Analyst’s Corner
Jesser Wilson, should he resurface
August Jackson, of SCIP
Jeff Dexter, at the Ghost of Patrick Henry
and Dr. Waller at Political Warfare

Revisiting Twelve Angry Men and legalism in intelligence analysis

2008-02-04T03:59:00.000Z

For a number of years, the classic black and white film Twelve Angry Men has been a frequent teaching aid in introductory analysis courses dealing with the basics of evidence and argumentation. The conventional use of the film is to provide an accessible means of deconstructing a fictionalized scenario for students with little prior experience with formal debate. Given the current decline in public education, this helps remedy a basic skills deficit that is unfortunately and increasingly all too common.

However, it is with interest that we observe the controversy that has erupted once again over this fifty-one year old movie. The criticisms that have been leveled against the underlying premise of the film deserve some additional consideration – not the least of which because they point out the serious problems in applying much of what is taught as legal logic to the unique problems of the intelligence domain.

The Spectator’s argument surfaces one of the reactions common among many students, but in a far more articulate fashion than any entry level professional might be expected to voice. In essence, this criticism is based on the need to focus on the external worldview, rather than the tactical maneuvering in the courtroom that such kinds of arguments inevitably devolve towards. It is a quite valid point, and among the reasons that we have long decried the trends towards creeping legalism that have lately come to dominate intelligence work. The bulk of a lawyer’s litigative activities – and therefore a disproportionate degree of their education and professional experiences – are dictated by entirely tactical considerations that apply nowhere else but within the limited framework of the legal system. Too often this is easily forgotten, to the detriment of the strategic picture – and the accuracy and veracity of analysis. We have written on these problems before, but to be frank we had rarely considered the myriad of ways in which – by borrowing from the older legal profession’s traditions in teaching basic logic and rhetoric – the intelligence academia may continue to contribute to these unhelpful trends of cognitive bias. Among these, of course, are the kinds of ludic fallacy identified by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

The folks at Volokh Conspiracy take a different tack, arguing for greater consideration of interdependencies within factors under examination in the film’s fictional trial. This is also a very useful approach for discussions with students, many who likewise tend to view evidence in isolation. It is particularly appropriate when covering structured analysis techniques such as ACH – and one that rarely touched upon, if only due to the frequently too shallow examples offered to illustrate the methodology, which are unable to support a more robust discussion.

Westminster Wisdom rises in defense of the film, and illustrates the more important but also often overlooked value to the piece in the intelligence studies classroom – the discussion of uncertainty. The intelligence professional will always work within a framework of ambiguity, doubt, and frequently, deception. However, the role of intelligence is not merely to reach a lower standard of proof than that used in a criminal trial (or even the lesser civil threshold), as is commonly taught (and in particular, a tenant of faith within law enforcement intelligence). Rather, intelligence’s purpose is to provide accurate insights despite such uncertainty; and where absolute accuracy is not possible, to bound the space of uncertainties for the policymaker in a manner that supports informed decision-making.

In light of all of the foregoing, we continue to search for good alternatives to the film for use in the classroom. Our search is also driven by the simple fact that to the Millennial generation, the black and white format is very nearly entirely alien. It creates such a visceral negative reaction that the first ten to twenty minutes of the film are simply an orientation to the unfamiliar environment. The pace of the thing is also glacial by modern standards, and particularly so to minds attuned to rapid multi-tasking and immersive information environments. While one can make all the arguments one likes about the need for sustained single focus attention, their native preferences are indeed more suited for the kind of world in which they operate as intelligence professionals than the Industrial era conventions that black and white film represents.

The single set format, and the emphasis on argumentation, has however made it exceptionally difficult to find a substitute. Our best – but admittedly still imperfect – alternative has lately been the 1999 film Deterrence, which offered a President’s decision-making process in a nuclear crisis while snowed in at a small diner. Unfortunately, the film’s scenario is constructed around a fictionalized Iraqi dictatorship – which in the modern politicized climate often steers debate too far astray of the real purpose and into the debate over Operation Iraqi Freedom. It also pre-supposes a certain level of student knowledge regarding nuclear warfighting and mutually assured destruction strategy: something not always guaranteed in the post-Cold War cohort. This sometimes makes for quite interesting discussions, to say the least. These are the same problems that incidentally also led us to abandon using the old JMITC exercise that relied on the film version of Hunt for Red October as a notional scenario from which the students would develop practice analytical pieces. While, as a friend recently reminded us, that particular film ages very well as such things go, we recognize that writing intelligence on Soviet era ballistic missile submarines is an anachronism to which few students will respond well –and one that does not serve their real and current professional needs.

All in all, teaching intelligence with films – for as engaging as the technique might be for students bored with lecture – remains a difficult proposition. We hope that in time the development of newer tools for digital animation – and the kinds of interactive scenarios that new gaming engines permit – will render the question entirely moot. But the cultivation of young professional minds remains a terribly stubborn business, and one that is not frequently improved by new technologies. We do wish to see such improvements become effective, and preferably in the near future. But given that the same promises have been made since around the time black and white films first graced the big screen, we remain skeptical.

h/t Overlawyered

Delving deeper into prediction markets

2008-02-01T23:19:00.000Z

Michael Abramowicz of George Washington University has been guest blogging at Volokh Conspiracy for a short time now, and he has given us much food for thought on the topic of prediction markets. There is easily enough material for an entire book, and unsurprisingly, he has written one (that is now on our must read stack); as well as his own blog site. The Volokh post series has been:

An Intro to Prediction Markets and the Liquidity Problem

Prediction Markets vs. Conventional Wisdom

A Quick-and-Dirty Empirical Defense of Prediction Markets

Manipulation of Prediction Markets

Deliberating with Prediction Markets

Predicting Decisions and Their Effects

Normative Prediction Markets

Why Normative Markets?

Nineteenth-century prediction markets

We will no doubt have more to say on the topic ourselves in good order. However, it is a subject that deserves deeper reflection, especially given our acknowledged skepticism of such efforts – and our general distaste for attempts seeking to create artificial numeric precision.

Nonetheless, we are quite grateful to the author for his work, which offers a unique contribution to the literature in an area of great interest to the IC. Whatever one may think of the technique, it is worth exploring with the same rigour as any new methodology.

Antecedent to the Chief Intelligence Officer

2008-01-31T15:14:00.000Z

Given the apparent interest in the historical examples of the roles played by the most senior intelligence professionals now carrying the title of Chief Intelligence Officer, we thought it appropriate to mention one of the designations which preceded the more common “modern” appellation.

Sir Francis Drake’s English fleet, constituted to resist the Spanish Armada in 1588, did not lack for its own intelligence. The fleet sailed with an intelligence department under an individual who carried the title “Master of the Discoveries”, which an 1898 reference (repeated by another source in 1902) likened to modern post of the Chief Intelligence Officer. This individual was given command as “Lieutenant-Colonel of the pinnaces”, these being a sort of light boat used for communications and scouting duties – a quite logical platform from which to build out an intelligence capability.

The title itself may have originated from the time of Prince Henry the Navigator, of Portugal, and passed into naval tradition by way of his school founded at Sagres in 1419. However, this is uncertain due to contemporary dispute as to the true nature of that gathering of cartographers and sailing masters. There is also some reference to the title in such use which may support this hypothesis, found a 1938 volume, but this may well be built upon the foundation of later local legends rather than true history.

The concepts underlying the idea of discovery were at the time a critical national security concern – offering grand strategic advantage to any government which could maintain such secret knowledge. The major fleets of the day were in fact nearly the entirety of a country’s military force projection, and thus the senior commanders the de facto heads of the defense establishment. The intelligence leadership of the day may have thus stood as one of the more influential figures in all of the profession’s history. One can also easily see how the post migrated from the fleet, to the Company, to the Admiralty (and in the US, the Office of Naval Intelligence - at least until 1911), and thence to the national intelligence establishment and its privatized counterparts.

While we do not think we shall see the more archaic form of address come back into fashion any time soon, it does extend the timeline for the formalized role back quite a bit. Throughout history, the position may have existed in informal practice for generations, but the dawn of the profession itself can be traced to the recognition of these functions in a manner distinct from other specialties.

Early intelligence in support of rail transportation security

2008-01-30T14:48:00.000Z

During WWI, the threat of German sabotage operations was very real. Over fifty attacks were documented, primarily in the New York and New Jersey area. The most damaging of these was the destruction of the Black Tom munitions handling pier in 1916. While overall the attacks were only marginally effective in the military sense, they created the first serious homeland security problem of the modern era.

Among the many responses attempting to prevent further attacks against critical infrastructure assets and the defense industrial base were programs which sought to involve the public in what could be considered the predecessors of the tip hotlines and industry information sharing programs of today.

One of the surviving notices published in support of this program was carried in Railway Age in 1918. It read:

“Attempts at Train Wrecking – The Military Intelligence Branch of the War Department requests that all employees along the lines of the carriers shall be instructed in case they notice any preparation for or intentional attempts at train wrecking or derailment, to at once notify Colonel M. Churchill, General Staff, Chief, Military Intelligence Branch, Executive Division, 1330 F Street Northwest, Washington, DC.”

One shudders to imagine the effort required to manage such a program by postal mail – and the delays that this communication would impose. One would presume that telegraph transmission – the Victorian Internet - would however be available to railway operators, which no doubt would have made any such effort far more effective. A study of such early message traffic management would no doubt be interesting – though it would likely mirror existing correspondence practices of the day, complete with registers, logs, and card files.

We have not found any other records of this program’s activities. Marlborough Churchill is a well documented figure in WWI and interwar military intelligence. A Harvard man, he was also involved in the investigation of the Chicago area publishers of propaganda materials, at the time violations of the Espionage Act of 1917, but reportedly recommended that the investigation be terminated. The good Colonel (eventually Brigadier General) was also the originator of the telegram which summoned the psychologist John Dewey to his captaincy in propaganda department of the Intelligence Bureau. He was also key player in early communications intelligence programs of the Cipher Bureau, alongside Herbert Yardley. Churchill would remain head of the MI Branch (later Division) until September 1920, and would pass away in 1942.

For those interested in other World War I era homeland defense efforts, we must recommend the excellent Studies in Intelligence article by the exceptional historian Michael Warner, examining how the “Kaiser Sows Destruction”. It is a well documented work with an excellent selection of otherwise quite rare photographs from the period.

We do wonder what other fragments of contemporary “early” homeland security in the Long War will survive into unknown futurity. While the volume of documentation itself is far greater, and the associated commentary more extensive, all spread widely through the wonders of digital distribution, so must have it seemed to those grappling with the first world spanning war.

The expanding intelligence studies web

2008-01-29T13:26:00.000Z

We note today a few excellent resources for the intelligence professional newly brought to the online environment. The public internet presence of the community continues to expand apace as the value of Metcalf’s law is realized, and the protocols for an appropriate public discussion of the field slowly continue to evolve.

The National Defense Intelligence College (pronounced JMIC by those seeking to avoid confusion with the ill-starred Drug Intelligence Center by the same acronym) has dramatically expanded its public presence. Most importantly for the intelligence scholar, they are releasing in electronic form a whole selection of works from their press, with the promise of more to come. Many of the files are large, so the usual admonition regarding server courtesy is in order. However, we are exceptionally pleased to see these materials being made available more widely for use in other academic programs. This will do much to combat the problem of seeing the better recent unclassified intelligence literature circulating only as 5th generation samizdat photocopy from hand to hand, due to a limited print run. We hope to see at least a selection of their voluminous collection of theses likewise circulated. We also sincerely wish that the civilian academic programs around the country will take an example from the College and cease attempting to reinvent their own wheels, but rather pursue unique studies of lasting value to the field.

We also note, thanks to our friend Michael Tanji, the venerable and respected OSS Society has also expanded its online presence into something akin to a blog. We look forward to their contributions and stories, which have already gotten off to a good start with discussion regarding the potential rebirth of the Office of Strategic Services in the Long War. Regardless of the relative merits of the proposal itself, the idea does capture the imagination. We would love to see a modern version of the kind of stories told in the classic You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger for our new era.

The imperative of Sherman Kent’s original vision of an intelligence literature continues to call to professionals. We are grateful to see the benefits to the history and the appreciation of the field that have already resulted, and we look forward to future developments.

Commodities and early commercial intelligence

2008-01-28T08:23:00.000Z

Our research into the early roles and function of privatized intelligence functions continues to surface more than a few interesting gems. These shed much light on hitherto unexamined complexity and variety in the entities involved in early incarnations of the profession's service to the private sector, particularly for commercial applications.

The British Cotton Growing Association apparently employed individuals in the position of Market Intelligence Officer as early as 1938. One of the duties assigned to this officer was also the "administration of the Trade Mark", suggesting an early emphasis on brand integrity and intellectual capital protection – likely an important consideration for what was the very definition of a commodity product in a time of global economic instability.

We had initially thought this a much earlier reference, based on what appears to be inaccurate metadata in the Google Books database entry on the subject. Had this volume indeed been from 1839, as the transposed figure would suggest, it would have been something remarkable indeed – rivaling the earliest formalized concepts of military intelligence position as a distinct specialty. Yet both the cover and the text itself clearly demonstrate the volume’s true origin from over a century later.

Nonetheless, it remains an interesting piece of the historical puzzle of early competitive intelligence. Other commodities organizations, both individual firms and collective associations, maintained their own capabilities for various markets throughout a contemporaneous time period documented from the 1890’s to the 1940’s. These included coverage of grain, tobacco, fruits, honey, cattle, pigs, dairy, and other agricultural products, as well as shipping markets. Exporter commission houses – often associated with major shipping lines - also played a key role in these collection and reporting systems. The descendants of these entities exist today, including such firms as the Société Générale de Surveillance.

Among the other trades who also apparently enjoyed their own intelligence functions were the foundrymen, with a 1921 issue of The Foundry Trade Journal referencing the appointment of a Mr. M. Cameron as assistant manager, market intelligence and research. (One will note the item also plagued by the same damnable error of dyslexic metadata.) Such services appear to have been available from consultants as well, with a 1924 advertisement referencing a “Market Intelligence Tracking System” that promised to show “how big their budgets really are” - still a key intelligence topic for many competitive intelligence shops.

India again appeared to be a key locus of formalized developments in this area – no doubt to the continued influence of former British military officers engaged in commerce in the region and the Empire’s emphasis on trade advantage. Interestingly, term “private intelligence” appears in a commercial context in an 1863 Marathi / English dictionary. The word referred also to market intelligence, the market itself, and banker’s correspondence (including alternative remittance systems such as hundi) - suggesting a high degree of overlap between these functions in practice if not in English terminology.

While the kind of business information these early market intelligence officers focused on collecting is now far commonly available, at the time its acquisition required a great deal of investment of time, communications costs - and of course, the irreplaceable element of local presence. It also illustrates that the emphasis on collection at the expense of analysis has always been with the field. And in this case, one might speculate that it may have been a contributing factor in the demise of the formal positions as basic data became easier to obtain through other reporting circulated by the larger media bureaus in the post World War II world. Given that their product was largely indistinguishable from business news, and the terminology indistinct, it is little surprise that the functions were discontinued and eventually forgotten from the corporate memory. Modern commercial intelligence professionals would be well advised to heed this lesson.

Despite the too frequently apparent flaws of inaccurate dates (which would be rather less consequential but for the far too legalistic restrictions of limited text viewing imposed by a cumbersome copyright regime that governs even long abandoned texts), the scanning project undertaken by Google continues to demonstrate its value in opening up the archives to exploration in a manner that would frankly be impossible using manual research methods. It is by no means a complete scholarly resource – but it is excellent as a pointer towards materials long buried in the disused acres of the back shelves. This gives us great hope that we might see some of the lost intelligence history – in both its commercial and national incarnations – soon recovered, and by these means also see the literature of intelligence advanced.

Revisiting primary sources – the Allen Dulles collection at Princeton

2008-01-26T15:56:00.000Z

We have been recently quite frustrated by the continued reliance of those in the intelligence studies field on secondary and other derivative works for academic purposes – particularly when so much primary source material has been recently declassified and digitized. We feel there simply is no substitute in many of the great matters of controversy to a student actually reading the original documents themselves, with derivative works used to provide commentary and illumination. It does require one begin to acquire the skills of piecing together fragments of documents – never a bad thing for a prospective intelligence professional. But the technique also illustrates sharply the true nature of one’s limited knowledge when discussing these matters in an unclassified forum, even decades after the events – a lesson many students (and a good number of their less humble professors) would be well advised to internalize at an early date. There will always be pieces of the profession which any particular individual will not see, and the sooner a scholar learns to work within these constraints, the better off that student will be – and the less likely to make a fool of themselves through wild assumptions or arrogant airs.

It is thus with great interest we note that Princeton University has opened a digital archive of the private papers belonging to former DCI Allen Dulles. The variety and volume of materials is simply extraordinary, and although it is organized by librarians (rather than intelligence professionals or modern search engine experts) it is well worth the time to explore these virtual stacks. Given that the gentleman’s 1963 text The Craft of Intelligence, is still reprinted for use as a basic text at many university level programs, these further materials are both substantively illuminating and historically invaluable. Of particular interest are the French and German language items, which may never have been previously referenced in depth during intelligence studies research on the matter.

We of course would be remiss if we did not mention one of the more valuable secondary texts which would provide a framework to the scholar seeking to interpret these materials. James Srode’s text, Allen Dulles : Master of Spies, is a modern and accessible work that covers Dulles’ career and legacy, and can prove a valuable guide to the nearly undifferentiated mass of the digitized documents.

The entire collection is over 1.5 gigabytes of data. One day very soon we will no doubt laugh at this as a trivially small volume in the age of the exaflood – but for now, please do be kind to the university’s servers and stagger your requests over time if you choose to download sections for your perusal. They do run a pretty fast pipe, but we would not wish to see a tragedy of the commons deny this resource to other researchers.

We would love to see these kind of digitization efforts other libraries holding such vital collections of import to the intelligence studies field – and hopefully in conjunction with a good OCR and search capability such as Google Books or its counterparts now offer. We can think of few greater wartime contributions that the intellectuals of this country may offer than to assist in the rebuilding and expansion of its intelligence capabilities for the Long War.

We also hope to see a commensurate response from the intelligence studies academia itself. There is easily enough material for countless numbers of good journal articles and even a thesis or two, plus a large selection of case studies focusing on aspects operational and analytic tradecraft. Let us hope that the investment of the field’s thinkers will equal that of the library’s digitization program.

Monuments out of shredded papers

2008-01-23T14:30:00.000Z

The history of domestic intelligence has long been a sordid one. It is all too often the first tool authoritarian regimes turn to in order to oppress a captive populace – and as a result in such cases rapidly devolves into an activity which is both soul destroying and at the same time farcical. The German STASI apparat was the very exemplar of such evil.

Wired magazine this month profiles the activities of those seeking to reconstruct the records of the STASI's dark days. The former Soviet bloc archives are of immense value in understanding the scope – and the banality – to which intelligence as an activity and organization became perverted under the Communist system. These same lessons will no doubt be seen repeated in the archives of totalitarian governments around the world in years to come, though few bureaucracies match the Teutonic obsession with documentation. Such obsession became the organization’s downfall, given the immense logistical challenges in destroying the voluminous files that are now fodder for historians and former victims alike. It is a document exploitation challenge of simply unprecedented scope and scale, and the reconstruction of partially destroyed documents has spawned new and innovative approaches in digitization and image matching that would no doubt make for fascinating academic discussion among other practitioners of similar arts.

If you the reader ever happen to find yourself in Berlin, it is well worth stopping by the former Headquarters, now turned into a museum and archive. It is a monument to the waste and stupidity that comes from an intelligence system turned against its own people – and a constant reminder of the kind of evil that was wrought.

The STASI legacy has tainted subsequent generations of intelligence far removed from the same evils, but also serves as an instructive sort of anti-model of actions – and more importantly – an underlying intent, one that must be avoided by ethical professionals at all costs. Thankfully, the impulses that drove the STASI are quite alien to those which have developed in the American intelligence tradition – and we hope that this will remain so as long as the profession endures in an apolitical and accountable form.

The perils of arbitrary and false precision

2008-01-22T13:49:00.000Z

We find quite unhelpful the recent academic obsessions over estimative language – largely an exercise in the introduction of a numerical system which offers a degree of apparently comforting but entirely arbitrary, and therefore utterly false, precision. It seems however that we are in one of those cycles which seem to come along in the intelligence community every few decades or so, in which the numerologists and other soothsayers attempt to reshape the profession into their own desires for a more “scientific” practice.

Let us be clear. There are times when quantitative analytic methodology is vital – but there are far more situations in which it is misapplied, misunderstood, and entirely out of place. The latter comprise the vast majority of scenarios in which analytic tradecraft is called upon – not the least of which may be attributed to the highly unbounded and indeterminate nature of the problems with which we must grapple. And any time in which a quantitative basis has not been established, the insertion of numerical percentages for predictive purposes is little more than a farcical exercise in arbitrary selection. Over time, you may attune a group sufficiently in order to calibrate its judgment of these percentages in such a way as to create a consistency within that shared hallucination. However, this does not alter the underlying fallacy upon which such a house of cards is built. This is clearly shown in the number of cases in which the naive predictor is a better estimate of potential than the much vaunted group of experts’ judgment. Thus even in finance, the most precise of arenas, built upon the foundation of values, you will find predictions expressed equally alongside hedges – and the market littered with those who have failed to impose arbitrary figures on a highly indeterminate problem.

One of the greatest challenges in intelligence analysis is to understand the limits of prediction when going about the hard business of estimation. That understanding should shape the analyst’s focus on what ought to be examined for predictive possibility. These are, properly: the scope and nature of trends, drivers, and future scenario outcomes – and not the capricious shadings of difference between mathematical expressions of probability.

Estimative language has not been expressed through probability percentages for the sixty plus years of the intelligence community’s modern incarnation for good and well contemplated reasons. While the abstraction of the clean and sterile realm of mathematics is often a welcome change from the messy and hard realities of intelligence, that abstraction too frequently is used as a shield and an intellectual refuge for those unable or unwilling to embrace the challenge of actually doing intel.

Scientisim in intelligence analysis is a particularly seductive heresy. It offers the false promise of greater insight, should only additional efforts be applied more systematically, more rigorously, or with more and better data. But it has not been given unto us to see the future – no matter how carefully we might craft our equations. We may simply chart the boundaries of its outlines, and discuss the implications within the uncertainty space so described.

We have no doubt that we will revisit this discussion in short order. For now, however, we would close with an excellent reminder of the vast gulf of differences that may be concealed with that change of a single degree of significance in numerical expression. Originally produced for IBM, this admittedly dated video still serves to explain the staggering concepts of scale in a world of large numbers. (h/t to Thoughts Illustrated for pointing out its online incarnation.)

Warning impact

2008-01-21T17:22:00.000Z

It is fair to say that Google has had a tremendous impact in any technology area that it seeks to invest its time and resources. Even when those investments have failed to materialize viable commercialized outcomes, the underlying advances in theory – and the less heralded aspects of hands-on operational experiences – have no doubt been of immense import in many sectors which simply had never before seen attention of that kind or scale.

We thus note with great interest the Google.org charity wing’s decision to explore new early warning solutions. The initial applications for this warning capability are envisioned to be in the area of emerging infectious disease – making the search engine perhaps the largest player in the medical intelligence field outside of the US government itself.

The implications are potentially stunning – not the least among them a possibility for the evolution of an entirely distinct indications and warning doctrine from a major external source, one that is natively rooted in new technologies and the lessons of distributed, knowledge work era communication and collaboration structures. Re-inventing I&W for non-state and transnational issues – especially the abhuman factors of biological threats – promises to be the most significant contribution to the warning field since Cynthia Grabo’s foundational work.

We further note that this is the kind of leading edge outcomes that In-Q-Tel should be exploring, perhaps through a public-private sector partnership model.

Let us hope the project will bring to results the kind of potential we can now glimpse. Given the foundation’s focus on metrics of success – in a manner for more rigorous than any government program is ever held to account for – we have reason to be optimistic. Whether such results can translate effectively into the realm of intelligence is another matter – and one that future intelligence scholars will no doubt be positioned to explore.

Questions of legality of intelligence in the commercial world

2008-01-18T20:33:00.000Z

We frequently encounter those in the academic and business world which have little grasp of the applications of intelligence to the commercial world. These problems have not been helped by the distractions of discussion regarding economic espionage, directed by nation-states against particular industries. While the latter crimes do occur, and frankly have since the days of the first corporate entities of the East India Companies (Honorable or Dutch, take your pick), modern competitive intelligence is however a far different animal. And while any corporate entity may itself also commit a crime, there is quite a gulf between the examples that detractors might point to, and the standards which a profession establishes for itself in order to inculcate in its practitioners. Herein lies the heart of the frequent disconnect between intelligence professionals and their counterparts on the other side of the boardroom table.

This is not a new phenomenon, by any means. It has been our contention that the entire practice of commercial intelligence has a long and storied history that has been given short shrift, largely due to the influences of consultants and others seeking to brand their names onto this “new” thing that the re-discovered. While this may be a good way to sell books, and to organize conferences, we feel that it has greatly hurt the profession’s development and legitimization. Like national intelligence in the interwar years, it is too easy to wrap up a “new” experimental function like a business intelligence / competitive intelligence unit, particularly when budget cuts come rolling around. The taint of controversy has too often provided convenient ammunition as cover in such situations. Unfortunately, the very defense against these largely manufactured controversies is the same history that has been so deliberately discarded in favour of the branding of novelty.

Thus it seems we are doomed to watch that fight replayed over and again in the gulf of ignorance that has been the result. Yet the legitimacy of these units has long been settled law, among the oldest questions in the profession of intelligence to come before the bar. We cite a 1916 publication by the United States Bureau of Corporations, Trust Laws & Unfair Competition. (courtesy of the Government Printing Office), which references the matter (for American law) thusly:

Before entering the final decree in United States r. American Tobacco Co. et al the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York considered a request to enjoin the defendants "from espionage on the business of any competitor, from bribery of employees of such competitor, and from obtaining information from any United States revenue official." Lacombe, J., denied the request, saying: “Why any one Individual or corporation engaged in this business may not acquire such information as he or it can legitimately obtain from private or public sources as to the business of a competitor we fall to see. When illegitimate methods are proved, they may be dealt with.”

We would wish to see that opinion more widely promulgated and discussed, in order to defeat the pseudo-legalistic arguments that have lately come into fashion to justify short sighted decisions that managers are unwilling to take responsibility for themselves. We think that such a changed calculus may actually alter those decisions in a marked way – or perhaps at least prove the unsuitability of certain ill informed individuals for the roles given to them in the complex decision-making environment of the modern corporation.

The loss of the history of the intelligence profession has had terrible consequences to its practice and evolution. It is long past time serious scholars begin to address these failings, in a manner that advances the literature of the field in areas of direct relevance to the practitioner.

New technologies for facilities characterization

2008-01-16T15:10:00.000Z

We recall – and not all too fondly - the early days of attempts to create architectural CAD renderings of target facilities. This was a clumsy process, which almost always required an engineer of some description to be involved, and frankly created an end product that most consumers didn’t see as anything more than a low resolution graphic. To be sure, there was always the bragging rights of adapting a new system to a classic target, but on any given day we preferred a good graphics artist with a keen eye for perspective and proportion far better. Kind of like architects themselves, really, given their preference for covers showing artist’s concepts of buildings rather than displaying the old blueprint style plans. Newer generations of architectural software have apparently made this task easier, but have not been as enthusiastically explored.

But a new technology may change that, by bringing back a level of interaction with the system that the insulating layer of engineering specialization took from the CAD models. We are already on record as being fans of the concepts behind multitouch style screens – especially in their as on just fictional style incarnations (courtesy of the futures studies folks). There appears a lot more to be explored in the space, though, as new applications are continually popping up that offer to reconceptualize human computer interface for a variety of tasks across the intelligence profession.

The latest incarnation that has come to our attention promises a “virtual” view of factories – and in particular, aggregate views of systems data for reactions that cannot be seen directly. One can readily imagine the utility such a system would have for those engineers and analysts attempting to assemble a composite view of a competitor’s industrial processes – or an adversary’s chemical or biological weapons production facility. The key to the technology’s innovation in our view is not the S&T solution, although this could indeed be valuable, but rather the engagement with a high fidelity visualization that the multitouch screen (and its follow on evolution) could bring. We strongly believe that innovations like this are vital in opening up the more arcane collection and analytic disciplines to all source generalists – and more importantly, the intelligence end user – in ways that graphs and pictures of CAD renderings could not.

We look forward to the day – hopefully sometime very soon – when we might be able to host a briefing around such a table screen, discussing some hard target with a consumer that can literally get their hands (and heads) around the issue. We think, however, that in this our counterparts in the commercial sector might lead the way, but if nothing else the use of such visualization techniques in competitive technical intelligence might provide an excellent example to reference when building out an acquisition justification elsewhere in the community.

h / t Smart Mobs

Intelligence history in the Black Valley

2008-01-15T19:50:00.000Z

We are quite fortunate to number among our readers a gentleman of expertise and innovation, who passed along an excellent video in which he can be seen here lecturing at Google's occasional talks series. The topic of conversation was what we would consider the early history of intelligence privatization – the development of the early partnerships to pursue new scientific and technical intelligence operations against Germany and the Soviet Union. For those generally unfamiliar with the importance of the Wizard’s War, the lecture also serves as an excellent introduction to basic electronic warfare concepts and the SIGINT / ELINT challenges required to effectively support EW during WWII and the Cold War era.

The lecture in particular resonates as it tracks the eventual higher order effects of the early Cold War surge in a way that is rarely done in intelligence history surveys. One can almost for a moment imagine a different lecturer, sitting in a room somewhere in a start-up turned world changing firm of not so distant futurity, exploring the impact of innovations in the early years of the Long War from a similar perspective and style. In our mind’s eye, we perhaps think that such a future lecture might focus on the IED Defeat fight, or perhaps the manhunting problem – but of course it has not been given to us to seen the future, only merely to glimpse the outlines of its potential.

For now, we are pleased to see this kind of history surfacing, and being spread in places where creative and imaginative young minds cluster, especially by such a gifted speaker and guide. Let us hope that it may inspire the next generation of intelligence developments and successes, even as it enlightens us to the pasts we share.

Further to the limited impact of university level intelligence scholarship

2008-01-14T14:49:00.000Z

Our earlier comments decrying the essential irrelevance of much of the intelligence studies academy to the professional practitioner has provoked no small measure of reaction over the past month. Most comments have come from those still serving, with anecdotes – in truth, mostly horror stories – of the failure of numerous attempts to reach out to the scholars in the field. It seems there is a certain degree of stubbornness – one might even say a profound expression of anchoring bias – which ties the professoriat to lines of inquiry that contribute only marginally to the art and science, despite clear needs in other areas.

The esteemed Dr. Barton Whaley reflected upon this problem in a recent article, which in part examined the academic tendency to continually try to re-invent the wheel. (For those interested, it may be found in the Defense Intelligence Journal, Volume 15, Number 2, 2006.) His personal list of such wheels covered includes the “re-discovery” of the problems of strategic surprise. In this spirit, we might add our own list of those topics we think more than adequate attention has already been paid, given the other gaps in the literature. Among these are the continual attempt to revisit the foundational definition of intelligence, the endless rehashing of debates over words of estimative probability, and the needless attempts to impose a false and entirely arbitrary numeric precision in intelligence writing.

One of our colleagues put it best: the primary reason these sorts of academic wittering continue unabated has been the small number of professionals who have actually read such irrelevant stuff. And even fewer will have dwelt upon it long enough to respond, rather than laughing it off. Unfortunately, even those that have gone through the difficulties of finding time apart from the pressing business of current accounts, and fought through publication review in order to convey substantive examples from inside the vault, rarely make a dent in the external discussion, given how few pages emerge to compete with the growing corpus of distraction.

But we strongly suspect there are yet other intelligence studies academics that may indeed be well worth listening to, and we continue our discussions in the forlorn hope of surfacing their work more widely within the community. Thus we were most grateful for the insightful commentary regarding the same earlier post, provided by a learned individual whom we shall describe (with permission) only as a Western intelligence scholar, and full professor at a top tier university. The gentleman sought to enlighten your humble authors regarding the flipside of the equation of intelligence scholarship from the university’s perspective, and raised points well worth wider consideration. (Reproduced here with only minor editing to preserve the anonymity upon which all of our skunkworks relies). His response speaks to “two central factors which have inhibited not only the volume and quality of (ivory) tower scholarship on intelligence matters, but also the impact of scholarly work on the IC.”

“First—and this holds true for a variety of areas, and not just the IC—most scholars simply have no sense of how bureaucratic and government processes, let alone the military and IC, operate. It is not anything taught in graduate school, where the emphasis is very much on mastering the theoretical masters of the field. The majority of academics have fairly predictable career paths from undergraduate degree through to MA and PhD, with little outside-academia work experience (the exceptions being "professional" schools of diplomacy and foreign service, which place more emphasis on recruiting staff with professional experience, and also many scholars working in the aid and development field). I would register a disagreement with your observation that: "Lacking in-depth target knowledge, substantive understanding of applied analytical tradecraft, and relying on a too short tour (if even that) at a three letter organization or two, the result becomes a sort of punditry entirely divorced from the profession itself." More specifically, while I don't disagree with the broader point that you are making, I would argue that the quality of academic literature on intelligence, war, and diplomacy would be substantially improved by even relatively periods spent inside an agency, or foreign or defence ministry.”

Second, the professional reward system within academia neither rewards policy-relevant output, nor does it place much value on material published outside the regular scholarly channels. Indeed, even the latter are carefully weighted (formally or informally) by their academic prestige within a disciplinary field, with leading university presses and peer-reviewed journals coming first, lesser presses and journals second, and everything else a very scant third. In other words, the benefit that accrues to a scholar is almost in inverse proportion to the actual policy impact (or, in this case, impact on the intelligence community).

Although most scholars don't think directly in these terms, it is possible to put some numbers on this. Let us take the hypothetical example of an excellent scholar who forgoes publication in a top-ranked journal (say APSR or World Politics), and instead produces a online piece or occasional paper in easily disseminated and digestible form with direct IC implications. Come annual salary increment time, the former might well be worth $750 (or more) in annual pay increase… the latter perhaps $150 (or less). Lets also make them 34, with a thirty year career ahead of them. The lifetime loss from writing the latter is (ignoring inflationary effects, etc) a minimum of $18,000. If they did it every year--well, quite apart from the tenure and promotion consequences, you can see that the implicit disincentive is substantial. Equally important are the validation messages that fields send to themselves, and the prestige and value one is accorded within academic networks and other peer groups.

This is quite apart from other inhibiting factors.”

We confess that we had not properly considered the economic incentives in the equation – thinking primarily of the thing as an unambiguous good in its own right. Of course, this is also a product of our own cognitive biases – rarely in the IC do contributions to the literature translate directly into one’s pay packet in the same manner (perhaps one reason why the literature advances so slowly.) Neither should the currency of the reputation market be lightly discounted.

If the community is to encourage the kind of the scholarship in the intelligence studies field that will actually serve the profession’s interest, these factors need to be taken into account. The learned gentleman does offer a few potential solution pathways, which merit further discussion.

“How can this be addressed? The recent proliferation of peer-reviewed academic journals on intelligence and security matters certainly helps, although it doesn't necessarily contribute to scholarly output with IC impacts. Sporadic efforts to get scholars inside government for a year or two, whether as scholars-in-residence or in an actual functioning capacity, ought to be expanded upon, and designed to have benefits (such as in-built research funds) that offset the apparent career liabilities of "wasting" (to quote a departmental colleague) one's sabbatical in this way. Finally, the intelligence community needs to reflect on whether its frequent aversion to providing "visiting" scholars with high-level security clearances needs to be rethought. There are certainly substantial security issues involved, given that scholars might well be lecturing on a country in class shortly after reading highly sensitive COMINT or HUMINT on the same. On the other hand, its not clear how they can understand what is going on--let alone contribute to the betterment of IC functions--if they are entirely kept out of the loop. At this point (and at the risk of paraphrasing Donald Rumsfeld), most don't know what they don't know.”

Money can be found, but its application towards productive ends has been problematic. Unfortunately, too often research funds have done little to redirect a faculty to more relevant pursuits, being simply contracts which were serviced using largely student labour. (Again, as in many cases of suboptimal contract performance, the fault may lie as much with the contracting agencies management of the project, but the history is what it is.) While cleared scholarship is an interesting concept, this is typically also done through a contracting vehicle – which tends to take the work product out of the academic realm and into the community itself, greatly limiting distribution elsewhere in the intelligence studies field. Many academics – with some justified reason – are also reluctant to accept the kind of future publication constraints that a term of cleared service will inevitably impose.

These are matters that deserve greater consideration, and we no doubt will return to in future discussions. We are grateful as always to our readership, and in particular to our commentator, for helping advance this discussion in ways we never could have anticipated when this small effort was begun.

Winter is the paper season

2008-01-10T14:59:00.000Z

For those locked indoors in the cold (such as it may have been, or soon return, despite a brief and enjoyable moment of unseasonable warmth), winter is an excellent opportunity for research, reflection, and writing. It is especially appropriate at the start of a new year for all those professionals who have vowed that 2008 will be the year that they at last contribute the literature in their own right.

Thus, we note in passing a few of the more recent calls for papers that have been circulating in recent weeks. For further details beyond these brief summaries, please see the original announcement sources.

2008 International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, to take place at the University of California at Santa Barbara on 4-5 April 2008. Submissions by graduate students working on any aspect of the Cold War, broadly defined. Of particular interest are papers that make use of newly available primary sources. A two-page proposal and a brief academic C.V. (in Word or PDF format), should be submitted to jchapman@history.ucsb.edu by 15 January 2008 to be considered. Notification of acceptance will be made by 5 February. Successful applicants will be expected to email their papers (no longer than 25 pages) by 21 March.

Doreen and Jim McElvany 2008 Nonproliferation Challenge Essay Contest: In an effort to spur new scholarship and policy initiatives to address today's vexing proliferation problems, CNS and its journal, The Nonproliferation Review, are launching an essay contest. The contest is designed to find and publish the most outstanding new papers in the nonproliferation field. Although we will not exclude essays with a historical orientation (if they provide guidance for current or future policy), our priority is to generate new insights and recommendations for resolving contemporary nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons challenges, including those involving both state and non-state actors. Entries should not exceed 10,000 words (including endnotes), or approximately 40 double-spaced pages. All entries must be the original, unpublished work of the author(s) and must not be under consideration for publication elsewhere. Deadline for submission is 31 March 2008. Grand Prize: $10,000* and Outstanding Student Essay Prize: $1,000

Computer Applications in Knowledge-Based Systems: A special issue of International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology: Knowledge-based systems provide intelligent assistance in solving any problem. They can be used not only as systems within engineering, but also within management, marketing, internet, communication, networking, psychology, education, etc. The research and development of these systems which exploit knowledge in the target domain is at the forefront of modern research. This special issue is intended to present applications of knowledge-based systems. Submitted papers are expected to postulate diverse problems, models and solutions for these applications. This special issue welcomes both academic and practical contributions in all aspects of knowledge-based systems. Relevant topics may include, but are not limited to, the following: Knowledge-based systems / Knowledge-based engineering / Knowledge discovery and data mining / Intelligent agents and multi-agent systems / Machine learning / Text mining and applications / Speech processing and synthesis / Signal processing / Business intelligence systems / Intelligence systems for e-business / Information agents on the internet / Genetic algorithms / Evolutionary computing / Hybrid intelligent systems / Knowledge acquisition / Communication assistance with knowledge / Natural language processing / Information retrieval / NLP application / Cross-language information retrieval. Important Dates: Submission of full paper before: 15 April 2008 / Notification of acceptance before: 15 June 2008 / Submission of final and revised manuscripts: 15 August 2008

POLICING FOR HOMELAND SECURITY, Criminal Justice Policy Review – Special Issue. Guest Editor: Willard M. Oliver, Ph.D., Sam Houston State University: Criminal Justice Policy Review is currently soliciting manuscripts for a special issue on policing for homeland security. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies in the United States have taken on new responsibilities, and the role of policing continues to evolve as a viable component of the overall national strategy for homeland security. Little research, however, identifies emerging policing strategies, their relationship and/or application to the national strategy for homeland security, and corresponding policy implications. Manuscripts considered for publication in this special issue could focus on a variety of topics, including (but not limited to): (1) adaptation of community policing and/or problem-oriented policing to homeland security; (2) law enforcement organizational transformation consistent with the overall national strategy for homeland security; (3) interagency cooperation for homeland security; (4) innovations in policing delivery of service models and policy consistent with the overall national strategy for homeland security; and, (5) policing for homeland security program evaluations. For style and submission guidelines for Criminal Justice Policy Review, please go to http://www.hhs.iup.edu/cr/CJPR. For additional information, contact Phil Stinson, Managing Editor, Criminal Justice Policy Review, at p.m.stinson@iup.edu or (724) 357-1247. Submission Deadline: May 1, 2008

And of course, interested parties are always welcome to submit papers or short pieces for publication in these pages, either for attribution or on anonymous / pseudonym basis. We remind our readers that we only accept unclassified material suitable for wide public distribution, which carries no potentially negative implications for operational security. For those individuals whose employment requires publication review, our policy remains the same as that of the Association for Intelligence Officers – it is entirely the responsibility of the prospective author to ensure compliance with all controlling policies and other security guidance; and we reserve the right to reject any material not meeting common community standards. Violations of law or policy will be reported to the appropriate agency authorities. However, with those limitations in mind, we have a broad range of eclectic interests in furtherance of our objective of advancing the literature and the profession, and contributions or notes are always welcome.

This is not to say our contemplated journal is yet dead, but much yet remains to be done in coordinating that project. There are also those who would be more comfortable seeing their work in the medium of the blog, which we would encourage – or simply have material which they do not feel would be appropriate for the peer reviewed journals, which we also understand. Students are particularly encouraged to contribute if they are not seeking publication elsewhere. Of course, there is also the wide range of other fine publications in the field, to which submissions may also be made to good effect.

We are greatly looking forward to what contributions to the literature that may be brewing on these long winter nights. After all, we do require a constant supply of good reading materials…

Further to the Google prediction market

2008-01-08T23:32:00.000Z

We were surprised to note the widespread discussion throughout the blogsphere regarding the Google prediction market paper. Something there clearly captures the imagination in a way that the art and science of forecasting rarely otherwise can.

Today’s discussions have also surfaced a fascinating item not included in the original paper itself: an influence diagram of successful and unsuccessful forecasters. Surprisingly, represented as a heat map, one clearly sees an unprecedented proximity effect in clusters of both winners and losers. There is also a strong temporal correlation to these trades on the prediction market, further reinforcing the idea of action from a shared information base.

The representation also reminds us of other recent comments regarding geographic impact on social networks at the esteemed Network Weaving blog.

We have long been proponents of virtual distributed intelligence production – especially given the realities of life in the DC metro. And given the personalities of most intelligence analysts (stereotyped or otherwise), the prevalence of VTCs and telcons for interactions even within the national capital region, and the highly asynchronous schedules of so many professionals working in 24 / 7 environments such as watch desks or fusion centers, we had frankly thought little lost when virtual teams were properly organized and managed.

Now the ‘plex no doubt has a very different organizational culture than the IC, and we are uncertain that these findings may be applied more generally within our field. We would particularly question cross-domain validity given the number of critical interactions already mediated by networks even in the most physically cohesive of teams, such as the requirements and evaluation process, or almost every element of coordination and review.

Yet still we find our gaze retuning time and again to the heat map. There is clearly an aspect of information contagion at work – for both good and ill. Bad ideas seem to have the same stickiness and spread as did accurate analysis. And despite the high levels of reorganization and mobility within specific offices, the contagion seems to have persisted. While in the IC we might immediately recognize the office as a “sick shop” with poor management or destructive internal dynamics, we cannot so blithely make the same statements regarding a corporation with which we are nowhere near so familiar.

Overall, and irrespective of specific elements of the discussion, we find ourselves wondering at this glimpse of what production management and consumer outcomes could look like in a transformed IC. For those that have advocated tracking more closely metrics for assessing analytic performance, this is perhaps the best model of the potential utility of such efforts we have ever seen. One could imagine similar representational overlays charting production output, consumer feedback, citation, or even employee retention / satisfaction.

This is definitely something to ponder at length.

A hard look at prediction markets

2008-01-07T10:00:00.000Z

Rarely does an analytical methodology garner attention in the manner that has marked the discussion of prediction markets. From controversial origins to increasingly widespread public adoption, we think more pixels have been spilled on this single approach than on perhaps any other methodology short of ACH.

We have written about such techniques before. Perhaps we might group them more generally under the moniker of arbitrary quantitative forecasting. Arbitrary, for the numbers themselves however derived have only relative meaning in the assessment of probabilities (including even financial data, which although it carries with it information about the state of a transaction series or commodity, responds as much to the complexities of interactions between financial entities as it does to those factors of relevance for intelligence forecasting.)

It has been difficult, however, to evaluate the effectiveness of the technique amidst all of the hype. Certainly, we know of no significant influence on ordinary analytic tradecraft. The real business of intelligence continues much as it always has. This does not necessarily invalidate a methodological experiment, for there is certain room for more specialized vehicles to address unique problems or support new product lines. This is the usual fate of a new and uncertain methodology, and is not a bad thing in and of itself. (Although we do not that adoption of new methodologies has been recently accelerated, which we can attribute in part at least to the more widespread discussion within a growing literature. A new technique or approach might have lingered for decades before seeing significant use, but now may find a home – even if in a specialized shop – within months or years.)

Validation has always been the bane of methodologists. However elegant their theories, they are doomed to academic irrelevance unless adoption occurs across a sufficiently representative section of the community. And absent validation, adoption – especially in cases where significant implementation effort is required - will always chancy. In the face of production pressures and surge requirements, analysts will in almost every case fall back upon processes with which they are familiar – structured or otherwise. Prediction markets by their very nature tend to require a substantial up-front effort for highly uncertain results.

We are thus grateful to the folks at Google, along with coauthors from NBER and Dartmouth, for publishing some of the first real results of their internal prediction market. The study covers nearly three years of the operation of an exchange which handled over 70,000 transactions – each conveying a degree of belief on one of almost 300 particular questions, on behalf of 1500 active employees (although nearly 6500 held accounts that were not used.) Interesting, they identify unexpected influences due to physical proximity, as well as the impact of cognitive bias towards optimism based on employee fiscal considerations created by Google’s rising share price. Also quite interesting was their observation that new employees were more influenced by this bias, and that staff with longer tenure within the firm tended towards more calibrated judgment – a not inconsistent phenomenon within any analytic activity.

As warrant to the authors’ point regarding proximate location influences on information sharing, it was also revealed that Google employees moved offices approximately every 90 days. If ever there was a indicator of a complex and unstable system… but of course, we are aware of quite a few community elements that would meet or even exceed this frequency.

At least a third of all market questions were purely “fun” topics, while nearly half did not have direct impact to Google. This begs the question of how much of the activity was merely socialized gambling using virtual currency vice the exercise of deliberate judgment regarding the potential future environment – something that will plague almost any prediction market collaboration. While fun helps drive adoption, and play can lead to divergent insights, it is easy to envision such a mechanism as becoming a drain on the hard questions of the real topics.

All in all, the paper is well worth reading and carries with it quite a bit of food for thought to sustain those debating the utility and applications of prediction markets within the intelligence community. We admit to a growing skepticism regarding the value of the methodology that this study has only served to reinforce. Given the total time, resources, and intellectual energies required to support such an endeavor, these kinds of outcome do not in our view necessarily justify the effort. However, we remain open to the potential that such mechanisms capture effort which might otherwise be entirely undirected, and therefore may create insight where other techniques would not. These remain in our minds open questions, and worthy of further research.

h/t Marginal Revolution and Midas Oracle

Rent seeking and digital media exploitation

2008-01-05T15:08:00.000Z

We hear news of one of the more disturbing aspects of legal intrusion into the intelligence field – the tendency of lawmakers and regulators to craft protectionist legislation – enabling and encouraging rent seeking behaviors that would never survive in a more open marketplace.

This time around it is an area which at first blush might seem tangential to the profession of intelligence - but it is more closely associated with other issues in the field than we would like. South Carolina may force those private parties involved in digital forensics to hold a private investigation license – that hoary old document so beloved of fiction authors and scandal page writers.

The PI business has clearly been losing a lot of ground over the past few decades as business has become ever more global in nature – and not that it ever had much ground to begin with, in the more rarified professional atmospheres of major multinationals. The few top tier exceptions in the field have undergone some dramatic shifts – so much so that reporting on the industry’s turmoil became a staple of the Indigo Publication’s Intelligence Online newsletter. Major players from consulting firms and more specialized shops have emerged to carve away what might have been business opportunities, especially since most executives (and more critically, the lawyers who advise them) disdain the “hard-boiled” image that the term PI evokes. Even if in the modern business of investigations such an image is only a stereotype, it has a strong impact on business realities.

Digital forensics is a pretty wide field, even despite its relative youth. It encompasses activities as disparate as internal systems monitoring, to compliance auditing, to the full range of criminal search and seizure. What it means in a networked world is still very much being explored – particularly given the challenges posed by rapidly evolving hostile technology innovations. In its more advanced networked forms, it often begins to resemble more closely activities in the signals intelligence domain. While this is understandable from the perspective of intelligence studies theory, given that the native competencies of intelligence in the cyber domain have yet to be recognized, it is far to early to allow regulatory frameworks to disrupt the development of the discipline – especially a framework which imposes mechanisms better suited to the Industrial age of rail than the modern age of networks.

We oppose this line of thinking not only for the immediate harm it causes, but for the slippery slope it creates. With each new regulatory overreach, additional activities within the intelligence field become new marginal examples that could be brought under one’s favoured framework. From digital media exploitation it is not far to also seize upon the regulation of document exploitation, and from DOCEX it is easy to bring other aspects of OSINT under the sway of those seeking to profit from entrenched positions. How long then before simple searches within a database, or simple overt elicitation contacts, will require a licensing regime – and one ruled by a clique of established players with only the "right" kind of political connections?

This is among the reasons why we have also opposed the creation of arbitrary standards bodies seeking to define professionalism within the intelligence field – especially those composed of academics who cannot even properly conceptualize many of the key aspects of the profession as it is actually practiced, let alone standardize external measures by which practitioners might be judged. We hold no objection to bodies seeking to advance professionalization through a community of interest, a strong literature, and leadership by example. We also see no issue in individual standards being put into place in specific circumstances – such as the conditions under which a court will recognize sufficient expertise for testimony, or how a government agency will certify knowledge and experience ample for the performance of a contract it is to award, or how employees will be evaluated for promotion within a given shop. But these are far different things than the regulatory creature now rearing its ugly head.

We hope that some degree of sanity will return to these discussions, particularly should the lobbyist guns of the major consulting firm players be warmed up to play against the bush league minors that appear to be driving this process. While the South Carolina case is but one state, the precedent could create more widespread attempts at similar rent-seeking behaviors, both geographically and down that slippery slope of further overreach.

h/t Slashdot

The art of cartographic intelligence

2008-01-04T14:28:00.000Z

The display of geospatial information has a long and storied history. Regrettably, as technology advanced, and the dissemination of mapping products was transformed by the radical new printing techniques of the industrial revolution, much of the unique art and frequent beauty of cartography fell by the wayside in favour of a brutal simplicity and single purpose mindset.

Strange Maps reminds us often of that lost art. Most recently, they cite the Economist on one of the more haunting representations of the complex statistical and geographic story of Napolean’s ill fated invasion of Russia, created by an inspector-general by the name of Minard.

The Minard map demonstrates most clearly the utility of both abstraction but also multiple element representation in geospatial intelligence products. The map is not the territory – and we are foolish to attempt to conflate them in an absolute and literal sense using technology, when the true purpose of our finished intelligence is intended to convey the vital element of analytical judgment. We do not merely seek illustrations for the sake of visual highlight but rather to provide additional insight into the subject under discussion.

This is among the more difficult aspects of the intelligence profession for an apprentice to master. Even among those experienced in the craft, the dominance of verbal and written production too often tends to overshadow its visual counterparts. This is something that we are reminded that we must always be mindful of in the excellent piece “Teaching Vision” by Mark G. Marshall, published in the Joint Military Intelligence College’s Occasional Paper A Flourishing Craft: Teaching Intelligence Studies , under the incomparable editorship of Dr. Russell Swenson.

For those wishing to explore this arcane aspect of the profession further, we highly recommend the works and instruction offered by Edward Tufte. W are rarely fans of most quantitative analysis techniques, given the all too frequent tendency to seek false certainties in numbers fabricated almost entirely from whole cloth. However, when numerical statements are properly called for there are few better ways by which they may be approached than those demonstrated in the The Visual Display of Quantitative Information.

Hazards of blogging for intelligence professionals

2008-01-03T15:57:00.000Z

August Jackson, most notably of the Washington DC chapter of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, reflects on the issues created by blogging with the same candor that one addresses intelligence assessments.

His comments raise interesting points from the perspective of professional ethics and the obligations of duty – perhaps something roughly equivalent to the concept of giri.

"In competitive intelligence you can't be a Kool-Aid drinker, and often you have to tell executives when they're on the wrong path. Companies make their moves in public, so it's only natural that management should expect to see criticism or praise in a public forum. I've had three different jobs and a number of different contracts since I have been blogging, and I have never disclosed proprietary information. Not once. Ever. I never will. Any time I've been involved in the formation of a business decision I've kept my opinions private whether I've agreed or disagreed. This, to me, is a more important measure of professionalism in blogging than never commenting on any company's policy."

It is interesting for us to see this discussion in a commercial intelligence perspective. Those in the public sector have a far more clear set of distinctions – and enforced by far more than mere civil tort – that bound words and deed. This by necessity limits to a much greater degree the range of topics we can address in public pages, and to avoid even the appearance of impropriety one’s opinions must be even more carefully circumscribed on any matter that might be seen as leading to politicization. Intelligence practitioners must be professionally apolitical, in all aspects of their public presence – something too often forgotten in the current Beltway atmosphere.

Most organizations simply do not permit an intelligence professional to blog in public at all. Some of those efforts which are allowed to exist may only do so under a high degree of restriction. (We suppose our humble effort falls into the latter category.) In government service, there are of course alternatives on other networks for those that wish to speak more freely about matters of more direct impact to their daily working lives. (As for us, we appreciate the chance to step away from the issues of the day and examine the craft in a more holistic fashion – but this is not for everyone.) But this is not the first time we have looked to this subject.

We have also previously discussed the implications of academic blogging. However, for the most part, our comments (and those of others) have reflected upon the professoriat. Intelligence studies student blogging is another question entirely. To date, student participation in the intelligence blogsphere has been very limited – largely because they are struggling to master a learning curve that has been compared to a brick wall, and recognize that they have little of interest of their own to say. There are a few quite notable exceptions, however, that are well worth the attention invested. It is for this reason that we feel student bloggers should indeed be cultivated, but carefully so. They will have to make hard choices – many which might impact their future career for years to come – especially if they are overt intelligence professionals from a young age (precluding other activities in later years.) It is also due to these pressures that we have witnessed a number of blogs simply drop off, as their authors come under new publication policies as they take professional jobs.

We further view with grave concern the current fashion among academics of assigning blog writing tasks as class requirements, as most have been authored under true name (or readily identifiable associations thereof), and explicitly link the student to an area of study that as a professional they would likely never acknowledge so publicly, even as overt practitioners.

Against this backdrop, why does intelligence studies blogging endure? We think it is because the benefits that accrue to an individual author’s mind far outweigh the potential downside, as long as one adheres to the strictest standards of professionalism (and security). That these benefits result in a public good which advances (to whatever small degree) the intellectual discussion of the intelligence studies field, and its literature, is a happy higher order result – and one that should be encouraged within the boundaries of propriety and discretion.