Forecasting through games

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

The Jesters tackle counterproliferation

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.

Considering immunity

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.

Vision and error

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.

The problems of prophets and jesters

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.

Wx-ing historical

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.

A hard look at prediction markets

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

Interfacing with the future

We have long had a fascination with the emerging edge of new interface technologies, if only because we frequently encounter the need to work with these Babbage engine contraptions under a variety of circumstances far outside those envisioned by the original designers. While we are quite aware that the space is quite littered with the remnants of failed attempts at new concepts and the broken dreams of the paleo-future, we nonetheless hold out hope for certain new technologies from time to time – a triumph of optimism over experience.

One technology – the interactive multi-touch style of whiteboard / display – has in particular caught our attention. It is a curious artifact, insofar as it was most famously profiled (in stunningly attractive set dressing) in the science fiction film Minority Report. In an unusual reversal, however, it was the jesters that invited the futurists to the table. Peter Schwartz, of the Global Business Network (and the Art of the Long View), was among those commissioned to enhance a number of the forecasted technological and social changes that provided a good number of “eyeball kicks” in the movie.

We are pleased to note that the ever innovative folks at Carnegie Mellon University are struggling to make this sort of technology a reality. Even more interestingly, they are doing so using low cost commoditized components repurposed from popular entertainment systems. The street does indeed find its own uses for things, in the famous formulation of another jester.

Whether such a technology will actually prove to be of value for the intelligence professional remains to be seen once working implementations are available for testing. We can however already think of certain scenarios – including in VTCs, watch operations centers, and situational awareness applications – where such an interface would be of great value for collaborative discussion and production. Coupled with the right big board type display, and driven by one of the better fusion portals, we could certainly see this garnering the same kind of rave reviews that first greeted the trials of the Knowledge Wall.

Riding the coffin

We have been taken to task recently by several of our close friends on the sharper side of the profession for focusing too much as of late on the analytical and privatized segments of the field. While we are the first to note that it is far harder to write in the public forum regarding the darker aspects of the intelligence professional’s world, we have indeed been less focused on those rare opportunities which might serve to inspire discussion and debate regarding the history and future of the operational house.

Thus we are pleased to note, via Aviation Week’s Ares blog, the following glimpse of the future of covert insertion techniques that would no doubt make even an OSS or SOE veteran wince. It enters the public sphere tucked away in a longer discussion of future warfighting concepts.

“The spookily labeled Coffin In The Sky (CITS) concept was a result of Northrop Grumman's engineers talking to SOF operators. The bomber would carry up to 12 modified Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) weapons, each fitted with a pressurized life-support container for one person. After launch, the missiles would fly deep into hostile territory, pop the containers open and release the operators for a HAHO (high altitude, high opening) parachute descent.”

Any piece of equipment named the “coffin” does not exactly inspire confidence, and reminds us of the old expression from the first days of discussing the probabilities of success of early orbital recovery systems – “NASA odds”.

What amazes us is not that the oddity of the concept, but rather the fact that is now a rational part of military futures exercises. This was once the stuff of pure science fiction – and as always, the jester’s at the table forecast it more accurately than the think tanks. The concept joins a rapidly growing list of successful predictions by author Bruce Sterling – who foresaw something very closely akin to the technique, including the consequences of a failed landing, in his short story Taklamakan. (Among his many other insights were the use of armed UAV’s for selective assassination and the rise of Islamic insurgency as a defining problem in Africa – envisioned in the 1980s’, no less.)

We have in our time done a lot of dangerous - and some might even say, foolish - things on the way into, and out of, some very bad places in the world. While we are not eager to repeat them unless absolutely required in pursuit of the mission, this new concept sounds at least as safe as riding in a taxi in some parts of the disconnected Gap, and certainly about as comfortable as the Fulton skyhook….

Once and future NIE’s on space programs

One of the great benefits to intelligence scholars in recent years has been the great number of declassified documents released from the archives, carrying significant – if often obscure – historical value. We speak not of the too common game that attempts to use such releases to catch out some supposed error of process or embarrassment of policy from decades past, revived into the current political debate. We feel such shallow attempts serve only to discredit too much of what real history can be pursued using these unique primary documents. Unfortunately, too many of those now writing on intelligence are not interested in history or tradecraft, but rather sensationalism and agenda. Despite this unhelpful trend, there are many fascinating elements to be found in the old documents for those truly interested in the study of intelligence.

Among these items, we often find surprising parallels that help to instruct perspectives on current situations through the examples of the craft of an earlier time. Our case study today comes out of our continuing interest in the development of non-state space programs, and the intelligence challenges and opportunities that these programs represent.

We note the recent news that low cost private space launch will feature prominently in the international scene during 2008 with new initiatives by a major corporate player. The news itself is interesting for those grappling the questions of assured orbital access and space control – something that the industry investment analysts are no doubt covering to a far more comprehensive degree than the intelligence community itself at this point. (After all, even NASA is seeking to leverage private sector capabilities in this area.)

Yet historical synchronicity comes when one reflects upon the older (and now declassified) National Intelligence Estimates discussing the Soviet space programs of the earliest generations in the 1960's, through the late stages of the Cold War in the 1980’s. (Many of these products may be found at the Federation of American Scientists site.)

One cannot help but be struck by a sense of having seen this before, in slight variation. While any estimate of current and future commercial space operations would certainly not be in itself a threat assessment, the framework from which most analysts would begin to approach the questions of dual use and non-state capabilities begins to hint at the what might emerge in the long out years given the inevitable involvement of other, less reputable firms as the industry matures and barriers to entry decrease. We think such an assessment – from a notional futures scenario perspective – would make for an excellent student exercise aimed at encouraging more creative, imaginative, and strategic intelligence analysis.

Markets for prediction versus prediction from market data

Our readers will recall that we have long been fascinated by the potential for new concepts in analytic methodology which might allow the imperfect instrument of predictive intelligence to be refined and applied under new conditions. Among the vehicles which have emerged over the past few years that might seem to offer promise is the idea of the prediction market – instantiated in various forms under DARPA, Long Bets, and other iterations.

We have yet to see any truly definitive examples of such a market’s utility to the practical and very real problems of forecasting for intelligence issues. We are also increasingly mindful of the new issues which emerge during the implementation of such markets – especially those related to strategies which successfully game the market from the perspective of an individual “trader” (responding correctly to market conditions to create “wins” for his own portfolio), but which degrade the pure anticipatory value of market based information due to meta-strategies focused one the market itself rather than the issue to be predicted. In this, we recall Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s admonition regarding successful trading strategies that only require one good year in a century to produce a profit, and who insulate against major losses through a strategy of slow cuts.

We thus were initially quite interested in a new paper which attempts to evaluate the Surge through the lens of a prediction market approach. However, the key difference we note is that the paper is an attempt to measure not a market consisting of predictive judgments, but rather to derive predictive value from a market of financial judgments. In our view, the attributing causalities to the decisions of finance is a far more difficult business, and so prone to errors of bias that we would question its practical utility.

However, it is an interesting example of the difficulties of cross disciplinary applications in the intelligence space. (And a clear definition of why intelligence is an art and science worthy of study of its own, as opposed to merely a bastardized aggregation of various social sciences – as some critics have in the past charged.) We encourage such efforts, not because we hope to gain transcendent insight on specific issues through any particular experiment, but so that we can continue to incorporate new approaches into the business of intelligence through trial and error. Identifying a dead end pathway is as valuable as finding the next new thing.

To this end, we would also recommend our readers to the excellent item at Mapping Strategy regarding the perils of actuarial approaches to prediction, in which we would heartily second the call for caution in making assumptions regarding the predictability of events based on their historical occurrence. (This is one of the reasons we have been so critical not only of Schneier et al’s comments on counterterrorism issues, but also of Pape’s work regarding suicide attacks.)


h/t Marginal Revolution and Economist’s View

Predictive markets in futures studies

The concept of using markets as a predictive intelligence tool for future studies has been too often critiqued by those who do not understand the nature of conclusions which can be drawn from market data. While we may question the collective groupthink that sometimes dominates on particular issues, and often find ourselves quite contrarian to the whole, the concept is an interesting one and deserves far more attention and exploration than it has been given. The politicization of the concept in the wake of media attention a few years ago has not helped in the least.

We have seen a few new efforts in the space - not least of which in Google’s internal predictive market - and there is even a journal for the field, but we fear that too much of the potential value has been destroyed by the politics of the thing, at least for this generation.

We also find the introduction of the economic element the most critical aspect of the successful predictive market. We have long been deeply suspicious of the arbitrary introduction of quantitative values into inherently non-numeric intelligence problems, and regrettably have seen far too much of a trend in recent years (especially in certain segments of the academy) that seeks to assign a false precision to ideas which exist entirely within subtle variations of the gray, better communicated through language and narrative than dry figures attempting to establish an aura of pseudo scientific rigor. The economic element is indeed another arbitrary figure – but there is something that focuses the mind when the scales are well perceived in terms of other weights such as opportunity costs or even the simple fixed pool of limited resources.

Thus it is with interest we note that the Long Now Foundation’s efforts to create a predictive market of its own, Long Bets. The Long Now effort has produced some very interesting forecasting and think pieces looking at the truly out years perspectives on the human condition, and its efforts here look quite promising. The market itself is largely a pairwise establishment, between those offering predictions regarding future scenarios, events, and drivers and those who would challenge the statement against a fixed sum to be donated to charity by the inaccurate party. As such, it is far less a mechanism for determining the wisdom of the crowd than it is a matter of watching the alpha geeks. For currently, the participants that are backing and challenging these predictions, are a smaller elite of highly connected, typically highly interesting individuals with strong existing public records in analysis and forecasting of difficult issues in complex and dynamic problem spaces. But this is very much a thing interesting in its own right.

In a way, this reminds us of the process in use at Stratfor, as recounted by their “Chief Intelligence Officer” George Friedman, in which their analysts are forced to make predictions for an internal record (apart from published FINTEL) regarding their assigned accounts on a quarterly and annual basis. These predictions are permanently tracked and make up a part of the analyst’s performance review and professional development process. (We would be very interested to see a study of their results over time correlated with other measures of analyst performance, if only from the perspective of a kind of reputation mechanism.)

The Long Bets effort bears watching. And more importantly, this is a low overhead mechanism that can easily be duplicated within the intelligence community, perhaps even as simply as establishing a short Intellipedia page to track IC internal versions (although the key financial elements are another matter entirely…. Perhaps the “bets” can be paid in non-currency commodities of unique value only within the vault…)

Illustrating the difficulty of futures intelligence

This item by science fiction author Charles Stross is an excellent micro case study of the difficulties of doing good futures intelligence and scenario projection. The issues and concerns of the day, especially in the alternative planes of finance and thought that comprise the Parallel World, are only faintly visible in the distant Starlight. The driving passions, and serious concerns, of those caught up in the future mysteries that will be the realm of tomorrow’s intelligence rely on a series of nested assumptions and understandings that we can only barely begin to sketch the outlines of today.

In a way, our earlier admonition regarding the need to be constantly aware of the fallibility of trying to doing intelligence in the incomplete information space of OSINT also holds true for futures intelligence. It requires a great deal of personal humility, and a very open mind, to get futures intel right. The same even goes true for its easier cousin, horizon scanning, as selection and emphasis is naturally biased by the limitations of one’s own perspective, inevitably and irreducibly rooted in the now. Frequent trips to face Smoking Mirror are called for….

Emerald Cities of the Future

Much has been made over the rather clever re-naming of the Green Zone in Baghdad in the title of the book “Imperial Life in the Emerald City.”

But the real cities which deserve that title are the vast, teeming slums of the developing world, in which tomorrow’s expeditionary fights will conducted. These will be 4th and 5th generation warfare at its fiercest, in an urban terrain that makes all the complexity of a Fallujah and Najaf seem relatively straightforward by comparison.

These are the hellholes of Africa’s urban cores, or the favelas of Latin America. And we have much to thank the USMC for, not only in demonstrating the manner in which MOUT will be conducted in the 21st century through the hard lessons of wartime experience, but offering a forward looking vision of tomorrow’s fights through the unique production of the khaki tower and its operational counterparts during exercises such as Emerald Express and Urban Warrior.

We are reminded of these earlier works in the new Forbes series on the urban environments of the future.

These are the core dynamics which will drive the intelligence challenges of the future. They will require different mindsets and perspectives, new collection techniques and analytical methodologies. The range of subject matter expertise that will be needed, from languages to civil engineering, urban planning, and sociology will defy aggregation in any single agency – if indeed it is possible to collect sufficient SME within the government (and its contractors) at all…

These futures are part of the reason for the radical changes in curriculum at the (new) NDIC – the National Defense Intelligence College. It is hoped that other elements of the intelligence studies academia will take close heed, whether they are part of the IC CAE program or otherwise.

Of puppeteers and 5GW

At Dreaming 5GW, Purpleslog has an interesting and evocative little post regarding the manipulation of 4th generation (and earlier) tactics by smaller groups of 5th generation warfare (5GW) actors. tdaxp has further comment.

We are intrigued by the idea, not least of all due to the applicability of the theory to certain types of proxy support problems. But we are also strongly reminded of the similarities between this theory and the Militant Shangri-La futures scenario developed during the original Proteus study. As their first paper summarizes:

"Militant Shangri-la is a frightening world of unexpected events and difficult-to-trace villains. The world in general, and the U.S. in particular, has continued into a third decade of a prosperous, information-driven economy. But the world is also continuing along the road to Complexity, with new structures of influence on the globe-some which hardly could have been imagined in the 1990s. The Newtonian diplomatic and military calculus of the past 400 years since nation states arose closing the Middle Ages seems to be giving way in turn to another New Age. In particular, the global man-in-the-street has endured a past century of 200 million deaths in war, dizzying and difficult technological change, and is listening sympathetically to the very Earth groan under the burden of pollution and extinction."
Familiar enough, but the key feature of the scenario lay in the deliberate construction of an “Alliance” in opposition to the United States. The composition of the Alliance was far less relevance than its connectivity, and the lack of apparent orchestration in those linkages that yet still allowed for synchronized events and strategic action. In this, we see the seeds of 5GW theory.

"But things are never what they seem in a complex world. Political, military, and economic actions yield unpredictable reactions in dimensions of policy - as the West was to learn in the decade from 2010-2020 when the Alliance was teaching it new tricks. For the Alliance operated both legitimately as a block of aligned nation-states and illegitimately as criminal cartels, and the twain often met. What was good for business was good.
"For the first time since the rise of the British Empire, the Alliance had created a genuinely effective Grand Strategy. It would keep the world on the edge of chaos; simply that and no more. And from that chaos-it would profit, never letting the Americans and their allies settle the world down into a single "balance of power." It was enough to make Henry Kissinger roll over in his grave. More, the Alliance saw with clarity what the West's bureaucratic governments refused to see: there were now no longer "spheres of influence" so familiar to Whitehall and Foggy Bottom. Now, the means for multiple planes of influence - new instruments of power, involving global media, new weapons, and profitable criminal enterprises had arisen. The Alliance was in space, on the seas, in the media and working into the hearts and minds of the world to kill the idea of personal liberty. With religion, nationalism, ethnicism, media, philosophy, art, music, the Alliance was harnessing the New Age yearning of the common man for its own use. One for all-and all for the Alliance. To the dismay of the West, many a man was ready to be domesticated."
It is a compelling scenario that has stayed with us for years – not for the direct prescriptive applicability as an actual future, but rather as a lens by which new events and indicators can be viewed. (This was, and remains, the core purpose of the Proteus Insights.)

If ever a 5GW puppeteer were to develop in actuality, we suspect the effects would look very much like what was gamed through MSL, as would the responses (and lack thereof) of the major Western powers. Of course, in scenario-building – as in most futurism - it is common to see exaggeration for effect to get certain points across. An MSL style 5GW puppeteer need not be a world-spanning conglomerate of all forms evil – rather, one could small groups, alternatively competing and cooperating, across a range of tactical and operational effects. In this, we see also parallels to John Robb’s Global Guerrilla theory outlining the concept of the “bazaar of violence”, but taken into the full range of 5GW through the inclusion of other actors and other means apart from direct conflict engagements.

Perhaps what interests us most in this discussion is the sense that it is more a matter of sideways applications (of the future that is already here, but not evenly distributed) than forecasting. In this, we not only quote William Gibson, but also take to heart his recent comment that “Glancing sideways is becoming more generally recognized as about the best way of doing what we used to call futurism.”

The continuing debate over climate intelligence

Weather intelligence (Wx) is one of the oldest continuously practiced forms of analytic prediction and forecasting. It has morphed over the years from something deeply and firmly entrenched “behind the green door” to an integral part of operations planning (an interesting evolution that may mirror future shifts coming in other forms of embedded intelligence support to the warfighter.) Wx forecasting is of course also a famously inexact blend of the art & the science, despite significant advances in sensor technology, modeling and simulation tools, and distributed real-time reporting sources.

Wx has also provided a fascinating comparative look into the evolution of analysis across cultural and organizational contexts, as US weather products (at least those available to the civilian world) are more timely and accurate than their European counterparts. The reference has escaped us, but we recall one research study that attributed this in part to the difference in meteorological publications processes between the peer-reviewed journal – preferred in the US - and the edited volume – preferred in Europe.

It is equally fascinating to see that the continuing debate over Wx in the form of the assessment of the potential for long term climate change has not yet abated. We have weighed in on this matter ourselves, but we continue to find new material surfacing throughout the community, mirroring a number of internal discussions. It seems that the prospect of institutionalizing this account has struck a nerve amongst practitioners. Additional references can be found at Politics & Soccer (the blog of a Georgetown University student) and at the Weekly Standard (where one can find a longer variant piece by the author usually featuring at Haft of the Spear.)

To this end, we note that there has been an apparent divide in the reactions between newly minted professionals (and their aspirant counterparts of equal age and similar experiences) versus the veterans and those that have been substantively engaged in the Long War for some time. Interesting enough, the younger generation is frequently eager to pursue such studies.

Whether our initial impression dismissing this difference as coming from a mindset imprinted by the media-generated cognitive biases (the results of decades of politically correct environmentalism targeted at the younger generation in the schools) will prove correct over time, we cannot say. There may also be more balanced and apolitical reasons for the interest of the younger set, perhaps even including the desire to find new accounts not yet dominated by the gray beards and talking heads of the community – and conveniently, one that does not require extended deployments but rather travel to the nicer places of the world for conferences, etc. (No one should ever think the new kids are stupid when it comes to angling for the right travel opportunities. One of our long ago bosses once noted that even the most inexperienced analysts could be divided into groups based on their native inclination towards cunning and self-interest in selecting assignments. The best and brightest would surge to the most difficult account of the day, and commit themselves utterly to it with no regard to personal sacrifice. The smarter, and usually quieter, ones would select the accounts most likely to bring them to the “chocolate” countries – nice European posts in places renowned for their confectionary and other cuisine.)

Once again, Wx provides a truly unique window into the practice of the craft, and the professionals' perspectives of the craft, cutting across the generations. It is however now become an entirely too political debate for our taste - and one that is being explicitly politicized by many of the participants.

When everything is intelligence, nothing is intelligence

The now famous essay from the Sherman Kent School comes to mind as one watches the debate over the intelligence community’s role in studying potential global warming issues play out in the media-legislative complex.

Both Haft of the Spear and In From the Cold have further insight and commentary into the role played by the political considerations in this equation, and are well worth reading.

One is also reminded that the intelligence implications of the issue has already been well covered by the National Intelligence Council’s Mapping the Global Future series, and to a lesser extent with the Proteus project’s scenarios.

However, a very wise (but very cynical) senior analyst once told us that the best account one could be assigned to is a futures study with a horizon long after your own retirement. That way, one could spend an entire career in intelligence and never be proven wrong…

Given the flux of other more frequently addressed geopolitical and transnational issues accounts, longer term futures are more and more being rendered irrelevant by the radical shifts of today. Thus, moving out to a geological timescale accomplishes the same objectives in a far more certain manner for those seeking a profitable retirement.

We ourselves feel that there are far more pressing and more immediate issues that demand the application of the talent and insight of trained intelligence professionals, and there are better target accounts in which the community can explore the integration of outside experts and academics with much more immediate, and much more reproducible, results.

As long as Americans are dying in the Long War, this kind of peacetime fantasy exercise is not just irrelevant but offensive. We are sure that there are many serving officers outside the wire that would love a chance to come back in, work in an air-conditioned office somewhere in the Beltway on a 9 to 5 schedule, see their families at night, and spend their time in the intellectual equivalent of wanking. But there is a real war to fight, and real intelligence to do first.

Warning examples for would-be futures analysts

We have recently begun following the quirky Paleo-Future blog out of the horrifying spectacle that one day our own forecasts may be featured therein - though we are comforted in that our writings will no doubt likely remain quite obscure, especially in comparison to things such as AT&T advertising or Apple's early pop culture visions. But we learned early to always be mindful of the examples of other’s mistakes, in order to seek to avoid them ourselves.

Collections such as Paleo-Future serve to point out well that most of what passes for futures analysis is merely a concise summation of the features of the present, exaggerated in a manner which reflects the interests and cognitive biases of the day. And while the future may already be here in uneven distribution, interesting parts of that future also emerges at the intersection of today’s forces and drivers that create complex higher order effects in ways that will always be difficult to predict. That’s why futures studies will remain just as much of a job as any other part of the intelligence equation.

We have been troubled by the lack of effective predictive analysis tradecraft in most intelligence analysis instruction, and a deep misunderstanding of futures studies techniques displayed on the part of many of the faculty and students emerging from typical academic programs. The process of authoring a fifteen year out-years assessment is far different than developing key judgments for an estimate regarding a current intelligence problem, but it seems too few times are those differences recognized or addressed.

This failure is not for lack of resources. The futures studies field has been producing a body of literature that frankly already nearly exceeds that of the intelligence studies academia, from a much smaller base of much younger institutions. The basic text as always remains the Art of the Long View, but there are numerous others tackling applications ranging from business strategy, technology developments, and a number of key national intelligence questions. Demonstrated project efforts abound, most notably in the United Kingdom’s multiple horizon scanning efforts, the National Intelligence Council’s excellent recurring series, and other private sector efforts. And for as much as Proteus is cited for its conclusions regarding the potential intelligence environment of 2020, the process by which it was developed is equally ignored.

This issue ties into the greater concerns regarding the lack of strategic imagination and strategic thinking within the intelligence community. It is widely acknowledged that the overwhelming press of current intelligence demands continues to rob time and effort that might otherwise have been devoted to longer term concerns, and to the kinds of interactions that lead to creativity and insight in futures problems. But it is hard to worry about tomorrow when one is always fighting fires today. Even when scarce time and analytical resources are devoted to futures studies questions, they often focus on easy, media-centric shibboleths which are politicized from the start by their very nature.

Futures studies, forecasting, and other forms of predictive analysis deserve far more attention than they current receive. There is some hope on the horizon, as some of the best in the community are shifting posture to emphasize a far more forward looking, forward leaning approach in intelligence studies – integrating predictive and opportunity analysis at every level. Hopefully, these efforts and their follow-on imitators bring new focus to futures intelligence.

Jesters at the futurist court’s table

This post’s title refers to a statement once made by the author Bruce Sterling regarding the role of science fiction and other speculative writers in the larger business of futures analysis. However, those fools have several advantages that have caused them to be increasingly sought out by the “professional” prognosticators.

Firstly, they are unafraid to experiment and to push the boundaries. A good speculative writer has imagination and innovation at the heart of the work, something that naturally trends against the grain of the conservatism often found in other types of futures analysis. Commercial authors who write for entertainment value do not risk ridicule for odd ideas, but rather find their successes in the obsessive and fractal complexity of the subcultures out of which spawn the very drivers of futurity.

Second, and perhaps most importantly, despite the odd bells and inappropriate comments that interrupt the supposed gravitas of an official proceeding, these are first and foremost writers and storytellers. Both are something of a lost art in many shops - destroyed by neglect of poor hiring and training processes which do not value those skills, and deliberate suppression through the seven levels of editing and coordination hell whose only purpose is to produce the blandest of common denominator products with no remnant of voice.

It seems that our neighbors to the north, in an effort to explore their own pathways to transformation and the reinvention of a martial traditional into the post-modern hydra of peacekeeping and human security, also chose to seek the service of such a storyteller. Theirs was Karl Schroeder, and the work, Crisis at Zefra, can be found along with a host of other interesting material in their National Defense Directorate of Land Strategic Concepts.

It should be noted that no less an authority than Shakespeare recognized the crucial contributions of the jester, clown, and fool to the courts of power in many of his works. Given that entire industries have been spawned as men chase the visions of their youth’s idle stories, the role of those who can conceptualize such futures will be ever more critical. Unfortunately, like most truly good analysis, this is a difficult and often non-reproducible art outside of the few unique minds which have mastered it. But the cultivation of this human capital is possible with a little effort and investment, if the right breathing space for such creativity could be carved from the darker reaches of the stifling bureaucracies that would naturally crush such heresy.

In a related matter, we note and second the call by Zenpundit for the inclusion of others outside of engineering in the development of new tools for visual analysis: “Sometimes concepts or scenarios are alinear and are best conveyed by ambiguity and paradox and the input of actual artists whose processing may be more intuitive and actively visual might give the data an entirely different, possibly better, spin.” Undoubtedly true, and well worth exploring.

We hasten to add, however, that we do not wish to see further examples of the “Hollywood factor”, where set designers and other species of professional illusionist are called upon to craft the foundations of new efforts. While the results make for good visuals and press conferences, we should not be in the business of fooling ourselves. There is enough of the aura of the mystique wreathing these matters as things now stand. After all, when even the simplest of small plastic tools can take on totemic importance, we need no artificially constructed cultures. Those which are allowed to grow organically from within serve the purpose far better.

So between the boundaries of the absurd and the insight of the sublime, the jesters may help the community walk the troubled path of prediction. Some early efforts have been made to incorporate new types of individuals into analytical efforts, primarily dealing in alternative analysis and Red Cell efforts. Perhaps the increasing use of boundary spanning information sharing and communication environments for production, enabled by new technologies, will allow experimentation beyond the normal Delphic focus group approach and into new methodologies more closely integrated with the storyteller’s art.