Once and future intelligence challenges: labor

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

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.

Intelligence and financial crisis, historical edition

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.

Vacant intelligence posts at the start of the financial crisis

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

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.

Intellectual property claims as denial & deception measures in medical intelligence

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.

Additional layers in the forgotten history of commercial intelligence

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.

The uncanny valley and the virtual briefer

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.

Taking stock of the blogged literature of intelligence

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”.)

Commodities and early commercial intelligence

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.

Questions of legality of intelligence in the commercial world

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

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

Chief Intelligence Officer, reporting

The recent resurgence in the use of the title of Chief Intelligence Officer has been hotly debated amongst many intelligence professionals. In properly elevated station, and applied narrowly to those of highest achievement and echelon, it is a dignified appellation that carries its proper weight without self-aggrandizement. However, like the term director, there is always the pressure of devolution which drives the title to ever lower ranks within the profession. It has also provoked a bit of a backlash by those that feel the title a modern influence from the CXO conventions that mark the corporate environment, and feel this to be improper in government. This is however a misperception – albeit a common one – as the title was given frequently in military organizations and other governmental structures in years past. The first reference which we are aware of originates when discussing the intelligence apparat in Malayia in 1811 – although it is caveatted by the potential that this may be a later appellation retroactively granted, given the publication’s date of 1907. A more explicit reference may be found in an 1871 volume, The soldiers pocket book for field service.

On the other hand, the commercial side of the house often rejects the title in order to keep intelligence away from a seat at the Board table along the other C-level officers. The private sector has long sought to free itself from the organizational structures of dead Germans, something the ever more baroque organograms of senior management posts amply attests. However, the role of a Chief Intelligence Officer dates back to the earliest successful commercial ventures, at the dawn of the first real trend of globalization. We are fortunate that a scholar of history at Florida State University, Dr. Marla Chancey, chose to examine the role of intelligence in the East India Company at the close of the 18th century for her thesis. The work - In The Company's Secret Service: Neil Benjamin Edmonstone and the First Indian Imperialists, 1780-1820 - conclusively documents a fascinating career and biography.

One can argue over the relative degree of actual privatization of the East India Company, given its role as an extension of British foreign policy. However, we can likewise point to any number of modern para-state entities which are perhaps even less “commercial” in nature, given a high degree of government involvement, but nonetheless merit consideration as privatized intelligence.

We should think Edmonstone’s example – assuming a seat on the board himself in later life - also speaks to the true potential of advancement after a long career in intelligence, despite many contemporary complaints regarding the supposed “dead-end” nature of the profession within the private sector. We think it far more likely that personality, and the nature of today’s employment environment – where a lifetime’s service to one institution is very likely something akin to a myth – will have greater impact the eventual summit of one’s career than in the discipline one pursues, especially for knowledge workers.

Further to the forgotten history of commercial intelligence

Our previous remarks on the loss of the collective memory about commercial intelligence activities in the early decades of this century apparently struck a nerve with our readership. We received quite a good deal of private communication (as well as more public posts) in response, and are glad to see a vibrant discussion in the competitive and business side of the intelligence blogsphere.

We thought to offer a few more references, then, from the virtual archives. Unfortunately, many of the references cited have not yet been digitized, and indeed may not survive extant. However, should any happen upon them in the more physical types of archival research there are no doubt additional stories worth telling. Even what scant citation is available tantalizes the mind with the volumes of lost history that could be written by modern scholars of the intelligence studies field. Among the items we surfaced with a short afternoon's research are:

• A reference to “Sell’s Commercial Intelligence” in 1902, out of London.
• A 1906 reference to the unnamed works printed by Commercial (Manitoba), “Proprietors of Commercial Intelligence”
• Eurolaw Commercial Intelligence. 1930. A newsletter, apparently published twice per month and in comprehensive semi-annual editions.
• Hooper , Frank Wilfred. The Functions of a Bank in Relation to the Capital Market. 1936. A more general management text that nonetheless discusses the staffing and functions of an economic intelligence department.
• Goldstein, Herbert. Competitive Intelligence in the Chemical, Drug, and Process Industries. Scientific Documentation Associations, New York. First identified reference to the text was printed in 1937.
• Commercial Intelligence Journal, 1938. It is unknown how long publication continued, or in how many issues.
• Artis, Michael. Foundations of British Monetary Policy. Oxford University. 1945. Discusses the establishment of a “strong and highly qualified Economic Intelligence Department, whose head should be an executive director of the bank” for “intelligence and analysis”.
• Administration. Institute of Public Administration. 1953. A more general work that does however mention, in connection with marketing, “each area sales organization has its own commercial intelligence service and a comprehensive system of trader contact”.
• Business History Review. Harvard University. 1954. This volume references the practice of keeping “overseas sources of business intelligence”.
• Brech, Edward Franz Leopold. Organization, the Framework of Management. 1957. This text makes reference to the organization of an example Economic Intelligence Unit as supporting the Managing Directors of manufacturing concerns.
• Alden, Burton. Competitive Intelligence: Information, Espionage, and Decision-making. C.I. Associates. 1959. A similar title by the same name was first referenced in 1957 as a publication “from the students of Harvard University.”
• The Library Association Record. 1957. Discusses the role of librarians, claiming one “Miss Chevis dealt with commercial intelligence in a way which made it look exactly like special reference library work.”
• Rose, Harold. The Economic Background to Investment. Institute of Actuaries. 1960. The author identified himself as “head of the Economic Intelligence Department of a large assurance company between 1948 and 1950.”

Further, the older literature also contains reference to additional shops in various commercial enterprises, the history of which could no doubt fill an entire thesis. Among these are mention of commercial intelligence offices, including one Dun & Company, with branches in Mexico City, Havana, Rio de Janerio, and Buenos Aires as of 1914. A commercial intelligence system at Lloyd’s of London is identified yet earlier still, with a mention in 1876 citing “the labour of half a century”. Various references are made to the “Economic Research Unit, Business Intelligence Department, Bank of Ceylon, Colombo” in 1931, again in 1947, and lastly in 1960. The Economic Intelligence Unit of Prudential Insurance Company is also mentioned as active between 1948 to 1958.

A number of sources were found which identified specific Economic Intelligence Departments – predominately (but not exclusively) at major financial institutions, including:

• Barclay’s Bank, whose Department was identified as the author of a number of publications, the earliest of which dates from 1902
• Bank of France, first mentioned in 1934
• Bank of England, cited in 1952 and 1960
• The English Electric Company, identified as active between 1954 and 1960
• The Swiss Bank Corporation of London, mentioned as late as 1956
• Westminster Bank, cited in 1952

Interestingly, older volumes also support the increasingly persuasive argument that the term “business intelligence” has been so diluted in common usage as to become entirely meaningless as a useful label for an organization, activity, or product. In most references prior to World War II, the term referred nearly exclusively to the quality of mind that an individual executive possessed – similar to current delineation of emotional intelligence, or other measurements of aptitude. Between this history and its current bastardization for the sale of data warehousing software, we think it high time the term be retired in favour of an alternative of greater utility and value.

No doubt quite a number of other interesting nuggets still lurk in the backroom stacks, awaiting the enterprise of some young intelligence scholar to ferret them out. Rescuing this history is one of the true needs of the intelligence studies field – particularly as we struggle to understand the dynamics of the privatization of intelligence and the growth of non-state intelligence capabilities, which the literature shows to be a much older trend than most now account for.

On the origins of competitive intelligence

We rarely touch directly upon our commercial brethren in the field, for we feel that much of our writings have relevance for this audience in their original form. We do not merely seek to write for a single group within the profession, and are fortunate to count among our readers many from the financial, pharmaceutical, and consulting set. We see their challenges and travails in applying the art and science of intelligence in often untrod territories as not so very different from those faced by a fusion center’s staff, or the senior intelligence officer who must stand up a new account-specific cell.

We have been too often struck however by the insistence of some in the commercial side of the profession that their work is entirely a new creature, divorced utterly from the precedents of the community that came before it. While we are the first to grant them respect for the unique conditions under which they operate, and for the sometimes serious challenges those conditions create, we would beg to differ most strenuously that the history of the community does not matter to them. We can point to the lessons of intelligence / decision-maker relationships or the experiences of communicating inference, evidence, judgment and uncertainty, along with any of a number of other areas in which the history should prove instructive in first principles.

There is nonetheless a too stubborn belief held by many competitive intelligence types that they have to be a “new” field, in order to carve out their place in the world and their relevance in the modern enterprise. And it is this insistence that makes us laugh, and reflect upon the length of the history underlying commercial intelligence activities. After all, most current literature cited by practitioners in the business intelligence world are indeed not that old in comparison to the national security side of the house, although we would question anyone citing what is now nearly 30 year old material as “new”.

Older yet are a few texts which for too long languished undiscovered in the stacks, and rarely cited in the literature – such as the 1966 volume Business Intelligence and Espionage by Richard Green, as explicitly a competitive intelligence work as any we have seen. The book also cites information from a series of business intelligence conferences, held starting in the 1930’s. These together create a timeline nearly equal to that of the better known literature of the foreign intelligence disciplines.

We have also written before of the excellent work being done by a number of the leading information industry firms of the day, in digitizing and disseminating the entire contents of a number of libraries worldwide. Among these millions of texts we have discovered quite a few forgotten gems of late, including works which point to the far older origins of competitive and business intelligence. The oldest volume we have yet uncovered is a series of reports first published in 1913 from commercial intelligence officers who advised the British government. The piece was presented to Parliament and was made available for general sale through the Stationary Office - though the level of interest was not recorded as far as we have yet seen. The text is in the form of correspondence, and is primarily descriptive in nature, providing quantitative information as well as some attempts at analysis. All in all, quite dry, and but for its historic value would not make for very interesting reading.

But it is precisely the historic that offers a glimpse into what we see as an earlier, parallel evolution of the profession. The early commercial and economic intelligence work of governments translated near seamlessly into the business intelligence of industry in its earliest incarnation. However, over time this side of the profession experienced its own wave of privatization. We have no record of the countless business intelligence shops that must have existed from the 1930’s onward – the turmoil of the depression and WWII no doubt radically reducing the number of active shops for a time. But simply because history has been lost does not make its successors “new” or unprecedented. It is thus the old lessons we would seek to have acknowledged – even if they cannot be entirely rediscovered. No doubt however there remain individuals alive who could contribute to the oral history, if nothing else – although we also strongly suspect somewhere in nearly forgotten corporate archives may be buried a few more gems of the early shops; should some young intelligence studies student seek to make his or her thesis through pursuing both the written and verbal remnants of this vanished era.

For those debating the current trend towards the privatization of intelligence in what are considered “inherently governmental” functions, the history is also instructive. At one point, it was deemed entirely a government responsibility to provide commercial and economic intelligence to the leading firms of the nation. Of course, in a globalized world of multinational corporations increasingly removed from industrial age models, that kind of intelligence support is not only infeasible but a questionable public policy. The private sector stepped into the breach to meet these demands through a variety of mechanisms, not all bearing the label of intelligence. In some cases, successful commercial shops have seen the cycle come full circle, as government agencies now purchase their finished intelligence products as the best available source of information and analysis.

We wonder how many of the intelligence functions now deemed the responsibility of government might also shift towards an entirely privatized existence over the course of the 21st century. And for those that protest such a course as unthinkable, we would gently remind them to look to the flowery language and proud signatures of those commercial intelligence officers of a century ago. They too no doubt thought their world forever the domain of government.

Differential problem solving

Business and competitive intelligence practitioners are one of those often overlooked sources of insight into analytical tradecraft in situations, and with individuals, very different from those typically encountered on the normal pol sci / national security track. Many of those insights have surprising cross domain relevance to the intelligence community proper.

Thus it is with the following item examining the behaviors of various (non-intelligence) technical minded types when confronted with an analytical problem. The differences in mind-sets, approaches, and even processes employed by the two groups make for a fascinating little vignette regarding comparative styles of critical thinking. (While we may object to the conclusions drawn in many other items on this particular blog, we do occasionally find an item or two of interest. And of course, given that the author resides in Kent in the UK, we could not help but notice the blog.)

We recall a similar little thought experiment that was routinely conducted during a strategic intelligence analytic tradecraft class once commonly offered around the community. The exercise involved a group of practitioners and managers, usually from very different organizations and entities, trying to tackle a new “emerging” target account from soup to nuts – requirements definition, collection management, and analysis and production planning. We likewise recall the very differing approaches and styles that surfaced during those discussions. At the time, common wisdom tended to chalk this up to institutional culture – and in particularly, the reinforcing power of organizational stereotypes (and expectations of those stereotypes). A more subtle interpretation would be to examine the extent to which individuals came to those organizations, and to succeed within them, that were more likely to embrace those cultural norms and even stereotypical responses.

The benefits of this kind of cross domain discussion (if you can keep the participants from killing each other) is perhaps one of the strongest arguments we have heard voiced regarding the need to break the old ivory tower model, and to integrate collectors, analysts, and operators throughout key accounts – in close proximity to the policymakers.

The changing of the intelligence studies (public) blogsphere

It is against the backdrop of our continuing discussions of intelligence studies and the impact of blogging that we note the passing of two blogs which we have had occasion to enjoy over the past while. The World is Grey and Fast Squirrel have recently chosen to close up shop. We respect their decisions, and understand entirely – as much as we will miss their contributions to the public literature. They join the now defunct JMJ Blog, Intelligence Analysis & OSINT, and Robot Economist among those recent intel, and intel related blogs which have gone dark.

Blogging – especially the personal, hobbyist kind – has always been a dynamic enterprise, with a constantly shifting menagerie of new faces. Even among our own humble skunkworks here at KI, we have seen contributors come and go. The public side of intelligence studies blogging is perhaps more prone to this than other aspects of the distributed conversation, if only due to certain unique features of the constrained information environment. After all, some may find it difficult to accept that the interests which drive the majority of their day and professional energies must be totally ignored in public discourse, and that the focus of online writing must remain academic, historical, and high level. Doing so in a manner that maintains both relevance to the reader, and the satisfies the intellectual interests of the authors, can certainly be a challenge for some bloggers. (We are fortunate here at KI that our interests span such a diverse range that we find no difficulty exploring areas of the field in which there can be no conflict of interest.)

At the same time as our old (virtual) companions have closed up shop, a few other blogs have come to our attention that appear to be fellow travelers in the revolution in intelligence affairs. These include the Intel Fusion blog, and the AFCEA’s MAZZ-INT commentaries. It is not surprising that several others hail from overseas (allies), or the private sector’s competitive intelligence / business intelligence spaces, such as the Singaporean National Security Intelligence, the Italian Intelligence & Security Analysis, the Competitive Intelligence Marketplace, or Jens Theime’s weblog. This does not make these potential contributions any less valid, of course – but such material does perhaps fall into the nebulous category of comparative intelligence studies.

Given the difficulties of public blogging for many intelligence professionals, we do expect to see the expansion of the activity on other networks rather than public pieces by a number of those authors seeking to enter the conversation. But that is a discussion for another time and place entirely, we should think. Our only hope is that many of those choosing to blog in more rarefied atmospheres recall the original admonition in Sherman Kent’s call for the literature, in which he urges those with an inclination to write not merely on their target or issue, but on the nature of their shared profession and its tradecraft. It is all too tempting in an environment where the details of one’s accounts may be shared more fully to explore those details and their implications, rather than the higher level abstractions of process, patterns, and transformation. However, it is the latter concerns that will truly respond to the Imperative laid upon us all, and help to chart the unknowns of the profession’s continuing evolution.

New applications for patent analysis in competitive intelligence

The exploitation of patent databases for competitive intelligence has been a key staple of much of the private sector’s intelligence work. This has been particularly a feature in consultancies with strong scientific and technical accounts, as well as the major manufacturing and R&D houses in the pharmaceutical and materials engineering sectors.

The Economist profiles a new method of mining patent information as feedstock for genetic algorithms designed to rapidly develop problem solving approaches for those wishing to find a novel alternative free of patent encumbrance (and in the process, avoid legal difficulties that may be created by the re-use of existing solutions).

The wider adoption of this technique would likely drive additional interest in what has been a longstanding element of competitive intelligence tradecraft. This follows an increasing trend within the private sector’s evolving intelligence sophistication – the reliance of many firms on intelligence products and services not merely for the executive level (as had long been the insistence of those wishing to assure C- level buy in, or model their own efforts on common IC publications processes such as the PDB). Rather, many of the successful new applications of intelligence are tightly integrated at the working level in the corporation’s various business units, and directly support the line responsibilities of teams of industry experts through specialist contributions.

To a large extent, this shift in private sector CI also mirrors the evolution of many intelligence efforts in other environments, which trend now towards increasing numbers of analysts embedded with units of operations professionals, in a distinct break from the supposed ideal of the “ivory tower” analyst organization divided functionally and geographically from the consumers they are supposed to support.

We might add that the same genetic patent analysis approaches, may also certainly have applications beyond the private sector. One can easily envision counterproliferation purposes for the same genetic algorithm approaches, particularly given the starting point of known weapons systems designs and the existing stable of scientific expertise that may be present in a given proliferant state’s program. The genetic algorithm might suggest alternative materials or processes that an adversary may attempt to substitute for prohibited components in a military or dual use acquisition program.

h/t Slashdot