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

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

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

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

h/t Futurismic

A glimpse of a future naval special operations mission

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

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

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

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

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

Intel 3.14159265

A lot has been said recently about the application of Web 2.0 technologies to the intelligence community. The debate has also attracted new bloggers to the field – some academic / student, some more professional.

But this debate occurs at a time when many are seeking to identify the next generation of technologies beyond the current crop of lightweight / social / rich experience / web as platform entrants that have defined the generation. Some commentators have even gone so far as to declare the Web 2.0 meme dead – ironically at around the same time as the intelligence community has just begun to manage to wrap its collective head around the possibilities of the technology, with things like Intelink blogs, Intellipedia, and now the new A-Space.

We remain uncertain what the next new wave of technologies might bring to the community. However, certain tantalizing possibilities do present themselves. The Web 2.0 revolution is fundamentally a change to the way information is shared and internalized by those tasked with production – in short, the way analysis is done. (And contrary to the self-aggrandizing claims of certain university types, real distributed collaborative analytical work is being done in the environment of the community’s wikis and blogs, not merely just descriptive summation.) New analytic tradecraft is developing, enabled by these new technologies, in ways that it is frankly impossible to fully predict. We have only begun to observe the first outlines, hinting at what might eventually be the native competence of these environments.

Given that Intel 2.0 is all about exchange and analysis, the next iteration of revolutionary transformation will likely change forever the dynamics of intelligence collection. The systems and processes which dominate collection as a problem set remain firmly mired in industrial age models, part of the long legacy of the cultures which gave them birth. The new generation entering these fields will bring with them changes which cannot be forestalled for long.

Exactly what the nature of these changes might be is another question entirely, however. The community has not fully grasped the implications of iteration 2.0, and peering forward to what will come after is less an exercise in forecasting as it is in fortune-telling. In this, however, we unapologetically look to the jesters at the futurists court’s table – the speculative fiction authors, who may fearlessly explore these new spaces unbound by the constraints of the mundane.

It is from one such writer we recently observed the fascinating potential for emergence at the intersection of several technologies and social changes. Charles Stross is no stranger to writing about intelligence in fiction – quite enjoyably crossed with elements of the fantastic in an elaborate Cold War allegory (which he has also sought to explain in an essay on "The Golden Age of Spying", well worth reading even for those professionals which otherwise eschew the genre). His latest novel, Halting State, touches again upon the work, this time presenting a series of intriguing suggestions regarding future trajectories of the field. Among his concepts (one of which led to the title of this post) are that alternative reality games might be adapted to training a pool of unwitting subjects for future intelligence and related support tasks, that an age of nearly ubiquitous networks will lead to new emphasis on classic HUMINT operations, and potential radical changes in field operations will be enabled by the introduction and common adoption of augmented reality vision displays. He further highlights the nature of the potential future adversary – the “blacknet” of highly networked transaction driven hostile connectivity which enables a market of illicit goods and services (including those things of economic value in persistent virtual worlds) exchanged on behalf of criminal and other adversarial interests.

Like all good speculative storytelling, it is based on elements of the future which are already here, but not evenly distributed (in the words of Gibson). A fascinating menu of potential, to say the least, the implications of which are well worth exploring in a more formal manner within the community. Again, if ever there were a role for the intel studies academia…

Warning examples for would-be futures analysts

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

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

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

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

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

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