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.

Requirements management for the new generation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Novel underground facilities revisited

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

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

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

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

Wx-ing historical

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imaginary constellations meet visionary capabilities

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

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

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

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

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

Examining intelligence activity in counterinsurgency units

Via the incomparable Small Wars Journal, we note a currently serving officer’s contribution to the literature in the form of articulated longing for the solutions that can help end his ongoing frustrations with the intelligence system as it is now structured. Among Captain Tim Hsia’s valid and well articulated points include a call for better portal management, a discussion of potential applications for market data mechanisms, and some interesting critique of the narrative format of Intellipedia and A-Space from the perspective of direct support to ongoing counterinsurgency operations.

We empathize with his frustrations, although we do not know that another “central” portal system or new repository is necessarily the answer to the ever expanding complexity of classified holdings and networks. The captain’s pain, we think, would better be served by a situated software application – a portal or other tool that could create, for his unit and those like his serving throughout the far reaches of the Long War, the functional appearance of centralization, at least insofar as this means the kind of “one stop shopping” for products in support of ongoing operations that seems to be needed. Frankly, we believe that the creation and maintenance of such a portal is a clear role for a reachback function – if such an element can identify and stay current with the constantly shifting needs of those on the ground.

Part of the pain also comes from cultural barriers to information sharing – and not the classic interagency turf battles that we are used to discussing in intelligence studies. Intelligence support in operational environments is typically least focused on formal production and publishing, spending its energies on communicating with its primary supported consumers (as well it should). This however creates a vast sea of products which are rarely formally disseminated beyond a specific unit, or perhaps its replacements. Certainly, a number of this would be no means be up to the classic community publication standard – but in many cases, they were not created to endure for more than the next 12 hour battle update cycle. Much of this support is also a highly verbal process, in which judgments and analysis is conveyed through discussion and debate, rather than in formalized bullet point.

Under the kind of time constraints a typical forward deployed intelligence function must operate, this lack of emphasis on publication is entirely understandable. What is most remarkable, perhaps, is rather the number of shops which do manage to maintain distribution of a high volume of products to other elements in the community, in addition to their pressing and immediate needs locally. Given the importance of intelligence obtained through non-traditional (and non-community) assets and methods within counterinsurgency operations, one cannot emphasize sufficiently the unique value the investment of that time and effort can bring to the community, in ways that are difficult to predict in advance.

One of the ways in which the reachback elements within the IC could better encourage and support the distribution of such products is to provide a better platform for lightweight publishing and databasing – one that will support the forward shop’s immediate needs, but also offer options for wider sharing of extant production, in whatever form it might take. The demand for a geospatial component – perhaps even if only through meta-tagging and geospatial search and display – is also clear. While a number of existing portals might be adapted to support this functionality, the typical sharepoint style (regardless of underlying software implementation) definitely lacks the situated elements that forward units most seem to rely upon. Likewise, the suggestion of the market tracking model is interesting as a potential model of organization – and outside of predictive trading style applications, the first time we have seen it floated. It is well worth exploring - paging Bloomberg?

We are grateful for the time taken by Captain Hsia to help advance the literature of intelligence, and particularly to help focus attention and debate on the counterinsurgency account. We also commend his choice of venue for publication – the Small Wars Journal is certainly emerging as one of the pre-eminent venues for these discussions. We definitely look forward to further contributions from both the author and publication in the future.

Alternative DOCEX models

We have frequently mentioned our aversion to involving lawyers in intelligence analysis in these pages. It is our strong belief – confirmed by countless personal experiences as well as professional anecdotes and case studies provided by others – that the current model of legal education irreversibly introduces a mental model and mindset which is inimical to the successful practice of intelligence as a profession – particularly any form of creative, strategic intelligence against non-traditional targets.

However, we unfortunately find that more and more young lawyers are entering the field. The overabundance of new graduates from an increasing number of law schools has produced more candidates than the traditional job sources within the legal profession can provide for. These graduates typically carry with them a crushing level of school loan debt, and to the inexperienced HR type, look like they have overlapping skills in the areas of research, argumentation, and writing. Despite surface appearances, the model of legal argumentation – oriented around shaping perceptions for advocacy in an adversarial setting - is profoundly different from that required to penetrate mysteries (as opposed to solving puzzles), and to piece together contradictory and constantly changing raw information into a coherent narrative designed to inform decision-maker options rather than persuade to a specific course of action.

This does not mean we are unwilling to keep tabs on what the folks in the legal field are up to, however. Via the fine folks at Volokh Conspiracy, we note an interesting story in the Washington City Paper regarding another higher order effect of the current glut of attorneys – legal temping. What interests us is not the tale of woe relayed by the newly minted and underemployed members of the Bar, but rather the manner in which the profession has sought to solve a problem which is in a very rough way equivalent to the document exploitation challenges faced by the IC.

DOCEX (now DOMEX) has long languished as a less than priority focus despite its vital contributions to key accounts. Our colleague Michael Tanji has written previously on potential for new collaborative models to attack large DOCEX / DOMEX tasks, and the resistance to those models that has been encountered even in theoretical discussion alone. No matter whether one agrees with the Army of Analysts model or not, DOCEX is an area deeply in need of the application new tradecraft and new methodologies – enabled by technology more current than the field driven database designs that have characterized most exploitation software to date. It says something profound – and none of it good – when it is a law enforcement support organization that can lay claim to what may be the most sophisticated standing DOCEX capability in the United States (though sophisticated only by comparison, and never mind about the hard target language requirements…)

We do think that the large scale legal discovery processes deserve a second look for potential adaptation by those engaged in DOCEX/DOMEX tasks. This is not because we wish to involve more lawyers in the community, but rather because there has to be a better way of organizing the kind of labour that these tasks require. While we are leery of any effort that seeks to create a machine by process, we are always willing to learn about methodologies and approaches that might better serve the task at hand.

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

Good old fashioned military analysis

One of the persistent problems in most mainstream media coverage of ongoing matters of national security interest is the continual failure to understand even the most basic factors military analysis. Evaluating weapons system effectiveness, for example, requires parsing through the marketing hype of the manufacturing country (or company), and examining the hard details of design, employment, and logistics that are essential to understanding how that system will perform in the field.

The recent abysmal state of press coverage is demonstrated amply by case studies of Syrian and Iranian air defense network, the “new” re-manufactured Iranian tactical fighter aircraft, Russian fuel air explosive development, and any of the missile test dog and pony shows conducted by the Iranians, North Koreans, or non-state actors such as Hezbollah and HAMAS. Indeed, this was perhaps the dominant media game of the 90’s, in which pundits came to prominence speculating about campaigns which would never come to understand during Kosovo, East Timor, and even the Desert Fox air strikes against Iraq.

This is not a new phenomenon, and certainly not limited to the areas of military interest given the wide range of other areas in which modern journalism fails utterly to provide an accurate comprehension of difficult subject matter – such as medicine, economics, or law. It is in part the raison d’etre for a whole range of custom open source intelligence services – from the Economist Intelligence Unit to the venerable Jane’s Information Group. Indeed, it was in the Kosovo conflict in which the Stratfor notably (or infamously) first made its bones.

The blogsphere is changing these dynamics, however. Now, within a very short amount of time, substantive analysis is published by a number of individuals possessing real expertise and experience on the matters at hand. Whether it is to take down a fabulist or fauxtographer, or to dissect the propaganda claims of a potentially hostile regime – the distributed and self-organizing interests of milbloggers (and experts in a range of other fields) is producing a kind of open source analysis capability that one could only have dreamed about in earlier years.

And when one considers the old OSINT maxim that an author will only ever write less than 20% of what they actually know about a subject, one begins to glimpse the potential of this population - given a means to organize and direct their “hobby” level efforts in a larger architecture of participation.

At the same time as this is occurring in the open environment, the intelligence community has seen a dramatic decline in its bench and depth, of those products which are produced as “shelfware”. We use the term not in a pejorative sense, but in recognition of the very real need for a baseline reference set by which current issues and future estimates made be assessed. Perhaps the better term we may coin for this class of intelligence are “enabling products”. Many commentators within and outside of the IC have bemoaned the shift of emphasis and resources away from strategic and long term production to the ever-expanding needs of the tactical and immediate. And while we support a community which can and will run to the sound of the guns in order to support the warfighter’s ongoing operations, the length and demands of the Long War will have to force the community to examine how it can serve both ends effectively. To be sure, enabling products has true limitations: whole ranges of issues and concerns simply did not have the same priority – or even the same conceptualization – before developments in the field made them central concerns. After all, in 2001 it would have been quite hard to predict that the humble IED would be the primary weapon of strategic influence, or that the Katyusha would become the strategic equivalent to a stand-off bombardment capability of a type seen previously only in the War of the Cities.

It is in this environment that we look around with the growing realization that there may be an unprecedented opportunity to change the traditional model of analysis through new partnerships with those outside of the core community. There are a host of concerns – from dealing with statements intended to influence rather than inform, and some very valid counterintelligence / denial and deception issues, particularly if requirements and questions become too widely known or too narrowly specific. The logistics and coordination of such an engagement – even a in narrowly bounded iteration – would be far from trivial. Yet the potential for leveraging the contributions of the kind of capability that occasionally emerges in ad-hoc fashion at present into a more dedicated and systemic resource is frankly one that would be worth at least an exploratory effort by certain parties with natural interests in the area.

We look forward to a day when good old fashioned military analysis is easier to come by and of better quality, based on such efforts, than has regrettably been the case in recent years.

Wx-ing for the future

We have commented previously on the growing push towards institutionalizing the “climate change” issue as an intelligence account. As those who have made their career around other transnational issues which never quite fit neatly into previous concepts of what merited status as a unique account, we are actually even sympathetic to the arguments made by those in favour of the specialization, despite how strongly we ourselves would come down on the other side of the substantive underlying questions – and despite our driving sense of other priorities in the Long War.

Our appreciation for the arguments in favour of tracking on the climate change issue comes not from the science of the debate, as muddled and as frequently revised as it is. Rather, we note that many significant targets of national intelligence interest do believe in the narrative of climate change – and would continue to do so, no matter what the science may eventually show. Belief creates behaviors, and those behaviors are of interest, especially when the actor is a national level priority target.

Thus Politics and Soccer’s arguments in rejoinder , referencing PRC weather control activities, do not entirely fall on deaf ears. We have seen similar questions of activity and effect arise in related contexts, such as in economic intelligence assessments of agricultural productivity - once the bedrock of Soviet studies, and no doubt the future backbone of AFRICOM’s civil affairs and development efforts. And we have often witnessed local weather mitigation efforts, such as the automated counter-hail systems deployed in many European vineyards to protect the delicate vines. (Although we note, those seeking to define the climate accounts often attempt to divorce the prosaic and often inconvenient realities of weather intelligence from the grand questions of change.)

In the end, intelligence as an activity is entirely the sum of its tradeoffs. To assign analysts in the already thin bench to a climate change account would be to strip them from other transnational issues in which their expertise and time could be better spent. However, we do not think we would reject FINTEL papers touching upon the behavioral side of the equation, particularly in sensitive geopolitical contexts. And perhaps it is there, in the analyst’s own private wars (perhaps pursued on their 20% time), that the climate change account will be best identified and proven on its own merits rather than in the abstract of debate. And perhaps this may be another one of those issues in which public/private intelligence activity models may prove fruitful, as long as the politicization that has damaged the public debate can be avoided.

Who knows what may come of such an effort? With our luck, we may very well wind up working in due time for some young rising star SES that has come up through the climate change account…. But we hope that executive will have been firmly grounded in indications and warning, human factors, and operational net assessments regarding the issue rather than the amorphous prognostications of events hundreds or thousands of years in the future.

The continuing debate over climate intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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