Weather intelligence – snowfall edition

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Intelligence and the 300 at 3 a.m.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warning impact

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

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

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

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

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

Case studies with enduring legacy

There is much to be thankful this holiday season, and it is natural at such a time to reflect back on the conflicts past, and those lost in the course of these conflicts. It is also a time to reflect upon history within the intelligence community, as our first – and for nearly 60 years, our most severe – intelligence failure at Pearl Harbor falls within these months.

Recently, new allegations have surfaced regarding what some consider to be another greater intelligence failure – the Allied ignorance of the machinations of death that were the Holocaust. This has long been an area of immense historical controversy, and present a number of opportunity to examine intelligence / policy relationships, the effects of cognitive bias, the questions of imagination (in thinking about the unthinkable), and (due to the importance of ULTRA decrypts in the overall reporting stream) decision-making in the SIGINT environment.

In short, the new claims put forth in the Hebrew language book Pazner: The Man Who Knew, are centered around supposed HUMINT reporting containing explicit discussion of the construction of camps intended for extermination operations in German occupied Eastern European areas. The reporting, alleged to originate in July 1942 from an unidentified German officer source with what was claimed to be good access, was passed through a Swiss intermediary to a Jewish Agency official. This reporting was subsequently provided to Allied intelligence, and may have even made its way to the highest echelons of the British government.

If true, it is an interesting addition to the historical case study of the Holocaust warning problem. One raw report does not warning make – particularly third-hand HUMINT from unevaluated sub-sources. However, a HUMINT source would have been encumbered by only a fraction of the difficulties of dissemination that the information provided by the ULTRA channel would have imposed. It is possible that such reporting could indeed have been the best “public case” material that could be used to support strategic communications and information operations pressure against the Nazi regime. Indeed, the source is alleged to have even proposed such a use of the information himself, recommending daily BBC broadcasts warning against the commission of war crimes. A later very similar reporting stream, which surfaced through the Riegner telegram, did become the basis of the US acknowledgement of the genocide in November 1942. Public diplomacy at the time had impact on the Nazi pogrom - and given modern experience in Bosnia, Darfur, and elsewhere - it is indeed questionable how effective even widespread public knowledge would have been in halting evil intent.

The handling of this information joins the already extant list of intelligence controversies from other collection disciplines – from the ULTRA COMINT to strategic air IMINT. The ultimate questions that are invoked, however, are ones of policy and operations – not merely intelligence. And these all continue to be well worth study – particularly in the face of the continued threat of genocide throughout the world.

Counting the minutes

Those with even a passing interest in counterproliferation issues will no doubt be well aware of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist’s infamous Doomsday Clock. Tao Security examines the implications of using a clock to convey threat information, and in particular the implications of shifting what was originally designed as a publication art into a watch and warning mechanism.

Many of these lessons, we think, could be taken to heart by those seeking to implement an ever wider array of threat level displays for almost every new issue that arises in a multi-agency or cross-account context. Too many of these efforts seek to differentiate themselves by creating their own standards, hoping to be cited with the same frequency as the more recognized measures of warning.

However, all face the same questions of setting an initial baseline, and of calibrating the changing conditions to the consensus of expert judgment based on imperfect and often contradictory indicators. These by themselves are not intractable problems – in fact, they are quite familiar to those routinely engaged in the business of analysis. (Although many now pushing for new threat level measurements do not themselves come from the analytic tradition.)

What complicates these new efforts is the effective communication of these measurements – often done in color coded fashion (to mimic the DHS National Threat Advisory), or through some combination of alpha-numeric or word designators. These are displayed variously as bars, speedometers, and a variety of other graphical tricks pulled from simple spreadsheet charts so favoured by accountants. And we can think of few less productive ways to spend the valuable time of intelligence professionals than group debates over the exact shade of color, or font, of one of these new graphics.

Effective warning in intelligence is a difficult task that is as individual as the consumers that it serves. We think the clock model, and its counterparts of the speedometer and bar graph, deserves to be left to rest. In much the same way as the intelligence community has moved away from numeric designators for source reliability and accuracy and towards more descriptive paragraph summary formats, it is long past time to reconsider how warning conditions are conveyed to decision-makers in a more robust fashion which clearly brings across not only the underlying indicators but also the key changes which drive current judgments.

Warning in Africa

One of the most difficult factors in the current political – media environment is the difficulty in effectively communicating warning across the noise of an ever more chaotic and ever less factual policy sphere. Clear indicators regarding the decline of Zimbabwe have been evident for quite a long time, yet only now, as the final hour approaches, do the elites begin to express surprise at the outcome of a brutal government enthralled to discredited economic fantasies in a neglected corner of a poorly illuminated continent.

We have great pity for the warning analysts who are responsible for the “new” ROW (rest of the world) accounts – i.e., anything other than the two primary fronts of the Long War: IZ and AF/PAK. AFRICOM no doubt has its work cut out for it – and somehow, forces will likely have to be found to support a British-led intervention, if only for non-combatant evacuation, once it all comes apart.

Interestingly, however, this will likely present an ideal test case for a purely humanitarian and peacekeeping mission supported largely by a contractor force package. After all, it is cases like this for which Greystone was created, in order to leverage the weight of the US private military sector towards the “lesser included” missions that current force commitments render untenable.
The intelligence side of such a situation would pose quite a challenge, however, even for the best national capabilities. We greatly wonder how much such an unsupported (even if national government led) operation would spur the concurrent development of private intelligence capabilities. After all, it was in the African brushfire wars of the 80’s and 90’s that small private operators demonstrated the effectiveness of even a limited number of moderately capable technical assets, coupled with good HUMINT and robust cultural intelligence. (And yes, we have not forgotten the Burundi exercise of the value of OSINT…. but OSINT alone does not a deployment of the magnitude and nature support, no matter that it will of course be the source of first resort.)

Ah, to be a fly on the wall in their operations center briefings on this crisis… we hope dearly that an intrepid young intelligence officer will have the presence of mind to document the evolution of a private deployment of this nature for the future literature, once the day (whether in Africa or elsewhere) has safely passed into history.

Irony is perhaps also too mild a word if the Zim people should owe their best chances for future stability and reconstruction to the modern international mercenary corps., given the long history of private military options in that sad country. We certainly doubt that any African or UN peacekeeping operation could provide them with anywhere near the same assurances of a good outcome.

h/t Captain's Quarters, related at Coming Anarchy

Also, don't miss the definitive review of AFRICOM at the Small Wars Journal blog

The black swan and the siren song

Via Shloky comes the link to this most fascinating interview by the author of Freakonomics with Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the thinker behind the concept of the Black Swan. Rarely are we so fortunate as to have two interesting thinkers conversing. Now if we could only get a similar conversation transcript and podcast between Taleb and some of the luminaries of the intel side of the house…

In an intelligence community that has become in many ways almost obsessed with the prospect of surprise (and the attending problem of warning failure), Taleb has achieved a nearly cult status. (We ourselves have done our humble bit in spreading his work more widely within the community.) It is thus quite refreshing to read about his attempts to spoof the traditional categorization in place in the major publishing houses, his other practical jokes in the financial world, and to otherwise defy commoditization of his ideas. This gives us great hope that he will continue to provide great contributions to the community.

Some key points from the interview, which intelligence professionals would do well to remember:

"We prefer any theory, even wrong, to no theory. Theorizing is the default activity for our brain; suspension of belief is an active one. Because of the narrative fallacy, our minds default to theory making. It takes more conscious effort – and energy - to suspend beliefs. It also takes more training – we train children to find “explanations” instead of just teaching them to have the guts to say, “I don’t know” in certain circumstances."

In many ways, our own concept of Smoking Mirror is an attempt to overcome the epistemic arrogance (confident but incomplete knowledge) of the false prophet.

It is too easy – especially as the ranks of true experts thin in the great demographic change sweeping the community – for many intelligence practitioners to assume to mantle of expertise without its substance. In the complex and chaotic world in which we live, that mantle is more of a burden than a benefit. It is for this reason we have such hope for the new young faces in the community, and for the generation after next. They join us without the same pre-conceptions and mental rigidity that too often mark their older but less suitable counterparts – and hopefully, these new professionals will be supported by the best possible education and training to help them preserve that flexibility of mind, and respect for the limitations of their own expertise without the burden of ego.

Further recommended reading from the academic contingent

We have spoken before regarding the excellent work done by our erstwhile colleague Dr. Tom Copeland on the subjects of intelligence failure and warning intelligence.

We are reminded today that he has recently released a new book on the subject, which appears to build substantively upon his earlier research and writing in the area.

It is on our reading lists, and is recommended to others by virtue of the author’s insight and quality of mind.

Where have you gone, Mrs. Wohlstetter?

In the light of recent events, we are reminded of the continuing challenges of getting predictive intelligence right. We are not given the power to see the future, but we are given the ability to reason - and most importantly, to imagine.

There has been a recent trend towards the examination of intelligence surprise (particularly at the strategic level), intelligence failure, and the analytical tradecraft by which these are avoided. We are grateful for these efforts, and their contribution to the literature of intelligence.

To this end, we recommend our readers to the excellent doctoral thesis “Surprise, Intelligence Failure, and Mass Casualty Terrorism” by Thomas Copeland - one of the few scholars of the intelligence field that emerged in the 1990’s. We were pleased to make his acquaintance at several academic functions in the past, and we greatly respect his intellect and insight.

Closely related, the classic Anticipating Surprise by Cynthia Grabo has recently been updated and released as an occasional paper by the Joint Military Intelligence College. The original declassified version has also been released through the Kent school.

Other contributions by authors at the Fletcher school and at the Military Intelligence Corps Professional Association have also been noted.

While we still feel the recent loss of Roberta Wohlstetter - the first and best of the scholars in the subject - her legacy continues to live on in the community.