Hazards of blogging for intelligence professionals

August Jackson, most notably of the Washington DC chapter of the Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals, reflects on the issues created by blogging with the same candor that one addresses intelligence assessments.

His comments raise interesting points from the perspective of professional ethics and the obligations of duty – perhaps something roughly equivalent to the concept of giri.

"In competitive intelligence you can't be a Kool-Aid drinker, and often you have to tell executives when they're on the wrong path. Companies make their moves in public, so it's only natural that management should expect to see criticism or praise in a public forum. I've had three different jobs and a number of different contracts since I have been blogging, and I have never disclosed proprietary information. Not once. Ever. I never will. Any time I've been involved in the formation of a business decision I've kept my opinions private whether I've agreed or disagreed. This, to me, is a more important measure of professionalism in blogging than never commenting on any company's policy."

It is interesting for us to see this discussion in a commercial intelligence perspective. Those in the public sector have a far more clear set of distinctions – and enforced by far more than mere civil tort – that bound words and deed. This by necessity limits to a much greater degree the range of topics we can address in public pages, and to avoid even the appearance of impropriety one’s opinions must be even more carefully circumscribed on any matter that might be seen as leading to politicization. Intelligence practitioners must be professionally apolitical, in all aspects of their public presence – something too often forgotten in the current Beltway atmosphere.

Most organizations simply do not permit an intelligence professional to blog in public at all. Some of those efforts which are allowed to exist may only do so under a high degree of restriction. (We suppose our humble effort falls into the latter category.) In government service, there are of course alternatives on other networks for those that wish to speak more freely about matters of more direct impact to their daily working lives. (As for us, we appreciate the chance to step away from the issues of the day and examine the craft in a more holistic fashion – but this is not for everyone.) But this is not the first time we have looked to this subject.

We have also previously discussed the implications of academic blogging. However, for the most part, our comments (and those of others) have reflected upon the professoriat. Intelligence studies student blogging is another question entirely. To date, student participation in the intelligence blogsphere has been very limited – largely because they are struggling to master a learning curve that has been compared to a brick wall, and recognize that they have little of interest of their own to say. There are a few quite notable exceptions, however, that are well worth the attention invested. It is for this reason that we feel student bloggers should indeed be cultivated, but carefully so. They will have to make hard choices – many which might impact their future career for years to come – especially if they are overt intelligence professionals from a young age (precluding other activities in later years.) It is also due to these pressures that we have witnessed a number of blogs simply drop off, as their authors come under new publication policies as they take professional jobs.

We further view with grave concern the current fashion among academics of assigning blog writing tasks as class requirements, as most have been authored under true name (or readily identifiable associations thereof), and explicitly link the student to an area of study that as a professional they would likely never acknowledge so publicly, even as overt practitioners.

Against this backdrop, why does intelligence studies blogging endure? We think it is because the benefits that accrue to an individual author’s mind far outweigh the potential downside, as long as one adheres to the strictest standards of professionalism (and security). That these benefits result in a public good which advances (to whatever small degree) the intellectual discussion of the intelligence studies field, and its literature, is a happy higher order result – and one that should be encouraged within the boundaries of propriety and discretion.

Further to the scholarship of blogs

We recently noted the ongoing discussion regarding the impact of blogging on scholarship in a number of fields, and to be honest, it is a matter we had rarely had occasion to reflect upon. In our own experience, the continuing conversation of the blogsphere (in both public and other networks) is to a great degree the enabler of new ideas and further discussions across a wide range of environments – from the formal journals to the internal ephemera of countless working shops.

Thus it is with some puzzlement we have observed the response to the discussion of the intellectual merits of scholarly blogs by those who would claim to be enforcing some alleged degree of academic standard. We have quite a bit of recent correspondence on this issue, such that we believe it merits wider response in a more general form, if only perhaps to advance the conversation more widely among those with new perspectives.

In some ways, we see the intelligence studies blogsphere - nascent though it currently may be in comparison to other more established fields such as law) - as the modern day equivalent of the circulated letters that used to pass from hand to hand amongst the academy of old – only conducted on a far more rapid timeline to a far greater degree of visibility. It was not uncommon for such correspondence – particularly involving multiple thinkers over time – to be used as the basis for a range of other publications. We still frequently encounter writings from this era, in which the correspondence or private discussions are footnoted accordingly.

We see no great difficulty therefore in extending the same consideration to the correspondence of the blog. Indeed, given the volume of unique and primary source information that is now conveyed by the authors of many blogs – including many new forms of online journalism, research, and expert discussion – it is incredible to us that such material would be ignored in more traditional modes of the literature. To do so would be to dismiss important aspects of contributions by those on the ground in conflict across the globe, or otherwise engaged in the practical pursuits of the profession.

The sharpness of the recent discussion reminds us of the vitriol also displayed towards other forms of evolving academic practice, such as the online engagement of distance learning studies; or the disdain for wiki-based collaboration models. While the discussion of the academic uses of the ever controversial Wikipedia (and its counterparts of technology) is in our minds an entirely different matter – being a thing of more ephemeral nature than the recorded conversations of the blog – we see many of the same rice bowls threatened by these technologies. We also find ourselves distressed by the increasingly fine distinctions of supposed authority that too many in the intelligence studies field now are attempting to impose, in order to preserve those rice bowls – such as one recent assertion that the field’s longest standing publications such as Studies or the JMIC / (new) NDIC papers are not “real” academic works, and therefore could not “count” in the eternal publish or perish world of those seeking tenure.

These arguments are very much the opposite of academic, in our view. The encouragement of critical review and analysis of any source material is fundamental to the practice of intelligence scholarship – and even moreso to the practice of the profession such scholarship purports to study. Credibility is not established by institutions alone – a point reinforced recently by the scandals which have afflicted many otherwise respected establishments - but rather more importantly through the continuous evaluation of ideas and their expression.

This debate will likely seem very odd in only a few short years hence, as the pace of evolution overtakes the academy far more rapidly than those within its walls are prepared yet to grasp. And there will be yet those who evolve and master the currents and complexities of this new domain – where the words of a forward deployed officer carry more impact to the literature than a number of dry treatises recycled on dusty pages, or where a student’s work may offer more promise than that of a tenured professor. Those members of the academy which can adapt – as many within law schools clearly have – will find themselves in a far different future than they might have otherwise envisioned. It will still however be a future in which the intelligence studies academia has much to offer, if it is willing to join the conversation as it is actually happening in the larger world, rather than as they might wish it to remain in their hermetically cloisters.

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.

The changing of the intelligence studies (public) blogsphere

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

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

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

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

Blogs and (intelligence) scholarship

Via the TaxProf Blog, we note the proceedings of a conference designed to examine the impact of blogging on the study of law. The parallels of many of the key arguments for the intelligence academy are quite striking indeed.

Recent years have seen not only the dramatic expansion of the intelligence studies field, but also attempts by a number of parties to impose their own control on the manner in which the field is evolving. These efforts have varied from proposed standards bodies to commissar style denunciation of new programs as mere “training” for vocational skills. Some are motivated by the best intentions of furthering professionalization, and some are regrettably little more than rent-seeking.

We have been greatly surprised that the expansion of the actual work of teaching intelligence has not led to nearly the flowering of the literature of intelligence that one might otherwise expect. For those most part, intelligence faculty simply do not publish – in the community’s own organs, or in the public journals that have arisen in the space. Now this may be in part explained by the moribund state of the field’s traditional publishing opportunities – but we doubt such an explanation complete, especially in this age of lightweight digital dissemination such as SSRN. Nor are we content to ascribe the lack of new material simply to the effects of tenure – though many a sleeping backwater might offer tempting distractions to those who enjoy lifetime employment, too few intelligence studies educators actually have their tenure in hand (not least due to the relative newness of many intelligence studies programs.) Likewise we find it difficult to assign blame to the consulting pathways that many intelligence professors also pursue, given the importance of networking and thought leadership in building intellectual capital for consulting assignments. (Indeed, we find that many of the scholar/bloggers of our acquaintance cite their blog as a more productive source of engagement opportunities than the institutions which supposedly provide them a place to stand respectably in the public square.)

There are many arguments both for and against blogging in pursuit of furthering the intelligence literature. In our opinion, not everyone is cut out to blog – and many, for reasons of classification and operational security, cannot (at least in public form) for entirely valid and understandable reasons. Yet this is no excuse for far too many intelligence educators – from those who work primarily if not exclusively in the unclassified, open source realm to those many now that focus on the pre-induction student pipeline at the university level.

We would strongly second the warning first given to the legal scholars as also quite fitting for those in the intelligence studies field: evolve or die.

The form into which intelligence studies evolves does not have to be a blog, but it has to be a mechanism which will advance the literature and the scholarship - and in a manner which has relevance to the native 21st century intelligence community, not merely the quaintly archaic exchange of dead trees that marked the industrial age era. Evolution does not come without risk – of professional differences and disputes, of public errors and their required corrections, or of the revision of one’s thoughts and writings in light of debate and further discourse. But in this it is no different than other forms of scholarship – merely conducted on a shorter timeline, with a self-selecting audience that is in many ways far broader in expertise, and often far more deeply studied, than the author might expect. Yet this is how the profession grows, and it is the imperative that was laid upon those who would make claim to its examination to pursue that growth.

Implications of publishing open source IMINT analysis

Some time ago, we added the excellent IMINT & Analysis blog to our sidebar for further watching. The effort is a superb example of the quality of contributions that can be made from unclassified, open source research through the application of basic analytic tradecraft. It pains us that this was not more routinely done by others in the space years ago. The technologies have been in place for some time – all that was lacking was the right mind and a willingness to devote the energies such a project would require.

To be sure, individual findings from selected research – such as Chechen urban battle damage assessments, PRC submarine activities, and the recent destruction of the Syrian suspected nuclear facility have all been chronicled using imagery. But the systematic assessment of multiple imagery sets in order to produce and publish something akin to finished geospatial intelligence is another matter entirely. Frankly, all that is lacking is cross reference to BE numbers, else one could easily mistake this as the output of a government system stripped of its markings and logos.

On the one hand, this is an unprecedented teaching opportunity for new analysts coming out of the academic side of the house. Geospatial intelligence has long been among the hardest of disciplines to inculcate within the student cohort, and many promising analysts have no doubt been steered in other directions simply by the lack of availability of resources and expertise to inspire them to pursue the path.

However, the wider availability of such products does raise concerns regarding the potential to feed adversary denial and deception efforts. High resolution commercial imagery has long carried the risk that adversaries without access to, or understanding of, the true nature of imagery collection would evolve more rapidly means to defeat such systems based on new commercial products. These risks are magnified when one can begin to glimpse the thought processes and tradecraft applied to imagery intelligence problems over the course of the production cycle.

We believe that the publishing of these kinds of finished products on an open blog such as IMINT and Analysis is not itself the problem. The real challenge arises out of the changing nature of the information environment itself. When the potential for such developments exist, they will inevitably arise in one form or another. It is better to consider their implications from a perspective of open discussion, than to attempt to second guess the effects of such activities in another context – for example perhaps that of an adversary’s intelligence service’s open source unit conducting their own version of a Red Cell assessment.

There will never be another day in the 21st century when the adversary will have less access to what was once the most sophisticated of the 20th century intelligence technical collection techniques than they do at present. The means by which such technical means may be defeated will only be easier as time passes, technology grows more common and less expensive, and the understanding of these systems from civil applications and open sources grows more sophisticated. The denial and deception problem - applied in the context of national technical means - will only get harder. The challenge to the Intelligence Community is to accelerate the pace of innovation in order to overcome the adversary’s attempts no matter how much easier the deceiver’s task may become in the future. Towards that end, we strongly suspect that the robust discussion of analytic tradecraft – including counter-deception – will do more to advance that innovation within the intelligence profession than in a closed and narrow conversation from a limited range of perspectives.

Pondering anonymous wiki usage

We note with great interest the research findings of the Dartmouth team that examined the role of anonymous contributions to Wikipedia. This work confirms what many have long suspected – the role of many individual experts contributing in a small area can be as vital as the long term “gardening” and other high commitment roles of high frequency wiki users.

This tracks interestingly with an alternative analysis first provided by Aaron Schwartz on the true distribution of authorship in Wikipedia. His work challenges conventional wisdom that only a few hundred individuals have been responsible for the majority of the production, showing that the contributions of these otherwise limited participants that actually provide the bulk of new content. The high participation individuals provided most of the structure, formatting, and debate.

None of this is terribly surprising when one considers the dynamics of expertise and contribution in other endeavors. But it has profound implications for those seeking to use the dynamics of participatory production models to create things of enduring value within the intelligence community. There is an inherent distrust of anonymity in the IC, and in a professional environment one’s reputation is not just at stake for a hobby but for the weight of one’s “real” work. How much has the intelligence community denied itself potential contributions of value (and reliability) through some of the choices made regarding anonymity in its wikis (or blogs)?

We come down strongly on the side of appropriate veils for the online environment, of course. Not that we wish to be the man behind the curtain (although professionally, some of us not in the more active side of the house are always more comfortable on the dark side of the one way glass), but rather so that ideas stand alone and can be discussed independently of the agencies and cultures which produce them. We have been accused of ill will on more than one occasion for our anonymity and group voice, but it is simply a desire to extend the debate on professionalization free of the conflicts of personality and organization. (It is also a function of the unique terms under which we are able to continue this venture, but in this it is a happy convergence with our intended outcomes for the blog.)

The parallels of Wikipedia assume however that the IC intends to create an encyclopedic work of its own. It is far from clear that this is what Intellipedia will be, let alone any of the other smaller and more focused wiki production environments. There are several other distinct roles evolving for wikis as the technology is bent to new situated uses within small groups – from watchstanding to warning, from dynamic production processes to shelfware reference replacement. The experimentation is really only just beginning – and for this reason, further real research is needed from the intelligence studies academia on both the open and dark side versions of these tools.

No maps – but perhaps guides – for these territories

One of the under-examined aspects in the adaptation of new web n.0 technologies to the intelligence community has been the potential utility of social bookmarking (in the model of del.icio.us and other related sites.) This has been in part remedied in the most recent Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, in an interesting article on the “The Application of Social Bookmarking Technology to the National Intelligence Domain”. The authors come out of the Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program, a fascinating group that has done good work assisting characterization of the trends in global terrorism from an outsider and OSINT perspective. (We continue to be fascinated at what role these sorts of projects have in exploring and validating analytical tradecraft in new contexts, and against new problem sets. We can think of no better example of this within the community itself than NCTC/Worldwide Incidents of Terrorism.)

What is interesting is that the concept of shared pointers to interesting and useful information sources is by no means a new thing within the intelligence community. Methods of such sharing – from the humble file card to the group email list – have had a long and successful history. Most, however, occur below the surface of recognition under the general rubric of mentorship. But it is clear who has such connectivity and sharing, and who doesn’t, when one compares analysts’ knowledge and situational awareness. It is not clear that a social bookmarking technology is the real answer – although the tool may help ease the formation of the kinds of emergent behaviors that drive the real successes of this sort of collaboration – the highly connected interdisciplinary individuals who routinely cross multiple cultural and organizational boundaries.

It is those rare individuals who essentially act as guides within the unexplored territories of information sharing. They do so, often at great personal risk, as the volume of material they typically pass between large numbers of individuals – often on the order of dozens of items a day to hundreds of folks in informal networks – can result in numerous administrative or political problems given even the smallest of mistakes by any individual in the chain. Despite this, they are vital to the work of the community. And while some hold official positions as liaison officers, most simply happen to enjoy an unusual mixture of independence, immunity from pressure, and a very large personal social network built over time through friend-of-a friend referrals. And in most cases, their organizations do not even understand the value these individuals bring to the table – sometimes even far in excess of anything else that particular shop might be doing.

Encouragement of these guides – be they mentors, gardeners or the near autistic savant – is more than technology, and demands as much focus as the tools and toys. Guided information consumption is critical to the cultivation of the analyst, both for its informative and situational awareness value but also for its inspirational effects. These are hard to measure, and difficult therefore to justify investment in. Nonetheless, without them, there would be far fewer exceptional intelligence practitioners today; and likewise those gaps will grow in tomorrow’s workforce if there is insufficient focus on such efforts – formally or informally.

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…

State blogging – and not blogging

Mountainrunner has been providing excellent coverage and commentary regarding the new developments out of Department of State’s online diplomacy efforts, including DoS’s new blog. We are please to see the efforts of those at Foggy Bottom advancing into the new century. State’s efforts were often the kind one would damn with faint praise – let us hope that this new initiative does not travel the same path. They would do well to heed (and preferably, quickly hire the unique expertise of) the gentleman blogger on such matters, particularly as he explores subjects of key interest – unmanned systems, private military companies, and public diplomacy unfettered by incorrect interpretations of half a century old legislative arcania.

At the same time, however, State has silenced a different interesting voice in the intelligence and foreign policy space. Arms Control Otaku will be ending formal blogging at official request that came out of an ongoing background investigation. We have mixed feelings on the matter – not least of which because this is an area that can ill afford the loss of thinkers and bloggers in the public space. However, we are the first to recognize the inherent tensions between the effective performance of one’s official duties, and the academic pursuit of advancing the literature. That conflict was likely far more pronounced the Otaku’s case, given the essential overlap between what one would presume about the demands of a Presidential Management Fellow’s assignment and the published record of that blog.

We are fortunate in the our humble endeavor suffers less from such potential conflicts due to a very deliberate series of choices to separate the stuff of our contributors’ professional accounts from the discussions on this blog. One can, given care and attention, find an acceptable way to further the academic conversation on larger issues of professionalization in a manner which does not come into conflict with one’s working responsibilities or one’s sacred oaths of secrecy. We are also fortunate to have had a favorable review which early on encouraged this effort (but of course, not as an endorsement), given entirely sensible and appropriate restrictions. Some of those peculiar features have drawn negative comment from others in the academic world - such as the lack of comment features - but overall it is a small tradeoff in return for the benefit of participating in the ongoing discussion regarding the future of intelligence. And since this blog generates no financial or other incentives, such intangibles are critical to our contributors.

Thus, we hope to see the Otaku’s writing some other time and place. We have enjoyed the work, even as we might disagree on occasion. And we were also pleasantly surprised to learn that once upon a lifetime, one amongst our number happened to be in the same movie theatre at the same time – despite being far from the usual stomping grounds - in one of those odd coincidences that marks life passing through the Beltway.

However, we also note that there are plenty of other outlets for creative energies in more professionally accepted fashion – though few so low-friction as lightweight online publishing. Perhaps an Intelink blog would be in order for the gentleman – and offer the Otaku the additional benefit of accruing professional respect within the community under true name, albeit within the more limited audience of the classified world.

This matter also provides a fascinating case study, one that we see as the leading edge of an issue that will increasingly come to define the role of the intelligence and foreign policy professionals of the next generation. Blogs and other online contributions will increasingly be a key part of their publication record – and increasingly will occur under true name (for good or ill). For some potential recruits to the community, the choice to accept the isolation of the vault, and abandon what may be their most significant professional contributions and activities to date, is one that they may be unwilling to accept in return for a low level GS position in some minor bureaucracy. This will be particularly an acute problem as other alternatives continue to become far more attractive than life as a blue badger as the privatization of intelligence continues apace. Better solutions have to be found.

Web n ruminations for the IC

Whatever network one routinely uses to conduct the business of intelligence analysis and production, the idea of Web n technologies and innovation has certainly begun to creep into common discourse within the community. Whether through Intellipedia, A-Space, reputation systems, or other still emerging variants of the wiki and the blog, there has been an encouraging degree of movement in recent years.

We are unabashed fans of experimentation in these areas. Unfortunately, too few times have the results of these experiments been examined with a dispassionate eye, nor recorded in formal publication – particularly by those not immediately involved in acting as proponents for the new technology. This alone has meant the art and science cannot advance beyond the basics of advocacy in this area, and into the hard business of implementation, refinement, and normalization. To move forward an idea is to find its flaws and correct its weaknesses through repeated efforts, rather than the repetition of the same effort.

We thus hope the new Mercyhurst Intelligence Studies program’s student blog at Web 2.0 and the Intelligence Community will evolve beyond mere advocacy and into solid academic research into the effectiveness and limitations of the tools and techniques of the driving philosophy of the next generation Web. It is fitting perhaps that it is not the established academics that will lead such research, but rather the students themselves – the next generation of professionals which will soon enough enter the community but who already demand the very cutting edge of commercial best practices.


h/t once again to Haft of the Spear, and to Zenpundit for the reference to A-Space at Network Weaving

Linkages

It’s been a while since we have highlighted newer finds in the greater blogsphere. It is quite amazing to see the growth of informed commentary and cogent discussion regarding the intelligence profession as a whole, as well as the overlapping areas of military studies and inter/national security policy.

We are not quite sure what to think of the rather interesting but not entirely worksafe blog Swedish Meatballs Confidential. On the one hand, we find some of the pieces quite excellent but we dislike attempts to play insider baseball with Beltway politics (especially writ large.) We find such discussions border too often on conspiracy theory. But when they focus on information operations and military matters, they prove worth reading. (We also rather like the manner in which they characterized our link - "Kent's Something of Import".... clearly an artifact of translation software, but it carries with it a flavour of the Victorian...)

The House of War is another newcomer which merits a look based on its continuing focus on matters of insurgency, future warfare, and 4GW + matters.

The Wizards of Oz, although so new it hasn’t yet accumulated much of a back archive, promises to add further to the 5GW discussion, and comes to the table with a pretty interesting follow-on to LTG Van Riper’s comments at Boyd 2007.


We have found ourselves occasionally tripping over the work of the Deception Blog – which deals with the entirety of the wider psychological aspects of deception (rather than the strictly intelligence context of D&D), but nonetheless occasionally offers links to exceptionally relevant new research. Regrettably, the wider blog cluster of which it is loosely a part of tends to run towards the whole “anti-polygraph” crowd, but thankfully this is not common as long as one sticks with the core psychological research sections.

It will be interesting to see the higher order effects of the informal online discussion in the blogsphere on future iterations of the literature of intelligence. But we expect that this will be the native communications behavior of the next generation of analysts and operators - and we strongly believe that if the community must quickly come to terms with the changing nature of organizational and individual expression and learning in the online environment, especially in the public discussion of the intelligence studies field.

Blogging the DNI’s Open Source Conference

Conference season continues apace, and with a wealth of interesting material surfacing for public discussion in the intelligence studies world. We note with great interest the rather unusual collection of blog entries by multiple contributors regarding the events. We are used to seeing this at the major tech conferences, but are frankly surprised to see it in the intelligence community. It simply would not have occurred to us that such a thing would happen, if not in due to overt security restrictions then in the face of the normal culture which prevails at such events.

It is however a harbinger of things to come, we think. We ourselves are of mixed minds on this matter – we have for a long time supported the Chatham House rule in order to encourage a more frank discussion free of political and career considerations (which can be far more damning than any security officer’s checklist). We fear that routine blogging of these rare unclassified events may greatly impair free flowing debate – and may indeed limit attendance in ways we cannot currently predict.

But in this case, the deed is done, and for those interested, a short collection of some relevant links:

DNI Open Source Blog 2007

a thaumaturgical compendium:
Hidden in plain view
Knowledge Management
Media as the Open Source
Technology: Improving the Use of Open Sources
Open Source on the Web


We should also note that the recent Boyd Conference has also generated quite a bit of interesting blogging in the 4GW and future warfare space, well covered by others.... see the usual suspects over at Zenpundit, Shloky, Simulated Laughter, Soob, and tdaxp

Not an Intelligence Estimate

We have been aware for some time of the recent academic exercise by Mercyhurst College’s Intelligence Studies program in utilizing a wiki-based production process for analytic experimentation which resulted in the production of a model National Intelligence Estimate on infectious disease issues. It has now apparently gone public under the auspices of the National Intelligence Council.

We were initially very interested in the discussion surrounding this effort, as it seemed on the surface quite innovative, and touched upon many of the key areas we have focused on here at Kent’s Imperative – including the use of new technologies to support analysis, and the integration of private sector and academic expertise into community efforts. However, we had reserved judgment and comment until the final form was published.

We find ourselves now troubled by the results we have seen. While we still support greatly the concepts of distributed, virtual production utilizing new collaborative technologies to blend academic and IC professional expertise into a single cohesive product, we are greatly disappointed by the initial run of the experiment. We suspect strongly that those without substantive community experience may have played a role in the divergence from what seemed initially a good project into something that displays remarkable deficiencies in tradecraft and judgment – not to mention a depressingly shallow treatment of the subject under consideration.

We may offer a more substantive critique of the product in the future, but our initial coordination notes would highlight the following, both methodological and substantive:

• Nation-state level focus on what are essentially transnational and globalized problems

• Lack of any apparent utilization of futures intelligence methodologies (such as scenario projection, horizon scanning, Delphic analysis, driving forces / event mapping)

• Excessive confidence in statements based on incomplete information or future uncertainty

• Introduction of arbitrary quantitative metrics into an essentially qualitative expression of analytic confidence, rather than utilizing intelligence community normative forms

• Too frequent focus on current conditions as opposed to the supposed 10-15 year target horizon of the product

• Layers of embedded analytic judgments expressed as factual points in “editorial” style

• Lack of any serious examination of Non-Governmental Organization and other private sector roles, currently or in the future timeframe of the study

Some might say we are being too harsh on what are after all a group of students. We do not direct our criticism at the students themselves – they clearly made an effort to address a very difficult task normally given to professionals with many years more experience (and a much greater familiarity with DI writing style); and acquitted themselves as individuals well. Our disappointment lies solely in seeing an unprecedented opportunity to a great extent squandered in the production of a glossy rag rather than something of true and enduring value. We continue to believe that even these most junior analyst / students are capable of much more – and that the concept has the potential to offer unique value to the intelligence community.

Still, we are glad that something came of the effort, if only to observe the process from afar. We would like to second Haft of the Spear’s call for the introduction of new schools, and new groups of academics for new experiments on new targets - that may perhaps have a better go of it, particularly given greater involvement of IC professionals in the kind of blended approach we have been advocating for some time now.

Intelligence activities in the native medium of the blog

We are not prone to navel gazing regarding the now unremarkable magic of the world of lightweight web publishing tools. (That’s so 2002, as the cool kids might say…).

However, we find ourselves occasionally drawn into the ongoing distributed conversation regarding the growth of blogging within the intelligence community itself, particularly as the idea spreads within the walls (thanks in large part to some visionary efforts and some hard work to create acceptance and adoption.) From time to time, we find ourselves writing on such matters as reflections emerge in open publications, much as we have when discussing related issues of wiki technologies.

In this case, we find ourselves once again welcoming the end of another academic year for many intelligence studies programs, and the deluge of new student publications, term papers, and theses has begun right on schedule. We happily expect that between the major universities, and the military service schools, that we will have much reading to last us through the idyllic evenings we intended to spend relaxing in a hammock this summer.

This year, we are fascinated to see the continuation of a trend towards the use of blogging tools to publish these student efforts on the open net. We are not yet certain of what to make of this – for sure, it is a far better means by which to ensure readership and availability of material which might otherwise slip unnoticed into the great gray literature slush pile. But there are also systemic concerns, especially when the content of certain papers (even though they may be drawn entirely from open sources and presented in an unclassified academic context) may offer our adversaries advantages in concealing, denying, or deceiving the community’s efforts to understand their intent and behavior.

This is a subtle issue, but it does have the potential to influence the willingness of the community to engage academia in the long term – if only by giving fuel to the arguments against sharing discussions of methodology, target interests, and conceptual standards. (We do think that in most cases benefits outweigh potential risks – especially if a keen eye towards OPSEC and counter D&D concerns remains foremost in mind, and the selection of topics chosen with care and deliberation. Regrettably, this is not always the case.)

We also have not decided if the blog format is entirely the best manner in which to see new academic papers and longer term study type products presented. The native strengths of the blog, much like the cable, are in the short form; but this tends to obscure the levels of supporting detail and nuanced argument which are critical to more robust intelligence products – and particularly to those efforts exploring new dimensions of methodology and analytic tradecraft. Blogging also tends to encourage a very different tone than is normally appropriate for finished intelligence or academic pieces, but this may not entirely be a bad thing given the predominance of lengthy, dry tomes of no particular redeeming value which so characterize other segments of the community’s output – and unfortunately also large parts of the field’s literature.

This however begs the question: which then are intelligence activities that have a native affinity for the medium of the blog? Blogs, while created initially as a publishing and distribution tool, have much more to offer than merely functioning as an advanced dissemination system (as much as we like RSS for that purpose when dealing with short, recurring product streams.) They also by convention and customary usage occupy a unique niche between the formalized rigidity of finished production and the otherwise uncaptured ephemera of working notes, partial drafts, non-papers and coordination commentary.

Blogs can function to foster social growth and interactions within communities of interest – whether within their comments pages or (as we prefer) through the distributed effects of common linkages between multiple independent authors. In this, they do so more slowly than the rapid, transient connections of sametime (or the physical world counterparts of conference asides and deskside chats); and frankly the process tends to produce a higher quality of intellectual result much more closely aligned with Sherman Kent’s original vision of the interactions which would produce the body of intelligence literature. The only difference is the technology, which brings with it levels of speed and accessibility that could not have even been conceived in his day.

“The literature I have in mind will, among other things, be an elevated debate. For example, I see a Major X write an essay on the theory of indicators and print it and have it circulated. I see a Mr. B brood over this essay and write a review of it. I see a Commander C reading both the preceding documents and reviewing them both. I then see a revitalized discussion among the people of the indicator business. I hope that they now, more than ever before, discuss indicators within the terms of a common conceptual frame and in a common vocabulary. From the debate in the literature and from the oral discussion, I see another man coming forward to produce an original synthesis of all that has gone before. His summary findings will be a kind of intellectual platform upon which the new debate can start. His platform will be a thing of orderly and functional construction and it will stand above the bushes and trees that once obscured the view. It will be solid enough to have much more built upon it and durable enough so that no one need get back in the bushes and earth to examine its foundations.

Now if all this sounds ponderous and a drain on time, I can only suggest that, so far, we of the Western tradition have found no faster or more economical way of advancing our understanding. This is the way by which the Western world has achieved the knowledge of nature and humanity that we now possess.”

We are very interested in the continued exploration of the matter, and will continue our own humble examination of the subject as we may. We wish the new crop of intelligence studies graduates well in their own endeavors in this area, and hope that they will continue to contribute in accordance with the original Imperative.

For those of our colleagues and readers which would wish to offer commentary, advice, or encouragement, the following are a few of the new student papers-as-blogs in the field.

Content Analysis Technique
Terrorism Social Network Analysis
Qods Force Targeting Methodology

In this case, all are out of Mercyhurst, but others are no doubt coming soon and we expect we shall write on those presently enough. Do not be shy, nor spare the full weight of judgments in order not to offend - for few things are worse than the unjustified ego of young analysts who have never received adequate critique due to the diplomacy of their seniors (a thing we have observed all too often as of late in many an intelligence studies program.) Analysts develop in the competition of ideas, and learn from the hard realities of failure. If they do not fight for it, they do not grow.

Spare cycles and private wars

We are not sure which is worse – the fact that a Sandia National Labs employee, at the height of the Long War, had such poor discretion and ethical baseline as to become a cyber-stalker, or had enough free time to do so without impact to professional performance.

We however generally view the hitherto unexamined excess capacity identified by Mr. Anderson with great interest. It is the primum mobile driving the Imperative to pursue the art and science of intelligence, and to document it in a robust and shared body of literature. Without those “spare cycles”, much of what craft which is currently passed along from master to journeyman would not exist, or be lost with retirement and re-assignment.

We are just as fascinated by the means by which such energies may be focused across the profession, through participatory architectures, new organizational structures, or new processes. Unfortunately, for the most part those that have spare cycles in the Long War are those that have the least to contribute – else they generally would have found themselves another home and a more engaging mission. Those with the best potential for insight and imagination are too heavily tasked already – driven by the relentless demands of current production and of mission critical needs.

We are nonetheless reminded that there are entire classes of individuals whose true contribution potential remains untapped by virtue of failing HR processes, inefficient bureaucratic structures, or the simple lack of the right inspiration and management. These individuals offer the potential to provide the kind of energy envisioned by Mr. Anderson, given the right conditions.

There are also those who have reached temporary professional plateaus, in which the often near vertical learning curve of the craft has given way to the kind of autonomic “servicing” of targets with little demand for innovation or growth. These analysts are often at greatest risk of burnout, but may lack other options for greater engagement on new issues demanding higher levels of intellectual intensity. This also represents untapped sources of potential energy for new cross boundary and cross functional efforts.

The community needs better mechanisms for utilizing these spare cycles. In many ways, this problem is closely linked to the sacrifice of human lifetimes caused by the bureaucratic and technological constraints under which the profession as a whole labors. Solving many of those pointless sacrifices would enable additional spare capacity to feed new functional uses for the right minds, including encouragement of time spent on analysts’ own “private wars” – the accounts of greatest professional interest to them on an individual level, even if those issues may not be the most pressing requirements currently faced by the community (or the target to which they are currently assigned.)

We have seen initial options for this sort of encouragement and channeling of these energies presented in the growth of new collaborative and communication environments, including wikis and blogs, that substantially mirror other mechanisms found in the outside world. But there are a number of other Web 2.0 innovations that could prove of value to the community, and other new tools specific to the profession that have yet to be developed. We would greatly wish to see more efforts directed at establishing the first principals which will enable their creation and adoption in the same manner as Intellipedia and other radical emerging innovations. It is from such striving that we feel the greatest advancements in the field may yet emerge, as the community transforms from the industrial age legacy to its as yet unknown future.

Pay no attention to the body behind the curtain

From Rough Type comes a well timed, and well executed, critique of the overarching (and over-reaching) philosophy that is increasingly shifting Wikipedia and its successors from a tool of utility to an engine of epistemology.

There are too many great lines to recommend anything but to read it all (and as always we offer great respect to those who quote the Bard well in theme and principal). We are fascinated by both the post and its comments, as this is an explicit debate over similar questions that we have raised regarding the most effective use of wiki’s within intelligence community contexts. Intellipedia will face the same challenges (in addition to other more unique pressures based on the oddities of culture and technology within the environments which host it.) But we are also interested in how the philosophies and drivers being laid out in the arguments between the open source world’s major supporters, detractors, and the juries of technologist and creator opinion. (The public having already apparently voted with their eyeballs and clickstreams.)

That interest stems largely from our contention that Intellipedia will not be the only way to use the wiki as a tool within the intelligence community (hardly a unique idea, as new projects and environments spring up daily), but more controversially, that things like an encyclopedia may not be the best means to utilizing that tool within the community. And the distinctions between, and proof of success, for new attempts will be in understanding the reasons and drivers for positive results from this new social technology and its associated production methods.

Open source, community based production economies are further examined within a second post at Rough Type, which discusses the monetization of YouTube contributions against the backdrop of current academic arguments over the revolutionary nature of participatory systems (first outlined in the Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler.)

The parallels between the evolving structures of open source movement and the new architectures being implemented in the intelligence community are again strikingly clear. Within the walls of the IC, there is stronger evidence for the contention that there has not yet been a model for accurate valuation of the participation economy. Indeed, the entire literature of intelligence as a professional body has largely been a non-economic affair, from the earliest days of Studies to the present, where the bulk of serious contributions originate still from practitioners volunteering additional time and thought away from their primary accounts to help advance the state of the craft. (These volunteers, driven by their own muse or by the Imperative itself, also stand in stark contrast to the academic intelligence studies field in a manner which is outlined in the comments.)

The multi-player (government, contractor, inter-agency & task force) dynamics of contributions to these participatory architectures deserves further study. It is our belief that market type drivers can be identified and encouraged, which will allow for more robust and useful implementation of these new tools for intelligence specific applications.

H/t and our thanks to Zenpundit for pointing out both Rough Type posts