Haft of the Spear

An excellent piece on the general state of things, with recent examples and a nice balance between the two extremes you usually see in articles in this vein.

For safety sake that’s all I’ve got say about about that …

… that can set back what modest progress that has been hard fought and won. If you haven’t figured out that that box on the desk at work is not yours then you need a big, fiscal cup-check. Frankly, I wish we saw a lot more of this sort of thing for more than just Hatch Act violations. Watch the stupid user INFOSEC tricks drop off after word gets out that someone has to cool their heels at home w/o a paycheck for a week. Strange though; our Uncle will fight for tens of billions for conventional protection but the arguably more effective effort of docking someone’s pay isn’t on the agenda.

Think analysis in the LE or narco domains are not as hot or significant as work in DC?

Keep thinking that.

When the more or less failed state to our South slides to the “more” category, you’re going to wish you’d signed up to work in Albuquerque. ;-)

Remember, its just words and bits and electrons, it doesn’t impact like real war:

Mexico’s northern border town of Juarez, infamous for its history of drug-related violence, has gone into lockdown after an e-mail began circulating warning of an unparalleled “bloodbath” in the coming days.

Shops, bars and restaurants have shut and soldiers are patrolling the streets, giving a surreal and dangerous tone to this city of 1.4 million people which sits just across the US border from the Texan town of El Paso.

60 Minutes discovers millennials. Cannot get over the fact that no one is addressing the importance of actual skillz across the generations (computer hacking skills, nunchuck skills …). I’ve no problem giving people with actual talent some leeway (that’s actually not a new practice) but the fact is (in any generation) the people with real skills worth catering to is woefully small. This was less a problem when those in the workforce recognized that fact and didn’t get all bent out of shape when they didn’t all get treated like demi-royalty. Work has to be arranged around your Yoga class? Maybe you should think about becoming a Yoga instructor and leave the real work to the professionals …

The consultants all claim that the world of work has to change to meet the challenge of millennials, but I question that conclusion: stuff still has to get done, things still have to get built, you can’t negotiate every task with every employee and keep up with demand … assuming you want to stay in business.

• You have a grade (or pay band) not a rank. If your system is truly pay-for-performance, and skills are paramount, then the idea that a “kid” who hasn’t “earned” a paycheck that is fatter than someone with 20 years on the job has to be pushed from the mental/social attic. Dues are what you pay your club.
• No one is going to show up, work on the same task and at the same desk for 30 years, and retire. Flexibility in assignments without the unnecessary overhead of exchange programs has to become SOP. Your counterpart across the river wants to borrow Alice for a month and you can spare her, stop thinking he’s trying to poach her (he might be, but your saying ‘no’ will just accelerate the process). Resources being what they are, no one in a community can afford to be selfish.
• This emphasis on connections and tangential interests - as much a pain in the *** as it can be - can be leveraged to the benefit of work. Think of the “I know a guy who knows a guy” network you’ve used in your own career and inject it with ‘roids.

I have said as much before, though in a more disjointed and in-eloquent fashion. I take issue with a few points but I don’t want to detract from the over-arching point: that real intelligence work does not mirror intelligence in pop culture or whatever your fantasy is, is a consumer’s problem, not an intelligence failure.

That the community does not lobby – education, not influence – both unsophisticated policy makers as well as the public it serves has long been a sore point in this quarter. One need only look at the recent Air Force commercials, or “Army of One” ads in the recent past to demonstrate that one can communicate a sense of mission importance, complexity, intensity, and urgency without revealing anything sensitive (that much of what is considered tradecraft is widely known to anyone wiling to do the research notwithstanding).

I try to instill in my students a sense of … “optimistic dismay” at the fact that no matter how much rigor you put into the task, no matter how choice your info, you are rarely going to be able to forecast a future state with anything approaching reliability as the term is commonly understood. Not being omniscient an analyst cannot blame himself if he does everything right but comes up short; the failure is in not communicating the fact that “intelligence” is the same sort of data-gathering, critical-thinking exercise anyone involved in policy- or decision-making performs every day (the big difference being the source of information used).

The least sensitive and largely prosaic aspect of intelligence work could stand more than a little openness and exposure; both as a check on intellectual tunnel vision and undue political influence, but also as a way to build public confidence that what is going on behind closed doors is hardly nefarious and largely familiar to anyone who works in a cube farm.

Moving to a dissemination model that eschews “publication” and relies on dynamically, communally-built findings and delivered orally in person is arguably the best way to overcome many problems associated with consumers not understanding or misusing intelligence. Nothing is going to stop leaks (save for serious investigations and public trials) but making it easier to track access to content is one way to dissuade more casual violators of non-disclosure agreements.

Absent a dramatic change of leadership at the agency-level, don’t expect much to change. There is too much of a perceived advantage in keeping things quiet and secret. The folly of that approach however, continues to be demonstrated daily. In a world awash in information and flooded with analysts as good as you’ll find anywhere, shortcomings in community performance will eventually call into question the need for an info-centric enterprise that fails to exceed the performance of unindoctrinated amateurs.

Slow security clearance processes and a lack of reciprocity between agencies are major inefficiencies that have huge unseen costs for agencies and contractors, Customs and Border Protection’s acting information technology chief told a group of industry executives today.

• If you’re more than just talk about national security, sharing, interoperability, best-people-where-you-need-them, etc., then you should be pushing downward to get your subordinates to focus on requirements and set aside institutional biases. People who are not team players, should be encouraged to take up tennis.
• If you’re about smaller gov’t, then you ought to relish the idea of needing less overhead to deal with a common and largely uniform issue.
• If you’re about smart gov’t, think about efficiencies gained and speed acquired.
• If you’re about saving taxpayer dollars (or corporate overhead), see bullet two above.

• Leveraging existing databases and data mining and analysis techniques to automate the background investigation process. This is already in the works to a certain extent, but the faster and more comprehensive the better. Ideally, your five-year update should be able to be handled via an encrypted web-based form and your status updated inside of a few weeks. New clearances for uncomplicated cases should be adjudicated in a very slightly longer time-frame.
• Eliminating the need to have a gov’t or corporate entity “hold” your clearance. Your clearance is about you, not your job or location. As long as you meet the necessary criteria, you should not be “punished” (that’s the practical impact) if you leave the business for whatever reason and try to come back. If you don’t have a need to know, you get read off; when you want to come back, update your address, travels and contacts and get back on the horse. This is an area that could also reap huge savings for contractors and the gov’t, as they both could stop canibalizing the existing pool of “active duty” to fill billets.

I am now officially international.

U.S. lawmakers have taken the strongest steps yet in recent years to rein in federal contracting.

In bills to authorize the Defense Department and intelligence agencies, House and Senate lawmakers have called for a three-year ban on outsourcing Defense Department civilian jobs, new boundaries on what work can be outsourced, and new curbs aimed at preventing conflicts of interest when contractors assist agencies with their procurements.

“Contracting oversight and accountability issues remain a concern,” said Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.

No kidding.

The sign in my barber’s shop reads: “Haircuts: Good, Fast, Cheap – Pick Two.” What no one in Congress seems to realize – or care enough to act on – is that if you limit what can be contracted you are left with raising the staffing ceilings at the agencies or you force certain missions to be dropped (alternately, the same missions get done, they are just done poorly). Of course, raising staffing ceilings means “creating big government” but I would submit to you that given the priority national security should have on our political agenda, a bigger Pentagon, CIA and FBI could be offset by, say, a smaller HHS or DOEdu. Of course I’m not a politician so dream on.

• Simplifying contracting law and regulation. Forget water boarding; force detainees to read the FAR and watch them crack like eggs. Contracting would be a lot cheaper if the back-end overhead workforce didn’t have to be as large as it is just to deal with excessively complex paperwork.
• Identify and codify in law what is “inherently governmental.” Maybe this has been done already, I don’t know, but identify for me the job in the defense and intelligence business that isn’t contracted out – from collection, analysis, interrogation, even shooting bad guys – and I have to wonder what got left off the list. When you know what can’t be farmed out, then you can actually – you know – plan for the proper size federal workforce.
• Oversight requires more people on staff who know the contracting business; the fact that contractors can end up overseeing what other contractors (read: competition) do is nuts on its face. Boosting the CO and COTR/COR ranks would reap two benefits: greater oversight from non-biased professionals and allowing technical/functional professionals to get back to doing what they enjoy instead of managing contractors.

Courtesy of Mercyhurst: a pretty good reason why it is so easy to make political fodder out of intelligence products.

More on the latest article on politics and analysis after I come up for air from the marathon “to do” list I’m working on …

Retooling material for my intel class and jumping between five books (two of which are out of print) and a raft of booklets, articles and sundry print sources; cyber buddy coincidentally mentions push on the inside to ratchet up analytic tradecraft, which reminds me …

… Non-fiction intel books - generally speaking - fall into two categories: the tell-almost and the high-level, policy-focused treatment. Clark’s books are something of an exception, but they’re not for novices. Jones’ book is great for fundamentals, but isn’t written for this audience. So …

a) anyone know a single book, readily available, that is suitable for intel analysis 101?
If a=false Then
b) what makes more sense: assemble and edit a compilation or craft something from scratch?

As a guy starting a new gig, relocating a family, a million other things on the plate the answer seems obvious, but compilations come with their own complications (copyright, etc.) and I’ll probably only get one shot at this before being overcome with the next next great if hairbrained idea.

Please to weigh in via comments.

If you are down with community that gets the best solutions, not the most well-lobbied ones, then this is most definitely good news. Though implementations may not be perfect, pay for performance is becoming de rigueur even in our Uncle’s ranks. My role as a competitor in this arena notwithstanding, I’d rather my tax dollars pay for things won fair and square.

Yet another tale of just how petty this business can get. That serious, severe action on this front (as well as broader sharing and collaborative efforts IC-wide) has not been taken is really the only metric one needs to measure when assessing how much of a priority these issues truly are at the highest levels.

More at ThreatsWatch.

If you don’t know you have it - or where it is - you can’t keep it safe. I’ve said that about a million times before as have others more august in this business than myself, but its a lesson that some still fail to heed. If you think inventory is a paperwork drill and not a security function, you are so, so terribly wrong.

If they can make it work, this will probably have a greater impact on the community than any reform effort to date.