Haft of the Spear

Inspired by Bob G’s latest post (he gets all the cool trips), a challenge for all my peeps both in and out of the biz:

1. Based on all the free apps, plug ins, extensions, etc. you’re aware of, build the baseline browser Alice and Bob analyst should have on their workstation (for the purposes of this evolution, the ‘Net and ‘Net-connected DBs is your simulated spooky info system).

2. Describe the killer plug-in, extension, etc. that doesn’t exist yet but would make the job so much easier.

Input to comments, please.

Sys admins, DBAs, fellow geeks, lend me your talents:

What if you organization (I’ve always got the IC on my mind, but any org will do) wasn’t a hierarchy, but a browser? A basic framework that provided some core capability/service (facility, access, connectivity, production, etc.) for all, yet open enough to allow one to add functionality as needed without dramatic effort (extensions, plug ins, add-ons).

A basic principle for operation is in place (the –INT cycle) but each deliverable is produced using either established applications (trusted downloads) or a solution developed ad hoc. Success? Upload your solution for polishing and re-use by others. Failure? Disseminate what happened and a) avoid future failures or b) discover a previously unknown source that can make it work.

Value derived from increased speed of delivery, more minds-on-task, and more granular/refined content (not to mention reduced overhead, inefficiency and bureaucracy). Trends with technology developments as well as workforce dynamics (demands for frequent challenges; measurable, instant feedback; and flexibility). Capable of adapting to new situations/problems/demands precisely because it lacks a rigid structure. Scalable from team to agency to community-level.

IC-as-platform?

(H/T to everyone I’ve talked to in the last week (you know who you are) about related issues. Just took me some time and a couple Sierra Nevadas to put it all down).

As we try to figure out how to operate in and integrate the tools of the information age into the age-old practice of blowing things up, it is clear we have issues (H/T John):

Unfortunately, high-speed communications and bold initiative do not always go hand in hand. With such an abundance of information available simultaneously at all levels, micromanagement can creep unnoticed into the chain of command and pull it apart. For example, if a general is able to follow an ongoing firefight through email and IM, and he is inclined to believe he knows what’s best for the units in contact, then he very well might start directing those small units from afar, consequently eliminating the need for his colonels, captains, and sergeants to do any thinking of their own.

Don’t think I can do a more succinct job than this.

As I stated before, Intel isn’t going to help solve climate change. Hell, Intel wasn’t even used in the production of the report. Apparently the only reason it is classified at all is for international-political reasons (“Country X is run like Monty Burns’ nuke plant” – or words to that effect). If you were going to develop a top-11 list of wasteful, political uses of Intel, this evolution would be in the top three, easy. Why use the IC instead of, say, the EPA? Well, science is OK, but secrets make everything better, right? Oh, wait …

Climate change may drive or exacerbate conflict; so could ethnic strife, political upheaval, or the shortage of some precious resource (not climate driven) … this is more or less the natural state of the world. If we were going to focus our nat-sec energies on the impact of climate change, a better use might to a study on how to best (re)configure our military and aid strategies and capabilities, etc., to deal with the resulting fall-out.

Soldiers of Reason

Sticking my toe in the waters of the CTLab.

It’s likely because Germans, like the French and Italians, ran out of patience with domestic terror groups years ago.

A recent line from another journalist (I forget whom at the moment) also applies: ‘few people have seen a dead American soldier.’ More broadly, few know one, period. 9/11 directly impacted few and the post-attack security measures are no different. I doubt it will change much if we are attacked again.

Matt and I met once: he remembered, I did not. The circumstances were a call from a training honco that went something like, “Mike, we need someone to brief I&W to a class of new hires and our regular fell through; can you come down in 10 minutes?” I only had about five fires burning at the time, so I went, and I tap-danced my way through (I prefer a little prep time under normal circumstances, if nothing else just to get my witty banter circuit warmed up). I recall that it was not my best performance, but it was apparently better than the whale songs the fresh faces had been listening to the last couple of days because he still talks to me.

Naturally I do my best to track what the next generation is up to these days and so it is with great interest that a mutual friend clued me in to Matt’s latest missive. It deserves a full read.

• The general thesis is rock solid. Any donkey can cast stones and wallow self-righteously in their preconceptions. Unless you’ve been (figuratively) shot at, don’t talk to me about your thoughts on bureaucratic combat and what is wrong with the Infantry. If you are not prepared to put up in some fashion, do everyone a favor and shut up. You are not saying anything we’ve not said to ourselves.
• There is a tendency to underestimate how complicated the inter-workings of gov’t actually is (are?). Some of this is by design, some not, but the model of code it; it works on my box without breaking; publish isn’t going to fly absent a tectonic culture and technology shift. Not a dissuasion of innovation, just a call to recognize that the “its simple” meme only works in a few domains.
• Focusing on the functionaries is important, but without influence from the top there is no hope for real change. I have lived through numerous “reforms” under various guises but none succeeded to any significant degree because the fundamental metrics never changed. If the bottom line is that I’m rated on how many widgets I produce, I’m not going to give two-s***s about whether or not I follow the TQM approach or use my mad ‘black belt’ skillz or if my efforts were culturally sound: I’m friggin’ going to show up at the end of the year with a ton of widgets. As long as the boss is counting beans, not how you pick them, “reform” is just talk.
• We cannot assume that anyone in a position to actually bring about some change – appointee, executive or senior functionary - is anywhere near as literate about these issues (tech, colab, etc.) as any of us who are talking about implementation. Listen, this is a community where a the equiv of an EVP in IT has to ask, “What does XML stand for again?” Trust me, there is a lot of education that still has to take place.
• Comey and Goodling are good examples, but the take-away is not that Goodling and her ilk do things that are untoward (“pleasure of the President” means something after all), but that at the end of the day a lot of this boils down to politics and politics and what makes sense rarely mix. One of the main reasons why the status quo is just that is because reformers (or grand strategists for that matter) rarely take the time to consider how this plays back in Peoria. If there is pork involved you’d better come to the table with at least one solution that has the balance sheet come out in the black. Any serious IC reform effort that leverages technology for example, if fully and rapidly implemented, is going to result in people being RIFed (and not just feds). The gov’t isn’t (or shouldn’t be) a make-work jobs program, but tossing people on the scrap heap willy-nilly isn’t smart either. There is a big human element to consider here.
• “If you’re a dynamic person, you’ve got an advantage,” truer words were never spoken. Listen; gov’t service can wear you down, give you an ulcer even, but if you put in half the effort you do in blogging or twittering or tweaking your Facebook page, trust me, you’re going to come out looking like a rock star. The dinos left over are very much Wally; if you’re anything like Asok the sky is the limit (the timeframe is a little longer than in other domains, but the end result is the same).
• The idea that we need an honest broker between the ‘preneurs and the old guard is one that seems to be percolating through a lot of minds these days. I don’t know what it takes to get something like that off the ground, but if my TT 2.0 efforts are any indication it is probably a big check (or a lot of smaller ones) so that people working it can quit their day jobs without losing their houses (or at least funding the equiv of 20% time). Not like there isn’t critical mass of support or bodies to work it …

I would like to think that we are on the cusp of some serious change in this business, primarily because we have the technology to help implement the ideas. By and large none of us is breaking new ground thought-wise; what has been lacking is the cheap, easy, fast and value-added way of implementing those thoughts. I will probably never get rid of a certain level of cynicism, but the part of me that actually holds out hope for progress gets bigger by the day.

I know its Friday, but there is “work” to do:

1. Hit the GI predictive market and place your (educated) bets. Sign up is a breeze, private, etc., etc. It wouldn’t kill you to click on an ad or two either; web sites don’t host themselves.

2. Send positive mind waves towards Foggy Bottom (or the Pentagon). The best mind in PD today is still gainfully under-employed in his preferred field.

3. Be careful what you say or type: big brother is listening/watching! Ha!

4. Read this and think about it. Related thoughts to follow.

5. Hit the new blogroll additions (here, here and here) if you have not already done so.

Party on Wayne.

In Canada the gov’t has been sticking it to people who say things “they” don’t like; fair warning that the gov’t has achieved IOC to stick it to those who don’t think thoughts “they” don’t like.

When first indoctrinated, he was DIRNSA, and loomed large in the field long after.

I find it interesting that a homeland security official is lamenting the lack of “skills” (really, science and math education) but - in the middle of disaster season in the mid-west - no one is raising a fuss about the lack the skills amongst the population needed to endure during a crisis (or even a car break-down). When you are temporarily back in the 19th century and waiting for Uncle Sam to come ‘round, a Ph.D. in particle physics isn’t all that useful. Not saying we don’t need more scientists, just that when things are fragile and break easily, I’ll take the town full of vo-tech grads over the citizens of Eureka any day.

I’m the geo-bachelor and none of my local fellow fellows can show up at the University Club to see Andy, Brian and Dr. Michael chat it up? What’s the world coming to?

As a side note, honestly, I can’t wait to get rich and belong to a private club.

Respect? Please. You think cops don’t catch flak from the public? I’ll put down a ten-spot that says your average big city beat cop would gladly trade his daily dose of fisticuffs and bodily fluids over your average Screener’s diet of dirty looks and snide comments.

Dressing up as a cop doesn’t make you a cop, just like wearing a badge doesn’t make you Sgt Angel. Abuses? Sure, but its not like this doesn’t happen now. Are Screeners enforcing the law? To an extent yes, but then under the proper circumstances so is a flight attendant, so do they get B&Cs too?

I think this is a bad idea not because I think Screeners don’t deserve respect; I’m against it because its “cop-creep.” If this is a job that doesn’t merit being sworn - or even being “inherently governmental” - then you should figure out a more appropriate way to dress and equip the people who do the job. If I remember right, back when private screeners were the norm, they wore a soft uniform. Its not like a hard uniform increases effectiveness.

My first online home, GroupIntel, is more or less back with its NatSec-themed prediction market. Be there or be a rhombus.

Global warming Climate change needs IC attention? Here is a tip: impacts on a practical level look a lot like this …

But of course highlighting that would call into question the success of that other “War on …” that has been raging for three-plus decades now; or the shortcomings of our neighboring trade parter …

OK, here you go (but I’m not spreading the virus! No! I won’t!).

You cannot be serious …

I hate to break it to the bleeding edge researchers who will be undertaking this study (or the person who came up with the idea), but people who do all those things are already on the job. They’re called - at the risk of painting with a broad brush - pretty much everyone who has been hired in the last five years (or ~50% of the workforce).

To be sure, people can get a little too open and careless with their online activities and persona, but like any pursuit or domain, there is the norm and then there are outliers. There are real issues and then there is just making stuff up to be a nuisance.

Yes, of course, you don’t want people to get too chatty about work with their cyber-buddy Kumar (or “Harold”) but then you don’t want people like Ames or Montes either. You can’t hire nothing but nuns or alter boys, you draw from the workforce available (or the workforce desired) and you craft policies and build mechanisms to mitigate the risk. That only now, well into the info age, are we studying these issues tells you all you need to know about how much real progress we’re going to make in a 2.0 world (full court media press notwithstanding).

• Politics and HUMINT are both inter-personal pursuits, but the price you pay for being careless in the latter cannot be repaid with a statement that “expands and clarifies” your earlier cock-up. When lives are on the line, if people don’t think they can trust you, they won’t work for you. All those sources are now on their way to the organ donation plant. Blame the Chinese all you want; you’re the one got pwned.
• If you want to give a boost to cyber security, there is this thing called the National Cyber Security Initiative that you might have heard of: pass the funding and …
• … Stop merely wagging your finger at agencies who turn in crap cyber security report cards. You might want to think about tying your passing a budget to them getting better grades.

All the time and effort volunteers have put it into creating Wikipedia is impressive, but it is only a fraction of what the human race is capable of producing, Internet culture consultant Clay Shirky has estimated. If we devoted as much time to research and writing as we spend in front of the boob tube, we could produce 2,000 Wikipedias a year, he said at the Web 2.0 Conference held in San Francisco in April.

• 100 million: Number of work hours it took to produce Wikipedia
• 200 billion: Number hours the world population spends each year watching TV

Hitz wasn’t troubled by the attempts to “humanize” the CIA. What concerned him was the pervasive attitude that it wasn’t much different from any other government agency.

On the one hand, when you work in this business, you have a whole different attitude about the nature of the job. Do you work for your Uncle? Sure, but you’re not some goll-dang paper pusher at DOT for crying out loud …

… yet you see evidence to the contrary if you look closely enough. It is a bureaucracy after all, and as I have pointed out before (channel Dr. Peter), the bureaucrat doesn’t derive any benefit from being original or thoughtful or displaying leadership.

You can flood the zone with stories about how you’re changing, but until “not doing things the way it has always been done” is a rated bullet on everyone’s eval, this is going to be slow, painful going. Have fun storming the castle …

…Daily I meet people who are struggling to keep their heads above water, crippled by their desire to always be “right” and to have an answer about what will happen n the future. But you can’t know this, nor do you need to. You just need to notice what is and isn’t working, and then be willing to flip.

A bitter personal struggle between two powerful figures in the world of terrorism has broken out, forcing their followers to choose sides. This battle is not being fought in the rugged no man¹s land on the Pakistan-Afghan border. It is a contest reverberating inside the Beltway between two of America¹s leading theorists on terrorism and how to fight it, two men who hold opposing views on the very nature of the threat.

In a nutsheel: “big” al Qaeda is still a major factor or it isn’t.

The problem with putting all your eggs into one theoretical terrorism basket is that, unlike proving theories in a lab, you lack the time and data to prove your theory in a meaningful timeframe … oh, and the fact that while you quibble people continue to die.

You cannot deny the power or at least the influence of old-school AQ; if they were not a factor, you wouldn’t have people wetting themselves every time the old man put out a new audio or video. As with anything that resembles a hierarchy however, there are limits to what can be accomplished when you are fighting time and distance before you can fight your enemy. In fact, the more distant and disconnected core al Qaeda is, the more likely everything is going to look like “a bunch of guys” because – like Kaiser Soze – almost no one is ever going to be sure who the heck they’re working for.

On the flip side, Sageman’s “just a bunch of guys” approach does not come without evidence, but adherents who make comments like “leaderless things don’t produce big outcomes” has not been paying attention to things like, oh, anything dealing with social networking, this thing called Wiki (or Intelli) pedia, or the data and discussion in a book you might have heard about.

Glomming on to the ascendant theory is indeed an issue, and anyone who says they’re not tweaking their mission statements and statements of work to help bolster their positions and expand their rice bowls is making statements inconsistent with the truth. The problem with jumping from theory to theory of course is that you end up spending precious little time dealing with real, actual problems. In keeping with the lab analogy, when most of your day is spent filling out paperwork and delivering PPT in order to justify your order of test tubes and ager plates, that’s time and resources you’re not putting into research.

FWIW, our strategy to combat terrorism should not be theory-chasing, but focusing on commonalities and neutralizing their impact on people and society. I don’t care who issued your orders, the steps necessary to affect and effective terrorist attack are the same. Who issued the orders means less and less if you can develop the means to minimize the impact of their tactics. Look past my inelegant language and appreciate the sentiment as it is intended: when terrorism can only produce nuisance, not chaos, then we have in effect won.

… ‘cause you asked for it …

I find it amusing that this lot will be the first to rail about “misleading” statements or “lies” about the war, intelligence, etc., but no one points out the utter nonsense of the phrase “secretive investment fund” is when talking about Carlyle. It is, exactly, how much more or less “secretive” than any other private equity fund?

Equally amusing is the idea that intelligence contracting is some sort of new issue or any sort of scandal. Its only been going on for decades. It is, quite naturally, the natural outgrowth of the fact that under current conditions that gov’t can only get so big. Lots of missions + not enough federal employees = need for contractors. Its pretty fundamental.

Of course, were the intelligence and security arms of the gov’t to get bigger, there would be no shortage of stories about the rise of a police state …

So easy to bitch: where’s your solution?

Me, holding up Armstrong and Axe after their 12th shot of Jager:

We think the stranger on the right lifted David’s wallet. ;-)
(H/T Wizards of Oz)

Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a US government website for his research into terrorist tactics.

I’m mean, WTF?!

This actually piggy backs off an earlier discussion I had with Jack Wiley: what in the world happened to patience? Where is the need to validate your information? You would think that bombing the wrong building or shooting the wrong person or illegally detaining children would make people in investigative and intelligence positions just a smidge wary about the data they act on. In fact in some cases, one has to wonder if any serious investigating or analytic rigor is applied at all. Is there sometimes a need for immediate action? Sure, but exigent circumstances is supposed to be rare.

Even if there is a reasonable suspicion that merits attention, there is this thing called “context” that so many people fail to take into consideration. I’ll bet any money that any G-town security studies student has enough reading material and browser bookmarks to merit arrest and detection under the aforementioned circumstances. It goes beyond information though, to things like tools and materials. Time was dynamite was not an unheard of thing to have on a farm; now too much fetilizer or propane gets people in a tizy.

The most common, likely explanation is usually the most accurate. If you want to dig deeper, do it quietly so that - if Occam’s razor happens to be dull in a given case - you gain enough intelligence to act intelligently. Perpetuate the fly-off-the-handle approach and not only with no one believe you, no one will trust you. Not exactly the kind of sentiment a national security establishment wants to perpetuate.

When first indoctrinated, he was DIRNSA, and loomed large in the field long after.

e-Subversion rocks.