Haft of the Spear

DNI says my former colleagues can come out of the closet.

Update:

Reading ICD-205 (PDF) reveals some interesting tidbits, like the assignment of an Analytic Outreach Coordinator to be a given agency’s belly button on outreach efforts. Smart in the sense that you don’t want to duplicate efforts and there is the matter of security to consider, but one wonders - this being the IC and a bureaucracy at heart - how much gate keeping will go on and how this may hinder real advancements in this area. The AOC is not supposed to be an “additional administrative approving authority” but we’d be fools to assume that this will become a bottleneck of sorts (perhaps not intentionally, its just a lot to expect the hidebound to become open and communicative overnight).

Section 4.a. is also notable in that it effectively allows for outside expertise to surge against problems during a crisis. A number of agencies, in the wake of 9/11, drew from the ranks of retired officers to help fill in gaps and work on “stuff that can’t not get done” even though the GWOT was in full force. Intel reform legislation called for the creation of an intel reserve, which has yet to see the light of day; perhaps this is a baby step in that direction?

All in all a very positive step forward, at least on paper. Let’s see how it works in practice.

As I was discussing with Bob prior to slaying the almighty and delicious bass, say you were building your TT 2.0; what are your building blocks? Bob’s suggestions:

• Phone: Grand Central
• Email of choice
• GTalk or aggregate IM app

• Google Apps

• Acrobat.com
• Connect.com
• Blog platform of choice
• Twitter
• Wiki

• NING
• Facebook
• LinkedIn

Thoughts? Alternatives? For the time being, let’s assume cost is not an object.

The IC releases its vision thing (PDF) and I toss (hopefully constructive) spit balls.

…the bad guys win.

Our editorial meetings take place via conference calls and e-mails, and these days I find myself back to where I began: writing headlines, composing ledes and copy-editing. My work clothes are often a bathrobe or a pair of gym shorts, and my work day sometimes ends at 1 a.m.

Am I too old to be doing this? On the contrary, I think I’m just about the right age. We think of entrepreneurship as being a young person’s game, requiring the brashness and energy of youth. But what I’ve learned over the last 30 years in Silicon Valley is that youthful energy — and this is especially true of today’s Gen Y’s — comes in short bursts and is ill-equipped for the kind of long-term consistency needed to run a modern Web 2.0 social network.

Moreover, an awful lot of that energy — as was the case with my failed start-ups 20 years ago — is wasted on meaningless work. Far better to understand what needs to be done, what decisions must be made and then to just get on with it. That takes experience.

In the spirit of DR’s Five for Fighting (and as an exercise to help me catch up after a week slaying delicious bass):

• Why in the world can’t we prepare for both? Especially since a smart adversary knows exactly what to do when faced with our precious technical superiority. Seems pretty straight forward to me that once that happens it would be nice to know how to go all Patrick Swayze on their @$$es.
• Nice to see having a positive outlook/interpretation of the data paid off.
• We all thought Larry W. was crazy when he said the RU-CH border was not where they said it was; whose crazy now?
• ASD Paul McHale: Let’s use a “national” resource nationally. Definitely someone who gets it.
• Selil: some original thoughts in a field full of code-reusers and BS artists. Another example of why more minds on a problem = better solutions.
• Like a neighborhood watch, only quite different.
• When terrorists do deals with gangs and fund ops with drugs and other crimes, do we need to expand the definition of what is anti-terrorism, or just trust that locals know their problems and will prioritize accordingly?
• Why US business will always get its lunch eaten until they start taking security seriously.
• 2.0 discussion penetrates 1.0 media. Ever forward.
• Trending: GOTS to COTS to open source; which is why this is a call that is long overdue.
• If it is worth saying, and truthful, isn’t it worth saying under your own name?

Off to stalk and slay walleye for a week (read: catch no walleyes, but an annoying about of bluegill).

The people who pay for the widgets can’t/not talking to the people who make the widgets: the guys who need to use widgets end up paying the price. How could TT 2.0 fix this?

• If legal interpretations are going to change with administrations, there can be no guarantee that formal sit-downs on problem programs, much less for general purposes will take place with regularity. This is a serious problem for efforts that run 5, 10 years or more. It negatively impacts trust, leads to communications breakdowns, which exacerbates current problems and creates new ones. TT 2.0 as an assembly of those with .mil and .com experience who can act as sounding board and honest broker ensures a stable and trusted comms path.
• In that honest broker role, TT 2.0 can serve as the “Gartner” or “Forrester” for defense (and perhaps later IC) offices and programs looking for advice and guidance on what tech or strategic paths to follow. Helps avoid falling victim to “nobody ever got fired” syndrome.
• As a more accessible entity, TT 2.0 can also take into consideration practitioner and engineer input that would most likely be ignored by high-level panels. This is not about real or perceived corruption or temptation, but a more-minds-better-solutions thing. The filter from field to mahogany row can be severe.

No shortage of possible participants, and of course the technology is here, but the 800 lbs gorilla is how to pay for it. Mix of gov and corporate dollars (fixed and aggregated to reduce external influence) is one option. Now, if only we had a proponent …

Will a peace deal be reached between Israel and Palestine, by the end of Bush’s term?

BTW: If you’ve got an idea for a market, you can create it on the site (pending admin approval).

When one of your nat-sec advisors used to be the cyberterror czar, this is not surprising.

Given that “cyberterror” is actually un-terrifying, it makes more sense to try and tackle what terrorists are doing online: communicating and making money. In other words: cyber crime and the digital black globalization the enables it.

… Wow. Now that I put it that way, and given that we’re on our third 5-year rota of “getting serious” about cyber crime, it kind of seems hopeless/pointless …

Still waiting for the original thinking in this space. What is clear – at the risk of drawing a real/cyber world metaphor – is that the too-few Marshals to cover too much territory model of policing the wild frontier of cyber space isn’t working. We can fight the digital hoard with a hoard of our own, or we can let the brigands run roughshod over us and wonder why we ever left the old (analog) country.

Its easy to make fun, but at some point it would be prudent to note that at a certain level in any organization, travel time is not an excuse to catch up on (fitful) sleep or bust out the PSP, its just another opportunity to get some work done. Granted, there is your standard first class seating and then there is your flying private suite, and I don’t know that we should be reprogramming CT funds for this, but give a General a break. ;-)

I forget the gov’t doesn’t work at the speed of Brown:

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is pleased to confirm your attendance at the “DNI Open Source Conference 2008: Decision Advantage” at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, DC, on September 11-12, 2008.

Syria-Israel Peace Deal.

Airports, amusement parks, no matter, its all wrong (right?).

Cheryl rings the bell for round two. (H/T Zen)

Twice in the same week I find myself torn between wanting to applaud a fellow intelligence commentator and smack my forehead in frustration at their density. The latest voice from behind the curtain is Melvin Goodman, whose op-ed in the Baltimore Sun is a great example of a former practitioner who is stuck in a rut and wants us to believe he’s blazing a trail.

Not an exceedingly common event, but fairly regular and on varying scales in various industries. Now imagine a bunch of torqued-off expats from the sub-continent going disobedient on your info infrastructure because they aren’t down with your foreign policy. Hmmmm.

Hooah!

Buddy Matt recently vented about Apple’s cr@p customer service. They’re probably also providing the customer service for the DNI OSINT Conference. Helloooooo?! Little help at the registration desk please?

Meant to get Lewis Shepherd’s blog up on the ‘roll ages ago … hey brother has bills to pay … baby needs a new pair of shoes …

… you’re wrong. Easy to set up, easy to participate, private, and it helps out a good friend (I wouldn’t be blabbing on the ‘tubes without him).

Don’t make me tell you again: Be there or be a rhombus.

Oh, sure, everyone responds when Bob asks for input. I get crickets. Fine, I’ll just take my ball and bat …

When do people stop paying serious attention to a given issue? When “everything” is related to the issue:

The gas [NF3], widely used in the manufacture of flat screen TVs, is estimated to be 17,000 times as powerful as carbon dioxide.

Ironically, NF3 is not covered by the Kyoto protocol as it was only produced in tiny amounts when the treaty was signed in 1997.

Levels of this gas in the atmosphere have not been measured, but scientists say it is a concern and are calling for it to be included in any future emissions cutting agreement.

If its not TVs its cow farts. Tomorrow it will be my bar of Irish Spring.

Just to be clear: I get it. Pollution = bad. I’m not down with pollution. I am as green as is practical and will be greener still once green tech gets up to speed.

Looking at this from a “guy who studies and tries to help solve problems” angle, seriously, this global warming climate change business is getting ridiculous. A few decades ago when the plant was in danger of freezing solid, where was a proposal like this? In light of how successful the conglomeration that is DHS has been, what possible sense does such a move make? Fusion of hierarchies != improved capabilities.

If serious people think this is a serious problem, then the best thing to do would be to STFU, seriously incentivize greenness, and watch the smart, effective solutions appear. Today’s trend may show that life sucks for Denali owners, but I don’t see a line backing up in front of the Metro dealership or hear about a run on Prius (Prii?). the more everyone flails about (especially true in intel or defense problems) the more questionable parties get involved in the process (as they glom on for the money, power or glory).

Expect the normal hue and cry over this development, despite the common-sense nature at its core. That you would intentionally not take such factors into consideration (along with many others) is somewhat laughable given the stats. So they’re recruiting whitey, OK, so you’re going to ignore the tank in front of you because there is a sniper behind the tank?

The issue is not that we shouldn’t be asking such questions or considering such factors, it’s that a man with a badge and a gun is doing the asking. I won’t re-hash the issues the Bureau has long had WRT the intelligence business; suffice it to say that there are stronger bastions of capabilities that would most likely produce better results. That we are prohibited by law from turning those capabilities towards domestic threats leaves us with no alternative but to punt the mission to arguably the least capable entity. Good enough for gov’t work I guess.

From Economist:

Mr Gates had the good fortune to be perfectly suited for his time—but he is less well-equipped for the collaborative and fragmented era of internet computing. This does not diminish his achievement. Nor, as some would have it, does his philanthropy necessarily magnify it. Whatever the corporate-social-responsibility gurus say, business is a force for good in itself: its most useful contribution to society is making profits and products. Philanthropy no more canonises the good businessman than it exculpates the bad. In spite of his flaws, Mr Gates is one of the good kind. Some great industrialists, like Henry Ford, stick around even as the world moves on and their powers fail. Mr Gates, pragmatic to the end, is leaving at the top.

As much as it might be needed, no purge of any hierarchy’s long-since-useful staff is likely (aside from normal attrition of boomers with sufficient retirement savings). Those who resist the most (based on the angry finger-waving I get when I bring it up) are those that don’t have their minds in the right place, a’la Bill G. In the end it isn’t an argument about how successful any given individual or mission was, its about the kind of shift that is taking place all around that overwhelms individual will. I mean, no matter how much you might like the sound, there is a reason why REO Speedwagon is playing at the local country club and not Wolf Trap. Calls for reform aren’t about malice or disrespect, they’re about business. When you make it personal, that’s when you end up causing the most damage.

I continue to be amazed at the level of effort put forth by a union on behalf of one of our Uncle’s largest exempt workforces. I don’t quite understand the motivation. I guess if you want to argue intel is more art than science, then sure, I’m down with joining the Teamsters (if nothing else for the jacket).

Look unless you want to go to a seriously objective system of measuring performance, there is no system that is not going to be abused by unscrupulous SOBs. The union assumes however that every boss is an SOB, and I don’t know about the rest of you, but that has rarely been my experience. In fact, more often than not I have seen bosses hampered by the performance/reward system and very deserving people effectively shortchanged because the rules were not flexible enough to account for the fact that they were rock stars.

What the union doesn’t want is a tech-based solution (the IC versions of Digg, Ebay and Amazon rankings) that would show objectively who was collaborating and having a measurable impact in the community (logs have no reason to lie). When measuring performance is simple math, you don’t need to pay dues for an advocate.

That last post, was my 1,000th at HoTS (does not count everything I did at GroupIntel).

Ostensibly, this should make it easier to get the right people in the right place in a timely manner (both for short and long-term arrangements).

Now, if we can just fix the initial clearance issue and stop cannibalizing each other.

Done properly, this is how you could help resolve the who, what, when, where and how of Iraq, based on captured media. Of course the rush to forget is well underway, so breath holding is ill-advised.