Power corrupts, no doubt about it. What most people miss is that it is not just about financial corruption that explicitly mis-directs scarce resources to benefit the few over the many (with Congress taking its standard 5% kick-back for delivering earmarks). Power also corrupts intellect. People forget how to think. They begin talking among themselves, shutting out external views, creating an incestuous cycle of circular citation. Col Mike Pheneger, then J-2 at the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) discovered this with respect to the Cuban Order of Battle (OOB), and I have found this myself on many occasions over the years.
Recently I have observed two deeply dysfunctional conversations in Washington. The first deals with intelligence and information overload, the second with the force structure requirements for the U.S. military beyond 2014.
Blithering Blobs of Blogdom
The intelligence discussion is best represented by SASA/INSA and The New America Foundation. The first fronts for the intelligence-industrial complex and the second for a mix of benefactors, none of whom appear actually interested in creating a government that works for all. Indeed, it can be said that the secret intelligence world and the “non-profit” think tank world share the same motivation: do whatever it takes to keep the money (inputs) moving, never mind the outputs or the outcomes.
EDIT of 21 January 2013: I have gotten both sharp criticism from folks I revere, and complements. I am more than willing to delete this, but I am more interested in having people think outside the lines. I've made some revisions, adding issues and readings in each section. Email me as you please, robert.david.steele.vivas [at] gmail [dot] com. I'm doing this to raise some ethical nuances, not to deny or revise history. Relevance to today: the “government” rarely tells the truth, and the “reasons” it gives for doing things that ultimately benefit the few at the expense of the many are generally, at best, “flimsy” and at worst, “calculated lies.” All institutions are lacking in both intelligence (decision-support) and integrity (holistic transparent analytics). Wars are a form a global crime, they are not fought for the reasons given, and the public ALWAYS loses while bankers ALWAYS gain. We need to change that. Thomas Jefferson had it right — we need to be better armed than the government — not just guns, but intelligence with integrity. That's what I think about.
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A colleague I respect very much suggested I watch Lincoln, the new movie, for an understanding of a leadership style that worked. Having dismissed the movie because of its erroneous depiction of the Civil War as being about slavery (it was actually a war for and against secession, and a war of conquest from the north of the south), I demurred. Today I read the following from Bill Clinton speaking to an adoring crowd in Hollywood, and it put me to thinking about the point my colleague was trying to make:
“A tough fight to push a bill through a bitterly divided House of Representatives: Winning it required the president to make a lot of unsavory deals that had nothing to do with the big issue.” A little shrug. “I wouldn't know anything about that,” Clinton said. His audience laughed.
Abraham Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln's struggle to abolish slavery “reminds us that enduring progress is forged in a cauldron of both principle and compromise,” Clinton went on. This film “shows us how he did it, and gives us hope that we can do it again.”
I have known for some time that I am viewed as uncompromising, perhaps even arrogant, in my insistence on intelligence with integrity, and my intolerance of the civil service and uniformed leaders who pander to politicians who shake down corporations and banks for campaign contributions, and then discount the public treasury by 95% solely for the purpose of getting their 5% kick-back, without any deep thought of the public interest, and certainly without considering any ethical evidence-based decision-support. Those same civil service and uniformed leaders are never held accountable for failure and roll over into retirement jobs with the industries they have not been holding accountable themselves. At the end of the day, 50 percent of every federal dollar is waste, and the other 50 percent is primarily beneficial to the recipient of the taxpayer revenue, not to the taxpayer.
A mass murder and an alleged suicide are very much on my mind these days. The mass murder is that of Sandy Hook, and the alleged suicide is that of Adam Swartz. I am quite certain that the government is covering up the facts on Sandy Hook, and not investigating the death ostensibly by hanging, of Aaron Swartz. I will return to these in my conclusion.
First I will touch on The War, Principle, on Compromise, and then on Citizen Intelligence / Counterintelligence and finally on Autonomous Internet.
Joseph Stiglitz, an economist I admire and would trust as one of several advisers has written a provocative essay, “The Post-Crisis Crisis” (Project Syndicate, 9 January 2013). Here is his opening:
NEW YORK – In the shadow of the euro crisis and America’s fiscal cliff, it is easy to ignore the global economy’s long-term problems. But, while we focus on immediate concerns, they continue to fester, and we overlook them at our peril. The most serious is global warming. While the global economy’s weak performance has led to a corresponding slowdown in the increase in carbon emissions, it amounts to only a short respite. And we are far behind the curve: Because we have been so slow to respond to climate change, achieving the targeted limit of a two-degree (centigrade) rise in global temperature, will require sharp reductions in emissions in the future. Some suggest that, given the economic slowdown, we should put global warming on the backburner. On the contrary, retrofitting the global economy for climate change would help to restore aggregate demand and growth. Read full article.
Joseph is well-intentioned in his focus on global warming and the need to create resilient localities and nations that ut people to work creating green infrastructure, but this is — with all humility — like painting the Titanic before driving it into the iceberg. Cosmetic.
It never occurred to me, when I lost the first bureaucratic battle on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) in 1992, that my innate sense of integrity [do the right thing] would lead me to resign from the Marine Corps civil service in 1993 as a very young GM-14, and spend not five, not ten, but twenty years wandering in the wilderness helping over 66 governments and over 7,500 mid-career officers get a grip on sources and methods the traditional secret services refused to consider and the traditional consumers of intelligence did not know how to do. Of all my student bodies, the USA was the worst, remaining ignorant at the leadership level, helpless at the follower level–butts in seats, no brain required. Hence, as we approach a historic turning point, the possibility that we might have a Secretary of State and a Secretary of Defense that can actually get a grip on reality together, I thought it might be useful to offer up three things I have learned during my 20-year walk-about:
Robert David STEELE Vivas Click on Image for Personal Page
The Hourglass Strategy: Healing the Americas with Intelligence & Integrity
Robert David STEELE Vivas, CEO, Earth Intelligence Network
Mr. Steele grew up in Latin America, returning as a clandestine case officer, and then going on to teach governments across the region how to leverage Open Source Intelligence (OSINT). He is the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction, reading in 98 categories, and has been described in the media as a serial pioneer and an unsung hero helping create the future. If implemented, ethical evidence-based decision-support becomes the foundation for a completely new innovative and positive OAS in the Americas.
Click on Image to Enlarge
The USA and the OAS have lost their way. The formation of CELAC (Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) was ignored, just as President Barack Obama ignored the value of the book Open Veins of Latin America when it was given to him by President Hugo Chavez. The seven sins of American foreign policy, beginning with ignorance and ending with arrogance, persist. Meanwhile, in Asia – and reinforcing the future of CELAC – President Obama was politely sent home with a sound rejection of his proposed and obviously predatory Trans-Pacific Partnership; instead, a Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) is being established. The Western Hemisphere including the Arctic should be but is not Priority One for the USA and OAS. The fact is that the USA and OAS lack a strategy, lack coherent policies, and lack harmonized spending strategies for embracing, nurturing, and devising mutually beneficial diplomatic, informational, military, and economic (DIME) programs. This is a global short-coming best addressed first in relation to the Americas.
Robert David STEELE Vivas Click on Image for Personal Page
Telling the truth to those who have replaced intelligence with ideology and integrity with loyalty to something other than their Republic is most difficult and more often than not will get you fired, because those without integrity tend to be promoted in corrupt systems, and they see clearly the threat to their world-view — and their perks — of someone who persists in pointing out that the truth at any cost reduces all other costs.
Reform can be job and revenue neutral from state to state and district to district — and is of course subject to Congressional oversight via the authorization and appropriations process. Below are seven truths about the US military that I would like to see introduced into the hearings on the confirmation of the next Secretary of Defense, and ideally also tasked to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), where the senior specialist for each of the major services is capable of validating my views.
There is one consideration I would like to discuss with you. While exploring for many years how to address the need for the military to understand all areas and aspects of the human environment, I had the opportunity to listen to many members of the intelligence community speaking about their role in achieving that understanding. I used to have the traditional military idea that it was the role of intel to provide the information and much of the knowledge. Along the way, they got me to doubt this view. Finally, they convinced me that the intel community, as we still know it today, is not a supplier of this understanding, but a customer. Understanding the human environment is a product stemming from Open Sources Information, but not from military intelligence. Intel's role might be, based on the understanding made available by others, to develop the specific products suiting its specific goals : targeting and counter intelligence.
As a general statement, no one nation has put this together — the Mediterranean countries have the skills and mind-set, the Sandanavian countries have the motivation and interest, and the Americans have the money — but the three “sets” are not coming together at this time.
Thank you for all the material you are producing.
Cheers,
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Long Answer with Graphics to Four Part Question Below the Line
