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2013 Craft of Intelligence2012 Open Source Everything2011 National Intelligence and National Defense2010 The Ultimate Hack2009 Intelligence for the President– AND Everybody Else2009 Fixing the White House and National Intelligence2008 World Brain as Earth Game2007 How to Restore Spies Credbility: Go Open Source2006 On Intelligence2006 Open Source Intelligence2002 New Craft1995 Smart Nation1995 Reinventing Intelligence1992 Ethics & Intelligence1991 Expeditionary Intelligence
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.
In the context of the Police Reform Agenda, the NIM is ‘A Model for Policing' that ensures information is fully researched, developed and analysed to provide intelligence which enables senior managers to:
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.
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2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity & Sustainability
Capstone book on hybrid governance based on shared information and ethical evidence-based decision-making
A massive cultural tsunami is sweeping round the world as the five billion poor acquire Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and the one billion rich realize that the era of Empire Rule Of, By, and For the Few is over. Happily, this is a revolution in human affairs that will be non-violent for the simple reason that no redistribution of existing wealth can match the infinite new wealth that the entrepreneurial poor can create for themselves when empowered with ICT.
We are entering an era in which global networks and the sharing of information can create revolutionary wealth at the micro-level, while enabling the harmonization of investments at the macro-level. This is an era in which transparency of cost and effect will eradicate corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse at the same time that it makes possible global to local engagement and collaboration such that we can create a prosperous world at peace. This is an era in which we will see a bottom-up conscious evolution of humanity that liberates and leverages the one inexhaustible resource we have: the human brain.
In 2004 the Secretary-General s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change published its findings as A more secure world: our shared responsibility. Unlike other extraordinary books this remarkable endeavor not only achieved consensus among diverse contributing Members, but actually prioritized the ten high-level threats to humanity as follows:
01 Poverty
02 Infectious Disease
03 Environmental Degradation
04 Inter-State Conflict
05 Civil War
06 Genocide
07 Other Atrocities
08 Proliferation
09 Terrorism
10 Transnational Crime
Inspired by this analytically-robust identification and prioritization of the ten high-level threats to humanity, the author funded and organized Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), a 501c3 Public Charity, to provide the United Nations (UN) and its Member states, all private sector and civil society organizations, and the public at large, with a strategic analytic model suitable for creating public intelligence in the public interest.
This book is intended to be a catalyst for the creation of the United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN), and the establishment of the Office of the Assistant Secretary General for Decision-Support (ASG/DS). Should a sufficiency of the Member nations concur, this book also provides a model for creating a Multinational Decision-Support Centre (MDSC) using the military as a hub for global access to unclassified information from the other seven tribes of intelligence [academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, and non-profit or non-governmental] combined with multinational sense-making and unclassified decision-support for stabilization & reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief operations.
EIN has achieved several modest breakthroughs that are outlined within this book, which is a capstone work, completely original but deeply rooted in thirty years of professional experience and intellectual reflection. The ideas in this book are implementable today.
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2006 INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information in All Languages All the Time
Still the best overview of “real” Information Operations, vice cyber-idiocy
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2003 PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future
Still the best book on information peacekeeping and peacekeeping intelligence
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2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political Donate $25. Still the one best book for any citizen not trusting their government to be honest
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2000 ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Still the best tough love critique and prescription for the future. Collector's item.
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