Cultural Intelligence – Page 835 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/09/082011/09/08

Chuck Spinney: Grand Strategy Analysis of 9/11 Blow-Back

03 Economy, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Commerce, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

An excellent grand-strategic analysis of last 10 years.

September 1, 2011

9/11 Blowback

By H.D.S. GREENWAY

Historians will label the events of that September morning 10 years ago as the most destructive act of terrorism ever committed up to that time. But I suspect they will also judge America’s last decade as one of history’s worst overreactions.

Of course overreaction is what terrorists hope to provoke. If judged by that standard, 9/11 was also one of history’s most successful terrorist acts, dragging the United States into two as yet unresolved wars, draining the treasury of $1 trillion and climbing, as well as damaging America’s power and prestige. These wars have empowered our enemies and hurt our friendships, and have almost certainly generated more terrorists than they have killed.

Like other victims of terrorism, the United States believed that somehow the answer could be found in brute force. But ideas seldom yield to force, and militant Islam is an idea. The result has been the militarization of U.S. foreign policy.

Read original.

Safety copy below the line.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Grand Strategy Analysis of 9/11 Blow-Back”

2011/09/082011/09/08

Todd Essig: Huge Psychological Bias Against Creativity

Advanced Cyber/IO, Cultural Intelligence

Managing The Psychological Bias Against Creativity

You come up with a great new idea at work, or at home. Or a political leader actually tries something “new and different” when faced with a previously intractable problem. But then, rather than grateful acceptance, or even a fair hearing, the idea is squashed, ridiculed, or otherwise ignored.

Sound familiar? It should. As anyone who has ever suggested a creative solution knows, people often avoid the uncomfortable uncertainty of novel solutions regardless of potential benefit. Creativity, no matter how much we say we like it, frequently elicits what my grandmother used to warn about, “too smart is half stupid” (for a current illustration look no further than the Obama administration).

Now, new research, soon to appear in Psychological Science, titled “The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas” empirically documents how our resistance to uncertainty makes the “old ways” far stickier than they should be given the practical benefits of creative, new solutions. Once again, the biases built into our minds leave us simultaneously moving in opposite directions; we like creativity but avoid creative ideas because creative ideas are too, in a word, creative.

Our results show that regardless of how open minded people are, when they feel motivated to reduce uncertainty either because they have an immediate goal of reducing uncertainty, or feel uncertain generally, this may bring negative associations with creativity to mind which result in lower evaluations of a creative idea. Our findings imply a deep irony. Prior research shows that uncertainty spurs the search for and generation of creative ideas …, yet our findings reveal that uncertainty also makes us less able to recognize creativity, perhaps when we need it most.

via Jennifer S. Mueller, Shimul Melwani, and Jack A. Goncalo “The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire But Reject Creative Ideas”

Reference: Council of Europe on Abuse of State Secrecy — the Beginning of Global Push-Back on CIA Rendition, Torture, and Assassination–JSOG Next

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Commissions, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government

EU-StateSecrecy — Click on Image to Enlarge

Council of Europe Draft Resolution on Abuse of State Secrecy and National Security

Tip of the Hat to Public Intelligence.Net at Twitter. In our view this represents the beginning of global push-back against crimes against humanity by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) acting “in our name” and at our expense. Similar push-back against the Joint Special Operations Group (JSOG) can be expected.

2011/09/072011/09/07

Venessa Miemis: Libraries as Hackerspaces?

04 Education, 11 Society, Academia, Advanced Cyber/IO, Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Hacking

Are Libraries the Hackerspaces of the Future?

September 7, 2011

As I was reading through the projects coming to our upcoming Contact Summit in NYC next month, I was inspired by a few people who are reimagining what a library could be.

Library Turns Hackerspace

Perhaps you’ve heard the term hackerspace, or something along a similar vein, like makerspace, makerlab, or fab lab. Wikipedia defines it as

“a location where people with common interests, usually in computers, technology, science, or digital or electronic art can meet, socialise and/or collaborate. Hackerspaces can be viewed as open community labs incorporating elements of machine shops, workshops and/or studios where hackers can come together to share resources and knowledge to build and make things.”

Click on Image to Enlarge

Read full post.

Phi Beta Iota: Note the Weberian centralized Dewey system on the left, and the chaordic vivaciousness on the right. This is what digital freedom and cultural freedom make possible.

2011/09/07

DefDog: Nation’s Top Cops Slam US Intelligence

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, IO Deeds of War, Law Enforcement

Failure, across the board…..implications of this for domestic security abound…..where has all the money gone?

Report: Nation's Top Cops Say U.S. Counterterror Effort Is Lacking

Ten years after 9/11, top cops in the nation's biggest cities feel there
are still significant gaps in the intelligence and analysis they receive
about terrorism, even as the homegrown terror threat looms larger.

A survey of intelligence commanders from America's 56 biggest cities conducted by the Homeland Security Policy Institute found the police chiefs believe the nation's intelligence enterprise is less robust than it could be, and that 62 percent of the chiefs felt this lack left them “unable to develop a complete understanding of their local threat.”

Read full article.

Read full report.

Phi Beta Iota: The “top cops” are great people, they just do not understand that the terror threat is fradulent and that the homeland security industrial complex is working precisely as intended, wasting hundreds of billions on fraudulent dysfunctional white and white-collar employment while channeling hundreds of billions in unearned profits to the homeland security industrial complex.

No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence

2011/09/06

Koko: China’s Spilled Secrets–A Tipping Point

02 China, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government

Koko Signs: Secrecy–when it is pervasive–cannot be micro-managed. As governments decline in legitimacy, and personal technologies become more pervasive than the instruments of secrecy, a tipping point is reached. We're there.

Op-Ed

China's spilled secrets

A remarkable YouTube video shows how hard it is to maintain control in a wired world.

By David WiseLos Angeles Times, September 6, 2011

Maj. Gen. Jin Yinan of the People's Liberation Army, in what he apparently thought was an internal briefing, revealed half a dozen cases of Chinese officials who had spied for Britain, the United States and other countries. Somehow, the video of his sensational disclosures leaked out. Clips of his hours-long talk appeared on at least two Chinese websites, Youku.com and Tudou.com, but were quickly removed by government censors.

Read full Op-Ed.

Phi Beta Iota: Colin Gray teaches us in Modern Strategy that time is the one thing that cannot be purchased nor replaced. The USA has blown a quarter century in its continuing corrupt quest for secrecy and its exploitation of secrecy and other information pathologies to further programs that are neither needed nor affordable. America, like China, is at a tipping point. The ability of the few to impose secrecy against the interests of the many is now done–expanding the Open Source revolution must be our highest priority, to include a year of paid retraining for every person now unemployed and every contractor about to become unemployed.

2011/09/062011/09/06

Paul Fernhout: How Security Clearance Process Harms National Security by Eradicating Cognitive Diversity

10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Threats

This essay discusses how the USA's security clearance process (mainly related to ensuring secrecy) may have a counter-productive negative effect on the USA's national security by reducing “cognitive diversity” among security professionals. Background refs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_clearance#United_States
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secrecy

Scott Page wrote an insightful book about the value of “cognitive diversity” in making effective groups, called The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies. From a review:

“Rather than ponder moral questions like, ‘Why can't we all get along?' Dr. Page asks practical ones like, ‘How can we all be more productive together?' The answer, he suggests, is in messy, creative organizations and environments with individuals from vastly different backgrounds and life experiences.”

Ralph J. Perro (a pseudonym) wrote an essay called: “Interviewing With An Intelligence Agency (or, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Fort Meade)”. From the document:

“After the process was over, I was talking to one of my references – a veteran Silicon Valley software executive, and former manager of mine. My reference commented on what transpired “That’s disappointing. If they can’t hire you, I have no idea who they can hire. That process seems to be designed to retain only the most bland.” The ‘bland’ comment might be a bit severe, however, considering the 1999 External Management report it would appear that the agency would appear to need creative thinkers & problem-solvers more than ever.”

What happens if you think about both of these together and consider the implications for US national security?

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