Category: Communities of Practice

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Phantom Phixer: Wall? What Wall?

Commerce, Government, Law Enforcement

Phantom PhixerHow Drug Cartels Operate Like Silicon Valley Startups

Tunnels, catapults, drones, and manned semi-submersibles.  Breast implants, fake carrots, and puppies.

skyrunner-in-flightDrug cannon discovered in Sonora

SkyRunner flying ATV goes on sale

According to its designers, it can go 115 mph on the ground, where it gets 53 mpg, and 55 mph in the air with a range of 200 nautical miles. Its maximum altitude is 15,000 feet, but FAA rules restrict its operation to 10,000 feet. All that’s needed to operate it is a sport pilot’s license, which can be earned with just 12 hours of lessons. As with most paragliders, it doesn't require an airport and can take off and land from just about any open stretch of ground, including the beach.

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Steven Aftergood: Sorting Out Snowden…

Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government
Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood

Sorting Through the Snowden Aftermath

Public discussion of the Edward Snowden case has mostly been a dialog of the deaf, with defenders and critics largely talking past each other at increasing volume. But the disagreements became sharper and more interesting over the past week.   . . . .   In an interesting response to Jack Goldsmith, Marcy Wheeler wrote that it is possible to comprehend — if not to reconcile — the sharply opposing views of the Snowden case if they are understood as a clash between professed American values (such as openness, privacy, and internet freedom) and American interests and actions (such as global surveillance and projection of military power). The former, “cosmopolitan” view presumes, however, that the favored values transcend, and can be sustained apart from, their national and institutional roots.

Continue reading “Steven Aftergood: Sorting Out Snowden…”

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Stephen E. Arnold: Marketing Assertions — Legal Lies?

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corruption, IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

Lousy Backlog? Sell with Interesting Assertions.

If you are struggling to fill the sales pipeline, you will feel some pressure. If you really need to make sales, marketing collateral may be an easy weapon to seize. I read “Examples of False Claims about Self-Service Analytics.” The write up singles out interesting sales assertions and offers them up in a listicle. I loved the write up. I lack the energy to sift through the slices of baloney in my enterprise search files. Therefore, let’s highlight the work the brave person who singled out eight vendors’ marketing statements as containing what the author called “false claims.” Personally I think each of these claims is probably rock solid when viewed from the point of view of the vendors’ legal advisers.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Marketing Assertions — Legal Lies?”

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Antechinus: CIA Killed OSINT at Birth — 80% of “OSINT” Studies are Bullshit

Academia, Commerce, Corruption, Government, Media
Antechinus
Antechinus

Further to the Phi Beta Iota comments on the mistaken limitation of OSINT to passive monitoring of web sites and such….

Prevalent approaches to countering ‘radicalisation’ ineffective, conceptually flawed

“A lack of research based on primary sources has been one of the major impediments to progress in the field of (counter-) terrorism studies… As numerous leading experts have warned, the consequences of an overreliance on secondary sources of information, such as newspapers, has led to a great amount of theorising based on a perilously small empirical foundation.”

More extracts, 2 cartoons, comment by Robert Steele below.

Continue reading “Antechinus: CIA Killed OSINT at Birth — 80% of “OSINT” Studies are Bullshit”

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Del Spurlock: Army Recruits Arrive Knowing Less

Civil Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Officers Call
Delbert J. Spurlock Jr.
Delbert J. Spurlock Jr.

Susanne M. Schafer of Associated Press offers a useful perspective on how Army recruits are changing and how the Army is changing to accommodate lower levels of knowledge about what used to be “basic.”

Fewer orders, more coaching: Army rookies learn to fire guns

As gun ownership drops among young Americans and the Army trains a generation more accustomed to blasting out emojis on cellphones than taking aim at targets, drill sergeants are confronting a new challenge: More than half of raw recruits have never held, let alone fired, a weapon.

Phi Beta Iota: Apart from only 1% of youth being eligible for the Army because the other 99% suffer from a broad range of disqualifying conditions including obesity, now we are realizing that new Army recruits simply don't know what past generations knew. A fresh look is needed at the relationship between the Army, education, and society. There may be roles for the Boy Scouts of America and the National Rifle Association — we have lost our foundation for a strong Army.

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Mongoose: Harvard Says Greatest Threat To USA Is Its Own Dysfunctional Political System…

Corruption, Government
Mongoose
Mongoose

Harvard study: Political ‘dysfunction' crippling U.S. economy

America’s dysfunctional political system has emerged as the biggest threat to its economic competitiveness, according to a new Harvard Business School study.   . . .

The authors polled Harvard Business School alumni on the political reforms they thought were needed. “By far the most common category of suggestion was changing the election process, including steps such as modifying the primary system and shortening elections,” the authors found. Others suggested “limiting campaign contributions from corporations and unions,” “changes to Congressional rules and norms,” and the institution of term limits. Continue reading “Mongoose: Harvard Says Greatest Threat To USA Is Its Own Dysfunctional Political System…”

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