Category: Corruption

Responding to David Isenberg: Intelligence On Demand in a Mobile Device – Hardy Har Har Choke Cough Gag

Robert,

Your comments are absolutely correct. Here are some supplemental thoughts on this:

The use of mobile devices to provide intelligence to policy makers is a very superficial concept that ignores the more important question of content. The fact of the matter is that the U.S. IC is now primarily focused on institutional survival and growth. I am not sure that any U.S. President since President Eisenhower has considered intelligence as a key ingredient in policy development or strategic planning.

The NSA has been popular with most Presidents and JCS because it traditionally provides fragmentary snippets of information with no effort to actually analyze their meaning in a larger context. The same is true for the NGA. CIA “all source intelligence reporting” ceased to be important after President Nixon dissolved their Office of National Estimates. DIA continues to be an agency without a mission. And of course ODNI and DHS are political gestures that have no relevance to decision support intelligence.

An independent Open Source Intelligence Agency staffed by serious people who place integrity over institutional loyalty would be a threat to the rest of the IC. If such an agency approached the development of intelligence from a global, multinational context, its products would be impossible for any rational policy maker to ignore. For this reason don’t put any money on such an agency being created in our lifetimes.

Richard

Continue reading “Richard Wright: Intelligence with Integrity – Not in Our Lifetime – Plus Steele on Soft Landing”

(1)  Little to disagree with here; (2) I remember author's name from my first years in current job; (3)  there seem to be multiple reserve studies/actions ongoing now; (4) there is a major effort ongoing to reduce the number of Reserve/National Guard soldiers brought on active duty for “Active Duty of Operational Support.”

Phi Beta Iota:  The article below is well-intentioned but ignorant.  The infantry, 4% of the force, takes 80% of the casualties and gets 1% of the budget.  There is plenty of money for a properly sized well-equipped, trained, and organized force including a National Guard optimized for domestic disorder and disaster and once in a lifetime deployment.  What General Flynn is about to discover is that DIA and USDI civilians expect him to drink the kool-aid and “go along” with pathologically dysfunctional intelligence, policy, acquisition, and operations processes that are not just inadequate and ineffective, but also unaffordable.   The “design” potential of intelligence with integrity has been absent from the US Intelligence Community for over 50 years now.  The time has come to restore that potential….in an election year, this might be exactly what is needed, not just for DoD, but across Whole of Government.  Afterthought:  18 veteran suicides a day – day after day after day.  Has this been analyzed (e.g. breakdown by MOS and NG vs Active vs Reserve)?

The Best Defense (ricks.foreignpolicy.com)
August 31, 2012

These Days, Reservists Are Just Soldiers Who Get Laid Off Between Deployments

By Maj. Gen. Michael Symanski (US Army, ret.), Best Defense department of reserve affairs

The Army will add more time to the National Guard and Reserve training year, so let's be candid about what the “operational” reserve military forces really are: A method to avoid the cost of a full-time military of adequate size. The reserve force, which was our strategic capital banked for a once-in-a-career national military emergency, has been cashed in because our expensive regular force has been too small to wage a protracted war. We no longer have citizen soldiers; we have professional soldiers who are laid off between deployments overseas.

Continue reading “Marcus Aurelius: These Days, Reservists Are Just Soldiers Who Get Laid Off Between Deployments”