Ineptitude – Page 61 – Public Intelligence Blog

2014/02/22

Stephen E. Arnold: Cash-Fueled Arrogance Displaced Innovation in IT Sector — No One Paying for the Plumbing [Facebook is Arrogant, Lazy, & Stupid]

Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

Last week, two of the senior ArnoldIT professionals delivered a one hour lecture to a select group of executives. The topic was related to our work in locating high-value information using open source content sources.

Shortly after our presentation I read “Google Was Willing to Beat Facebook’s $19B Offer for WhatsApp.” Quite a windfall for WhatsApp.

The thought that struck me was the way the deal illuminated a comment made by an investment banker attending out lecture last week. The former consultant told me:

We focus on innovation. We are looking in high tech sectors.

The statement is a bit of misdirection. The investment firm wants to find companies, inject cash, and then do a deal like the WhatsApp anomaly. The user of the word “innovation” is an audible pause. Like the person who uses “so” or “um” in conversation, the individual talking about innovation is not interested in innovation.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Cash-Fueled Arrogance Displaced Innovation in IT Sector — No One Paying for the Plumbing [Facebook is Arrogant, Lazy, & Stupid]”

2014/02/202014/02/20

Berto Jongman: Secrecy As Culture of Waste

03 Economy, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military, Peace Intelligence

Secrecy = culture of waste.

Balancing Transparency and National Security

Is keeping military funding secret truly necessary for national security? Not according to Pieter and Siemon Wezeman. Greater transparency not only makes governments more accountable, it also helps reduce the causes of insecurity and conflict.

By Pieter Wezeman and Siemon Wezeman for SIPRI

EXTRACT

The secrecy of military matters is an illusion

Many governments justify secrecy in military budgets on the basis that such information should not be allowed to fall into the hands of potentially hostile forces. However, maintaining secrecy about military spending and key military procurement projects is practically impossible. For example, SIPRI has had 45 years of experience in collecting information about military budgets and international arms transfers. Open sources, official or non-official, provide SIPRI with a wealth of information about the procurement of major arms. If organizations like SIPRI, with minimal resources and working only with open sources, can calculate military spending and map global arms transfers with a high degree of comprehensiveness and accuracy, then national intelligence agencies in potentially hostile countries are obviously able to achieve a lot more.

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2014/02/20

Stephen E. Arnold: Hewlett Packard (HP) Implodes — Stupid Over Autonomy, Corrupt at Root — the Same HP That Killed Alta Vista

Commerce, Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency

Frequentists Versus Bayesians: Is HP Amused?

I read a long report and then a handful of spin off reports about HP and Autonomy, mid February 2014 version. The Financial Times’s story is a for fee job. You can get a feel for the information in “HP Executives Knew of Autonomy’s Hardware Sales Losses: Report.” There are clever discussions of this allegedly “new information” in a number of blogs. What is interesting is an allegedly accurate chunk of information in “HP Explores Settlement of Autonomy Shareholder Lawsuit.” My head is spinning. HP buys something. Changes the person on watch when the deal was worked out. HP gets a new boss and makes changes to its board of directors. HP then accuses everyone except itself for buying Autonomy for a lot of money. HP then whips up the regulators, agitates accounting firms, and pokes Michael Lynch with a cattle prod.

As this activity was in the microwave, it appears that HP knew how the hardware/software deals were handled. If the reports are accurate, Dell hardware was more desirable than HP’s hardware.

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Hewlett Packard (HP) Implodes — Stupid Over Autonomy, Corrupt at Root — the Same HP That Killed Alta Vista”

2014/02/192014/02/19

Penguin: Is the Pentagon Completely Corrupt? Yes — F-35 Totally Vulnerable to Electromagnetic Neturalization

Corruption, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military

The New F-35 Fighter Jet Can Be Taken Down Without A Bullet Ever Being Fired

The F-35, the latest fighter jet being developed for the U.S. Armed Forces, has hit another potential snag.This time, it's not questions of the jet's structural integrity or even questions of relevance in combat.

It's the plane's vulnerability to hackers.

The F-35's helmet displays an augmented reality overview, which is drawn from six cameras across the body of the plane. This enables the pilot to look around the cockpit and, instead of seeing the interior of the plane, see directly through the cameras at the world outside.

This computational capability is all run by a computer system called ALIS.

Continue reading “Penguin: Is the Pentagon Completely Corrupt? Yes — F-35 Totally Vulnerable to Electromagnetic Neturalization”

2014/02/18

NIGHTWATCH: India Begins Military Support for Afghanistan — Robert Steele Comments

01 Poverty, 02 China, 02 Diplomacy, 03 India, 04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 05 Iran, 06 Russia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Drones & UAVs, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

India-Afghanistan: Indian Minister of External Affairs Slaman Khurshid said on 15 February that India will provide helicopters to Afghanistan.

“We are giving them helicopters and we will be supplying them very soon,” Khurshid told reporters accompanying him on a day-long visit to the Afghan city of Kandahar, where he inaugurated an agricultural university built with Indian aid. “We also have been giving them some logistical support and we hopefully will be able to upgrade and refurbish their transport aircraft.”

Khurshid did not specify the number or type of helicopters to be provided to Afghanistan. Nor did he elaborate on transport aircraft contracts.

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2014/02/142014/02/14

Berto Jongman: GAO – U.S. intelligence agencies can’t justify why they use so many contractors

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

GAO – U.S. intelligence agencies can’t justify why they use so many contractors

Brian Fung

Washington Post, 14 February 2014

Private contractors play a huge role in the government, particularly in civilian intelligence services like the CIA. Contracting critics say it's an addiction whose overhead costs drive up the federal budget and leads to data breaches like the kind perpetrated by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

In the wake of last year's NSA revelations, many agencies have been reviewing their contracting policies. But few people have a good grasp on just how many contractors the government employs. What's worse, the country's eight civilian intelligence agencies often can't sufficiently explain what they use those contractors for, according to a Government Accountability Office report.

Every year, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is supposed to count how many contractors serve the intelligence community (IC). Due to differences in the way intelligence agencies define and assess their workers, however, the data are inconsistent and in some places incomplete. Out of hundreds of agency records, for example, GAO found that almost a fifth lacked enough paperwork to prove how much a contractor was paid. Another fifth of the records were found to have either over-reported or under-reported the actual cost of the contract work.

But the GAO reserves its harshest judgment for the agencies that couldn't fully explain why they resorted to contractors in the first place.

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2014/02/142014/02/14

Mini-Me: BENGHAZI – Hillary Lied, CIA Complied?

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

Huh?

Did CIA official suppress Benghazi narrative? Accounts raise new questions

By Catherine Herridge

FoxNews.com, 14 February 2014

Then-Deputy Director Mike Morell, whose own agency lost two employees at Benghazi, former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty, was heavily involved in editing the administration’s internal narrative on what happened – known as the “talking points” – which served as the basis for then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s controversial claims about a protest on the Sunday talk shows after the attack.

According to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report on Benghazi, on Sept. 15, four days after the attack and one day before Rice’s appearance, the CIA's most senior operative on the ground in Libya emailed Morell and others at the agency that the attack was “not/not an escalation of protests.”

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