Advanced Cyber/IO – Page 113 – Public Intelligence Blog

I published What 2013 Has In Store 166 days ago and summed up my discoveries in Professionalism & Propaganda a week ago. This 1,800+ word piece with descriptive links to over thirty posts covers everything from my network of now over 3,000 Facebook Anonymous supporters through the CIA’s application of mindfulness to the analysis process, a direction taken in response to network threats.

During that time I completed a social network analysis class offered by Coursera and I curated nineteen related documents in my SNA Class collection. Humans exhibit a variety of interconnected ways of making decisions, information itself has a network of precursors and successors, and the flow of information through human networks can often be modeled as a spreading contagion.

There are a variety of problems that professional analysts face which have been studied in-depth by the Central Intelligence Agency‘s internal think tank, the Center for the Study of Intelligence. A distributed, grassroots network shares some characteristics with a professional cadre of analysts, but organizing, motivating, and assessing their progress is dramatically different from that of a hierarchical organization.

Here is an overview of the universe for the next stage in my inquiries. This Maltego graph displays five major components. The large group with the most diverse colors is representative of my place in the scheme of things – people who engage me in a bi-drectional fashion and organizations to which I subscribe. The cluster of people(lavender) and Twitter accounts(green) at the lower left represents e-International Relations, which is open and academic in nature. The similar looking cluster at the upper right are the Twitter users among the 156 analysts for Wikistrat. A larger graph of their complete network is seen in the next image. The cluster at the lower right is the LinkedIn-centric International Security Observers, an open, web based think tank.

. . . . . . . . .

If I had to distill what I am trying to get at here in one paragraph, it would be this:

Groups of analysts need a shared context that can store and display information in chronological order, recognizing entities in the field ranging from states to naval vessels to individuals. The system needs to be able to store documents, images, URLs, and other internet accessible content. The system need not perform link analysis, but it must be amenable to doing so with its content using a tool like Maltego or Gephi, and then making the analysis available as an integral part of the overall offering.

Read full post with many links and graphics.

Continue reading “Neal Rauhauser: Confusion & Disinformation”

2013/05/192013/05/19

Stephen E. Arnold: Connecting the Dots is the Wrong Mind-Set for Intelligence

Advanced Cyber/IO

Connecting the Dots Yields Spotty Results

Posted: 10 May 2013 05:30 AM PDT

In the aftermath of the Boston bombing, many have discussed whether or not the FBI should have had the capabilities to “connect the dots” to identify and prevent the bomber from following through. Boing Boing reiterates the point that Bruce Schneier made in a recent CNN op-ed in their post, “Why ‘Connecting the Dots’ is the Wrong Way to Think about Stopping Terrorism.”

It goes back to the old adage: hindsight is 20/20. It takes a future perspective to look at an event and create a narrative amongst dots of data. The concept of the “narrative fallacy” is what makes a past event seem like a neat story where the dots to be connected should have been obviously illuminated the entire time.

The article tells us:

“Rather than thinking of intelligence as a simple connect-the-dots picture, think of it as a million unnumbered pictures superimposed on top of each other. Or a random-dot stereogram. Is it a sailboat, a puppy, two guys with pressure-cooker bombs or just an unintelligible mess of dots? You try to figure it out. It’s not a matter of not enough data, either. Piling more data onto the mix makes it harder, not easier. The best way to think of it is a needle-in-a-haystack problem; the last thing you want to do is increase the amount of hay you have to search through.”

No one can deny that connecting dots is an important way to increase knowledge. However, as good of a technique — and phrase — that it is, spotty results are invariable.

Megan Feil, May 19, 2013

Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search

2013/05/162013/05/16

Michel Bauwens: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Advanced Cyber/IO, Architecture, Civil Society, Data, Design, Governance, Innovation, Knowledge, P2P / Panarchy, Software, Worth A Look

People are raving about this as a possible alternative command and control system for the public to use.

Civilized Discourse Construction Kit

Jeff Atwood

Coding Horror, February 5, 2013

EXTRACT:

After spending four solid years thinking of discussion as the established corrupt empire, and Stack Exchange as the scrappy rebel alliance, I began to wonder – what would it feel like to change sides? What if I became a champion of random, arbitrary discussion, of the very kind that I'd spent four years designing against and constantly lecturing users on the evil of?

I already built an X-Wing; could I build a better Tie Fighter?

Today we announce the launch of Discourse, a next-generation, 100% open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.

The goal of the company we formed, Civilized Discourse Construction Kit, Inc., is exactly that – to raise the standard of civilized discourse on the Internet through seeding it with better discussion software:

100% open source and free to the world, now and forever.
Feels great to use. It's fun.
Designed for hi-resolution tablets and advanced web browsers.
Built in moderation and governance systems that let discussion communities protect themselves from trolls, spammers, and bad actors – even without official moderators.

Our amazingly talented team has been working on Discourse for almost a year now, and although like any open source software it's never entirely done, we believe it is already a generation ahead of any other forum software we've used.

Continue reading “Michel Bauwens: Civilized Discourse Construction Kit”

2013/05/162013/05/16

Jean Lievens: Revolutionize Corporate (All?) Learning — Beyond Formal to Informal, Mobile, Social Dichotomies

03 Economy, 04 Education, Advanced Cyber/IO, Methods & Process, Uncategorized

Revolutionize Corporate Learning: Beyond Formal, Informal, Mobile, Social Dichotomies

by Marcia Conner on May 10, 2013

A report for business decision makers interested in abolishing traditional corporate training functions, creating instead vibrant modern collaborative cultures. Why? The corporate learning field is in dire need of bravery, insight, creativity and boldness. It has been stuck in an antiquated rut for too long. Full classrooms and smile-sheet summaries only indicate employees can successfully sit through training, not that these strategies demonstrate value or engender growth in competitive organizations. With a nod toward early twentieth-century innovations, moving the art world toward natural forms, the corporate education function should aim to become learning nouveau. The people responsible for fostering education throughout organizations ought to consider becoming artists. Here's how. [Additional information at http://www.marciaconner.com/learning-nouveau/]

2013/05/152016/03/26

Reflections on Alternative Command & Control and Four Transformation Forcing Concepts

#OSE Open Source Everything, Advanced Cyber/IO, All Reflections & Story Boards, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Key Players, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Strategy, Threats

I have been reflecting on the past twenty years, and the remarkable resistence of the US Intelligence Community, seemingly impervious to all manner of reform recommendations, be they presidential, congressional, or public. Reform is not transformation. This from Dr. Russell Ackoff, a pioneer in systems thinking and reflexive practice:

Reformations and transformations are not the same thing. Reformations are concerned with changing the means systems employ to pursue their objectives. Transformations involve changes in the objectives they pursue.

And now this from Ada Bozeman:

(There is a need) to recognize that just as the essence of knowledge is not as split up into academic disciplines as it is in our academic universe, so can intelligence not be set apart from statecraft and society, or subdivided into elements…such as analysis and estimates, counterintelligence, clandestine collection, covert action, and so forth. Rather … intelligence is a scheme of things entire. (Bozeman 1998: 177):[1]

The recent NATO Innovation Hub initiative in leveraging social media is a tiny but potentially potent transformation starting point. It reflects clarity, diversity, and integrity. After an open brainstorming session that identified 32 opportunity areas, enablers, and concerns, the team nurturing the NATO Innovation Hub settled on three areas for focus where concept papers will be developed:

-‐ Education and Training through New Media
-‐ Alternative Command and Control
-‐ Social Media Users Training

As one of the early invited participants contributing to the process, I offered the below comments toward the first draft of the concept paper for Alternative Command and Control, and am now adding to that a section on four forcing concepts or functions for transforming strategy, policy, acquisition, and operations via the alternative command and control concept.

Continue reading “Reflections on Alternative Command & Control and Four Transformation Forcing Concepts”

2013/05/14

Parag Khanna: Rise of the Info-States

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Ethics

Edging toward the sweet spot of new-century governance

Enter the info-state. The info-state – today one of a growing number of dynamic and entrepreneurial cities, city-states or small nations scattered around the world – governs as much through data as via democracy.

Scholars have for decades appreciated political mutations that drive international competition and result in new forms of governance. In 1941, Harold Lasswell emphasized the rise of politico-military elites, such as in Imperial Japan, that shaped the ideology of ‘garrison states.’ In 1996, Richard Rosecrance forecasted a transition toward ‘virtual states’ that downsized geography and outsourced production, while investing more in human and portfolio capital than territorial expansion. Building on this logic of the economic over the political, Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles (2002) traced the advent of the ‘market state’ era, in which the maximization of individual commercial opportunity defines national power and success. Japanese business strategist Kenichi Ohmae then set the stage for the info-state era in The Next Global Stage (2005), which argued that urban agglomerations of city-states resembling the medieval Hanseatic League would become the world’s power centres.

The info-state draws on numerous important attributes of these previous – and still co-existing – units. The economic footprint supersedes the territorial, the urban industrial core and its human capital pool are the locus of value, and diplomacy is exercised by commercial and knowledge centres as much as by national capitals.

But the info-state also presents new mutations that were not conceivable in previous technological periods – a peculiar convergence of the Information Age and the devolved authority of city units and clusters. The critical shift lies in the manner of policy-making enabled by new technologies: governance is practiced in ‘real-time’ – through constant consultation, rather than through traditional, staggered democratic deliberation. In a sense, this is a post-modern democracy – or even ‘post-democracy’ – that combines popular priorities with rationalist or technocratic management. On this logic, data-driven policy might mean more objective measurement of progress, more evidence-based policy, and more accountability of leadership.

In order to thrive, an info-state must provide both the security of the garrison state model and the connectedness of the virtual state. In other words, the essence of the info-state is secure connectedness. And, to be sure, this existential reliance on secure connectedness is potentially the info-state’s most prominent vulnerability.

Continue reading “Parag Khanna: Rise of the Info-States”

2013/05/122013/05/13

NATO Innovation Hub: Communication on Social Media Next Steps

Advanced Cyber/IO, Communities of Practice, Crowd-Sourcing, Ethics

Click on Image to Enlarge

Entering the Solution Design Phase
Social Media Event – May update

Dear Innovation Hub members,

“How should NATO use Social Media?” is the question you have been discussing for six weeks. This online brainstorming was fruitful beyond all expectations! Your motivation to engage in an expert level exploration of the topic has generated a broad understanding that is now shared among the community. All the ideas produced have been carefully collected and presented to Allied Command Transformation hierarchy. They fall under three categories,

-‐ Opportunity areas : The effects NATO could achieve thanks to Social Media
-‐ Enablers : What NATO should develop as a result of the Social Media
-‐ Concerns : What NATO should pay attention to as a result of the Social Media

(You can find a list of these ideas here below)

From this list, the topics deserving immediate further exploration have been identified. They are :

-‐ Education and Training through New Media
-‐ Alternative Command and Control
-‐ Social Media Users Training

These topics enter now their Solution Design Phase. It means that they will be further explored up to the drafting of focused concept papers. Like the brainstorming, this work will be collaborative and conducted online. The online platform has been adapted for this phase. When you visit it you will easily identify the newly created topic groups. They include the new collaborative document editing function. Feel free to join them at NATO Innovation Hub.

Continue reading “NATO Innovation Hub: Communication on Social Media Next Steps”