IO Impotency – Page 223 – Public Intelligence Blog

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US Military Intelligence Critic To Lead Spy Agency

By Agence France-Presse, 18 April 2012

A US general who once blasted the work of military spies in Afghanistan as “only marginally relevant” has been nominated to take over the Pentagon's intelligence agency, officials said.

The decision to name Lieutenant General Michael Flynn suggests a possible shake-up of the sprawling Defense Intelligence Agency as the general has earned a reputation for pushing for dramatic change in his work with special forces.

Flynn was a scathing public critic of military intelligence in Afghanistan, where he served as a top intelligence officer in 2010, saying it failed to provide decision makers with a clear picture of conditions on the ground.

He chose to publish his critique through a Washington think tank, the Center for a New American Security, instead of sticking to customary channels within the Pentagon bureaucracy.

“Eight years into the war in Afghanistan, the US intelligence community is only marginally relevant to the overall strategy,” his report said.

“Having focused the overwhelming majority of its collection efforts and analytical brainpower on insurgent groups, the vast intelligence apparatus is unable to answer fundamental questions about the environment in which US and allied forces operate and the people they seek to persuade,” it said.

Flynn is credited with playing an influential role during his tenure at Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), the secretive headquarters that oversees elite commandos like the team that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.

At JSOC, Flynn reportedly persuaded special forces to place a higher priority on scooping up intelligence while carrying out targeted attacks on militants.

His nomination reflects the ascendancy of special forces in policy making both within and outside the American military, a trend reinforced by the successful operation against Bin Laden.

Flynn, whose nomination must be approved by the Senate, currently serves as the assistant director of national intelligence for partner engagement at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

Phi Beta Iota: General Flynn has many challenges facing him at DIA: too many civilians with zero combat experience, redirection of MASINT dollars to HUMINT, while also integrating the fifteen slices of HUMINT into one coherent network using best in class commercial technologies; and resurrecting the now dead concepts of intelligence support to policy and acquisition (that is to say, intelligence with integrity that keeps policy honest and acquisition relevant). We pray for his success.

2012/04/19

DefDog: Pentagon Integrity? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Integrity!

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military

Complete integrity lost. If the soldier committed these acts, trying to cover them up and using the excuse, “the photographs could incite violence” is only self serving. Until the brass admits that they operate under two or more standards…those of the troops and then of the officer, the brass, the government, they will continue to hide from the American public the truth…and they will be aided and abetted by the dysfunctional two party system that has taken over this country to the detriment of the people….

Pentagon Sought to Stop Paper From Using Photos

By BRIAN STELTER

Los Angeles Times, April 18, 2012

The grisly photographs of American soldiers posing with the body parts of Afghan insurgents during a 2010 deployment in Afghanistan were the source of a dispute between The Los Angeles Times and the Pentagon lasting weeks.

Two of the 18 photographs given to the paper were published Wednesday by The Times over fierce objections by military officials who said that the photographs could incite violence. The officials had asked The Times not to publish any of the photographs, a fact that the defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, reiterated on Wednesday as the images spread across the Internet.

Read full article. Use first link above to see the two photos.

Phi Beta Iota: Citing earlier LA Times report: “An American soldier says he released the photos to the Los Angeles Times to draw attention to the safety risk of a breakdown in leadership and discipline. The Army has started a criminal investigation.” This is exactly right. We are glad someone in the US military still has intelligence and integrity. A force is the embodiment of its commander. The US military is “out of control” and has morally disengaged. They have lost their soul. If we had the power, not only would Panetta be gone and Gates' ridiculous Presidential Medal of Freedom rescinded (as ridiculous as the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama for his first ten days in office), but the flag officers would be retired en masse, all one grade lower than their present rank. They are a uniform disgrace to the nation for their lack of integrity in matters large and small.

2012/04/19

NIGHTWATCH: US “Leaders” Do Not Know Squat About War or Afghanistan

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military

AFGHANISTAN COMMENT: The photos published by the Los Angeles Times have been covered extensively by the US press, except for a few minor issues not mentioned by any news services.

First of all, an Islamic suicide bomber is not someone who has abused his body, as some pundits opined today. On the contrary, he is a martyr, in fundamentalist theology. The American soldiers were not just defacing a dead human being; they were insulting an Islamic warrior.

But that is not a big deal for Muslims. They do the same and understand fighting and death. Fighters die. Winners gloat.

Even suicide bombers ought to be respected as warriors, but that means little, even to Afghans. Above all, they understand that death is an occupational hazard for a warrior. Plus they believe he gets his reward in heaven.

No American leader should apologize. An apology betrays a complete ignorance of the culture because the Afghans understand war: national and regional; tribal and clan; and village and family. Afghans consider an apology by a stronger power to be a sign of weakness.

For example, the bombers were most likely kids taken from a madrasah in Pakistan, given rudimentary training, doped up and sent to die by their religious teachers and elders. In which case, no Afghans will lament the deaths. The US does not even know the nationality of the bombers. To whom should the US apologize?

The cultural and religious differences are valid. Fundamentalist Islamic values that encourage children to sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers do not represent the mainstream of Muslim theology. Suicide bombings are denounced regularly in every meeting of Pakistani and Afghan Islamic scholars. However, they have never denounced the killing of Americans, Jews and Christians. A US apologiy to people whom even Muslims consider extremists serves no point.

It might be some kind of epiphany for some news reporters that American soldiers are soldiers, who are not so different from Roman legionnaires. But in most of the world, including in the US outside of San Francisco or Los Angeles, everybody in every culture understands that gloating is part of winning after a battle, along with mourning the dead. So in a war, a US apology for the death of an enemy fighter by his own hand also serves no point.

The Taliban have shown no special reverence for their suicide bombers in the past 11 years, unless they kill lots of Americans or unless an incident could be turned to some propaganda advantage.

US soldiers in Afghanistan are not placed in increased risk because of this incident. Most Afghans most likely will consider taking pictures of the lower half of a dissected body bewildering, if not sick. Any protests will be perfunctory. Protests over the dead never last more than a day or two, if they occur at all.

Defacing the Koran is a vastly more incendiary offense. These protests last for weeks.

After 11 years of US troops in a country and culture, Readers and citizens have a right to expect a deeper official understanding and better handling of these incidents. It did not happen in Vietnam and it is no better in Afghanistan.

Thanks to Brilliant and extremely well-informed Readers for Feedback about Afghan attitudes towards death and towards defacing the Koran.

NIGHTWATCH KGS Home

Phi Beta Iota: Too many flag officers. Too many political appointees. Very limited intelligence and zero integrity.

2012/04/182012/04/18

Steven Aftergood: Secret Systems Cluttering the Electromagnetic Spectrum

Corruption, IO Impotency, Military

SECRET SYSTEMS CLUTTER THE ELECTROMAGNETIC SPECTRUM

The difficulty that the military has in allocating the efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum for military operations is aggravated by the fact that some of those uses — involving intelligence platforms and sensors — are secret even from military planners themselves, a new Pentagon doctrinal publication notes.

“Coordination with intelligence units and agencies can be challenging for many reasons, to include classification issues, disparate data formats, and separate technical control or reporting channels,” the publication states.

“In many cases, the JSME [joint spectrum management element] does not have adequate visibility or knowledge of intelligence sensors, platforms, or systems in order to accomplish accurate deconfliction.”

“In order to capture all aspects of intelligence spectrum use, the JSME must understand that intelligence platforms such as UAS/unmanned ground system will have spectrum requirements for both a payload (e.g., imagery or data) and control frequencies to operate the platform.”

“Intelligence is a heavy user of sensors that employ both active and passive techniques. Active sensors are usually accounted for, but the passive sensors will also require spectrum consideration so they perform properly.”

See Joint Electromagnetic Spectrum Management Operations, Joint Publication 6-01, Joint Chiefs of Staff, March 20, 2012 (at page V-12).

Phi Beta Iota: The US has never been serious about spectrum–one of the dirty little secrets of Afghanistan is how often drones, artillery, and aviation as well as C4I messed each other up. Adding remote disengaged drone video games made it much worse (news flash for DoD “leaders”: pilots are cheaper than bandwidth and much, much better at situational awareness). The Soviet standards for emissions control have always been 10 to 100 times more serious than US standards. However, the bottom line is that Open Spectrum is here to stay, and the US military is the last to know or accept this.

2012/04/182012/04/18

Gary North: Do NOT Under-Estimate Bernanke’s Ignorance

03 Economy, Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency

Ben Bernanke's Judy Garland Impersonation

by Gary North

“Somewhere, over the rainbow, way up high.”

Federal Reserve Board chairman Ben Bernanke delivered a speech on April 13 on “Rethinking Finance.” It certainly needs to be rethought at the highest levels. Unfortunately, Dr. Bernanke has not yet begun the process. Thinking, yes. Not rethinking.

He ended his speech with this:

The financial crisis of 2007-09 was difficult to anticipate for two reasons: First, financial panics, being to a significant extent self-fulfilling crises of confidence, are inherently difficult to foresee.

This is wrong on two counts. First, in a free market, there are no self-fulfilling prophecies. That is because of the widespread distribution of knowledge. A self-fulfilling prophecy is said to take place because lots of people expect it to happen. But why would lots of people expect it to happen? Because (1) there is something fundamental taking place and (2) people share the same economic theory.

Then why is there ever a panic? The free market pits buyers against buyers and sellers against sellers. Why wouldn't those with the best information sell the assets over time, as accurate information spreads? Why is there a panic? Why don't prices come down in a more steady, orderly way? If someone issues a prophecy, it is not widely believed at first. It takes time for people to believe.

They believe it because it explains events in terms of a framework. They draw conclusions. They slowly come to the same conclusions. A panic takes place when the vast majority of investors put their money in the wrong investments. Overnight, the investments turn out to be ill-conceived. The economist should ask this: Why did almost everyone make the same bad investments? The normal process of competition precludes such widespread, simultaneous errors.

Bernanke asked this. His answer self-fulfilling prophesies. He did not ask the more fundamental question: How is it that these self-fulfilling negative prophesies work their black magic against the interests of the vast number of market participants?

FIAT MONEY PRODUCES BAD INFORMATION

Continue reading “Gary North: Do NOT Under-Estimate Bernanke's Ignorance”

2012/04/172012/04/17

Patrick Meier: The Digital Operations Center of the American Red Cross

IO Impotency

The Digital Operations Center at the American Red Cross is an important and exciting development. I recently sat down with Wendy Harman to learn more about the initiative and to exchange some lessons learned in this new world of digital humanitarians. One common challenge in emergency response is scaling. The American Red Cross cannot be everywhere at the same time—and that includes being on social media. More than 4,000 tweets reference the Red Cross on an average day, a figure that skyrockets during disasters. And when crises strike, so does Big Data. The Digital Operations Center is one response to this scaling challenge.

Sponsored by Dell, the Center uses customized software produced by Radian 6 to monitor and analyze social media in real-time. The Center itself sits three people who have access to six customized screens that relate relevant information drawn from various social media channels. The first screen below depicts some of key topical areas that the Red Cross monitors, e.g., references to the American Red Cross, Storms in 2012, and Delivery Services.

REDACTED: Multiple Screen Shots and Related Commentary

red cross digital ops center — Click on Image to Enlarge

As argued in this previous blog post, the launch of this Digital Operations Center is further evidence that the humanitarian space is ready for innovation and that some technology companies are starting to think about how their solutions might be applied for humanitarian purposes. Indeed, it was Dell that first approached the Red Cross with an expressed interest in contributing to the organization’s efforts in disaster response. The initiative also demonstrates that combining automated natural language processing solutions with a digital volunteer net-work seems to be a winning strategy, at least for now.

After listening to Wendy describe the various tools she and her colleagues use as part of the Operations Center, I began to wonder whether these types of tools will eventually become free and easy enough for one person to be her very own operations center. I suppose only time will tell. Until then, I look forward to following the Center’s progress and hope it inspires other emergency response organizations to adopt similar solutions.

Phi Beta Iota: This is not real — it is what the beltway bandits can vaporware, or viewgraph engineering. It appears to be a local initiative that is completely removed from the Geneva operations center that follows 30+ wars at a time. It is the germ of a good idea that is heavily reliant on non-existent volunteers, and disconnected from all other information outside the social sphere. It also appears to have overlooked the value of Twitter in identifying specific individuals at specific locations who can be queried via Twitter for an eyes-on answer.

1989 Webb (US) CATALYST: Computer-Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science & Technology

Open Source Agency: Executive Access Point

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

World Brain & Global Game 101-104

2012/04/162012/04/16