IO Impotency – Page 225 – Public Intelligence Blog

Deja vu! Seem to recall Winn Schwartau saying all of this in 1990-1991.

The Looming Specter of Cyber Warfare: Deprivations and Social Breakdowns

Keeping your finger on the pulse of evolving cyber threats is very difficult as they change so frequently and abruptly. In the following interview, IDGA’s @DefenseInsider explores the current and future landscape of cyber warfare with Scott Borg, CEO of the Cyber Consequences Unit. Chris Archer asks how cyber warfare will affect defense in the future and what’s being done to ensure the military and government remain ahead of the evolving threats. Scott Borg also reveals the current aims and priorities within the US Cyber Consequences Unit.

Scott, in your opinion how will cyber warfare affect defense in the future?

Cyber warfare will require us to rethink every aspect of defense. Our current weapons and defense systems will still be needed, but the way we use them will become very different. A major cyber assault could completely bypass our military forces. It would not require incoming airplanes, missiles, ships, or troops. The attack could suddenly appear inside the computerized equipment of our major industries. The identity of the country or organization that was responsible could be impossible to determine quickly or with complete confidence. The cyber assault could cause almost any kind of damage that could be produced by the human operators of computerized equipment. In fact, a cyber attack could cause many kinds of damage that the human operators of industrial equipment could only achieve by reprogramming their controls. A major cyber assault could physically destroy or sabotage electrical generation stations, refineries, pipelines, banking systems, railroad switches, flight control centers, chemical plants, hospital equipment, and water and sanitation facilities. Thousands of people could be killed immediately by explosions, leaks of toxic chemicals, airplane crashes, train crashes, and wrong medical treatments. Hundreds of thousands could be caused to die over the months to come as a result of famine, disease, loss of heating or cooling, and the general deprivations and social breakdowns resulting from people no longer being supplied with the necessities of life. The total economic damage and fatalities could surpass any other kind of assault, except for a nuclear one.

Our current defense strategy ‐‐ having the government defend our boarders, being ready to annihilate adversary military forces or countries, and letting domestic industries completely ignore defense issues ‐‐ is clearly no longer appropriate in a world where this sort of attack is possible. The entire relationship between our military and our society will need to be redefined.

Continue reading “DefDog: Deja Vu on Cyber-Security, 25 Years After Terminal Compromise”

2012/04/102012/04/10

Owl: The DHS Cybersecurity Logjam [aka Goat-Fest Scam]

Corruption, Government, IO Impotency

Global Insights: The DHS' Cybersecurity Logjam

By Richard Weitz

World Politics Review | 10 Apr 2012

When the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was established in March 2003, one of the new department’s primary goals was to enhance U.S. cybersecurity. But after several years passed without major DHS initiatives in this area, observers concluded that the department was insufficiently prepared or resourced to address cyber emergencies. Indeed, prior to the 2008 presidential election, the influential think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Commission on Cybersecurity recommended that the next occupant of the White House formally revoke DHS’ limited authority to coordinate cybersecurity because the department, having never had authority over the U.S. military, intelligence community and law enforcement agencies, could not perform this coordination role effectively.

When the Obama administration assumed office, it followed many of the commission’s recommendations, but it ignored this one. With White House encouragement, DHS has made it a higher priority to address the security of U.S. civilian cyber networks and has earned greater support in Congress for remaining the lead civilian agency in this area. For example, DHS made cybersecurity one of its five most important mission areas in the first-ever Quadrennial Homeland Security Review (QHSR) released in 2010, 74 percent higher than in the 2012 budget.

DHS currently has the lead role in securing federal civilian network systems, sometimes described as the “dot.gov” domain. Through its National Infrastructure Protection Plan, DHS works with private- and public-sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure and key resources to bolster their cybersecurity preparedness, risk mitigation and incident-response capabilities. The fundamental problem the department faces is that, at present, it has responsibility to protect all nondefense public- and private-sector networks from cyberattack, but lacks sufficient authority to accomplish this mission.

Continue reading “Owl: The DHS Cybersecurity Logjam [aka Goat-Fest Scam]”

2012/04/092012/04/09

Mini-Me: Bin Laden death-detecting analytics service signs partnership with Twitter

IO Impotency

Huh?

Bin Laden death-detecting analytics service signs partnership with Twitter

A Twitter analytics company that said it detected Osama bin Laden's death before it was reported by the news media has signed a partnership with Twitter, and is expanding the availability of its service for notifying financial firms and government clients of highly unusual events.

The company, Dataminr, described its technology at the Twitter Devnest conference last May, shortly after its service used Twitter data to report bin Laden's death to its clients before the story hit major media outlets. Today, Dataminr is announcing a partnership with Twitter allowing it greater access to tweets and their metadata, and is expanding availability of the service.

Dataminr and Twitter did not make its executives available for phone interviews, saying Dataminr customers are concerned about revealing too much information, but gave us an early copy of the press release being issued this morning. The announcement says that “Dataminr has just signed a partnership with Twitter, which includes access to the full Twitter Firehose in real-time,” and that it is unveiling “its novel technology for using Twitter’s public Tweets to create actionable signals for enterprise clients.”

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Bin Laden death-detecting analytics service signs partnership with Twitter”

2012/04/092012/04/09

Robert Steele: Earthquakes From Oil and Gas Drilling

03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, Commerce, Corruption, Earth Intelligence, Government, IO Impotency

steele smiling final — Robert David STEELE Vivas

One can only look on in anguish as the US Government continues to betray the public trust for lack of intelligence and integrity.

The headlines about earthquakes being related to oil and gas drilling have been common for some time now. Despite the fact that the federal government has noticed the connection at very low bureaucratic levels, the fact is that the politicized government persists in ignoring the precautionary principle and continues to betray the public trust by not stopping all activities associated with increasing earthquakes.

Earthquakes are now coming to the East Coast just as they are about to become much more frequent, intense, and consequential on the East Coast.

One can only pray that at some point the public will demand an honest government capable of making informed decisions with integrity.

Shale Shocked: “Remarkable Increase” In U.S. Earthquakes “Almost Certainly Manmade”

Federal Study Ties Oil and Gas Industry to Earthquakes

Survey says increase in quakes may have man-made cause

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

THE OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING MANIFESTO: Transparency, Truth & Trust

2012/04/092012/04/09

Ayesha Khanna: Our Intelligent Future

Blog Wisdom, IO Impotency, Mobile

Our Intelligent Future

Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies, 9 April 2012

In just three decades between 1990 and 2020, the internet will have grown from linking just a few experts in labs to connecting the entire human species through computers and mobile phones as well as billions of objects into an “Internet of Things,” a seamless web of infinite data. As a result, we have transitioned from the familiar Information Age into the uncertain Hybrid Age, an era in which technology is rapidly becoming ubiquitous, intelligent, and social, radically transforming our societies, markets, and governance.

Intelligent Energy & Infrastructure

Sustainability has become the dominant theme of the early 21st century. To successfully transform societies toward lower consumption and greater productivity requires, first and foremost, increasing our urban intelligence through smart grids that connect offices, homes, and traffic lights into an energy saving and generating eco-system. “Smart cities” are emerging all over the world, from greenfield developments such as Songdo in Korea and Tianjin Eco-City in China to retrofit districts in Stockholm, Hamburg, and Rio de Janeiro.

Intelligent Markets & Consumers

Innovation is once again a buzzword among leading corporations, yet many have failed to realize that the future lies not just in innovating products but, more importantly, in innovating experiences. Based on growing online interaction, consumers now expect a real-time, personalized, and social experience as part of the every product offered. Augmented reality, collaborative consumption, game-ification, and sensors embedded in apparel are all examples of how products are being tailored to location, personality, and preferences, while also allowing consumers to share feedback through social networks.

Intelligent Work

Corporate management faces dramatic challenges today: an aging workforce, talent shortages, and rising competition from emerging markets. The only way to maximize the skills and ambitions of employees is to enable systems of collaboration called “virtual teams” irrespective of division or geography. The new “soft architecture” of the workplace includes Telepresence monitors, social robots, and software platforms which allow for virtual networked cooperation among globally mobile employees and contractors.

Intelligent Living

In an age of information overload, we now need interactive machines to help us analyze and extract maximum value from all the data we collect about ourselves. From the smart home to the smart car, we are moving beyond a one-way relationship with technology towards interacting with machines using natural gestures and voices, and even trusting them with personal information. The most significant impact of such machines will be felt in healthcare, where data collected from wearable devices will monitor everything from our blood pressure to our moods. In order to partake of the intelligent revolution, each of us must consciously fashion our daily lives and personal living spaces to accommodate and take advantage of new data streams and applications rapidly coming to market.

Intelligent Governance

Social networks have unleashed citizen revolutions from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign to the Arab Spring in the Middle East. Rather than succumb to waves of unforeseen pressure, clever mayors from New York and Paris to Dubai and Singapore are deploying elaborate digital strategies to streamline government services and create citizen engagement platforms. An entirely new kind of governance is emerging: through partnership with private sector entrepreneurs, software programmers, and bottom-up social movements, government increasingly operates through interactive dashboards that identify policy and investment needs and respond efficiently.

Ayesha Khanna is Managing Partner of Hybrid Realities, a consulting firm specializing in scenario analysis, technology trends, future cities, and geostrategy. She is also Founder and Principal of the Hybrid Reality Institute, which explores human/technology co-evolution and its implications for society, business and politics.

Phi Beta Iota: Elegant and worthwhile but missing the larger point, that all of these applications of technology are still controlled by the status quo ante powers, doing the wrong things righter, not the right thing. Absent an autonomous Internet and Open Everything, the Internet will be degraded the way Occupy was so quickly degraded.

2012 PREPRINT FOR COMMENT: The Craft of Intelligence

Advanced Cyber/IO (789)
Autonomous Internet (135)

2012/04/092012/04/09

Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

Blog Wisdom, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Geospatial, Gift Intelligence, Government, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, IO Impotency, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Threats

Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?

I recently had the distinct honor of being on the opening plenary of the 2012 Skoll World Forum in Oxford. The panel, “Innovation in Times of Flux: Opportunities on the Heels of Crisis” was moderated by Judith Rodin, CEO of the Rockefeller Foundation. I've spent the past six years creating linkages between the humanitarian space and technology community, so the conversations we began during the panel prompted me to think more deeply about innovation in the humanitarian space. Clearly, humanitarian crises have catalyzed a number of important innovations in recent years. At the same time, however, these crises extend the cracks that ultimately reveal the inadequacies of existing humanita-rian organizations, particularly those resistant to change; and “any organization that is not changing is a battle-field monument” (While 1992).

These cracks, or gaps, are increasingly filled by disaster-affected communities themselves thanks in part to the rapid commercialization of communication technology. Question is: will the multi-billion dollar humanitarian industry change rapidly enough to avoid being left in the dustbin of history?

Crises often reveal that “existing routines are inadequate or even counter-productive [since] response will necessarily operate beyond the boundary of planned and resourced capabilities” (Leonard and Howitt 2007). More formally, “the ‘symmetry-breaking' effects of disasters undermine linearly designed and centralized administrative activities” (Corbacioglu 2006). This may explain why “increasing attention is now paid to the capacity of disaster-affected communities to ‘bounce back' or to recover with little or no external assistance following a disaster” (Manyena 2006).

Continue reading “Patrick Meier: Does the Humanitarian Industry Have a Future in The Digital Age?”

2012/04/092012/04/09

Yoda: When Intelligence Loses It’s Integrity, It Is Not Intelligence

Commerce, Corruption, Government, IO Impotency, Military

yoda with light saber — Got Crowd? BE the Force!

Peak Intel: How So-Called Strategic Intelligence Actually Makes Us Dumber

An industry that once told hard truths to corporate and government clients now mostly just tells them what they want to hear, making it harder for us all to adapt to a changing world — and that's why I'm leaving it.

Eric Garland

The Atlantic, 5 April 2012

I recently quit my job as a “futurist” and “strategic intelligence analyst” after a successful 15-year career of writing books and consulting to corporations and governments around the world. I spent a decade and a half analyzing disruptive new technologies, predicting the effects of the Internet on the international construction industry, helping executives decide whether to spend billions in the nuclear power market, profiling the customer of the future — and training thousands of executives to do likewise for their own companies. It was exciting and fulfilling, but this is the end of the road. My employment status is interesting to nobody except my wife and I, but why I am leaving the business of intelligence is important to everybody, because it stems from the endemic corruption of how decisions are made in our most critical institutions.

I am not quitting this industry for lack of passion, as I still believe — more than ever — in using good information and sophisticated analytical techniques to decode the future and make decisions. The problem is, the market for intelligence is now largely about providing information that makes decision makers feel better, rather than bringing true insights about risk and opportunity. Our future is now being planned by people who seem to put their emotional comfort ahead of making decisions based on real — and often uncomfortable — information. Perhaps one day, the discipline of real intelligence will return triumphantly to the world's executive suites. Until then, high-priced providers of “strategic intelligence” are only making it harder for their clients — for all of us — to adapt by shielding them from painful truths.

Continue reading “Yoda: When Intelligence Loses It's Integrity, It Is Not Intelligence”