DoD – Page 36 – Public Intelligence Blog

UPDATE: A colleague from within asked us to highlight this quote with the observation that neither the US IC nor DoD have any clue how to execute. We agree. Both lack leadership with vision and multinational panache; they simply do not know what they do not know because they have both wasted the last 21 years refusing to listen or learn.

P.23. They must embrace open-source, population-centric information as the lifeblood of their analytical work. They must open their doors to anyone who is willing to exchange information, including Afghans and NGOs as well as the U.S. military and its allies. As General Martin E. Dempsey, commander of the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command, recently stated, “…[T]he best information, the most important intelligence, and the context that provides the best understanding come from the bottom up, not from the top down.”

The Cold War notion that open-source information is “second class” is a dangerous, outmoded cliché. Lieutenant General Samuel V. Wilson, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, captured it perfectly: “Ninety percent of intelligence comes from open sources. The other 10 percent, the clandestine work, is just the more dramatic.

News Story with Links: Spies Like Us: Top U.S. Intel Officer Says Spooks Could Learn From Journos

Good News: Some good people in the field have finally re-invented half the wheel–the company-level bottom-up half. Unfortunately they have absolutely no idea what can be gotten from the rest of the world (non US citizens without clearances); they are jammed into a legacy system that demands at least a SECRET clearance; there is no Multinational Engagement Network that is totally open albeit commercially encrypted, and therefore this is going nowhere. We could fix this on leftover loose-change, but ONLY if DoD intel leadership will accept the iconoclastic multinational solutions that have been in gestation for 21 years.

Bad News: CIA and DIA are still broken and not likely to get fixed anytime soon. The Human Terrain Teams (HTT) are an utter disgrace. DoD commanders still have not figured out Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and OSINT does not appear in this report, nor does Reach-Back, 24/7 tribally-nuanced on demand web-cam translator services, and on and on and on. Army G-2 is non-existent–Army is simply not trained, equipped, nor organized to do tactical intelligence in small wars. Neither is the Marine Corps, but they adapt better. What is so very tragic is that this is a problem that can be fixed FAST with Multinational Engagement and a proper use of distributed linguistic and cultural assets. All it needs is an internationalist mind-set, which no one now serving in DIA or CIA actually can muster. All of the pathologies we have been writing about since 1988 are to be found in Afghanistan, and none of the solutions that many, many authors have written about for the last 21 years are even on the table.

Reference: COIN Dynamic Planning, Full Text Found

DoD, Peace Intelligence

Phi Beta Iota: The below material is a bit cluttered as it was built up over time as the individual pieces came to light. The important point in our view is that each element of the dynamic planning model is an intelligence (decision-support) requirement, and the U.S. Intelligence Community is completely unable to address of of them in a tactical near-real-time neighborhood level of granularity such as Dr. Stephen Cambone knew in 2000 we would need. This is why General Flynn says intelligence is not helping in Afghanistan. 95% of what we need to know to support this planning and operational campaign management model is available for open sources of information–multinational open sources of information.

Full Story Online

UPDATE: Full Text Found

The Hairball that Stabilized Iraq: Modeling FM 3-24 by Brett Pierson, Walter Barge, and Conrad Crane

Phi Beta Iota: These guys were around long before the new handbook came into being, and chances are most of it was drawn from their earlier work. This is righteous brilliant good stuff, and it is precisely the kind of thinking and leadership process that should go into Whole of Government Planning, Programming, and Budgeting, if we can ever get the Office of Management and Budget back in the business of “managing” to outcome and effect.

UPDATE: A single page of text has come available and the slides are now infamous after media discussion. Below is the graphic used in the NBC report:

slide AF planning — Original Briefing without Text

We thought we would add a couiple of thoughts:

1) Whole System thinking is long over-due for a renaissance. We have a government that overseas is all fist and no brain or heart, while at home it is all lips and no brain or heart.

2) If you think of the world as a three level chessboard, the bottom level is the Earth–natural resources and the specifics of the atmosphere, climate, and so on. The middle level is the vast public, a power that cannot be suppressed in the long run. The top level is the Industrial Era menage a plus of governments, corporations, and other institutions, all working on a zero-sum basis, none actually willing to share information or work from a shared Strategic Analytic Model to harmonize spending.

3) The dynamic planning model, the Navy's global gaming, the DARPA efforts to “simulate” what everyone on the planet is thinking, all are the right idea executed in the wrong way: divorced from reality. Creating a World Brain Institute with an embedded Global Game that absorbs all true cost information as it becomes available is the fastest possible way to “get a grip” and achieve non-zero infinite wealth.

graphic afghandyland — New York Times on Colbert Adaptation

We're in the process of trying to track down the Army originator of this brief, which is both exquisitely focused and extraordinarily complex.

Below is a first cut–nothing more than an ugly concept for consideration, of what could become a generic approach to assuring our personnel going in harm's way that everything possible has been study to study, understand, and plan for every aspect of what we call Stabilization & Reconstruction Operations, what others call Occupations.

2010/01/122010/12/19

Reference: Intelligence-Led Peacekeeping

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, DoD, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, InfoOps (IO), Key Players, Methods & Process, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Policy, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Threats, United Nations & NGOs

cover UN Haiti FINAL — Dorn on UN PKI Haiti FINAL

Professor Walter Dorn is the virtual Dean of peacekeeping intelligence scholarship, going back to the Congo in the 1960's when Swedish SIGINT personnel spoke Swahli fluently and the UN stunned the belligerents with knowledge so-gained. This is the final published version of the article posted earlier in author's final draft.

The UN is now ready for a serious discussion about a United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN) but a Member nation must bring it up, as the Secretary General has kindly informed us in correspondence.

In the absence of US interest, we are asking Brazil, China, and India to bring it up. Should a UNODIN working group be formed, it will certainly include African Union (AU), Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), and Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) counterpart groups, as the regional networks will do the heavy lifting and be the super-hubs for the UN (this is in contrast to a US DoD-based system in which military-to-military hubs would be established to do two-way reachback among the eight tribes in the respective nations). Both concepts are explored in the new book, INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH and in two DoD briefings that are also relevant to the QDR.

2009/12/302011/06/20

Reference: Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC)

DoD, Methods & Process, United Nations & NGOs

The full title is “The Civil Military Operations Center (CMOC) in Operation Uphold Democracy (Haiti). Although dated March 1997, this is a very fine contribution that maintains its relevance, not least because of its descriptions of both the functions and the effect of the functions in dealing with NGOs (like herding turkeys).

For best effect, also read Reference: Walter Dorn on UN Intelligence in Haiti.

2009/12/292010/09/03

Handbook: Religious Affairs in Joint Operations

DoD, HUMINT, Military

This handbook is nothing more than a Chaplain's Rice Bowl. It has nothing to do with what we were hoping for, Religious Engagement. For that, see the two references below by Capt Doug Johnston, USN (Ret), still the Top Gun on the topic. JCS needs to completely rewrite this publication, triple it in breadth and depth, and get a grip on religious engagement tactics, techniques, and procedures before, during, and after operational engagement.

Review: Religion, The Missing Dimension of Statecraft

Review: Faith-Based Diplomacy–Trumping Realpolitik

And:

Continue reading “Handbook: Religious Affairs in Joint Operations”

2009/12/292010/09/03

Handbook: Peace Operations for the JTF Commander

Communities of Practice, DoD, Military, Peace Intelligence, Stabilization, UN/NGO

cover jtf peace 97 — Full Text Online (212 Pages)

Long over-due for re-issuance, this time with a great deal more participation from all Eight Tribes, and a really warm welcome for the US Institute of Peace (USIP) which hit its stride with Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction (Paperback). No one answers the phone when we call to ask about an update.

2009/12/272009/12/28