I will not replicate all that is at www.oss.net and to a much lesser extent, www.earth-intelligence.net, but do want to recognize a handful of extraordinary individuals by isolating their especially meritorious contributiions to the long-running debate about national intelligence reform and re-invention.
One of the great things about being the touchstone for public intelligence is the contacts that are made by students, officers and enlisted personnel serving in the field, and so many others.
While we were in Denmark, an officer now serving in Iraq sent us some questions that we answered to the best of our ability. The questions alone are listed here. For the answers, click on the cover.
1. We never should have invaded Iraq. I have a less developed opinion on Afghanistan, but if I had to say one way or another, that was probably a mistake as well.
Do these mistakes fall solely on the Bush administration?
Was the administrating that incompetent or did they have an immoral and selfish reason such as fleecing the U.S.?
Was it shortsighted political gain objectives with an underestimation of the downside?
We will have at least double the amount of dead service members before these conflicts are over as were killed during the 9/11 attacks. I read somewhere that we have 75,000 amputees due to the two conflicts not to mention the amount of PTSD. Who has the blood on their hands? Certainly nobody is willing to admit mistakes.
I don't understand how Cheney can even think about spouting off after how the conflicts have gone. Where is the cost vs gain analysis?
2. Once we did invade, we didn't have a solid plan and we didn't bring nearly enough troops if we planned on staying. Was this mainly Rumsfeld's fault?
Adaptive Capacity: The amount and variety of resources and skills possessed and available for maintaining viability and growth relative to the requirements posed by the environment.
Agility: The capacity for moving quickly, flexibly and decisively in anticipating, initiating and taking advantage of opportunities and avoiding any negative consequences of change.
Resiliency: The capacity for resisting, absorbing and responding, even reinventing if required, in response
Below is a key table from the article. The degree to which US Government elements–and especially elements of the secret world–are NOT agile and NOT resilient, is striking. Money has been a substitute for everything else, and secrecy a means of avoiding accountability. The below table is more characteristic of those emergent organizations that embrace M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making.
Agility
1. Our organization is open to change
2. Our organization actively and widely scans for new information about what is going on
3. Our organization is good at making sense of ambiguous, uncertain situations
4. Our organization takes advantage of opportunities quickly
5. Our organization is good at quickly deploying and redeploying resources to support execution
Resiliency
1. Our organization has a strong sense of identity and purpose that can survive anything
2. Our organization has a strong support network of external alliances and partnerships
3. Our organization is expanding its external alliances and partnerships
4. Our organization has “deep pockets”—access to capital and resources to weather anything
5. Our organization has clearly defined and widely held values and beliefs
With the right conditions in place — education, entrepreneurialism, and environmental awareness among them — a young, eager, educated workforce can be the key to prosperity.
When conditions are right, large numbers of young workers can drive a nation’s growth to remarkable levels. This theory is known as the “demographic dividend,” a phrase coined by demographer David Bloom. He proposes that when young working-age adults comprise a disproportionate percentage of a country’s population, the national economy is affected in positive ways.
Phi Beta Iota: Government is broken. Ron Paul has that exactly right. It is broken for two reasons: first because over time those spending the money have grown distant from those providing the money, the individual taxpayers, AND from reality. The second reason it is broken is because knowledge itself has become fragmented, and “systems thinking” has fallen by the wayside.
Below are three quotes from a tremendous reference of lasting value to every citizen and policymaker.
ONE: 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.
TWO: The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This is very significant because almost every problem confronting our society is a result of the fact that our public policy makers are doing the wrong things and are trying to do them righter.
Phi Beta Iota: First, tip of the hat to the New York Times for open persistent URLs. Bravo! We strongly recommend a reading of the entire pieceat the NYT website. Shame on the USA for not living up to the Founding Father's aspirations for a wise government and an engaged public. No one now working for the White House can recite the ten high-level threats, the twelve core policies that must be harmonized, or the eight demographic challengers–including China–who we should be helping devise the World Brain with embedded EarthGame. US voters are slow to anger, but that anger will rise in 2010 and crest in 2012.
Op-Ed Contributor: Eight Idas Behind China's Success
By ZHANG WEI-WEI, Published: September 30, 2009
EXTRACT: Critics of China like to claim that despite its economic success, the country has no “big ideas” to offer. But to this author, it is precisely big ideas that have shaped China’s dramatic rise. Here are eight such ideas:
Definitions:
TWO: The righter we do the wrong thing, the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. This is very significant because almost every problem confronting our society is a result of the fact that our public policy makers are doing the wrong things and are trying to do them righter.
