Category: References

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.

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2004 General Accountability Office (GAO) Report: Defense Acquisitiions: The Global Information Grid and Challenges Facing Its Implementation

General Accountability Office
Full Report Online
Full Report Online
Summary Only
Summary Only

Oops 2004: The most critical challenge ahead for DOD is making the GIG a reality. While DOD has taken steps to define its vision and objectives for the GIG on paper and in policy and is beginning to make a heavy investment in the GIG as well as systems that will be heavily dependent on the GIG, it is not fully known how DOD will meet these objectives. For example, it is not known which investments should take priority over others and how these decisions will be enforced. Moreover, it is not known how DOD will assess the overall progress of the GIG and determine whether the network as a whole is providing a worthwhile return on investment, particularly in terms of enhancing and even transforming military operations. According to DOD officials, the enhancements DOD is making to its planning and budgeting processes are meant to begin addressing these questions. Until DOD implements an investment and oversight strategy for the GIG as a whole, it is at risk of making investments that do not fit DOD’s vision for the future.

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Reference: Multiscale Networks for Global Environmental Governance

Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Cultural Intelligence

Summary:  The rigid hierarchy that characterizes state bureaucracies has also been embedded into internaitonal institutions, and it is this architecture that can be vastly improved by restructuring it into a multiscale network.  There are both descriptive and prescriptive reasons for doing so: 1) increases in functional efficiency and robustness, and 2) improvements from a normative perspective.  As we enter the 21st century, the international system already exhibits many aspects of multiscale networks, but there are typically seen as liabilities and not assets.  By providing a richer understanding of multiscale networks, this paper proposes an alternative to Cox's “with them or against them” ultimatum.

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Reference: Stevyn Gibson on Open Source Intelligence

Articles & Chapters
Click on Image to Enlarge

PDF (7 Pages): RUSI Journal (February 2004)

Phi Beta Iota:  This is the first Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) overview we have seen, by someone other than one of the OSINT Masters from 1992-2006, that is fully competent.

See Also:

2008 Open Source Intelligence (Strategic)

2008 Open Source Intelligence (Operational)

Hamilton Bean, No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger, 2011)

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2004 Stephen Cambone, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Speech to the Security Affairs Support Association (SAS) on Need for Universal Coverage at the Neighborhood Level of Granularity

About the Idea, Briefings (Core), Historic Contributions, Military
Stephen Cambone
Stephen Cambone

Dr. Stephen Cambone was a fine Undersecetary of Defense for Intelligence (USD(I)) given the context he was in and the policy personalities he was dealing with.  His most brilliant moment, for the public interest, came on 22 January 2004 when he spoke to the Security Affairs Support Association (SASA) about the need for universal coverage at the neighborhood level of granularity.  When combined with Boyd Sutton's findings on the Challenge of Global Coverage (Frog Left), and the 9-11 Commission depiction of an independent Open Source Agency (OSA) on page 413 of its report (Frog Right), the stage is now set for the present USD(I) to finally get moving on this program with an Initial Operating Capability (IOC) of no less than $125 million a year, as has been agreed to by OMB principals and key staff on successive occasions.

Stephen Cambone
Stephen Cambone

The other two legs of the DoD OSINT stoolare below.  Note that the 9-11 Commission did not have time to fully understand the OSA it was recommending; all serious practitioners have agreed that it cannot be within the secret intelligence world, but rather outside the wire, perhaps under joint Defense Intelligence (DIA) and Civil Affairs (CA) proponency, the first responsible for firehosing all OSINT to the high-side, building the bridge from Intelink-U to the SIPR Net; the second responsible for both ingesting all open source information from multinational partners including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO), and for multi-national information-sharing and sense-making at the unclassified level, all of which is both shared liberally without secret world constraints, and also feed immediately to the high-side for further explotation by all-source analysts with access to all available classified information.

DOC (8 Pages): Cambone Speech to SASA 22 Jan 04

Challenge of Global Coverage
Challenge of Global Coverage
Open Source Agency
Open Source Agency (9-11 Commission)
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Reference: Panarchy–Governance in the Network Age

Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Cultural Intelligence

ABSTRACT:  The primary hyposthesis that I will endeavor to support is that leveraging the benefits of network organization constitutes a new source of power and a new way of accomplishing global governance.

Complexity + Networks + Connectivity = Panarchy

CONCLUSION:  In this paper I have shown that the convergence of processes crosses a critical threshhold to create new possibilities for governance.  The result is a new system.  The key distinction between the old system and the new lies in the fact that governance in the old system was achieved through states, whereas in the new system it is not only achieved outside of hierarchies through horizontal networks, but is in fact often achieved in spite of hierarchies.

45 Page PDF

Phi Beta Iota: The author is meticulous in crediting James N. Rosenau, Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990) for originating many of the concepts that underlay the emergent scholarship on panarchy.