References – Page 70 – Public Intelligence Blog

2011/12/04

John Robb: War with Iran Very, Very Close

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 10 Security, Corruption, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Peace Intelligence

WAR with IRAN? It's closer than you think….

Israel's hawks are VERY close to manufacturing a full scale war with Iran. On Monday the 28th of November, it used special operations forces (referred to below as the “Hand of God”) to blow up a portion of an Iranian Nuclear facility near Isfahan (confirmed by satellite imagery). This follows on the heels of another explosion at Tehran facility that killed an Iranian general.

What's even more worrisome is that Israeli hawks are actively claiming responsibility for this sabotage (from the Times of London):

Dan Meridor. the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: “There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.”
Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel's former director of national security, told Israel's army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. “There aren't many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it's the hand of God”
A former Israeli intelligence official cited at least two other explosions [that we haven't heard about] that have “successfully neutralised” Iranian bases associated with the Shahab-3, the medium-range missile that could be adapted to carry a nuclear warhead. “This is something everyone in the West wanted to see happen,” he added.

Ok, let's put this into perspective:

These claims are blood in the water. Israel's hawks see Iran as an existential threat to Israel. They WANT a war with Iran. This is an attempt to make that war happen.
The US, from President Obama on down, are incapable of reigning Israel in. Israeli hawks are now operating open loop (without restraint).
Iran's anger at these attacks, demonstrated by an attack on the UK embassy in Tehran, is just the start. Who knows what they will do next? Iran's hawks are likely frothing at the mouth too.

What does this mean? A war with Iran would:

Cause an immediate energy shock. Oil prices shooting through $200 + a barrel. Lost production from Iran, Iraq, and most of the monarchies. A potential loss of 6-10 m barrels a day?
Global depression deepens. Prices over $150 cause immediate recessions. Higher than that, who knows? Usually, a slow down in economic activity reduces demand, however with peak oil (we hit the max the world could produce a couple of years ago) and lost production from the Middle East, that price could remain high even in the face of a deep, deep economic depression.
Networked Resilient Communities. Nobody is going to save you. You need to prepare by building or moving to a resilient community that produces most of the energy and food it needs to survive.

2011/12/042011/12/04

Patrick Meier: Architecture and Calendars as Trojan Horses for Repressive Regimes [Cognitive Dissonance 101]

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, DHS, Government, IO Impotency

Why Architecture and Calendars Are Trojan Horses for Repressive Regimes

by Patrick Meier

The simple thought first occurred to me while visiting Serbia earlier this year. As I walked in front of the country's parliament, I recalled Steve York's docu-mentary, “Bringing Down a Dictator.” In one particular scene, a large crowd assembles in front of the Serbian parliament chanting for the resignation of Slobodan Milosevic. Soon after, they storm the building and find thousands of election ballots rigged in the despot's favor. I then thought of Tahrir Square and how more than a million protestors had assembled there to demand that Hosni Mubarak step down. There was one obvious place for protestors to assemble in Cairo durin g the recent revolts. The word Tahrir means “liberation” in Arabic. That's what I call free advertising and framing par excellence.

These scenes play out over and over across the history of revolutions and popular resistance movements. In many ways, state architecture that is meant to project power and authority can just as easily be magnets and mobilization mechanisms for popular dissent; a hardware hack turned against it's coders. A Trojan Horse of sorts in the computing sense of the word.

Read rest of post.

Phi Beta Iota: Understanding cognitive dissonance between a public and a regime (or between troops / officers and their corrupt chain of command) is not a competency of the national intelligence communities or their political “clients.” What is so sad is that this is the PRECISE competency needed to avoid an all-consuming revolution.

2011/12/03

Reference: Ben Gilad – Strategy without intelligence, intelligence without strategy

Articles & Chapters

Strategy without intelligence, intelligence without strategy

Prologue

Competitive intelligence (CI) began to make inroads at a few leading-edge US companies such as Motorola and Kellogg back in the mid-1980s. Since then, companies have been investing in personnel, software, and consultants’ services to systematically monitor their competitors. At one point in time, (old) ATT had over 30 people in its business services division’s CI department, and pharmaceutical firms were not far behind. Today, 90 percent of all Fortune 500 companies have some form of formal CI activities. Yet, ask top executives to recall one occasion of how CI affected their strategy, and they go blank. Ask them who their intelligence analyst is, and they have no idea. At an age when ‘‘rising global competitive pressure’’ is on every executive’s lips, why has CI failed to leave real impact on companies’ C-suites?

The answer is deceptively simple: companies never built real competitive intelligence capabilities. Instead they created elaborate and detailed practices for closely monitoring competitors’ every little move. How important is bird-watching to an airline pilot flying at 39,000 feet? Competitors just do not matter that much to executives, and rightly so.

That is the good news. The bad news: they never built real intelligence capabilities. Executives short-change themselves like a ship captain navigating in thick fog without radar. Worse, while around him the horns are blaring, he listens only to his iPod.

Benjamin Gilad is President, Academy of Competitive Intelligence, Boca Raton, Florida, USA.

Read full article (PDF)

Benjamin Gilad, (2011) “Strategy without intelligence, intelligence without strategy”, Business Strategy Series, Vol. 12 Iss: 1, pp.4 – 11

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to point out how little competitors matter for companies' long-term success, how little support executives receive with intelligence that does matter, and to offer a different solution.

Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses numerous examples of competitive failures and success that point out the limits of competitors' impact on a company's performance. It covers the theory of strategic positioning and industry change drivers and provides a practical definition of strategic intelligence.

Findings – Competitors do not matter to executives; “competitive intelligence” has been misinterpreted as competitor-watching and has therefore had no real value to executives, and companies leave their executives vulnerable to disastrous blindsiding.

Practical implications – Companies should and could markedly improve their intelligence support of top executives, but need to rethink their whole approach to competitive intelligence. Companies can also significantly improve the way they monitor the competitive environment by redirecting their efforts.

Originality/value – Executives are short changed by their organizations' own processes of closely watching competitors. For the first time, this paper exposes the myth that competitive intelligence – as practised by more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500 – has value for executives and offers a unique approach to improving companies' strategic intelligence capability.

2011/11/30

John Robb: How to Win Any Conflict – Como Ganar Cualquier Conflicto

Blog Wisdom

HOW TO WIN ANY CONFLICT

Posted: 29 Nov 2011 09:42 AM PST

NOTE: I'm in the process of modernizing conflict theory (for wars, insurgencies, protests, etc.) and needed to get this backgrounder on John Boyd's thinking out of the way first. IF any part of it is unclear/difficult to understand, let me know. I'll improve it.

What is Conflict?

To answer this question, let's start with a theory of conflict developed by the late great John Boyd, America's best military thinker. It's a bit of a journey, but trust me, it's worth the effort.

Continue reading “John Robb: How to Win Any Conflict – Como Ganar Cualquier Conflicto”

2011/11/282011/11/28

Mini-Me: When All Else Fails, Try Crowd-Sourcing

Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), Government, Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Methods & Process

U.S. Government Turns to Crowdsourcing for Intelligence

National Defense, December 2011

By Dan Parsons

The Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community spend billions of dollars each year trying, with mild success at best, to predict the future.

They organize elaborate wargames, develop computer algorithms to digest information and rely on old-fashioned aggregation of professional opinion.

Past intelligence failures have been costly and damaging to U.S. national security. Trying to avoid previous pitfalls, agencies are on a constant treasure hunt for new technologies that might give them an edge.

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity in February solicited industry proposals for how to improve the accuracy of intelligence forecasting. Under the auspices of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, IARPA invests in research programs that provide an “overwhelming intelligence advantage over future adversaries.”

Applied Research Associates, a New Mexico-based firm, has launched a program it hopes will improve upon the traditional methods of gathering expert opinion by using computer software that could make better-informed predictions. The system chooses the best sources of information from a huge pool of participants.

ARA won the bid and started working on its Aggregative Contingent Estimation System, or ACES, in May.

Mini-Me: Senate Authorizing Military to Lock Up Anyone Anywhere – Including US Citizens – without due process, indefinitely

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Corruption, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Cultural Intelligence, DoD, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Officers Call

Senators Demand the Military Lock Up American Citizens in a “Battlefield” They Define as Being Right Outside Your Window

While nearly all Americans head to family and friends to celebrate Thanksgiving, the Senate is gearing up for a vote on Monday or Tuesday that goes to the very heart of who we are as Americans. The Senate will be voting on a bill that will direct American military resources not at an enemy shooting at our military in a war zone, but at American citizens and other civilians far from any battlefield — even people in the United States itself.

Senators need to hear from you, on whether you think your front yard is part of a “battlefield” and if any president can send the military anywhere in the world to imprison civilians without charge or trial.

The Senate is going to vote on whether Congress will give this president—and every future president — the power to order the military to pick up and imprison without charge or trial civilians anywhere in the world. Even Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) raised his concerns about the NDAA detention provisions during last night’s Republican debate. The power is so broad that even U.S. citizens could be swept up by the military and the military could be used far from any battlefield, even within the United States itself.

The worldwide indefinite detention without charge or trial provision is in S. 1867, the National Defense Authorization Act bill, which will be on the Senate floor on Monday. The bill was drafted in secret by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.) and passed in a closed-door committee meeting, without even a single hearing.

Chuck Spinney: UK Dunkirk, USA Long Walk Away from Afghanistan – the Military-Industrial Scam is to “Reset, Rebuy, Retrench”

03 Economy, 05 Iran, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Articles & Chapters, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Corporations, Corruption, Government, IO Deeds of War, Military, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests

… How the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) Will Win By Losing

The old adage that it is easy to get into Afghanistan but painful to leave is true for many reasons — here is a big one described in 27 November issue of the Daily Mirror [also attached below] — the British army plans to use Russian railways, built by the Tsars 140 years ago, to return hundreds of millions of pounds worth of equipment in Afghanistan via a landroute to the English Channel.

If you think the horror described in the Daily Mirror report is bad, think about the US options: Given our deteriorating relations with Pakistan, the long, highly vulnerable land route out of Afghanistan, thru the Bolan and Khyber passes, and then down the road system of the Indus Valley in Pakistan to its port of Karachi, is becoming increasingly problematic.

An optional US exit strategy would be an agonizing variation of the Dunkirk option described in the Daily Mirror report plus a sea lift, perhaps via transshipment points in Black Sea ports, like Batumi in Georgia, or Novorossiysk or Sochi in southern Russia, or even Odessa in the Ukraine (which at least would avoid the problem of different railroad gauges).

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: UK Dunkirk, USA Long Walk Away from Afghanistan – the Military-Industrial Scam is to “Reset, Rebuy, Retrench””