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General comment: CIA leared how to run drugs and launder money in Viet-Nam at the same time that the Pentagon discovered the joys of a blank check.  We have never recovered from that.  When combined with the secret slush fund managed by the Secretary of the Treasury, the bottom line is that many things have been done “in our name” that are completely inconsistent with the Constitution, the Republic, or the rule of law.  Corruption and covert action have displaced decision-support as the reason for being.    Life comes down to one word:  INTEGRITY.  If a government lacks integrity at any level (not just honor, but inclusion, open-mindness, a grip on reality), then it will ultimately fail.  Lies kill one's comrades.  It is time we stop lying to one another, and it is time we stop obeying orders based on lies.  Unilateral top-down short-term decisions based on flawed secrets are simply not affordable, sustainable, or–generally–honorable.  The future lies in make multinational bottom-up long-term decisions that ARE affordable and sustainable precisely because they achieve a good “fit” with reality.  At the end of this entry is an illustration of thise contrast.  We still need spies and secrecy, but the 20-80 rule applies.

Search Tip: Old dogs remember Viet-Nam.  Modern writing tends to go with Vietnam.  Search for both.

Absolute Classics

Who the Hell Are We Fighting?: The Story of Sam Adams and the Vietnam Intelligence Wars (Hardcover)

None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam

War Without Windows

The Tunnels of Cu Chi

Continue reading “Search: Intelligence and the Viet-Nam War”

This entire web site is about intelligence reform, at three levels;

Level I: Unscrew the secret world, which spends $75B a year on the 10-20% it can steal (of which it only processes 1-6%, ultimately producing no more than 4% of what the President needs to know, and virtually nothing for anyone else.

Level II: Create a Smart Nation that allows Whole of Government operations able to eradicate the ten high-level threats to the USA by harmonizing the twelve core policies within a balanced budget, while eradicationg Wall Street and Mafia co-corruption with the two-party tyranny and the relatively ignorant White House.

Level III: Leverage our Collective Intelligence (the one billion rich) to empower the five billion poor so that their Collective Intelligence can create infinite wealth and thus achieve a propserous world at peace.

Below the fold are some of the more trenchant references for each level, but the student of intelligence reform should study the entire site inclusive of Books (OSS/EIN) (9);  Graphics (104); Handbooks (26); Historic Contributions (223); References (172); and  Reviews (1442).  The quote below applies to both our politicians and policy makers, and to our intelligence professionals.

Fedor Dostoevsky: A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else.

Continue reading “Search: Intelligence Reform”

The “1000 ship Navy” is a delusional concept that assumes we can count on other navies–the same delusion that led to the Navy being heavy in the 1980's and 1990's while completely lacking in “small craft” such as mine-sweepers.  We wrote the original J-2 Plans piece on Somali pirates in 2005 and nothing was done–years later both U.S Navy and U.S. Special Operations colleagues told us nothing was done because the problem was not expensive enough (we are NOT making this up!).  We even volunteered to do some quick and dirty honey trap runs with 70-80 foot yatches available cheap in Turkey, each carrying a couple of topless babes on top and a squad of pissed-off SEALs lounging below, gattling guns at the ready.  No takers….hence proving the point that slogans are no substitute for strategic thinking.

Our own original 450-Ship Navy article was accepted by USNI in the 1990's and then constantly pushed back from publication as various Admirals got their ghost-written pet rocks published.  We finally sent back the $750 and published it through a defense news online service.  More recently, we updated it, and below is the graphic and link to the updated article.  Three CNO's in a row have blown this off, the USN appears to be unable to design a total Navy and is still not serious about littoral or expedtionary operations, support to stabilization & reconstruction operations, or our favorite, “peace from the sea.”

2008 U.S. Naval Power in the 21st Century

This is an extraordinarily exciting Search, and we deeply regret not having the time to devote to creating a new article on this topic.  Here therefore are a few humble thoughts.  If the leadership of Gujarat Province were to offer us a job testing and developing this in India, we would be on the next flight out.

Capitalism. Capitalism in its purest form is the process of adding value for the greater good of the community being served, with profit being a legitimate valuation of the value being added by the combination of entrepreneurship, innovation, and dedication.

–  Western Capitalism has become predatory, immoral, and corrupt.  It has commoditized the human (both the employee and the customer), created a false cycle of adversie, consume, discard, and repeat,  and it does not reflect the “true costs” of what it consumes, such that Exxon, to take one example, receives $4 per gallon of gas, with enormous profit, but receives an additional $12 per gallon in costs that are externalized to the public and the future.  Under no circumstances should India adopt Western Capitalism in its present form.  Emerging variants of Western Capitalism that are at least a decade away from being mainstream include Natural Capitalism based on Ecological Economics, which are substantive, and Bill Gates' “Creative Capitalism” which is just a marketing slogan.

– Eastern “Capitalism” is something we do not understand as well as we should, but it is a very exciting potential mix that is conflicted.  On the one hand, we stand in awe at the micro-finance initiatives of the Gameen Bank, and we respect the Islamic prohibition of ursury, but we also see some terrible disadvantages from excessive revenue in the oil countries; corruption among dictators and royal families long overdue for being sent into exile, and the uneven influence of religious figures, both Islamic and Jewish.

Both forms of capitalism are based on imposed scarcity of money, and rule by secrecy. Both also permit absentee landlords, which we consider wrong.

Continue reading “Search: Capitalism for India”

This entire site is about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and more recently, its two applications in the public interest now that “OSINT” has been captured and buried by governments–anyone dumb enough to “classify” OSINT has no clue.

The two new applications are Public Intelligence in the Public Interest (PI2) and, originally a Swedish military peace intelligence concept articulated by Col Jan-Inge Svensson, Land Forces (Ret) and others, M4IS2 (Multinational Multiagency Multidisciplinary Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making).

The Handbooks and the Historic Contributions are “best of OSINT” in practical terms.  The References and History of Opposition contain a lot of information about the inherent conflict between secret bureaucracies and the real world.  The original one-page of links, BASIC, and the original LIBRARY table of all contributions within OSS.Net, remain useful.

The two core references in the literature remain:

Continue reading “Search: OSINT (Open Source Intelligence)”