Threats – Page 613 – Public Intelligence Blog

editor spinney time — Chuck Spinney Sounds Off...

From the inventors of McNamara's electronic line (which failed spectacularly in Vietnam) comes the Electronic Coup/Revolution Predictor (EC/RP)! This is explained below in the attached Wired report.

The EC/RP is merely the latest effort in DARPA's continuing campaign to overthrow Boyd's Law* (i.e., Machines don't fight war wars, people do, and they use their minds) by taking the mind out of the military's Observation – Orientation – Decision – Action (OODA) loop, and hardwiring what little is left of it with a automated predict-decide-act computer algorithm — the goal, apparently, being to make stupid decisions faster.

This particular DARPA boondoggle is bizarre even by DARPA's tolerant standards for lunacy. That is because the EC/RP is aimed predicting discontinuities in order to remove uncertainty from the future.

Continue reading “DARPA as Poster Child for Out of Control Budget”

2011/02/122011/02/12

Chuck Spinny on George Will: Pusillanimous Mush

07 Other Atrocities, Corruption, Media, Military

In a 13 February 2011 op-ed column [also attached below], George Will, a self-proclaimed conservative, who by definition must favor adherence to the Accountability and Appropriations Clauses of the Constitution, not to mention the rule of law (for example, the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990), announced that he has discovered the Pentagon's bookkeeping shambles! He ends his op-ed by saying … “To govern is to choose, always on the basis of imperfect information. If, however, the strong language of [Congressman Randy] Forbes and [Senator Tom] Coburn is apposite, Congress cannot make adequately informed choices about the uniquely important matters that come to McKeon's committee. This fact will fuel the fires of controversy that will rage within the ranks of Republicans as they come to terms with the fact that current defense spending cannot be defended until it is understood.”

Continue reading “Chuck Spinny on George Will: Pusillanimous Mush”

2011/02/112011/02/11

EGYPT: CIA’s Last Stand? Mubarak as First Domino? Advice for the USG: BUTT OUT.

07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Real Time

Suleiman: The CIA's man in Cairo

Suleiman, a friend to the US and reported torturer, has long been touted as a presidential successor.

. . . . . . .

In the mid-1990s, Suleiman worked closely with the Clinton administration in devising and implementing its rendition program; back then, rendition involved kidnapping suspected terrorists and transferring them to a third country for trial.

. . . . . . .

Under the Bush administration, in the context of “the global war on terror”, US renditions became “extraordinary”, meaning the objective of kidnapping and extra-legal transfer was no longer to bring a suspect to trial – but rather for interrogation to seek actionable intelligence. The extraordinary rendition program landed some people in CIA black sites – and others were turned over for torture-by-proxy to other regimes. Egypt figured large as a torture destination of choice, as did Suleiman as Egypt’s torturer-in-chief. At least one person extraordinarily rendered by the CIA to Egypt — Egyptian-born Australian citizen Mamdouh Habib — was reportedly tortured by Suleiman himself.

Read the entire article….

Phi Beta Iota: A great deal hinges on the next few days. We are betting on the Egyptian people. The USA should BUTT OUT. Not only is the Administration completely ignorant of the dynamics in Egypt, where young people, old people, workers, and all other walks of life have “come out”–the Muslim Brotherhood has been SIDELINED–but anything the Administration says can and will be used against it and against the people of Egypt. The USA is long overdue for getting back in touch with its core values, which should NOT include redition, torture, and dictator pals, all “in our name.”

2011/02/112011/02/11

URGENT EVOKE: The End of Old Government

Advanced Cyber/IO, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Serious Games, Threats

free job training — Four Rules of EVOKING

EVOKE is a ten-week crash course in changing the world.

It is free to play and open to anyone, anywhere.

The goal of the social network game is to help empower people all over the world to come up with creative solutions to our most urgent social problems.

VOKE was developed by the World Bank Institute, the learning and knowledge arm of the World Bank Group, and directed by alternate reality game master Jane McGonigal.

EVOKE is for all ages; recommended age 13 and up.

LEARN HOW TO PLAY: the Five Secrets of the EVOKE Network.

URGENT EVOKE Home Page

2011/02/102011/02/10

How Military Spending Drains & Distorts Economy

03 Economy, 07 Other Atrocities, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Officers Call

When American Conservative Magazine and a senior Fellow of the Ludvig von Mises Institute collaborate to produce a dynamite article that builds on and reinforces the great work of my friend, the late Professor Seymour Melman of Columbia University, a card-carrying liberal, you know it is time to sit up and read it carefully.

Below is a an excellent article describing how the political economy of the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex drains and distorts the civilian economy. Melman did the path breaking research in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s and his warnings about deindustrialization were prophetic. No less an authority that William Anders, CEO of General Dynamics, confirmed Melman's warnings in spades, when Anders explained to a group of defense contractors in the 1991 why General Dynamics was not going to convert into civilian production after the cold war ended, because “most [weapons manufacturers] don’t bring a competitive ad-vantage to non-defense business,” … and … “Frankly, sword makers don’t make good and affordable plowshares.” [see The Domestic Roots of Perpetual War, pages 58-59 & footnotes 4 and 5.]

Chuck Spinney

The Blaster

Less Bang for the Buck

Military spending drains and distorts the civilian economy.

By Thomas E. Woods Jr.

American Conservative, 1 March 2011

Read full analytic piece….

Phi Beta Iota: Summing up, we have military spending distorting the economy, Wall Street defrauding the economy, and a mix of politicians completely out of touch with reality and pretending to be “governing.” We can't make this stuff up.

2011/02/092011/03/17

USAF Backs Off on Threat to Air Family Members….

06 Family, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, IO Impotency, Military, Officers Call

Air Force Rescinds New Guidance on WikiLeaks

Secrecy News reported Monday on strange new guidance from the Air Force Materiel Command declaring that Air Force employees and even their family members could be prosecuted under the Espionage Act for accessing the WikiLeaks web site. On Monday night that new guidance was abruptly withdrawn.

Lt. Col. Richard L. Johnson of Air Force Headquarters released this statement: read statement….

Airmen, It’s Illegal for Your Kids to Read WikiLeaks [Updated]

Spencer Ackerman, WIRED Magazine Danger Room, Feburary 7, 2011

“[I]f a family member of an Air Force employee accesses WikiLeaks on a home computer, the family member may be subject to prosecution for espionage under U.S. Code Title 18 Section 793,” the legal guidance reads. “The Air Force member would have an obligation to safeguard the information under the general guidance to safeguard classified information.”

Read the sordid story….

Phi Beta Iota: We do not make this stuff up. If SecDef wants an excuse to dismiss Air Force leadership down to the one-star level, this is it. This is utterly insane, and a clear demonstration of moral and intellectual and leadership vacuum that exists in the US Air Force.

See Also:

Journal: Chuck Spinney on Gallipoli

Censorship & Denial of Access (35)

Power (Pathologies & Utilization) (154)

Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy (63)

2011/02/08

Identifying & Structuring Terrorist Objectives

09 Terrorism, Analysis, DHS

berto small — Berto Jongman Recommends...

REPORT (PDF 27 Pages)

Identifying and Structuring the Objectives of Terrorists

by Gregory L. Keeney and Detlof von Winterfeldt

Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, August 2009

Phi Beta Iota: The report is interesting, and provides a useful methodology for approaching the relationship between intangible values and tangible manifestations, but it has one major flaw: it does not provide for the reality that expelling dictators and the US from the Middle East might be related to actually seeking to create a prosperous Middle East at peace. Because of that flaw, the report also fails to point out that the best strategy against Al Qaeda is NOT to try to hunt down individual Al Qaeda members, but rather to pull out of the Middle East, stop supporting dictators (and Israel) and begin waging peace at one third the cost of war. One should not throw stones when one lives in a glass house. The USA today is a glass house on a sand foundation.