Building a Constituency for the Director of National Intelligence

Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Open Government, Policies, Reform, Strategy, Threats

Richard Wright

Decision-support (intelligence) is the ultimate objective of information processes. One must carefully distinguish between data which is raw text, signal, or image; information which is collated data of generic interest; and intelligence which is information tailored to support a specific decision…

Robert David Steele Vivas  On Intelligence (AFCEA, 2000)

As noted in an earlier Journal entry (Assessment of the Position of Director of National Intelligence December 27 2010), the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) is an unclaimed orphan among the senior U.S. intelligence managers while the Office of DNI (ODNI) is an unwelcome member of the so-called Intelligence Community (IC).  The current DNI, General James Clapper (USAF ret.) is a good man in a bad job. He conspicuously does not have the ear of his most important constituent, the President of the U.S. (POTUS) or the support of the President’s most important intelligence advisor John Brennan.  So how can the DNI carve out a niche for himself and his office that will enable him to build a Washington D.C. based constituency that may even include the POTUS ?

Even a cursory examination of the principal agencies of the IC, will reveal that none of them are producing strategic intelligence. CIA maintains that its intelligence analysts (most less than five years in service) are too pressed by the need to develop current intelligence to engage in the in depth analysis and research required to produce strategic intelligence. State INR the only other intelligence center really capable of producing strategic intelligence tells much the same story.  The once widely influential National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), primary vehicles for strategic intelligence, are no longer highly regarded guides to policy formulation.

Yet according to one of the most important thinkers on intelligence analysis, Sherman Kent, strategic intelligence provides, “the knowledge which our highly placed civilians and military men must have to guard the national welfare” (emphasis added). Put another way, strategic intelligence can be described as accurate and comprehensive information that is needed by decision makers to formulate policies or take actions to protect our national interests.

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Reference: Quadrennial Diplomacy & Development Review

About the Idea, Communities of Practice, Ethics, History, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Maps, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Open Government, Peace Intelligence, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Document Online

Phi Beta Iota: The US Government continues to be chaotic in part because its civilian leaders simply do not know what they do not know.  They have the best of intentions, but have been promoted into a new world far removed from the world imprinted on them in their formative years.  There are four ways to address global engagement needs:

1.  With government employees performing inherently governmental functions.  PROBLEM:  The US Government has become hollow, with most of the experienced personnel scheduled for retirement in 2012 (if they don’t retire we lose what is left of the middle), and the bulk of the population, e.g. at CIA, having less than six years experience and being phenomenally ignorant of the real world.  An inter-agency cadre for D&D does not exist.

2.  With contractors hired to government specifications on a cost plus basis.  This is what killed the Pentagon–decades of engineering responsive to military specifications on a cost plus basis, with no accountability anywhere.  As we have seen in Iraq and elsewhere, individual instances aside, contractors are generally too expensive, very under-qualified, and often a major political risk hazard.  They also loot our qualified manpower–in both intelligence and special forces, we have lost too many good people to bad jobs with too much money.

3.  Multinational government task forces in which we plan, program, and budget for using the US military as a “core force” to provide intelligence, operations (mobility, logistics), and communications, and we default to unclassified information-sharing and sense-making.  This allows culturally and linguistically qualified individuals to work at the highest levels of performance for the lowest per capita cost.

4.  Multinational hybrid task forces in which we plan, program, and budget for using the US military as the “core force” to provide intelligence, operations (mobility, logistics), and communications, and we default to unclassified information-sharing and sense-making.  This increases by a factor of SEVEN the number of culturally and linguistically qualified individuals to work at the highest performance levels for the lowest per capita cost with the greatest possible flexibility in covering all needs–the “eight tribes” (academia, civil society, commercial, government–all levels, law enforcement, media, military, non-governmental) become a “whole” force, using shared information and shared mostly unclassified decision support (intelligence) to achieve both a common view of the battlefield, and to most efficiently connect micro-needs in the AOR with micro-gifts from an infinite range of givers.

The Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review is at least 20 years too late.  It means well.  It is both delusional and incomplete.  Delusional because no one part of government can become effective until the Office of Management and Budget (OmB) learns to manage again, and incomplete because State simple does not “get” bona fide multinational operations or recognize the “eight tribes.”  There is a small seed crystal here, one that could flourish if the Department of Defense (DoD)–or any significant element of DoD such as the US Army–were to “flip the tortilla” and recognize that the greatest contribution DoD can make in the next 20 years is to get a grip on reality, get a grip on open spectrum, open source intelligence, and open source software, and serve as the “center” for Whole of Government planning, programming, and budgeting, toward the end of creating a prosperous world at peace via low-cost low-risk multinational hybrid task forces that use information and intelligence as a substitute for wealth, violence, time, and space.

NOTE:  On some systems links above appear to be underlining, they are actually links.

See Also [Broken Link Fixed]:

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Reference: Microsoft, Facebook, & the Future

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, info-graphics/data-visualization, Mobile, Technologies

Bianca Bosker

Bianca Bosker

bianca@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting

Microsoft's Cracked Windows: How The World's Technology Juggernaut Lost Its Buzz And Became The ‘Underdog'

EXTRACT:  Its stranglehold on the desktop, while hugely profitable, helped turn Microsoft into an out-of-shape competitor focused on defending turf rather than scoring new hits. In seeking to maintain its dominance on the desktop, it failed to anticipate and plan for the spread of computing to mobile phones, handheld computers, the cloud, and Web-based services delivered by companies such as Google. Now, people can write documents, run spreadsheets and browse the Web without indulging any Microsoft software, steering right around the software giant.

EXTRACT:  “It has an executive team that had not truly lived in a world of competition for perhaps a decade, and its performance in the years between 2000 and 2010 have showed this,” says George Colony, CEO and chairman of Forrester Research, a technology and market research firm. “Essentially, the company had no competition for a decade and so it became out of shape and not ready to truly compete.”

EXTRACT: In an op-ed in the New York Times published earlier this year, a former Microsoft vice-president, Dick Brass described the company as “a dysfunctional corporate culture in which the big established groups are allowed to prey upon emerging teams, belittle their efforts, compete unfairly against them for resources, and over time hector them out of existence.”

EXTRACT:  “Apple builds fanatics,” says MIT's Anderson. “Microsoft builds people who are sullen, but not mutinous. Their DNA is large organizations, operating systems, and applications. Their DNA doesn't understand design and the consumer mind.”

EXTRACT:  The Pew Research Center's 2010 Mobile Access survey found that 40% of adults in the U.S. now use their mobile phone to go online, compose email, or instant message–a number that will almost certainly swell.  “Phones are do or die for Microsoft,” says Foley.

EXTRACT:  The only certainty is this: Microsoft will be around in a major way if for no other reason than the dollars at play.  “They have more money than God,” says MIT's Anderson

Read the entire deep, thoughtful, world-class piece….

See Also:

Graphic: One Vision for the Future of Microsoft

Graphic: Analytic Tool-Kit in the Cloud (CATALYST II)

Worth a Look: 1989 All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation–The Four Requirements Documents

Could Rovio or CCP kill Microsoft or Google?

Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools
Ric Merrifield

When you think about who might topple a software giant like a Microsoft or a Google, you might be inclined to think of Goliaths like, well Google and Microsoft.  The same is true of any industry, you probably think of a company of similar size or larger as being the type of company that would win a battle, or a war.

Actual battles and wars end up being an interesting analogy.  If you think if big battles like World War I and World War II, that’s exactly what happened – giants fighting giants from big, knowable centralized points of command.  But there are some other wars that have been fought where the little guy won (or hasn’t lost in the case of one ongoing war) and there’s a common element in all of them.  No centralized physical location to “take out” to win.  When everything is dispersed and there isn’t any one thing to take out, it’s hard to really know how big or how small opposing force is, and they can be substantially more agile.  In this situation, an organization of any size can pose a major threat to an enormous organization.  The war on terror is an ongoing war that fits this profile – it’s virtually impossible to know how big or small the opposition is, or where they are at any given time, so it’s very hard to be ready for an attack from them.  Viet Nam was a tough one for the US to really stand a chance in because it was in unfamiliar territory and there was no central location to take out to declare victory.  One could even make the same argument (at a high level) for why the British lost the American revolution.

So if you don’t know who Rovio or CCP are, I have already made significant progress on the path of making my point.

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Reference: Strategic Analytic Model for Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

About the Idea, Analysis, Blog Wisdom, Budgets & Funding, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Mapping, IO Multinational, IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Reform, Standards, Strategy, Threats

Robert David SteeleRobert David Steele

Recovering spy, serial pioneer for open and public intelligence

– – – – – – –

Posted: October 14, 2010 06:40 PM

Strategic Analytic Model for Creating a Prosperous World at Peace

Click on Title to Read at Huffington Post and Make Comments.

EDIT of 10 Dec 10 to add missing links and correct typos, this version only.

A Strategic Analytic Model is the non-negotiable first step in creating Strategic Intelligence, and cascades down to also enable Operational, Tactical, and Technical Intelligence.

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Reference: Has Wikileaks Killed Secrecy?

About the Idea, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Corporations, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Policy, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Real Time, Reform, Research resources, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Threats
Jeff Jarvis

Julian Assange - WikileaksWikileaks: Power shifts from secrecy to transparency

Welt am Sontag in Germany asked me for an op-ed on Wikileaks. Here it is, auf Englisch. Hier, auf Deutsch.

Government should be transparent by default, secret by necessity. Of course, it is not. Too much of government is secret. Why? Because those who hold secrets hold power.

Now Wikileaks has punctured that power. Whether or not it ever reveals another document—and we can be certain that it will—Wikileaks has made us all aware that no secret is safe. If something is known by one person, it can be known by the world.

Full article online.

See Also:

Reference: On WikiLeaks and Government Secrecy + RECAP on Secrecy as Fraud, Waste, & Abuse

Reference: Transparency Killer App Plus “Open Everything” RECAP (Back to 01/2007)

Safety copy below the line.

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Reference: Crash Course on Reality

07 Other Atrocities, Blog Wisdom, Briefings (Core), Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Commercial Intelligence, Communities of Practice, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), IO Mapping, IO Sense-Making, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Movies, Officers Call, Policies, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Strategy, True Cost
Chris Martenson Home

Chris Martenson not only paid attention to all of the early warning signals, but acted upon them, leaving a Fortune 50 job, selling his Connecticut home, getting out of the stock market, and buying gold and silver.  Now he has produced the single best, down-to-earth, detailed free video (38 minutes), inexpensive video (208 minutes), forthcoming book, and a 50 hour week-end course for concerned citizens.  This is essential education for all–it also demonstrates the fraud, waste, and abuse inherent in the continued support by the two-party tyranny of Wall Street.  Wall Street STILL OWES twice the capital it actually has–the bail-out was a flim-flam to perpetuate the short-term bonuses and positions of the criminals who have looted America and the rest of the world.

Short Free Video

Amazon Page
  • Crash Course by Chris Martenson – 38 minute condensed version
  • DVD Release Date: March 5, 2009
  • Run Time: 203 minutes
Amazon Page
  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Wiley; 1 edition (March 22, 2011)

Phi Beta Iota: In a perfect demonstration of the Hacker Principle that for every piece of information you share, you get back 100 pieces of which 10 are priceless (10:1 noise to signal and 10:1 return on investment), the below was brought to our attention by Dr. James C. Spohrer, Director, IBM University Programs World-Wide (IBM UP), IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120 USA.  We like IBM, we like it even more after seeing that this kind of thinking is well-understood by IBM.  Bottom line: a number of others have sounded the alarm, Chris Martenson does it better than everyone else, in the most concise non-partisan manner possible.  He is the Paul Revere of the Republic, the Commonwealth.