Category: Intelligence (government)

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Journal: Gorgon Stare (All Eyes, No Brain)

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, Advanced Cyber/IO, Corruption, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Peace Intelligence, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Strategy, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Richard Wright

BELOW REFERS TO PREVIOUS POST:

Reference: Gorgon Stare–USAF Goes Nuts (Again)

Another Technical Showboat

Chuck Spinney and Robert Steele have pretty well identified the new U.S. Air Force (USAF) drone program for what it is, but here are some ancillary remarks on the subject.

The Gorgon Stare, a new UAV built presumably to USAF specifications is a technological marvel and does indeed multiply not only surveillance capabilities, but store and forwarding capabilities as well. In the excitement over this new collection platform several essential questions are being ignored.

The most important is how much help is this device going to be in actually fighting enemy forces in Afghanistan. Is it going to help the U.S. or Coalition High Commands understand that what they call the “Taliban” is not a monolithic force with an elaborate hierarchy using a Soviet era command and control systems? But is actually a rubric for disparate tribes, groups, and gangs that engage the foreigners when they fell like it or to protect their opium trade or home village or to up grade their armament. I don’t think so.

Perhaps it will help the actual U.S. and Coalition fighters (boots on the ground) by providing heads up warnings of impending attacks or dangerous stretches of road. Perhaps but this will depend not simply on enhanced surveillance, but as Robert Steele has observed enhanced processing as well.

Thus the second important question is how will all the extra data being down linked from the Gorgon be processed, analyzed, and disseminated in a timely manner?  It may not be, but it can be certain with all the extra data coming in the USAF will argue for greatly increased processing staffing along with new information handling systems with impressive, if expensive, bells and whistles. This of course will be a hidden, but real addition to the cost of the Gorgon. So will enhanced processing and analytic capabilities  mean that Gorgon data may actually get to the war fighters in time to save lives and materially aid in defeating enemy forces? My guess is it won’t make a bit difference.

Unfortunately the whole Gorgon Stare Program is one more example the increasing tendency to use technology as a substitute for target knowledge and analysis (what Chuck Spinney calls synthetic as opposed to analytic thinking).  As one who designed my share of ‘Gold Plated Shovels with Rope Handles’, I suspect the Gorgon falls into that category.

Phi Beta Iota: See the three graphics below.  Historically the excess profit is in collection with few humans, and both government managers and contractor carpet-baggers shy away from the processing challenge–the contractors don't do processing well (a major problem with single-point of sale snake oil salesmen) and humans are “messy” and there are not enough of them to go around if you insist they have clearances.  The future is HUMAN, Multinational, Ezight-Tribe Sharing, and THINKING.  Gorgon Stare has no brain and neither does the US Air Force. This web site contains all of the information the US Government refuses to take seriously.  Until at least one element of the US Government gets serious about creating intelligence for every level of command across all mission areas, Gorgon Stare will continue to be the norm: expensive, useless, and harmful to the infantry that take 80% of the casualties because 96% of the Pentagon's budget continues to be spent irresponsibly (and without being accounted for in a responsible manner either).

Graphic: OSINT and Lack of Processing

Graphic: OSINT, We Went Wrong, Leaping Forward

Graphic: OSINT and Missing Information

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Reference: Gorgon Stare–USAF Goes Nuts (Again)

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Budgets & Funding, Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Maps, Methods & Process, Military, Misinformation & Propaganda, Officers Call, Policy, Politics of Science & Science of Politics, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Reform, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy, Standards, Strategy, Technologies, Waste (materials, food, etc)
Chuck Spinney Sounds Off

SEE ALSO: Journal: Gorgon Stare (All Eyes, No Brain)

The American Way of War: If You Can See Everything, Can You Know Anything?

With Air Force's new drone, ‘we can see everything,' in today's Washington Post (attached below) is a good example of how the high-cost addiction to techno war is  running amok. One thing ought to be clear in Afghanistan: A tiny adversary armed with the most primitive weapons, and a command and control system made up of prayer rugs and cell phones, has brought the high tech US military to a stalemate … or even worse, the looming specter a grand-strategic defeat, because we are becoming economically and morally exhausted by the futility of this war.  It does not matter whether it is President Obama presiding over a vapid strategic review or a low ranking grunt on point in Afghanistan — the central problem facing the United States in Afghanistan is the absence of what the Germans call fingerspitzengefühlor the feeling in the fingerprints needed for an intuitive feel for or connection with one's environment.

As the American strategist Colonel John Boyd (USAF Ret.) showed, fingerspitzengefühl is absolutely essential to the kind of synthetic (as opposed to analytic) thinking that is necessary for quick, relevant, and ultimately successful decision making in war, where quick decisions and sharp actions at all levels must be made and harmonized in an ever-present  atmosphere of menace, uncertainty, mistrust, fear, and chaos that impedes decisive action.[1]

Article About Grogon Stare

To paraphrase Clausewitz, these difficulties multiply to produce a kind of friction, and therefore, even though everything in war is simple, the simplest thing is difficult.  Clausewitz considered friction is the atmosphere of war. Nevertheless, according to the Post, the Air Force is about to deploy to Afghanistan a “revolutionary airborne surveillance system called Gorgon Stare, which will be able to transmit live video images of physical movement across an entire town.”

Quoting Maj. Gen. James O. Poss, the Air Force's assistant deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we're looking at, and we can see everything.”  Nirvana. While the Post dutifully reports a smattering of opposing views, it misses the ramifications of the central idea epitomized by General Poss's confident assertion: namely, how the American ideology of techno war assumes it can negate the human need for fingerspitzengefühl on a battlefield.

General Poss's confidence suggests quite clearly he believes seeing everything enables one to know everything. This a stunning theory of knowledge.  It is also a classic example of the American military's unquestioned belief that complex technologies coupled to step-by-step analytical procedures can negate the friction of combat to solve any problem in war.  Lifting the fog of war is, in fact, a phrase frequently used in contractor brochures touting the efficacy of these technologies.  This reflects theory of knowledge — really an unquestioned ideology — that views war as fundamentally a procedural problem of methodical analytical thinking, as opposed to its messy reality of being in large part an art of synthetic thinking.

Continue reading “Reference: Gorgon Stare–USAF Goes Nuts (Again)”

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Journal: Hard Truths to Power–Anyone?

About the Idea, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Corruption, Ethics, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Officers Call, Policies, Threats
Chuck Spinney Recommends...

Phi Beta Iota: When did it go out of style for warriors to speak the truth and only the truth?  Lies kill our own and dishonor our Republic.  It is time for integrity to come back into being.  Advanced Cyber/Information Operations (IO) are about truth & trust.  No amount of courage at the tactical level can overcome a dishonest, unaffordable, intellectually-bankrupt strategy.

MACGREGOR: Afghan report 2010

Deluding ourselves from one failure to another

By COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR

American forces invaded Afghanistan more than nine years ago, and we still don't know whom we're fighting. It's hard to know who did the better job of playing us for fools a few weeks ago – the Afghan who passed himself off as the “moderate” Taliban leader, who was rewarded with American cash for his performance, or Hamid Karzai.

. . . . . . .

With the lion's share of Iraq‘s southern oil fields in Chinese hands and the Kurdish nationalists determined to control the country's largest oil reserves, more fighting in Iraq is inevitable. This sort of thing would almost be funny, in an insane sort of way, if such military leadership did not result in the pointless loss of American lives, undermine American strategic interests and erode the security and prosperity of the American people – the things the nation's four-stars are sworn to defend.

. . . . . . .

When the budget ax falls, many inconvenient facts will come to light, unmasking the great deception that America confronted a serious military threat in the aftermath of Sept. 11, a deception promoted and fostered by politicians and ambitious generals who sought to gain from it. It will horrify and discourage Americans to learn we've bankrupted ourselves in a fight that always was analogous to clubbing baby seals. From 2001 onward, we never confronted armies, air forces or capable air defenses. Bottom line: There was no existential military threat to the United States or its NATO allies emanating from Afghanistan or the Middle East. There is none today.

Read the entire righteous piece….

For the time being, no one will say these things. It's easier to go, in Winston Churchill's words, “from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” and nurture the money flow to Washington.

Retired Col. Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat veteran, is executive vice president of Burke-Macgregor Group. His newest book, Warrior's Rage, was published by Naval Institute Press.  See also his earlier books, Breaking the Phalanx and Transformation Under Fire.

Why Can’t Europe Avoid Another Crisis? Why Can’t the U.S.?

By Simon Johnson (bio), Baseline Scenario, 30 December 2010

Our leading bankers looted the state, plunged the world into deep recession, and cost us 8 million jobs.  And now many of them stand by with sharpened knives and enhanced bonuses – also most willing to suggest how the salaries and jobs of others can be further cut.  Think about the morality of that one.

Will no one think hard about what this means for our budget and our political system until it is too late?

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Journal: DNI Sand-Bagged by Triad & Self

Advanced Cyber/IO, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Threats
Mario Profaca Recommends...

DNI Clapper Needs to Know

The Weekly Standard, DEC 29, 2010

In fact, the more we learn about what the plotters were up to, as well as the efforts to stop them, the more troubling the DNI’s ignorance becomes.

Three facts, in particular, have emerged that make this lapse inexcusable.

First, the State Department says the plotters had the U.S. embassy in London in their sites. On Monday, a Foggy Bottom spokesman confirmed that the embassy was on the plotters’ “targeting list.”

Second, according to the Guardian (UK), the alleged would-be terrorists were arrested “after several months of surveillance and monitoring by police and MI5 officers.”

Third, the UK press has reported that the plotters were, at the very least, inspired by the notorious al Qaeda cleric Anwar al Awlaki. … Awlaki is currently one of the most wanted terrorists in the world.

Read complete article….

Phi Beta Iota: The DNI has been sand-bagged by three people and himself.  Neither John Brennan (kitchen DNI at the White House), Leon Panetta (cheerleader for the CIA), or Michael E. Leiter (lawyer fronting the National Counterterrorism Center) appear to have any direct interest in seeing Jim Clapper succeed.  Unfortunately, Jim Clapper has also sand-bagged himself by accepting “business as usual” and contenting himself with improvements on the margins–doing the wrong things righter.  There is not a single piece of the US secret world that is working the way it should, in part because the entire mess lacks the legitimacy derived from relevance, and in part because the one thing Jim Clapper could have done on his own authority–the creation of an Open Source Center and an embedded Multinational Decision Support Centre–he has not done.   Since the obvious needs to be spelled out, here are the two reasons why the OSC/MDSC are essential: 1) to begin providing the 96% of the decision-support not now provided to everyone including the President but explicitly not provided by classified to anyone below the President including policy, acquisition, and operations action officers; and b) to create the baseline for evaluating the Return on Investment (RoI) for the mis-begotten pieces of the secret world that are not, by any stretch of the imagination, worth the $90 billion a year they are costing us now.  If there were one person among the seniors actually capable of making a difference, it should have been Jim Clapper.  Happy New Year…

See Also:

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

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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.

Continue reading “Building a Constituency for the Director of National Intelligence”

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Worth a Look: LibraryThing Online Public Library & Social Network

About the Idea, Advanced Cyber/IO, Analysis, Augmented Reality, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Geospatial, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Policies, Policy, Strategy, Threats, Tools
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Check it out

What’s Good?

  • Join the world’s largest book club.
  • Catalog your books from Amazon, the Library of Congress and 690 other world libraries. Import from anywhere.
  • Find people with eerily similar tastes.
  • Find new books to read.
  • Free Early Reviewer books from publishers and authors
  • Enter 200 books for free, as many as you like for $10 (year) or $25 (life).
  • Available in many languages: (others)

Phi Beta Iota: This is fascinating and has enormous potential from local to global.  It is what Amazon SHOULD have been, a means of harnessing the distributed intelligence of authors, reviewers, and readers.  Phi Beta Iota was created to meet this need for one collection, cataloging Robert Steele's reading across 98 categories.  We are contacting this group to suggest they create Global to Local Citizen Intelligence, Policy, and Budget Councils.

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Assessment of the Position of Director of National Intelligence

Corruption, Government, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), Law Enforcement, Military, Officers Call, Policies, Threats
Richard Wright

The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (9/11 Commission) was created to examine how the terrorist attacks of September 2001 could have occurred and what could be done to prevent future attacks.  Among other things the Commission recommended that there should be a National Intelligence Director who would have “two main areas of responsibility” namely:

1) to oversee intelligence centers on specific subjects affecting national security; and

2) to oversee the national intelligence program and the agencies that contribute to it.

In effect the Commission wished to have a single authority that could that could task and co-ordinate the processes and operations of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). The U.S. Congress was more or less forced to act on this specific recommendation because of public pressure. Thus the position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004.

In April 2005, Ambassador John D. Negroponte, former Ambassador to Iraq, was sworn in as the first DNI.  Negroponte was chosen because no qualified candidate from the so-called IC was willing to take the job. In truth, the DNI was forced on the Federal Government by outside forces and began with no support either in the Congress, the Executive Branch, or the so-called IC. Indeed President Bush made it clear that he considered the DNI unnecessary. The position of DNI had responsibility for, but no authority over the IC, had no ready made constituency within the government, and was considered an unnecessary intrusion on intelligence operations by the principal members of the IC.

Continue reading “Assessment of the Position of Director of National Intelligence”