Budgets & Funding – Page 3 – Public Intelligence Blog

WinslowWheeler Cropped — Winslow Wheeler

A Final Word on Drones and Reaper (doc 20 pages)

A Final Word on Drones and Reaper

Last week I distributed a five part series on drones, specifically the MQ-9 Reaper. It was published at Time Magazine's Battleland blog. This last message on the series distributes each of the five parts and the entire paper as originally written for any who might be looking for a missed part or to read the paper as one piece. But also, I attempt here to raise some broader issues.

My paper addressed Reaper as a physical system, and I take a few shots at some of the more uninformed things that have been written about drones by some people who, had they looked more into the data, probably would have been a little less effusive about the “revolution in warfare” and expectation that drones should naturally replace manned aircraft for air combat roles in the foreseeable future.

My paper only scratched the surface of the implications of the burgeoning love affair of the US defense community with drones. Some of those issues have already been thoroughly discussed in the press: such as the use of unmanned systems to pursue air to ground combat roles in friendly, ambiguous and hostile countries as a “safe” way to pursue policy makers' objectives. The endnotes in the first part of the series referenced several excellent articles on this issue, or you might want to read Andrew Cockburn's more recent essay in the London Review of Books at http://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n05/andrew-cockburn/drones-baby-drones.

Continue reading “Winslow Wheeler: Drones Dead on Arrival”

2012/03/03

Josh Kilbourn: Israel, Others Begin US Stock Spree

08 Wild Cards, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government

Next Leg Of The Ponzi Revealed – Foreign Central Banks To Begin Buying US Stocks Outright Starting Today

Tyler Durden

ZeroHedge, 1 March 2012

We were speechless when we read this from Bloomberg.

The Bank of Israel will begin today a pilot program to invest a portion of its foreign currency reserves in U.S. equities.

The investment, which in the initial phase will amount to 2 percent of the $77 billion reserves, or about $1.5 billion, will be made through UBS AG and BlackRock Inc. (BLK), Bank of Israel spokesman Yossi Saadon said in a telephone interview today. At a later stage, the investment is expected to increase to 10 percent of the reserves.

A small number of central banks have started investing part of their reserves in equities. About 9 percent of the foreign- exchange reserves of Switzerland’s central bank were invested in shares at the end of the third quarter, the Swiss bank said on its website.

The investment will be made in equity index trackers and will include between 1,500 to 2,000 shares, among them stocks like Apple Inc. (AAPL), Saadon said.

Lord James of Blackheath: 2009 to 2010 Massive Money Laundering Between USA, England, and Scotland — Three Possibilities

03 Economy, 04 Indonesia, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 11 Society, Budgets & Funding, Commerce, Corruption, General Accountability Office, Government, Intelligence (government), Methods & Process, Money, Banks & Concentrated Wealth, Office of Management and Budget, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests, Secrecy & Politics of Secrecy

Lord James of Blackheath, House of Lords [VIDEO 11:10] from 2010, now circulating

Breaking news Lord James of Blackheath has spoken in the House of Lords holding evidence of three transactions of 5 Trillion each and a transaction of 750,000 metric tonnes of gold and has called for an investigation.

I think there are three possible conclusions that may come from it. I think there may have been a massive piece of money laundering committed by a major government which ought to know better and that it has effectively undermined the integrity of the British bank the Royal Bank of Scotland, in doing so. The second alternative is that a major American department has an agency that has gone rogue on it because it has been wound up and has created a structure out of which they are seeking to get at least 50 billion Euros as a payoff. And the third possibility is that this is an extraordinarily elaborate fraud which has not been carried out but which has been prepared in order to provide a threat to one government or more if they don't pay them off. So there are three possibilities and this all needs a very urgent review.

My Lords, it starts in April and May of 2009, with the alleged transfer to the United Kingdom, to HSBC of a sum of 5 trillion dollars and seven days later, in comes another 5 trillion dollars to HSBC, and then 3 weeks later another 5 trillion. 5 trillion in each case. Sorry. A total of 15 trillion dollars is alleged to have been passed into the hands of HSBC for onward transit to the Royal Bank of Scotland and we need to look at where this came from and what the history of this money is. And I have been trying to sort out the sequence by which this money has been created and from where it has come from for a long time.

http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/forum.cgi?read=230593

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201212/ldhansrd/text/120216-0002.h…

2012/02/202012/02/20

Winslow Wheeler: “Defense” Budget – the Full Enchilada

03 Economy, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, IO Impotency, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call

Last Monday, after the Pentagon released its 2013 budget materials, just about every news article I read inaccurately reported the totals. These articles did not just miss some significant bits not in DOD's press release; they ignored another $380 billion in spending for US national security spending if you take the time to parse through OMB's far more complete and accurate budget materials.

AOL Defense ran my explanation; it is at

Which Pentagon Budget Numbers Are Real? You Decide!

How do I get to a $1 trillion US small “d” defense budget; real it below:

The Real “Base” Pentagon Budget and the Actual “Defense” Budget

Winslow T. Wheeler

When the Pentagon released its budget materials and press releases last Monday, the press dutifully reported the numbers. The Pentagon's “base” budget for 2013 is to be $525.4 billion, and with $88.5 billion for the war in Afghanistan and elsewhere added, the total comes to $613.9 billion. (See the two DOD press releases ONE and TWO).

Indeed, if you plowed through the hundreds of pages of additional materials the Pentagon released Monday, you would come up with little reason the doubt the accuracy of those numbers as the totality of what Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was seeking for the Pentagon. It would also seem reasonable that those amounts constitute the vast majority of what America spends on “defense,” defined generically.

You would be quite wrong to think so.

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2012/02/102016/03/25

Robert Steele: Intelligent Management of Intelligence Agencies, and the New Craft of Intelligence

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Collective Intelligence, Communities of Practice, Computer/online security, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, Hacking, History, Information Operations (IO), Intelligence (government), Key Players, Methods & Process, Officers Call, Open Government, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Resilience, Serious Games, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Waste (materials, food, etc), Whole Earth Review

steele formal high res — Robert David STEELE Vivas

I have begun drafting my portion of the new Handbook of Intelligence Studies (Routledge, 2013), it is a chapter early on entitled “The Craft of Intelligence.” I pick up where Allen Dulles and Sherman Kent left off. My graphic on Intelligence Maturity captures the essence of my thinking at the strategic level, but of course there is more to come, including the desperate need to restore integrity to all that we do.

In 1988 I ghost-wrote for the Commandant of the Marine Corps an article that he enhanced and signed, “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's.” At that time my focus was on the difference between the conventional threat and the emerging unconventional threat.

Now my focus is on the purpose and process of intelligence as decision-support. We must — we will — move from secret intelligence for the few to open intelligence for the many; from expensive centralized largely worthless intelligence to free and low-cost distributed intelligence relevant to every person at every level on every issue; from intelligence as window-dressing for channeling $80 billion a year to banks and corporations, to intelligence as an integral element of every aspect of a Smart Nation.

Today Owl sent me a link to an article, Philip E. Tetlock and Barabara A Mellers, “Intelligent Management of Intelligence Agencies,” American Psychologist, 2011, pp. 1-12. I respect Owl, so I printed it and read it twice.

This article is completely out of touch with reality and the authors have not bothered to familiarize themselves with the literatures pertinent to their endeavor. Out of 89 cited sources 12 are non-intelligence-related prior publications of the lead author, 1 is a prior publication of the second author, and 11 are ostensibly about intelligence but truly marginal selections. So 12% sources on the subject, 13% self-citation, and 75% escoteric psycho-babble irrelevant to the actual challenge. As an intelligence professional, I am offended that two ostensibly erudite individuals would dare to publish this trype without even a semblance of understanding of the subject under discussion.

Here are a few comments and additional links:

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2012/02/09

Winslow Wheeler: Sorting Out the Real DoD Budget…

10 Security, Budgets & Funding, DoD, Military, Office of Management and Budget, Officers Call

I thought the short piece below might help people better analyze and report on the defense spending budget that will be released on Monday, February 13. As you know, DOD has already released some numbers; however, they are quite incomplete. They do not even cover all Pentagon spending, let alone all defense-related spending. Using the Pentagon's press release on Monday will likely mean missing the more complete picture. I try to explain below, and I address where you can find a more complete display of the numbers–all of them.

Decoding the Pentagon's Budget Numbers

Winslow T. Wheeler

This Monday, February 13, the Pentagon will release the details of its fiscal year 2013 budget. The press, congressional staff and think tank-types go through an annual routine, scrambling to get out their take on the numbers and some selected issues. Some of these efforts are quite predictable; this year we will surely hear about

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2012/02/092012/02/09

Ralph Peters: Testimony to Congress on Pakistan As a Failing Empire, Focus on Baluchistan

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Hill Letters & Testimony, History, InfoOps (IO), Intelligence (government), IO Impotency, Key Players, Methods & Process, Military, Officers Call, Policies, Strategy, Threats, True Cost

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations
House Committee on Foreign Affairs
Baluchistan Hearing, February 8, 2012
Testimony of Ralph Peters, military analyst and author

“PAKISTAN AS A FAILING EMPIRE”

2012-02-09 Ralph Peters House Testimony, Baluchistan and Pakistan (8 pages, doc)

Introductory remarks: This testimony arises from three premises.

First, we cannot analyze global events through reassuring ideological lenses, be they left or right, or we will continue to be mistaken, surprised and bewildered by foreign developments. The rest of the world will neither conform to our prejudices nor behave for our convenience.

Second, focusing obsessively on short-term problems blinds us to the root causes and frequent intractability of today’s conflicts. Because we do not know history, we wave history away. Yet, the only way to understand the new world disorder is to place current developments in the context of generations and even centuries. Otherwise, we will continue to blunder through situations in which we deploy to Afghanistan to end Taliban rule, only to find ourselves, a decade later, impatient to negotiate the Taliban’s return to power.

Third, we must not be afraid to “color outside of the lines.” When it comes to foreign affairs, Washington’s political spectrum is monochromatic: timid, conformist and wrong with breathtaking consistency. We have a Department of State that refuses to think beyond borders codified at Versailles nine decades ago; a Department of Defense that, faced with messianic and ethnic insurgencies, concocted its doctrine from irrelevant case studies of yesteryear’s Marxist guerrillas; and a think-tank community almost Stalinist in its rigid allegiance to twentieth-century models of how the world should work.

If we do not think innovatively, we will continue to fail ignobly.

Continue reading “Ralph Peters: Testimony to Congress on Pakistan As a Failing Empire, Focus on Baluchistan”