Topics (All Other) – Page 242 – Public Intelligence Blog

2010/02/03

Journal: New QDR–Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Ethics, Military, Reform, Strategy, Threats

The New QDR

The Pentagon Goes Intellectually AWOL

By FRANKLIN C. SPINNEY

Monday, February 1, 2010, was a day that should live in budgetary infamy. The Defense Department released its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and its accompanying Fiscal Year 2011 budget request, which is the first year of the Fiscal Year 2011-2015 five year plan (2011-2015 FYDP). These documents are available on the internet and can be downloaded in PDF format here: QDR and the FY 2011 budget.

Even by the dismal intellectual standards of Pentagon bureaucracy, the QDR and the FY 2011 budget, taken together, establish a new standard of analytical vacuity, psychological denial, and just plane meaningless drivel. I will keep this short by using just one important case to prove my allegation. Judge for yourself if it is necessary and sufficient to make the point.

. . . . . . .

The chaos in the accounting system provides the intellectual “grease” to lubricate the engine driving narrow bureaucratic agendas that are causing the force structure meltdown. Senior decision makers can not possibly understand the trade offs they are really making when they put together a budget, assuming they wanted to, which is also in doubt.

Phi Beta Iota: The Pentagon is only as competent as the combination of three factors:

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2010/02/022010/02/02

Journal: Politics of Fear–Spending on National Insecurity

10 Security, Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collective Intelligence, Military, Peace Intelligence, Reform, Threats

Answer: It all depends on what you think should be included, but once this is clear — this spending will be be exempt from any cutbacks needed to reduce the deficit.

The Table prepared by Winslow Wheeler, Director, Straus Military Reform Project within the Center for Defense Information.

Chuck

Defense Spending — Winslow Wheeler, Straus Military Reform Project.

2010/01/312010/02/01

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

Analysis, Budgets & Funding, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Ethics, Historic Contributions, InfoOps (IO), IO Sense-Making, Key Players, Methods & Process, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools

The software chapter in Book: INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH–Chapter 22 Technical Intelligence Enablers Loaded is being doubled up as our smarter colleagues churn it around, it will probably be extended several pages and have more linked references.

Here are the four requirements documents for the all-source fusion analytic workstation converging in 1989–we do not have this today because no one has ever tried to manage the US Government's approach to IT–distributed chaos and centralized ignorance just will not do.

1989 Webb (US) CATALYST: Computer-Aided Tools for the Analysis of Science & Technology

Reference 1989 Analyst 2000

1988 Generic Intelligence Center Production Requirements

Reference: 1989 USMC Work-Up for JNIDS VI All-Source Fusion Analytic Workstation

1988-2009 OSINT-M4IS2 TECHINT Chronology

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

2001 Porter (US) Tools of the Trade: A Long Way to Go

2010/01/302010/01/30

Worth a Look: IBM’s Smarter Planet Initiative

Analysis, Methods & Process, Worth A Look

Phi Beta Iota: The problem with IBM, apart from its ignoring the threat from Google, is that it still tries to create proprietary and single-point solutions.

IBM is a great company with smart people–they are going to have to be compelling to move into the Open Source Triad (Software, Intelligence, Spectrum) by smarter citizens who will settle for nothing less.

We like this site, a great deal. Lots to work with.

2010/01/302010/01/30

Journal: DoD Mind-Set Time Lags Most Fascinating

10 Security, 11 Society, Government, Key Players, Law Enforcement, Military, Non-Governmental, Peace Intelligence, Strategy, Threats

Full Story Online

Pentagon Shifts Its Strategy To Small-Scale Warfare

By August Cole and Yochi J. Dreazen

Wall Street Journal January 30, 2010 Pg. 4

The shift in strategy sets up potential conflicts with defense contractors and powerful lawmakers uneasy with the Pentagon's growing focus on smaller-scale, guerilla warfare.

In particular, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has come to think that the Pentagon's traditional belief that it needed to be able to fight two major wars at the same time was outdated and overly focused on conventional warfare. The new QDR moves away from that model, a mainstay of U.S. military thinking for more than two decades, in favor of an expanded focus on low-intensity conflict.

Phi Beta Iota: This is most fascinating; it is also not the last word. Here is the timeline in short and long versions. Short: 22 years from advance guard to leadership; 12 years from internal think tanks to leadership; probably further delay from leadership acceptance to bureaucratic implementation: another 20 years.

1988: Commandant of the Marine Corps Al Gray and the USMC Intelligence Center figure it out. General Gray publishes “Global Intelligence Challenges in the 1990's,” American Intelligence Journal (Winter 1989-1990).

1992: USMC seeks redirection of one-third of the National Intelligence Topics (NIT) to Third World. Across the board stone-walling by other services and the US Intelligence Community.

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2010/01/292010/01/29

Journal: Afghanistan, Sun Tzu, State, & “Intelligence”

Methods & Process, Policy, Strategy

This post has four parts: 1) Chuck Spinney's long commentary; 2) The original article with attachments from TruthDig; 3) a ripost making three points about Chuck's comments; 4) Chuck's answer and a short comment from Robert Steele

The Eikenberry Cables Turn Sun Tzu on His Head: Domestic Politics and the Art of Asymmetrical Bureaucratic War

In the opening line of Book 1 of Sun Tzu's classic, The Art of War (circa 400 BC), the first treatise ever written on the subject, the Chinese master said,”War is a matter of vital importance to the State; the province of life and death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.” [1] He then goes on to describe a systematic method for assembling the information needed to make a rational decision to go to war. Today, in Pentagonese, we would call his method a “net assessment,” that is to say Sun Tzu described a very thoughtful way to perform a comparative analysis of one's own strengths and weaknesses with those of the adversary.

Sun Tzu's strategic outlook is amazingly relevant to contemporary circumstances; indeed, it is timeless, and I submit it provides the gold standard for for evaluating our own efforts to grapple with the question of going to war or to escalate a war — basically, his advice was simple: know your enemy and know yourself before plunging into war.

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2010/01/292010/01/29

Journal: Haiti–A Special Forces Sergeant Major Reports Our National Crime Against Humanity in Haiti

08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Methods & Process, Military, Peace Intelligence, Threats

From A Retired Special Forces Sgt Major:

To All,

I just returned from Haiti with Hebler. We flew in at 3 AM Sunday to the scene of such incredible destruction on one side, and enormous ineptitude and criminal neglect on the other.

Port o Prince is in ruins. The rest of the country is fairly intact. Our team was a rescue team and we carried special equipment that locates people buried under the rubble.

There are easily 200,000 dead, the city smells like a charnel house. The bloody UN was there for 5 years doing apparently nothing but wasting US Taxpayers money.

The ones I ran into were either incompetents or outright anti American. Most are French or french speakers, worthless every damn one of them.

While 1800 rescuers were ready willing and able to leave the airport and go do our jobs, the UN and USAID ( another organization full of little OBamites and communists that openly speak against Americana) [REDACTED].

These two organizations exemplified their parochialism by:

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