About the Idea – Page 15 – Public Intelligence Blog

Robert Steele as posted 13 October 2009. The below paragraph is cited in Kent C. Myers, Reflexive Practice: Professional Thinking for a Turbulent World (New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan, 2010); p. 86.

The central problem of our time is the failure of human organization–its failure to scale, to adapt, to assimilate.

We believe the failure stems directly from a rejection of diversity and a falsification of feedback loops–the absence of integrity.

We’ve come to the conclusion that the discord between politics and intelligence is contrived–there is no inherent opposition between politics (choice of best path for all) and intelligence (presentation of best achievable truth for all) provided ONE condition is met: integrity among the majority of individuals engaged in each.

If intelligence loses its integrity and allows itself to be politicized or worse, ignored, then intelligence fails. Similarly, if politics loses its integrity and overplays the secrecy card while also shutting out the diversity of views that are essential to achieving a sustainable consensus, then politics fails.

2010 PhD Author Dissects Intelligence Reformer Robert Steele [Click on Cartoon for 5 Pages]

About the Idea, Ethics, Hacking, Officers Call, Worth A Look

brain-surgery humor — CLICK HERE For Myers on Steele 5 Pages

As published in Kent C. Myers, Reflexive Practice: Professional Thinking for a Turbulent World (New York, NY: Palgrave McMillan, 2010); pp. 82-86.

Cartoon Credit: Inebriated Press also quoted below

My first post was on June 21, 2007: “Mad Cows Terrorize London“ For all I know they still do.

PS: Hang tough and live your beliefs. Remember what Edmund Burke said:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Phi Beta Iota: Alvin Toffler in “The Future of the Spy” (1993) and Anthony Kimery in “Vet with a Vision” (2009) are the precursors to Dr. Myers' definitive dissection. Browse the many items in About the Idea for a broad overview. The concluding quote from Steele by Myers can be found at Journal: Politics & Intelligence–Partners Only When Integrity is Central to Both as posted 13 October 2009.

2010/07/102011/07/15

Reference: Human Intelligence (HUMINT)–All Humans, All Minds, All the Time

About the Idea, HUMINT, Military, OSINT Generic

: Robert David Steele

Position: External Researcher

Email Mr. Robert D. Steele

ROBERT D. STEELE is a retired Marine Corps infantry and intelligence officer and also qualified as an S-1/Adjutant, with service at all levels from platoon to Service Headquarters. After four years active duty (the balance in the Individual Ready Reserve) and a decade in the clandestine service of the Central Intelligence Agency (including three tours overseas focused on terrorist and extremist targets), he resigned from the CIA to accept a Marine Corps invitation to be the senior civilian responsible for creating the Marine Corps Intelligence Center (today a Command) and served as the study directory for the flagship study, Overview of Planning and Programming Factors for Expeditionary Operations in the Third World. He resigned from the Marine Corps civil service in 1993 to lead the modern Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) revolution, and is the author of the DIA, NATO, and SOF OSINT Handbooks, as well as personally responsible for training 7,500 officers from 66 countries. His latest book, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability, outlines a course of action for creating public intelligence in the public interest across all organizations, beginning with the United Nations. Mr. Steele founded OSS.Net, Inc. and Earth Intelligence Network, the latter a 501c3 public charity, and is the foremost proponent for a Swedish concept enhancing Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, and Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2). Mr. Steele holds graduate degrees in international relations and public administration from Lehigh University and the University of Oklahoma. He has also earned a certificate in intelligence policy from Harvard University and a diploma in defense studies from the Naval War College.

SSI Publications by Mr. Robert D. Steele

EDIT: None of these are “handbooks” in the classical sense of the word, but all are strategic guides that set the standard for holistic approaches to human intelligence, information operations, and analytic intelligence.

Added June 03, 2010

Type: Monograph

Human Intelligence: All Humans, All Minds, All the Time.

Authored by Mr. Robert D. Steele.

The author explores the centrality of Human Intelligence in meeting the needs of the U.S. Army, as well as the Department of Defense, and the whole of government, for relevant information and tailored intelligence essential to creating a national security strategy; for defining whole of government policies that work in harmony; for acquisition of the right capabilities at the right price in time to be useful; and for operations, both local and global.

Added February 01, 2006

Type: Monograph

Information Operations: Putting the “I” Back Into DIME.

Authored by Mr. Robert D. Steele.

In the Age of Information, the primary source of National Power is information that has been converted into actionable intelligence or usable knowledge. Information Operations is the critical ingredient in early warning, peacekeeping, stabilization & reconstruction, and homeland defense.

Added February 01, 2002

Type: Monograph

The New Craft of Intelligence: Achieving Asymmetric Advantage in the Face of Nontraditional Threats.

Authored by Mr. Robert D. Steele.

This monograph is the third in the Strategic Studies Institute's “Studies in Asymmetry” Series. In it, the author examines two paradigm shifts–one in relation to the threat and a second in relation to intelligence methods– while offering a new model for threat analysis and a new model for intelligence operations in support to policy, acquisition, and command engaged in nontraditional asymmetric

LINKS REPAIRED 10 July 2010

2010/07/09

Afghan Self-stabilization from Below – and Above

About the Idea, Augmented Reality, Collaboration Zones, Communities of Practice, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Ethics, Geospatial, info-graphics/data-visualization, InfoOps (IO), International Aid, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship, Key Players, Methods & Process, microfinancing, Mobile, Policies, Real Time, Reform, Strategy, Technologies, Threats, Tools, True Cost

As the end game begins for NATO and the US in Afghanistan, and as the potential mineral wealth of that unhappy land is revealed, one confronts despair when contemplating the fate of the Afghans. With the Taliban poised to move once more into the coming power vacuum and exploit a resurgent drug trade as well as establish a protection racket parasitic to the future mining industry, one looks for some glimmer of hope for the Afghan people.

After all, Afghanistan has never been conquered except by the Mongols. The much decentralized, tribal society that makes them vulnerable to decentralized gang rule has confounded each centralized invader who attempted to bring about their own version of order. Is there hope that the Afghan people will be able to expel the Taliban as they expelled the others? After all, the first government of the Taliban was not overthrown by the Afghans themselves, but by military invasion with the passive consent of the Afghan people.

Now, with the outside military forces beginning their final period in-country, and with little if any evidence of a viable government staffed by officials who will not bolt the country with their pockets stuffed, what can give the ordinary Afghans the means to resist as they have resisted other occupations?

The answer, I believe, lies in the essence of government. Government operates by communication. People in government gather, refine, transmit information, both from the populace to the seat of power and in reverse after policies and laws are defined based upon the information gathered. People have political power to the extent that they are included in this process of information flow to the exclusion of others.

Continue reading “Afghan Self-stabilization from Below – and Above”

2010/06/202010/06/20

Journal: One Mobile Per Child

About the Idea, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, InfoOps (IO), IO Multinational, microfinancing, Mobile, Real Time, Reform, Tools

Phi Beta Iota: The idea of one mobile per person was originally devised by the Earth Intelligence Network, and is articulated in both brief form and in a full-length book. Now the idea is emerging, spontaneously, from others. Below is a link to a letter in the Journal of Health Informatics in Developing Countries.

Letter: One mobile per child: a tractable global health intervention

The authors, Prajesh Chhanabhai and Alec Hold, one working at the University of Otago in New Zeland, the other for the Department of Economic and Soical Affairs in the United Nations, make several important points, not least of which is the price point: mobile telephones are being offered in Venezuela for $15, which is half the price the World Bank negotiated with Motorola.

If and when the Chinese see the opportunity (free cell phone, no extra charge for listening in), we should see both free cell phones and eventually free airtime as well as free call centers to educate the poor “one cell call at a time” at the same time that we recoup the investment in elevated national productivity, now proven to be associated with the diffusion of cell phone access.

It merits observation that the cell phone is now the “gift of life” that any one of the one billion rich (80% of whom do not give to charity now) can endow, down to a specific person in a specific village. The sooner we make cell phones ubiquitous, the sooner we can start exposing corruption at all levels (with web sites that make sense of text messages and expose corruption in near-real-time “by name,” and also creating infinite wealth among the four billion at the “bottom of the pyramid.” The human brain is the one inexhaustible resource we have, giving every human a cell phone is the fastest way to harnessing the distributed intelligence of the Whole Earth.

Interesting Side Note: Carlos “slim” Helu (richest person in the world) has a major stake in Tracfone (some phones go for $10). He could be a major player in the one mobile per child campaign. Venezuela president Hugo Chavez has a Twitter account and the Earth Intelligence Network just posted >> earthintelnet @chavezcandanga “the Vergatario” ($15 phone) + Carlos “Slim” Helu ? http://phibetaiota.net/?p=25785 #Vergatario #Venezuela #CarlosSlim

2010/06/152010/06/15

Reference: Steele on the Record–Four Short Videos

About the Idea, Briefings (Core), Briefings & Lectures

Phi Beta Iota: Occasionally we stumble across value-added efforts by others who have re-mixed or clipped portions of longer pieces featuring our founder, Robert Steele. Provided for information.