4 Star – Page 45 – Public Intelligence Blog

2005/10/232009/12/04

Review: Imperial Ambitions–Conversations on the Post-9/11 World (American Empire Project) (Paperback)

4 Star, Empire, Sorrows, Hubris, Blowback

Call to arms for We the People (Intellectual Self-Defense),

October 23, 2005

Noam Chomsky

There are always gems to be found in anything that Chomsky offers (I agree with the Boston Globe's assessment of him as “America's most useful citizen”) but one can always be warned when the offering is interviews, double-spaced, over time.

In this instance, the Introduction is actually useful and I agree with David Barsamian when he describes Chomsky as an extraordinary distiller and interpreter of information, who represents all that intellectuals *should* be.

One aspect of the book that is new to Chomsky's writing is his clear and distinct appreciation for the freedom's that we enjoy in America. While we are all subject to the arbitrary declaration by the government that we are an “enemy combatant” with no rights, on balance Chomsky goes out of his way in this series of interviews to articulate his love for America and his appreciation of the privileges that attend one who is both a citizen and a tenured (now retired) professor.

As a long-time reader of Chomsky, I found some delight in his recollection of the beginnings of propaganda (in England, with the stated intent “to direct the thought of most of the world”) and I learned for the first time that Chomsky credits Walter Lippman with the phrase “manufacturing consent” that Chomsky used as the title of his most famous co-authored work.

Chomsky offers some fascinating geopolitical insights with his suggestion that the Trans-Siberian Railway might be extended to run down through North Korean into South Korea, and his views that ASEAN plus 3 (China, Korea, Japan) might rise to super-power status. I am especially taken with his view that China might be the power that saves America from itself, orchestrating a balance of power and sanity arrangement from that side of the world.

Chomsky returns to a familiar theme in this book, that of war crimes and the US being a very guilty party, but for the first time, I see Chomsky forgiving of the soldiers on the front lines, and even of their general officers, and placing all of the blame on the civilians that direct the military from the White House and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. This is new. I fully expect Americans to be brought up on war crime charges in the next ten years, and I expect the American public to support this when the evidence is presented in graphic terms.

Chomsky also returns to his theme of the US harboring terrorists and hence not being able to claim the high ground against other nations. I was impressed by how the Cubans gathered evidence on the Florida-based assassins and violators of US law, and how elegantly the Cubans presented this evidence to the FBI. I was dismayed but not surprised to find the FBI arresting the Cuban infiltrators rather than the assasins–this is the same FBI that has convicted fewer than five actual terrorists, each with an average jail sentence of 14 days, from thousands of arrests. So much for intelligent effective federal investigations.

The book concludes with a fascinating discussion of “intellectual self-defense” that is a call to arms for every intelligent American (we need to be concerned–that may only be about one fifth of us).

This is something of a quickie book, not at all as substantive as Chomsky's usual works, but with many gems never-the-less. Certainly worth buying and reading.

2005/10/202009/12/04

Review: A Whole New Mind–Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age (Hardcover)

4 Star, Information Society

Simplistic but Useful Guide to Global Dialog,

October 20, 2005

Daniel H. Pink

This book, like Free Agent Nation: The Future of Working for Yourself is written for people who live in an ivory tower, a gated community, or a corporate palace. It is completely out of touch with the 90% of humanity that is comprised of the Working Poor in America, or the destitute and disenfranchised everywhere else. For that it loses one star.

However, and this is high praise from me, it is a “must read” for any knowledge worker, and I am particularly recommending it to the new breed of warrior in the U.S. Government, the Information Operations specialist. A **major** part of our government's failure at foreign policy and national security–including its failure at homeland security and its mis-steps in the global war on terror, going back to the Viet-Nam era, can be traced to a combination of excessive reliance on “metrics” (remember the “body counts?”) diluted by ideological preferences absent historical or cultural contexts.

This book, while simplistic, is a superb over-view of the alternative methods of **perception**, integration, understanding, and outreach–empathy and strategic communication to others in terms they can “receive,” and for that reason I consider it a “must read.”

The six senses, design, story-telling (see Steve Dunning), symphony, Empathy (none to be found in this White House), Play (intertwing work and play, mixing it up to energize both), and Meaning, are well covered by this book, and in a way that makes sense, where the value of listening is clear to the reader.

It is a well-put-together book, with the right amount of white space, good illustrations, good notes and recommended readings, and over-all a pleasant and instructive contribution to my library and my reflections.

2005/10/112009/12/04

Review: Rain Fall (Spy Fiction)

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Been a Spy, Done Japan, This is a Great Tax Write Off,

October 11, 2005

Barry Eisler

I've been a spy, out from under cover for a long time, and I would not normally have touched this, but my spouse suggested it on a rainy afternoon, and I have to give it four stars because it held my attention and I finished it.

On balance, I would put this between a 3 and a 4, but I gave it a four for coherence. Still, this author is not John Le Carre at his best (George Smiley series).

What I found most interesting, as I read through the book and found connections with both my past and with Japan, was the manner in which the author appears to have found a formula for connecting what he has done in his own past, what he has read about, and what he is presumably writing off on his taxes–comprehensive travel.

I put the book down, not disappointed–I certainly recommend this book to anyone who has not been a spy–but thinking to myself, WOW, this is what I can do when I retire–travel all over the world, write a spy novel with details about each place I visit, and presto, it is all a grand tax write-off.

Professionally speaking the book is way too facile. Planting an audio device is very very tough. The need for line of sight from the transmitter to the receiver kills most applications. Generally speaking, you have to listen for four hours to get five minutes worth of useful stuff. Killer technologies certainly abound, but as CIA found when it tried to kill Castro with exploding cigars, infected dive suits, beard killers, and the bomb-dropping pigeons, generally technology is not the answer.

3 for former spies, 5 for the general public, 4 on balance. Absolutely recommended for a rainy afternoon.

2005/10/032009/12/04

Review: Transforming U.S. Intelligence (Paperback)

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

“Must Read” Superb Collection, But Not Transformative,

October 3, 2005

Jennifer E Sims

This is a valuable book and merits careful study by policymakers, practitioners, and students who may be future intelligence professionals. The book is not, however, transformative, nor is it particularly innovative, and for that, I must with reluctance limit it to four stars, but with the caveat that it is a “must read.”

Some of the best contributions are those of Jennifer Sims, and the deeper that I read into the works of others, the more I wished that she had had the time to make the entire book her own, casting a broader net for iconoclastic thinkers, foreign intelligence practitioners, non-governmental experts in open source intelligence, religious and labor experts on foreign threats from foreign religions, whose thoughts do not appear in this book.

The book's major premise is that it was not the institutions that failed, but rather leadership–that all that is needed is a change in priorities, perspective, and methods. This is typical of books written by those who, by their own admission, were “part of the problem.”

The section on new requirements is more than adequate if one wishes to continue to focus on unilateral secret intelligence about major state threats but fails to acknowledge that we earned a D, at best, on everything else, to include terrorism, proliferation, environmental scarcity, ethnic conflict, and dictatorial corruption (our friends) as a long-term threat to our vision of participatory democracy and moral capitalism. The requirements section suffers from a rather staid focus on states and “actor” threats, with little mention of history, geography, culture, religion, or demographics, all forces vastly more potent than your average failed state or single transnational group.

The middle third of the book, on capabilities, is the strongest part of the book. It opens with a chapter on open sources by Amy Sands that I would say is now the best available short summary of that discipline's potential. I especially applaud the focus on the need for analysts (who are NOT under cover) to have professional networks that transcend borders and cultures, and to be comfortable with local as well as global information. Where this important chapter falls short, however, is in failing to recognize that 90% of what we need to know from open sources will never be shared with U.S. “intelligence” and we therefore need an Open Source Agency under diplomatic sponsorship; and that we will never unilaterally collect and process all that we need to know, hence we need a global network of regional information-sharing centers, initially doing open sources, eventually doing all sources. These latter two ideas are transformative, the chapter itself, while very solid, is not.

Clandestine intelligence is well covered from a traditional perspective, but stops short by contenting itself with asking for more authority, tighter lanes in the road, and “staying the course.” It does have gems of insight on both possibilities and obstacles, and is a good read. It does not, however, make the transformative leap toward a much larger non-official cover cadre hired at mid-career; toward regional multinational clandestine stations with mature officers on rotation from other nations; toward a much larger career principal agent network; and toward the excellent idea of one recently retired ADDO, that of one-time “it's just business” contracts for specific operations.

Digital dimension is very fine but could have benefited from a much stronger appreciation of what can be done in addressing the contributions that can be made now by man-machine translation networks with automated online dictionaries, and advanced geospatially-based analytics including predictive analysis.

I have no quarrel with the substance of either the analysis or denial sections, other than to observe that they completely eschew multinational, multiagency analysis.

The management section is strong in terms of understanding what insiders think the problems and solutions are, but for one who has read most books in this field, it is so deeply tied to the past and to past biases and perceptions as to forego any claim to being transformative.

The section on homeland defense is well-meaning, but incorrect in its assertion that the FBI has done well with a good model for joint terrorism task forces (JTTF). First off, the FBI remains a completely dysfunctional organization when it comes to either counterintelligence or sharing with state and local organizations. Secondly, as more than one expert has noted, it is the height of ignorance, especially in the aftermath of Hurricane KATRINA and the imminent bird-flu pandemic, to obsess on terrorism as the sole area where national to state and local sharing will take place. 50% of the “dots” that will help prevent the next 9/11 are bottom up dots observed by citizens and cops on the beat, and those dots have no place to go. We need 50 state intelligence centers and networks.

Britt Snider is unique in America-one of two people, the other being Loch Johnson-who have served on both the Church Committee staff and the Aspin-Brown Commission staff. He is one of America's foremost observers of national intelligence, and his chapter on Congressional oversight is one of the best pieces in the book. Having said that, I would note that it lacks two transformative thoughts, both being explored at this time: first, the time has come for every Congressional committee to have its own Sub-Committee on Intelligence and Information Operations (I2O), and for the ranking members of those sub-committees to form a new Special Committee on I2O with concurrent jurisdiction over both secret and open source information expenditures and capabilities across the entire U.S. Government; secondly, and enabled by this new committee, it is time for a new form of hybrid agency, an Open Source Agency that integrates the Library of Congress and is equally responsive to Congress, the Governors, and the Executive as well as the public, with its Director appointed for life, as are Supreme Court justices, and a fixed percentage of the disposable budget (1%) for complete independence from the White House.

“Must read,” but not transformative.

2005/09/282009/12/04

Review: Burn Before Reading–Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence (Hardcover)

4 Star, Intelligence (Government/Secret)

Useful to Congress, a President, or a Future DCI,

September 28, 2005

Stansfield Turner

This is a useful retrospective by Admiral Stansfield Turner, Director of Central Intelligence under President Jimmy Carter, but it is most useful if you are a Member of Congress, a sitting or future President, or perhaps being considered as a future DCI. For the general public, and even for intelligence professionals, this is an interesting personal recollection and evaluation that reflects a limited appreciation for the broader literature on intelligence reform and is less likely to be exciting to those seeking to understand the minutia of intelligence.

It could be very useful to the public under one condition or rather one hope: that the public react to this book as I did, to wit, the author may not have intended this, but his superb tour of the relations between Presidents and Directors of Central (or in today's terms, National) Intelligence has persuaded me that our national intelligence community must be removed from the Executive Branch. We need a new hybrid national intelligence community in which the Director is simultaneously responsive to the President, to Governors, to Congress, and to the public. It's budget must be set as a fraction of the total disposable budget of the federal government, on the order of 1%. This agency must be completely impervious to Executive or Congressional abuse, and must act as a national objective source of truth upon which to discuss policy and acqusition and liaison options. A national board of overseers could be comprised of former Presidents, former Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and former Leaders of the House and Senate, as well as selected representatives of the public. Intelligence is now too important to be subject to the whims of politics. Intelligence is the revolutionary source of wealth as well as conflict resolution, and this author has made it clear that most Presidents simply cannot be trusted to either manage it or listen to it with wisdom. I would go so far as to suggest that national science and education also require a similar form of hybrid oversight and management. This is not to say that each Executive agency should not have its own intelligence and information operations (I2O) capabilities and functions, only that intelligence and science, like justice, need a court of last resort that cannot be undermined by ideology and personality.

This suggestion is probably too radical, BUT there is one opening for a first step: the DNI should recommend to the President and to Congress that the new planned Open Source Agency integrate the Library of Congress and be the first new hybrid organization, with the Director appointed for life, as are Supreme Court Justices.

The author has done an excellent job, albeit with some obvious gaps and a few errors, in focusing on the relationships between Presidents and Directors of Central Intelligence. However, the book suffers from the author's understandable but incorrect assumption that national intelligence should remain focused on secrets by, of, and for the President. In fact, not only is most intelligence today from open sources of information, but finished intelligence is a small fraction of Information Operations (IO), that larger matrix of all operational, logistics, geospatial, and other information (including information from non-governmental organizations, universities, and corporations as well as religions and labor unions), and thus the author's perspective and recommendations, while valuable, are relevant only to 10% of the challenge facing DNI John Negroponte and DDNI Mike Hayden.

A few notes from the margins:

The author's largely cursory review of past reform efforts completely ignores the earnest efforts of Senator Boren and Congressman McCurdy with the National Security Act of 1992. That Act was undone by Dick Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, and Senator John Warner, then ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. The author does correctly note that all of the recommendations of the Aspin-Brown Commission, a device used by Senator Warner to delay and stop reform, have not yet been implemented.

The author is incorrect when he credits Tenet with focusing on the operational side of the CIA, and for focusing on global coverage. In fact, Tenet appointed a White House mess buddy to be DDO, James Pavitt screwed up for seven years, and then Tenet has the temerity to tell the 9-11 Commission that he needed seven more years to get it right. Tenet also commissioned and then refused to follow the recommendations of a report called “The Challenge of Global Coverage,” where Keith Hall, then Director of the National Reconnaissance Agency, among others, told Tenet directly that with the secret world's obession on seven hard targets, it desperately needed an insurance policy on the order of $10M a year for each of 150 countries or topics including terrorism and disease. Tenet is reported by one present to have said “we are in the business of secrets, speak no more of this report.”

The author is politically correct but wrong to give the recent intelligence reform legislation a qualified “yes” when asking it makes us safer. It does not. The lead article in the Fall issue of the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, by Michael Turner, is absolutely on target when it calls the legislation a loss for the American people and the widows and orphans of 9-11, and a victory for entrenched interests including Congressional pork rolling in Virginia.

The author is completely correct to suggest that “CIA” is an acronym ready for retirement. As I suggested in my first book, ON INTELLIGENCE (with a Foreword by Senator David Boren), CIA needs to be come the National Analysis Agency, and be stripped of its S&T and clandestine functions. [NSA needs to become the National Processing Agency–Washington is operating on 2% of the relevant information, and most of it is not online.]

There are two important recurring themes across the book that the author is extraordinarily qualified to address. The first is the long-term political, social, economic, and cultural costs of “covert actions” including assassinations, coups, and other nefarious interventions in foreign affairs. The second is the extremely negative impact on national intelligence of military ownership of three “national” agencies. He points out that we missed the Indian nuclear developments in part because the Department of Defense was demanding that all the satellite capabilities be focused on Iraq, and through ownership, was able to enforce its demands and neglect national priorities.

The author praises George Bush the First as a model President and director, and seems to hint that the son would do well to follow his father's active engagement. The author is brutal about Casey, suggesting (to this reader) that not until Karl Rove has there been a more negative employment of government assets for political advantage. The author is subtly critical of Henry Kissinger, calls Woolsey's tenure a lost opportunity to redirect CIA, and has many other insights that can only come from a DCI, about other DCIs. Overall this is a good read for anyone who cares deeply about the health and nuances of U.S. intelligence.

The book loses one star for gaps here and there. The sources used are very limited–in the critical Viet-Nam era, for example, the author does not cite George Allen's “NONE SO BLIND,” and he does not mention at least 15 other retrospective books on intelligence that would have added substantially to his endeavor, which seeks to end with recommendations for the DNI and future reform legislation that remains needed.

2005/09/252009/12/04

Review: The Singularity Is Near–When Humans Transcend Biology (Hardcover)

4 Star, Future, Information Society, Science & Politics of Science

Technically brilliant, culturally constrained,

September 25, 2005

Ray Kurzweil

Ray Kurzweil is unquestionably the most brilliant guru for the future of information technology, but Joel Garreau's book Radical Evolution: The Promise and Peril of Enhancing Our Minds, Our Bodies — and What It Means to Be Human covers the same ground, with the same lack of soul, but more interesting and varied detail.

This is really four booklets in one: a booklet on the imminence of exponential growth within information technologies including genetics, nano-technology, and robotics; a booklet on the general directions and possibilities within each of these three areas; a booklet responding to critics of his past works; and lengthy notes. All four are exceptional in their detail, but somewhat dry.

I was disappointed to see no mention of Kevin Kelly's Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization and just one tiny reference to Stewart Brand (co-evolution) in a note. Howard Rheingold (virtual reality) and Tom Atlee (collective intelligence) go unmentioned. It is almost as if Kurzweil, who is surely familiar with these “populist” works, has a disdain for those who evaluate the socio-cultural implications of technology, rather than only its technical merits.

This is an important book, but it is by a nerd for nerds. [Sorry, but anyone who takes 250 vitamin supplements and has a schedule of both direct intravenous supplements and almost daily blood testing, is an obsessive nerd however worthy the cause.] It assumes that information technologies, growing exponentially, will solve world hunger, eliminate disease, replenish water, create renewable energy, and allow all of us to have the bodies we want, and to see and feel in our mates the bodies they want. All of this is said somewhat blandly, without the socio-cultural exploration or global evaluation that is characteristic of other works by reporters on the technology, rather than the technologists themselves.

The book is, in short, divorced from the humanities and the human condition, and devoid of any understanding of the pathos and pathology of immoral governments and corporations that will do anything they can to derail progress that is not profitable. It addresses, but with cursory concern, most of the fears voiced by various critics about run-away machines and lethal technologies that self-replicate in toxic manners to the detriment of their human creators.

The book is strongest in its detailed discussion of both computing power and draconian drops in needed energy for both computing and for manufacturing using new forms of computing. The charts are fun and helpful. The index is quite good.

I put the book down, after a pleasant afternoon of study, with several feelings.

First, that I should give Joel Garreau higher marks for making this interesting, and recommend that his book be bought at the same time as this one.

Second, that there is an interesting schism between the Kurzweil-Gates gang that believes they can rule the world with machines; and the Atlee-Wheatley gang that believes that collective **human** intelligence, with machines playing a facilitating but not a dominant role, is the desired outcome.

Third that there really are very promising technologies with considerable potential down the road, but that government is not being serious about stressing peaceful applications–the author is one of five advisors to the U.S. military on advanced technologies, and it distresses me that he supports a Defense Advanced Research Programs Agency (DARPA) that focuses on making war rather than peace–imagine if we applied the same resources to preventing war and creating wealth?

Fourth, information technologies are indeed going to change the balance of power among nations, states, and neighborhoods–on balance, based on his explicit cautions, I predict a real estate collapse in the over-priced major cities of the US, and a phenomenal rise of high-technology villages in Costa Rica and elsewhere.

The singularity may be near, as the author suggests, but between now and then tens of millions more will die. Technology in isolation is not enough–absent broad ethical context, it remains primarily a vehicle for nerds to develop and corporations to exploit. As I told an internal think session at Interval in the 1990's (“GOD, MAN, & INFORMATION:. COMMENTS TO INTERVAL IN-HOUSE”. Tuesday, 9 March 1993″ can use as a Yahoo search) until our technologies can change the lives of every man, woman, and child in the Third World, they are not truly transformative. This book hints at a future that may not be achieved, not for lack of technology, but for lack of good will.

EDIT of 24 Oct 05: Tonight I will review James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century His bottom line is that cheap oil underlies all of our surburban, high-rise, mega-agriculture, and car-based mobility, and that the end of cheap oil is going to have catastrophic effects on how we live, driving much of the country into poverty and dislocation, with the best lives being in those communities that learn to live with local agriculture and local power options. Definitely the opposite of what Kurzweil sees, and therefore recommended as a competing viewpoint.

EDIT of 12 Dec 07: ethics is something I have thought about a lot, and my first public article outside the intelligence community was entitled “E3i: Ethics, Ecology, Evolution, & Intelligence: An Alternative Paradigm for *National* Intelligence.” It must be something about engineers. Neither the author of this book, nor the Google Triumverate, seem to grasp the moral implications of technology run amuk without respect for ethics, privacy, copyright, humanity, etc. This is one reason I admire E. O. Wilson so much–the first of his works that I read, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, answered the question: “Why do the sciences need the humanities?” The second, The Future of Life, answered the question, “What is the cost and how do we save the planet?” Science had little to do with the latter. The two authors are poles apart.

2005/09/252009/12/04

Review: Time Present, Time Past–A Memoir (Hardcover)

4 Star, Biography & Memoirs

Thoughtful and Depressing–American Does Not Elect the Smart Ones,

September 25, 2005

Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley and John McCain may go down in history as the two smartest men who should have been President, but could not get elected. This is an extraordinarily thoughtful book, and it makes one almost cry out in despair. America has given up the idea of an informed democracy led by informed representatives of the people, and as the author concludes his book, given over all the power to two kinds of technocrats: political technocrats like Karl Rove who will do anything to get their man elected, including unethical misrepresentations against Republicans like John McCain, never mind Democrats; and corporate technocrats, who will kill off the middle class and increase the working poor in the name of corporate bottom lines that pass off the social and economic costs to the very taxpayers being disenfranchised.

The current Congressional and Executive systems do not work as intended. Congress has become insular and corrupt, and the Executive–at the political level–has become ideological and corrupt. Bill Bradley's writing makes it clear that there are solutions, but men like Bill Bradley will not get elected–nor even heard–until sufficient catastrophe befalls America and the people rise up in desperation to reclaim their heritage.

The index is helpful in looking up specific views of the author, e.g. on health care, national security, etcetera.

The New American Story
Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming