The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
Great airplane book. The story of Jim Clarke, the only man to have created three billion-dollar ventures-Netscape, Silicon Graphics, and Healtheon. Documents the shifting of power from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, and offers some wonderful insights into the culture. Does not, by virtue of focusing on the one really big success story out of the Valley, begin to address the human waste and carnage from all the failed start-ups.
“It is not too gross an exaggeration that when considering any given threat, DIA will overestimate, CIA will underestimate, and INR will blame the U.S. for it.” From his opening chapter and his distinction between static, dynamic, and technical facts, on through a brilliant summary of the post-war spy on page 103 and lengthy sections on how we've gotten it wrong, how we can get it right, and what is needed in the way of reform, I found this book worthy of study. An analyst and political staffer by nature, the strength of this book rests on the premise in the title: that intelligence should be about informing policy, not about collecting secrets for secrets' sake.
