Chuck Spinney: Cartographic Games Divorced from Reality – Daniel Neep on The Middle Eastern Example

Below is a brilliant essay that shows how cartographic hallucinogenics can capture one’s Orientation and create an incestuously amplifying* decision cycle that disconnects a “policy” maker from real world. * Note to new readers: For an explanation of how “incestuous amplification” operates to disconnect a decision maker from the exigencies of the real world read my essay, Incestuous …

Berto Jongman: Will US Collapse Soon? Robert Steele: Should EU Be Thinking About Post-US NATO?

Unthinkable: Brazilian Journalist Mulls Soviet-Style Collapse of US Citing a series of geopolitical, economic and social setbacks faced by the United States since the turn of the century, geopolitical analyst and Sao Paulo Business School Professor Antonio Gelis-Filho argues that global policy planners must prepare to deal with the “improbable, but by all means possible, …

Jack Davis: Modern Analytic Tradecraft

Commenting on Berto Jongman: Modernizing Analytical Training + Robert Steele & RECAP Remember the Gorge Carver-Gorge Allen contrasting mindsets in predicting the outcome in Vietnam.  The optimistic Carver argued , “if, if, if, we’re going to win.  The pessimistic Allen countered: “unless, unless, unless we’re going to lose.” In more formal argumentation, the “ifs” and …

Jean Lievens: Can Analytics Save The Earth?

This Earth Day, Let’s Start Using Analytics To Conserve Energy The success of new energy projects relies on one crucial skill: the ability to derive insights from massive amounts of rapidly changing data. That’s why utilities and energy companies are adopting analytics to meet the rising demand for renewable energy from more sophisticated customers.

2015 ANSWERS Robert Steele for Sean Lorenz on OSINT Update 3

There is a need for hard data and statistics on OSINT — why it has been relegated to the basement and distributed rather than consolidated as with the other disciplines, what it’s successes and failures have been. In how many cases did it provide Intelligence that was critical to mission success ? NEEDS DATA 

Review: Digital Humanitarians – How Big Data is Changing the Face of the Humanitarian Response

Patrick Meier 5.0 out of 5 stars World-Changing Book Documenting Intersection of Humans, Technology, and Policy-Ethics, February 2, 2015 This is a hugely important work, one that responds to the critical needs outlined by Micah Sifry in The Big Disconnect: Why The Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet) and others such as myself writing these past …