Mini-Me: Air Force Nuclear Rotten; Nuclear Budget Waste to Point of Treason — Where, We Ask, Does the Buck Stop on This Nonsense?

Huh? AP Exclusive: Air Force sidelines 17 nuclear missile officers; commander cites ‘rot’ in system WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel demanded more information Wednesday after the Air Force removed 17 launch officers from duty at a nuclear missile base in North Dakota over what a commander called “rot” in the force. The Air Force …

Stephen E. Arnold: A Fresh Look at Big Data & Big Data (-) Human Factor (+) Transformation (+) RECAP

A Fresh Look at Big Data May 8, 2013 Next week I am doing an invited talk in London. My subject is search and Big Data. I will be digging into this notion in this month’s Honk newsletter and adding some business intelligence related comments at an Information Today conference in New York later this …

Chuck Spinney & Mike Lofgren: Is War Good for the Economy?

In the attached essay, my very good friend Mike Lofgren raises the question of whether defense spending is good for the economy.  This is a current issue because the threat of defense budget reduction is being countered by arguments asserting that these reductions will push the economy into recession.  More generally, the political addiction to …

Search: tactical versus strategic intelligence + Meta-RECAP

An important question — the USA no longer does strategic intelligence and it has never done Whole of Government operational or tactical intelligence.  The $60B secret world is largely worthless at all four levels of analysis: STRATEGIC:  Next Generation near, 100 years our far OPERATIONAL:  Whole of Government regional and threat/topic based campaign plans, harmonized …

Winslow Wheeler: Pentagon’s budget realities mandate new Defense team

The tired old ideas in SecDef Hagel’s first defense budget make clear that he needs new thinking from his DOD team, or a new team. Pentagon’s budget realities mandate new Defense team By Winslow T. Wheeler – 04/16/13 07:25 PM ET President Obama’s budget for the Department of Defense for 2014 is a strange document. …

SchwartzReport: Chained CPI is 1% Code for Screw the 99% Forevermore

I completely support this. The last place where power still resides with ordinary people lies in the vote. Everything else in our government may increasingly be a charade of retained form underneath of which lies corrupted substance. But the vote still matters because it determines who gets to play. Any compromise in the already tattered …