Public Intelligence Blog

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2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity & Sustainability

Capstone book on hybrid governance based on shared information and ethical evidence-based decision-making

A massive cultural tsunami is sweeping round the world as the five billion poor acquire Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), and the one billion rich realize that the era of Empire Rule Of, By, and For the Few is over. Happily, this is a revolution in human affairs that will be non-violent for the simple reason that no redistribution of existing wealth can match the infinite new wealth that the entrepreneurial poor can create for themselves when empowered with ICT.

We are entering an era in which global networks and the sharing of information can create revolutionary wealth at the micro-level, while enabling the harmonization of investments at the macro-level. This is an era in which transparency of cost and effect will eradicate corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse at the same time that it makes possible global to local engagement and collaboration such that we can create a prosperous world at peace. This is an era in which we will see a bottom-up conscious evolution of humanity that liberates and leverages the one inexhaustible resource we have: the human brain.

In 2004 the Secretary-General s High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change published its findings as A more secure world: our shared responsibility. Unlike other extraordinary books this remarkable endeavor not only achieved consensus among diverse contributing Members, but actually prioritized the ten high-level threats to humanity as follows:
01 Poverty
02 Infectious Disease
03 Environmental Degradation
04 Inter-State Conflict
05 Civil War
06 Genocide
07 Other Atrocities
08 Proliferation
09 Terrorism
10 Transnational Crime

Inspired by this analytically-robust identification and prioritization of the ten high-level threats to humanity, the author funded and organized Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), a 501c3 Public Charity, to provide the United Nations (UN) and its Member states, all private sector and civil society organizations, and the public at large, with a strategic analytic model suitable for creating public intelligence in the public interest.

This book is intended to be a catalyst for the creation of the United Nations Open-Source Decision-Support Information Network (UNODIN), and the establishment of the Office of the Assistant Secretary General for Decision-Support (ASG/DS). Should a sufficiency of the Member nations concur, this book also provides a model for creating a Multinational Decision-Support Centre (MDSC) using the military as a hub for global access to unclassified information from the other seven tribes of intelligence [academia, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, and non-profit or non-governmental] combined with multinational sense-making and unclassified decision-support for stabilization & reconstruction, humanitarian assistance, and disaster relief operations.

EIN has achieved several modest breakthroughs that are outlined within this book, which is a capstone work, completely original but deeply rooted in thirty years of professional experience and intellectual reflection. The ideas in this book are implementable today.

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2006 INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information in All Languages All the Time
Still the best overview of “real” Information Operations, vice cyber-idiocy

This book is the third in the series to date. The first, ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World, documented in great detail all that is wrong with the predominantly secret U.S. Intelligence Community–virtually none of the problems have been fixed in the aftermath of 9-11. The second book, THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political, outlined a new method of achieving public collective intelligence by harnessing the distributed knowledge of the seven tribes of intelligence (government, military, law enforcement, business, academia, ground truth–non-governmental organizations & the media, and civil–citizens, labor unions, and religions. The secret government intelligence tribe continues to ignore the other six tribes and waste close to $60 billion a year doing things the old way, only with greater waster. This third book is a technical manifestation of the Brahimi Plan, and shows the way to create a World Brain that allows for the optimal access by all citizens and their organizations–including rather uninformed governments–to all information in all languages all the time. As with the first two books, the annotated bibliography is a book unto itself.

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2003 PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future
Still the best book on information peacekeeping and peacekeeping intelligence

Each year millions of people die, are displaced, become diseased, or suffer severe depravations at the hands of rogue states, predatory ethnic groups or tribes, or ruthless terrorist and criminal organizations. Around the globe, while recognizing the important efforts of selected Nation-States and selected Non-Governmental Organizations, only one organization can be said to be truly concerned with global security and global prosperity in the common interest of all mankind: the United Nations. Unfortunately, the United Nations has chosen to ignore the proven process of “intelligence” by confusing it with espionage. Intelligence is not about espionage, it is about rationalized decision-support in which global sources of information in many languages and many mediums (oral, written, imaged) are deliberated collected, processed, analyzed, and presented to decision-makers in order to reduce uncertainty, suggest alternatives, and otherwise make instability more manageable. This book is the first book to bring together a combination of experienced United Nations military commanders, experienced national intelligence leaders, and scholars of United Nations and insurgency history. It combines the results of the first annual conference on peacekeeping intelligence help in The Netherlands in November 2002, with eight seminal works from the past, and three vital references for the future–extracts from the Brahimi Report with intelligence-related footnotes; a completely new Peacekeeping Intelligence Leadership Digest 1.0 distilled from the entire book into 35 pages; and pointers to both the three North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) doctrinal documents on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and to a selective group of recent references, most available online. This book is, in essence, “Ref A” for the future of intelligence at the United Nations.

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2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political
Donate $25.  Still the one best book for any citizen not trusting their government to be honest

This book is the sequel to ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World (AFCEA International Press, 2000). That book, written largely for government and corporate intelligence professionals, remains the basic reference volume for the future of global intelligence enterprises. This book, by contrast, is a completely new effort that is written for every citizen of every country—the “intelligence minutemen” of the 21st Century. In the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, attacks carried out by a non-state actor skilled at asymmetric warfare and using our own capabilities against us—attacks followed quickly by a nation-wide anthrax assault that closed Congress and terrified the U.S. Postal Service—it is imperative that every citizen have a clear-headed understanding of what is at stake and what needs to be done to keep not only America, but all civilized communities safe. It is especially imperative that citizens understand that the world is already at war, with millions of refugees in 67 countries, plagues sweeping across 59 countries, mass starvation in 27 countries, and deliberate genocide campaigns in 18 countries. These are “facts of life” that our schools, our media and even our intelligence communities have been unwilling and unable to represent intelligently to the public. It is against this backdrop of global chaos that terrorism rises.

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2000 ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World
Still the best tough love critique and prescription for the future.  Collector's item.

The author of this book has produced one of the very best and most interesting books to date on intelligence reform and transformation. It is extremely well written and provokingly thoughtful on many critical issues as we decide what we want from our Intelligence Community in the 21st Century and how we want to achieve those results. His economic, business and organizational logic is right on track for a wide range of relevant and timely topics. One is amazed at how much detail the author provided without getting the reader “lost in the trees with no sense of the forest”. His reference approach is also outstanding in two regards: (1) he carefully documents the source of many of the great authors and thinkers and practitioners sited, and (2) he gives the reader access to a much broader set of view points (some of which no doubt conflict with his own views). Whether you agree with all of Steele's ideas or not is irrelevant. This is just excellent stuff and should be required reading for all members and staff of all of the Congressional oversight committees as well as the various commissions that review aspects of one sort or another of our national intelligence community. Beyond that it will undoubtedly be of interest to anyone who is concerned about the role of Intelligence in National Security.

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