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Marcus Aurelius: Max Boot on Better Spies, Not More

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude
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Marcus Aurelius

Better Spies, Not More

By Max Boot

Los Angeles Times, December 6, 2012, Pg. 19

The Defense Intelligence Agency is planning to dramatically expand the ranks of its covert “collectors” — a.k.a. case officers or, more popularly, spies. It has 500 or so and hopes to double that number.

There is nothing inherently wrong with this plan, which is being pushed by the DIA's new director, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. It is unlikely to lead to a militarization of U.S. foreign policy, as some fear — the military is already the dominant player in the intelligence community, with its control not only of the Defense Department's DIA but also the National Security Agency and other high-tech outfits.

The real question is, will a beefed-up DIA make up for the intelligence community's long-standing difficulties in acquiring high-quality human intelligence? On that score, unfortunately, there is real cause for doubt.

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SmartPlanet: An app to model big decisions

SmartPlanet
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An app to model life’s big decisions

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SmartPlanet | December 5, 2012,

If you’re faced with a big decision, you no longer need to go with your intuition – there’s an app for that. The app, called iMODELER, is an offshoot of a European Union research project into decision support systems. It visualizes personal decisions or strategies in a way that its creators say will lead to “non-linear” decisions that are less influenced by emotions and impart a clearer understanding of life’s complex interconnections.

German software company CONSIDEO released iMODELER as a free download for Apple’s iOS and as Web application in August. A new desktop edition was announced last month that includes advanced features to target businesses and large organizations. iMODELER is a derivative work from MODELER, an applications that boasts over 200,000 user ranging from BMW, NATO and the Worldbank to over 1,000 schools and universities.

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SchwartzReport: Mary Meeker’s State of the Internet Report

IO Impotency
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Mary Meeker releases stunning data on the state of the Internet

Dylan Tweney

VentureBeat, 3 December 2012

Click on Image to Enlarge

Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, has just published her latest huge deck of amazingly useful data, the “2012 Internet Trends Year-End Update.”

Meeker is delivering her report to a group of Students at Stanford University, and Kleiner Perkins is live-tweeting the presentation on Twitter at @kpcb.

This is an update to a report Meeker delivered in May 2012, and it’s got a ton of new information.

We’re still digesting the slides, but the slide above (#24 in Meeker’s deck) is a real standout. Echoing a similar graph of computer system sales from Horace Dediu at Asymco, it shows the dramatic shift away from Windows-powered Intel machines (Wintel) in the past few years. Apple drove a wedge into the Wintel monopoly, but it’s Google’s Android OS that’s really eating Microsoft’s lunch. Since Q4 2010, combined shipments of tablets and smartphones have exceeded the number of PCs shipped, Meeker reports, and that trend shows no sign of reversing.

Other tidbits:

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NIGHTWATCH: Syria, Bio-Chem, & US Intelligence

08 Wild Cards, IO Deeds of War, IO Impotency
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Syria: A senior U.S. official told Fox News that the Syrians loaded bombs with components of sarin gas. They have 60 days to use these bombs until the chemical mixture expires and has to be destroyed, according to the report.

According to NBC News, bombs filled with a sarin components have not yet been loaded onto planes, but that the Syrian military is prepared to use these chemical weapons against civilians pending orders from President Bashar Assad.

Comment: Yesterday, 4 December, a senior US Defense official stated there was no evidence that the chemicals used to create sarin gas had been mixed. A day later, the chemicals are reportedly mixed.

No intelligence service has the ability to make such a determination except from testimony from human sources — from direct observation by the source or detected from radio intercepts. Both collection systems are highly vulnerable to deception and manipulation. In other words, the message from Syria could be intended to persuade the West and others to reduce their  support to the opposition.

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