Phi Beta Iota: CIA, presumably with help from NGA, but not necessarily, has gotten much, much better at creating useful maps. This is truly delightful. They still don't do tribes in the classical demographic-linguistic sense, but this is a huge step forward. Bravo. Truly gratifying to see this progress.
What the world needs now is a move to four-dimensional maps and the ability to track relations and investments by and among organizations including dictatroships and their sovereign funds (e.g. Saudi Arabia) as well corporations and the “true cost” of what they offer in both stock and sale.
When combined with the Global to Local Range of Needs Table devised by the Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), this will make possible micro-giving at the household level by the one billion rich, 80% of whom do not give to charity now, and will rapidly accelerate the connectivity of the five billion poor with cell phones that do not need electrical recharging, the education of the five billion poor (with call centers and global diaspora networks that provide free education or answers “one cell call at a time“), and conequently the creation of a prosperous world at peace–the fortune really is at the base of the pyramid.
Distributing cell phones is modern Human Intelligence (HUMINT). It empowers, connects, and makes possible the rapid anonymous reporting of negative personalities that can be dealt with as a minority, as well as call network surveillance. Absent cell phones, the tribes are influenced by the story being told by those among them–something we don't do well at all. Cell phones, not drones, is how we should wage peace. Second-order quesiton: if we can revive and re-green the Dead Sea, what will it take to re-green the Yemen wasteland? Contractors have no clue how to wage peace–they are the result of a half century of government-specification cost-plus military procurement. What DoD and Whole of Government need now is Tony Zinni's National Monitoring and Planning Center (NMPC) along with a robust DoD Open Source Intelligence OSINT) program that is pro-active and comes with a global network able to do 183 languages on demand.
See also:
Search: Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield
Review: Guiding Principles for Stabilization and Reconstruction (Paperback)
Review: All Rise–Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity
