Public Intelligence Blog – Page 4144 – The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: The Future of War–Power, Technology and American World Dominance in the Twenty-first Century

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Smart Thoughts Important to Future of National Security,

April 8, 2000

George Friedman

The authors begin by noting that there is “a deep chasm between the advent of technology and its full implementation in doctrine and strategy.” In their history of failure they note how conventional wisdom always seems to appreciate the systems that won the past wars, and observes that in the U.S. military there is a long history of transferring power from the political and military leadership to the technical and acquisition managers, all of whom have no real understanding of the current and future needs of the men who will actually fight. They address America's vulnerability in both U.S. based logistics and in overseas transport means-“Destroying even a portion of American supply vessels could so disrupt the tempo of a logistical build-up as to delay offensive operations indefinitely.” They have a marvelous section on the weaknesses of U.S. data gathering tools, noting for example that satellites provide only a static picture of one very small portion of the battlefield, rather that the wide-area and dynamic “situational awareness” that everyone agrees is necessary. They go on to gore other sacred oxes, including the Navy's giant ships such as the carrier (and implicitly the new LPH for Marines as well as the ill-conceived arsenal ship) and the largest of the aircraft proposed by the Air Force. They ultimately conclude that the future of war demands manned space stations that are able to integrate total views of the world with control of intercontinental precision systems, combined with a complete restructuring of the ground forces (most of which will be employed at the squad level) and a substantial restructuring of our navel force to provide for many small fast platforms able to swarm into coastal areas.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Predictions–Society’s Telltale Signature Reveals Past & Forcasts the Future

4 Star, Future

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Useful and thought-provoking,

April 8, 2000

Theodore Modis

Or, everything you ever wanted to know about the S-curve and why it all makes sense in the end. This book is about creativity, competition, and the natural order of things. Mutants are most important during times of violent change (the end of a paradigm) when they offer substantial variation from the non-workable past and hence improve the shift toward survival by being more fit for the new circumstances. Interestingly, each successive transport infrastructure (canals to rails to roads to airways) provides an order of magnitude improvement in productivity. One could consider the personal computer and modem a way station on this trend, with networking and true global collaborative work tools as the next node. In the life spiral of change 1996 is the center of a “charging” period with new order and new technology, and will lead to tension and grow in the 2000-2010 period followed by a discharge boom and then relaxation and recession in the 2010-2020 period. Pollution is the next “global war” that needs to be fought, and we will not have a global village until we can reduce the travel time between any two points anywhere to 70 minutes and a cumulative cost for a year of such travel to 15% of the average global income.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Firepower In Limited War

5 Star, Force Structure (Military), Insurgency & Revolution, War & Face of Battle

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Best examination of intelligence-firepower disconnects,

April 8, 2000

Robert H Scales

Major General Bob Scales may well be the Army's brightest light and this generation's successor to General Don Starry and Dan Morelli (who inspired the Toffler's book on War and Anti-War). First published by the National Defense University Press in 1990, this book reflects deeply on the limitations of firepower in limited war situations, and the conclusion is a telling indictment of our national intelligence community and our joint military intelligence community, neither of which is willing to break out of their little boxes to find a proper response to this statement: “The common theme in all five case studies presented here is the recurring inability of the side with the firepower advantage to find the enemy with sufficient timeliness and accuracy to exploit that advantage fully and efficiently.”

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Leading Minds–An Anatomy Of Leadership

5 Star, Leadership

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Brilliant Look at Need to Link Direct and Indirect Leaders,

April 8, 2000

Howard E. Gardner

I bought this book sometime after concluding that national intelligence leadership needed to inspire and appeal to the citizens of the USA at large, rather than being so narrowly focused on staying out of trouble with Congress while collecting secrets. This book reviews leadership of both domains and nations, with case studies on Margaret Mead (Culture), J. Robert Oppenheimer (Physics), Robert Maynard Hutchins (Education), Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (Business), George C. Marshall (Military), Pope John XXII (Religion), Eleanor Roosevelt (Ordinariness and Extraordinariness), Martin Luther King (Minority) and Margaret Thatcher (National). The best leaders that emerge are those who are willing to confront authority and take risk, while also creating networks of contacts that number in the hundreds or thousands rather than tens. Most tellingly, aleader in a discipline (e.g. intelligence) only emerges as a long-term leader if he finally realizes that “he is more likely to achieve his personal goals or to satisfy his community if he addresses a wider audience than if he remains completely within a specific domain.” The six constants of leadership are the story, the audience (beginning with a message for the unschooled mind), the organization, the embodiment, a choice between direct (more practical) and indirect (more reflective and often more enduring) leadership, and a paradox-the direct leaders often lack knowledge while the indirect leaders often have greater knowledge, and transferring knowledge from the indirect leader to the direct leader may be one of the central challenges and opportunities of the 21st Century.

2000/04/082009/12/04

Review: Innovation and Entrepreneurship

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation

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Deflates Knowledge-Based Innovation, Very Practical,

April 8, 2000

Peter F. Drucker

Drucker has a remarkable ability to deflate any self-styled entrepreneur and “innovator.” His book discusses the sources of innovation, concluding rather significantly that knowledge-based innovation is rarely successful-that innovation generally works best when all the factors are known and put into new combinations that work exceedingly well-and that successful innovations start small, focus on the simplest element that can be understood by any half-wit, don't cost a lot, and are never grandiose.

2000/04/082009/11/01

Review: Unleashing the Killer App–Digital Strategies for Market Dominance

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Information Society, Information Technology

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Twelve Steps for the Information Entrepreneur,

April 8, 2000

Larry DownesTwelve principles of killer app design: 1) Outsource to the customer, 2) Cannibalize your markets; 3) Treat each customer as a market segment of one; 4) Create communities of value; 5) Replace rude interfaces with learning interfaces; 6) Ensure continuity for the customer, not yourself; 7) Give away as much information as you can; 8) Structure every transaction as a joint venture; 9) Treat your assets as liabilities; 10) Destroy your value chain; 11) Manage innovation as a portfolio of options; 12) Hire the children.

2000/04/082009/10/24

Review: Post-Capitalist Society

5 Star, Best Practices in Management, Change & Innovation, Future

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Knowledge Policy As Root of Economic Stability & Prosperity,

April 8, 2000

Peter F. Drucker

Drucker and Toffler agree on one important idea: fiscal and monetary policy is no longer the real driver for national prosperity. At best it is a place-holder, a means of keeping the economy stable. There is a strong element of accountability throughout the book, first with respect to the managers of governments and corporations, and finally with the managers of schools that must ultimately be held accountable for producing students who are competent at both learning and sharing knowledge. For Drucker, the organization of the post-capitalist society must commit itself to being a destabilizer able to change constantly. “It must be organized for systematic abandonment of the established, the customary, the familiar, the comfortable-whether products, services, processes, human and social relationships, skills, or organizations themselves. It is the very nature of knowledge that it changes fast and that today's certainties will be tomorrow's absurdities.” So speaketh Drucker of the U.S. Intelligence Community….