Below is a high-level view of the model:
|
Military
|
Civil
|
Geographic
|
|
Strategic
|
Sustainability:
Ability to sustain operations over time and
space
|
Allies:
External relationships of strategic import
|
Location:
Strategic geo-political location or source
of materials
|
|
Operational
|
Availability:
Quantities of military power available for
commitment
|
Instability:
Internal precipitants and preconditions of
volatility
|
Resources:
Internal natural resources affording self-sustainment
|
|
Tactical
|
Reliability:
Impact of training and maintenance on existing
capabilities
|
Psychology:
Internal group dynamics affecting cohesion
and operations
|
Terrain:
Internal geographic conditions affecting mobility
|
|
Technical
|
Lethality:
Effectiveness of specific capabilities assuming
no constraints
|
Infrastructure:
Transportation, power, communications, and
other infrastructures
|
Atmosphere:
Internal climate affecting system performance
|
Figure 1: Concept for Integrated Intelligence Analysis
Two examples of this model's utility are offered because
its implications are so important to policymakers dealing with complex
conflict situations.
Middle Eastern Tank Threat. In a test case discussed
with the appropriate analysts from all of the major intelligence
agencies in the U.S. governments, we discovered that the tank threat
in a particular Middle Eastern country, historically classified
as high because it was comprised of Soviet T-72 tanks, at
the time the most powerful main battle tanks outside our own, changed
dramatically depending on the level of analysis-it was only high
at the technical level (lethality).
- At the tactical level (reliability),
because of very poor troop training, the long-term storage of
most tanks in warehouses, and the cannibalization of tanks at
random for parts, the threat fell to low;
- At the operational level (availability),
because of the quantity of tanks scattered around the country,
the threat rose to medium; and
- At the strategic level (sustainability), where various
constraints would not permit this country to sustain tank operations
for more than two weeks, the threat again fell to low.
We considered this very significant to the perspective
of the policymaker or commander making decisions about the over-all
structure of the force to be deployed to this region, even in the
absence of related information about civil and geographic factors.
Integrated Analysis. In a second example, which
illustrates the importance of civil and geographic factors to the
over-all analysis of any peacekeeping situation or related acquisition
and employment decisions, the Commandant of the Marine Corps asked
us to evaluate the Marine Corps requirement for a follow-on procurement
of the M1A1 tank. We examined civil and geographic factors for the
sixty-nine countries (now eighty) which comprised the expeditionary
environment, and discovered these "strategic generalizations":
- Intervisibility (Line of Sight Ranges).
91% of the countries in the Marine Corps environment offered line
of sight distances of 1,000 meters or less, making the M1A1 irrelevant
to operations in those countries;
- Cross-country mobility. 79% of the
countries offered zero cross-country mobility; the terrain
would require all mobility platforms to use normal roads (most
of which have bridge loading limitations of 30 tons or so, making
the M1A1's 70 ton weight a distinct liability);
- Ports. 50%-fully half-of the countries did not have a
port usable by a U.S. Navy or Maritime Pre-Positioned Force (MPF)
ship-they lacked an adequate depth, turning radius, and/or piers
and cranes. This means that the 70-ton M1A1 would have to be off-loaded
in mid-stream using scarce and often-inadequate landing craft.
A similarly strategic observation was subsequently
made with respect to aircraft, which are designed by the U.S. Navy
for the U.S. Marine Corps based on a standard aviation day that
is warm (around 65oF) and with average humidity.
The Marine Corps aviation day is in fact hot
(routinely over 80oF) with very high humidity. Translation:
Marine Corps aviation can carry half as much half as far than the
book says it can-both range and lift are dramatically reduced under
these conditionsÖyet policy makers and the military commanders
that advise them consistently fail to plan for these civil and geographic
realities. This is of special concern with respect to Non-Combatant
Evacuation Operations (NEO).
We also discovered that :
- most U.S. Embassies were well beyond the round-trip
range of the CH-46 from a naval platform at the five fathom line
even at optimal performance;
- most countries in the Third World can out-gun
the standard U.S. Navy five-inch gun with their existing shore
batteries; and
- we are completely lacking in digital imagery and 1:50,000 combat
charts for operations in 90% of the world, as well as 200 ship-years
behind in shallow-water (100 fathom and less) hydrography.
Why is this so important? The sad fact is that policymakers
are often ignorant of the realities of the military, civil, and
geographic elements in relation to one another and the levels of
analysis, and this ignorance leads to woefully inadequate estimates
of what it will take to achieve stated objectives. At the same time,
the military is uninformed as to the "intangible" aspects of the
situation, and generally is not trained, equipped, and organized
for operations which require that they deal with people rather than
kill them.
TECHNOLOGY IDEA: Post the Marine Corps study as a public
document.
Multi-Dimensional. Consider the following table:
|
Political-Legal
|
Socio-Economic
|
Ideo-Cultural
|
Techno-Demographic
|
Natural-Geographic
|
|
Perception
|
Isolation of elites; inadequate intelligence
|
Concentration of wealth; lack of public disclosure
|
Conflicting myths; inadequate socialization
|
Acceptance of media distortions; inadequate mass
education
|
Reliance on single sector or product; concentrated
land holdings
|
|
Identity
|
Lack of elite consensus; failure to define priorities
|
Loss of economic initiative; failure to recognize
need for balanced growth
|
Loss of authority; failure to provide and honor
national myth system
|
Failure to accept and exploit new technologies
and new groups
|
Failure to integrate out-lying territories into
national system
|
|
Competence
|
Weak or inefficient government; too much or too
little bureaucratization
|
Break-down of fiscal, monetary, development,
or welfare policies
|
Humiliation of leaders; loss of confidence by
population
|
Failure to enforce priorities, with resulting
loss of momentum
|
Failure to prepare for or cope with major natural
disasters
|
|
Investment
|
Ego-centric or parochial government
|
Excessive or insufficient mobility; lack of public
sector
|
Cynicism; opportunism; corruption
|
Failure to nurture entrepreneurship or extend
franchise to all groups
|
Failure to preserve or properly exploit natural
resources
|
|
Risk
|
Elite intransigence; repression; failure to recognize
new sources of power
|
Failure to deal with crime, especially white
collar crime
|
Failure to deal with prejudice; desertion of
the intellectuals
|
Failure to develop national research & development
program
|
Failure to honor human rights; failure to protect
animal species
|
|
Extroversion
|
Ineffective tension management; failure to examine
false premises
|
Structural differentiation; lack of national
transportation
|
Elite adoption of foreign mores; failure to deal
with alienation
|
Failure to develop communications infrastructure,
shared images
|
Failure to explore advantages of regional integration
|
|
Transcendence
|
Foreign control of gov't; arbitrary and excessive
government
|
Loss of key sectors to foreign providers; loss
of quality control
|
Media censorship; suppression of intellectual
discourse
|
Failure to control police, army, or terrorists;
failure to employ alphas
|
Failure to respect natural constraints or support
organic growth
|
|
Synergy
|
Failure to assimilate all individuals or respond
to groups
|
Status discrepancies; lack of economic motivators
|
Absence of sublimating myths; failure of religion
|
Failure to provide program and technology assessment
|
Failure to distribute political benefits between
urban and rural
|
|
Complexity
|
Garrison, industrial, or welfare states
|
Unstable growth; external diseconomies; excessive
DoD $$
|
Cultural pre-disposition toward violence; fanatic
elements
|
Excessive urbanization, pollution, nuclear development
|
Lack of land for expansion, inefficient land
use or land tenure
|
Figure 2: Framework for the Observation of Conflict
The policymaker is poorly served when analysts focus
only on the political-legal situation, or the military situation,
or even-to the extent they can gain access to the necessary open
sources-on the economic situation. Every emerging and on-going conflict
has a multi-dimensional nature, and must be understood across a
spectrum, which includes ideological, cultural, technological, demographic,
natural, and geographic conditions. At the same time, culturally
astute experts must study the aspects of human development and the
local psychology, and these informed judgements factored into the
decision-making process.
The average analyst,
pre-occupied with cutting and pasting miscellaneous "current facts",
and lacking access to sources of cultural and other forms of "intangible"
intelligence as well as access to tools for visualizing complex
integrated problem sets, is rarely if ever going to provide the
policymaker with insights into the multi-dimensional nature of the
conflict and the consequently unanticipated consequences of revolutionary
change in the non-traditional dimensions such as the ideo-cultural
or techno-demographic.
TECHNOLOGY IDEA: First, do a case study of a single
country, and completely re-define the idea of a "Country Study"
so as to move far beyond the cursory coverage of the CIA World Fact
Book or the useful but largely "tangible" Army Country Studies.
Then develop a Web-based network of sites and publications organized
by country and within country so as to allow any policymaker to
quickly access multi-lingual and multi-cultural perspectives in
each of these matrix areas, using only open sources of information
which can be easily shared with coalition and non-governmental partners.
Use automated gisting and clustering technology to quickly visualize
the aggregate data while comparing "points of view" from different
sites and organizations.
Emerging Threats. There are two aspects to the
changing nature of the threat as we approach the 21st
century, and both merit brief discussion because the lack of knowledge
among policymakers, and the mind-set inertia of the analysts supporting
them, suggest that we are avoiding making significant changes to
how we direct, collect, process, and analyze information, and this
will continue to generate "intelligence failures".
First, it is important to recognize the dramatic difference
between the conventional threat that everyone has grown comfortable
following since the end of World War II, and the emerging threats
which we are not trained, equipped, or organized to identify and
evaluate.
The conventional threat has been governmental
in nature, comprised of conventional and sometimes nuclear forces
arrayed in a static order of battle, developing their capabilities
linearly over time, fighting by known rules of engagement, with
known doctrine, providing ample strategic warning of attack, and
using known intelligence assets.
The emerging threat is generally non-governmental,
unconventional, dynamic or random in event initiation, non-linear
in its development due to the availability of off-the-shelf equipment,
fighting without any constraints or rules of engagement, with unknown
doctrine, with no established indicators of attack, and with an
unlimited fifth column.
Second, it is important to reflect on how the emerging
threats, looked at in a different manner, require a completely different
form of "intelligence" as well as a completely different form of
"defense" organization.
High-Tech Brutes are the ones we understand,
and are represented by the conventional powers. They practice medium
and high intensity warfare, have as their source of power money,
and rely on physical stealth and precision targeting of munitions
for their effect.
Low-Tech Brutes are the ones we are beginning
to fear, and are represented by the transnational terrorist and
criminal organizations. They practice low-intensity conflict, have
as their source of power ruthlessness, and rely on natural stealth
and random targeting for their effect.
Low-Tech Brains are the "wild card" of history,
and are presented by the Islamic Fundamentalists (who merit respect
for their religious beliefs) and also cults (which do not merit
religious status). They practice Jihad, have as their source of
power ideology, and rely on mental stealth and mass targeting for
their effect.
High-Tech Brains are the threat de jure,
and are represented by friendly and unfriendly nations practicing
economic espionage, transnational corporations exercising electronic
privateering, and individual information terrorists and information
vandals as well as criminal hackers stealing what they can from
an unwitting world of nations, corporations, and citizens. They
practice information warfare, have as their source of power knowledge,
and rely on cyber-stealth and database targeting for their effect.
TECHNOLOGY IDEA: Establish an inter-agency working
group, with extensive representation from the private sector and
especially including law enforcement, hackers, and non-governmental
organization analysts, and devise a completely fresh directory of
"indications and warnings" for the three threat categories that
comprise the unconventional threat. Undertake an effort to automate
multi-lingual content analysis, including the digitization of important
foreign language publications not now covered by the Foreign Broadcast
Information Service (FBIS) and unlikely to be widely monitored.
Come As You Are. Finally we must come to grips
with the fact that "the water's edge" is as dangerous to our security
as the "iron curtain" once was, in that it is imposing-on our governmental
policy organizations, and on our national and law enforcement intelligence
communities-a dangerous and likely catastrophic barrier to the development
of seamless lines of communication and shared knowledge about transnational
criminal gangs and terrorist organizations moving freely between
overseas and domestic locations; major religious as well as cult
organizations and alien-smuggling operations; and individuals participating
in economic espionage, information terrorism, and information vandalism,
in association with international partners, be they governments,
corporations, gangs, or other individuals. Consider the following
illustration:
What does this chart mean to how we devise policy and
execute operations? It has two meanings:
First, it demonstrates the urgency of creating a seamless
architecture for linking policymakers, financial authorities, law
enforcement, the military, and all others including non-governmental
organizations, into a global information network where shared knowledge
is the foundation for preventing conflict and damage to mutual interests
including financial stability. Conflict is no longer simply unilateral,
military, or "over there".
Second, it emphasizes that conflict avoidance and resolution
against the emerging threats represent "come as you are" situations,
and that we do not have the luxury of time to gradually recognize
threats, devise means of monitoring them, and finally come to consensus
on means of dealing with them, after which the means can be gradually
constituted. An underlying implication of this lack of time is that
we must find a means of harnessing all available citizens as voluntary
sensors in a global "warning system", and that we must engage all
available expertise from the private sector so as to be able to
respond rapidly to threats beyond the ken of the conventional government
policymaker, bureaucrat, or analyst.
What does this mean in terms of what we need to know,
and how? It means that we now have to cover a much vaster range
of "threats" (and also opportunities), each much more subtle, more
diffuse, more obtuse, than the traditional conventional threat we
have grown to rely on for our feeling of security (that we understand
our world). As we shall see in the next section, the U.S. Intelligence
Community is neither prepared, nor inclined to become prepared,
for this more complex world. At the same time, the private sector
now offers a "virtually" unlimited range of open sources, systems,
and services, which are directly applicable to meeting the needs
of international policymakers, and which have the added advantage
of avoiding the constraints associated with classified information.
Part II: Why Don't We Know What We Need to Know?
The policymaker today suffers from a triple liability:
an intelligence community optimized for processing secrets out of
context (without adequate access to open and especially multi-lingual
sources of information); a government information handling system
unable to deal with the flood of unfiltered and unanalyzed information
directed at the policymaker from hundreds of international advocacy
sources all pressing their own agenda; and a policy process which
is inherently focused on domestic political decision criteria acted
upon with little time for reflection.
No person who really understands the roots of the intelligence
function in support of policy can fail to be dismayed by the existing
situation. Both the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA), relative newcomers to the global intelligence
community, were created to carry out strategic intelligence analysis
and to coordinate inter-agency information and intelligence assessments.
Both were intended on inception and into the future to rely predominantly
on open sources. Unfortunately, the allure of clandestine operations
and then the failure of these same clandestine operations against
the Soviet Union, led the United States to invest very heavily in
narrowly focused satellite technology, to the detriment of both
its clandestine human intelligence collection capability, and its
severely degraded analysis capability.
In general terms, the U.S. Intelligence Community fails
to meet the needs of the policymakers because:
1. It is optimized for secrecy and does not have adequate
access to the substantive, contextual, and culturally critical information
available from open sources-it cannot claim, with credibility, to
be "all source" because of its gaps in access to multi-lingual open
sources.
2. It is extremely dependent on overhead satellite
collection assets and severely lacking in commensurate investments
in data processing, human clandestine collection, and human analysis
capabilities.
3. It is completely isolated from the larger worlds
of government and private sector information and intelligence-by
inclination in terms of management and culture, and by design in
terms of budgets and technology.
4. It persists in using a priorities-driven requirements
system in which repetitive collection against generically monitored
high-priority targets (e.g. Russia, China, Iraq) consistently eliminates
the possibility of even the most cursory coverage of specific aspects
of Third World and other lower-priority targets.
5. It lacks a model of analysis and a process of analysis.
Consider this table:
|
Quick Looks
|
Direction
|
Collection
|
Analysis
|
Dissemination
|
|
Strategic
Customers:
1. Policymakers
2. Coalition Partners
3. Acquisition Managers
4. Public
5. Media
|
No tracking system for consumer satisfaction;
no integrated multi-disciplinary requirements database; non-traditional
consumers not well represented.
|
Superb but ossified technical capability with
limited utility against emerging threats. Very deficient human
(clandestine) and open source capabilities.
|
Cut-and-paste community, a few bright lights
kept under tight control, too many young people with little
idea of overseas realities and with very limited language/cultural
skills.
|
Cumbersome compendiums of limited utility to
day-to-day decisions.
|
|
Operational
Customers:
1. Theater commanders and staffs
2. Embassy Country Teams
3. Coalition Partners
4. Media
|
Self-imposed overemphasis on "worst-case" threats
continues, with almost complete lack of focus on such basics
as Third World mapping data and communications intelligence.
|
Virtually no support for human contingency requirements,
limited low intensity conflict indications and warning capability.
|
Highly motivated and responsive analysts in the
joint intelligence centers, but without adequate access to
open source information and especially information in host
country foreign languages.
|
Excellent dissemination to the theater headquarters,
very poor capability to support theater (forward), Joint Task
Force commanders, or Country Team members.
|
|
Tactical
Customers:
1. Tactical Military Commanders
2. Non-governmental organizations
3. Host governments
4. Media
|
From whom? How? At the mercy of national capabilities
not designed to support the tactical commander, with a theater
staff between the tactical units and the national organizations.
|
Adequate organic capabilities with the exception
of wide-area imagery; ground reconnaissance skills appear
to have atrophied; completely inadequate prisoner and refugee
handling.
|
Mixed bag, with personnel generally consumed
by volumes of traffic and additional duties-overloaded with
raw data, and very inadequate hardware and software.
|
Lack of realistic communications architecture
for sharing data with coalition and civil counterparts, lack
of digital mapping data, very vulnerable to electronic attacks
at source (home front) and in field.
|
|
Technical
1. Tactical commanders and pilots
2. Acquisition project managers
3. Vendors
|
Well-established mechanisms but not always focused
on the right questions. Slow to focus on C3I vulnerabilities.
|
Very good against denied areas, less so against
rogue states, emerging non-state actors, and present-day allies
and their religious partners.
|
Too much emphasis on technical countermeasures
and single system threat assessments, with no strategic generalizations.
|
Adequate in relation to fixed sites; will be
completely inadequate when "tactical" technical collection
and analysis is needed.
|
Figure 4: Critical U.S. National Intelligence Deficiencies
In systemic terms, in relation to the four major functions
of intelligence and in relation to the four major consumer groups,
the U.S. Intelligence Community is not trained, equipped, and organized
to be effective against the complex threats and opportunities
which face U.S. policymakers and their international partners today.
What about with respect to the vaunted individual disciplines
or aspects of classified intelligence which are intended to provide
policymakers with "plans and intentions" intelligence as well as
a full gamut of encyclopedic intelligence, current intelligence,
indications & warning intelligence, estimative intelligence,
general military intelligence, and scientific & technical intelligence?
Below are some unclassified extracts from the evaluative comments
that received policy and security approval within the Marine Corps
but were never published:
-
- General Military Intelligence (GMI) Production.
More attention should be devoted to integrating intelligence about
operational geography and civil factors pertinent to military
operations into over-all estimates.
- Scientific & Technical Intelligence
(S&TI) Production. Our Service planners and programmers
would benefit from expanded analysis of S&TI function to include
Third World arms production programs, weapons sales and thefts,
and technology transfer. We look for improved integration of both
HUMINT reporting and annotated imagery into S&TI production.
S&TI databases on the Third World appear lacking.
- Indications & Warning (I&W).
Many non-military crises require a commitment of military resources
for stability or humanitarian reasons. We are concerned by the
absence of an estimative methodology and dedicated resources for
anticipating such crises. Our community must have a "peacetime
engagement" indications & warning capability, together with
a capability to produce estimates relevant to national security
planning and programming for Third World stability operations.
- Human Intelligence (HUMINT). There are
several general trends of concern: the most fundamental is that
the existing national intelligence capability is simply not able
to meet our needs for military and non-military plans and intentions;
nor can it provide for contingency support, and stay-behind ground
reconnaissance and support assets. This is especially the case
in the Third World.
- Signals Intelligence (SIGINT). The proliferation
of commercial technology, the reduction of our overseas basing
infrastructure, and the rapid emergency of multiple threat groups
in new areas of concern (e.g. criminal and narco-revolutionary
splinter groups in areas of the world not previously covered)
will make it extremely difficult for the SIGINT community to realign
its resources and develop new capabilities with the declining
dollars it receives under the defense draw-down. The SIGINT community
is beset by other challenges, including a lack of qualified linguists
for many lower priority languages.
- Imagery Intelligence (IMINT). The emergence
of multi-spectral imagery (MSI), and its commercial availability,
together with possible economies achievable by modifying airborne
targeting radar, offer innovative alternatives for meeting some
of our most pressing requirements.
- Collection Management. Our national
intelligence community must strive to establish a national requirements
system that is useful in the management of resources, is cross-disciplinary,
automated, and is responsive to individual customers by allowing
them to track their requirements resolution by discipline, country,
topic, and time frame.
- ADP and Intelligence Communications.
The intelligence community as a whole must have a global data-driven
C4I2 architecture, which encompasses all mission areas and provides
for multi-level communications and computer security oriented
toward near-real-time sensor-to-shooter support in Third World
operations. The same architecture must also satisfy our requirements
for intelligence and information sharing with U.S. law enforcement,
foreign military, and non-governmental humanitarian organizations.
- Processing and Dissemination. Processing
and dissemination management (and concepts) cannot be isolated
from ADP and Intelligence Communications management. This is also
true of production planning-advances in technology and the manner
in which multi-media data can be handled have finally made "product"
and "system" two sides of the same coin; our planning processes
in these area must be integrated.
- Intelligence Training. We would welcome more emphasis
on the development of advanced analysis methods and tools throughout
the community, and development of a means of exporting these methods
and tools to all intelligence analysts. We also need to do a better
job of educating non-intelligence professionals regarding all
aspects of intelligence, including how to ask for intelligence,
how to collect it, and what are the capabilities and limitations
of our existing and planned intelligence systems.
Now, lest one conclude that the U.S. Intelligence Community
is to blame for its inability to adequately inform the policymaker,
it is time to stress several factors which permit its deficiencies
to persist:
1. The budget for intelligence operations is not subject
to critical review in detail, obscuring virtually everything in
its "base" budget and being limited to scrutiny by a few staff employees
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) or the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI).
2. The majority of the budget for intelligence operations
is managed by the Secretary of Defense rather than the Director
of Central Intelligence, and is such a small amount in relation
to the total Department of Defense budget as to merit very little
oversight from the Secretary of Defense.
3. The budget is not subject to review by the various
policy-level consumers in the Administration, to whom "intelligence"
represents a "free good" which they may ignore, or consume, at their
pleasure. A corollary of this point is that the policymaker is permitted
to avoid investing in their own analysts (e.g. the Departments of
Treasury and Commerce have mediocre to non-existent intelligence
collection and analysis organizations).
4. No one in Washington is held accountable for ignoring
intelligence, and in fact most intelligence is presented in a fashion
which makes it not only easy to ignore, but essential: as a cumbersome
compendium of classified research, often so compartmented that the
executive assistants are not cleared to read it, but so difficult
to gain access to (codeword signatures, special vaults) that the
policymakers don't bother to seek it out.
5. The needs of the policymaker, and the wont of the
intelligence analysts, are worlds apart. Four contrasts between
the two worlds are provided:
- The analyst focuses on all-source INTERNATIONAL
DATA while the policymaker focuses on DOMESTIC POLITICAL ISSUES
as the primary criteria for decision-making.
The analyst focuses on (and is driven by community
managers to) produce "PERFECT" products over a lengthier timeframe
while the policymaker requires "GOOD ENOUGH" products immediately.
Analysts continually run the risk of having zero impact because
their review process delays their product to the point that
it is overtaken by events.
The analyst is accustomed to INTEGRATING all-source
information at the CODEWORD level, while most policymaker staffs,
and especially those actually implementing operational decisions,
have at best a SECRET clearance. "A secret paragraph is better
than a codeword page".
The analyst and community management focus on SUBSTANCE
and ACCURACY while the policymaker focuses on POLITICS and PROCESS,
an arena where disagreement can be viewed as insubordination.
Even if new information is received, political considerations
may weigh against policy revision.
1. Lastly, the sources of unclassified (and unanalyzed)
information available to the policymaker drown out and reduce to
almost nothing the impact of the narrow inputs from classified intelligence.
Consider these competing influences on the policymaker, all flooding
the policymaker with verbal and written information:
-
- Politicians (Executive Leadership, Legislative
Leadership, Personal and Professional Staffs)
- Government Officials (Department Heads, Assistant
Secretaries, Program Managers, Message Traffic)
- Foreign Officials and Organizations (Diplomats,
Counterparts, Correspondence)
- Private and Public Sector (Lobbyists, Executives,
Citizen Groups, Pollsters, Individuals)
- Independent Researchers (Think Tanks, Academics,
Authors, Foundations, Laboratories)
- Media (CNN/C-SPAN, Newspapers, Wire Services,
Radio/TV, Pool Reporters
- Personal (Family, Intimates, Church, Clubs,
Alumni)
- Intelligence Community (CIA, DIA, NSA, NRO, NIMA, FBI, State
INR, Service Intelligence organizations)
What does this all mean? It means that right now the
U.S. Intelligence Community is unable to meet the most practical
needs of the policymaker, at the same time that the policymaker
is unable to define and manage their own needs in the context of
their available funding for unclassified information procurement,
and their prerogatives as intelligence consumers to dictate a new
focus for national intelligence-one which stresses responsiveness
to policymakers and the exploitation of open sources of information.
Neither the U.S. Intelligence Community, nor the information management
specialists serving the policymakers, nor the policymakers themselves,
have focused on the basic fact that intelligence is an inherent
responsibility of command, and it is the policymaker who
must specify the timing, format, length, and level of classification
of the intelligence products they wish to receive-to abdicate this
responsibility is to persist in a condition of power without knowledge.
Part III: The Perils and Promise of Information Technology
Information technology up to this point has been a
resource drain, and ultimately reduced the ability of government
to hire and retain world-class experts. Information technology has
imposed on the policymaker financial, productivity, secrecy, and
opportunity costs. The "iron curtains" between classified information
technology systems, policymaker information technology systems,
and private sector information technology systems have created a
wasteful and counter-productive archipelago of information, which
the policymaker needs but cannot access electronically. Billions
of dollars are being wasted through a lack of coordination and standardization,
and a lack of focus on requirements analysis, human productivity,
and the need for easy access to multiple remote multi-lingual and
multi-media databases. Information technology continues to offer
extraordinary promise, but only if the policymaker begins to manage
the technology rather than abdicate technology procurement decisions
to technologists far removed from the core competencies of the policy
environment.
Information technology, in relation to "content", appears
to have swamped the end-user with three waves, each of which has
left the end-user less productive and less informed than they were
before having information technology imposed on them.
The "first wave", when electronic publishing and electronic
storage of data first became possible, brought with it two major
negatives:
Because computer memory was so limited, the end-user
was turned into a "virtual slave" to the computer, and obliged to
master all manner of arcane commands with which to feed the "c prompt";
and
Because librarians were focused on hard copy, and technologists
were focused on processing generic bytes, the computer industry
developed without any strategy for data classification and data
archiving.
The "second wave", when increasingly sophisticated
word processing and database management programs became available,
also brought with it two major negatives:
Because the programs were so sophisticated, end-users
were required to either spend a significant amount of time in training,
or to forego most of the features offered by the programs; and
Because the programs kept changing and managers kept
allowing the technologists to specify ever-more sophisticated programs
for use, the end-user ended up losing access to much of their legacy
data, and spending a great deal of time re-entering data to satisfy
the changing formats and features of the new programs.
Now comes the "third wave", in which the Internet is
touted by the most optimistic as well as the least principled (two
different classes of advocate) as the be-all and end-all for meeting
the information needs of the policymaker, with, again, two major
negatives:
Because the Internet is such an interesting environment,
and new programs do indeed have a lot of power, analysts are disappearing
into the void, either hopelessly lost or hopelessly addicted to
wandering in cyberspace; and
Because the Internet does offer a superficial amount
of information on virtually any topic, albeit with no real source
authentication or validation, it has become the "classic comics"
of knowledge, and too many policymakers and their analysts are accepting
the Internet as the first and last stop in their quest for
information.
As one reflects on the $300 billion dollars (roughly)
that the U.S. Intelligence Community has spent primarily on information
technology, and the $3 trillion (roughly) that the rest of the U.S.
Government has spent on information technology (including weapons
and mobility systems information technology), four "costs" emerge
which must be considered by policymakers as they plan future investments
in information technology:
Financial costs. The ugly fact of the 1980's
and 1990's is that information technology usually provides a negative
return on investment in both government and corporate applications,
largely because of the dramatic negative impact on employee productivity,
and because of the lack of standardization across organizational
lines which interferes with data sharing and also wastes resources
through the development of multiple variations of complex systems
responding to different managers with the same functional requirements.
Productivity costs. The productivity costs of
badly managed information technology acquisitions are two: the loss
of employee productivity due to constantly changing applications;
and the loss of organizational productivity due to an absence of
attention to external sources of information.
Secrecy costs. Between classifying our vulnerabilities
and classifying our data, we have left ourselves vulnerable to electronic
attack of our financial, communications, power, and transportation
infrastructures in the private sector, at the same time that we
have deprived most end-users of critical information. There is also
"virtual secrecy", a pervasive compartmentation and concealment
of information from the public and indeed from the policymakers,
which results from poor information management practices as well
as bureaucratic regulations that block access to unclassified information.
Opportunity costs. Between spending billions
of technical collection and related security systems, and policies
which ensured the technical isolation of analysts dealing predominantly
with classified information and analysts dealing predominantly with
unclassified information, we have essentially created a dysfunctional
technological architecture-we have created a "virtual" iron curtain
between sectors (government, business, media, academy); a "virtual"
bamboo curtain between institutions within sectors (Oxford, Harvard,
Stanford, George Mason, University of Southern Florida); and a "virtual"
plastic curtain between individuals who cannot readily share word
processing or graphics files. This dysfunctional technological architecture
is preventing policymakers from identifying opportunities for conflict
avoidance in time to be effective, and at a far lower cost in terms
of political and economic resources than will be required later
to resolve the conflict once begun.
In summary, today information technology is part of
the problem, not part of the solution. However, the fault does not
lie with the technologists, but rather with the managers who have
abdicated their responsibility for the direction of technology and
its proper applications in support of core competencies.
At the strategic level, we must manage
information as the core value-what Paul Strassmann calls "knowledge
capitalTM",
and use information technology to reach across national, organizational,
and disciplinary boundaries.
At the operational level, we must radically
alter how we manage both security and procurement, as both are now
hobbling information technology by placing barriers in the way of
connectivity and state of the art capabilities, while we simultaneously
avoid investing in advanced electronic security programming.
At the tactical level, we must dramatically
realign dollars from the collection of classified information, to
the discovery, discrimination, distillation, and dissemination of
unclassified information.
At the technical level, we must accept that
our classified base of analyst workstations is a given and stop
trying to create a duplicate architecture of unclassified machines
which the analysts and policymakers will never use-instead we must
rely on private sector Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities
(SCIF) to serve as the "air gaps" for introducing unclassified information
into the classified system. At the same time, we must invest in
our global Embassies (of all nations) and their related corporate
offices, and establish a Global Information Management (GIM) concept
of operations.
Returning to the field of imagery and global geospatial
data to illustrate the perils of badly managed information technology,
one can observe:
Billions have been spent to collect repetitive snap-shots
of (then) Soviet missile silo doors, at the same time that the mapping
satellite constellation was cancelled and the Defense Mapping Agency
was forced to create an enormously cumbersome processing system
to digest synoptic and relatively microscopic classified images.
The system is also poorly suited to integrating commercial imagery
sources that have now far outpaced national assets in terms of diversity
of utility and breadth of availability.
SPOT Image Corporation has most of the earth already
in its archives, generally 100% cloud-free, and less than three
years oldÖ.yet the U.S. Intelligence Community refuses to realign
funds to meet the stated need of the National Imagery and Mapping
Agency (NIMA) for $250 million dollars a year to buy commercial
imagery; the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense has refused
an even more modest request from NIMA for $25 million a year; the
Director of Central Intelligence continues to refuse to create a
separate funding line for the procurement of commercial imagery;
and NIMA compounds this problem by refusing to acknowledge the EARTHMAP
Report and the needs of the Departments of State, Commerce, Treasury,
and other key elements of the government concerned with peace and
prosperity.
In the absence of a means for integrating existing
commercial global geospatial data into a global multi-media database,
automated data fusion between distinct sources and disciplines remains
an impossibility. Global geospatial data at the 1:50,000 resolution
level is literally the foundation for information sharing and integration
and automated value-added processing and-ergo-the foundation for
virtual intelligence, virtual diplomacy, and information peacekeeping.
Now what of the promise of information technology?
One can focus on two areas: generic functional requirements for
individual workstations; and generic organizational methods for
routine, reliable, and responsive access to global data and expertise-neither
exist today.
The single most helpful contribution to the productivity
of all those supporting policymakers across national and organizational
boundaries would be the stabilization of their individual workstations
and their means of accessing multi-lingual and multi-media data.
At a minimum, organizations must put a stop to the practice of duplicative
and counter-productive investments in varying kinds of "all source
fusion workstations" which ultimately divide rather than unite data
and people.
|
Data entry
Selective text and image extraction
Hard copy scanning including color
Audio transcription/translation
|
Data routing and records management
Automated clustering of related information
Automated gisting
Automated weighting of documents
for review
Automated routing, filing, and purging
|
|
Data retrieval
Very large unstructured multi-media database
search
Automated access to and querying
of distributed databases
Menu-driven multiple database/multi-level
security access programs
Natural language query conversion
to all legacy search systems
Automated flagging of data changes
Retrieval of like images despite
angle of look and shades of gray differences
Understanding of numeric variations
and equivalents
|
Database construction and management
Free form database construction
Automated database maintenance and
updating
Automated verification and cleansing
of data
Automated text extraction
Automated tagging of data elements
with level of classification and source
Fully integrated text and images
Automated and ad hoc hot links easily
applied
Automated records management
Individual entry protocols for voice
and video
|
|
Data collection and exploitation
Desktop publishing
Graphics and briefing aids
Global electronic mail
Graphical visualization of trends
and linkages
Menu of modeling and simulation
programs
Automated statistical analysis
Expert pre-screening of indicators
and warning
Automated flagging of "hot" words
and changes in content over time
Digital map overlays and grid coordinate
input
Tailored no-notice map productions
to the 1:50,000 level
Automated overlay maintenance
|
Knowledge base construction and management
Menu driven access to previous queries
Automated repeat queries
Menu driven flagging of key words,
profile extensions
Gradual automated and user-assisted
development of key links and concepts
|
|
"Intelligence" collection management
Automated collection asset inventory and
status
Automated matching of assets and
requirements
Automated "tasker"
Automated tracking of satisfaction/tickler
"Alternative collection strategies"
generation
Raw/finished collection evaluation
toolkit
|
Administrative and security management
Classified documents control/bar coding
Electronic "marking" of classification
by word
Automated sanitization to any level
Automated comparison of like/unlike
reports
Quick search OOB and terminology
library
Automation of all forms and reports
Automated name traces on refugees
and prisoners for any location
Automated access/query audit trail
Automated virus detection &
eradication
Smart in-boxes (prioritizing and
screening)
Instant retrieval of any order,
manual, handbook, or other official document
Instant retrieval of any contingency
plan to which the individual is a party
|
Figure 5: Generic "All-Source Fusion" Workstation
Requirements
Above have been a few illustrative examples of generic
requirements, which should be part of joint government-corporate
efforts to establish an international information technology standard,
which contributes to individual productivity: The technologists
will be quick to say "we can do that", but there are two realities
that continue to escape them:
Human productivity and human nature cannot afford to
learn a different application for each function and task. These
are basic functions and tasks, which must be integrated and intuitive.
Crazy things happen when multi-media and multi-lingual
data is needed which can only be obtained from multiple remote sources.
No technology should be considered acceptable until it has been
fully tested against the real-world data sources and real-world
data processing needs of the end-user.
It is essential, therefore, that policymakers
present a united front, across organizational and even national
boundaries, with respect to the generic functional requirements
for the single most important tool in the arsenal of the diplomat:
the electronic information machine.
Now with respect to external access, and the creation
of an architecture through which policymakers can obtain open source
intelligence from the private sector, the following two illustrations
outline the core ideas for the "information merchant bank" which
has been established by the author in prototype.
Early Bird (Periodic Awareness Service). The
lowest level of service is the daily Early Bird which builds
on a quality process such as that offered by Individual, Inc., and
provides to each individual policymaker (or supporting staff employee)
a one page digest of highly focused current news-each entry comes
with a route to obtaining the full text document.
Help Desk (Online Search & Retrieval). The
next level of service, the Help Desk, provides rapid response search
and retrieval services which can access the Internet, all major
commercial online services including international and foreign language
online services as well as international electronic databases that
are not necessarily "online" but can be exploited remotely, and
hard-copy references including general literature such as is available
in a major library.
Primary Research (Experts on Demand). At the
third level, even more expertise can be brought to bear on a policymaker's
problem by systematically identifying and then contracting with
individual experts who can bring to bear decades of experience and
immediate access to all manner of electronic and hard copy sources
(as well as their own network of experts and assistants). The economic
benefits of out-sourcing decision support to such experts cannot
be understated-this essentially allows the policymaker to harness
expertise that has been maintained at someone else's expense, and
that has proven itself in the marketplace through peer citation
and public success. Oxford Analytica, which uses the Dons of Oxford
University as a de facto "Intelligence Council", is the only
organization of its kind, and an integral part of any comprehensive
effort to take advantage of the knowledge available in the private
sector.
Strategic Forecasting (Including Technology Forecasting).
Finally, at the fourth level, strategic studies and forecasts, including
forecasts of scientific and technical trends and opportunities,
can be obtained by using the capabilities of the Institute of Scientific
Information (ISI). This unique organization is the sole source in
the world of both citation analysis data, which covers all significant
peer-reviewed journals in the world (i.e. it is international and
multi-lingual) as well as essential technology for mapping specific
disciplines and identifying key individuals and centers of expertise.
In combination with a wide range of other open sources, systems,
and services, relatively low-cost strategic forecasts can be developed.
Any organization can establish its own clearinghouse
for gaining access to external expertise and knowledge. It may not
be as effective as using a "virtual" intelligence center provided
by a global leader in open source exploitation, but it will assuredly
improve-significantly improve-day to day decision support and hence
contribute to the effectiveness of the organization.
Below is an illustration of a basic internal
clearinghouse, and a brief description of its core functions.
The above "cell" is scalable, but the key idea is to
avoid at all costs the creation of a centralized unit with increasing
numbers of employees which attempts to actually do the research
and develop the intelligence itself. Instead, the focus for each
of the specialists must be on "knowing who knows"
The Internet specialist keeps track of external
Internet experts who are also subject-matter experts, for instance
in regional, scientific, or military domains, and who can be called
upon to carry out specific searches of the Internet. This specialist
also monitors the development of new Internet technologies.
The commercial online specialist must understand
in strategic terms the relative utility and price value of the various
commercial online offerings, and focuses on retaining the appropriate
information broker or brokers, each with the necessary expertise
at particular online services, as well as a complementary knowledge
of the language and /or foreign databases as well as the subject
matter area.
The primary research specialist is expert at
using a combination of citation analysis, association and other
directories, and direct calling to rapidly get answers to questions
which cannot be addressed through accessing published information,
but rather require either access to "gray literature" that is legally
available but only if you know where to go for it, or to a human
expert who can construct the answer in real time by drawing on their
historical knowledge and access to various sources, including human
sources.
The external services specialist (some might
wish to distinguish between an external systems specialist and an
external services specialist) is a master of the marketplace and
follows all of the niche providers who offer narrowly focused technologies
(e.g. search & retrieval technologies, visualization technologies)
or services. Below are some of the standard niche services that
are common to the private sector:
|
Open Source Examples
|
Open System Examples
|
Open Service Examples
|
|
Current Awareness
|
Internet Search Tools
|
Commercial Online Search & Retrieval
|
|
Current Contents
|
Data Entry Tools
|
Foreign Language Media Monitoring
|
|
Subject-Matter Clearinghouses (Univers.)
|
Database Construction and Management Tools
|
Human Document Abstracting and Indexing
|
|
Conference Proceedings and Papers
|
Data Retrieval, Routing, and Records Management
|
Document Translation
|
|
Direct Access to Commercial Online
|
Automated Document Abstracting and Indexing
|
Gray Literature Discovery and Retrieval
|
|
Contextual Awareness/
Cultural Orientation
|
Automated Document Translation
|
Experts on Demand
|
|
Document Acquisition
|
Knowledge-Base Construction & Mgmt.
|
Primary Research (Telephone Surveys)
|
|
Subject-Matter Commercial Databases
|
Data Mining and Visualization Tools
|
Private Investigation and Direct Debriefings
|
|
Risk Assessment Reports
|
Desktop Publishing Tools
|
Market Research
|
|
Expert and Association Directories
|
Multi-Media Communications Tools
|
Strategic Literature and Technology Forecasting
|
|
Photographic Archives
|
Digital Imagery Processing
|
Hard-Copy Global Map and Chart Procurement
|
|
Digital Data Archives
|
Electronic Security and Administration Tools
|
Commercial Imagery and Map Production
|
Figure 7: Standard Niche Capabilities Offered Within
the Private Sector
"Market research" and "studies & analysis" are
generic categories where in many cases the customer cannot rely
on the provider. In general, providers of such services who have
major investments in permanent personnel will not take the
trouble to systematically identify world-class experts or fully
survey external online and hard copy sources. It is an unfortunate
reality that such organizations are constantly seeking to assign
existing employees, whether or not they are fully qualified to address
the specific inquiry, and to avoid paying for direct support from
niche providers such as those who specialize in specific languages,
citation analysis, patent records search, etcetera.
Information technology continues to offer the policymaker
significant opportunities for acquiring and managing knowledge with
which to avoid conflicts and resolve conflicts, as well as to identify
and exploit opportunities for mutual peaceful advantage, but it
will not be part of the solution until the policymaker recognizes
that in the age of information, the management of information technology
is an inherent function of command, and not something which can
be delegated to technologists.
It is also critical that the policymaker focus on content
and access to external expertise and multi-lingual data as well
as value-added services, and not on internal information handling
systems which tend to require more effort to "feed" than they return
in value-added.
In the age of information, the cost of communications
and computers (hardware and software) has already declined dramatically.
Now the cost of content is leveling off and is about to begin declining.
The major added value in the next two decades-and information technology
has an important but not an exclusive role to play in delivering
this added value-will come from:
-
- Discovery. Policymakers have power and
they should spend their time reflecting and deciding when they
are not in negotiation and in face to face communication with
their counterparts. It is for the "virtual intelligence community"
to meet the policymakers needs for discovering as much of the
raw information as is necessary to meet the policymakers needs
for "just enough just in time" intelligence.
- Discrimination. A major value-added
function is that of discriminating between valid and invalid information,
through a constant process of source validation, generally a labor-intensive
process requiring genuine human expertise as well as new developments
in automated understanding. A cost element can also be provided
here, by giving the customer the benefits of superior knowledge
in selecting sources of equal content but lower prices.
- Distillation. This is the essence of
"intelligence" in that it combines research judgements which first
discover and discriminate, and then it adds expert subject matter
knowledge to distill the broader effort into "just enough" intelligence-intelligence
being information which is tailored to the needs of the policymaker
and tightly focused on helping the policymaker with a specific
decision at a specific time and place.
- Dissemination. Often the timing, length, and even the
format of the delivered product can be decisive in determining
whether the intelligence contained in the document (or oral presentation,
or video, or electronic mail, or whatever) is received by the
intended policymaker, absorbed, and compelling enough to support
action. There is far more to dissemination than simple delivery.
The above is not intended to make a case for the use
of open sources from the private sector to the exclusion of either
unclassified information or classified information from government
sources. Indeed, the ideal situation emerges when both the policymaker
and the intelligence community use open sources to the fullest extent
possible, but with intelligence methods applied to produce open
source intelligence, then task the classified systems for
such information as is truly critical, and finally utilize open
sources to protect classified findings but inform those who require
information support but to whom classified information cannot be
disclosed.
Part IV: Strategic Information Management for Global
Peacekeeping
The private sector offers the policymaker an extraordinary
range of world-class expertise at very low cost, and with the ability
to create new knowledge on demand. In most cases having to do with
Third World conflicts, traditionally very low priorities for classified
intelligence capabilities, the private sector is the essential source
for expertise needed by the policymaker. At the same time, the policymaker
can acquire a new appreciation for information as a "munition" or
a means by which to alter the balance of power in a conflict through
an alteration of the balance of information. A new theory is presented,
the theory of "information peacekeeping", whose elements are (unclassified)
intelligence, information technology ("tools for truth"), and electronic
home defense. The article concludes that the private sector can
be harnessed by the policymaker in a non-intrusive way, but that
a national information strategy is required if the policymaker is
to be effective in fully integrating and exploiting classified and
unclassified government information as well as private sector information.
Given a national information strategy, the policy maker can create
a "virtual intelligence community" and utilize "information peacekeeping"
as a means for the conduct of virtual diplomacy.
In this final part of the article we examine three
elements which, taken together, can help avoid and resolve conflicts
while significantly increasing the productivity and effectiveness
of those practicing "virtual diplomacy":
Distributed Expertise in the Private Sector-The Information
Continuum
Information Peacekeeping and "Tools for Truth"
Information Strategy as the Enabler of Virtual Diplomacy
Distributed Expertise in the Private Sector-The Information
Continuum.
The following illustrates the "information continuum"
which exists today, the vast majority of it in the private sector:
In contemplating this continuum, the policymaker should
consider the following key findings:
The expertise contained within each of the sectors
is created and maintained at someone else's expense.
The expertise which is maintained in these other sectors
is constantly subject to the test of market forces, and tends to
be more current with respect to both sources and methods than the
government's archives and analysts.
The cost of this expertise, when the policymaker is
able to surmount security and procurement obstacles, is on the order
of $10,000 for a world-class report which is concise and actionable
and delivered overnight, inclusive of the cost of identifying and
validating the best choice of expert.
Such published information as is available to the policymaker
through either online retrieval or hardcopy document retrieval represents
less than 20% and more often less than 10% of what is actually known
by the individual experts.
The most significant deficiency in national intelligence
today as it pertains to providing the policymaker with just enough,
just in time "intelligence", is the lack of direct access to the
expertise available in the private sector.
There are many examples of worthy private sector sources
and capabilities, which can be harnessed to meet the needs of the
policy maker, but for the sake of this article, a practical case
study pertinent to conflict resolution, will be reported.
On the afternoon of 3 August 1995, a Thursday, the
author was testifying to the Commission on Intelligence regarding
the importance of dramatica
