Sunday, October 15th, 2006
HEY SEAN…IS THIS YOUR KIND OF KNIGHT?
Tom’s intrepid webmaster, Sean Meade expresses a yen for the dark side of his youth.
Up next, a ZP homage to Blade Runner….. ;o)
Archive for October, 2006
Sunday, October 15th, 2006
SUNDAY’S RECOMMENDED READING
Following up, catching up and posting up:
Chirol at Coming Anarchy – “Georgia: Little Engine that Can?“
Gunnar Peterson at 1 Raindrop -“Decentralization and “Good Enough” security Part 3“
Dan of tdaxp – “Learning Evolved, Introduction: The Revolution Against the Standard Social Sciences Model” and ” Learning Evolved, Part I: Darwinism-Cognitivism” and “Learning Evolved, Part II: Social Motivation“
Kingdaddy at Arms and Influence – “Mahan redux, sort of“
Austin Bay – “the Left’s new history on missile defense“
Bruce Kesler – Democracy Project-“Kissinger on Acheson: We’re Again Present At The Creation & Learning“
CKR at Whirledview -“Breaking Out of the Proliferation Box“
Marc at American Future -“Eugenics Is Alive and Well in North Korea “
Dr. Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News -“How Do Editors Decide to Publish Classified Info?”
That’s it !
Friday, October 13th, 2006
NEW OR FAIRLY NEW TO THE BLOGROLL
Going to have to systematically review the damn thing for dead blogs and changed URLs soon and delete/fix them but in the meantime, some new voices:
Gunnar Peterson on the intersection of tech, security, distributed systems, cyberthreats and related subjects.
A blog journal on the Middle East organized and edited by Dr. Marc Lynch a.k.a Abu Aardvark, that intends to publish posts from across the political and methodological spectrums.
Specialist blog on IC analytical practices, other tradecraft and literature.
Check them out and enjoy !
Friday, October 13th, 2006
CHIROL’S MICROPOWER
Chirol at Coming Anarchy artfully expands on the Micropower discussion that went down recently at Global Guerillas, also adding a visual homage to Valdis Krebs. I’m not sure Ukraine can be regarded as ” micro” given its size, population and economic potential, but I think Chirol is illustrating possible strategic behaviors for a state as much as he is categorical characteristics of micropower status.
A future discussion of geographic micropowers that are economic macropowers, like Singapore or the U.A.E. , is warranted. Small states can acquire considerable amounts of economic ” hard power” – or for that matter, illicit, ” black globalization” flows via tight bank secrecy laws or porous borders.
Thursday, October 12th, 2006
IN THE VANGUARD OF INTEL REFORM
Three worthwhile posts on the state of the IC to peruse:
Gunnar Peterson – 1 Raindrop – ” Decentralization and “Good Enough” Security” and “Decentralization and “Good Enough” Security (cont.)”
“There are several parallels in the challenges addressed by the DoD and the enterprise environment, and they all get back to how do you realistically deploy/manage/scale security in a large decentralized system. (hint: the answer is not centralizing security)”
Michael – GroupIntel Blog -” **** or Get off the Pot (Updates)“
“I don’t know why the thought didn’t come to me earlier (alcoholic blackout?) but reading this latest account of FBI fits and starts as it tries to become both an intelligence and counterterrorism agency on top of a law enforcement agency I am had to ask myself: why are we spending so much time trying to retrofit the Bureau when it is painfully clear that it does not want to be anything more than it is?
There are any number of texts explaining why the FBI can do the domestic intelligence (in the most benign sense) job and the CT job; and an equal number of arguments against those positions. So far proponents of the former have won out, but judging by the comments made by Bureau staff in the first few paragraphs of the story it seems to me that they are not much interested in doing what is necessary to fulfill intelligence and security needs. Note that they talk a good game about how they’re improving in the intelligence and CT fields, but they’ve either driven out anyone who tries to make changes or stick whatever executive short-timer they can into what is arguably one of the most important jobs in the agency. Nobody who is serious about a mission has seven bosses in five years.”
