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OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE REVIEWED

The latest issue of the CIA’s journal Studies in Intelligence has a couple of articles that demonstrate the advantages and limitations of systematically using OSINT for analysis.

“Reexamining the Distinction Between Open Information and Secrets” by Stephen C. Mercado

Book Review: “Understanding Terror Networks by Mark Sageman” Reviewed by Dwight P. Pinkley

For professional intelligence analysts, OSINT is frequently an underutilized resource due to a need for efficient and systematic aggregation and judicious and precise discrimination among what can often be a massively overwhelming body of information. To make these kinds of selections under time constraints requires both a high level of vertical expertise so the analyst can readily evaluate the significance of the data and a capacity to scan horizontally across fields with acceptable competence. Interestingly enough, Stephen Mercado points to the blogosphere and old media as demonstrating the OSINT equivalent of the ” wisdom of crowds“:

“Quantity: There are far more bloggers, journalists, pundits, television reporters, and think-tankers in the world than there are case officers. While two or three of the latter may, with good agents, beat the legions of open reporters by their access to secrets, the odds are good that the composite bits of information assembled from the many can often approach, match, or even surpass the classified reporting of the few.”

The military appears to be taking the lead with tapping OSINT for intelligence purposes though the existence of a formal system to regularly vet the blogosphere per se is unknown, it would be well within the technical capacity of the NSA to create such a system. It is also extremely probable that IC analysts rely on the internet from time to time, including blogs writtten by those with particular fields of expertise, as do most other researchers these days. There are also, most likely, analysts with a mathematical bent who can discern useful intelligence from studying the memetic network patterns of the blogosphere or make use of those pattern structures for purposes of disinformation strategy ( have to be careful there – you don’t want to corrupt your own feedback loop !).

The review of the Sageman book ostensibly demonstrates the limits over relying solely on OSINT though that is mixed rather heavily with the scholarly limitations of Dr. Sageman, who I’m certain is a top-notch psychiatrist and former CIA field operative but is neither a historian nor an Arabist. The reviewer himself makes an elementary mistake in finding fault with Sageman:

“And there are other problems with Chapter Three. On the one hand, Sageman contends that foreign fighters were barely involved in fighting in the Soviet-Afghan war (57); on the other hand, he stipulates that the leadership and founding members of al-Qa’ida were indeed in the fight “

These two statements by Dr. Sageman I have to note are not mutually exclusive. They also happen to be accurate. Foreign fighters were at best peripheral to the anti-Soviet jihad in Afghanistan but they were present, engaged in firefights that were, if no great strategic importance to the outcome of the war, served as the defining life experience for these “Arab Afghans” themselves.

The IC does not operate under the research constraints that Dr. Sageman labored under regarding OSINT, which should form the base of the analytical pyramid, the context, into which SIGINT, IMINT and clandestinely- acquired HUMINT can be placed and evaluated.

SKETCHING AN IDEA

As I am facing another long day and I’m tired to the point where stringing sentences together with any coherence is proving difficult, I thought I’d try an informal format and see what the resultant reaction might be from the readership. Here goes…..

Deep Influence Networks:

Ideologist ——-> Big Idea:

Conceptual Reorganization within a vertical subfield or domain <--Utility
Horizontal Applications across domains <------ Strong Memetic appeal
Re-Framing old intractable questions
Is Big Idea Zero Sum or Nonzero Sum ?
Simplification vs. Complexity
Cultural universality vs. exceptionality
Conflicting with or reinforcing of dominant societal worldview?

Disciples<-------- Ideologist-------->Patrons
Free-Scale Network builders vs. Free-scale Network providers

Communication Networks <----Big Idea ----> Insider Influencers
( Wide Dispersal )_________________________( Targeted Dispersal)
Passive Acceptance_________________________Active Adherence
Passive Opposition__________________________Active Opposition

Questions:

Allies – discrete category ?
Closed vs. Open system Big Ideas ?

COGNITIVE LINK:

Just for fun, Dan of tdaxp and his grad class in what looks to psych theory.

RECOMMENDED READING

Being very harried today and having to be at work until the late evening I am unlikely to be posting much or commenting tonight…BUT, these are a fine selection !

Simon at Simon World directs us to the IMF magazine’s ” Next Steps For China” and also to The Jamestown Foundation’s look at the influential maverick General Liu Yazhou.

Bruce Kesler at The Democracy Project, takes President Bush to task.

Curtis Gale Weeks at Phatic Communion weighs in on the future of Sino-American
relations.

Dave at The Glittering Eye on System Reliability and Disaster Planning

Razib at Gene Expression has a long and well-considered piece on why Mitt Romney’s Mormonism will be his undoing in the G.O.P. at the hands of the Religious Right.

Marc at The American Future on Europe’s creeping dictatorship. If you wonder why I don’t trust transnational institutions like the poorly-designed ICC, Marc’s post sheds some light.

Back to the grind. for me…….

UPDATE:

In order to fulfill a special request from overseas and provide readers with some timely information that I know will be of interest to most of you, CENTCOM.mil is now added to the blogroll. Check it out !

INSTITUTIONAL MYOPIA AT STATE

Paul D. Kretkowski of Beacon – a fine blog devoted to exploring the parameters of Joseph Nye’s ” soft power” concept – had a post today that touched on what would seem initially to be a small mattter; the recommended reading list of the State Department for prospective members of the Foreign Service. Mr. Kretkowski expressed bewilderment that the famous novel, The Ugly American by William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, did not make the cut:

“The novel (really a collection of interconnected short stories) takes place around and immediately after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, Vietnam in 1954, an event that underlined the difficulty a Western army had in fighting what were then called the Viet Minh. In fictional Sarkhan, some American diplomats and businessmen win local hearts and minds with their can-do spirit and willingness to get their hands dirty, while others stay isolated at the embassy by language, casual racism or bureaucracy, ignorant of the country’s growing Communist insurgency.

…So who is reading it? Apparently it’s a required text in the Army’s special forces, which is no surprise because the book is practically a billboard for the Green Beret counterinsurgency model”

I took a look at State’s reading list and I find myself equally perplexed by the absence of a number of texts to for which the inclusion should be a no-brainer. Present at the Creation and the memoirs of George Kennan, Charles Murphy,Walter Bedell Smith are all AWOL. Nothing by Henry Kissinger, including his classic Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy. In fact, no classics of any kind, even in diplomatic history where I expected to see William Appleman Williams, Robert B. Tucker, John Lewis Gaddis or Walter LeFeber, none of whom were on the list. Nor are foreign statesmen who dealt extensively with American diplomats included – you can find a lot to read on women and American multiculturalism issues but don’t bother looking for Anthony Eden or Anatoly Dobrynin; evidently what they had to say was less important to future FSO’s than what was offered by the authors of Asian American Women and Men: Labor, Laws, and Love.

George Kennan’s ” X” article – the single most influential document in the history of American diplomacy – was omitted. Why ?

There are some decent survey-type history books on State’s list and an eclectic though not insubstantial selection of books on economics – most of which however date from the 1970’s, 1980’s and early 1990’s. Nothing, however on on leadership. Nothing on strategy. No biographies. Nothing on technology, espionage or military affairs. A couple of books on terrorism from the mid-1990’s and a few books on countries that no longer exist ( note to State, Yugoslavia… kaput!) . It reads a lot like a list calculated not to offend irascible Congressmen.

When our prospective diplomats are given more books about office accounting and The Americans with Disabilities Act than they are about critical subjects that tie directly into foreign policy, State is sending a message loud and clear.

And it’s the wrong one.

THE POWER ARC OF THE CHINESE NAVY

Power and Interest News Report takes a look at the much debated rise of Chinese naval might and comes away…not terribly impressed:

“The submarine fleet will have the same duties as surface vessels, but is also expected to be assigned the hard task of facing the “traditional” Taiwanese adversary and, supposedly, coping with U.S. battle groups. In fact, it appears that Beijing discarded the possibility of deploying a limited number of aircraft carriers (which would appear excessive in relation to other regional navies) since they would have little hope of prevailing in an engagement with U.S. naval forces. This explains why China’s aircraft carrier planning and construction is slowing in pace. Indeed, Beijing now prefers a well-stocked fleet of diesel submarines and nuclear powered submarines to have the difficult role of exerting some deterrence against American ships in case of a crisis.

Following this path, China will rise to a respectable level of underwater power, partially repeating the Soviet strategy during the Cold War. However, unlike the past Soviet submarine fleet (essentially dedicated to attacking N.A.T.O. forces and protecting bastions full of SSBNs), Chinese submarine forces seem to be assigned the role of supporting surface forces — in their attempts to control sea lines of communication, with the additional mission of trying to exert some form of counter-power against U.S. forces.”

What would be a feasible and economical naval deterrent to American intervention in the Taiwan Strait in the eyes of China’s Politburo ? My guess, is the ability to sink the smaller PACOM ships and inflict multithousand casualties before going down ( literally) to defeat. Nailing a destroyer or carrier would be key to Beijing’s internal political calculus- to do enough damage to claim “victory” the way the Egyptians parlayed their better than expected military performance in the Yom Kippur War into a ” win”. Ideally, the Chinese would like to leverage land based assets in combination with their upgraded fleet to maximize the force they could bring to bear against the Navy but they will settle for simply causing any American president to think twice before engaging China over Taiwan.

In reality, these new ships are simply political chips for raising stakes. Should the status of Taiwan get pushed to the point of war then China has lost the game and its leadership will be trying desperately to save enough face to ride out the crisis without a revolution breaking out. Not that we should cheer because even a brief, low-casualty, Sino-American war will rock the global economy like nothing we have seen since 1929