Tag Archives: intelligence analysis

Homeland Security hodge podge

Posted on May 7, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Things remain unclear about the attack in Boston but some things of note can already be discerned.  Here’s my list so far…

Network news is terrible at covering unfolding events.  I don’t think it was always so, but maybe it was and I just didn’t it or my information needs were different.  In any case the 24 hour news channels were uniformly useless.  The normally quite good John Dickerson gives a pretty weak defense of the institution (While mistakes may have been made it’s really the fault of the viewers…or twitter…of Blitzer’s beard!)

The news channels weren’t about providing information and context.  They were about spreading rumor, speculation and regurgitating the few facts they did have.  This led to the second problem of the news organizations (not new but exacerbated by this story) which is that even though these channels have 24 hours to fill with programming they suffer from myopia.  Nothing important was going on elsewhere in the world during the entire week?  Really?  I find that hard to believe.

Social media was even worse.  Twitter was a disaster and Reddit users were on their way to forming virtual lynch mobs.  It would seem, not the greatest set of days for the idea of crowd-sourced intelligence.

But not so fast.  I suspect some of that was the messy nature of self organization.  There was very little attempt to give people ways to connect to the story in helpful (or, at least not harmful) ways.  That is what government can do although the agencies upon whom this responsibility would normally fall (law enforcement or homeland security) don’t really seem interested in communicating more than they absolutely have to with the public.

Aside from the occasional photo op, the customary speech laden with rhetoric about “our partners in the private sector, blah, blah, blah,” and of course the obligatory platitudes that we see in news releases and congressional testimony, the level of engagement with people outside the red brick walls of the DHS complex is anemic, if not nearly extinct.

Lesson Learned:  Shut off the news on the second repeat of ‘what we know’.  Tune back in at the end of the day.  Avoid social media (as it’s currently configured) unless you have some specific information needs you think you can fill through those sources.  Anything else is the virtual equivalent of rubber necking and will do nothing except waste your time and risk getting you caught up in the same useless feeding frenzy everyone else is in.

We’ve already heard calls for new changes to account for this incident.  We should charge this American citizen as an ‘enemy combatant’ and deny him his constitutionally protected rights.  This attack ‘proves’ that Putin is a guy we want on our side, after all.  And all those Muzlims!  Muzlims everywhere!

One incident is one datapoint.  That’s all.  Any assertions that this is part of some sort of trend is engaging in baseless speculation.  We have no idea if this event means nothing or is a harbinger of something significant.  I suspect the former but we have to wait and see.

Lesson Learned:  STFU until you know what you’re talking about (and even now, we don’t know much).  If you don’t know what you’re talking about but want to speculate anyway, make sure you don’t make your speculation have to bare more weight than it can carry.

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We’ve been very fortunate in that the U.S. suffers from very little terrorism.  Less in the past ten years than in the 1970s 1 but I suspect people, like me, that grew up in the 1970s didn’t feel like we were living in a terrorist wonderland.  9/11 may, indeed, have changed everything but perhaps not for the better.

So, while perhaps not popular I recommend Rose Brooks’ occasionally condescending yet still good ‘Keep Calm and Shut the Bleep Up‘ as we gird ourselves for countless stories that go something like:  ‘You know…I was thinking about running in a marathon before I died.  That could’ve been it.  I was that close…’  We get it.  If you didn’t have a head cold you totally would have been in Boston and wow…coulda been you.  Just because the odds of you getting killed in a terrorist attack are increased from 1 in 3 million to 1 in 1 million, don’t expect me to come down with a case of the vapors.

Lesson Learned:  Chill out.  You, your family, your friends and everyone else you care about are MUCH more likely to die in many more ways than terrorist attacks.  If you’re going to freak out…pay some attention to those risks.

 

 

  1. By quite a bit, I might add.   There were almost TEN TIMES the number of terrorist attacks in the 1970s compared to the decade starting on September 11, 2001. ↩

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Cognition and intelligence analysis

Posted on May 6, 2013 by | Leave a comment

A couple of stories have been in the press recently that have some interesting implications for intelligence analysis.

First, courtesy of Discover magazine, is this piece summarizing research that seems to indicate that people that sign their documents on the top of documents (before they’ve entered data or made a statement) their information is more accurate than if they sign at the bottom of the document (after they’ve already done the work).

People are often dishonest in little ways on forms, rounding numbers in a beneficial direction or failing to mention a relatively small item as part of a larger list. If they sign a form once they’ve done all that, they don’t go back and correct it; instead, they’ve already woven a story to themselves—consciously or not—about why what they did was perfectly fine.

It’s worth noting that most intelligence products do not have the author(s) names attached.  Now, there’s usually a very good reason for that.  Namely, that the analysis done is supposed to represent the agency’s position and not the individuals.  Additionally, there’s a security issue as well.  Knowing that analyst ‘A’ is the one who writes all the stuff about security issues in Outer Mongolia opens that analyst up to targeting and influence.

That being said, I’ve heard analysts say things like ‘I don’t care, my name’s not on this.’ Anonymity often breeds what I recently heard described as ‘a culture of compliance rather than one of performance’.  Check a box…if you get it wrong, who cares?

This isn’t just an individual issue, either.  Take a look over at Public Intelligence and you can see all sorts of examples of poor analysis (and occasionally good).  Very rarely are agencies held accountable for putting out bad, or just outright wrong, analysis so we can’t just go out and hammer analysts.

There’s got to be a way to address both problems.

The London School of Economics has this podcast about cognitive biases in support of the speakers book titled ‘The Art of Thinking Clearly‘.  It’s a fun, easy to access set of examples that demonstrate the various ways in which cognitive biases cause us to make poor decisions.

One particular point I like to emphasize when teaching critical thinking and analysis that Dobelli mentions is that what we see as cognitive biases today are actually traits that were essential for survive for much of the human (and, I suppose, pre-human) evolutionary process.  When you’re a hunter-gatherer traveling across the savannah and you see a shadow in the tall grass, your buddies to take off running.  Maybe it’s not a lion in the grass but if it is they’ve got a good shot at getting away.  Meanwhile, while you’re trying to analyze the various possible hypotheses explaining the movement, some sabre tooth is picturing you with a nice mango salsa.

Another part of the lecture reminded me of a circumstance I had where I had written a product yet it languished in editing/approval hell for an astounding 13 (!) months.  Finally I suggested officially killing the project since its contents were of dubious relevance any more and I had increasing concerns about the validity of my original findings.  My suggestion seemed to be the spark that was needed for everyone else to decide that the product needed to be disseminated right now!  Lengthy, impassioned arguments discussing my concerns were brushed aside.  After all, I was told:  ‘We’ve already spent so much time on this already…we can’t just let it go.’

When I mentioned the concept of ‘sunk costs‘ I got this sort of look:

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For the record, I’m kind of used to those looks now…

The idea that the time spent on project X is already gone doesn’t justify spending more time on it unless project X makes sense and has value but my overlords at the time saw that past time as some sort of investment and were determined to get some sort of return on that investment.  Getting them to see the sense in the fact that their ‘return on investment’ would, in fact, just leave readers confused about why they were getting a product about an event that was a year old, took some doing.

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A few thoughts in the wake of Boston…

Posted on April 15, 2013 by | Leave a comment

I’m writing this just a few hours after the news about the bombing in Boston.  You won’t see any speculation here about who’s responsible, thoughts on the immediate response or similar things.  Rather, I want to talk a bit about what the larger implications might mean in terms of threat and what how an intelligence shop might best respond in a situation like this.

Ok…first things first.  A couple of rules to keep things in perspective.

  1. We should now know that with events like this, information that comes our way in the first hours is going to be confused, full of inaccuracies and speculation.  Anyone who speaks with authority in the first few hours is likely to be a liar.
  2. The 24 news channels are terrible at covering events like this.  Since there is so little information to report they have to fill their air time with anything they can.  This means your signal to noise ratio will be off the charts.  Once you get the broad outlines of the event and (possibly) see any footage of the event your best bet is to switch off the TV.

Since we’ve not got a few decades of data about terrorism from all around the world, there are some findings that might help us think about what might (might) come next.

First, a good place to look is the fine folks at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START).  I’d recommend reading this piece about the (un)predictability of terrorism and its ‘burstiness’.  I’d particularly like to mention this latter point.

As the people at START put it:

But in addition, terrorism has a bursty quality. When it is effective in a particular time and place, we get a lot of it rapidly.

Now, I think the key word here is the word ‘effective’.  While, on some level, attacks like Oklahoma City, Mardrid, and 9/11 were successful but I’m not sure they would be considered ‘effective’.  After all, in all of those cases the terrorist group (or individual) was captured or killed during or very shortly after the attack.   There was, in short, no one left to follow up on the success and so no follow up occurred.

But, take something like London or (I’m sure) the terrorist activity we see in much of the Middle East and you’ll see a different definition of ‘effective’.  Since a ‘successful’ attack isn’t a requirement for a terrorist to be successful (because, remember, the point of terrorism is to elicit a particular response…not generally to do direct damage) you can ‘fail’ but still be effective.  I’d suggest that much of the Palestinian terrorism over the past few decades falls into this category.

So…if we don’t neutralize (in some way) the perpetrators in some reasonable amount of time, we might reasonably expect additional attacks by the same group or individual.

Conversely, this also means that if we might not need to be too worried about ‘copy cats’ or others being inspired to action.  After all, al-Qaida has been trying to inspire people to take up the cause for years with little success.  White supremacists have been trying for decades with little to show for it.

It also means that the data suggests that the threat is going to be localized in time and space.  Might the perpetrators jet off to Idaho and launch attacks in Boise?  Sure, I guess, but I’m not sure I’d consider it particularly likely.

Also from START is this piece which states that we might see an increase in hate crimes over the coming weeks as a result of this attack.  Based on their data, the people at START have concluded that:

…in the weeks following a terrorist attack, the number of anti-minority hate crimes increased if the attacks were made against symbols of core American values (such as the Pentagon) or perpetrated by groups with a religious motivation.

Does the Boston marathon qualify?  I’d guess definitely in the immediate area.  I’m not sure how much resonance the event has on people further afield.  But, depending on who is identified as suspects, this could be an issue.

Readers of this blog know I often talk about small intelligence shops.  Events like the attack in Boston, because they are so rare, are going to attract the attention of just about every intelligence unit in the country.  Almost every one of them will be expected to publish some sort of ‘product’ about the event.  So, what should a small shop (I’m not talking the big three letter agencies of the federal government but rather the numerous state, local and joint agencies and centers around the country) do in situations like this?

Everything I’m going to write here is for those shops that don’t ‘own’ the territory where the attack took place.  If this attack took place in your area of operations than that’s another story for another time.

First…take a breath.  Look at observation #1 at the top of this post.  You’re highly unlikely to get much of value during the first 24 hours after an event so don’t expect to do more than summarize basic facts.

BUT…everyone is going to want to be seen to be doing something.  This is, after all, the big show.  So, even if there’s nothing to say, there will be incredible pressure to say something anyway.  In some cases this is from a very real desire to ‘help’.  In other cases this is a very real desire to justify ones existence.  It reminds me of a quote from Sir Humphrey:

“Politicians must be allowed to panic. They need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.”

Only politicians aren’t the only ones susceptible to this.  If you don’t have a plan in place you’ll get sucked into the thankless (and useless) task of feeding regurgitated news to various overlords like a mother bird does with her chicks.

Instead of trying to compete with CNN, the New York Times or news agencies (which you’ll never succeed at doing) take advantage of this time to figure out what you need to know for your area of operations.  So, let’s say I was in charge of a shop in…North Carolina (or Montana…whatever) when this attack happened.  What’s going to be important to me initially?  Probably:

  1. Who committed the attack
    1. The specific individual(s)
    2. Any affiliated group
    3. Any linkage to my area of operations
  2. Why did they commit the attack
    1. What was their motivation
    2. Why did they pick that specific target(s)
  3. How did they commit the attack
    1. How did they acquire the explosive device
    2. How did they carry out the attack (emplacement, detonation, escape)

Now, as those questions get answered you’ll have follow ups and more specific ones but even a list like that disseminated to your staff will help them separate the wheat from the chaff during the early hours and days of the story.  Yes, eyewitness accounts may be compelling but if they don’t address those questions your people are really just wasting their time.

Second, if you do not have a compelling reason to call the agency(ies) responsible for handling the emergency do NOT do so before their first press conference at the earliest.  Look, they’ve got a lot on their hands and the last thing they need to do is answer a bunch of questions from a yahoo like you because the leader of your agency 900 miles away wants the latest poop.  Remember, there are now literally hundreds of intelligence shops in the U.S. now…many of them are going to be calling the scene in order to be the first on their block to put out a product with an exclusive tidbit 1 to show how ‘high speed’ they are.  The last thing you would need in that situation is an extra few dozen calls from people essentially saying ‘So…what’s up?’  Let them do their job and you’ll get your information when you need it.

Third, remember that one incident is NOT a trend.  Don’t start reorganizing your whole shop based on one event.  If you’re assessments of the threat were on solid ground before an attack like this, they should remain so.  One event should not nullify your analysis.  BUT…this is a good time (well, earlier was a better time but you slacked off, didn’t you? So we need to do this now) to identify the triggers that would cause you to reevaluate your analysis.

For example…I’ve been saying that al-Qaida is a has-been organization for some time now.  Assuming they were behind this attack (for a moment) would not change my opinion.  But I should be able to explain at what point I would say my analysis was crap.  That’ll keep me straight both when my ego is on the line as well as when tensions are riding high and people start making claims that this or that event ‘changes everything!’

Forth…If you have nothing to say about an event…say nothing.  The intelligence community is suffocating on a philosophy of ‘Send it to everyone…just in case they need it.’  This means it’s not uncommon to receive the same message three, four, five times or more.  It’s not uncommon to receive products that have no relevance to your area of interest.  Adding to the noise does nothing but guarantee that when you really do have something to say, it’ll be ignored.

 

  1. That’ll probably be released to the press before the product is even disseminated making the whole thing moot. ↩

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Stop playing it safe…

Posted on April 15, 2013 by | Leave a comment

One of the reoccurring (if not explicitly stated) themes on this blog is my frustration with intelligence shops (law enforcement, homeland security; federal, state or local) to experiment, innovate, or do much beyond play a never ending game of CYA.

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I’m not much of a fan of this sort of approach since it mostly seems to be grounded in fear and careerism.  JFDI does a nice job of dealing with the subject while talking about federal employees specifically.  I’ve had this very same discussion with analysts around the country over the past few years, usually in response to a question that goes something like this:

What do I do if I’m asked to write something where the people in charge:

  1. can’t articulate what they want
  2. presuppose the answers and want me to cherry pick the results
  3. won’t approve using new/different techniques
  4. won’t consider the possibility the threat picture has changed
  5. etc., etc.,

At that point I usually remind them of several facts:

  1. They are government employees (usually) which almost universally means that it is virtually impossible for them to get fired.  Provided they don’t snort a line of coke off the belly of an under-aged hooker on the bosses desk, they can be fairly confident of getting no worse punishment than a useless ‘counseling statement’.
  2. Counseling statements are usually useless because they only thing they effect is evaluations.  Evaluations, for many government employees, have been totally removed from the both raises and promotions (more on that in a second).  In short, evaluations are really kind of a sham that only have as much value as people want to give them.  They are, in short, the modern equivalent of the emperor’s clothes.  You are as constrained by them as you allow yourself to be.
  3. It’s cliched but it’s true:   Forgiveness is MUCH easier to get than permission.

So, what is the fear?  For most analysts it’s the belief (unfounded but, I believe, culturally ingrained) that it’s very important not to get your overlord mad at you.  Therefore, best to go along to get along.

JFDI has some extra insight:

The only way I can understand the pervasive risk aversion that I see in federal civilians is that people who are naturally risk averse are the ones who gravitate towards the security of federal employment.  There is a tragic irony.

That rings true.  I’ve had discussions where various overseers have (swear to god) held off or changed analysis because they didn’t want to be the first to put out a new idea.  Think about that for a minute.  In the intelligence field, withholding analysis because of fear that it doesn’t conform to conventional wisdom.

Strategic (or tactical) surprise?  Nah…never happen.  Crooks and terrorists will always act the way they have in the past.  Sure….

Back to JFDI:

(One exception to this is former military personnel.  A person cannot consciously put on a military uniform without accepting the risk of being sent to war, being shot at, being captured, and being killed.  The Defense Department probably benefits significantly from being the natural place for retired or separated military personnel to work in their post-military careers.  The down side is that former military personnel often lack the competitive drive that come from experience in the private sector.)

I’m including that because I find it incredibly flattering as a former military person myself.  I’m not sure how true it is but (maybe…how would we measure that?) it’s a nice thought.  Even if it is true, however, we need not rely on military personnel to overcome this pathology.

Analysts frequently are (relatively) junior personnel, with few chances of advancement 1 and even then, are usually regarded as some sort of glorified secretarial staff.  What DO they have to lose?

In short, there just isn’t much downside to being bold and taking risks when you’re an analyst.  Even shorter, if you’re an analyst the question you ask yourself shouldn’t be ‘Why should I take this risk?’ It should be ‘Why shouldn’t I take this risk?’  2

  1. Some agencies allow for analysts to rise up fairly high in the ranks but they’re rare ↩
  2. And yes, I realize that was longer than my ‘In short’ comment. ↩

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The Worldwide Threat Assessment

Posted on April 3, 2013 by | Leave a comment

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has continued the most excellent tradition of releasing an unclassified threat assessment. I can’t describe what a good initiative this is as it is a big step in providing transparency into the thinking of Intelligence Community. While something like this could certainly be manipulated, it is at least one check against the powers that be cherry picking intelligence. By publicly proclaiming their analysis (broadly) to the world, the Intelligence Community have their colors nailed to the mast and face the consequences (good or bad) of their work.

I’m particularly happy with this edition of the assessment for a couple of reasons.

First, the report starts off with a discussion of the cyber threat. I am by no means a tech geek and I agree that there are many serious vulnerabilities to our electronic data and networks but I’ve been concerned by the increasingly hysterically drum beat of talks about cyber ‘Peal Harbors’, 9/11s or Kratatoas. Coupled with the ominous ‘It’s not a matter of if but when…’ statements by very serious people, these predictions would seem like a slam dunk. 1

So, I was glad to see this:

We judge that there is a remote chance of a major cyber attack against the US critical infrastructure systems during the next two years that would result in long-term, wide-scale disruption of services, such as a regional power outage.

First take away: ‘Chill the fuck out.’

Those that can carry out those big attacks are going to be nation states and countries (even ones like Iran) are going to be reluctant to do so because a cyber attack today can lead to a physical retaliation tomorrow. Just because we now pay our bills online doesn’t mean the idea of retaliation has gone away.

But, what about those crazy terrorists? They’re already under the gun (so to speak) so threats of retaliation aren’t going to mean much to them, right? Well, true, but there are a couple of reasons why we might not have to worry too much about that. First, most ‘traditional’ terrorists are still thinking in terms of traditional fighting. Taking down a multinational corporation or a power station might be a significant win for these players and a step in their ultimate plans but just about all of them have goals of temporal power and for that you need to get our from behind the keyboard and pick up a gun. That’s the first part…the second is that it doesn’t look like any such groups have the capability to conduct such attacks.

Instead of the risk coming from well planned and executed attacks over the next two years, the assessment says that our vulnerability to less sophisticated attacks having an unexpected result because of particular ‘system configurations and mistakes’. In other words, our crappy system designs might go loopy. Just like the HAL9000 in 2001.

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Al-Qaida continues their downward spiral with the various affiliates being either concerned more with local matters (AQIM, AQI, al-Shabaab, etc.) or just suffering from a long string of general ass-kickings (AQ Central). Not much to say there other than to say that my personal opinion is that history is passing them by. They still might be able to launch attacks over the coming years but both as a terrorist organization and a broader movement, they’re starting to look like they’re past their expiration date. The thing to look out for will be those who came to political maturity over the past decade. Just as AQ is really the function of the cohort that came out of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, how will the next generation of…who? Islamic radicals? The global ‘have-nots’? Others communities we aren’t even aware of yet? Anyway, how will these people internalize these events (and then externalize them!)?

My prediction: I suspect we’re in a terrorism ‘lull’ that probably began in 2009 or so 2 and will go on for at least another year or two. Now, a ‘lull’ does NOT mean there won’t be any terrorism activity occurring around the world. I think, instead, that we’ll see a general retreat of international terrorist organizations from targeting the United States. Targeting U.S. interests (like the Benghazi attack which, contrary to Fox News, Sen. McCain, et. al. was NOT a sign of a resurgent al-Qaida) will probably continue but occur in places that lack adequate security (post-revolutionary Libya, Bulgaria, etc.). But attacks like 9/11, or even 7/7 3, are going to continue to recede into the realm of hypotheticals dusted off to protect pet funding projects.

I suspect 9/11 will eventually be seen as al-Qaida’s battle of Cannae. A brilliant tactical success but with no real strategic benefits for them. Yes, 9/11 did cause the U.S. to make a number of really, really (really) bad decisions that didn’t do them any favors but they didn’t really translate into any sort of net gain for al-Qaida. Maybe bin Laden’s strategy of using a 50 or 100 year time scale will prove him right but I suspect not. Trying to game the global system decades in advance is virtually impossible (at least now). If we weren’t able to do it when we were the global hegemon how can al-Qaida expect to? Indeed, they had better have a deity on their side as that’s what I think it will take.

I was also pleased to see an acknowledgment of the negative influence of environmental crime around the world:

[Environmental crime] constitutes a multi-billion dollar industry annually, endangers the environment, and threatens to disrupt the rule of law in important countries around the world. These criminal activities are often part of larger illicit trade networks linking disparate actors-from government and military personnel to members of insurgent groups and translational organized crime organizations.

One reason such crimes are so lucrative is that the enforcement and penalty mechanisms are so lax.

The really frightening part of the assessment is the section titled ‘Natural Resources: Insecurity and Competition’. It presents a bleak picture of the state of food, water and natural resources now in which many stocks are at or near capacity with little margin for unexpected (or, in some cases, expected) shocks to the system. So, who cares if a bunch of peasants in central Africa can’t get wheat? Well, what would you do if all the supermarkets ran out of food? And what if the next town over had full supermarkets but either charged all outsiders a huge markup or just didn’t let outsiders in at all, deciding to save food for their citizens? Things could get ugly really fast. I believe it was Isaac Asimov who said something like ‘No civilization is more than three missed meals from anarchy.’

The other big problem with this issue is that it’s just not a national (or international) priority. In a country where we’re still debating whether global warming is an insidious crypto-Socialist-academic plot to deprive honest, hard-working citizens of the ‘American Dream’, who in the hell is going to get support to try to address the question of food security? You can almost hear the tin foil hat brigade talking about how the market will solve everyone’s problems. Make not mistake, these are big problems that are going to create all sorts of new, more traditional problems before everyone realizes just how bad things are. The fact that us humans just aren’t that good at dealing with threats like this doesn’t fill me with a great deal of optimism.

But in the short term (perhaps the next year or three) things don’t look too bad, relatively speaking. As the assessment runs down the various regions of the world we continue to see instability (Africa), slides towards authoritarianism (Central Asia), rampant crime (Central/South America) and emerging rivals (China) but none of these things seem ready to drive the international system into crisis. The more I read these things the more I find myself thinking of the later Roman Empire. Not as a direct correlation but rather the sense of the system gradually falling apart while those at the center seem unable to focus on anything except trivial matters. Shocks to the system are dealt with in a temporary and ad hoc manner. Hopefully that impression is just my age and cynicism catching up to me. I suppose we’ll see…

  1. Of course, we should remember we’ve heard this about waves of suicide bombings, Iraqi WMD threats, ‘dirty bombs’, etc., etc., etc. So, take it for what it’s been worth thus far… ↩
  2. But, I think it’d be safe to mark the death of Osama bin Laden as the ‘official’ beginning of the lull, even though that was in 2011 ↩
  3. Again, I’m talking about in the U.S. ↩

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Music and intelligence analysis

Posted on January 31, 2013 by | 1 Comment

So, last time I talked about trying to incorporate different sensory inputs in order to improve analytical production.  Now I’m entering into speculative territory here but while I was primarily looking to different types of visual stimuli (the written word, graphics, images, etc.) I’ve been thinking about the possibility of using our sense of hearing to either improve the analytical or production process.

I therefore submit to you, then, this interesting project.  It takes a piece of classical music and, while you’re listening to it, describes it with accompanying text.  In doing so it conveys more information that either the musical piece or the text individually AND more then if you experienced both but separately.  The ‘extra’ value comes from getting the explanation at the same time the music is playing.  That not only reduces the chance of miscommunication (‘Is this supposed to be the teeth chattering or….this?’) but also helps improve the ‘stickiness’ of the information.  Associating the text with the music helps ‘anchor’ it in your mind.  The next time you listen to the music you’ll be more likely to remember the text.

Is there any value in incorporating music into the production process?  Might customers retain more with particular accompaniment?  Could music be used to emphasize particular pieces of information?  How about in terms of explaining probability, risk or threat?  Does the human mind respond consistently to certain types of music and sound or is the process so individualistic that the incorporation of sound is just as likely to hinder the transference of meaning as enhance it.

Up to now I’ve been talking about the production part of the intelligence cycle but music might have an easier fit in the analytical part of the cycle.  There’s evidence that distraction can assist in problem solving, particularly in helping identify weak connections between items or when thinking about difficult problems with multiple variables.  Sitting down and trying to force yourself to solve problems doesn’t work well when compared having your subconscious take a crack at it.

The goal is to get into the proper mental state:

It means not actively working on a problem but instead letting yourself happily mind-wander, freely associating and relaxing into a quiet mental state. It is like being okay to feel how you feel when you first wake up in the morning – relaxed, with diffuse, easy attention.

I’ve found that some of my best insights came about when I was most definitely not working on the problem that needed solving.  Running, reading, sleeping or…yes…listening to music.  I began wondering if there was any possibility tapping into that insight potential collaboratively after playing with my latest time sink, turntable.fm.  Is there any benefit to having analysts, working on the same problem, simultaneously sharing something like music playlists and listening to the same songs at the same time?  If you assume that a person’s choice in music is a reflection of their mental state and preferences, would sharing music give you a glimpse into how other analysts are thinking?  If so, would that help to look at problems through a slightly different perspective and, therefore, improve you problem solving skills?

Many questions for which I have no answers but interesting to think about.  Now, time to listen to some tunes….

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Crowdfunding intelligence

Posted on January 30, 2013 by | Leave a comment

You may not have seen it in the news but lately poachers have been killing animals at alarming rates in Africa.  Rangers aren’t only frequently outgunned (with reports of poachers not only using military weapons but also relying on aircraft to find animals) but usually outmaneuvered since they have huge areas to cover while the poachers hold the initiative of when and where they’ll operate.

One conservancy in Kenya has decided to embrace technology to address some of these problems through the purchase and use of an aerial drone.  Their program to fly a drone will allow them to cover significant amounts of territory, providing both real time visual data and, through a program of implanting RFID transmitters in some of the animals in the park, through tracking key members of the animal population.  They did have a problem, however.  How does a non-profit afford a drone aircraft with all the associated training, maintenance, etc?

They decided to launch a crowdfunding appeal on indiegogo.  They requested $35,000 and surpassed that with ease, thanks in part to pretty significant press coverage.

Allow me to take this opportunity to recycle a post of mine from almost one year ago where I spoke in a bit more detail about the potential of crowdfunding the analysis process.  It’s probably not efficient for a long term strategy but such a method could be used for a very specific program like this when more traditional funding isn’t available or would be too slow.  Of course, you’d have the regular problems with crowdfunding such as over-promising and under-delivering in various forms but they can be mitigated.

But beyond that, I’ve been talking to people about intelligence training.  Across the field training is pretty spotty with tons of beginner level training out there (of varying qualities) and much less advanced training, especially good advanced training.  There just doesn’t seem to be a critical mass of people who need such advanced training in a place that would justify the development and presentation of that sort of thing 1.

Would be possible to crowdfund intelligence training as well?  hmmm…more to think about.

 

 

 

  1. well, not including D.C. where the intelligence community can do so ↩

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Intelligence analysis, avalanches, and Sally Fields

Posted on January 14, 2013 by | Leave a comment

An excellent article by the BBC that uses archival footage to talk about the mutually dysfunctional relationship between Israel, Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.  Also demonstrates that while we often think the Arab-Israeli conflict has been unchanging for the last 60 years, there has, in fact, been significant changes in attitudes on both sides…and not for the good.

Speaking of interesting ways to present information, check out this amazing use of video and graphics to convey information about an avalanche that swept up a group of experienced skiers.

These sort of stories are fine examples of how information can be transmitted more efficiently and effectively through the use of mixing media.  We’re all familiar with the trope that people learn information differently and we also know that the more senses we can engage with a piece of information will make it more ‘sticky’.  That’s one reason, for example, that the Obama campaign in both 2008 and 2012 were insistent that campaign people have at least three contacts with voters they were looking for.  Voters that had such contact were more likely to vote for the President.  Now some of that might be a result of voters saying ‘Hey, they like me!  They really like me!’

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Some of that, however, is due to the voters internalizing the positions of the campaign by hearing the arguments repeatedly through different mediums.  A phone call, a knock on the door, an email, you get the point.

So, why not think about that in terms of intelligence products?  Frequently, products come out in one format *cough* pdf *cough* but why?  I’m convinced that a lot of it has to do with ingrained prejudices about what products are ‘supposed’ to look like.  But c’mon, that’s all based on style guides from 50 years ago when people were using typewriters and carbon paper (look it up).  At that time, strict uniformity made some real sense since we’re no longer getting out information primarily from the physical, written word.  Whole new venues have been opened up and yet the conventional wisdom seems to be that we should try to make our digital products mimic paper ones as much as possible.

That’s kind of like inventing the airplane but then only using it to taxi to where you want to go.

But we might want to think about this not just in terms of production but also analysis.  If one of the cornerstones of analysis is trying to understand some aspect of our environment by reducing bias and making connections maybe there are ways to engage multiple areas of the brain at once.

More on this later….

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On circular reporting…

Posted on December 17, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Just two observations about the recent shooting in Connecticut.  The first is kind of a policy thing and the second is how this event relates to intelligence analysis:

I honestly can’t figure out if people are honestly surprised and horrified by these events.  After all, it’s not like mass shootings are a rare occurrence in the U.S.  Consider the following:

  • We have absolutely NO way to track the vast majority of firearm ownership changes in this country.  We can figure out who purchased one from a dealer but at that point they enter a big black hole, never to be seen again.  And we’ve got a LOT of guns:

  • While the mentally ill aren’t that much more violent than the general public (does that make you feel better?) our mental health system and culture towards it is so atrocious that there are few opportunities to intervene in many instances.  Basically, we hope the worst of them will get strung out on illegal drugs and self-medicate themselves to death, allowing us to ignore the problem.

Now, in intelligence analysis threat is defined as the intersection of capability and intent (more from me about this here).  Yet again, however, we’re about to forget that equation. If you want to reduce the threat you either have to reduce the capabilities of those you’re worried about (and here we’re talking about their ability to access firearms, ammunition and/or their targets) or reduce their intent.

We don’t seem to be able to even talk about limiting gun ownership in any way (even requiring all owners have firearms training will be portrayed as a totalitarian blow against freedom) so, despite the post shooting gnashing of teeth from those on the left, I think that’s going to go precisely nowhere 1.

And let’s be honest, does anyone see increased funding for mental health happening?  The right will say it’s yet another example of creeping socialism and the left is going to stamp it’s feet about guns all day. 2

So, events like last Friday are tragic but they shouldn’t be shocking or tragic.  Someone once said that Americans get the government they deserve (or something like that).  Well, we also get the crime that we deserve.  If you want unlimited gun ownership and consider mental health an issue of ‘personal responsibility’ then you’re going to get events like this.  If you want, you can hire more cops, give them bigger guns and more power to peep into your lives but do you really want to live in an armed camp for the rest of your lives?

<\soapbox>

Ok, so onto implications for intelligence analysis.

Since our law enforcement/homeland security community is essentially a competitive beast, what you will see (or would see if you could peep behind the curtain) is a mass of products flooding the system about this event.  Almost all of them will be meaningless drivel.  Cut and paste summaries from open source news outlets with some boilerplate language lifted from DHS’s ‘How to respond to an active shooter’ booklet.  These products are going to ping around the system like pinballs, filling up inboxes and (for the most part) going unread.

Why will so many of these repetitive products be made?  Because every agency needs to appear to be doing something.  To paraphrase Sir Humphrey:

[They] must be allowed to panic. They need activity. It is their substitute for achievement.

That way, when budget time rolls around they can proudly point to product X and say ‘We disseminated a product to all the schools within 4 hours of news of the shooting.’  What you won’t hear is anything concrete and measurable about the utility of said product.  That’s because usually there is very little.

Of additional concern is the use of resources in cases like this.  Does anyone think that North Carolina’s and South Carolina’s (purely a hypothetical example) take on this event will be (or should be) substantively different?  Rather than each devoting anlayst(s) to craft a product might it be worth while to produce one that applies to both.  Perhaps, in cases like this, even a national level product?

But that doesn’t happen.  So, beginning on Friday you had agencies all over the country and at all levels crafting products that were essentially the same thing.  Those were resources that could have been devoted elsewhere, perhaps to more credible, local purposes.  Given the sketchy details in the first few hours and the unremarkable aspects of this particular case a fairly generic piece that applies broadly would be fine here.

The other problem with all these reports is their impact on perception of a problem.  Even though these reports will all contain virtually the same information, the number number of these reports (I suspect) has some subconscious impact on perceptions of what threats are most likely and most dangerous.

For example, there have been a number of high profile mass shootings since the summer.  The open source media has reported on them quite heavily and the public safety community has an irritating trend of only following news items that appear on CNN or Fox.  So, in the wake of each shooting has been a flood of official products regurgitating the same information.

The problem is that few, if any, are looking at whether this is something substantially different, a spike in incidents that statistically happens occasionally or just the result of increased media reporting.  And since no one asks that question, people impose their own, evidence free, interpretations on these events.

And that, in turn, can lead us back down to focusing on things we shouldn’t.

rinse…lather…repeat

  1. alternately, some sort of law will pass that will make people feel good but not actually impact the threat equation. For example, some sort of assault weapons ban that won’t do anything to curb the vast secondary market or address the fact that handguns are the big problem. ↩
  2. Btw, this isn’t really the place but, in my humble opinion, this could be solved by reading the 2nd amendment as it was written and allowing unfettered ownership of arms to be contingent on membership in a ‘well regulated militia’.  But, nobody gives a crap what I think so nertz to me. ↩

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Ethics in Intelligence Analysis

Posted on October 25, 2012 by | 1 Comment

I’ve got an article up over at the new issue of Foreknowledge.  The original version is below…

The most recent edition of U.S. Department of Justice’s Global Justice Information Sharing Initiative (Global) Law Enforcement Analytic Standards mentions ethics only twice in its 44 pages. The first is its inclusion as one of 30 ‘core competencies’ that are to be addressed in initial analytical training over a (minimum) 40 hour training program. The second provides some detail into the specific aspects of ethics that should be focused on.

Analysts must be able to apply their agency’s policies, guidelines, and operating procedures to information and intelligence sharing, analysis, and dissemination.

While important, intelligence personnel are often left to their own devices when presented with serious ethical questions. These questions can be broken down into two broad categories that I refer to as sins of commission and those of omission.

An agency is in competition with another over scarce resources. In furtherance of that end a supervisor approaches a junior analyst and asks for a product with a specific conclusion. When the analyst tells her supervisor that she’s not sure the data supports that conclusion, the supervisor replies: ‘C’mon, you can make statistics say anything.’

Sins of commission, where someone in power attempts to strong arm an analyst to deliver a particular judgment, are rare among those agencies that have strong tradition of professionalism, community and where analysts are able to progress beyond the lowest levels of the organization. Paul Pillar, a veteran analyst with the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote about such attempts in the context of intelligence analysis preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Such instances of crude arm twisting within the federal Intelligence Community (IC) “…are rare and, when they do occur…, are almost always unsuccessful.  1

Yet, in the United States, the past decade has seen an explosion of domestic intelligence personnel in law enforcement and ‘homeland security’ agencies. Most of these agencies have little to no orientation or traditions in intelligence analysis, are fragmented with few analytical personnel and rarely afford analysts the opportunity to rise within the organization to positions with decision making authority. It is under these conditions where analysts are most likely to be directed to produce politicized analysis and also where they will have the fewest opportunities for redress.

Sins of Omission

A political protest erupts in cities around the country. The protestors are dedicated to non-violence and, despite attracting large numbers of supporters, engage in little serious criminal activity. Yet, the movement attracts the attention of law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials who demand a steady stream of products linking the protest to other, violent movements despite little to no evidence of any such connection. As intelligence resources are focused on the movement, other criminal and terrorist threats are given lower priority and attention.

A more common and subtle ethical issue for intelligence analysts falls into this category. Intelligence personnel may be directed to focus their energies towards a particular conclusion for any number of biases or interests. The end result, however, remains the same. Analytical judgments are influenced and manipulated based upon the parameters under which intelligence personnel directed.

As in the case of the search for WMDs in Iraq, repeated requests to find evidence of a particular threat, along with increasing amounts of resources devoted to the question, inevitably leads to increased reporting. Often this reporting involves information of decreasing quality or repetitive reporting but its quantity can lead to superficial assessments that threats exist where they really don’t.

Raising questions about practices like this can be problematic for even experienced intelligence personnel. While in the federal IC, raising such questions may result in a transfer to a less desirable post or delayed career advancement, in the law enforcement or counter-terrorism communities the consequences can be much longer lasting. Many analysts in those communities work for small agencies and have few career opportunities other than moving to other agencies. Acquiring a reputation as not being a ‘team player’ can effectively destroy a career via informal channels.

Expecting analysts to both be aware of ways in which their work can be manipulated (consciously or not) and expecting them to act as warning system to prevent that occurring without training or support may just be too much for them to bear. New intelligence analysts frequently come into their agency wanting to both make a good impression and a difference in their community. The important nature of the work, culture of hierarchy and presence of people of great experience, even if in a non-intelligence field, can make the pressures against raising concerns formidable at best.


  1. Pillar, P. R. (2006, March 1). Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq. Foreign Affairs, (March/April 2006). Retrieved from http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61503/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policyand-the-war-in-iraq ↩

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