Just over three years ago, National Review Online published an article I wrote urging the U.S. to rush aid to Pakistan in response to a cyclone that had devastated Pakistan's coastal regions. Much of it appears all too relevant now.
July 6, 2007 7:30 A.M.
Pakistan Needs U
And we need Pakistan.
Hopefully the United States is preparing a massive relief package for Pakistan’s coastal regions, which have been hard hit by flooding caused by a cyclone and heavy monsoon rains since June 23. In addition to the humanitarian importance of this mission, aiding Pakistan’s response to the flooding could have some positive implications for the U.S.-Pakistani relationship.
While possibly not as horrendous as the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, there have been over 200 deaths so far and at least two million are homeless. Karachi, Pakistan’s leading port, and a sprawling megalopolis with over ten million inhabitants (some population estimates double this figure) that suffers from power outages and poor municipal services at the best of times, was battered. Particularly hard hit were the coastal regions of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, where the floods have isolated communities, cutting transport and communications links. Outbreaks of cholera and other diseases also loom.
The Pakistani provincial and federal governments have been slow to respond. In shades of our own Katrina disaster, Pakistan’s National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has been roundly criticized for its failures. At one point, the NDMA chairman claimed that there had been 14 deaths when the media had already confirmed nearly 100. There have been large-scale protests throughout flood-hit parts of Baluchistan.
At the moment the Pakistani government is distracted. There is a standoff in Pakistan’s capital between government forces and the radical Islamist “Red Mosque.” The nation has also been rocked with massive protests in the wake of President Musharraf’s ham-handed firing of the chief justice.
A timely and large-scale relief package is much needed. Aiding people suffering from natural disasters is always the right thing to do. Also, it is good public diplomacy. The Pakistani image of the United States changed when the U.S. led the way in delivering assistance to Pakistan after the 2005 earthquakes. Models of U.S. Army Chinook helicopters became the favorite toy for Kashmiri children.
U.S. aid to Pakistan’s coastal regions would also serve a range of positive strategic purposes. The aid would be an opportunity for U.S. and Pakistani military forces to work together in a peaceful role. The Pakistani military is effective, but heavily focused on a conventional war with India. The U.S. has been assisting the Pakistani military in its transformation into a more nimble force that can perform a range of missions. Collaborating on flood relief would be a learning experience for both militaries.
One of the Pakistani government’s major concerns is that eventually the United States will abandon it, leaving Pakistan encircled by India. A major rescue operation might help reassure Pakistan that the U.S.-Pakistan relationship is for the long-term. If the Pakistani government were more confident in strength of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship it might also be more flexible in undertaking political reforms that move the country back to democratic civilian rule.
The region hardest hit by the flooding is Baluchistan, the largest in area, but poorest province of Pakistan. Sitting on mineral wealth, including natural gas, and with a seacoast that is just beyond the Straits of Hormuz and the terminus for the shortest land route to Central Asia, Baluchistan has become central for Pakistan’s future development. Baluchi frustration with the Pakistani government has sparked uprisings in the past. The current round of violence between the Baluchi tribes and the government is fueled by the failure of the investments in the province to bring benefits to the inhabitants. Past Pakistani governments responded to Baluchi uprisings with negotiations, but currently the Pakistani military is responding with a large-scale offensive. Last year, the Pakistani military assassinated a prominent tribal leader, Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti. The government’s failure to deliver disaster relief is seen as simply another example of the Pakistani government’s attitude towards the region.
A strong aid program might help defuse some of these tensions and allow the government and the Baluchis to resolve their disputes. With Baluchistan bordering southern Afghanistan (Taliban leader Mullah Omar is rumored to be in the vicinity of the provincial capital Quetta) the Pakistani military does not need this distraction from the main battle against the radical Islamists. Additionally, China has built a deep-water port at Gwadar on the Baluchi coastline. It would only be prudent for the United States to also be engaged in this strategic region. Finally, if assistance from other sources is not forthcoming, the void will be filled by Pakistan’s powerful Islamist organizations. The Baluchis have not traditionally been extremist in their religious beliefs, but if no one else shows concern for their plight that could change.
Delivering aid to the suffering people in Pakistan’s coastal regions is an opportunity to provide much needed humanitarian relief while improving relations with a nation crucial in the fight against radical Islam.
— Aaron Mannes is a researcher in international-security affairs and Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland.
Friday, August 13, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
Hezbollah Spies via Facebook
In an excellent article in The Washington Times, UPI’s Shaun Waterman described a “red team” activity in which a security consultant created a false persona on Facebook that appeared to be attractive young woman who was working in cyber defense. She quickly garnered hundreds of friends in the national security community, as well as job offers and invites to conferences. In the process she gathered a great deal of sensitive materials such as inadvertently exposed passwords.
This is not a hypothetical concern – Hezbollah (long a terrorism pioneer) has already employed this strategy. According to the Israeli news site MySay:
Implications
The first concern regarding incidents of this nature is the raw intelligence collected. But more than the data, it creates opportunities to gather even more data. An op-ed I co-authored for The Washington Times on the probable future of cyber-war argued:
Consider this scenario (which is not far from what has happened). A foreign intelligence agency identifies an analyst that has access to a network of interest. The agency sends the analyst a spoof email that appear to be from someone known in the field containing a paper for review that also contains malware. Using data collected from social network analysis, the intelligence agency can carefully choose the spoofed specialist – making sure it isn’t someone the analyst knows well – but is someone that analyst would know of and maybe the email could refer to mutual acquaintances. The paper could be carefully tailored to relevant interests.
This may sound like a great deal of work, but modern computing makes the accumulation and correlation of data far easier so that much of this effort could be generated automatically.
Cyber-security is clearly a growth industry and presents serious challenges. But whatever technical innovations are employed to prevent intrusions, they cannot succeed if they do not fully consider the human side of the equation.
This is not a hypothetical concern – Hezbollah (long a terrorism pioneer) has already employed this strategy. According to the Israeli news site MySay:
The Hizbullah agent pretended she was an Israeli girl named “Reut Zukerman”, “Reut” succeeded during several weeks to engage more then 200 reserve and active personnel.The picture attached to “Reut Zukerman” was, of course, an appealing young woman (some tricks are timeless.)
The Hizbullah agent gained the trust of soldiers and officers that didn’t hesitate to confirm him as a “friend” once they saw he/she is friends with several of their friends from the same unit. Most of them assumed that “Reut” was just another person who served in that elite intelligence unit.
In this way, Hizbullah collected information about the unit’s activity, names and personal details of its personnel, the unit’s slang, and visual information on its bases. This user / agent using Facebook is an example of a trend called fakebook.
Implications
The first concern regarding incidents of this nature is the raw intelligence collected. But more than the data, it creates opportunities to gather even more data. An op-ed I co-authored for The Washington Times on the probable future of cyber-war argued:
Critical government systems are run on Intranets, networks that are separate from the Internet.... Most government Intranets do have points at which they interface with the Internet, and Intranets have been infected with malware from the Internet. However, Intranets are relatively controlled environments, so anomalous activity (at least theoretically) can be controlled and isolated quickly.The fakebook phenomenon adds additional wrinkles to this possibility. Using social network information, infiltrators will have additional information with which to identify targets for social engineering, develop material and approaches for these targets, and identifying people who the target would “trust.”
Because compromising those networks may be crucial in a military conflict, nation-states with serious cyberwar ambitions will carefully tailor malware for specific systems....
The most serious cases of identity theft usually involve social engineering, tricking the target to reveal crucial information that facilitates the crime. The same may be true in tailoring attacks to critical networks.... Social-network analysis could be used to identify individuals who are likely to have contacts within the security establishment and attempt to insert malware through them.
Imagine the now ubiquitous phishing attacks masquerading as e-mail from banks and credit card companies but instead designed by sophisticated intelligence agencies and carefully targeted at small communities.
Consider this scenario (which is not far from what has happened). A foreign intelligence agency identifies an analyst that has access to a network of interest. The agency sends the analyst a spoof email that appear to be from someone known in the field containing a paper for review that also contains malware. Using data collected from social network analysis, the intelligence agency can carefully choose the spoofed specialist – making sure it isn’t someone the analyst knows well – but is someone that analyst would know of and maybe the email could refer to mutual acquaintances. The paper could be carefully tailored to relevant interests.
This may sound like a great deal of work, but modern computing makes the accumulation and correlation of data far easier so that much of this effort could be generated automatically.
Cyber-security is clearly a growth industry and presents serious challenges. But whatever technical innovations are employed to prevent intrusions, they cannot succeed if they do not fully consider the human side of the equation.
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Obama-Netanyahu: Reality Sets In
Every pundit worth his/her appearance fee has weighed in on the Obama-Netanyahu summit (the Washington Institute’s Rob Satloff wrote a good analysis). The TerrorWonk has little to add, only a broader observation. In studying bureaucratic politics one reality that jumps out is that it is very hard for the President of the United States to get his own government to do what he wants. That goes at least double when dealing with other governments.
The reason Presidents can only rarely give orders is due to the combination of shared constitutional powers and the plethora of competing interests in the American political landscape. Now, when dealing with foreign governments they have their own competing interests and institutional limitations. Then there are bi-national and multi-national issues to further complicate the issue. (The classic on this is Richard Neustadt’s case study of the Skybolt affair. We wanted to cancel Skybolt because it was expensive and would never work. But we were building it with the Brits, for whom it was the only way to keep a viable nuclear arm. The alternative was to let the Brits have the Polaris missile – but that might have interfered with European unity efforts – and possibly a nuclear Germany. We ended up giving the Brits the Polaris, European unity efforts still blundered on, and Germany did not go nuclear.)
Obama attempted to dictate to the Israeli government without taking its domestic political pressures into the equation. This had an unfortunately high cost, making the President look foolish and weak on the world stage. Unfortunately, governments don’t tend to accept conditions that will result in falling out of power and Netanyahu was no exception.
But doesn’t the U.S. give Israel several billion a year in aid? Shouldn’t that translate into influence?
True enough, but even substantial aid does not make one government beholden to another. Consider that the United States pays for essentially the entire Afghan government and has 100,000 troops on the ground and still can’t get Hamid Karzai to do what it wants.
For that matter, in pressing for payments from BP Obama has had to be sensitive to domestic British politics – the list goes on. In that sense, Israel is just like every other country in world. Approaching it any other way will be a huge cost in political capital at home and abroad.
The reason Presidents can only rarely give orders is due to the combination of shared constitutional powers and the plethora of competing interests in the American political landscape. Now, when dealing with foreign governments they have their own competing interests and institutional limitations. Then there are bi-national and multi-national issues to further complicate the issue. (The classic on this is Richard Neustadt’s case study of the Skybolt affair. We wanted to cancel Skybolt because it was expensive and would never work. But we were building it with the Brits, for whom it was the only way to keep a viable nuclear arm. The alternative was to let the Brits have the Polaris missile – but that might have interfered with European unity efforts – and possibly a nuclear Germany. We ended up giving the Brits the Polaris, European unity efforts still blundered on, and Germany did not go nuclear.)
Obama attempted to dictate to the Israeli government without taking its domestic political pressures into the equation. This had an unfortunately high cost, making the President look foolish and weak on the world stage. Unfortunately, governments don’t tend to accept conditions that will result in falling out of power and Netanyahu was no exception.
But doesn’t the U.S. give Israel several billion a year in aid? Shouldn’t that translate into influence?
True enough, but even substantial aid does not make one government beholden to another. Consider that the United States pays for essentially the entire Afghan government and has 100,000 troops on the ground and still can’t get Hamid Karzai to do what it wants.
For that matter, in pressing for payments from BP Obama has had to be sensitive to domestic British politics – the list goes on. In that sense, Israel is just like every other country in world. Approaching it any other way will be a huge cost in political capital at home and abroad.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Terrorists: Nitwits or Masterminds?
Recently, in the Atlantic Monthly Daniel Byman and Christine Fair (two first-rate analysts) argue that the reality is that the terrorist enemies of the United States are not highly disciplined religious fanatics – but in fact are a bunch of nitwits. The article is interesting, provocative, and makes some important points. But we cannot dismiss the terrorists as nitwits quite yet – they’ve had failings in attacking the U.S. homeland directly, but they have also had some important successes.
Byman and Fair point out the many cases of terrorist incompetence such as the Times Square bomber, the UK doctors, and the Miami jihadis. In many regards, I agree with them. Terrorist groups are extremely constrained in their efforts to hit “far targets.” I’ve argued that this is a logistical issue. With intelligence agencies worldwide on high alert it is increasingly difficult to move operatives long distances. This complicates long-range terror strikes. Self-starters do not have the necessary skills and groups do not want to risk well-trained operatives on operations that will probably not succeed. The failed attacks on the West aren’t because the terrorists are stupid. What’s more they are adaptable. My argument continued that the danger was now in the realm of geopolitics – terrorists destabilizing and important country rather than carrying out direct attacks in the U.S. or the West.
Fair and Byman also state that the Taliban are similarly stupid. They frequently blow themselves up and also become intimate with livestock (this has been caught on tape by drones and other battlefield cameras). Maybe, but they are also giving the U.S. military a run for its money so discounting their capabilities seems unwise. I would be remiss if I did not note two important points their article makes. First that the less than pious behavior, as well as their tactical mishaps, could be important tools for American public diplomacy efforts to discredit them. Second, Fair and Byman point out the importance of disrupting terrorist training facilities so that they can remain stupid. This is dead on – terrorist groups are adaptable, “learning” organizations. If they cannot learn and transfer knowledge, they cannot survive.
But another recent event highlights the adaptability of asymmetric opponents and perhaps is a caution against any kind of over-confidence. The Gaza Flotilla was a brilliantly planned operation on every level (tactical and strategic). If the key in asymmetric warfare is to exploit critical vulnerabilities with small amounts of force – the Flotilla operation succeeded. (Strictly speaking, calling the Gaza Flotilla terrorists is problematic as they were attacking military personnel. On the other hand, they were doing so in an effort to support Hamas – a terrorist organization.)
Tactically, the Flotilla organizers carefully examined Israeli operations and identified a way to create a situation that worked to their advantage. Politically the Flotilla undermined Israel’s Gaza policy, the Israeli-Turkish alliance, and drew attention to Egypt’s siege on Gaza. (Long-term, as I’ve argued before, the Egypt angle may be the most significant.)
There have been important gains against terrorism, but very serious dangers remain. There are a lot of dumb terrorists – but there are also more than enough smart ones.
Byman and Fair point out the many cases of terrorist incompetence such as the Times Square bomber, the UK doctors, and the Miami jihadis. In many regards, I agree with them. Terrorist groups are extremely constrained in their efforts to hit “far targets.” I’ve argued that this is a logistical issue. With intelligence agencies worldwide on high alert it is increasingly difficult to move operatives long distances. This complicates long-range terror strikes. Self-starters do not have the necessary skills and groups do not want to risk well-trained operatives on operations that will probably not succeed. The failed attacks on the West aren’t because the terrorists are stupid. What’s more they are adaptable. My argument continued that the danger was now in the realm of geopolitics – terrorists destabilizing and important country rather than carrying out direct attacks in the U.S. or the West.
Fair and Byman also state that the Taliban are similarly stupid. They frequently blow themselves up and also become intimate with livestock (this has been caught on tape by drones and other battlefield cameras). Maybe, but they are also giving the U.S. military a run for its money so discounting their capabilities seems unwise. I would be remiss if I did not note two important points their article makes. First that the less than pious behavior, as well as their tactical mishaps, could be important tools for American public diplomacy efforts to discredit them. Second, Fair and Byman point out the importance of disrupting terrorist training facilities so that they can remain stupid. This is dead on – terrorist groups are adaptable, “learning” organizations. If they cannot learn and transfer knowledge, they cannot survive.
But another recent event highlights the adaptability of asymmetric opponents and perhaps is a caution against any kind of over-confidence. The Gaza Flotilla was a brilliantly planned operation on every level (tactical and strategic). If the key in asymmetric warfare is to exploit critical vulnerabilities with small amounts of force – the Flotilla operation succeeded. (Strictly speaking, calling the Gaza Flotilla terrorists is problematic as they were attacking military personnel. On the other hand, they were doing so in an effort to support Hamas – a terrorist organization.)
Tactically, the Flotilla organizers carefully examined Israeli operations and identified a way to create a situation that worked to their advantage. Politically the Flotilla undermined Israel’s Gaza policy, the Israeli-Turkish alliance, and drew attention to Egypt’s siege on Gaza. (Long-term, as I’ve argued before, the Egypt angle may be the most significant.)
There have been important gains against terrorism, but very serious dangers remain. There are a lot of dumb terrorists – but there are also more than enough smart ones.
Friday, June 25, 2010
The General & the President
In his 1953 short story, “Disappearing Act”, the great science fiction writer Alfred Bester once wrote:
Presidential Authority
I’ve come late to this pundit party, so I’ll just make a few quick comments (besides quoting Alfie Bester.) My first thought was about the President’s actions (I have a whole blog devoted to this issue.) In his landmark Presidential Power, Richard Neustadt established that presidents have only limited powers of command. In general they share their powers with other branches of government and other actors inside and outside of government. To get anything done, they need to persuade. Even where presidents have clear powers to command, they must exercise them judiciously so that they do not provoke other powers in the government to align themselves against the president. In making this argument, Neustadt begins by discussing three cases in which presidents had clear command powers and how they were circumspect in using them. One of these cases was Truman decision to fire MacArthur.
There was something satisfying in seeing a President exercise his authority in an unambiguous manner. The past few months President Obama has been dealing with the Gulf Oil spill – where he needs to appear concerned, but has very little influence over the outcome. Sometimes it is good for the commander-in-chief to command.
As it happens, I was chatting with a Thai acquaintance who noted that in his homeland, a political leader’s attempt to fire a general would probably result in a coup. The United States does not run this risk. We have an interesting hybrid system where in many situations authority is unclear – but on certain crucial issues (such as the Supreme Court’s power to interpret the constitution) authority is unquestioned.
Strategic Implications
My friend Ilan Berman had a smart piece in the Washington Times stating that the Rolling Stone article highlighted the strategic incoherence of the administration’s Afghanistan policy.
In this case personnel is policy. Besides the fact the (as Steve Metz notes in the post I link to above) Petraeus probably has better skills for the mission – his personal credibility is also important. Petraeus demonstrated that he could play nice with the other kids – forging a good working relationship with Ambassador Crocker and charming Congress. He might also be able to amend the deadlines that threaten to crush the Afghanistan mission. If Pretraeus can credibly report progress he might be given the leeway to maintain troop levels past the withdrawal deadline so that progress can be maintained.
in that light, losing McChrystal may be the best thing that can happen to Afghanistan.
There are fighting generals (vital to an army), political generals (vital to an administration), and public relations generals (vital to a war).Perhaps there are generals that can be a bit of all three, but Stanley McChrystal is not one of them. No question he was a battle general par excellence, but his political and PR instincts were terrible. (Steve Metz, a professor at the Army War College said all of this with greater erudition for The New Republic.) It is not likely that McChrystal’s Rolling Stone interview crossed the line into forbidden political activity. But it did demonstrate abject stupidity – people at his level ought to know to exercise some discretion around journalists. His big mouth about his colleagues demonstrated that he is no political general either, who can play nice with other agencies and governments.
Presidential Authority
I’ve come late to this pundit party, so I’ll just make a few quick comments (besides quoting Alfie Bester.) My first thought was about the President’s actions (I have a whole blog devoted to this issue.) In his landmark Presidential Power, Richard Neustadt established that presidents have only limited powers of command. In general they share their powers with other branches of government and other actors inside and outside of government. To get anything done, they need to persuade. Even where presidents have clear powers to command, they must exercise them judiciously so that they do not provoke other powers in the government to align themselves against the president. In making this argument, Neustadt begins by discussing three cases in which presidents had clear command powers and how they were circumspect in using them. One of these cases was Truman decision to fire MacArthur.
There was something satisfying in seeing a President exercise his authority in an unambiguous manner. The past few months President Obama has been dealing with the Gulf Oil spill – where he needs to appear concerned, but has very little influence over the outcome. Sometimes it is good for the commander-in-chief to command.
As it happens, I was chatting with a Thai acquaintance who noted that in his homeland, a political leader’s attempt to fire a general would probably result in a coup. The United States does not run this risk. We have an interesting hybrid system where in many situations authority is unclear – but on certain crucial issues (such as the Supreme Court’s power to interpret the constitution) authority is unquestioned.
Strategic Implications
My friend Ilan Berman had a smart piece in the Washington Times stating that the Rolling Stone article highlighted the strategic incoherence of the administration’s Afghanistan policy.
In this case personnel is policy. Besides the fact the (as Steve Metz notes in the post I link to above) Petraeus probably has better skills for the mission – his personal credibility is also important. Petraeus demonstrated that he could play nice with the other kids – forging a good working relationship with Ambassador Crocker and charming Congress. He might also be able to amend the deadlines that threaten to crush the Afghanistan mission. If Pretraeus can credibly report progress he might be given the leeway to maintain troop levels past the withdrawal deadline so that progress can be maintained.
in that light, losing McChrystal may be the best thing that can happen to Afghanistan.
Monday, May 31, 2010
Memorial Day Movies: Heroes Past and Future
Taking advantage of the long weekend, I took my long-suffering wife to the movies. We watched Harry Brown, which stars Michael Caine as an aged pensioner and former Royal Marine living in a crime-ridden housing project. When his best friend, who is regularly intimidated by the local thugs, is killed Caine’s Harry Brown remembers his training and wreaks havoc. It is similar to Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino. As an action movie and police drama Harry Brown is more exciting and Michael Caine is always a pleasure to watch – his visage shifting between formidable killer and tired old man. As a movie about people, Gran Torino is by far the better movie as we see Eastwood’s character grow and change.
Two movies hardly constitute a cultural trend, but the fantasy of old men stepping up and restoring order to a world gone mad has a deep appeal. Do we just like seeing unruly youngsters getting smacked down by their elders or is it something more? The era of our grandfathers, of WWII and the Greatest Generation has passed and we hunger both for their clear view of right and wrong and their ability to do something about it. Perhaps we feel we have lost both the sense and the capability and we yearn for our grandfathers to return and set things aright.
There was a sense of that in John McCain’s candidacy. Anne Applebaum wrote about this in The Washington Post, describing McCain as the candidate of clarity and Obama as the candidate of nuance. According to Applebaum (I can’t find the column online) we want to live in McCain’s world, but the world we actually inhabit is Obama’s. (UPDATE: There was a reason I could find the column online. It was actually by Sally Quinn - thanks Soccer Dad for the heads up.)
Two thoughts struck me about this hunger for heroic grandfathers. If we are seeking the moral clarity of past times, we are mistaken. The past is only clear when viewed in hindsight through a broken lens. As Willie Stark, prodding his old college history textbook, told Jack Burden in Robert Penn Warren’s classic All the King’s Men:
But my Memorial Day thought is that if we miss the heroes of yesteryear, we aren’t looking very hard. I honor the great sacrifices and achievements of past generations – but the current one is more than holding its own. I am thinking of the kids I went to high school and college with who chose to become soldiers and marines while my friends and I tried to find ourselves, of the servicemen I meet professionally, or of the recipients of JINSA’s Grateful Nation Award. They have done great things in terrible circumstance – all the while demonstrating their prudence, compassion, and bravery. They can hold their heads high and take their place beside the great heroes of American history.
And they are just getting started.
We should all be grateful for their service. I know that I get to write – because they fight.
Two movies hardly constitute a cultural trend, but the fantasy of old men stepping up and restoring order to a world gone mad has a deep appeal. Do we just like seeing unruly youngsters getting smacked down by their elders or is it something more? The era of our grandfathers, of WWII and the Greatest Generation has passed and we hunger both for their clear view of right and wrong and their ability to do something about it. Perhaps we feel we have lost both the sense and the capability and we yearn for our grandfathers to return and set things aright.
There was a sense of that in John McCain’s candidacy. Anne Applebaum wrote about this in The Washington Post, describing McCain as the candidate of clarity and Obama as the candidate of nuance. According to Applebaum (I can’t find the column online) we want to live in McCain’s world, but the world we actually inhabit is Obama’s. (UPDATE: There was a reason I could find the column online. It was actually by Sally Quinn - thanks Soccer Dad for the heads up.)
Two thoughts struck me about this hunger for heroic grandfathers. If we are seeking the moral clarity of past times, we are mistaken. The past is only clear when viewed in hindsight through a broken lens. As Willie Stark, prodding his old college history textbook, told Jack Burden in Robert Penn Warren’s classic All the King’s Men:
And the fellow that wrote it didn’t know a God-damned thing. About how things were. He didn’t know a thing. I bet things were just like they are now. A lot of folks wrassling around.
But my Memorial Day thought is that if we miss the heroes of yesteryear, we aren’t looking very hard. I honor the great sacrifices and achievements of past generations – but the current one is more than holding its own. I am thinking of the kids I went to high school and college with who chose to become soldiers and marines while my friends and I tried to find ourselves, of the servicemen I meet professionally, or of the recipients of JINSA’s Grateful Nation Award. They have done great things in terrible circumstance – all the while demonstrating their prudence, compassion, and bravery. They can hold their heads high and take their place beside the great heroes of American history.And they are just getting started.
We should all be grateful for their service. I know that I get to write – because they fight.
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Aaron Mannes in Defense News: Info Systems Must 'Connect Dots' on Terrorism
Defense News just posted an article by Jim Hendler and me about the need for the intelligence community to embrace cutting edge information technology that can help analysts process the enormous quantities of information collected and connect the dots.
Jim has been working on this stuff for over a decade and when I worked with him at UMIACS where we built an online portal to highlight this potential.
Info Systems Must 'Connect Dots' on Terrorism
By AARON MANNES and JAMES HENDLER
Published: 19 April 2010
The near success of the Christmas Day bomber on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit has been characterized as a failure to "connect the dots." Now, additional teams of specialists are being formed to run down clues.
Throwing resources at a problem is an understandable knee-jerk reaction, but human capacity to absorb and process enormous quantities of information quickly is limited. Connecting the dots requires cutting-edge information technologies that augment human capabilities. Without revamping the information systems used in the intelligence community, more eyeballs will, at best, yield diminishing returns and, at worst, exacerbate problems and increase stovepiping.
The American intelligence community has invested heavily in building unparalleled tools for collecting information - generating dots - while slighting tools to connect them. The most commonly reported weakness in the information systems used in the intelligence community is that analysts have to search multiple databases to access all available information and that they cannot integrate the data they find from their searches.
Although technologies to amalgamate databases exist, they have not been widely deployed within the intelligence community. Giving intelligence analysts the same search capabilities that are commonplace for most Web surfers is necessary, but on its own will not help "connect the dots."
Since 9/11, intelligence-sharing has improved, but the data deluge caused by increased collection capabilities has negated these gains. Data is now measured in the petabyte, 1 million gigabytes, roughly equivalent to 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text.
A public search engine might process many petabytes of data daily, and presumably the intelligence community collects data on a comparable scale. Without knowing what to look for, searching these enormous quantities of data will only increase information inundation. An effective system not only helps analysts find information, it helps them make connections.
A search on variants of the Christmas bomber's name, Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab of Nigeria, would have resulted in hundreds or thousands of responses. One person could not examine this volume of material in a timely manner. Even if a team of analysts exam-ined the material in a reasonable time frame, without knowing what to search for in advance, team members might focus on different issues and not connect the dots.
Information systems that can draw basic conclusions, such as indicating probable links, would help overwhelmed analysts identify critical information. This is not the stuff of science fiction. Businesses are investing in the Semantic Web, in which information is given some context by facilitating smart or semantic searches. This approach is just starting to be embraced by industry, with some search engines, such as Microsoft's bing.com, starting to link searches together.
An information system with these capabilities might understand Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab not only as a string of characters but as a person who possesses certain inherent characteristics, such as parents and a last known location. Nigeria and Yemen can be understood as places where a person might be present at a given time. With this context, the info system could automatically identify disparate warning signs as potentially relating to the same person.
Despite the tremendous efforts of intelligence-community analysts, the current ways of doing business have proved inadequate. While there is no guarantee that better information technology would have allowed U.S. intelligence to act before Abdulmutallab boarded the plane, increasing personnel represents more of the same. Adopting revolutionary IT could be a much-needed game-changer.
Ironically, many of the technologies underpinning these revolutions in information systems were funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and were motivated by the need to enhance data-sharing in the intel community. Now, the Semantic Web is used by governments to increase the public's access to data and by businesses to connect the dots. But efforts to deploy this technology within the national security system have moved more slowly.
There are understandable reasons why adopting new information systems have not been prioritized. The infrastructure for building and launching an intelligence-collection satellite is proven and the additional data gathered is easily measured. But it can be difficult to quantify the impact of a new information system and its implementation is an enormous technical and bureaucratic challenge.
But without better information systems, the intelligence community will be hamstrung in its efforts to transform information into intelligence while America's enemies continue to systematically identify and exploit these blind spots. To connect the dots and prevent the next incident before it happens, the intelligence community needs to implement technologies that were specifically developed to address these challenges.
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Aaron Mannes is a researcher at the University of Maryland's Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics. James Hendler is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic University, N.Y., and a former chief scientist for information systems at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
Jim has been working on this stuff for over a decade and when I worked with him at UMIACS where we built an online portal to highlight this potential.
Info Systems Must 'Connect Dots' on Terrorism
By AARON MANNES and JAMES HENDLER
Published: 19 April 2010
The near success of the Christmas Day bomber on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit has been characterized as a failure to "connect the dots." Now, additional teams of specialists are being formed to run down clues.
Throwing resources at a problem is an understandable knee-jerk reaction, but human capacity to absorb and process enormous quantities of information quickly is limited. Connecting the dots requires cutting-edge information technologies that augment human capabilities. Without revamping the information systems used in the intelligence community, more eyeballs will, at best, yield diminishing returns and, at worst, exacerbate problems and increase stovepiping.
The American intelligence community has invested heavily in building unparalleled tools for collecting information - generating dots - while slighting tools to connect them. The most commonly reported weakness in the information systems used in the intelligence community is that analysts have to search multiple databases to access all available information and that they cannot integrate the data they find from their searches.
Although technologies to amalgamate databases exist, they have not been widely deployed within the intelligence community. Giving intelligence analysts the same search capabilities that are commonplace for most Web surfers is necessary, but on its own will not help "connect the dots."
Since 9/11, intelligence-sharing has improved, but the data deluge caused by increased collection capabilities has negated these gains. Data is now measured in the petabyte, 1 million gigabytes, roughly equivalent to 20 million four-drawer filing cabinets filled with text.
A public search engine might process many petabytes of data daily, and presumably the intelligence community collects data on a comparable scale. Without knowing what to look for, searching these enormous quantities of data will only increase information inundation. An effective system not only helps analysts find information, it helps them make connections.
A search on variants of the Christmas bomber's name, Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab of Nigeria, would have resulted in hundreds or thousands of responses. One person could not examine this volume of material in a timely manner. Even if a team of analysts exam-ined the material in a reasonable time frame, without knowing what to search for in advance, team members might focus on different issues and not connect the dots.
Information systems that can draw basic conclusions, such as indicating probable links, would help overwhelmed analysts identify critical information. This is not the stuff of science fiction. Businesses are investing in the Semantic Web, in which information is given some context by facilitating smart or semantic searches. This approach is just starting to be embraced by industry, with some search engines, such as Microsoft's bing.com, starting to link searches together.
An information system with these capabilities might understand Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab not only as a string of characters but as a person who possesses certain inherent characteristics, such as parents and a last known location. Nigeria and Yemen can be understood as places where a person might be present at a given time. With this context, the info system could automatically identify disparate warning signs as potentially relating to the same person.
Despite the tremendous efforts of intelligence-community analysts, the current ways of doing business have proved inadequate. While there is no guarantee that better information technology would have allowed U.S. intelligence to act before Abdulmutallab boarded the plane, increasing personnel represents more of the same. Adopting revolutionary IT could be a much-needed game-changer.
Ironically, many of the technologies underpinning these revolutions in information systems were funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and were motivated by the need to enhance data-sharing in the intel community. Now, the Semantic Web is used by governments to increase the public's access to data and by businesses to connect the dots. But efforts to deploy this technology within the national security system have moved more slowly.
There are understandable reasons why adopting new information systems have not been prioritized. The infrastructure for building and launching an intelligence-collection satellite is proven and the additional data gathered is easily measured. But it can be difficult to quantify the impact of a new information system and its implementation is an enormous technical and bureaucratic challenge.
But without better information systems, the intelligence community will be hamstrung in its efforts to transform information into intelligence while America's enemies continue to systematically identify and exploit these blind spots. To connect the dots and prevent the next incident before it happens, the intelligence community needs to implement technologies that were specifically developed to address these challenges.
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Aaron Mannes is a researcher at the University of Maryland's Laboratory for Computational Cultural Dynamics. James Hendler is a professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic University, N.Y., and a former chief scientist for information systems at the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
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