Warrior-Mentor
09-21-2009, 09:02
Wall Street Journal
September 21, 2009
Pg. 17
Information As The New Arms Race
An official report last week reveals weaknesses in our effort to prevent another 9/11.
By L. Gordon Crovitz
The U.S. is the only country whose laws mandate the release of details of its intelligence goals and operations. Every four years, the National Intelligence Strategy document discloses the priorities of the usually hidden operations of the country's 16 intelligence agencies.
A key theme of last week's report is that we're now in what might be called an information arms race, driven by technology. "Rapid technological change and dissemination of information continue to alter social, economic and political forces, providing new means for our adversaries and competitors to challenge us," the report says, "while also providing the U.S. with new opportunities to preserve or gain competitive advantages."
How is the U.S. doing in this information war? The intelligence agencies rightly gave themselves a mixed grade.
A key goal remains to connect the intelligence dots of intelligence to spot risks and eliminate them, and avoid another 9/11. The report admits the pre-9/11 problems of gathering and sharing data continue. The intelligence community must now "discover, access, analyze and disseminate intelligence information in compressed time frames" while "respecting the privacy and rights of U.S. citizens." Trying to herd bureaucracies as diverse as the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and FBI continues to be a challenge.
The document acknowledges the need to "narrow the gap between our capacity to 'sense data' and our capabilities to 'make sense of data' in handling an exponentially increasing volume and variety of data and information." But it does not refer to how emerging technologies can overcome the problem of understanding the meaning of all the data now being collected. New data-mining technologies, for example, can aggregate personal information in ways that minimize risks to individual privacy.
The focus on using technology in smarter ways is encouraging. But redefinitions of intelligence agencies' top missions show clear breaks from the 2005 version of this document, and indicate differences between the Obama and Bush administrations. The redefinitions water down the stated missions, which could give our enemies false comfort. Or they could prove actually to reflect sharply reduced security goals, which should give Americans discomfort.
For example, the new version of the document refers to the mission objective to "combat violent extremism" versus what the Bush administration's determination to "defeat terrorists at home and abroad." Combating is weaker than defeating.
Also, a mission that had been defined in 2005 as to "prevent and counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction" has been reduced to "counter WMD proliferation." Reducing prevention to countering seems like a move in the wrong direction as Iran grows closer to acquiring nuclear weapons.
Another change: the deletion of the Bush mission of "promoting the growth of freedom and democracy." From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's deliberate downgrading of human rights in the U.S.-China relationship to President Barack Obama's choice of Egypt for regional outreach, the administration has intentionally downplayed the U.S. role in promoting human rights and democracy. This is a problem even from a realpolitik point of view in a world where information gaps are the biggest risks. Closed countries and terror groups are the greatest obstacles to the free flow of information, especially about the risks they pose.
In addition to Iran, the document singles out North Korea, China and Russia as threats to the U.S. Beijing responded in vintage party line, assuring the world that Chinese military development "is always a positive factor for both regional and global peace and stability."
The report identified some important new priorities, including to "understand, detect and counter adversary cyber threats to enable protection of the nation's information infrastructure." There is also a renewed emphasis on counterintelligence. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said that "we do have to be very aggressive in cyber, both protecting our own secrets and stealing those of others."
One previously top-secret disclosure last week was the amount the U.S. spends across its civilian and military intelligence operations. Mr. Blair said this is $75 billion a year, including 200,000 intelligence professionals. These details alert other countries to what it would take to close the intelligence gap.
No matter what the administration, gathering data—and knowing what to do with it—should be the top security priority, even if we're still at the early stage of understanding what it takes to win this information war.
September 21, 2009
Pg. 17
Information As The New Arms Race
An official report last week reveals weaknesses in our effort to prevent another 9/11.
By L. Gordon Crovitz
The U.S. is the only country whose laws mandate the release of details of its intelligence goals and operations. Every four years, the National Intelligence Strategy document discloses the priorities of the usually hidden operations of the country's 16 intelligence agencies.
A key theme of last week's report is that we're now in what might be called an information arms race, driven by technology. "Rapid technological change and dissemination of information continue to alter social, economic and political forces, providing new means for our adversaries and competitors to challenge us," the report says, "while also providing the U.S. with new opportunities to preserve or gain competitive advantages."
How is the U.S. doing in this information war? The intelligence agencies rightly gave themselves a mixed grade.
A key goal remains to connect the intelligence dots of intelligence to spot risks and eliminate them, and avoid another 9/11. The report admits the pre-9/11 problems of gathering and sharing data continue. The intelligence community must now "discover, access, analyze and disseminate intelligence information in compressed time frames" while "respecting the privacy and rights of U.S. citizens." Trying to herd bureaucracies as diverse as the National Security Agency, Central Intelligence Agency and FBI continues to be a challenge.
The document acknowledges the need to "narrow the gap between our capacity to 'sense data' and our capabilities to 'make sense of data' in handling an exponentially increasing volume and variety of data and information." But it does not refer to how emerging technologies can overcome the problem of understanding the meaning of all the data now being collected. New data-mining technologies, for example, can aggregate personal information in ways that minimize risks to individual privacy.
The focus on using technology in smarter ways is encouraging. But redefinitions of intelligence agencies' top missions show clear breaks from the 2005 version of this document, and indicate differences between the Obama and Bush administrations. The redefinitions water down the stated missions, which could give our enemies false comfort. Or they could prove actually to reflect sharply reduced security goals, which should give Americans discomfort.
For example, the new version of the document refers to the mission objective to "combat violent extremism" versus what the Bush administration's determination to "defeat terrorists at home and abroad." Combating is weaker than defeating.
Also, a mission that had been defined in 2005 as to "prevent and counter the spread of weapons of mass destruction" has been reduced to "counter WMD proliferation." Reducing prevention to countering seems like a move in the wrong direction as Iran grows closer to acquiring nuclear weapons.
Another change: the deletion of the Bush mission of "promoting the growth of freedom and democracy." From Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's deliberate downgrading of human rights in the U.S.-China relationship to President Barack Obama's choice of Egypt for regional outreach, the administration has intentionally downplayed the U.S. role in promoting human rights and democracy. This is a problem even from a realpolitik point of view in a world where information gaps are the biggest risks. Closed countries and terror groups are the greatest obstacles to the free flow of information, especially about the risks they pose.
In addition to Iran, the document singles out North Korea, China and Russia as threats to the U.S. Beijing responded in vintage party line, assuring the world that Chinese military development "is always a positive factor for both regional and global peace and stability."
The report identified some important new priorities, including to "understand, detect and counter adversary cyber threats to enable protection of the nation's information infrastructure." There is also a renewed emphasis on counterintelligence. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said that "we do have to be very aggressive in cyber, both protecting our own secrets and stealing those of others."
One previously top-secret disclosure last week was the amount the U.S. spends across its civilian and military intelligence operations. Mr. Blair said this is $75 billion a year, including 200,000 intelligence professionals. These details alert other countries to what it would take to close the intelligence gap.
No matter what the administration, gathering data—and knowing what to do with it—should be the top security priority, even if we're still at the early stage of understanding what it takes to win this information war.