Cyreenik Says
The military is often accused of preparing to fight the last war. In this case we have an example of military intelligence preparing to spy for the last war.
The Wikileaks phenomenon is a symptom of how much information handling has changed throughout society in the last ten years. I first noticed an example of this change this summer when I reread Isaac Asimov's "End of Eternity" -- a time travel novel that he wrote in 1958. I was impressed with how differently social interactions and information interactions were handled in his story compared to what we experience today.
What the Wikileaks phenomenon is demonstrating is that information does not play the same role in 2010's society that it did in World War Two, Vietnam War or even the first US Gulf War times. And that difference now includes the military and the State Department.
The root of the difference is that in the past information was a comparatively scarce commodity. For example if an army could attack only by going through Pass A or Pass B, and you found out which one, you gained information of considerable value! An example of this that showed up in a whole lot of post-World War Two spy movies was the threat of revealing D-Day details to the Germans. This value meant that spying paid off handsomely, and counter-spying -- classifying documents, also paid off handsomely.
Today the world, and war, is much more like the contemporary stock market -- there is tons and tons of information that must be moved just to function. This means that trying to control information flow by classifying documents is not going to work nearly as well as it has in the past. Nowadays, if you succeed at classifying documents -- successfully controlling information flow -- military operations can't coordinate, and the whole military process grinds down to a snail's pace. This causes "shock and awwww" among the good guys, not the bad guys.
And... Umm... that's expensive!
A contemporary example is Obama trying to get various intelligence agencies to "connect the dots". If they are going to do that dot-connecting, information has to flow. Lot's of it! Because you don't know before the dots are connected which particular pieces of information are going to do the dot connecting.
But when you classify, you are saying, "Don't move that information until you are sure it will be useful." That's the essence of the "Need to know basis" policy that is the foundation for the whole classification process. Sadly, you don't connect dots in a need-to-know environment... and you don't coordinate very well, either.
And thus, the classifying systems don't work, can't work!, and the Wikileaks-compatible environment evolves.
What should the government do?
All government information flow, including military intelligence and diplomacy, should become like the stock market environment or a supply chain environment. The default condition should be to expect that all information should be widely available so the enormous benefits of good coordination can be reaped. Then the good guys can do a whole lot of dot-connecting.
And, if this is the default environment -- an all-information-is-widely-available environment -- then, just like with global supply chain and the stock market, the good guys will do a whole lot better than the bad guys, because the good guys will have good clues as to where to look for what they need next.
Wikileaks is showing government, military, diplomatic and intelligence services what the next war will look like. It's time to do some serious adapting.
Just in time for the holidays, we have a new car bomb plot foiled. There are some details in this 27 Nov 10 NY Times article, Oregon Teen Arrested in Plot to Bomb Holiday Event by Liz Robbins. As described in the article this was a sting operation that went smooth as snails on glass. The suspect was given the tools and ready to go for the glory. He pushed the button, and then discovered his co-conspirators were FBI undercover agents.
Ouchie! for him, and Yay! for the good guys. This is the stuff of movie making!
... And that's the dark side of this story with a happy ending: The FBI is developing a booming agent provocateur arm. That may sound good, but it's not. Agent Provocoteuring has a big problem and a big risk:
o The big problem is that of drawing the line between catching a real terrorist-to-be and entrapment: Encouraging some gullible person who would otherwise be just another of thousands of talk-loud, do-nothing bellyachers into taking rash action. Catching such a person makes great publicity, as seen in this article. But it's expensive -- dozens of agents were involved for months in setting up this fine performance of Counter Terror Theater. And it's so perfect it sure smacks of being 1984-style propaganda-supporting news.
If this kind of agent provocateur news becomes routine, we have had our government build up for us a sick, sick form of counter-terrorist boom industry: The Counter-Terrorist Entertainment Industry.
o The second big problem is that this is playing with fire. This time it went smoothly. But if agent provocateurs become a routine part of the counter-terrorist scenery, they can be perverted or subverted or just get plain-old sloppy, and when they do we will have a huge, tragic, government-sponsored mistake on our hands.
A recent example of this sort of perversion is talked about in this 22 Nov 10 NY Times article, Taliban Leader in Secret Talks Was an Impostor by Dexter Filkins and Carlotta Gall. A sham Taliban leader ponied up by intelligence sources lead Western peace negotiators around by the nose for months and got paid quite well in the process.
In sum, with this enthusiastic agent provocateuring we are risking an incident where the "Truthers" get it right. So I worry... and I doubt this success is really helping our security one bit.
And finally, a point I will make one more time: The root of terrorism is advertising -- these people are advertising a cause. If we want to stop terrorism for good, we don't pay billions for a booming counter-terrorism industry, we simply don't buy the product.
Since terrorism is advertising, the most effective way to fight terrorism is not to buy the product. Do that by doing your business as usual.
Update: Yup! Second one in a month. An 8 Dec 10 Washington Post article about another "FBI Sting", Officials: Man who spoke of Jihad arrested in plot by Ben Nuckols.
The media revolt (and maybe citizens revolt) against the TSA seems to be in full swing this holiday season. Perhaps change, good change, is in the works?
Back in 2004 I noted that much of the power behind the TSA procedures is faith-based, not fact-based. (See Worshipping at the Altar of the Holy Metal Detector) Over the years this has been demonstrated time and time again by the choices the TSA makes when changing screening ritual... I mean policy. Yeah, policy.
This latest rit...policy change -- full body scanners and groin pats -- seems to have taken many of the flying faithful into fully uncomfortable territory. Since flying suffers fully from The Curse of Being Important, and many media people fly a lot. This is now Big News.
It could also signal the beginning of a big and steady change in the TSA away from intrusive procedures. I sure hope it does. Ultimately, I hope that the rituals to help comfort flying fears get completely divorced from flying security issues.
For one thing, a divorce would revive the flying industry. It would move us away from the collectivist mentality that is becoming so strong in the flying environment. And it will give Americans something new to search for: It will force Americans and the media to find some new organization they can love to hate.
Update: The divorce is not likely to come as quickly or smoothly as I would like. <sigh> According to this 26 Nov WSJ editorial, How to Make Air Travel More Infuriating by John Fund, the Labor Relations Board has decided it is OK if the TSA unionizes.
Oh my! A unionized priesthood leading a manditory worship service!
Am I about to enter The Twilight Zone?
Update: This 28 Nov 10 New York Times article, A Media False Alarm Over the T.S.A. by David Carr, indicates it was mostly a media revolt looking for a holiday news story.
This 22 Nov 10 WSJ editorial, The 'Build America' Debt Bomb by Steven Malanga, points out where America is building its next Subprime Mortgage Crisis. Next up will be municipal bonds.
Normally when the US economy tanks, cities and states have to cut back on spending, too. This is well known, and it frustrates many people that cities and states can't be Keynesian like the federal government is and be contra cyclical.
The "Ah Hah!" on this crisis was the concept of "Build America Bonds" where the federal government subsidizes 35% of the interest on some muni bonds. Like CDO's did for the mortgage market, this worked, and worked big. It widened the market for munis by allowing institutions that found no attraction in the tax-free nature of munis to get interested in them. These new style munis are now attractive to pension funds and overseas buyers.
But this well-working idea was a move made in response to panic, and it has a dark side. The dark side is there has never been rigorous oversight on muni offerings, so, yes, these munis can be risky. And this could become the next US bubble/Blunder.
Now, the issuers are campaigning hard to make this temporary measure permanent. "It's worked so well... why stop now?" is the thinking of these enthusiasts.
UmmmMM! I've got my head down and my ears covered! This could be big! REAL BIG!
This seems to be the latest "tofu trend" in California, and it's a rock solid one. This 16 Nov 10 WSJ editorial, California's Destructive Green Jobs Lobby by George Guilder, tells how a referendum to repeal Assembly Bill 32 went down in crashing defeat -- it was 62%-38% in favor of keeping California's version of carbon capping.
Campaigning against the repeal were many of California's Silicon Valley luminaries -- "Pouring in millions were such promethean venturers as John Doerr and Vinod Khosla of Kleiner Perkins, Eric Schmidt and Sergei Brin of Google, and the legendary Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove of Intel".
Sounds noble and true... what's the problem here?
The problem is that guilt is powering this trend, which means cost-benefit is being tossed out the window, and that's something neither California, the nation, or the world can afford right now.
In this particular case, guilt-based feel-good nonsense is also producing a Green-government complex that is siphoning off the best and brightest of Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial talent in support of government pork projects and away from economic growth projects.
"In the past, Kleiner Perkins funded scores of vital ventures, from Apple and Applied Materials to Amazon and Google. But now Kleiner is moving on to such government-dependent firms as Miasole, Amyris Biofuels, Segway and Upwind Solutions. Many have ingenious technology and employ thousands of brilliant engineers, but they are mostly wasted on pork catchers."
"Many of these green companies, behaving like the public-service unions they resemble, diverted some of their government subsidies into the AB 32 campaign for more subsidies. Virtually every new venture investment proposal harbors a "green" angle that turns it from a potential economic asset into a government dependent."
In my words, this is a contemporary outbreak of the emotional thinking that made government planning of the economy so popular eighty years ago.
It didn't work well then, and it's not working well now.
To paraphrase French actor Maurice Chevalier, "<sniffing> Ah... But that's never important when guilt is in the air."
This Blunder comes as a surprise to me, and it's a scary one. Ben Bernake, the Fed chairman, and the guy who studied the Great Depression economics, has perhaps started a Great Depression-style trade war by printing a bunch of US money over the next few months -- in his program called Quantitative Easing Two (QE2).
This WSJ 10 Nov 10 Heard on the Street, Fed Triggers Emerging Response by David Reilly, talks about how various emerging nations such as China and Taiwan are real unhappy about this move by the Fed. They see this a promoting hot money and commodity price increases (including food prices) which will destabilize their business and social well-being.
These countries are scared enough that they are talking about capital controls... which are a form of trade war. This is real scary because what transformed the 1930's depression from bad into Great was trade wars. And the irony is that Bernake is doing this QE2 to get more growth out of the US economy.
It could get worse, much worse. The US currency is currently the currency of safety, and that's been very helpful to the US for many, many decades. But, if it's about to become as safe as any banana republic's currency... Ummm! Times will really change for the US, and not for the better!
This is a risky move, brought on by the novel and scary economic situation we are currently living in in the US. It is a blunder.
Can the government produce an Edsel?
No surprise, it seems it can, and has.
This 12 Nov 10 WSJ editorial, The 8,011-Person Crisis, talks about the tepid reception of its plan to offer insurance to those who have been denied insurance because of pre-existing conditions.
This is a Health and Human Services (HHS) plan to offer insurance to those who had been denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. It was started in July and was expected to attract 375,000 subscribers by now, and an additional 400,000 per year until 2014 when other Obamacare plans would kick in to cover these people. The government backed this plan with 5 billion.
Well... as of today 8,011 have signed up. Umm... I can spell E-D-S-E-L.
The HHS response to this underwhelming interest sounds like that of a rookie businessman who is in love with his product -- lower the price. HHS is proposing that taxpayers cover even more of the cost by lowering the rate it will charge subscribers.
It might work, but I can also spell B-L-U-N-D-E-R.
-- The End --