From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: 110cb18fc93d64acfb1699da70d4233c26b5c020a78a185dacc828b6dc967dbc
Message ID: <199606120115.BAA01339@pipe3.ny3.usa.pipeline.com>
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UTC Datetime: 1996-06-12 08:33:21 UTC
Raw Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:33:21 +0800
From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:33:21 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Information Age Intelligence
Message-ID: <199606120115.BAA01339@pipe3.ny3.usa.pipeline.com>
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Foreign Policy, Summer 1996:
"Information Age Intelligence." by Bruce D. Berkowitz,
a former CIA analyst and staff member for the Senate
Intelllgence Committee. Excerpts of 14-page essay:
During most of this century, the intelligence
community led the world in developing information
technology. Intelligence organizations were deeply
involved in the development of telegraph and
telephone networks, modern computers, and
space-based communications and surveillance
systems. The intelligence community also
established new forms of analysis and areas of
expertise.
Yet several signs suggest that the intelligence
community is no longer the leader in the
information world, and it may have fallen behind
significantly in some respects. The underlying
problem is that the intelligence community has
failed to keep up with changes in how modern
society uses information and how information
technology develops in modern society. As a
result, our model for intelligence is out-of-date.
This reality is what current efforts at
intelligence reform are failing to recognize.
The intelligence community needs to move as fast
as information businesses do to capture markets,
but the traditional organization is not up to the
task. Today's model for intelligence -- how it is
organized and how it operates -- is an artifact
from an earlier age. Even the name "Central
Intelligence Agency" is reminiscent of the New
Deal era, when large, powerful, national
bureaucracies were the accepted way of getting
things done efficiently. It makes less sense in a
world moving toward fluid, distributed, networked
information organizations.
As the capabilities of the private sector improve,
the intelligence community will need to move on to
the next frontier of technology or expertise that
the private sector has yet to fill. While one
challenge for intelligence reform is to keep up
with these changes, fundamentally the greater
challenge will be to establish an organization
that can adapt with the times.
One reason why the intelligence community cannot
deal effectively with the Information Revolution
is that intelligence requirements and the
intelligence community's comparative advantage are
both fluid, but the traditional intelligence
bureaucracy remains static. In addition,
organizations responsible for developing and
applying technology, such as the National
Reconnaissance Office (NRC)) and the National
Security Agency (NSA), have created organizational
dogma, and dogma always resist change. Once such
organizations carve out a place for themselves
(and their technologies) in the budget, they can
be difficult to dislodge. The fact that these
organizations often operate at a classified level
further insulates them. As a result, the
intelligence community often locks into specific
technologies, even when new and possibly better
ideas have come along.
http://pwp.usa.pipeline.com/~jya/fpintel.htm
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1996-06-12 (Wed, 12 Jun 1996 16:33:21 +0800) - Information Age Intelligence - jya@pipeline.com (John Young)