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| Terror Networks |
| The Other Michael Flynn |
| 2016-11-22 |
| [Defense One] Who is Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s new national security advisor? There is no single or simple answer. The Flynn you’ve probably heard of, the one who hitched his wagon to Trump for-President, seems intent on convincing the world that he harbors a smoldering animus against Islam. He is a man whose worldview the American Conservative has described as "warped." But there once was a Flynn who resembles the current man barely, if at all. We can find this earlier Flynn in the papers he wrote while serving as an intelligence officer and in the relationships he formed with special operators working the tough fight in Afghanistan. Through these lenses emerges an innovator who sought to update intelligence collection and dissemination practices to comport with modern technology; an intelligence professional who emphasized building local ties with--yes--Muslim leaders to undermine the insurgent cause; and a manager who pushed hard for big changes, alienating entrenched power brokers in the intelligence community. In 2010, Flynn was the director of intelligence for joint international forces in Afghanistan, working for top war commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Together, they reshaped how operators acquired information and intelligence to target enemies, emerging with a process sometimes called F3EAD, for Find, Fix, Finish, Exploit, Analyze, and Disseminate. "They are the folks that ’industrialized’ the targeting process of F3EAD," said Stuart Bradin, a retired Army colonel who worked with Flynn in Afghanistan. Flynn distilled the new ideas in a 2010 white paper, "Fixing Intelligence", coauthored for the Center for New American Security, or CNAS. Its thrust: share more intelligence with and among with more operators at the battalion and company level, and do it much faster. "Currently, information this basic to a coordinating a successful counterinsurgency literally is inaccessible to the people who need it most. This failure not only jeopardizes an operation, but also exposes international efforts to ridicule for their ineptitude," Flynn wrote. In the paper, Flynn argued that the military should rely more on open-source and data and much less on classified and expensive intel. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 Well, Obama has his political generals (to fight a SJW war) and so Trump can have his political general to fight a real war. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2016-11-22 14:22 |
| #2 And there it is, the accusation that he is a political general, bete noir of the fighting soldier. (And sailor, marine, coast guard, and airmen of both sexes.). But will it stick? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2016-11-22 13:45 |
| #1 "The Flynn you’ve probably heard of, the one who hitched his wagon to Trump for-President, seems intent on convincing the world that he harbors a smoldering animus against Islam." That, right there, is reason enough to cheer. |
| Posted by: Dave D. 2016-11-22 10:05 |