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2010-09-06 Home Front: WoT

The US Intelligence Community (IC) symptomatic of broader difficulties.

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Posted by Besoeker 2010-09-06 09:22|| || Front Page|| [2 views ] Top

#1 Buzzword overload and the breezy assertion that political appointes and entrenched bureaucrats can learn to trust one another. The CV at the bottom of the article highlights how "knowledgeable insiders" are not necessarily circumspect...

Posted by M. Murcek 2010-09-06 12:58|| 2010-09-06 12:58|| Front Page Top

#2 The answer is obvious. All these different agencies, by law, have to use NSA approved crypto gear to communicate. Let NSA integrate the intelligence. :-)

Posted by Mike Ramsey 2010-09-06 13:10|| 2010-09-06 13:10|| Front Page Top

#3 Departments and agencies focused on managing their narrow mandates, rather than on integrating their strengths to address whole-of-government challenges

Strong cultural barriers that inhibit information-sharing across departments and agencies.

If you've been reading me (and others) the better part of the last decade here at the Burg, you already knew these issues.

THe author, however, has a laughable solution "National Security Staff should work with the Office of Management and Budget..."

Bull, whats needed is an overhaul, including slicing apart the CIA, removing the fiefdoms and silos, and giving functional parts to other agencies where they belong. The CIA has ossified. NSA has for the most part changed but still could use some pruning of bureacracy.

As an example: the NRO needs to be restructured and forced away from the "one big expensive bird" cold-war design clique that holds power there and forced into the networked work, where you have lots of less expensive things networked, for resilience as well as ability to rapidly absorb and adapt to change. Instead of a single $1-billion swiss army chainsaw satellite in a Molyniya orbit, you should have dozens of them in various orbits each with a single sensor or else comm, all fairly small and cheap (comparatively) as well as easier to launch. Build them with the expectation that they will be in service for 5-7 years on orbit, at most, so they can be built "cheap" - within 5 years new technology will make them obsolescent anyway. And have another set that may be even cheaper an less lifespan, for sruge capacity in the event of a war or loss of current capacities (these would be even lighter and cheaper due to reduced need for lifespan). You get enough redundancy where a malfunctioning deployment system doesn't blind us (or loss of a bird to a Chinese ASAT or laser, or a piece of space junk). its a simple concept, the technology already exists top put up a "web" in space for the IC.

But the people at the top don't see it that way, neither do the main contractors. That's why we need to break a lot of these agencies up and reconstruct them.

Posted by OldSpook 2010-09-06 14:18|| 2010-09-06 14:18|| Front Page Top

#4 Um, what exactly does Katrina and the BP oil spill have to do with the IC?

This sounds to me very much like someone with a love of being a "dictator" who could control everything from his omniscient and omnipotent HQ.

I also didn't see anything about the role of congress in creating "fire-walls" and responsibility splits / wars.

Posted by Alan Cramer 2010-09-06 14:22|| 2010-09-06 14:22|| Front Page Top

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