Top Secret America (Part 1) by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin appeared in the Washington Post on Monday, 19 July 2010.
It’s early in the year for predictions but I think this is going to be my topic maps poster-child story for 2010.
I don’t doubt that with enough effort, a topic map could be perverted to reflect the lack of sharing and coordination that is reported in this story. But if the President were to assert real control, topic maps could be a part of the solution. (My suggestion would be no sharing = no paycheck/funding. These “patriots” won’t report for work without paychecks. “Pocketbook patriotism.”)
This story illustrates the need for topic maps in three ways:
First, they could help the Washington Post offer a drill down to the actual sources and public contract information that underlies their story. Not to mention knowing which representatives got donations from the same contractors who now have contracts for national security? Can you say “merging?”
Second, rather obviously topic maps could help eliminate the extreme duplication of information flow, which would allow analysts to concentrated on less, but higher quality information. And by eliminating the duplicate information flow, that should also trim down the middle and upper level management staffs, which would increase the amount of funding that could be spend on effective intelligence activities.
Third, and perhaps less obviously, intelligence operations of other governments and governments in waiting should take a lesson in how to not run an effective intelligence operation. If you don’t have $Billions to waste on duplicated and fragmented intelligence operations, perhaps you should consider the advantages that topic maps can bring to an intelligence operation.
Those advantages vary depending on what you want but typically it would result in elimination of duplication of content, enhanced sharing between intelligence agencies, tracking of information flow, integration of data from outside sources as well as offering multiple views of the data or multi-lingual presentation.
Those advantages are not automatic. No IT system, not even topic maps, can solve personnel management issues, greed, corruption, inter-agency rivalry, sheer stupidity, etc., but assuming you can manage those, topic maps can help make intelligence operations more effective.
Glenn Greenwald remarks:
One can almost come to believe that only dysfunction is rewarded.
Comment by sam hunting — July 19, 2010 @ 10:03 am
I’m pretty much convinced that, at least since the days William Casey’s “stewardship” of the intelligence community under Ronald Reagan, sycophants have tended to be promoted to leadership positions over those who spoke truth to power. With that in mind, it is not encouraging to recollect that our present Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, was Casey’s protege.
The problem with rational argument in this space (and Patrick, your arguments are not only rational, but also spot-on) is the demonstrable fact that rationality is emphatically *not* what motivates these people. An efficent intelligence apparatus would put the sycophants within its own ranks out of their jobs. Since the sycophants are running the show, we can have no realistic expectation that an approach that might actually *work* — that might compellingly indicate opportunities to exploit, and pitfalls to avoid, with respect to national security or anything else — would be of any interest whatsoever to those who are committing the funds and deploying the resources. That’s exactly what they must *not* do, for reasons of self-preservation and desire to retain and increase influence and power. These people are not stupid or incompetent — despite the fact that they regularly plead ignorance and incompetence whenever things go sour (just watch any congressional hearing on the subject of national security). They are, quite simply, corrupt. It’s not a technological problem; it’s a systemic one, and, at a personal level, a moral one. Why is the U.S. always doing so much violence, at such great expense? Because that’s what makes the American economic engine go. What’s the end of this story? We drive off a cliff and go bang.
Now, after the bang, there is a huge opportunity for topic mapping to be embraced by what’s left of humanity, as it attempts to conserve and improve what’s left of the ecosphere, and what’s left of the world’s knowhow. So, whatever we do now to make things easier for those folks is surely not wasted effort.
But what’s the most meaningful way to help them? Is it to try to turn the ship of state away from the rocks toward which it is now hell-bent? I think not. In 2007, if we had stood on Wall Street and, Cassandra-like, tried to get pension funds to keep their money out of mortgage-backed derivative securities (which had already been obvious frauds for at least 6 years by that time), would we have saved anyone a single dime? I doubt it. What if we had told Alan Greenspan that only 2 years later he would testify before Congress that financial institutions don’t act in their own best interests, contrary to his long and fervently-held Ayn Rand-ish faith in their rationally self-interested behavior. Would he have listened to us? No chance. No chance at all. He wasn’t ready to receive that message — not then, anyway.
It is better to light small candles than to curse the darkness, no matter how loudly one curses it. Whatever one may think about Jack Park’s insights, the wisdom of his urging us to “Just Do It” is undeniable. I mean that praxis will have the most enduring positive impact. I mean that just making topic maps is the activity most likely to be helpful to those who are left with the task of picking up the pieces after the current order goes ka-boom. The noise of the U.S. intelligence apparatus, and the enormous quantity of human resources now being expended on it, is like a siren song for us. To be quite blunt: we’re better off if we stop up our ears so we can’t hear it. It interferes with our ability to steer a course that avoids the rocks. I think we should focus on making topic maps, and let the military-industrial complex keep on accelerating toward perdition, which it will do anyway.
I in no way seek to imply you’re wrong, Patrick. I think you are right, right, right in everything you say. I just don’t think the American Empire, or, rather, the globalized military-industrial complex that now tyrannizes our economy and our lives, can be saved from self-destruction. Self-destruction is in its very DNA, and, frankly, it’s not worth saving anyway. Those who worship at it altar will, like Alan Greenspan, be forced, under conditions of extreme discomfort and cognitive dissonance, to re-evaluate their positions. We should be focusing our efforts on giving them something to turn to, when they finally begin looking for a more serviceable, less atrocious paradigm. We should already just be quietly there by then.
Comment by Steve Newcomb — July 19, 2010 @ 4:04 pm