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I Thought I Had Seen Some Crazy Things In The Intelligence Community, But Nothing Like Nuking The Moon

I love a good history book. And love reading insider info on the mysteries of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Which means I have been looking forward to Vince Houghton’s “Nuking The Moon” for quite a while.

Vince is a special kind of historian, a person who not only looks for facts and meaning, but is skilled in expressing history in understandable ways. This is why his podcast, SPYCAST, is one of the most enjoyable examinations of history and current intelligence community issues available on the net. I could not imagine a better person to serve in his current capacity as historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in DC.

Now back to the book. What a page-turner. The book explores abandoned plans from the U.S. Intelligence Community, some of which are bizarre, and a few, like the concept of dropping a nuke on the moon, are terrifying! The book reminds me of the concept we used to call S&T. I don’t mean S&T in its traditional use of Science and Technology. I mean S&T to stand for Sick and Twisted. Ha! I have seen many successful activities in the IC, and the greatest came from amazing thinkers who had that knack for thinking so far out of the box to be on the edge of crazy. Those Sick and Twisted thinkers generate lots of ideas, many of which never turn into full scale proposals. Some of which turn into plans that never get approved (the subject of Vince’s book), but a narrow slice of these S&T projects become real operations. The successful ones, we hope, will never be written about.

Reading the book will expose you to a way of thinking that comes from a necessity to win in a great struggle. Imagine you were in that fight. Wouldn’t you want the best S&T on your side?

The book has many stories that will make you feel. You will feel empathy for animals harmed in the furtherance of security objectives, you may feel like proposals were being created that would waste your tax dollars, and may in some cases read about ideas that in your mind would actually put us at risk of causing much grater harm to national security than the planners were thinking they would. There is plenty of emotion in this book.

But there is humor too. I found myself laughing plenty of times, maybe because in hindsight we can think of much better ways to accomplish objectives than those proposed here.

Overall I loved the book, and most strongly recommend it to the workforce of today’s Intelligence Community as well as those who enjoy tales of espionage. The book is really well done.

For more see: “Nuking The Moon and other intelligence schemes and military plots left on the drawing board”

Additional Reading:

If You Drive A Car, Or Know Someone Who Does, You Must Read This…

Pulitzer Prize-Winning Fred Kaplan Explores The Secret History of Cyber War

What You Need To Know About The Administration’s Cybersecurity National Action Plan

Like Kip in Napoleon Dynamite, We love Technology

Breakthrough In Energy We Should All Track: New green technology generates electricity ‘out of thin air’

Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It

The Security Yearbook by Richard Stiennon

The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage, and Fear in the Cyber Age

Leader Of U.S. Intelligence Community Delivers Clear and Unambiguous Warning of Cyber Threat

Time for another clear and unambiguous warning on the growing cyber threat, this one in testimony to Congress by the leader of the U.S. Intelligence Community:

Security of Information systems: Allow me to turn now to a transnational threat that is, at present, difficult to measure — the threat of attack against our information systems and information-based infrastructures. Hackers, criminal groups, and foreign intelligence services consider these systems lucrative targets, as evidenced by the growing number of intrusions into corporate and financial information systems. … I am concerned that the threat to our information systems will grow in coming years as the enabling technologies to attack these systems proliferate and more countries and groups develop new strategies that incorporate such attacks.

Our efforts to identify and characterize the threat are continuing. I am encouraged by our progress over the past year. We are developing cooperative efforts within the community, and establishing valuable links with other agencies outside the Community and outside government. We have a lot more to do, however. We must identify sufficient resources to work on this problem and work through many of the legal and regulatory obstacles to collecting needed intelligence.

You can read the full testimony on the CIA.gov website. You will need to go to the archives page. That warning was delivered in February 1996 by Director of Central Intelligence John M. Deutch. While there you can find similar warnings delivered every year up to today. You can add to those the warnings of every Director of National Intelligence, which you can read on their site since 2005.

With that as context I would like to underscore that threat warnings are good, and having every leader of the U.S. intelligence community help underscore the seriousness of this threat is important. But like in every other warning the intelligence community gives, decision-makers can fail to act.

Could I be considered a troll for bringing up this old history with such a click-bate title? Maybe. But you have to admit, there is a huge point to be made here. We should all do what we can to be aware of the threat. But awareness is not enough. We have to do something about it. And by “we” I don’t just mean policy makers. Policy is important, but leaders must act at all levels. In government, in industry, in academia, in non-profits and at home.

There were many other warnings through the years. See George Tenet’s 1998 warning at: An Assessment on the Cyber Threat

What do you think about this? Seems like we have had plenty of warnings, but have failed to act. So one thing is for sure, the current situation we find ourselves in is not an intelligence failure.

More on things cyber:

SitScape, Inc. Selected by In-Q-Tel (IQT) to Support the U.S. Intelligence Community

SitScape, Inc. the leader in visual collaborative User-Defined-Operating-Picture (UDOP) software for Situational Awareness, today announced a strategic investment and development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), the independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technologies solutions to support the mission of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

Released: Vienna, VA February 25, 2011

SitScape, Inc. the leader in visual collaborative User-Defined-Operating-Picture (UDOP) software for Situational Awareness, today announced a strategic investment and development agreement with In-Q-Tel (IQT), the independent strategic investment firm that identifies innovative technologies solutions to support the mission of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

SitScape’s innovative software addresses the pervasive challenges of disparate and diverse information sources facing today’s business and government. It makes visualizing and aggregating any silo-ed desktop, legacy as well as Web application extremely easy by enabling UDOP in seconds with zero programming, achieving on-demand Situational Awareness.

“IQT’s strategic partnership with SitScape reflects the opportunities we see in this innovative approach for information and application aggregation, visualization and contextual collaboration,” said William Strecker, Executive Vice President of Architecture & Engineering and CTO at IQT. “SitScape’s software will offer our customers in the U.S. Intelligence Community the powerful capabilities they have been looking for in the visualization and contextual collaboration space.”

“We are thrilled to be working with IQT,” said Kevin Yin, CEO of SitScape. “IQT’s selection of our technology truly speaks to the power of SitScape’s Situational Awareness Software, and further expands our presence in the federal market. “

With SitScape’s award-winning software, mission users, operators and analysts gain greater access over their heterogeneous information sources and silo-ed IT applications. They can contextually visualize, share and collaborate across distributed networks with diverse computers and mobile devices for enhanced situational awareness and decision making.

About SitScape

SitScape is the leader in collaborative User-Defined-Operating-Picture (UDOP) Situational Awareness software solutions, ideally suited for Cyber Security Watch Floor, Counter-terrorism Center, Command & Control Center, Operations Center, Data Center, Situational Room, Traffic Monitoring, Emergency Response Team, Intelligence Analysts, C4ISR and also marketing, sales teams’ visual documents sharing and publishing. SitScape has large customers in both the commercial and Federal space. To learn more about SitScape and its software product, please visit http://www.sitscape.com.

About IQT

In-Q-Tel is the strategic, not-for-profit investment firm that works to identify, adapt, and deliver innovative technology solutions to support the missions of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Launched in 1999 as a private, independent organization, IQT’s mission is to identify and partner with companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve the national security interests of the United States. Working from an evolving strategic blueprint defining the Intelligence Community’s critical technology needs, IQT engages with entrepreneurs, growth companies, researchers, and investors to deliver technologies that provide superior capabilities for the CIA and the larger Intelligence Community. To learn more about IQT, visit http://www.iqt.org.

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Gourley: Intelligence Community Should Provide Unclassified Cyber Threat Assessments Annually – The New New Internet

Gourley provides context for the New New Internet:

For that be effective, Gourley writes that the Department must choose the a capable and intelligence technology leader to head the NCCC. “The nation must choose wisely and put a very smart technology leader in this position,” he writes. “Someone who can enforce the right standards and give direction when required but can back off and let agency IT leaders run things when required and that person must be smart enough to know when and how to decide what to decide about.”

Gourley also praises the movement towards a system of continuous monitoring rather than the current FISMA structure. “Updating FISMA is long overdue,” he writes. “Moving towards real-time monitoring is GREAT!”

Additionally, making NCCC the central coordination point across the federal government is “a solid move.” The proposed effort to create secured supply chains, remove any impediments to sharing information and factoring in the human side of cybersecurity are also important, Gourley writes.

In addition to his praise for the bill, Gourley has one additional piece he would like to see added to the bill.

“I want to suggest that the U.S. Intelligence Community be tasked with providing a detailed yearly cyber intelligence threat assessment  for unclassified dissemination,” he writes. “The IC does a good job of providing some counterintelligence assessments and frequently mentions cyber in open fora like Congressional Testimony, but I believe this issue deserves a focused, NIE-like report dedicated to this topic.  Of course the IC should also be tasked with support to the NCCC.”

via Gourley: Intelligence Community Should Provide Unclassified Cyber Threat Assessments Annually – The New New Internet.

Related Reading

2008 AFCEA Meritorious Service to the Intelligence Community Award

AFCEA International, a non-profit membership association serving the military, government, industry and academia as an ethical forum for advancing professional knowledge and relationships in the fields of communication, IT, intelligence and global security, awarded Crucial Point LLC CTO and founder Bob Gourley with their 2008 Meritorious Service Award.

Citation follows:

2008 AFCEA Meritorious Service to the Intelligence Community Award

Mr. Bob Gourley

CTO, Crucial Point LLC

Mr. Bob Gourley is the CTO and founder of Crucial Point LLC, a technology research and acceleration firm, and is the lead blogger at ctovision.com. Gourley is a former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

While in this position he was recognized by InfoWorld as one of the top 25 CTOs in the globe.  Gourley is a strong advocate for user-focused and open source software. His contributions to the Google Gadget community have placed him on Google’s list of the top 200 gadget programmers in the world.  He holds three masters degrees including a Master of Science degree in scientific and technical intelligence from Naval Postgraduate School, a Master of Science degree in military science from USMC University, and a Master of Science degree in computer science from James Madison University.  Gourley has published over 40 articles and has won National Defense University’s Sun Tsu award for information warfare and the US Naval Institute’s Colin Powell Essay contest.

He is a founding member of the Cyber Conflict Studies Association and sits on that organization’s board. He is also on the board of directors several other non-profit and for-profit enterprises, and serves on several government advisory boards.

via AFCEA.

We are really honored when we make the award lists. Some of note include:

Optimizing Corporate Intelligence with OODA Loop

Our site at OODAloop.com is dedicated to improving the art and science of business decision-making. We cover advances in technology, the dynamics of global geopolitics, the nuances of the cyber threat, and provide deep insights into market trends.

The site also hosts a special series on the Intelligent Enterprise, which provides best practices and guides for business leaders seeking competitive advantage through better and more accurate decision-making.

Posts in this series include:

A Practitioner’s View of Corporate Intelligence

This post is part of a series providing insights aimed at corporate strategists seeking competitive advantage through better and more accurate decision-making.

Organizations in competitive environments should continually look for ways to gain advantage over their competitors. The ability of a business to learn and translate that learning into action, at speeds faster than others, is one of the most important competitive advantages you can have. This fact of business life is why the model of success in Air to Air combat articulated by former Air Force fighter pilot John Boyd, the Observe – Orient – Decide – Act (OODA) decision loop, is so relevant in business decision-making today.

In this business model, decisions are based on observations of dynamic situations tempered with business context to drive decisions and actions. These actions should change the situation meaning new observations and new decisions and actions will follow. This all underscores the need for a good corporate intelligence program.

Optimizing Corporate Intelligence

Actionable recommendation on ways to optimize a corporate intelligence effort. It is based on a career serving large scale analytical efforts in the US Intelligence Community and in applying principles of intelligence in corporate America.

Corporate Intelligence In The New Age

We strongly encourage every company, large or small, to set aside dedicated time to focus on ways to improve your ability to understand the nature of the significantly changed risk environment we are all operating in today, and then assess how your organizational thinking should change.

As an aid to assessing your corporate sensemaking abilities, this post summarizes OODA’s research and analysis into optimizing corporate intelligence for the modern age.

C-Suite Considerations Regarding Current Geopolitical Tensions

Something is different in the geopolitical situation today. The reasons are probably a combination of factors that include the pandemic, the rise of the global grid of cyberspace, plus the payoff of years of planning and strategic moves by our adversaries. But whatever the reasons, the world today is more complicated and more dangerous than the world of just a year ago, and in many cases the risks being faced by open societies have never been seen before. The changes are so significant, OODA recommends all business leaders take stock of the geopolitical situation and assess how the nature of these changes should impact your business strategy.

“The world is a more dangerous and complicated place than it was just a year ago. Your corporate strategy and defensive posture needs to reflect that”

Kathy and Randy Pherson, Authors of Critical Thinking for Strategic Intelligence

Kathy and Randy Pherson are authors of the book Critical Thinking for Strategic Intelligence. Both had successful careers in the US Intelligence Community. While they were at the CIA they pioneered new methods of risk analysis and analytical methods, and helped bring those methods to widespread adoption in the community. Both are also successful business leaders who created companies that build value for others. Their focus in business is on helping others improve their analytical methods. They write about and teach best practices in analysis.

Useful Standards For Corporate Intelligence

Provides best practices and actionable information you can use to improve and professionalize your corporate intelligence activities. This post discusses standards in intelligence, a topic that can improve the quality of all corporate intelligence efforts and do so while reducing ambiguity in the information used to drive decisions and enhancing the ability of corporations to defend their most critical information.

An Executive’s Guide To Cognitive Bias in Decision Making

Cognitive Bias and the errors in judgement they produce are seen in every aspect of human decision-making, including in the business world. Companies that have a better understanding of these cognitive biases can optimize decision making at all levels of the organization, leading to better performance in the market. Companies that ignore the impact these biases have on corporate decision-making put themselves at unnecessary risk. This post by OODA Co-Founder Bob Gourley provides personal insights into key biases as well as mitigation strategies you can put in place right now.

 

 

CTO Guide to the Business of Artificial Intelligence

 

artificial-intelligence-headThis is the CTOvision guide on the megatrend of Artificial Intelligence. This report gives a high level overview of the most important factors of the trend, gives updated insights into the activities of the major AI companies, and succinct descriptions of AI tech. It also points to key CTOvision reporting to help readers dive deeper into the topic.

We start with a definition of AI:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the application of thinking machines to real world problems.

This definition is unique. We like it because it focused on practitioners. Once you take a practitioners view you see AI is really about far more than algorithms. There are a wide range of technical and non-technical factors that must come together to deliver results.

Examples of tech components and non-tech components of real world AI solutions follow:

Tech Components:

  • Analytic Algorithms (including Machine Learning, Deep Learning)
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Robotics
  • Computer Vision
  • Data Management
  • Sensors
  • Hardware architectures
  • Technical security measures

Non Tech Components:

  • New business strategies
  • Cybersecurity policies
  • Business risk policies
  • Ethics
  • Legal and regulatory regimes
  • Training and testing
  • Operation and maintenance
  • Hiring, promotion, career management

Business Impact of AI:

Here are the key points we recommend any enterprise tech professional consider regarding AI:

  • With business models returning profit now, all indications are AI will continue to improve.
  • The evolution of AI has been accelerating due to its coupling with incredibly low cost cloud computing.
  • Creators use a “generate and test” approach to creating functionality, with no accepted protocol for security or testing in AI. This is a huge negative.
  • There are four major problems with AI today: 1) Some of the most capable AI is not scrutable (you can’t see how it works), 2) AI can be easy to deceive, trick or hack, 3) AI can be unfair, unethical and unwanted, and 4) AI can be leveraged by competitors and even criminals to your detriment.
  • There are ways to balance the risks and opportunities around AI.
  • AI, especially Machine Learning, is playing a huge role in modernizing the cybersecurity industry.
  • AI is also being used by cyber criminals, with many in the security community predicting AI enabled malware coming soon.
  • AI can be easier to deceive than current computer software (see Generative Adversary Networks: A very exciting development in Artificial Intelligence).
  • There are many lessons that can be learned from others on ways to improve your corporate governance over AI including ethics around AI.
  • More on optimizing AI for business can be found at OODAloop.com 

Open AI questions decision-makers should track:

  • Will job displacement caused by AI be a crisis? Will government put regulations on companies because of this?
  • Will companies use AI in ways their customers regard as ethical?
  • Will there ever be a widely-accepted security framework for AI?
  • Can behavioral analytics enhance security?
  • How can machine learning improve cybersecurity?

The field is growing dramatically with the proliferation of high powered computers into homes and businesses and especially with the growing power of smartphones and other mobile devices. AI requires lots of data to be effective and with the proliferation of mobile devices there is more data now than ever.

Due Diligence Assessments and Artificial Intelligence

The trend of Artificial Intelligence is an increasingly important element of corporate Due Diligence since it is so disruptive business models.

  • On the sell side: Firms should ensure their use of AI is done securely and ethically (see our special report at OODAloop.com on “When AI goes Wrong” for insight into issues and mitigation strategies). This applies to any firm that uses any AI enabled capability. However, firms that produce AI (vendors) should pay particular attention to this, it will make a big difference in how well a firm will be valued.
  • On the buy side: Buyers should pay particular attention to the use of AI in the target to ensure a well thought out architecture that mitigates risks. External and independent verification and validation of AI ethics and security policies and practices are key, as well as the degree that the target is complying with appropriate compliance regimes.

Strategically, the acquisition of technology firms is an art requiring assessment of how unique the capability is and how much in demand it will be in the market. We provide a special focus on  due diligence for artificial intelligence companies via our parent company, OODA LLC.

The Technologies of Artificial Intelligence

There are many key technologies used in fielding AI. These are the components of AI technologies we recommend tracking:

Machine Learning: Machine Learning is a subset of AI that focused on giving computers the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Machine Learning involves the automated training and fitting models to data. ML is the most widely used AI related technology and is frequently the front end of more complex solutions. This is a broad technique with many methods. Methods commonly taught and applied in ML solutions all have different strengths and weaknesses and part of the art of ML is knowing which applies to the need at hand.

Neural Networks: Considered a more complex form of Machine Learning, this approach uses data flow mappings similar to artificial “neurons” to weigh inputs and related them to outputs. This approach views problems in terms of inputs, outputs and variables that associated inputs with outputs.

Deep Learning: Highly evolved neural networks with many layers of variables and features. Important to most modern image and voice recognitions and for extracting meaning from text. Deep learning models use a technique called “back propagation“ to optimize the models that predict or classify outputs, which adds to complexity of the end model. The end model may have so many 1000’s of variables that no human can really understand how the model functions or how a conclusion was arrived at.

Natural Language processing: This class of technology analyzes and understands human speech and text. Used in modern applications of speech recognition including chatbots and intelligent agents. NLP also requires training data, in this case the output is knowledge about how language relates, often referred to as a “knowledge graph” for a particular domain.

Rule-based expert systems: This is an older approach to AI solutions. It involves establishing sets of logical rules derived from the way people actually work. Used in many processes where sets can be clearly defined. This was the dominant form of AI in the past and is still around today, but is really just complex programming. Imagine a large number of “if-then” statements in a program, but in this case the rules were built by domain experts.

Robots and Robotics: This is the automation of physical tasks. Primarily used in factory and warehouse tasks but growing use in heath care, small businesses and homes. Training data for robots is critically important, but in this case the training data may include location for movement or a wide variety of expected changes in the environment.

Robotic Process Automation: This is the automation of structured digital tasks in the enterprise or factory. This is a highly evolved form of scripting actions. It is a combination of software and workflows built to help automate business processes. RPA is at its best when it provides users with the benefits of other AI capabilities like Machine Learning.

Other Related AI Terms and Concepts:

Supervised Learning: The most common type of training for AI models. Data is labeled by humans so the algorithm can be taught based on what was established by humans. This is very similar to older techniques of statistics like regression analysis. Once a model has been developed using supervised learning, it can be used with new data to provide predictions. This is called “scoring”. Training models on labeled data generally takes large quantities of data that have known outcomes, and in many use cases the outcome that is being sought is actually a rare occurrence (this is called a “class imbalance”).

Unsupervised Learning:This is the development of AI models in ways that detect patterns in data that are not labeled and results are not known.

Training Data:The data used for the development of the model. This is often validated using another subset of data for which the outcome to be predicted is known.

The methods and concepts above are almost always combined in any real world AI solution.

The AI Vendor Community

Most AI capabilities today have their roots in academia, but real implementations are being driven by the corporate world. There are many reasons for this. One is the profit motive. Another is the large collections of data available to the big firms. We provide more focused reporting on the firms driving AI forward in our Disruptive IT Directory in the categories of Tech Titans and Artificial Intelligence Companies. It is especially important to track the AI developments of Google, Microsoft, IBM, Amazon, Apple,

You can see our reference to Truly Useful AI You Can Use Right Today.

For Further Study

Artificial intelligence software is assisting people in most every discipline. The many functions of AI are considered to be threatening jobs across multiple industries, but others consider it a great producer of jobs since it will help create entirely new industries and free more humans to innovate and create. This impact on jobs is best considered in conjunction with the megatrend of Robotics, since together those two trends are going to impact some of the largest sectors of jobs in the U.S. (consider, for example, the impact on retail and shipping).

For alerts on future posts on this topic see CTOvision Newsletters.

Some of the AI companies we are tracking include:

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For more on these topics see:

There are seven key megatrends driving the future of enterprise IT. You can remember them all with the mnemonic acronym CAMBRIC, which stands for Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence, Mobility, Big Data, Robotics, Internet of Things, CyberSecurity.

What the New U.S. Intelligence Strategy Says About Cyber Threats

The United States intelligence strategy for 2019 has been released, covering seven specific themes.  Here’s how the United States Intelligence Community will deal with cyber threats:

“Despite growing awareness of cyber threats and improving cyber defenses, nearly all information, communication networks, and systems will be at risk for years to come. Our adversaries are becoming more adept at using cyberspace capabilities to threaten our interests and advance their own strategic and economic objectives. Cyber threats will pose an increasing risk to public health, safety, and prosperity as information technologies are integrated into critical infrastructure, vital national networks, and consumer devices. The IC must continue to grow its intelligence capabilities to meet these evolving cyber threats as a part of a comprehensive cyber posture positioning the Nation for strategic and tactical response.”

For more on the new strategy and to download a copy see: OODAloop.com

 

More Reading:

For more on these topics see the CTOvision Guide to National Security Technology and

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