Open Source intelligence, as in open source labor and sources
Another good article on Gray Goose in the Washington Post.
Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? (book review)
Will terrorists go nuclear? That is the essential questioned posed by counterterrorism expert Brian Jenkins in a book of the same title.
Jenkins has written a sobering and critical analysis of this question that spans over his decades of research on the topic. In fact, the book shares the title of a research paper Jenkins wrote over 30 years ago and it is that essay he uses as the entrance point for his observations. The issue of nuclear terrorism is one that has haunted policy makers, enriched movie producers, and fevered American apprehension for 30 years and the strength of Jenkins book is his categorical and tempered analysis of how each of these complex areas play into the nuclear terrorism debate.
Playing the role of mythbuster, Jenkins dives deep to determine the seeding point for a large number of nuclear terrorism memes that have propagated over the past decade. Upon examination, Jenkins finds that some of the memes are just that, organic ideas that developed a life of their own or had strategic sponsorship by individuals who were in a position to benefit from the propagation of the meme. Readers should draw some comfort from the thoughtful analysis and debunking of some of our most terrifying concerns.
In his analysis of terrorist motives, operational concepts and evolution Jenkins dissects the core issues in a way that few terrorism analysts can. This book will speak not only to his peers, but is very accessible to the general audience and it is this audience that Jenkins seems obligated to inform with this book.
That assumption brings us to the final and most essential element of the book, which is Jenkins' differentiation between "nuclear terrorism" and "nuclear terror". Nuclear terrorism is the threat that must be addressed by Western democracies through sound counterterrorism and non-proliferation policies. Nuclear terror is the state of perpetual societal fear that is exploited to erode civil liberties and generate apprehension within democracies. Of course, the fundamental question is how much apprehension can we cope with before the fundamental components of our society become unrecognizable.
Jenkins book is a highly recommended read for anyone interested in this essential subject and should be required reading for consumers of popular culture (the TV show 24, for example) that propagate the nuclear terrorism meme, or anyone who finds the concept of nuclear terrorism "terrifying".
Will Terrorists Go Nuclear? is available for purchase from Amazon.
Love this video
I still show this video in my class every semester at Georgetown. Nice to see it digitized:
Solar Sunrise: Dawn of a New Threat
Mark Cuban nails it
This is exactly my frustration with the current market crisis we are currently going through. Those that facilitated the crisis with irresponsible risky behavior are free of any sort of financial risk. It is all reward, no risk at the leadership level and this introduces what I believe are unacceptable consequences. Take a look at the list of multi-millionaires created through management failures. Required reading here.
Which is exactly why we need to re-establish a link between risk and reward in public companies. The first step should be the following law:
If the government must step in and provide any sort of financing or guarantees for any part of a public company's business, then all officers and directors lose all rights to severance pay and all outstanding vested or unvested options or warrants immediately become canceled. In the event the CEO of such corporation is not fired, but instead chooses to step down voluntarily, then the last 12 months of earnings is considered to be an interest free loan which the CEO must pay back over no more than a 10 year period.
Apple for the win
2.1 update is a major improvement for me. My 10 hour backup was reduced to 2 minutes.
I envy my friend Eric who will only ever know an iPhone with 2.1.
Apple's free pass?
I'm a big fan of Apple. Anyone that reads this blog is certainly aware of that fact. However, I can't believe that Apple is getting a free pass in the media over all the iPhone issues users are encountering. For example, on my iPhone:
- A backup takes 8-12 hours for 12GB of data over USB 2.0!
- Application installation takes several hours as well for a few MB of data.
- Huge corruption issues with the phone. Mine went dead on me, and A-list blogger like Leo LaPorte are experiencing the same issue. On restore, the phone is taking over three hours to install only 916MB of data.
- Applications fail on the phone all the time.
I had to laugh today at the Apple Genius bar when Johnny the Genius told me that he couldn't tell me how to get the phone in restore mode. He said it took him a month to learn it just right. I tried about 50 times and could not get the timing right. He did it in two tries. Obviously, there is huge firmware issue that needs to be addressed. Putting the phone in restore mode should be a simple process that does not require a trip to the Apple store (which cost me two hours of time).
I'm using a Mac Pro with 2TB of hard disk space and 8GB of RAM. I'm running the latest OS, the latest iTunes software, and the latest iPhone firmware, so don't tell me my local system is to blame. I've tried syncs through direct USB connections and via powered USB hubs. I really hope that firmware 2.1 fixes these issues as they are critical at this point and require more attention than they are getting.
Gray Goose...not the vodka
Lots of interesting online press about this project I am participating in:
The online posse to unmask Russia's hackers is ready to ride. Two weeks back, we linked to an open source effort by IntelFusion's Jeff Carr to figure out who, exactly, participated in the recent Russian cyberstrikes against Georgia and Estonia. (It's a problem in the savviest of analysts have had a bitch of a time solving.) Within 72 hours, Carr reports, he had "over 100 volunteers," from college students to "high-ranking members" of the intelligence community. (Wired)
Think Tanks 2.0?
I've been thinking a lot about Mike Tanji's Think Tank 2.0 concept that he has been pitching over at Haft of the Spear. Couple that with the discussion on tools on Mike's blog, but also on Bob Gourley's CTO Vision and I was struck with a key realization that while the Think Tank 2.0 concept is sound, what we really need is Think Tanks 2.0 (note the intentional plurality).
Namely, we need to figure out how to get the community of emerging next generation think tanks and colleague bloggers to better collaborate on projects, share information and basically build out a Think Tank Network using the newest tools and technologies available. A good example is the Gray Goose project I just volunteered for. I know two people in the group, yet using the social network of analysts out there, they've built a first rate team of participants for a unique research project. Had it not been for this project, I would probably never get the chance to collaborate with members of that team.
We've got the basis for this social network already in place with http://network.groupintel.com so we should work to build out the size of the network and then build out communities of interest within the network then use web 2.0 tools to advance research agendas of mutual interest. If everyone on my blogroll joined, and then invited everyone on their blogroll, we'd have 150 top thinkers, analysts, and technologists within the network in a week. The network can serve not only as a place to find colleagues for collaborative research, but can also serve as analytical ground zero in the event of an incident or attack. Given the 30 first responders already on the network, they'd have a great Rolodex to reach back into when the SHTF.
As of right now, there are 44 members of the GroupIntel Network. Can we get to 150 next week? Will you participate and promote it? Join the GroupIntel Network
Ning - roll your own social network
I'd been remiss about checking out Ning and finally took the time after seeing it mentioned in Mike Tanji's Think Tank 2.0 discussions and reading about it in the book Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good.
Ning lets users create their own social networks based on their particular community of interest and then provides the underlying tools to manage and operate the social network. Features include social networking (profiles, friend relationships, etc), discussion forums, photo sharing, video sharing, blogging, sub-group establishment with a subset of features for the group, and a handful of other social media capabilities.
Users are able to configure their own site, but I found it to be quite limiting and included only the ability to add some custom CSS code, not rewrite headers, footers and other elements of the site that I was used to having control over. That said, I was able to piece together a decent site in one evening (or about 3 hours). The only real coding required some fancy javascript to insert some of my own menu items in the Ning menu bar.
Page layouts are reasonably configurable with drag and drop sectional items to add new components to the social network. It has a basic text box component and an RSS widget which allows you to pull external content into the site. In my case, I used an aggregate of the members blogs to display on the main page. I did run into issues trying to insert some Google Adsense code, which I think was a result of Ning actually rewriting their own adsense scripts and the two instances barfing on each other. Ning does offer the option to remove ads from your network for $19.95 a month. Given my experience with ads, I think I'll keep the $20 and let them run ads to offset the costs. I did pay to use a custom domain name and to remove some of the annoying Ning promotional blocks.
Ning is a very viable option for communities of interest looking to create a social network. I had a mailing list of folks that were supposed to link up at the state and local level for information sharing and networking and in one night I was able to fulfill that promise and 25 people have signed up in the first 24 hours. If you are an intelligence professional, you can find the network at network.groupintel.com
Chertoff interview on cyber issues at Wired
Beware the filching. I won't summarize it here, just go read it. [Link--->]