ping
Tip Off by Darkwing104
The salvation-through-technology types do great damage to our intelligence effort. They deliver massive amounts of data, but become so mesmerized by what technology can do that they slight the importance of relevance. And humans are messy, while technology appears pristine. Furthermore, there are massive profits to be made on the technology side (and good retirement jobs for program managers); thus, Congress leans inevitably toward funding systems rather than fostering human abilities.I consider myself very pro-technology in everything, including and especially defense, but I agree with this paragraph. Sometimes technology is not only lacking, but can become a dangerous diversion. (As in education, when kids learn computers but not books.)
Ralph makes so many great points in this article that I hardly know where to start. These lines probably sum up the essence of what he is saying:
"As then-Lieutenant General William Scott Wallace, the Army V Corps commander on the march to Baghdad, observed, the enemy we ended up fighting (albeit successfully) was not the enemy the intelligence community had briefed. Commanders learned as they fought, after our best intelligence had promised them a different war. In Iraq, we couldn't see what we wanted to see, so we refused to see what we didn't want to see. We relied so heavily on technical collection means that we forgot to think."
"Only human beings can penetrate the minds of other human beings. Understanding our enemies is the most important requirement for our intelligence system. Yet, "understanding" is a word you rarely, if ever, find in our intelligence manuals. We are obsessed with accumulating great volumes of data, measuring success in tonnage rather than results. Instead of panning for gold, we proudly pile up the mud."
"If we want to improve the quality and usefulness of the intelligence that reaches our nation's leaders, we need to accept the primacy of the human being in intelligence. Instead of the current system, in which people support technology, we need our technologies to support people."
Truer words have never been spoken. 'Intelligence' in our government has been in critical short supply for quite some time!!! Corruption, on the other hand, we've had an abundant surplus.
http://www.highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2006/03/07/4911
Is this the Ralph Peters? Looks like the left is using FR for misinformation.
Ralph, tell us your combat Intel experience?
Ralph: 22 years as an EM great, How did ya make LTC?
Please tell us. All active duty? You are my hero.
There are two issues that will linger forever as concerns the intelligence services.
1. The Klintonista regime gutted it during their ugly reign.
2. The Intel services have been at each other's throats forever and the competition btwn them (e.g. withholding info) has been around since the start of time and will be around until the end of time. Life is like that, live with it.