Sources Open and Closed

ON THIS WEEK’S DNI OPEN SOURCE CONFERENCE.


Early this week I attended the DNI Open Source Conference, a two-day Washington affair keynoted by the Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, and attended by roughly 900 people from intelligence agencies, private companies that want to do business with them, and academics.

The conference’s topic was the gathering, care and handling of open-source (OS) information, such as from news media, commercial databases and libraries—basically, anything that’s not stolen or obtained surreptitiously. OS has recently become a priority thanks to the efforts of McConnell and others who contend that OS should be the “source of first resort” for the U.S. intelligence community (IC).

I attended panel after panel in which current and former IC members described the virtues and drawbacks of open-source collection: how to vet it, recombine it, and even how to get access to it at all, since many IC computers are purposely isolated from the Internet. (Internet connections risk giving away IC intentions since an adversary could monitor intelligence-agency searches and results.)

Although some of these breakout sessions were useful, most were inordinately heavy on panelist presentations and light on Q&A time, reducing opportunities for useful give-and-take between panelists and audience members.

The plenary sessions, held in an amphitheatre, were uncomfortably repetitive. Officials with long experience in the IC each welcomed us, heralded a new dawn for the IC’s embrace of OS, asked our help, and solicited suggestions. Not one of these plenary speakers—high government officials all—provided contact information for themselves, so the idea of people in the OS community making helpful suggestions remains a bit distant.

Unfortunately this trend of one-way communication reached up to Tom Fingar, deputy director of national intelligence for analysis, whose talk on Tuesday followed the release of a two-page, unclassified summary of the new National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism. Perhaps trying to motivate his audience, Fingar briefly discussed the NIE’s findings, which boil down to: Al-Qa’ida still threatens the U.S. from its Pakistan “safe havens.”

After the director’s remarks, Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker asked Fingar why the NIE took three years to conclude what anyone reading the newspapers would already know. Fingar testily replied that a) the media don’t have as many sources as the IC, which therefore b) has a higher confidence level in its conclusions.

Considering that the conference’s purpose was to promote OS sources and thinking, Fingar's reversion to the old-school IC line—We know more than you, so please don’t question our thinking—was remarkable. Particularly on the topic of al-Qa’ida, whose plans and intentions the IC has misread more than once.

Afterwards, I shared a chuckle with Wright, a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Looming Tower, when I accused him, personally, of lacking both good sources and confidence.

Fortunately, the real story of the DNI Open Source Conference wasn’t on the agenda. Someone once told me it’s the ‘walks in the woods’ that matter at conferences, and the myriad conversations between panelists, attendees and exhibitors between sessions generated real sparks. I was hard-pressed for a moment to talk with many of the panelists since so many others also sought them out.

I have no doubt that hundreds, maybe thousands, of useful connections were made between IC, private-sector and academic intelligence professionals, whose enthusiasm for talking and debating one-on-one was obvious and contagious.

This is where the DNI Open Source Conference’s real value to the U.S. lies; hopefully, next year’s conference will move beyond the introductory, isn’t-this-great phase and plan in more time for people to mix, mingle and create connections that will lead to better OS intelligence collection.

Absurd Denials

When the more clueless Iraqi imams accuse the U.S. of importing "Jews" who will somehow enslave Mesopotamia, the U.S. doesn't usually issue a denial because the idea is so absurd.

Unfortunately, British forces felt they should deny importing the dread honey badger to Basra.

A Note from Secretary Rice

Len Baldyga forwards a cable that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently sent to all U.S. diplomatic and consular posts around the world. In it, she thanks U.S. diplomats for tolerating the State Department's redeployment of personnel from comfy, overstaffed places like Germany to more wretched, frequently isolated but vital postings.

The Secretary also explicitly puts Embassy Baghdad at the top of the heap in terms of getting first pick of staff—which is hardly necessary to emphasize to U.S. diplomats, who understand that the only route to advancement at State is through the Green Zone:

SUBJECT: RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES OF OUR NEW ERA—A CALL TO SERVICE

1. Around the world, the men and women of the Department are doing important work. The work may vary, from traditional partnership and alliance building to the cutting edge of transformational diplomacy. Whatever your work, it is all necessary and vital to our nation's security.

2. I am very grateful, and pleased, that so many of you have responded to the Director General's call to serve in difficult posts. The changes he has instituted are making a difference for Iraq and all of our difficult yet critical posts. Those changes, together with global repositioning, are ensuring that more of the Foreign Service and the Civil Service are on the ground in transitioning countries. It is there, on the frontlines of diplomacy, that I believe we can have the greatest immediate impact.

3. As I am sure you are aware, the number of unaccompanied and limited accompanied posts has grown in recent years. The decision to serve at these posts requires personal sacrifice. I would like to extend a personal thank you to each and everyone of you who have made this decision. I would especially like to acknowledge the difficulties such service imposes on our families. We are now preparing for 2008 openings, and I am committed first and foremost to ensuring that Embassy Baghdad has the staff it needs.

4. Why is all of this so important? I believe we are at a crossroads in history. The decisions we make and the actions we take will shape our world for years to come. I believe that we, like our predecessors, must actively commit to building a better world where terror, injustice, and extremism cannot gain a foothold. To win this struggle, we must mobilize more than our military. We must also deploy our democratic principles, our development assistance, our compassion, and the power of ideas.

5. I, therefore, encourage each of you -- and your families -- to look to the future, consider where you can best make a difference, and then pursue the assignments and training that will get you there. I encourage you to serve in transitioning countries, to learn their culture and their language -- from Arabic to Chinese to Hindi -- and to share the principles and the story of the American people. I especially encourage your continued commitment to serve at our most difficult and essential posts, such as Baghdad and Kabul.

6. In the past, those who helped shape a better future became the leaders of their time, and of this Department. I urge you to seize the opportunities before you and lead.

7. Thank you again for your commitment to public service.

Item number six is perhaps the most interesting; Secretary Rice calls on staffers to sacrifice but also publicly implies a quid pro quo: Work hard now at your hardship posting and you too can be great, and perhaps even stride in the footsteps of Cordell Hull and Dean Acheson.

It's a small bit of inspiration, but it may be vital for U.S. diplomats to hear as it places them in a larger context of diplomacy stretching all the way back to the first Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson.

Much More than a Mouse

SECOND THOUGHTS ABOUT FARFOUR, ON THE OCCASION OF HIS DEATH.


I’d been thinking that Farfour, Hamas’s Mickey Mouse lookalike, had quietly retired under a combined assault by Disney lawyers and world public opinion. Good riddance, I thought; Farfour had been used by Hamas to indoctrinate Palestinian kids on the importance of being good little martyrs, outraging Disneyphiles and trademark lawyers alike.

But I was wrong, as an un-bylined story in yesterday’s New York Times will show:

Farfour, Hamas’s TV Mouse, Dies ‘Martyr’s Death’ at Hands of Israeli

JERUSALEM, June 30—Farfour, the giant Mickey Mouse look-alike who was the host of a Palestinian children’s program on Hamas-affiliated television and drew international ire for what critics saw as incitement, died a “martyr’s death” at the hands of a fictional Israeli on Friday.

...

In the final episode of the program, “Tomorrow’s Pioneers,” Farfour’s grandfather, a Palestinian refugee, entrusted him the deeds and a key for property abandoned by the family when Israel became a state and Palestinians fled or were chased out. After leaving his grandfather, “Jews” went after Farfour and asked him to hand over the deeds and the key. When he refused, he was beaten to death.

I used to get riled when right-wingers would refer to some Middle Eastern dictatorships as “totalitarian.” It was a stretch that the corrupt, ramshackle state structures of an Iran or a Saudi Arabia could drive every aspect of a citizen’s life and thoughts toward a specific thought pattern, as the Soviets once tried to do.

But there is nothing ramshackle about Hamas, which is attempting a total brainwashing of its citizenry from the crib on up. The merits of Hamas’s cause can be debated but its efforts to create an anti-Israel Jesus Camp of the airwaves make me regret my earlier lighthearted treatment of Farfour and Hamas.

I now wonder when some anti-Semitic version of Thomas the Tank Engine will hit the airwaves, and figure a Two Minutes Hate for adolescents can’t be far behind.

"Our Independence from Foreign Funding Is Our Only Strength"

The Times magazine ran a depressing little piece this past Sunday on successes and failures in public diplomacy toward Iran ("Hard Realities of Soft Power"). It dissects the disposition of about $75 million in funds meant to influence Iranian opinion, but unfortunately, the funds—and administration officials' pronouncements in support of Iranian civil-society organizations (CSOs)—have had unintended consequences.

It seems like most of the failure has come from this combination:

Publicized U.S. Funding of Iranian CSOs + Administration Sabre-Rattling + Absence of External Oppressor = Tehran Crackdown on CSOs

I occasionally give Cold War-era FSO and USIA types a hard time, because some seem to reflexively reach for a toolkit that contains some combination of Voice of America programming and touring American musical groups as our front line of public diplomacy; but in this case, it would be nice to head back to a Cold War model that looked something like this:

Highly Covert Funding + Steady But Judicious U.S. Talk About Democratic Futures + External Oppressor + Patience = End of USSR

Maybe it's time to redouble U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, where the Taliban are at least externally inspired and supported—and get out of Iraq, where we are the external oppressor of some large fraction of the population.

That Was the Zombie War That Was

A SURPRISINGLY ACUTE BOOK ABOUT THE UNDEAD.


It’s an article of faith among fans that any time science fiction says something important, it is not taken seriously outside the fan community. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War fits this model, as novels with much larger palettes (Dune and Foundation) did before it.

Author Max Brooks sets World War Z 10 years after the last major world power has subdued a plague of zombies, which occurs sometime in the near future. It includes wide-ranging interviews with those who survived the decade-long war against the undead, putting the novel’s “present” somewhere around 2030 and gazing back at the 2010s.

Brooks’s zombies are pure George Romero: mindless yet strong, vulnerable only if you destroy the brain. Hungry. They spread, of course, by killing and partially eating victims who then return to ‘life’ as zombies themselves. They generally cannot climb obstacles, and the moans of one attract others within earshot to an unlimited extent.

But zombies are just the gory gift-wrap for some acute social commentary. Like Warner Brothers cartoons featuring smart-aleck rabbits and overconfident coyotes, World War Z works on several levels. For teenagers and young adults, Brooks paints a pulp picture of the near-destruction of humanity.

For adults who think about U.S. society and international relations, the book has a second level:

Take a threat with X qualities (add robustness and strength to normal humans; subtract reason, speed and tool use; the zombie disease spreads by direct contact). How will X threat affect Y type of society (post-industrial, high-tech, increasingly insular)?

Seen through this lens, World War Z is an examination of society’s weaknesses and strengths relative to that threat.

The zombies overrun large sections of the earth, including the entire U.S. east of the Rockies, before humanity manages to counterattack years later. World trade collapses, and widespread fires combine with a small nuclear exchange to drop global temperatures 10-15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Various societal weaknesses aid the zombies’ rise:

The high-speed international trade in bodily organs speeds zombies’ spread via transplants—especially from China, where the zombie plague is thought to originate. It also makes advanced Western hospitals the sites of zombie outbreaks, quickly crippling nations’ medical capabilities.

First-world militaries’ shock-and-awe attacks fail against opponents that cannot be shocked and awed (read as “non-deterrable” in current jargon).

Training riflemen to aim for center body mass, rather than to take head shots, also works against human forces.

Many spend time Googling for answers rather than grappling with physical-world factors that could help them escape or fight the zombies.

A sedentary class of white-collar workers is useless to a society that suddenly must fight a large-scale infantry war. Physical stamina and blue-collar skills (as farmers, machinists, factory workers, etc.) are suddenly highly prized, leading to general social upheaval.

The unwillingness of some societies to accept an unimaginable threat causes much unnecessary death, adding to the zombies’ numbers. For example, many Arabs initially believe the zombie plague is merely a Zionist lie.

China’s penchant for secrecy catches up with it, as it successfully deceives foreign intelligence agencies into thinking that early zombie outbreaks are themselves rumors spread by the PRC government to hide a massive political purge.

On the other hand, various societal strengths help humanity eventually beat the zombies:

White South African paranoia emerges as the unlikeliest virtue, in the form of an apartheid-era plan that becomes the basis of each country’s merciless decisions about which human groups to protect and which to abandon, essentially as bait, so that others may reach safety.

As with invaders throughout history, even one that gets behind its lines, Russia’s vast interior and unforgiving winters give it periodic respite from the zombie invasion (the zombies are inanimate when frozen, then thaw each spring).

After a disastrous opening engagement in Yonkers, N.Y., the U.S. military completely redesigns its weaponry, doctrine and training to fight a years-long war on foot, which sweeps the U.S. from west to east. Needless to say, this infantry focus does not please the Air Force, whose high-tech weapons platforms are now useless and largely mothballed in favor of low-tech aerial resupply.

Max Brooks had previously written The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead, which treated episodes from horror movies as straight-faced fact and showed how one could avoid the mistakes that caused the deaths (and undeaths) of so many B-movie actors. World War Z is a logical brand extension—but one that also happens to illuminate some of our current world societies’ weaknesses.

I contacted Brooks’s publicists about an interview for Beacon in which we could discuss this further—does he realize this is the most entertaining social commentary in years?—but they replied that Brooks won’t be doing interviews until the fall release of the World War Z paperback. I’ll try and get hold of him then.

The Drift of “Public Diplomacy”

SOON, THE TERM WILL CEASE TO HAVE ANY MEANING AT ALL.


For years the term “public diplomacy” has been fought over by specialists and pundits. I’d initially thought that public diplomacy could and should be defined as:

governmental expressions of the best of your nation’s culture, science and style of government in all their messiness

but the term has drifted as its use has widened. Readers will recall me insisting over the years that “public diplomacy” should not consist of a Karen Hughes-style rapid-reaction force that sat there watching TV all day, responding instantly to foreign badmouthing, but I lost that one and PD went through a period of being defined as:

top-down unity of messaging and prompt correction of disinformation about the U.S.

and now “public diplomacy” is becoming synonymous with mere “diplomacy”—the actions of our ambassadors. This latest watering-down of “public diplomacy” is illustrated in a bit of critique from Davids Medienkritik, which purports to analyze the German media:

The fact that members of the American Foreign Service haven't more effectively engaged German media has been a costly failure. The system of two year rotations in the US foreign service clearly makes it more difficult to establish an effective media program. The fact that the Foreign Service and State Department tend to lean undeniably to the left also means that there is currently less desire to go out and explain and defend the positions of the US government on mass media forums - despite the fact that that is the very mission of the public diplomacy officials.

No, day-to-day explaining and defending is not what public diplomacy is about! But I’ll probably lose this one, too, since “public diplomacy” now seems reduced to:

ambassadors and staff staring down hostile local media.

(Thanks as always to John Brown's Public Diplomacy Review for the initial item.)

Science Fiction Writers Aid DHS

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE, EVEN BEFORE IT WAS COOL.


In “Sci-fi writers join war on terror,” Mimi Hall describes Sigma, a group of science-fiction writers who are helping the DHS brainstorm ways to protect the U.S.:

The last time the group gathered was in the late 1990s, when members met with government scientists to discuss what a post-nuclear age might look like, says group member Greg Bear. He has written 30 sci-fi books, including the best seller Darwin's Radio.

Now, the Homeland Security Department is calling on the group to help with the government's latest top mission of combating terrorism.

Although some sci-fi writers' futuristic ideas might sound crazy now, scientists know that they often have what seems to be an uncanny ability to see into the future.

"Fifty years ago, science-fiction writers told us about flying cars and a wireless handheld communicator," says Christopher Kelly, spokesman for Homeland Security's Science and Technology division. "Although flying cars haven't evolved, cellphones today are a way of life. We need to look everywhere for ideas, and science-fiction writers clearly inform the debate."

Bear says the writers offer powerful imaginations that can conjure up not only possible methods of attack, but also ideas about how governments and individuals will respond and what kinds of high-tech tools could prevent attacks.

The group's motto is "Science Fiction in the National Interest." To join the group, Andrews says, you have to have at least one technical doctorate degree.

Bear is the perfect pick for a group like this; I had the good fortune to meet him a few years ago, at a conference that looked at ways to enhance human performance, and he had the twin attributes of deep insight (Darwin’s Radio and its sequel deal with periodic jumps in human evolution) and the affability needed to work in group settings.

Authors Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are also Sigma members, and they’re no strangers to thinking hard about the future, either. In fact, they’ve been doing it for over 30 years, by my count, having co-written the seminal asteroid-impact epic Lucifer’s Hammer in the mid-1970s.

All You Bhojpuri Speakers

... RAN OUT TO SEE THE BHOJPURI-DUBBED VERSION OF SPIDER-MAN 3, SETTING INDIAN RECORDS.


Hollywood is increasingly cutting into Bollywood’s ticket sales thanks to simultaneous releases of blockbusters in Indian dialects like Bhojpuri, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

As this Christian Science Monitor article notes, Hollywood movies have frequently not done well in India since dubbed versions, if any, tended to be released only after English-language versions had finished their runs.

U.S. studios are wising up, and Spider-Man 3 is breaking the recent record set by Casino Royale—an American movie about a British spy that takes place in Africa and Europe—which was also released in multiple Subcontinental dialects.

It’s clearly worth the money for Hollywood studios to dub films into major foreign languages and dialects, although I’d love to see where the cut-off is; hypothetically, do the studios decide to spend money to dub for 101 million Bhojpuri speakers but consider dubbing for 90 million Gujarati speakers not worth the investment?

If Hollywood moguls can bring the cost of dubbing for smaller and smaller dialects down, they will. The question is, will Bollywood do the same, toning down its musical melodramas for non-Indian audiences and dubbing into Mandarin, English and Spanish for overseas consumption?

(Thanks as always to John Brown's Public Diplomacy Review for the initial item.)

From the Mouths of Mice

HAMAS ADOPTS MICKEY AS ITS MOUSEPIECE.


It is extremely rare that Hamas makes a strategic mistake. But it has.

The Palestinian militia/political party/social-services agency has adopted a thinly veiled ripoff of Mickey Mouse as the mascot for one of its kids’ shows:

A giant black-and-white rodent — named "Farfour," or "butterfly," but unmistakably a rip-off of the Disney character — does his high-pitched preaching against the U.S. and Israel on a children's show each Friday on Al-Aqsa TV, a station run by Hamas. The militant group, sworn to Israel's destruction, shares power in the Palestinian government.

"You and I are laying the foundation for a world led by Islamists," Farfour squeaked on a recent episode of the show, which is called "Tomorrow's Pioneers."

"We will return the Islamic community to its former greatness, and liberate Jerusalem, God willing, liberate Iraq, God willing, and liberate all the countries of the Muslims invaded by the murderers."

Children call in to the show, many singing Hamas anthems about fighting Israel.

The reason I call this a Hamas mistake is that the group can face down the U.S., stand off the Israeli Army, alienate the European Union, and even thumb its nose at various regional sponsors—but it is now subject to attack by the most relentless opponents in the Western Hemisphere: Walt Disney Co. intellectual-property lawyers.

Nothing can stop them. Nothing can placate them. Unmarked private jets have been seen flying east from Bob Hope Airport even as I write this.

It’s a shame that none of Osama bin Laden’s broadcasts have tried to appeal to kids in this way; Osama would long ago have been found by Disney lawyers and flown back to Burbank to face justice.

On the other hand, only after a pricey out-of-court settlement had been reached would Disney have released Osama to U.S. officials for trial.

Update: The last surviving child of Walt Disney condemns the Hamas ripoff as “pure evil.”

May 10 Update: Disney's lawyers have achieved the inevitable victory, and in record time: Mickey Hamouse has been taken off the air and "placed under review."

Thanks to Tyler Davidson for forwarding the initial story as well as a follow-up.