CISS Blog

Today’s post is from Dr. Jan Goldman, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and the editor of Ethics of Spying, Volumes 1 and 2.  Dr. Goldman is the world’s leading expert on intelligence ethics, which made him the perfect person to weigh in on a currently troubling ethical situation: hunger strikes at Guantanamo.

Even this week, I noticed as I graded students’ final exams, that people mistake “laws” for “ethics.”  This is a conversation Jan and I have had several times; as a lawyer, I can say definitely that what is legal is not necessarily ethical, and vice versa.  Jan’s analysis does a fine job of reaching beyond the false assurance of legality to ask what a basic moral code requires of the United States in response to the prisoners’ actions.  I fear that the repercussions of Guantanamo will continue long after the facility is closed.  Intelligence-wise, it will present some of the most historically cogent and troubling questions regarding what should and should not be allowed in collections and information gathering.

Ethics of Force-Feeding

At the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 100 of the 166 detainees are on a hunger strike. President Obama has already announced, “I don’t want these individuals to die.”[1] The result has been the forced feeding of these individuals strapped to a chair for 1 to 2 hours as a tube gets shoved up their noses with a feed-drip of Ensure while either a nurse or someone from the military watches. This has been going on since February, although, there are reports that for a few detainees they have been on a hunger strike (and undergoing this painful operation) since 2005.

From an ethical viewpoint, it must be asked, “Is it ethical to force-feed a detainee?”  What obligation or responsibility does the government have to keep these men alive in their cells?” On the other-hand, would it be more ethical for the government NOT to be involved in keeping these men alive against their will.

First, let’s look at the experts and see what they have to say….the American Medical Association has taken no direct stance, except to say that international standards have upheld a prisoner’s right to refuse food and drink. More explicit is the international standards at the World Medical Association,

“Where a prisoner refuses nourishment and is considered by the physician as capable of forming an unimpaired and rational judgment concerning the consequences of such a voluntary refusal of nourishment, he or she shall not be fed artificially. The decision as to the capacity of the prisoner to form such a judgment should be confirmed by at least one other independent physician. The consequences of the refusal of nourishment shall be explained by the physician to the prisoner.”[2]

According to the the International Red Cross, medical staff should not be involved in the forced feeding of inmates, “which would be a gross violation of medical ethics.”[3]

However, if the medical profession sees forced-feeding as an unethical act, assuming the person is mentally competent, is it still possible to for the government to be moral in its claim to force-feed an individual to keep them alive? If it was in the interest to keep these men alive, it must be asked, to what end? The hunger strikes exist because the men live in a never-never world of neither black nor white. They are not prisoners of war or criminals (both of which would have rights under the Geneva Convention or the US Constitution.) These “enemy combatants” live in a world that have been detained years AFTER the Obama administration approved their release. The hunger strike is a recognizable peace protest of their continual imprisonment without charges, but because of politics they remain in prison. They have become desperate individuals, in which they are forced to live forever… without knowing if there will ever be an end. Clearly, to some, death is the certainty they crave. The difference between how we treat prisoners in relation to human dignity, still is in contrast with other prisoners held in the United States. Convicted prisoners serving time, that go on hunger strikes, are provided a sense of dignity. At least in some federal prisons they handle hunger strikes far less coercively, then what’s happening at Guantánamo. For example, in 2007, federal prisoner Sami al-Arian went on a water-only hunger strike for 60 days. Near the end of the strike, he was unable to walk, and trembled constantly. He was transferred to a medical prison, but was not force-fed, though prison officials considered doing so.  In contrast, based on court documents and press reports about the Guantanamo hunger strikes, detainees have been force-fed in a matter of days or weeks after they start refusing meals — long before their lives were in serious danger.[4]  Clearly, when it comes to hunger strikes, not all prisoners are created equal.

Human dignity is the hallmark of the founding of this country. However, if we cannot rely on past wars, or interpretations of our laws, we must recognize these limitations as it applies to the “war on terror.” In 1985, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States William J. Brennan, Jr. wrote,

If our free society is to endure, those who govern must recognize human dignity and accept the enforcement of constitutional limitations on their power conceived by the Framers to be necessary to preserve that dignity and the air of freedom which is our proudest heritage.  Such recognition will not come from a technical understanding of the organs of government or the new forms of wealth they administer.  It requires something different, something deeper–a personal confrontation with the wellsprings of our society.[5]

It’s not ethical, but, rather rational to keep them alive. From an intelligence perspective, if any of these men die, it is highly likely we will see indications of increased violence and a possible upsurge in terrorist recruitment. When Irish Republican Army Bobby Sands starved to death in a British prison in 1981, it led to an increase in recruitment in the IRA and consequently, intense violence that extended that conflict. Without a doubt, the deaths of these individuals in government facilities will be watched outside the walls of this facility and will need watching.  Force-feeding may prevent this type of martyrdom, but it also leaves the United States open to further accusations of state torture and prolongs an enviable ending…..or does it?

Analysts, take heed:

“In 1951, when I sold my first story, I had no idea that such fundamental issues could be pursued in the science fiction field. I began to pursue them unconsciously. My first story had to do with a dog who imagined that the garbagemen who came every Friday morning were stealing valuable food which the family had carefully stored away in a safe metal container. Every day, members of the family carried out paper sacks of nice ripe food, stuffed them into the metal container, shut the lid tightly—and when the container was full, these dreadful-looking creatures came and stole everything but the can.

Finally, in the story, the dog begins to imagine that someday the garbagemen will eat the people in the house, as well as stealing their food. Of course, the dog is wrong about this. We all know that garbagemen do not eat people. But the dog’s extrapolation was in a sense logical—given the facts at his disposal. The story was about a real dog, and I used to watch him and try to get inside his head and imagine how he saw the world. Certainly, I decided, that dog sees the world quite differently than I do, or any humans do. And then I began to think, Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. And that led me wonder, If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn’t we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others?”
–Phillip K. Dick (1978) How to Build a Universe That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later

The reddit alien. Image credit: via SRSArtistry

No sooner was the remaining Boston Bombing suspect apprehended last week than the finger-pointing began: The FBI had prior warning about the older brother; facial recognition software failed decisively; the Boston police were overzealous when shooting up the suspect’s getaway boat; and social media, specifically the Reddit hivemind, imperiled the investigation.

Reddit is a social news and entertainment website where 43 million registered users submit content, make jokes, and bicker with each other. Occasionally, subgroups in Reddit unite for projects, like giving shopping sprees to sick children, amassing donations, and responding to emergencies.

Some of these failings were summarized in an article by the technology news website Ars Technica, which related that Law enforcement officials within the Boston investigation lambasted Reddit’s role in spreading speculation and accusing innocent people of being terrorists. The article was itself covered by Reddit in an after-action discussion thread rife with self-loathing and gallows humor. Reddit user “pseudolobster” offered this bone-dry comment:

I like the part where they said we were useless, nearly universally wrong, and they had to release images of the suspects, possibly even compromising the investigation in the process, just to shut us up.

In the past, the CISS blog has covered surveillance cameras (“Self-watching cameras that judge you”) and what you get from crowd-sourcing an emergency (“What social media gives us”).

Facial recognition algorithms don’t work well in low-light situations.

It’s certainly interesting to discuss the benefits and problems of emerging technology, and to share how people are leveraging the power of crowds to solve problems — but if these experiments impede an active investigation, that’s a serious matter. Did social media, and specifically Reddit, really jeapordize the Boston Bomber investigation?

Nope.

The question is not whether Reddit’s marathon bombing “investigation threads” (no longer public) had good information. The days following the bombing were information-poor and speculation-rich. Even established news organizations, which operate with the explicit mission to distinguish good information from poor information, distinguished themselves with with failure:

One of many erroneous headlines.

More examples of off-target news reporting can be found at IMGUR.

In fact, the selfsame article that highlights Reddit’s failures then itself proceeds to speculate about whether the sport of Boxing turned the elder Tsarnaev into a terrorist:

Some [scientists] wonder if the older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, could have been affected by the disorder due to his history as an amateur boxer. According to this theory, damage from the sport could have led him towards erratic behavior and violence.

Said “disorder” is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), and despite how the quote makes it sound, there is only a faint suspicion that Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have suffered from it because, in the past, he boxed at an amateur level.

CTE in professional athletes (aka, terrorists)

If baseless speculation is to be believed, then thousands of NFL players, boxers, and members of the military who suffer from CTE must now entertain the suspicion that they may be inclined to commit mass-casualty terrorist attacks. The thin ray of comfort they have is that no connection has ever been shown or suspected to exist.

So if social media can’t be expected to vet information with more success than professional news organizations, what can social media do?

One place to look for answers is Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (Wikipedia article). Using this Amazon service, businesses can create a list of tasks requiring human-level intelligence, such as identifying the contents of pictures, searching for lost millionaires, or transcribing handwritten text. As soon as that business funds an account with money, Amazon releases a horde of human workers intent on earning the money as micro-payments.

At Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, “HITs” are “human-intelligence tasks.”

The Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s foray into an area known as ubiquitous human computing, where tasks are disaggregated into smaller pieces and then crowd-sourced via the Internet. The practice has been occasionally criticized for creating digital sweatshops, because workers are paid mere pennies for each completed task.

But what if law enforcement could release a horde of volunteers on a problem? Within hours after the Marathon explosions, law enforcement agencies had collected a vast library of pictures and footage. They meticulously followed each member of the Marathon crowd on that fateful day. As the Washington Post reports,

The work was painstaking and mind-numbing: One agent watched the same segment of video 400 times.

At the same time, Reddit was reconstructing the same paths of the same people using crowd-sourced overhead imagery of the finish line. The images and discussions (no longer public) highlight the victims and trace their paths back through time. The main reason law enforcement had counter-terrorism experts watching videos 400 times, and Reddit had amateurs attempting to profile a terrorist, is because there isn’t an interface between law enforcement and Reddit.

The Department of Justice is already aware that non-experts are crucial resources for experts. Law Enforcement Intelligence: A Guide for State, Local and Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies, written by Michigan State University professor David Carter, is the reference manual for integrating intelligence capability into law enforcement. The LEI document  discusses in detail how to integrate civilian participants and law enforcement agencies alike into the post-9/11 Information Sharing Environment (ISE). Community volunteers may not know about social network algorithms, and their ability to work with personally identifiable information may be restricted, but they can still make significant contributions to homeland security. And when an emergency like the Boston Bombing arises, many hands make light work:

“Where’s Waldo?” might be a lengthy task for a single highly trained LEI analyst.
Crowdsourced on a site like Reddit, it would take a few minutes.

The online world continues to cohere. Online crowds are increasingly effective at finding information, and then spreading the information once found (sometimes they even spread the correct information). True, the Boston Bombing investigation also shows that online crowds can mutate into online mobs, but this only indicates that new law enforcement capabilities must be developed to understand (and maybe steer) online crowds… the Internet is not going anywhere, and the influence of online crowds/mobs will only grow, so the sooner law enforcement builds these skills the better.

Our next national security adversaries will probably be technologically sophisticated, home-grown radicals who had American-style childhoods where they evaded online detection and gamed surveillance systems. We should remember the resources we have to combat them, namely, other technologically sophisticated, home-grown radicals who had American-style childhoods where they evaded online detection and gamed surveillance systems.

If our million-dollar surveillance-camera networks can be defeated by tilting your head, as this instructional video by Anonymous suggests, then we will need all the eyeballs we can recruit to scan video footage for suspects who are tilting their heads. Thus does the game progress.

The original mechanical Turk.

Dear Fellow Intelligence Lovers,

I am senior at the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies, Cohort #2. (What what?!) I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at Ole Miss and I love my job; being a student worker/research assistant at CISS kicks… ya know…

It’s my turn to blog today. I am graduating soon and I thought that the best thing I could do was not to degrade the opposing gender with senseless paragraphs about famous Bond actors, but rather lay down my own law.

These are the most important things I have learned about the Intelligence Community, surviving the minor, and my own personal take on professionalism. Accepting the truths about being an intelligence analyst and about the world of the IC will help with you with the life-long practice of being poised and professional. Besides, the IC is great place and everyone loves tips.

Tip #1: Let’s Get One Thing Straight: This Ain’t like James Bond and You Definitely Won’t Fly a Private Jet like on Criminal Minds

• This reality check hurt a little since I’ll admit I was fooled by the fantasy and action on TV, but I am glad that I know the reality of working in the IC.
• While some intelligence agencies are concerned about violent crime and serial killers (especially within the FBI), catching serial killers is not as easy as TV makes it out to be.
• Solving violent crime issues is not typically a priority to every IC agency.
• Let’s get one thing straight… James Bond movies and all those TV shows like Homeland, Criminal Minds, CSI, etc. they’re not realistic. This minor is meant to help train the members to become intelligence analysts, not crime-fighting super heroes that solve all dramatic and vicious problems in 45 minutes.
• However, a private jet to fly the BSU around would be pretty awesome.

Tip #2: Dress Like You Already Have the Job

• This was the very first rule I learned when applying for membership into the Intelligence and Security Studies minor.
• These professors and their associates have worked in the IC before or they know people who do.
• You need to impress them, be confident, dress like you already have the job. You’ll look more professional.
• Make them want you.

Tip #3: Bragging, Exploitation, and Manipulation

• Bragging – should be extremely limited, not taken too kindly upon.
• Exploitation – While this is not prevalent in the ISS minor at Ole Miss, it happens all the time in the real world. Get used to it.
• Manipulation – Will likely happen to you since intelligence analysts aren’t high up on the IC totem pole, but just remember what makes you truly professional is knowing the different between when to manipulate something/someone and when not to do it.

Tip #4: Not Taking Credit Where Credit is Due

• Example: Delta Force and SEAL Team 6. Enough said.
• Acting like Archer will definitely NOT help.
• As an intelligence analyst you’ll likely be living in the dungeon of your building, but a true professional continues to work anyway always knowing that his or her work has benefited policy.
• Continue to fight the good fight, because the country will move on in a few minutes to some other drastic news or event so your job will never end…unless computers find a way to think like a human and do your job better since your brain is not your friend anyway.
• Until then, keep it humble.

Tip #5: You will be fighting a bureaucracy/The Man, but it is so worth it

• If you become an analyst in the IC you work for the man. Just accept it.
• The man is everywhere.
• Choose your battles wisely.
• Also, find someone to vent with. That usually helps.
• Just don’t use walkie-talkies… The Man hears everything.

Tip #6: Constant Reinforcement of Critical Thinking and Analysis Skills

• This basically explains itself.
• However, you should always use the skills gained from this minor, class, and life experiences that helped hone your critical thinking/writing/analysis skills. The number one thing current analysts need to be able to do is to think critically, write effectively, and brief appropriately.

Tip #7: It is actually OKAY to Admit When You Need Help

• The ethics of being an analyst can be complicated. What is worth reporting? How much do you report? Can you share the information with other analysts? What if someone else knows more about the subject matter you are working on? Do you ask their opinion? Do you seek out communications with other agencies? What do you do?
• As for quiet professionalism, making the effort to seek out the information you need in order to produce the most comprehensive and non-biased products (while not ruining the security level of the situation) is best.

Tip #8: Be Willing to Not Admit What You Do (e.g. bragging on being recruited by a top secret security agency)

• Don’t be dumb.
• Heck yes these jobs are cool and the IC has exciting areas of interest that you can study or travel to, but if you have a certain clearance or served on a top secret team during your internship, DON’T TALK ABOUT IT.
• This gets me every time when someone says to me, “Oh intelligence huh? Like the secret agents for the CIA? I am really athletic and social and I’m taking Chinese right now. I could totally be recruited by the CIA. I’ll just go to the information session and apply right there. They’re definitely going to want to hire me.”
• Dude.
• You just red flagged yourself right there.
• You can’t go NCS if you tell everyone you’re NCS.

Tip #9: Never Underestimate the Power of Networking

• NETWORK
• NETWORK
• NETWORK
• IF YOU’RE SHY FIND A WAY TO BRANCH OUT BECAUSE YOU NEED TO HAVE FRIENDS IN ALL PLACES.
• PERSONAL AND BUSINESS ASSOCIATIONS HELP IN THE LONG RUN.

Tip #10: Learn to Appreciate Other People’s Skills While not Losing Sight of What You Bring to the Table

• This was one of the hardest things I had to learn over the past four years.
• All of the students in this minor got here for a reason.
• Some people speak multiple languages, some people can break apart computers and put them back together, some people can hot wire cars, some people can swoon three people into three separate dates all in the same day, some people can raise their own chickens and sheep.
• Others may not do any of that.
• But every one of us in this CISS minor has a skill set that will benefit the IC.
• You just have to figure out how to use your uniqueness to your advantage. Don’t sell yourself short.

Tip #11: Go for the Patriotism not the Money

• This is America.  We live for it, we fight for it, we die for it. (That should be on the quarter).
• There is no better way to give back to your community than to serve and protect the nation you hold so dear.
• Do not go into a career of intelligence or analysis if you do not LOVE IT.
• If this does not drive every fiber of your being…
• If you feel like a failure when you don’t get things right…
• If you don’t like jobs that might call for high stress/late nights/oral presentations…
• If you don’t handle criticism or stupid questions well…
• THEN PICK ANOTHER PROFESSION BECAUSE WE DO NOT NEED WISHY WASHY.

Tip #12: Above all else… DO NOT BECOME A TERRORIST

• Or serial killer, depending on what agency you work for.
• Because if you do, you will be found.
• Most likely you will also be stupid enough to leave illicit, anti-American, radical ideology rhetoric on your social networking sites.
• Anything you put on the Internet (or search on the internet) will not disappear.
• So we will get you.

Sincerely,

“Agent Killswitch”
(Tip #8)

Hollywood tried its best in Red Dawn to hide behind a weak script and predictable plot by trotting out famous young actors such as Chris Hemsworth and Josh Hutcherson. Unfortunately, for those of us unlucky enough to spend two hours of our lives watching the newly redone Red Dawn, the ploy was a miserable failure. While watching the movie, besides thinking about the complete #fail by the director, I kept thinking about how the intelligence community in this movie must have either been non-existent or suffered from a massive failure in analysis to miss an invasion by a country located 5,000 miles from Spokane, WA, where the movie takes place.

First, I want to point out five facts we learn from the movie before the first 26 minutes are over. Why are these facts important? These five facts will allow us to set the foundation on which the future intelligence failures will rest. Below are the facts:

1. Cyberwar, Russia, and PACOM nations uniting with North Korea against U.S. influence are mentioned during intro. (North Korea no longer shunned by     others)

2. “What are they preparing for?” asked at the end of the intro. (OSINT telling us many are aware of North Korean preparations)

3. Power goes out the night before invasion.(Blackout mostly likely caused by cyber attack, but provided an early warning)

4. Mayor was taken immediately. (Possible to get all his info online, but for an operation of this magnitude most likely means agents were on the ground     before the invasion)

5. There was initial resistance – Planes are shot down by air to air missiles. (At least some air assets were within range and operational)

The rest of the movie requires the suspension of belief, actually the whole movie does, but if I did that this entire blog post would completely disintegrate. Beyond that it must be assumed that North Korea was running one of the most complex and successful denial and deception campaigns in the history of modern warfare.

Now, I don’t want to bash IC on this mythical failure until we look at the evidence. So in this blog posting let’s review the possible intelligence that was most likely available to the IC starting from a year before the morning of the invasion. Since the movie doesn’t mention disintegration of the U.S. government or the military I am going to work off of the assumption that the IC’s collection abilities were still in place. From this we can again assume (a dangerous proposition for an intelligence analyst) that analysts would have had access to HUMINT, IMINT, SIGINT, MASINT, OSINT, and CYBINT.

HUMINT from North Korea might have been hard to come by, but the movie offers plenty of evidence that the Russians played a big part in the operation so surely an operation of this scale would have revealed some intention. The intelligence gained may have been dismissed as too preposterous. Agencies such as CIA, State Department, and DIA, would have had a network of sources to help gather information on the intent of the Russians to help, but since nothing was done we will again assume that the pieces they had fell short of a smoking gun, so to speak. What information they did have, however, should have been fused with other sources to help put together an all-source assessment.

In addition to foreign collection, the FBI counter-intelligence units would likely have been following at least some sleeper agents operating within the U.S. I state confidently that there were operators within U.S. borders due to the fact that the mayor was apprehended so quickly and that key locations were taken over and fortified within minutes of the start of the invasion. Even if the FBI agents assigned to surveilling the foreign operators were unaware of their intent, the mere fact that there were so many and that their activity was increasing would have been an indicator of coming events.

IMINT would have revealed a massing of equipment somewhere. Not to mention the amount of training that would have to take place in preparation for the invasion. Multiple ships would have had to be moved to staging areas, storage garrisons would show increased activity, airfields would be busy as well, even construction of additional airfields would have been visible. IMINT would not have revealed any intentions, but added to the right HUMINT the picture would have become a bit clearer.

SIGINT, and its’ sub-disciplines COMINT and ELINT, might not have been as readily available in North Korea. The North would not have to worry as much about OPSEC perhaps as much as other countries, but some communication would still have had to take place. Also, the North possessed a new technology that had the ability to knock out enemy communications while keeping their own in operation. If they had used this prior to the invasion someone would have likely become aware of this. Therefore, we will assume that they did not use this new technology until the entire plan became operational. Still, a key indicator of an impending attack would have been ELINT from their RADAR systems. They probably navigated using one COMNAV RADAR, but the approaching mass would have given the invasion fleet away. Why do I think U.S. RADAR was still somewhat operational? U.S. air-to-air missiles take out some of the aircraft dropping paratroopers before the troops are on the ground. Their warning could have come from VISINT (visual intelligence), but the fighter aircraft were quickly able to close in on some of the enemy formations.

MASINT would have added to the stockpile of information clueing the IC in on a massing of equipment, increased training, and weapons testing. This still would not have provided a smoking gun, but it should have been enough to confirm an attack was coming soon even if the location wasn’t certain.

OSINT and CYBINT from the North might have been few and far between. It is highly probable that North Korea would have been running a disinformation campaign, in conjunction with Russia (and possibly all PACOM nations), prior to the attack. CYBINT was also likely unreliable due to the major cyber battle that was implied in during the intro. So, I will rule out any direct information from CYBINT, but the ability to hide all activity seems highly unlikely. Therefore, information might not be trustworthy, but the awareness that someone was messing with the information would probably have been apparent. An intrusion of this scale should have signaled a major cyber attack and the immediate need to overhaul the entire system.

That is a rough overview of the available information. Obviously, this is all speculation on a very unrealistic scenario, but it the best we can do. Despite these limitations, there was likely still enough collected intelligence available to prevent the invasion. This leads to the conclusion that the failure is either due to the analysis or to the policy maker that did notproperly utilize the intelligence. If it was theanalysis, then cognitive bias probably paid a big part in the wrong assessment. I think group think would also have been a problem similar to the same scenario that occurred before Pearl Harbor. Red Team analysis might have proven helpful as the amounts of evidence continued to pour in. Collaboration between the different intelligence agencies also might have been a problem, but that is hard to imagine given today’s attitude towards the subject and the massive amount of collected intelligence that would have been available. My assessment on the failure would rest on a failure in analysis most likely due to hubris. It is a pretty far fetched idea that North Korea could ever invade the United States and that thought most likely never entered many analysts minds. They were probably aware that a major attack was coming, but simply could not bring themselves to believe that it would be aimed at the mainland. Add to this a massive D&D campaign to help with that thought and you get this massive intelligence failure.

There might not be a lesson to learn from this movie and mythical failure, but if there is one it is to never rule anything out. Never make any assumptions as to the intentions of the enemy and never over estimate your own strength.

*Acknowledgment: Thanks to C.D. Hill for the inspiration of this post!

Yesterday, my phone lit with a terse message from CNN. I was meeting with Center visitors so I only glanced at it and saw there had been an explosion during the marathon. People were wounded.

CNN had previously texted me something about a big Golf tournament, and I’d dismissed that message too. So what, a street explosion? Cities have aging infrastructure. People hurt? Sometimes that happens in the world (you either take a long view, or turn cynical and depressed). The follow-up human interest stories? Routine, sad.

It wasn’t until I sat down with my laptop that I began to grasp what happened. The complete tragedy was waiting to unfold for me in social media — from early Marathon coverage that chattered about the weather, to the now-famous twitter photo of the second explosion, to the silent debris-strewn finish line streamed in a video feed that someone forgot to turn off.

Giving comfort to a victim.

Social media turned the Boston marathon into a realtime tragedy. As soon as I started reading the first-hand reports, I lost my “long view” and I couldn’t turn away. We’re human; our empathy is a curse we would never give up. The same mental parochialisms that incline some of us to bomb ‘others,’ also incline us to rush to the aid of strangers.

In the early 1990s, I saw a hodgepodge group of New Yorkers (who would never have acknowledged each other on the sidewalk) coordinate themselves in seconds, and lift a 1987 Oldsmobile off of a group of students who had been sitting on a park bench. (Here is a heart-wrenching reconstruction of the Washington Park Massacre).

You see the same thing in this stunning (but non-graphic) Boston Globe footage of the explosion and its aftermath: A few seconds of stunned confusion, the volunteer workers glancing around, the runners continuing a few more steps — and then their minds shift.

In the video, as soon as people understand what happened, and they realize people are suffering, they run toward the chaos. Police officers, soldiers in uniform, and random bystanders, too — they tear down metal barricades with their bare hands to get to the suffering victims.

Passengers reported being generally composed immediately after crash-down.

Too much is made of “panic” in the media. The passengers of US Airways Flight 1549 didn’t panic when they landed in the Hudson. Bodies at the scene of mass-casualty fires often show that victims were methodically working to survive. The surviving Kursk submarine sailors wrote placid letters to their families as their air ran out. The same unreliable brain that gives us so many Type I errors to maximize our survival rate (I chastise it in this post), also maximizes our survival rate by keeping us functioning in the worst extremes.

Of course, as with any leaderless enterprise, social media is rife with bad information, false leads picked up and magnified by media reports, and conspiracy theories. Contributing to the initial chaos of the immediate emergency response were unsubstantiated reports of Saudi national “persons of interest” (which were benign, or were they?), and this tweeted picture of Boston Police with a suspect (unconfirmed reports said BPD moved bystanders out of a possible blast radius).

Live-update of bomb reports.

Social media also registered bomb squads checking suspicious devices, it spread word about Google’s Person Finder service, and it enabled an ad hoc google-map of bomb reports that swelled with pointers (today it’s down to only six). Still other individuals found and posted the police scanner audio of the emergency (where victims are heard screaming at the end). We have personal accounts at the finish line. We have the meaningful actions of individuals (here is more on the heroic “man in the cowboy hat”).

These pieces of data, even the unreliable ones, will soon be crucial to reconstructing the mayhem, and to studying the emergency response performance on April 15th. Indeed, the reconstruction has already begun as a crowd-sourced effort: A comprehensive thread on Reddit.

Finally, for better or worse, social media gives a voice to the voices among us. When the voices have something valuable to share, the demos might amplify it democratically, through the social-media megaphone. Here is a message that was shared 200,000 times on Facebook:

This is a giant planet and we’re lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they’re pointed towards darkness.

But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We’d have eaten ourselves alive long ago.

So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, “The good outnumber you, and we always will.”

— Patton Oswalt, responding to the bombings, on Facebook.

Social media gives us something to latch onto apart from the horrid casualty figures and the grisly photos. It lets us bypass the “distancing” mechanism that insulates our emotions when we hear of remote atrocities. It relieves us of our “long view” and gives our innate empathy a stake in the emergency. If we are willing, we can have a human role again. We might even take action, where before we might have felt some extended version of the bystander effect. Soon after the attack, The Red Cross tweeted:

I remember it like it was yesterday–sitting on my couch and watching the stock market crash before my eyes on the television.  My bank account was smaller than it had ever been.  I was receiving notices in the mail, daily, about my students loans that were soon to be due.  It was September 2008, the beginning of the recession, and I was unemployed.

It turns out that I have a propensity to choose fields of study that are near death.  I majored in English Literature as an undergraduate.  I loved my courses (who doesn’t want an entire semester of Flannery O’Connor?) but I was shocked when I graduated and didn’t have employers knocking on my door to give me a job.  I was under the impression that a college degree made you employable.  I had my golden ticket, and I couldn’t for the life of me see why I wasn’t getting a tour of the “job” factory.

Oh well, I thought.  I had a plan.  I had applied, and been accepted to law school.  I knew my chance for success was right around the corner.  I was smart, I was ready to work hard, and I had seen the movie Legally Blonde enough to know that if I could just find a chihuahua and good manicurist, I could survive anything law school threw at me.

That was a good plan until I attended orientation the first day and came home in tears.  Law school turned out to be a dark and scary place full of superstar students that I feared wanted nothing more than to crush me.  I was partly correct; that first year was filled with vindictive hiding of library books, professors that made my stomach flip with a single look, and a lot of lonely hours hunched over books full of cases that I barely understood.  I think I’ve blocked out much of law school from my memory, but I remember afternoons spent on the couch, relieved to be taking a break from my homework load to watch movies (the couch seems to be a theme for law school).  I devoured tabloid magazines to take my mind off the heavy lifting of legal reasoning.  I threw much of my frustration into baking cakes.  I would spend hours icing a cake, only to watch myself cut into it, sample a piece, find myself critiquing my creation, and ultimately throwing it in the trash.  When I graduated law school, I found myself, once again, stuck in a lonely house, studying for the bar exam.  I had never been so cut off from humanity.  My study method consisted of listening to endless hours of legal lectures on an iPod.  I didn’t even have the experience of going to class and suffering alongside anyone.  I spent days sitting at my desk, trying to keep my blood pressure down by listening to calming music while trying to memorize estate law.  I was miserable.

I was lucky to find a job that summer.  I found myself unexpectedly (and blessedly) in Washington DC working for the DC Attorney General’s Office.  I was grateful to have a job, but I found the days grinding.  Thankfully, I worked for some of the nicest people I had ever met.  They mentored me and took great care of me that summer.  Still, I didn’t love the work.  At times, I didn’t even like it.  When the job ended that summer and the DC government announced a hiring freeze due to a waning budget, I packed my bags and went home to Mississippi, feeling like a failure.

Once I returned to Mississippi, I found myself struggling to find a place within the working world.  Law firms stopped hiring.  Newspapers proclaimed the death of the legal field.  I didn’t have a job, the prospects looked grim, and I grew more depressed by the day.  One August afternoon, I sat on the beach of Sardis Lake and wondered if my hopes and dreams for a successful career had come to an end.  My sleeping schedule went from normal to disjointed.  The stress took its toll on my body, and I felt my business suits pulling at the seams, as I drowned my sorrows in pints of Ben and Jerry’s.  And then…

I fell into intelligence.  I found my job at the center.  At first, I was just grateful to have a job.  I remember waking up one morning, early into my position, and dreading my workday.  “Ugh…I have to go to work,” I thought, until I realized that I didn’t hate it, and even more, that I actually looked forward to the day.  Over the next couple of years, I found my place.  It didn’t happen overnight, and it certainly came accompanied with a fair share of frustration but nonetheless, I found myself happy and passionate about what I was doing.

I frequently meet students that struggle to discern what they should do with their lives.  I sympathize with them, mainly because I walked in their shoes.  Throughout law school, I had naively thought that one day, my hard work would pay off, and I would finally enjoy what I was doing.  I thought it was normal to be miserable.  I remember (stupidly) asking a career counselor if she knew any students that hated law school but loved practicing law.  To my surprise, she couldn’t think of any.  And yet, the law felt like a secure field–it was impressive, and I loved telling people I was in law school, as if I had a mysterious and studious aura.  I thought for sure that I would have a good job when I graduated and I dreamed of days when I would wear expensive Ann Taylor suits to my urban law office lined in steel, glass, and mahogany.  I saw myself as all my legal movie heroines–I would have the sassiness of Sandra Bullock in A Time to Kill, the style of Reese Witherspoon in Legally Blonde and the brains of that annoying kid from The Paper Chase.  Unfortunately, I became none of those things.

It took a long time and some hard-earned honesty with myself before I realized that I would never be a good or, more importantly, happy lawyer.  This made the discovery of intelligence that much sweeter.  Instead of suffering the agony of trying to muster an interest in intelligence, I found myself naturally thinking about it and wanting to read and talk about it outside of work.  The days no longer dragged, and I felt fulfilled in a way that I never had.  Too much of my pursuit of law was tied to my own vanity: I wanted to prove to myself and to others that I could get that law degree!  When I moved to intelligence, I no longer cared what others thought.  I just loved the subject.

This weekend, I had great conversations with several people from the intelligence community who also fell into their field by mistake.  We relished our happiness.  Because, for those of us who suffered our series of failures before we found our calling, we realize how lucky we are.  We know the misery of spending your days doing something you hate.

So, when I find a student that lights up at the prospect of accounting and white collar records, I feel a sense of happiness when I think that they’re in a program that will help them get to the FBI.  When I see students that want nothing more to be an analyst with the CIA, I believe they’re on the right path with our minor.  When I see people enjoying their hard work (because the intel classes are challenging) and finding true fulfillment, I know that we’re recruiting the right students.  And when I meet students that have the experience of Sisyphus, trying to roll their burden of a career choice up an impossible mountain, I secretly wish, for their own well being, that they’ll let go of their misery and allow themselves the freedom to find their true place.

Briefing can be an intimidating experience for those unfamiliar with the process. Since some of you may be confronted with just such an experience in the near future here are a few tips to help you get through it.

-BLUF: Always remember to put your Bottom Line Up Front! Let the audience know what your subject is and why it is important.

-Questions: Be prepared for questions from the audience. Never lie. Never say, “I’m sorry.” If you don’t know the answer say, “ I don’t have that information at this time, but I will research that and get back to you.”

-Follow up: If you tell someone you will research a topic further for them make sure you do and give them the information they asked for.

-Team work: If you are briefing with a team be sure to help each other out. Have one person assigned to take notes. If a question is asked to the briefer and they don’t know the answer but you do help them out.

-Slides: Make sure the titles of your slides match the information on the slide.

-Pictures: Make sure all pictures on your slides add to the information on the slide and are labeled.

-Keep Calm and Carry On: Always practice, practice, practice. If you are nervous about how to start use this checklist: Observe the time of day, address the senior person in the room, introduce yourself, introduce your topic, state the classification.

Experience is the best teacher, but the above tips are tried and true methods that will help contribute to a successful brief.

In our hyper-connected world, information that can produce intelligence (notice how I phrased that) can come from the most interesting places. Seems that a website posting a clip from The Daily Show poking fun at North Korea racked up 2.8 million views. In China. Many of the 10,000 comments left on the site have been positive about the show and negative regarding Lil Kim (not the singer). What does all that mean? According to a piece in the Washington Post, it may mean that opinion in China, North Korea’s only friend, may be turning negative toward the “Brilliant Comrade” and his minions. That could prove interesting.

Kim Jong-Un

Recently, I went to dinner with my husband, and over Mexican food, we discussed the week’s events (we’re nerds, I know).  Our conversation made its way to the topic of North Korea.  My husband expressed concern over Kim Jong-Un’s recent threats toward South Korea, explaining his fears about the regime’s possible actions.

Upon hearing him say that, I tilted my head, put on my scrunchy face (the annoying, know-it-all expression that says: really?!) and scoffed.  “North Korea?  Dangerous?  Please.  Let me tell you about everything I’ve been reading from The New York Times.”  Then, for the next twenty minutes, I became an expert on North Korea and regurgitated six months’ of news stories.  To boost my case, I even cited some students’ recent analytical papers.  I was so clearly in lawyer mode, laying out my three points, presenting alternative analysis, and then refuting it right before his eyes.  “Listen,” I concluded, haughtily.  “Kim Jong Un is just flexing his muscles so that he can keep the military under his control.  Let’s not get all worked up.”  The air thick with condescension, all I needed to complete my “analysis” was a big gong, behind me, that I could clang for dramatic effect.

Since that conversation, I’ve found myself increasingly worried about the threats posed by North Korea.  Their rhetoric continues; some argued that the US needed a stiffer response, and the US and South Korea responded in kind.  According to a CNN poll released yesterday, 41% of Americans believe that North Korea poses an immediate threat to the United States; earlier this month, only 13% claimed such concern.  In a short period of time, we’ve shifted our focus dramatically.

But, here’s where intelligence has the opportunity to become incredibly valuable.  Captain Glenn Sulmasy, Professor of Law at the Coast Guard Academy, and John Yoo, a Professor of Law at University of California Berkeley, see the outcome of war as a failure of bargaining between states; states go to war because they’re uncertain about the other’s capabilities.  Sulmasy and Yoo explain the enormous utility of intelligence, in such arenas of uncertainty:

Effective intelligence gathering can reduce this uncertainty. Better intelligence allows a state to determine more accurately the military strength of the other side and the value it places on the disputed asset. If the states have a better understanding of the expected value of war to the other side, the states will be more likely to reach a negotiated settlement rather than go to war. Thus, more aggressive intelligence gathering can reduce the chances of conflict. (1)

Over the last few days, the news has fixated on what we don’t know about North Korea.  Is Kim Jung Un bluffing? Perhaps, but perhaps not. Will North Korea launch another missile?  We aren’t sure.  Is Kim Jong-Un a rational person?  Hard to tell.  It’s difficult to gauge anyone’s level of decision making when they release a 1980s quality video of nuclear destruction set to Michael Jackson’s “We are the World.”  Experts have come out of the woodwork, proclaiming their take on things: some think North Korea is likely to launch some sort of attack while others believe this is merely a continuation of a history of rhetoric.

Intelligence, we have claimed, is about decision advantage.  Ideally, the United States collects and analyzes information that will allow them insights into their adversaries.  Intelligence should allow a policymaker insights into the future actions and capabilities of North Korea.  Yet, that is easier said than done.  We’ve had our fair share of intelligence failures related to North Korea; how can we be certain that this time, we’re right?

A lot stands in our way of analyzing the situation.  First, there’s so much that we don’t know about North Korea.  It’s a closed state; our collection capabilities have largely relied, up to this point, on visitor accounts (Human Intelligence / HUMINT), signals intelligence / SIGINT (email, internet, telephone interceptions) and geological measurements / MASINT to detect their nuclear capabilites.

We also have a history of intelligence failures.  It’s hard not to flashback to 2002 and 2003, when the United States contemplated another closed state and asked itself whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.  When Saddam Hussein refused to let the UN weapons inspectors do their job, the United States jumped to the conclusion that he must have barred them from entering so that they wouldn’t see his huge weapons stockpile.  Now, we know better.  We know he was bluffing.  At a conference this last week, I heard a former CIA analyst explain that with Saddam Hussein, “we never considered the null hypothesis–the possibility that he simply didn’t have any weapons.”

Once again, we’re faced with similar questions related to North Korea–do they or don’t they?  Or, more to the point, will they or won’t they?  At CISS, we teach our students the concept of mirror imaging.  In his classic book on intelligence analysis, CIA analyst Richards Heuer explained:

To see the options faced by foreign leaders as these leaders see them, one must understand their values and assumptions and even their misperceptions and misunderstandings. Without such insight, interpreting foreign leaders’ decisions or forecasting future decisions is often nothing more than partially informed speculation. Too frequently, foreign behavior appears “irrational” or “not in their own best interest.” Such conclusions often indicate analysts have projected American values and conceptual frameworks onto the foreign leaders and societies, rather than understanding the logic of the situation as it appears to them. (2)

These days, I’m a lot less likely to launch into a diatribe about North Korea.  I’m certainly no expert on North Korea.  The truth is, I’m as worried as anyone else.  And yet, these days present an enormous opportunity for the Intelligence Community to fulfill its purpose by arming policymakers with the decision advantage, or information they need, to make informed decisions.  So much stands in the way of good intelligence.  I’d be lying if I said I was completely optimistic that intelligence can solve this issue.  Still, the hope remains.

Yesterday, NPR presented a story told from the perspective of those in North Korea.  Though everyone expected to find the North Korean citizenry gearing up for war, the journalist instead saw people rollerskating happily in Pyongyang’s town square (one of Kim Jong-un’s contributions to his country has been the creation of roller-skating parks; no, I’m not kidding).  People have been going about their daily lives, happy with their leader’s direction and oblivious to any signs of war.  It begs the question: is this all a bluff?  Is Kim Jong-Un merely the sum of his rhetoric, or does he represent a greater threat?  It’s hard to say, but one thing’s for sure.  Until we know, one way or the other, the Intelligence Community will continue to try to read his poker face.

(1) Sulmasy, G. and J. Yoo, Counterintuitive: Intelligence Operations and International Law, 28 Mich. J. Int’l L. 625 (2007).

(2) Heuer, Richards. Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. (Washington DC: Central Intelligence Agency), 1999.