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The Ultimate Hack: Re-inventing Intelligence to Re-engineer Earth

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Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Social Networks ((LNSN))

Abstract

It is for me a huge honor to be invited to deliver the counter-balancing view within this distinguished gathering of counter-terrorism experts. Let me begin by emphasizing what I consider to be the “three strikes” or in international terms, the “side-out” of government counter-terrorism thinking today.Strike One: Terrorism is a symptom, not a root cause or threat. Going after Al Qaeda has nothing to do with the more threatening fact that a corrupt Saudi monarchy embraces infidels at the same time that it is destroying its own commonwealth and sponsoring Wahhabism world-wide.Strike Two: No government is trained, equipped, nor organized to understand, much less defeat, terrorism in detail. Although the United Nations (UN) has recently discovered Coherence, with the implementation meme of “Deliver as One,” and the US Government claims to be interested in Whole of Government operations, neither is actually real (yet).Strike Three: Earth is at a tipping point, with multiple catastrophic possibilities, all of them interacting in complex unpredictable ways. In this context, terrorism is the canary in the coal mine, not the lethal atmosphere itself. I will review these, and then outline a strategy for all of us that addresses all ten high-level threats to humanity within which terrorism is but number nine, and then only because of a potential mass destruction event.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The original briefing as delivered with words in Notes format, can be found at http://www.tinyurl.com/SteeleDK5. A longer earlier version for engineers as delivered at the University of British Columbia can be found at http://www.oss.net/HACK

  2. 2.

    Stephen Arnold, "Search panacea or ploy: Can collective intelligence improve findability?," in Tovey [43], pp. 375–388. Google portion added to this depiction.

  3. 3.

    Robert Steele, National Security C3I3H3-Command, Communications, and Computing, Inter-Agency, Inter-Disciplinary, Inter-Operability, Heuristics of the Community Intelligence Cycle (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma, unpublished MPA thesis, 1987); online at http://tinyurl.com/Steele1987.

  4. 4.

    Adapted with permission from Crane [12]. See also Amato [2].

  5. 5.

    Cf. http://www.sandia.gov/news/features/mapping_science.html# and also see http://scimaps.org/maps/map/maps_of_science_fore_50/.

  6. 6.

    As devised by the 26 co-founders of the Earth Intelligence Network (EIN), at http://www.earth-intelligence.net. Its front end is http://www.phibetaiota.net.

  7. 7.

    I cannot find the specific book, and since George Mason University accepted my entire library as a gift when I joined the UN, I am at a loss. I was influenced by Brand [8].

  8. 8.

    Cf. Perrow [30]. His book, especially, relegates terrorism to the minor league in comparison with what our own nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological industries do every day.

  9. 9.

    I am indebted to Tom Atlee [3, 4] – his mentoring changed my life. This specific point is made by a book he guided me to, Wright [47]. See also Benckler [6], Carter [10], Stewart [40], and Toffler [42].

  10. 10.

    The Secretary General has little meaningful authority over anything, and no authority at all over the Specialized Agencies (SA) that comprise the bulk of the UN. The UN "management system" is mostly about moving internal information (inputs and outputs), not about managing and certainly not about forecasting and adapting.

  11. 11.

    Requirements definition; collection management; source discovery and validation; multi-source automated and human fusion; application of human expert judgment; visualization; and compelling timely actionable presentation. Cf. the various handbooks available at http://www.phibetaiota.net/category/handbooks.

  12. 12.

    As discussed in [39].

  13. 13.

    As the US prepares to abandon Afghanistan, one book Ossman [27] posits a UN hybrid International Reconciliation and Reconstruction Agency (IRRA) staffed almost exclusively by Muslim experts on detail from Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, and Turkey. Such an organization, as an arm of the Afghan government but empowered with the polygraph and able to control corruption while avoiding the inevitable baggage of "infidels," would be the new model for addressing failed states, and readily adapted to the needs of Haiti, Somalia, Yemen, and others. What has become clear is that neither governments nor non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross can be relied upon in isolation. Coherence demands a hybrid approach that enables intelligence-driven harmonization of effort by all parties, while also providing the integrity protection of counter-intelligence.

  14. 14.

    Robert David Steele, "World Brain as EarthGameTM," in Tovey [43], pp. 389–398.

  15. 15.

    M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making.

  16. 16.

    Earlier summaries include the EIN brochure at http://www.earth-intelligence.net, and the chapter "World Brain and EarthGameTM" [43]. EarthGameTM is trademarked to EIN co-founder Medard Gabel, Global Game is a more generic term.

  17. 17.

    An entire literature is emerging on this point. Two examples are David K. Johnston, "Scary New Wage Data," in Tax.com, Oct. 25, 2010 04:35 AM EDT and Paul Craig Roberts, "America's Jobs Losses are Permanent," Counterpunch, October 28, 2010.

  18. 18.

    For EIN, Professor Gabel has also calculated how to build the digital EarthGame, at a cost of less than $3 million a year. This would allow everyone to play themselves, permitting self-governance on all issues across all boundaries.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Earth Intelligence Network, Oakton, VA, USA

    Robert David Steele

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  1. Robert David Steele
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Correspondence to Robert David Steele .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The Maersk McKinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark, Campusvej 55, 5230, Odense, Denmark

    Uffe Kock Wiil

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Steele, R.D. (2011). The Ultimate Hack: Re-inventing Intelligence to Re-engineer Earth. In: Wiil, U.K. (eds) Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Vienna. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3_21

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-7091-0388-3_21

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