Leksika - A New Site On Russia, Eurasia Worth Watching!

I just received a note from one of the sharper crayons that has emerged from the Mercyhurst Intel Studies box - Spencer Vuksic.  

Spencer, a truly gifted analyst and Russian linguist currently seeking his masters in International Studies from Johns Hopkins, has, along with a fellow Mercyhurst alum Graham Westbrook, started a new project - Leksika - to provide open source intelligence analysis on all things Russian and Eurasian.

According to Spencer, "Leksika’s value proposition is in the application of intelligence analysis to political, social, and economic shifts in the region in opposition to the largely polarized reporting from both the West and Russia."  

Just in the last month they have published short, easy to read but highly informative pieces covering such diverse topics as Russia's partnerships with Serbia and Latvia, the current situation in Crimea, Israeli and Russian relations and Poland's geopolitical positioning.  Earlier posts have reached even more broadly including a three part series on Russia's cyber strategy.

One of the most interesting and FREE features of the site is their "ReapReport".  Here they do a side by side comparison of the top news stories coming out of western and Russian media.  More importantly, they add a highly useful "What to Watch" blurb in order to highlight upcoming events of interest.

While clearly still in the start-up stage, Leksika is already quite good and has the potential to be a one-stop shop for unbiased analysis of Russia and Eurasia.  Recommend you check it out and take advantage of the free subscriptions!

How To Analyze Black Swans

Black swans, we are told, are both rare and dramatic.  They exist but they are so uncommon that no one would predict that the next swan they would see would be a black one.  

The black swan has become a metaphor for the limits of the forecasting sciences.  At its best, it is a warning against overconfidence in intelligence analysis.  At its worst (and far too often it is at its worst), the black swan is an excuse for not having wrung every last bit of uncertainty out of an estimate before we make it.

One thing does seem clear, though:  We can have all the information and structured analytic techniques we want but we can’t do a damn thing in advance about true black swan events.  They are, by definition, unpredictable.

Or are they?

Imagine a single grain of sand falling on a table.

And then another.  And then another.  While it would take quite some time, eventually you would have… well… a pile of sand.

Now, imagine this pile of sand growing higher and higher as each single grain falls.  The grains balance precariously against each other, their uneven edges forming an unsteady network of weight and weaknesses, of strengths and stored energy, a network of near immeasurable complexity.  

Finally, the sandpile reaches a point where every time a single grain falls it triggers an avalanche.  The vast majority of times the avalanches are small, a few grains rolling down the side of the sandpile.  Occasionally, the avalanches are larger, a side of the pile collapsing, shearing off as if it had been cut away with a knife.

Every once in a while – every once in a long while – the falling of a single grain triggers a catastrophe and the entire pile collapses, spilling sand off the edge of the table and onto the floor.

The sandpile analogy is a classic in complexity science but I think it holds some deep lessons for intelligence analysts trying to understand black swan events.

Just as we cannot predict black swan events, we cannot predict which precise grain of sand will bring the whole sandpile down.

Yet, much of modern intelligence focuses almost exclusively on collecting and analyzing the grains of sand – the information stream that makes up all modern intelligence problems.  In essence, we spend millions, even billions, of dollars examining each grain, each piece of information, in detail, trying to figure out what it will likely do to the pile of sand, the crisis of the day.  We forecast modest changes, increased tensions, countless small avalanches and most of the time we are right (or right enough).

Yet, we still miss the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Arab Spring of 2010, and the collapse of the sandpile that began with a single grain.

What can we do?  It seems as though intelligence analysts are locked in an intractable cycle, constant victim to the black swan.

What we can do is to move our focus away from the incessant drumbeat of events as they happen (i.e. the grains of sand) and re-focus our attention on the thing we can assess:  The sandpile. 

It turns out that “understanding the sandpile” is something that complexity scientists have been doing for quite some time.  We know more about it than you might think and what is known has real consequences for intelligence.

An example of a power law, or long-tail, distribution

In the first place, for the sandpile to exhibit this bizarre behavior where a single grain of sand can cause it to collapse or a single small incident can trigger a crisis, the pile has to be very steep.  Scientists call this being in the critical state or having a critical point.  More importantly, it is possible to know when a system such as our imaginary sandpile is in this critical state – the avalanches follow something called a “power law distribution”.

Remember how I described the avalanches earlier?  The vast majority were quite small, a few were of moderate size but only rarely, very rarely, did the pile completely collapse.  This is actually a pretty good description of a power law distribution.  

Lots of natural phenomena follow power laws.  Earthquakes are the best example.  There are many small earthquakes every day.  Every once in a while there is a moderate sized tremor but only rarely, fortunately, are there extremely large earthquakes.

The internet follows a power law (many websites with few links to them but only a few like Google or Amazon).  Wars, if we think about casualties, also follow a power law (There are a thousand Anglo-Zanzibar Wars or Wars of Julich Succession for every World War 2).  Even acts of terrorism follow a power law.

And the consequences of all this for intelligence analysts?  It fundamentally changes the question we ask ourselves.  It suggests we should focus less on the grains of sand and what impact they will have on the sandpile and spend more resources trying to understand the sandpile itself.

Consider the current crisis in Crimea.  It is tempting to watch each news report as it rolls in and to speculate on the effect of that piece of news on the crisis.  Will it make it worse or better?  And to what degree?  

But what of the sandpile?  Is the Crimean crisis in a critical state or not?  If it is, then it is also in a state where a black swan event could arise but the piece of news (i.e. particular grain of sand) that will cause it to appear is unpredictable.  If not, then perhaps there is more time (and maybe less to worry about).  

We may not be able to tell decisionmakers when the pile will collapse but we might be able to say that the sandpile is so carefully balanced that a single grain of sand will, eventually, cause it to collapse.  Efforts to alleviate the crisis, such as negotiated ceasefires and diplomatic talks, can be seen as ways of trying to take the system out of the critical state, of draining sand from the pile.

Modeling crises in this way puts a premium on context and not just collection.  What is more important is that senior decisionmakers know that this is what they need.  As then MG Michael Flynn noted in his 2010 report, Fixing Intel: 

"Ignorant of local economics and landowners, hazy about who the powerbrokers are and how they might be influenced, incurious about the correlations between various development projects and the levels of cooperation among villagers, and disengaged from people in the best position to find answers – whether aid workers or Afghan soldiers – U.S. intelligence officers and analysts can do little but shrug in response to high level decision-makers seeking the knowledge, analysis, and information they need to wage a successful counterinsurgency."

The bad news is that the science of complexity has not, to the best of my knowledge, been able to successfully model anything as complicated as a real-time political crisis.  That doesn't erase the value of the research so far, it only means that there is more research left to do.

In the meantime, analysts and decisionmakers should start to think more aggressively about what it really means to model the sandpile of real-world intelligence problems, comforted by the idea that there might finally be a useful way to analyze black swans.

Chinese, Russian, Turkish Hackers Almost Certainly Targeting, Penetrating US Energy Provider Networks (Project Grey Goose)

Jeff Carr, author of Inside Cyber Warfare and IntelFusion, along with Sanjay Goel at the State University of New York, Albany and other contributors, has recently completed another of the Grey Goose reports, this time on hacker attacks on the power grid, both domestically and internationally.

The report's key findings are chilling:

• "State and/or Non-state actors from the Peoples Republic of China, the Russian Federation/Commonwealth of Independent States, and Turkey are almost certainly targeting and penetrating the networks of energy providers and other critical infrastructures in the U.S., Brazil, the Russian Federation, and the European Union."

• "Network attacks against the bulk power grid will almost certainly escalate steadily in frequency and sophistication over the next 12 months due in part to international emphasis among the G20 nations on Smart Grid research, collaborative development projects and the rich environment that creates for acts of cyber espionage"

• "The appeal of network intrusions against the U.S. Grid is enhanced by two key factors:"

• "90% of the U.S. Department of Defense's most critical assets are entirely dependent on the bulk power grid."
• "Most Grid asset owners and operators have been historically resistant to report cyber attacks against their networks as well as make the necessary investments to upgrade and secure their networks."

Grey Goose reports are volunteer efforts to analyze various cyber threats through the use of open source information. Previous reports have analyzed the Russia-Georgia cyber war and the evolution of cyber warfare.

In the interest of full disclosure: Jeff kindly listed me as a "reviewer" in the recent report but my input was limited to a little light editing. I don't consider myself a cyber war expert. I do think, however, that Jeff's record and the records of his co-contributors' speak for themselves and believe that those interested in this area (and those who should be interested in this area) need to read this report carefully (whether you ultimately agree with its conclusions or not).

Open Source Nuclear Targeting (FAS.org)

One of my students recently pointed me towards a well researched and thought-provoking article by the the Federation of American Scientists titled, From Counterforce To Minimal Deterrence.

The article laid out the FAS's argument against the US's current nuclear strategy, Counterforce, in favor of their suggested alternative, Minimal Deterrence. Under this proposed strategy, the US would maintain only about 500 nuclear weapons or just enough to deter anyone foolish enough to consider using a nuke on the US. Currently, according to the FAS, the US has about 5200 active nuclear weapons.

Anyone interested in the argument and counter-argument on this proposed strategy shift should see the FAS site. What really caught my eye, however, was the notional target set that the FAS developed in support of their position. They decided to target Russia and set up their list such that they could effectively threaten punishment sufficient to make the use of nuclear weapons by Russia appear undesirable. In other words, how many targets and of what type would you have to be able to take out in order to be able to deter (in this hypothetical case) Russia from using nukes on the US?

In the end, the FAS settled on 12 targets. You can sort of see them in the image below or you can download the KMZ file from the FAS and see them on Google Earth. Hitting the 12 targets with relatively small 3 kiloton bombs (Fat Man, by way of comparison was 21 kilotons) destroys everything within 1000 feet of the blast and continues to damage everything within a little more than a mile from the blast. The FAS projects some 46,000 dead and another 67,000 wounded from strikes on these 12 locations.

As horrific as these casualty counts are, the FAS suggests its strategy, designed to deter potential aggressors with this level of force, yields results that are substantially better than those of previous US government funded studies including one in 1979 that used less than 100 of the more than 20,000 nukes the US had in its stockpiles at that time. That study resulted in estimates of 836,000 to 1,458,000 dead and another 2.6 to 3.6 million wounded.

Obviously, this analysis only works for state actors and rational state actors to boot. No amount of nuclear weaponry is likely to deter determined non-state actors (the some 10,000 weapons in the US arsenal at the time did nothing to stop 9/11 for example...). Likewise, irrational state actors are equally unlikely to be deterred by large stockpiles of nuclear weapons believing, as they tend to do, that nuclear explosions have no impact on divine beings.

It does leave one wondering, however, about the fragility of the modern state. If an attack (albeit one that completely destroys) only 12 targets is sufficient to bring a modern state to its knees (or to make it think that it will be brought to its knees which seems to be closer to the goal of deterrence), how many and, more gruesomely, which targets would do the same to China or the EU or the US?

New Challenges (Day 2 -- International Security Forum)

Related Posts:
Live-blogging The ISF
BBC Monitoring
Towards An Unruly World: Ideas Of Interest

After a quick trip to the Routledge booth to talk about books past and future, I trotted off to a full day of seminars on various topics tied to the parade of horribles from yesterday.

There are four time slots today with six panels in each slot. This means that you can see no more than one-sixth of what the conference has to offer. Since I am presenting in one of those time slots, that limits my participation even more. I am not a big fan of this type of conference format as it really limits your exposure to new ideas. It also explains some of the hit and miss quality of this post. Still, I managed to pick up some new stuff of interest today as well.

(Note: In case you are new to this series of blog posts, this conference is being held under the Chatham House Rule which does not limit my use of the ideas that come out of the conference but does prohibit my use of the names or affiliations of the people speaking about those ideas. The ideas mentioned below, then, are not my own. In some cases, I don't even agree with them. I am reporting them merely because I found these ideas interesting.)

When can NGOs do better with non state actors than states or international organizations? When the non-state actor wants to be seen like a state (i.e. has political ambitions, needs international attention, leadership under pressure to deliver something to the people, etc.). This condition often occurs late in the game -- when the non-state actor has tried other avenues. Likewise, because of the timing and the purpose, states typically do not want the NGO to succeed.

The legal framework is an important factor in cyberwar. The lack of an adequate legal framework actually impeded efforts to respond effectively to the series of cyber attacks in Estonia 2 years ago. There has been some good thinking on this issue but it is not widely known and has not yet been incorporated into legal systems. This results in a continuing exploitable weakness in the system despite efforts to more directly address the cyberwar threat.

Russia. The current sabre rattling over Georgia is likely just that. The next major crunch point with Russia is likely in Ukraine and will revolve around the status of the Black Sea Fleet currently stationed in Sevastopol. Russia's ability to act has not been hurt as much as some people think by the recent sharp decline in gas and oil prices or by the economic meltdown generally.

Secrecy is a force divisor in asymmetric warfare. Asymmetric warfare is anti-Clausewitz. It focuses on weaknesses in the system rather than on the center of mass. Fighting an asymmetric war, then, requires more knowledge than force ("all the force you need to deal with most terrorists is a cop with a gun"). Secrecy is an impediment to the system effectively applying its collective knowledge, ergo, secrecy reduces the efficacy of force.

The Intelligence Cycle can be thought of as an out of date operating system. Dealing with modern intelligence problems using the framework of the intel cycle is like trying to get Windows 95 to run Vista programs.

Another Russia-Georgia Conflict Brewing? (Multiple Sources)

The Russians are objecting to a series of low-scale NATO Exercises scheduled to begin in early May at an airbase outside of Tbilisi, Georgia.

Such diplomatic maneuvering would be within normal limits if it weren't for the disturbing news regarding the forward deployment of troops, tanks and artillery reported yesterday by Reuters and the sortie of the Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol reported yesterday by the armchair admirals over at the Information Dissemination blog.

Add to this the possibility of Russian funding for the protests against Georgian President Saakashvili that began last week and a worrisome pattern begins to emerge. In fact, the Jamestown Foundation puts these exact pieces together in a recent report while the Caucasus Analytic Digest claims that NATO doesn't have the stomach for a fight in Georgia.

Georgia's Foreign Minister, on the other hand, thinks nothing will happen and even decided to poke the bear a bit: "...Russia would be afraid to undertake a new military aggression against Georgia because it would be entering in confrontation with the rest of the civilized world." (Hey, buddy, are we talking about the same Russia?)

Yoikes!

I don't have a background in this area and so am unqualified to comment on the news or the reliability of the sources. On the off-chance that this region of the world is going to heat up in the next couple of weeks, though, I thought I would put together some good open sources to help new analysts get started:

History/Future of the Conflict:
Wikipedia on the 2008 South Ossetia War. Very detailed, comprehensively sourced with a truly outstanding map.
NATO After the Georgian Conflict. A recent Polish Institute Of International Affairs Study (in English).

The Black Sea Fleet and the Russian Military:
The unofficial Black Sea Fleet Website. Good pictures, info and history.
Wikipedia on the Black Sea Fleet. Amazingly comprehensive site.
Warfare.RU. I did not spend much time on this site but I found what I did see to be pretty good stuff on the Russian military. Tons of pictures. The guys who write this site are also referenced in Google Earth through the Google Earth Community (all of the "i's" in the image of the Sevastopol navy base to the left).

News and Other General Information Sources
Information Dissemination. These guys are watching the naval part of this and will likely have some good armchair analysis if it progresses.
UN Observer Mission In Georgia. Probably the best one stop shopping place for current, detailed news in English from inside Georgia.
EU Monitoring Mission In Georgia. Not as current as the UN site but has some good maps and background data.
ReliefWeb on Georgia. ReliefWeb is a UN effort of consolidate news and info from a number of sources into a single place for NGOs. It usually has the best, most current open source maps available as well.
Reuters AlertNet. Reuters has done a good job of consolidating news and background info into a single site.
The Institute Of War And Peace Reporting, the International Crisis Group and the International Relations and Security Network. All three organizations maintain special sections on the crisis in Georgia.

Do you have another source of interest? Drop it in the comments...

OSINT Product On Russian Hackers And The Georgia Crisis Out Tomorrow! (Intelfusion)

The Grey Goose is about to fly! Nope, this is not an obscure quote from a numbers station; its a real product.

About 2 months ago, Jeff Carr over at Intelfusion set out to put together an OSINT team to take a look at Russian hackers and how they supported (or not) the Russian war effort in Georgia. Specifically, they sought to conduct "analysis of Russian hacker blogs in an effort to uncover connections that may not be readily apparent."

Jeff releases his initial round of results tomorrow. If you are interested in a copy, check out his post here for the instructions.

North Caucasus Insurgency -- Strategic Estimate (Original Research)

Last year one of my strategic intelligence teams took a look at the insurgency in the north Caucasus. You can see their final product on the Mercyhurst Caucasus Insurgency Analysis Team wiki. Their analysis was only designed to look out to the Russian presidential election but having reviewed some of the findings, methods and final products once again, I think it is worth sharing, particularly given the recent crisis in Georgia.

The team did not look directly at Georgian/Russian relations but there is still some interesting grist for the mill here. They have built a very good link chart of the insurgency leadership (you can download the PowerPoint here or see the full report with videos here) and the resources page has a wide variety of mapping and other resources listed. The violence database contains an ethnographic map of the region along with a brilliant use of the online mapping service CommunityWalk to map out all of the incidents prior to November, 2007 (when they completed the project). The final estimates, as mentioned, are out of date, but may include some items of interest, particularly relating to perceived Russian capabilities in November 2007. As with all of the wiki-based products (referenced below), there is much to be gained by looking at the methods and process used as well.

Related Posts:
Russia And Georgia Analysis: Its All About Timing
Security Sector Reform In Sub-Saharan Africa
Jihadist Use Of YouTube, SecondLife
Non-State Actors In Sub-Saharan Africa

Background Brief And Prediction Market Combo Makes For Interesting Intel (Playthenewsgame.com)

Impact Games (the makers of the award winning serious game, Peacemaker) has launched a new service that combines an interactive background briefing on a topic of current news interest with a prediction market engine allowing the user to "Play The News".

Each of the Play The News "games" follows the same pattern. The background briefing (done using a flash-based interface) lays out the essential details of the story and the identifies the stakeholders in the story. Next, there is a short current news video and the game frames the essential question(s) for the player to answer. In an interesting twist, the players can often pick which side of the story they want to play. For example, in the game embedded below, players can choose to play either the Russian side or the Georgian side.



Once the briefings are over and the player chooses a side, the game then asks the player one or more questions about the future of the current situation. Again, the game adds an interesting twist, asking the player both what should happen and what will likely happen (Note: The prediction feature is only available to registered users but registration is painless). The game then shows the player the aggregated results from all other players. Finally, the company drops you an email to let you know if you were correct or not when the results are finally known.

I was particularly impressed by the choice of news stories covered. Most of the games focused on world news and many of those on stories that receive scant coverage elsewhere. In all, I found it to be an extremely engaging way to get personally involved in a current news event.