Internet Connectivity In Africa (AppAfrica.net)

The blog White African recently pointed to a post on AppAfrica that featured an amazing infographic of the state of African internet connectivity in 2009. The pic below is too hard to read but it gives you an idea of what is in the document. You can, however download a very detailed view (as well as some shots of specific areas of interest) from Flickr.

Sabotaging The System, The Cyberwar Plan, The PRC's Cyberwar Capability and Trillions (Cyberwar Link List)

Cyber stuff is everywhere these days and the last couple of weeks have seen a number of interesting articles and videos make the rounds:

• Sabotaging The System. I would start the tour of this particular horizon with the recent 60 Minutes report on the cyberthreat. Readers should note that, in addition to the video below, there is quite a bit of additional material on the website as well.
  

Watch CBS News Videos Online

• The Cyberwar Plan. The National Journal recently posted an online article that discusses in some detail the US's own offensive cyberwar capabilities. Whether you agree with Jeff Carr or not over the appropriateness of this article, it is the most comprehensive piece I have seen on what is likely an open secret among the hackers of the world and those that sponsor them.
• Capability of the People’s Republic of China to Conduct Cyber Warfare and Computer Network Exploitation. This research report actually came out last month but it is one of those kinds of reports that, if you haven't seen it, you should. It is very solid open source analysis by the good people at Northrop-Grumman for the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission.
• Trillions (via Gizmodo). This one is probably my favorite entry on the list. It is not directly related to cyberwar but it provides an interesting perspective about where all this is going to go -- is going to have to go -- before too long.

Trillions from MAYAnMAYA on Vimeo.

Hey, Admiral Blair! Did You Get Tetlock's Memo? (NationalInterest.org)

Philip Tetlock's Expert Political Judgment is required reading here at Mercyhurst. While some analysts take issue with Tetlock's findings, I have yet to see anyone create as compelling a study as his regarding the essential qualities of a good forecaster.

So, I pay attention whenever Tetlock writes something, even a book review. Thanks to my colleague, Steve Marrin (who knows of my interest in all things Tetlockian...), I recently had a chance to read Tetlock's review of three new books by people who claim to have an inside track when it comes to predicting the future.

I will let you read Tetlock's review of the books on your own. Suffice it to say that his critique of all three works is based on his research and, as a result, is skeptical (in varying degrees) of the claims of accuracy in the three books.

What really fascinated me about this review is buried at the end of it, though. Tetlock worries about how to improve forecasting, about how we can know which forecasters are worth listening to and which are modern day snake oil salesmen. Then, he makes a point that I agree with in whole:

• "There is one potential savior on the horizon: a big institutional purchaser of forecasting services that has the financial clout and technical-support staff ready to run forecasting tournaments that would shed light on the relative performance of competing approaches—a big player that also has powerful incentives to discover superior analytical strategies, for even small improvements in its prediction accuracy can translate into billions of dollars and millions of lives saved. And that player is the Office of the Director of National Intelligence."

Right on, Professor T! The DNI has every reason to want to improve forecasting and has the purchasing power to insist upon it. Specifically, according to Tetlock:

• "Players high up in the political system—who really do want the best-possible forecasts—could decide that it is worth investing a nontrivial share of their intelligence agencies’ budgets into a series of long-term forecasting tournaments designed to distinguish the more from the less promising forecasting approaches across policy problems."

The DNI dipped its toes in this water back in 2008 when it sponsored the Open Source Challenge. Since then, of course, we have not had another Challenge or another Open Source Conference. This does not bode well for Tetlock's very reasonable suggestion.

Still, it is a great idea. If we are ever to break out of the "two-thirds right" trap we are in, we need a robust research program aimed at validating intelligence methods and the DNI will have to be the one to sponsor it.

ONI's New "Hoo-ahh!" Video, Deconstructing Analysis Techniques, The Geography Of Job Loss And The Future Of Shopping (Link List)

Lot's of interesting stuff crossing my desk this week:

• The Office of Naval Intelligence has a new promotional (i.e. "hoo-ahh) video out. It gives a brief overview of the ONI's new organizational structure and mission. Many people don't think about ONI as an intel career option but they actually do some pretty cool stuff. The video is certainly worth 5 minutes of your time (Note: It takes a few minutes to get started (I don't understand why these guys don't just upload these videos to YouTube...). Also, if you are interested, see it quickly as Matchbox Twenty's lawyers may slap a take-down notice on the ONI for unauthorized use of copyrighted material (not even a music credit, ONI? That was cold...).

• My favorite online design magazine, Johnny Holland, continues its excellent (if slow-motion) series of posts on deconstructing analysis techniques. The current entry focuses on transformation or "the act of taking a set of values from a dataset, processing them in some way (depending on the aims of the research) and arriving at a new set of values with the goal of revealing some aspect of the data from a new perspective." The entire series is very good and well worth the read.

• Visualizing information is a powerful way to communicate analysis. A good example of this is Tip Strategies infographic showing job loss and gain in the US from 2004-2009. It is both stunning and depressing but clearly shows the value of a good visual (Sorry, no embed. You will have to go to the site to see it).

• One of the trends I have been tracking now for a number of years is the growth and influence of virtual worlds and augmented reality. Cisco has recently produced an interesting video (via Kzero) that explores the future of shopping (you can see the video below). It sounds mundane but the underlying technical implications are pretty significant to intelligence and become doubly so when you realize that this world is just around the corner.

Intel Legend Art Hulnick On The Future Of OSINT (ISN)

The ISN, on one of its recent podcasts, scored a very good (if too short) interview with Professor Arthur Hulnick (see picture at right). Art currently teaches intelligence related courses at Boston University and has for a number of years. Before that he was at the CIA for several decades and has contributed significantly to the open body of literature on intelligence through his books (including Keeping Us Safe: Secret Intelligence and Homeland Security (2004) and Fixing the Spy Machine: Preparing American Intelligence for the 21st Century (1999)) and many articles.

Art is one of those guys who has been around, as we used to say in the army, "since Christ was a corporal" and is always worth listening to. Unfortunately, the ISN did not make an embeddable version of the podcast but you can get it on iTunes, download the MP3 or just go to the ISN site to listen to it.