Which Language Should I Take? (Careers In Intelligence)

http://thesteamerstrunk.blogspot.com/2011/01/february-is-great-language-learning.html

Which language should I take?

I advise about 50 students and, of all the questions I have been asked over the years, this is, by far, the most common.  Parents, too, ask this question when their high school students come to visit the campus. 

Many students and parents think they know the answer to this question and are usually looking for some sort of confirmation that Chinese, Arabic or Russian are the “right” languages.  They are confused (and maybe a bit disappointed) when I tell them, “It depends.”

In fact, I think it depends on three things:  Interest, aptitude and goals.  Let me talk about the one I think is most important first - interest.

I am a pretty strong believer that interest should drive learning.  Interest equals attention and effort and, over time, those things matter quite a bit in how much one learns and how well one does in a language.  Picking a language to learn in college because it is in demand in the current job market or it is perceived to be the “right” language to learn is, in my opinion, a mistake. 

Aptitude is another important and often overlooked factor.  I have been to the Defense Language Institute (twice, once for Italian and once for what used to be called Serbo-Croatian).  I was able to qualify for these courses partly because I did well on the Defense Language Aptitude Battery or DLAB.   The DLAB does not measure how well you know a language; it measures how well you can learn any language and it is, in my experience, surprisingly accurate. 

Students (i.e. soldiers and other government employees) who did very well on this test learned even the most difficult languages fairly easily.  Students who did poorly on this test struggled with languages that are traditionally easier for English speakers to learn.  It turns out that language ability is a lot like musical talent; some people have it and some do not.

Over the next few weeks, all of our freshmen will take the Modern Language Aptitude Test, which is a commercial equivalent of the DLAB.  We used to have students take language courses as freshmen but changed a few years ago because we wanted our students to have a better feel for the intelligence career field (which is important for the last factor I will discuss) and because we wanted them to take the MLAT before they decided which language program to pursue. 

Let me be clear:  We do not use the MLAT as a way to sort our students.  A student can still take any language they wish to take.  We do think, however, that it is unfair to students not to give them the information they need to make a more informed choice.  In short, a student who does poorly on the MLAT can still take a language such as Japanese or Arabic but they should not be surprised if they have to work harder at it than others to achieve a similar level of mastery.

(Note:  There are other good reasons not to use the MLAT in such a black and white manner.  When the military tests someone for DLI, they expect them to spend many hours mastering the language.  This is an expensive proposition and they want to be sure that the student has the aptitude to achieve those mastery goals.  College level programs in a language rarely rise to these exacting standards.  For example, consider my Italian language course.  At the time I took it, it was a 24 week course.  For five days a week, six hours a day, we learned Italian.  After hours, we were expected to put in at least 2 additional hours on homework.  Each week added up to roughly 40 hours studying a language.  This is roughly equivalent to the number of classroom hours a college student spends in a semester.  Even if the student spends as much time outside of class studying as they do in class, the typical DLI student arguably spends more time studying and practicing a language in a couple of weeks than a college student spends in a semester.  In addition, the college language course is deliberately geared towards the average student (or whatever passes for average at that university).  This is not the case at DLI, where the students have been carefully selected based on the government’s assessment of capabilities and the needs of the military or government agency sponsoring the position.)

The final factor to consider is goals.  Students in our program often start out narrowly focused on positions within the CIA or FBI.  Many go on to achieve these goals but it is not uncommon for students, once exposed to the full array of opportunities within the national security (not to mention the business and law enforcement) fields, to change these goals.
 
As the goals change, the languages that might augment those goals also change.  For example, if a student starts to become more interested in the possibilities of intelligence in business,  then any of the romance languages, German or Japanese become very good choices.  Europe and Japan continue to be major trading partners of the US and having a good understanding of any of these languages is a plus.  Some people tend to disparage Spanish.  This is a mistake.  A growing percentage of Americans speak Spanish as a first language and if a student is interested in a career in law enforcement intelligence or in customs enforcement, a working knowledge of Spanish is becoming increasingly important.

Chinese, Russian and Arabic are clearly important languages but they are also very challenging for most English speakers.  Taking these kinds of courses without a strong interest, aptitude or goal can be a frustrating experience for many students. 

If a student really wishes to become reasonably proficient in a particular language, I also recommend that they start planning early on for a semester or more abroad in a country where the language is spoken routinely.  There is nothing like daily immersion in a language to add depth and nuance to your vocabulary.   

A final word about languages:  Some students are better off thinking about a digital language track; that is, they should focus on learning a computer language rather than a traditional spoken language.  Ideally, I would recommend that a student learn both.  One of the most important things an analyst can bring to the table is an appreciation of the value of culture in analysis.  There is no better way to get that appreciation in my experience than by learning a language – any language.  That said, being able to code, to be unafraid of the workings of a computer or a network of computers, are critical 21st century skills as well.  In those cases where a student has a tin ear but an aptitude for all things digital,  learning a computer language is a respectable option.

How Many Entry-level Intelligence Analysts Do The Business And Law Enforcement Communities Need This Year? (Survey)

Good questions, right?

 

If you have direct knowledge of information that might help answer the question in the title for business or for LE or you have indirect knowledge that is relevant to the answer to the question in the title, please take 2 minutes to complete

 

the business survey or

the law enforcement survey.

What do I mean by direct and indirect knowledge?

Direct knowledge means that you know personally or have good information concerning the hiring plans of your agency or organization (or at least your section or division).  You might work in HR or be a manager with hiring responsibilities.

Indirect knowledge is information that is relevant to the question that is not due to your direct responsibilities.  You might have spoken with an HR manager or have been involved in meetings where this issue was discussed.

We are NOT looking for opinion based on purely circumstantial information.  If you are not involved in the hiring process either directly or indirectly, please DO NOT take this survey.  

If, however, you know someone who does fit the descriptions above, please forward this post or the survey links to them.

Why are we interested?

 

Every year, other disciplines announce hiring projections for the year:  "This year's hot jobs are for engineers and chimney sweeps."  That sort of thing.  Entry level intelligence analysts who are searching for a job, on the other hand, receive no such guidance. 

 

We hope to change that.  Working with one of our hot-shot grad students, Whitney Bergendahl, and my colleague and marketing expert, Shelly Freyn, we put together these surveys to get a better feel for the the job market for entry level analysts for the year ahead. 

One of the questions you might have regards our definition of "intelligence analyst".  This means something that is more or less clear in the national security community but, in both the business and law enforcement communities, it is a bit more muddied.  In fact, very few jobs in either community are actually labelled "intelligence analyst".  I leave it up to you to decide if the jobs you are likely to have fit a broad definition of "intelligence analyst".  What I would ask is, if you think you might be employing intelligence analysts (no matter what the job position is actually called), please, at least take a look at the survey -- and then fill it out if it seems appropriate.

Once we get enough survey data, Whitney will compile it and combine it with the macro-level, mostly qualitative data that we already have and put together a "jobs report" for the year ahead for both communities.  I will publish them here once we are done.

 

Regular readers of this blog know that we have already published our report on job prospects for the US national security intelligence community.  These two new surveys will allow us to cover all three of the major "intelligence communities".

 

Thanks for your participation!

Spot Report From The Future: War Between Pakistan And India Has 70% Chance Of Going Nuclear

Each year, in my strategic intelligence class, I use an old-school war game as the capstone of the game-based learning portion of the course.  Last year, we looked at a potential conflict on the Korean Peninsula but this year we were able to examine a hypothetical, near future, force-on-force conflict between India and Pakistan using Decision Games' Showdown.

The premise of the game is that "something" happens such that India feels compelled to invade Pakistan.  To win, the Indians have to take four of the five major Pakistani cities while not allowing the Pakistanis to take even one Indian town.  The Pakistanis win by preventing an Indian victory or by taking two Indian towns.  A draw is possible if the Indian player takes four cities but the Pakistani player has one Indian town.  Showdown is a 2 person game so we actually had 28 games being played more or less simultaneously.

The results?  In the 28 games, Pakistan won outright in 11 of them (39%) and India won outright in 7 (25%).  In addition, there were 3 draws (11%) with the remaining seven still too close to call when we ran out of time (4 hours).  It was a pretty even battle for the most part (You can see the number of cities taken plotted against the number of games in the chart below).

X axis = No. of Cities taken; Y axis = No. of games

Oh...yeah.  And in 70% of the games, the conflict went nuclear before it was over.

It is not preordained that this conflict will go nuclear when the game begins.  The Pakistani player must use nukes first and must be losing before the nukes are released (this is simulated by a rule that increases the odds that nukes are released with each Pakistani city taken). 

Showdown only simulates tactical nukes but it does so in a fairly sophisticated way.  Each side gets a fixed number of nukes to begin the game with a random plus-up to simulate the unknowns inherent in the size of the two nuclear arsenals.  Likewise, nukes can be duds (fail to explode upon contact) or get shot down by either sides' air defense systems.  Neither dud nor shootdown is highly likely but it helps create a sense of the fog of war. 



The photostream above is of the final dispositions of forces for both sides at the end of 15 of the games.  The darker pieces are the Pakistani units and the lighter pieces are the Indian units.   The cell phones used to take most of these pictures don't give much detail, so I have provided a clearer image of some the counters below.

 

This year, I asked students to make estimates about their opponent's strategy, devise their own strategy  and then execute that strategy.  In the after-action review, we went back and tried to determine why someone won or lost.  In many cases, students were able to determine that it was a poor or good estimate, strategy or execution that led to their defeat or victory.  In some cases, however, luck played a major role and occasionally (particularly in the games that were still up in the air when time ran out) it was impossible to say.

While I am a fan of games in the classroom in general, I particularly like using these old school war games with intel students.  It forces them to not only make estimates but to come to grips with the consequences of those estimates while simultaneously giving students a sense of the complexities inherent in modern warfare.

Attitudes Towards Social Media Non-Users And Some Interesting Privacy Watchdog Sites

I have a team of students (very bright students, of course) who have been taking a hard look at social media and the risks of both being involved and the risks of not being involved.

They have come across lots of data (Key Finding:  It is highly likely that social media people LOVE to talk about social media (High confidence)), but we have not been able to find out one thing:  Do people who use social media sites (like Facebook and Twitter) think that people who don't use them are weird? I don't necessarily mean weird in a pejorative way (though I am certainly interested in that interpretation).  It could be just sort of a reaction, like when someone says, "Oh, I don't have a Facebook account" and someone else would automatically think, "That's weird."

So, before I talk more about it more, answer the Swayable below:


Here's what I think we'll see:  A small but significant percentage of those that answer the question will say, "Yeah, it's weird."  If I could gather details, I would guess that there would be a fairly strong correlation between those that think it is weird and age (with younger people thinking it is weirder, obviously).

What is really weird, though is that we can't seem to find anyone who has asked this question before.

Changing the subject a little (but not much), I also wanted to highlight two sites, one old and one new, that provide an interesting insight into the subject of privacy in the age of social media.

http://blogs.wsj.com/wtk-mobile/

The first is the wonderful What They Know courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.  This site lets you explore the privacy settings of some of the most popular apps for IOS and Android phones.  You can see a screen shot of part of the site at the right but you owe it to yourself to visit the interactive and a bit disquieting site.

The other site, Privacyscore (See screenshot below), is new but seems like it would be particularly valuable to anyone who searches the web (i.e. everyone).  The site can tell you, based on its own rating system, on a scale 1-100 (where 1 is very bad and 100 is very good), how private your activities on that site really are.  So, for example, Google.com scores an 85 whereas Bing scores only a 74.   Of particular interest to heavy web users or researchers are the Firefox and Chrome add-ons that will display a site's privacy score in real time as you search.

http://www.privacyscore.com/

Intelligence And Crowdmapping

I realized today that, while I had written in the past about the idea of crowdmapping, I had never actually used that term in a post before.

That was a mistake.

Don't get me wrong, Group editable maps have been around for some time and are quite successful.  We have used CommunityWalk, for example in a number of projects and it has served its purpose excellently.

CommunityWalk Map - North Caucasus Violence Sep-06 to Nov-06



Likewise, automatically edited maps are also quite helpful.  The comprehensive map at RSOE EDIS, for example, just recently got some new competition with Google Public Alerts.

Crowdmapping, though, is something a bit different.  Here, dozens and sometimes hundreds of people are providing information from a variety of sources (including the web, of course, but also through SMS and Twitter) that are then mapped in real time.

Right now, this space is occupied almost exclusively by Crowdmap.com, an offshoot of the much admired Ushahidi project.  It is not too hard to see a time, however, when other companies and organizations will enter this space with competing offerings.

I, along with a small group of intrepid students, have been experimenting with this system for a few months and, while managing the input has proven to be more challenging than expected, the potential (and the relative sophistication of Crowdmap) is enormous.

The best way to get a sense of the value of a crowdmap, however, is to look at them.  Below are three of my favorites:  Syria Tracker (a map tracking eyewitness accounts of missing, killed or arrested people in Syria in English and Arabic), China Strikes (a map tracking instances of labor unrest in China), and Energy Shortage (a map tracking reports of energy related issues worldwide).  You can see all of these maps below (Syria Tracker is live; the other two maps need to be clicked on to get to the live versions).