Information Operations: All Information, All Languages, All the Time - Hardcover

Robert David Steele

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0971566135 ISBN 13: 9780971566132

Publisher: OSS International Press, 2006

Synopsis

My personal view is that the key points of the book are that:

• inter-agency sharing of non-secret information is much more important than precision delivery of secrets to the top guy;

• unclassified information on operations, logistics, beliefs, etc. is much more important that technical secret information; and

• there is a larger process called "Information Operations" (IO) that has been mis-defined in the US as offensive cyberwar and PSYOP on steroids, which in fact deals with

• the full and constant integration of global coverage in all languages all the time (including historical and cultural knowledge at the neighborhood level);

• the technologies of sharing, translating, and understanding; inclusive of online video gaming; and

• the crafting of inter-agency BEHAVIOR and BUDGETS (means) in order to achieve useful ends.

In short, it's not about secret intelligence; it is about global awareness and ethical behavior done across all the instruments of national power, wisely. As Dr. Cambone demands, we need universal coverage, 24/7, at sub-state levels of granularity, but we also need to act on that information in a timely as well as ethical manner, utilizing all of our resources, not just our military, and harmoniously integrating our intelligence and operational activities with those of other legitimate governments and non-governmental organizations.

About this title

About the Author

Robert David Steele Vivas is today the CEO of OSS.Net, Inc., a veteran-owned small business incorporated in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Since 1988 he has focused on the need to reinvent intelligence by first establishing the separate discipline of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), and then by focusing on sense-making through a new craft of intelligence that fully integrates history, culture, and all that can be known or intuited by the "seven tribes." Born in New York, he spent 20 years overseas as the son of an oilman, half in Latin America, half in Asia including four years in Viet-Nam. He completed his undergraduate education at Muhlenberg College, specializing in political science, with a thesis on home-host country issues with multinational corporations. His first graduate degree is from Lehigh University, specializing in international affairs, with a mini-thesis on the origin and purpose of the state, and a graduate thesis on predicting and analyzing revolution. Steele joined the United States Marine Corps in 1974, serving on active duty as an infantry officer including a Marine Expeditionary Force deployment (32 ships) during which he served as S-1/Adjutant for a 1,500 man Battalion Landing Team. Joining the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1979, he went through accelerated training and served three back-to-back tours in Latin America as a clandestine case officer, including one tour as one of the first officers focused full-time on terrorism. He returned to serve three Headquarters tours in counterintelligence, advanced information technology and advanced technical (satellite) program evaluation. While in the CIA, he completed a second graduate degree with the Extension Program of the University of Oklahoma, specializing in public administration, with a thesis on strategic and tactical information management issues for national security. He also completed the Naval War College non-residence program, earning a diploma with distinction. Having remained a Reserve officer with twice annual active duties as a Tactical Exploitation of National Capabilities (TENCAP) specialist, he helped draft the Marine Corps Intelligence Plan (MCMIP). Invited to resign from the CIA, he became the founding Special Assistant and concurrently the Deputy Director of the Marine Corps Intelligence Command (then Center). He wrote the first official appeal for a national OSINT program in 1988, and spent four years trying to heal national intelligence from the inside, finally resigning on 1 April 1992 to campaign independently. He is the author of three books, ON INTELLIGENCE: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World; THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political; and INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time. He is also a contributing editor of PEACEKEEPING INTELLIGENCE: Emerging Concepts for the Future. His next book will define the remainder of his life and is tentatively entitled INFORMATION PEACEKEEPING: Empowering the Poor to Save the World. As a hobby, he reads, and is the #1 Amazon reviewer for non-fiction books about national security and global issues.

From the Back Cover

Robert David Steele, OSS CEO, is featured in the chapter on "The Future of the Spy" in Alvin & Heidi Toffler's War and Anti-War: Survival at the Dawn of the 21st Century. He has been twice-named to the Microtimes 100: "Industry leaders and unsung heroes who...helped create the future," and was featured in the Year in Computers 2000. The author, who for fifteen years has helped train intelligence professionals from over 40 nations, and consulted directly to 18 governments, brings to bear twenty-five years of broad experience in national, defense, and business intelligence. He has served in three of the four Directorates of the Central Intelligence Agency; served in three consecutive and dangerous tours as a clandestine service officer under deep cover; helped program for overhead imagery satellites and support national signals intelligence programs; managed an offensive national-level counterintelligence program; and been the senior civilian responsible for creating the newest U.S. national intelligence production facility, the U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Center. As OSS CEO he has inventoried open sources and services around the globe, and provides direct open source intelligence support to a variety of government and private sector organizations.

From the Inside Flap

Neither the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) nor the Revolution in Intelligence Affairs (RIA) have proven to be real. In the first case, an over-emphasis on weapons and platforms yielded extraordinarily expensive and largely useless advances as the world turned away from state on state warfare and toward the global war on terrorism, failed states, and the proliferation of disease, crime, scarcity, and alienation. In the second case, an over-emphasis on secret technical collection systems, without either commensurate investments in processing and sense-making technologies, or in sophisticated cadres of humans with deep historical, cultural, and linguistic knowledge, resulted in expanding the secret intelligence bureaucracy at the expense of actually knowing anything useful. This book is about the emerging revolution that is going to change everything about how we do national and homeland defense inclusive of enlightened foreign policy and moral commercial practices, and about how we do national intelligence. Information Operations (IO), implemented through Joint Intelligence Operations Commands or Centers (JIOC), and integrating all that our coalition partners can offer in the way of Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), with Man-Machine Foreign Language (FL) and Advanced Analytics (AA) including predictive analysis and rapid response modeling and simulation, is the real revolution that is occurring in the national security arena. Universal coverage, 24/7, in all languages of all open sources, is the best path to peace and prosperity. Sharing, not secrecy, is the operative principle.

Edition details

• Publisher: OSS International Press
• Publication date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0971566135
• ISBN 13: 9780971566132
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 362