Phi Beta Iota: Speaking to the World Affairs Council on 6 November 2009, Admiral Dennis Blair, USN (Ret), now the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), offered up a faint-praise indictment of a national intelligence community that is pedestrian and mis-directed.
Climate change accepted as a given top priority; state system still the foundation for analysis; technology search still focused on extraction of fossil fuels; potential for conflict grrowing; in 2025 the US will still be #1 power on Earth.
He stated that the goal of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) is to help policy-makers make wise policy; to provide effective actionable intelligence to the Whole of Government (WoG); and to move the IC toward the cutting edge of technology.
Here is what he did not say, and our critical comments:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Intelligence activities across the U.S. government and military cost a total of $75 billion a year, the nation's top intelligence official said on Tuesday, disclosing an overall number long shrouded in secrecy.
Phi Beta Iota: So much for all those who questioned our long-standing repetitive statement that secret U.S. intelligence is costing the U.S. taxpayer $65 billion a year. We were deliberately off by $10 billion. Now that we have established this, perhaps the time has come for both the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the General Accountability Office (GAO) to ask the obvious question: What does the taxpayer get for this vast sum, and how could it be spent better?
Phi Beta Iota: Admiral Dennis Blair, USN (Ret) has signed off on the 2009 update and revision of the National Intelligence Strategy of 2005, and on balance we give it a solid C with the observation that there is no “break-out” in this documents. (Continued below the fold–A for school solution, F for real-world need, C over-all)
Rear Admiral Gilbride has promulgated the Concept of Operations (CONOP) for the National Maritime Intelligence Center (NMIC), effective 19 August 2009.
It is quite good and serves as a model for all others. it is, as of now, the single best attempt to truly integrate the concerns and capabilities of the inter-agency community of interest.
A few shortfalls are easily corrected. The Department of Agriculture and food security, for example, are not embraced. That needs to be corrected. The CONOPS is also too focused on security and avoids both protective and enabling opportunities for maritime intervention. Environmental Impacts, for example, focuses only on weather and the opening of the Northwest Passage, not on pollution or other maritime dumping activities that further toxify 75% of our Earth.
