Reference: UN Air Power Conference Papers

Briefings (Core)
Click on Image to Enlarge

The 17th Air Force Historical Workshop was a great success and the proceedings will be published in book form (scheduled for 2012).

For futher information, please contact Dr. Walter Dorn, Canadian Forces College, Toronto, at dorn@cfc.dnd.ca.

Presentations

Air Operations in Somalia, 1991-1993“,

Dr. William Dean III, United States Air Force Air Command and Staff College

Kinetic Air Power in the Congo, 1961-1963“,

Dr. Walter Dorn, Royal Military College / Canadian Forces College

Attack Helicopters in the Heart of Africa, 2004 onward“,

Dr. Walter Dorn, Royal Military College / Canadian Forces College

United Nations Air Operations in the Congo Crisis, 1960 – 1964“,

Dr. Sebastian Lukasik, United States Air Force Air Command and Staff College

Reference: Open Source Agency (OSA) II

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Book Lists, Briefings (Core), Defense Science Board, DoD, Hill Letters & Testimony, Legislation, Memoranda, Monographs, Office of Management and Budget
Amazon Page

This book remains the single definitive reference on the Smart Nation Act as developed by Robert Steele in support of Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02).   As pointed out in Hamilton Bean's recently published book,  No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of US Intelligence the Open Source Agency (OSA) has become the subject of competing visions–on one side, those who favor accountability, effectiveness, transparency, and respect for the public…..on the other, those who favor corruption, profitable waste, secrecy, and the exclusion of the public.

The simplified public articles are three:  1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information; 2002 TIME Magazine The New Craft of Intelligence and 2006 Forbes Blank Slate On Intelligence.

The back-up book, the one intended to help the Department of Defense transform itself, INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time has since been supplemented by two briefings, 2009 DoD OSINT Leadership and Staff Briefings.

Amazon Page

Most recently, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability provides the strategic, operational, tactical, and technical contexts for leveraging both Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making (M4IS2) in order to create a prosperous world at peace–and at one third the cost of what the USA spends on war today.

This book had two pre-cursors, 2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political and 2010 COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.

That book has since been supplemented by a chapter, 2010 The Ultimate Hack Re-Inventing Intelligence to Re-Engineer Earth, in the just-published book, Counterterrorism and Open Source Intelligence; and by two articles and a monograph from the U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, all three found at 2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated.

If an OSA is created–it can only be a success under diplomatic auspices as OMB has twice agreed (provided the Secretary of State asks for it as a sister agency to the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), it could–it should–host the Multinational Decision Support Centre (MDSC) as proposed to DoD and implicitly called for in several Defense Science Board (DSB) reports.  The MDSC  could be located in Tampa, Florida, as the Coalition Coordination Centre has been, but staffed by intelligence professionals instead of logistics professionals.

Put most simply, an OSA restores intelligence and integrity to the entirety of the US Government, and changes everything about how we do policy, acquisitions, and operations.  It restores the Republic.

See Also:

Continue reading “Reference: Open Source Agency (OSA) II”

Reference: Open Source Agency (OSA) I

About the Idea, Articles & Chapters, Briefings (Core), Director of National Intelligence et al (IC), DoD, Legislation, Memoranda

The Open Source Agency (OSA) was first proposed by Robert Steele to the Open Source Council in 1992, as an Open Source  Center outside the wire.  The rationale was that best in class sources would change constantly, and access was needed to all information in all languages all the time.  CIA and MITRE conspired to substitute instead the Open Source Information System (OSIS), a still-anemic unproductive system with limited sources and no analytic tool-kit worthy of the name.

On this history, see:

Journal: LEXIS-NEXIS OSINT Kiss to CIA/OSC

History of Opposition (15)

Despite the history of opposition, and the fact that the CIA's Open Source Center (OSC) today only deals with eleven countries on a more or less regular basis, while going through the motions with others, a robust multinational network has been developed over time that includes at least 90 countries, some of which have made gains in harnessing the eight tribes of intelligence, some not.  The Nordics, and especially Sweden, have been especially effective, at furthering the concept of M4IS2 (multinational, multiagency, multidisciplinary, multidomain information-sharing and sense-making).

On this progress, see:

Historic Contributions (246)

Search: The Future of OSINT [is M4IS2-Multinational]

There remains a need for an Open Source Agency (OSA) that is under diplomatic auspices as suggested by Dr. Joe Markowitz and endorsed by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02) and Robert Steele, both writing and speaking on this over the years.  Below are some references that bear directly on the need for and the means by which an OSA might be created.

2010: Human Intelligence (HUMINT) Trilogy Updated

2010 INTELLIGENCE FOR EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainability

Legislation: Smart Nation-Safe Nation Act of 2009

Memoranda: OSS CEO to DNI One-Pager

Memorandum: $2 Billion Obligation Plan Centered on Defense, for a New Open Source Agency

Memoranda: Creating a New Agency with a New Mission, New Methods, and a New Mind Set

Memoranda: Policy-Budget Outreach Tool

2006 INFORMATION OPERATIONS: All Information, All Languages, All the Time

2006 THE SMART NATION ACT: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest

2006 Forbes Blank Slate On Intelligence

2002 THE NEW CRAFT OF INTELLIGENCE: Personal, Public, & Political

1995 GIQ 13/2 Creating a Smart Nation: Strategy, Policy, Intelligence, and Information

1995 National Information Strategy 101 Presentation to CENDI/COSPO*

Venessa Miemis: Beyond Systems Thinking

Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Briefings (Core), Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Earth Intelligence, Ethics, Policies
Venessa Miemis

Excellent piece from Rethinking Complexity: Studying Systems for a Humane and Sustainable World.

From Systems Thinking to Systems Being

CONCLUSION

Systems being involves embodying a new consciousness, an expanded sense of self, a recognition that we cannot survive alone, that a future that works for humanity needs also to work for other species and the planet. It involves empathy and love for the greater human family and for all our relationships – plants and animals, earth and sky, ancestors and descendents, and the many peoples and beings that inhabit our Earth. This is the wisdom of many indigenous cultures around the world, this is part of the heritage that we have forgotten and we are in the process of recovering.

Click on Image to Enlarge

Systems being and systems living brings it all together: linking head, heart and hands. The expression of systems being is an integration of our full human capacities. It involves rationality with reverence to the mystery of life, listening beyond words, sensing with our whole being, and expressing our authentic self in every moment of our life. The journey from systems thinking to systems being is a transformative learning process of expansion of consciousness—from awareness to embodiment.

Kathia Laszlo, Ph.D., directs Saybrook University's program in Leadership of Sustainable Systems

Reference: GW Seminar on Reflexive Systems

Briefings (Core)

For several years a group of faculty members, students, and people from off campus met once a month to discuss “complex systems”.  Later we decided to discuss “reflexive systems” as the next step in the systems sciences.

The systems sciences and cybernetics provide a general theory of perception, cognition, learning, adaptation, and understanding, whether these phenomena occur in human beings, groups, organizations, nations, or machines. Just as physics provides a fundamental theory of matter and energy, which is used in the various fields of engineering, cybernetics may one day be seen as providing a fundamental theory of information and regulation for the fields of the social and design sciences .

Reflexivity is similiar to second order cybernetics. Both emphasize including the observer in what is observed. Cybernetics has already had an impact on a wide range of fields – computer science, robotics, engineering, biology, psychology, management, sociology, political science, economics and the philosophy of science. As a transdisciplinary field cybernetics serves as a catalyst for further developments in many fields.

The group meets from September to April except December.The presentations and discusssions take place at The George Washington University, from 10 a.m to noon in Funger Hall, 2201 G Street NW, Washington DC (coffee available, lunch afterwards).

Archives 2006-2011  [to be continued]

Tip of the Hat to Stuart Umpleby for the pointer.

Howard Rheingold: Cooperation Theory

Advanced Cyber/IO, Articles & Chapters, Book Lists, Briefings (Core), Communities of Practice, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Gift Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Policies
Howard Rheingold

Introduction to Cooperation Theory

A six week course using asynchronous forums, blogs, wikis, mindmaps, social bookmarks, synchronous audio, video, chat, and Twitter to introduce the fundamentals of an interdisciplinary study of cooperation: social dilemmas, institutions for collective action, the commons, evolution of cooperation, technologies of cooperation, and cooperative arrangements in biology from cells to ecosystems.

If you are interested in signing up, contact howard@rheingold.com

Learning objectives

About this course: Expect participative and collaborative learning

Schedule

Missions

Below the line: synopsis of course with many open links.

Continue reading “Howard Rheingold: Cooperation Theory”