Public Intelligence Blog

Anthony Olcott

5.0 out of 5 stars 6 Star Insider-Outsider Unique Offering, March 24, 2012

This is my final review. If you are interested in what the US Intelligence Community does NOT know about open source intelligence and the global network of sources in 183 languages, this is without question the only book available in English, and a six star rating is earned by virtue of its uniqueness. This is NOT a book that will teach you anything about Open Source Intelligence (OSINT).

The author, an academic rather than a CIA body, has done a phenomenal job of integrating multiple literatures in studying the history and culture of the CIA’s open source endeavors as well as its overall culture, and in his conclusion, offers up sound ideas that need to be implemented if we ever get a national leadership that is interested in intelligence with integrity.

I certainly recommend that this book be read along with Hamilton Bean’s No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger Security International).

Dr. Olcott has done a tremendous service to all who care about the future of the craft of intelligence (decision-support), and I have been so impressed with this book that I reworked my chapter for Routledge at the last minute to ensure this book’s inclusion in the bibliography and credit to the author on two points within the chapter. A “must read” for anyone interested in bureaucracy, public administration, intelligence, information pathologies, obstacles to innovation, and so on.

I made ten pages of notes. Below I offer a distilled summary.

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Gustavo DIAZ Matey

I know the author personally, have followed his work over many years, and consider him to be one of the top authorities on intelligence writing in the Spanish language. I recently worked with him in Spain on an initiative he has been developing, to help the Spanish government and Spanish commerce make better use of open sources of intelligence while also refining their methods in relation to data integrity, product integrity, and system or behavioral integrity.

Although I am not familiar with all the publications in Spanish on intelligence, people I trust tell me that this is one of the top books in Spanish. I do not look for it to be translated soon, but would certainly recommend to any publishing house that they consider doing so, as we are all [except the Western governments] moving toward M4IS2 hybrid eight tribe governance, and this is something the author is helping to explain to all governments and business and academic and non-governmental communities that work in the Spanish languages.

M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making

Eight Tribes: Academic, Civil Society, Commercial, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Non-Governmental / Non-Profit

Rather than list specific books I also recommend here, I want to point readers to my full list of most intelligence books that I have reviewed for Amazon, just search for intelligence (most and get right to it with links to the Amazon pages for each book.

Gustavo DIAZ Matey

I know the author personally, have followed his work over many years, and consider him to be one of the top authorities on intelligence writing in the Spanish language. I recently worked with him in Spain on an initiative he has been developing, to help the Spanish government and Spanish commerce make better use of open sources of intelligence while also refining their methods in relation to data integrity, product integrity, and system or behavioral integrity.

Although I am not familiar with all the publications in Spanish on intelligence, people I trust tell me that this is one of the top books in Spanish. I do not look for it to be translated soon, but would certainly recommend to any publishing house that they consider doing so, as we are all [except the Western governments] moving toward M4IS2 hybrid eight tribe governance, and this is something the author is helping to explain to all governments and business and academic and non-governmental communities that work in the Spanish languages.

M4IS2: Multinational, Multiagency, Multidisciplinary, Multidomain Information-Sharing and Sense-Making

Eight Tribes: Academic, Civil Society, Commercial, Government, Law Enforcement, Media, Military, Non-Governmental / Non-Profit

Rather than list specific books I also recommend here, I want to point readers to my full list of most intelligence books that I have reviewed for Amazon, just search for intelligence (most and get right to it with links to the Amazon pages for each book.

Uffe Kock Wiil (ed)

5.0 out of 5 stars , Innovative, Technical, Leverages Open Sources to the Fullest July 27, 2011

Springer needs to make it clear to Amazon that the book ships from a US-based warehouse. I have urged the lead editor and conference organizer to ask Springer to correct the error. The book is available within the US and should be delivered within the week once Springer corrects the way the book has been registered on Amazon. I anticipate that a paperback version will be offered at a more affordable price for individuals–this is the library or institutional “trade” price.

I am very glad to see the publisher make use of Look Inside the Book, and encourage all interested parties to use that feature and study the table of contents. I have to articulate my profound respect for the conference organizer and senior book editor and for those contributing to this book, all of whom I met at the conference for which this content was created.

I have never seen a better collection of scientific and mathematical approaches to leveraging open sources of information to identify precursors and patterns of terrorism. This is an original book, and the first major effort of the new counterterrorism center at the University of Southern Denmark.

Including my alternative perspective, as one other senior participant put it, “makes our job harder.” One reason I particularly like Nordic professionals is because of their integrity. There is a great deal of intelligence and total integrity in this book; it is an honor for me to have been included. I am not competent in the way the other authors are, and my regard for their pioneering is unlimited.

Also just published, very US centric but a really original study, is No More Secrets: Open Source Information and the Reshaping of U.S. Intelligence (Praeger Security International). I have provided a lengthy review at the Amazon page for that book.

Wolfgang Reinicke

This is a pioneering work, easily a decade ahead of other world-class efforts, my favorite being that of (then) World Bank Vice President for Europe, J. F. Rischard, High Noon 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them. It has been largely over-looked, but should gain additional importance, along with the author’s additional book, Critical Choices. The United Nations, Networks, and the Future of Global Governance, now that George Soros is sponsoring the Central European University (CEU), and within that university, the author Wolfgang Reinicke has been appointed the inaugural dean of CEU’s School of Public Policy and International Affairs. In the context of the essay by George Soros, the first 57 pages of The Philanthropy of George Soros: Building Open Societies, and the now hardened disenchantment with the nation-state system for being ignorant, biased, and non-agile (these and other deficiencies are marvelously articulated by Professor Philip Allot of Cambridge in The Health of Nations: Society and Law beyond the State, one can surmise that Dean Peinicke will seek to focus on integrationist endeavors that demand transparency and accountability for multiple stakeholders in return for stability and mutual gain.

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Russell Ackoff

5.0 out of 5 stars “There are no simple solutions to complex problems”., August 21, 2000

ByTurgay BUGDACIGIL (Istanbul, Turkey) – See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

“This book is a product of applying systems thinking to the management and organization of enterprises”. Russel L. Ackoff writes, “therefore, an understanding of the nature of systems and systems thinking is essential for understanding what this book is about. Although most people can identify many different systems, few know precisely what a system is. Without such knowledge, one cannot understand them, and without such an understanding, one cannot be aware of their implications for their management and organization and for treatment of the most important problems that currently face them” (p.5).

Thus, he firstly argues that a system is a whole consisting of two or more parts that satisfies the following five conditions:

(1). The whole has one or more defining properties or functions.

(2). Each part in the set can affect the behavior or properties of the whole.

(3). There is a subset of parts that is sufficient in one or more environments for carrying out the defining function of the whole; each of these parts is necessary but insufficient for carrying out this defining function.

(4). The way that each essential part of a system affects its behavior or properties depends on (the behavior or properties of) at least one other essential part of the system.

(5). The effect of any subset of essential parts on the system as a whole depends on the behavior of at least one other such subset.

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Ran Hock

6 Stars–The ONE Essential Reference

March 13, 2011

I’ve known Ran Hock for close to twenty years, and now that Mary Ellen Bates (MEB) and Reva Basch are retired (see their last books below), Ran is more or less the last man standing in the independent information brokerage domain, at least that I know. Arno Reuser, the genius librarian and top Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) pioneer in Europe still tells me that just listening to Ran Hock once a year (he was always the pre-conference to my conference) made him appear to be the most intellegent searcher in his organization for another year…Arno was being modest, he is his own pioneer, but the point is important. Ran Hock remains the one person I would consider essential for training a cadre to make proper use of the Internet.

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Lisa Gansky (Author)

5.0 out of 5 stars How and why a new business model has created a “perfect storm” of opportunities

November 10, 2010

By Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) – See all my reviews

A Mesh enterprise (as opposed to a Mesh company) consists of everyone directly or indirectly associated with the design, production, marketing, sales, distribution, and servicing. It relies on advanced web and mobile data networks to obtain or create whatever information is needed (e.g. demographics of consumers, market trends and patterns, as well as the nature, extent, and frequency of usage. Also, it makes effective use of word-of-mouth and social network channels to “get the word out” about offers, news, and recommendations.

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Ellen Hodgson Brown

5.0 out of 5 stars Follow the Yellow Brick Road… to comprehend a financial system on the brink of collapse

September 16, 2007

By GK (Bay Area, CA) – See all my reviews

I have been researching this topic myself for four or five years now and am familiar with almost every other book in this genre, and I can unequivocally say that this is now the definitive work on the world’s financial and banking system, the history of money and power in Western civilization, and the dire prognosis for our economy and our personal freedoms, in general, as a result. It is vastly superior to “The Creature from Jekyll Island”, to compare it to one other fine book on the subject that is now outdated, both in terms of its complete historical coverage, as well as a completely up to date perspective on recent financial history and a deeply insightful analysis of our current debt crisis, why it was let out of control, and who would benefit from its ultimate unwinding. Quite frankly, looking back four to five years from now, this could be the most profound non-fiction work of our times. Robert Hemphill, Credit Manager for the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta, when speaking on the same topic as this book, stated, “It is the most important subject intelligent persons can investigate and reflect upon.” I couldn’t agree more, and even encourage many unintelligent persons to give it a go. The mechanics of money and finance have a profound affect on every person’s life and well being, and is inextricably linked to the fabric of our society and our freedom. Yet it is almost completely ignored and poorly understood by the common man. As Henry Ford said, “It is well that the people of this nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be revolution before tomorrow morning.” It’s time we all started to understand what’s been going on and how it will affect our immediate future.

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Buckminster Fuller

6 Star and Beyond–the Essence of Fuller, the Future of Humanity

November 28, 2010

I did not truly begin to understand the breadth and depth of Buckminster Fuller’s thinking until I read this book as it deserves to be read, with full attention and detailed notes. This is one of those books that merits–and received from me, a Work Table of core concepts, definitions, obstacles, and solutions, posted online at Work Table [link live at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog].

Although I heard Fuller speak personally at Muhlenberg College and distinctly remember him saying that a housing foundation could support the Queen Elizabeth ocean liner, it was not until this book that I understood in detail exactly what he meant: that we are wasting 90% of what we put into buildings. I have previously read and reviewed Critical Path as well as Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, and it is my great privilege to know Medard Gabel, co-creator of the analog World Brain and sole creator of the new digital EarthGame (in concept pending funding).

CORE POINT: True wealth is cosmic energy and the creation of means to deliver to humanity unlimited free energy. Among many other things this creates the possibility of applying energy to create self-contained homes that are lightweight, fully self-contained in water and sewage, and totally green.

CORE CONCEPT: Capitalism and democracy have been perverted by money–those who manage money manage those who manage politics, and they both concentrate on optimizing the false God of money, an abstract concept hardly worth its paper representation, while ignoring–even subverting–the possibility of achieving infinite cosmic wealth on behalf of all of humanity.

CORE CONCEPT: Predatory capitalism on the one hand, and controlled socialism on the other, are both extremes and both fail to meet the needs as well as the possibilities of humanity. Fullerism is at root a non-zero equation.

PERSONAL POINT: This book answers the question I could not answer when a senior executive asked me “what do you do?” Now I know. I am a Comprehensive Global Architect whose objective is Prime Design: From Waste to Wealth (the title of my next book, inspired by this core reading from Buckminster Fuller). All my prior works, including my most recent, INTELLIGENCE for EARTH: Clarity, Diversity, Integrity, & Sustainaabilty, have been a preamble to what I now recognize is my life’s work…I will try to earn another 25 years (I am 58, 58 + 25 is 83 — my family history suggests I will make it.).  I am still looking for a country or global organization that wants to profit from doing this.

A few definitions up front:

QUOTE (142): WEALTH [is] the measurable degree of forwardly organized environmental control, in terms of quickly convertible energy, capacities and performance ratioed system capabilities, per capita, per diem.

Advertising destroyed public trust by pre-empting “industrial design” as code for airbrushing superficial changes to move products to market, rather than seeking integral improvements that could be shared with the consumer.

Design-improved livingry increases wealth.

Synergy is the delta between the sum of the parts and their anticipatable outcomes, and the actual outcome not anticipated.

CORE CONCEPTS

Architects deal with the externalities of man.

“At rest” science and understanding (Newton’s paradigm) have been replaced by “constant change” (Einstein’s paradigm).

Bad housing breeds bad humanity and bad science–the time/energy costs and the materials costs are too high, housing is the socio-economic “runt” of all the professions.

Challenge is IRREDUCIBLE.

Design is innovative re-assembly that adds value.

Design-preventable includes illumination and prevention of corrupt exploitation of materials for inefficient or unjustifiable applications.

Energy mass, energy radiation, energy gravitation (E3) times Intellect (E3I)

Good design would reduce the per capita consumption of building materials from nine tons per person to one ton per person [this is in the developed world--these reductions would allow the extension of the lower tonnage home designs to nine times more people and more--with mass consumption come mass efficiencies.]

Industry is *supposed to be* the organization and application of collective knowledge and action that produces synergy (added value) over the sum of the parts in isolation.

Individual freedom is ESSENTIAL to the expansion of diversity needed to enable collectives to see the whole.

Intelligence masters energy, increases energy, applies energy.

Total Thinking is the intelligent acquisition, ingestion, processing, and exploitation of all relevant information in order to produce efficiencies and effects beneficial to the mission objective.

Wealth is intellect plus energy combined to create capacity [with more free energy making more refined capacity possible].

Worldwide commonwealth credit is both needed and achievable to provide mass-produced sustainable housing for all. That in turn frees up the five billion poor to create “infinite wealth” by combining their intellect with infinite free energy to advance civilization.

OBSTACLES to advancing humanity include:

Advertising in place of genuine progress [should not be a tax-deductible expense in my own view]

“Credit” fueled the perpetuation and expansion of rotten housing at great cost.

Housing is the works of design, the worst of materials, and the worst of applied engineering

Housing as the sucking chest wound in economics [mortgages should not be tax-deductible, this both encourages waste of materials on housing, but also enables the growth of financial fraud]

Managers lack the over-all philosophical discernment to be effective at seeing the whole and building to the whole.

Politics is VERY wasteful, perpetuating inefficient industries.

Specializations are attracting the most gifted, and this leaves the less gifted dealing with integration if they think about it at all. [I always thought this was what business and public administration programs were supposed to do, but having graduated from such a program realize they do not.]

A HANDFUL OF QUOTES

p. 25 “My envisioned transcendental world design plan would be inherently nonpolitical, because it would be utterly independent of any need for authority beyond that to-self-by-self for initiation of its study and development.”

p. 95 In relation to the waste of heavy materials in housing, “…that in this war crisis it is technically treason to allow ourselves to be short sixty-five thousand freight cars weighing fifty tons of steel each, which shortage is equivalent to the number of cars required exclusively to transport the solid foundation and flooring materials unscientifically employed as frozen compression elements to structurally support the tiny weights of one-tenth-of-a-ton load of men who comprise the negligible working loads of housing, or to support machinery from below that could better be suspended, etc.”

p. 246 “The efficiency of the industrial equation is directly proportional to the numbers consuming.” [In other words, capitalism focused on the needs of the one billion rich is long overdue for a redirection of focus to the needs of the five billion poor.]

p.247 “Serve one hundred per cent will involve a world design revolution, not just design of end-products, but of the comprehensive industrial network equations including world-around-livingry-service systems, at regenerative occupancy rentals, mutually installed in anticipatory facilitation of total world enjoyment of individually respected total man.”

p. 249 “Only the free-wheeling artist-explorer, non-academic, scientist-philosopher, mechanic, economist-poet, who has never waited for patron-starting and accrediting of his coordinate capabilities holds the prime initiative today.”

SOLUTIONS

Energy investments will define the future.

Need a world housing industry. We do NOT need water, sewer, and electrical infrastructure. Distributed housing and small cities connected by high-speed rail should be the norm.

Harvesting of scrap is the next needed Manhattan Project/Marshall Plan.

A HANDFUL OF RELATED BOOKS

Radical Man
The exemplar: The exemplary performer in the age of productivity
Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life
Human Scale
Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny
The Knowledge Executive
Reflections on Evolutionary Activism: Essays, poems and prayers from an emerging field of sacred social change