Some have become cynical about Washington's ways. But we should consider whether there might be deeper causes that mere bureaucratic competition and empire-building behind the vast expansion in the IC. Rather than being only a self-interested grab by agencies and contractors for money and power, the great expansion of the IC also reflects the preferences of the broader American society. We could save money by making significant cuts in the IC's counter-terrorism activities. But that would mean taking risks with casualties, civil liberties, or responsibilities that many Americans would find uncomfortable. So, perhaps not yet having thought through the financial tradeoffs, the public, at least for now, is happy to "spend whatever it takes." In other words, if we are outraged by the size, expense, and waste of "Top Secret America," we all share the blame.

For example, the minimum acceptable standard for counter-terror success is presumably zero attacks within the United States homeland. An Islamist maniac shooting up a reception center at Fort Hood with two pistols or a crude attempted car bomb in Times Square are deemed to be unacceptable failures, requiring investigations and bureaucratic shakeups. An alternative and thriftier approach for the federal intelligence community would have it focus on only truly mass casualty scenarios such as nuclear, chemical, biological, maritime, and commercial aviation threats. Preventing relatively low casualty threats such as car bombs, suicide bombers, and gunmen would fall on states, cities, and the citizens themselves.

But don't expect anyone to propose cutting $100 billion over ten years from the IC's budget in exchange for a, say, 25% increase in the chance of 200 terror murders in the U.S. over the same ten years. One reason the IC may be so costly and complex is because of the urge to spend extra money in an attempt to save that extra life from a terror attack. American society seems —to make that marginal payment. In this sense, society's preferences for the IC's spending on counter-terrorism matches the society's preferences for health care spending -- every extra year of life is worth it, whatever the price. Not surprisingly, the budgets for the IC and health care are following the same exponential trajectory.

Counter-terrorism might be cheaper if American society didn't rightfully place such a high value on civil liberties, social equality, and the rule of law. Racial profiling, police state surveillance, preventive detention (Gitmo aside), even quarantining travel and contact with countries known to be terror harbors are all measures deemed beyond the pale. Maintaining safety without these measures requires a larger and more expensive IC, an expense U.S. society is —to pay in order to avoid corrupting its values.

Americans seem to have opted for professionalization of their security. "Let the experts handle it," is now the way things work. Never mind that it was common citizens who foiled the Shoe Bomber, the Underwear Bomber, the Times Square Bomber, the Fort Dix plot, and others. If they knew they alone were responsible for their security, 300 million pairs of motivated eyes could probably outperform the 854,000 experts with top-secret clearances discussed in the Washington Post story. But we will never hear a Secretary of Homeland Security or U.S. president say, "Citizens, you are responsible for stopping terrorism." Most citizens likely believe they have such a responsibility. But it is not clear how vague or concrete that responsibility is, where it stops and where the experts' responsibility begins. Or vice versa.

Within the looming need for general budget-cutting in Washington, the IC will no doubt find some redundant programs to cull. But the standard of zero attacks on the homeland means that it will be impossible to discuss the tradeoff between extra security spending versus extra risk taken. As important is the discussion of how much the responsibility for security should be in the hands of the federal government's security elite versus in the hands of the citizens themselves. Just as with health care spending, there will be no upper bound to the IC's budget until society talks through these issues.

Insurgency has been the most prevalent form of armed conflict since at least 1949, as well as the subject of countless historical and contemporary studies. Contemporary discourse on the subject is voluminous and often contentious, but to date there has been a dearth of systematic evidence supporting the counterinsurgency (COIN) approaches, practices, and tenets that make for successful operations. Relying on a collection of the 30 most recent resolved insurgencies, along with a bank of factors that helped or hindered the COIN force in each case and in each phase of each case, several commonalities emerge. For instance, the data show that good COIN practices tend to "run in packs" and that the balance of selected good and bad practices perfectly predicts the outcome of a conflict. The importance of popular support is confirmed, but the ability to interdict tangible support (such as new personnel, materiel, and financing) is the single best predictor of COIN force success. Twenty distinct approaches to COIN are rigorously tested against the historical record, providing valuable lessons for U.S. engagement in and support for COIN operations. A companion volume, Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Detailed Counterinsurgency Case Studies, presents in-depth profiles of each of the insurgencies.

Download the full monograph at Rand.

Observations on Recent Trends in Armored Forces - David E. Johnson, John Gordon, IV; Rand Occasional Paper.

For an ongoing project entitled "An Army for Full Spectrum Operations: Lessons from Irregular Wars," RAND Arroyo Center researchers assessed recent "irregular" conflicts and their implications for U.S. Army force mix and capabilities, as well as for the elements that support or operate with ground forces. This paper provides initial research observations on how various militaries view the role of heavy forces (tanks and other armored vehicles) in irregular warfare (IW) and hybrid warfare environments. The views of the U.S. Marine Corps, the British Army, the Canadian Army, the Danish Army, and the Israeli Army are discussed. What emerges from the research to date is that each of these forces believes that there is a role in IW and hybrid warfare for heavy forces, including tanks, because they reduce operational risk, minimize friendly casualties, and provide an intimidation factor against adversaries.

Download the full occasional paper at Rand.

... While more than a few journalists have tracked the intelligence community over the years, most have focused only on contracting and outsourcing. For example, Tim Shorrock, whose 2008 book Spies for Hire recounts many of the problems with relatively unregulated intelligence contracting, has been following the issues surrounding the so-called "outsourcing" of the IC since 2005. He even assembled a searchable database of intelligence contractors, and routinely blogs about what they are up to. Jeremy Scahill, a reporter at the Nation, focuses on security contractors and documents their activities (Scahill wrote a damning article on Blackwater's secret activities in Pakistan).

But Priest and Arkin expand their discussion to the IC as a whole — the story, they contend, isn't just the possible misuse of contractors, but the growth of the national security state since 2001. And in this they are right — the IC has grown by leaps and bounds, and now produces a veritable avalanche of information. It's far too much for any one person to read, and far too much even for a bureaucracy like the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the agency set up to coordinate intelligence activities, to manage. Intelligence agencies and their contractors now work on everything from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, to global counter-drug operations, unconventional warfare like psychological operations, weapons and technology, and even operations in space...

Much more at PBS.

WASHINGTON, DC 20511

July 19, 2010

Acting Director of National Intelligence, David C. Gompert, reaction to the Washington Post series.

This morning, the Washington Post began a series of articles on the growth of the Intelligence Community following the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The reporting does not reflect the Intelligence Community we know.

We accept that we operate in an environment that limits the amount of information we can share. However, the fact is, the men and women of the Intelligence Community have improved our operations, thwarted attacks, and are achieving untold successes every day.

In recent years, we have reformed the IC in ways that have improved the quality, quantity, regularity, and speed of our support to policymakers, warfighters, and homeland defenders, and we will continue our reform efforts. We provide oversight, while also encouraging initiative. We work constantly to reduce inefficiencies and redundancies, while preserving a degree of intentional overlap among agencies to strengthen analysis, challenge conventional thinking, and eliminate single points of failure. We are mindful of the size of our contractor ranks, but greatly value the critical flexibility and specialized skills they contribute to our mission.

The challenges that lie ahead are difficult and complex. We will continue to scrutinize our own operations, seek ways to improve and adapt, and work with Congress on its crucial oversight and reform efforts. We can always do better, and we will. And the importance of our mission and our commitment to keeping America safe will remain steadfast, whether they are reflected in the day's news or not.

David C. Gompert

-----

Q&A on the IC Post-9/11

Truth about Contractors

ODNI Fact Sheet

ODNI Organizational Chart

Previewing Priest: Inside the Semi-Secret World - The Atlantic

Counterinsurgency by Dr. David Kilcullen, reviewed by Basil and Spice.

... At the heart of Counterinsurgency is Kilcullen's legendary "Twenty-Eight Articles." In it, he shows company leaders how to practice counterinsurgency in the real world, at night, with the GPS down, the media criticizing you, the locals complaining in a language you don't understand, and an unseen enemy killing your people by ones and twos.

Reading this piece is like reading a modern-day Sun Tzu--an essential read for officers in the field, and not infrequently an excellent source of wisdom for readers of all backgrounds -- military or civilian. In such pithy adages as "Rank is nothing: talent is everything" or "Train the squad leaders--then trust them," Kilcullen offers advice that any leader would be wise to consider...

More at Basil and Spice.

... The Taliban are fighting for their lives, and for some time have been completely aware that the effective build up of the ANA is one significant key to the coalition' s success and their failure. They are also completely aware that the trust that runs between the mentored ANA battalions and their mentoring coalition cadres is both the critical and the most vulnerable point of that build up. Sowing distrust between the mentor and the mentored must be their top priority. Above all contriving the murder of a mentor by a soldier of the host Afghan battalion drives a wedge between the two parties that is hard to overcome.

Crying despicable fails to emphasise that the mentor-mentored relationship is a critical point in the operational concept for both sides. Using words like "despicable" makes it seem like a surprising and egregious act, whereas in truth it is an obvious thing to do. Instead of crying despicable, generals and politicians need a more robust narrative or explanation for what is happening. Rather than exuding baffled surprise, they should be saying firmly : look, the key to success is the establishment of an effective Afghan security force so we must expect that the Taliban will desperately try to sabotage this effort. And they will try to do this by attacking the trust between our mentoring cadres and the Afghan forces with whom they are embedded. That is a critical point of our campaign plan and they are bound to go for it again and again. This means that because of the Taliban desperation, the task is both crucially important and very dangerous and from time to time there are terrible costs involved...

More at Kings of War.

The list is vetted through the components and TSOCs to ensure that research will advance SOF missions and support SOF interests. The final recommendations for research topics are approved by the USSOCOM commander.

These topics, concepts, and processes reflect the challenges of winning the current conflicts and meeting the needs for the conflicts most likely to face us in the foreseeable future. This alone speaks to the need for more debate, research, and study. If you have any questions about this document, JSOU Press in general, or how JSOU can assist you in your academic research, contact the director of Research, jsou.research@hurlburt.af.mil.

In many respects, the war against the Taliban is no different to a war on gangs such as the Hells Angels. Both rely on a breakdown in the socio-economic conditions that force sections of the community to make unfortunate decisions. Where the community is ravaged by violence, drugs and intergenerational deprivation, how do you stop people supporting the Taliban or their local gang? This is how I began to look at the struggle against the Taliban during my time in Afghanistan.

Counterinsurgency is the military's version of what criminal and social justice systems have been doing for years. Whether it's Afghanistan or the Bronx, the population is the prize and it is no longer acceptable just to shoot the bad guys.

Counterinsurgency has become a blindingly complex approach to winning the war in Afghanistan. Fighting the Taliban has become a multi-layered offensive that combines the maintenance of security, the restoration of law and order, community and tribal mapping ('human terrain analysis'), rebuilding social, health and educational facilities, establishing systems of governance and straight-out capturing and killing the enemy. Counterinsurgency is only effective by winning on all these fronts...

More at The Interpreter.

You can have the best COIN doctrine in the world and the most swept up culturally aware warriors that exist, able to rain down death and destruction in 3 local languages and say sorry afterwards. But if you cannot come up with a decent plan, implement it effectively and maintain your combat power while doing so you are still going to get egg on your face! It's all about the basics.

And then Ken:

My emphasis (It's all about the basics). Because that really sums it up. We are overly concerned with displaying (word of choice) our sophistication and erudition thus we have lost sight of that inviolable truth.