Three upcoming conferences. One with two robot scientists, another on privatizing defense, and the third on social media for government. Details after the fold.
Continue reading “Two Upcoming Conferences + One You Probably Missed
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Category: ICT
Coming soon: a fatwa to promote tin foil hats so you don’t hear the wrong voice
MountainRunner friend Steve Corman has a post about a commercial application of the "voice of Allah" we learned about at a workshop earlier this year
At a government workshop some time ago I head someone describe a new tool that was described as the “voice of Allah.” This was said to be a device that would operate at a distance and would deliver a message that only a single person could hear. The story was that it was tested in a conflict situation in Iraq and pointed at one insurgent in a group, who whipped around looking in all directions, and began a heated conversation with his compatriots, who did not hear the message. At the time I greeted this story with some skepticism.
Lo and behold, today I saw this item on CNET News:
The folks who heard the ad for A & E’s TV show “Paranormal State” emitted from a billboard in New York City’s Greenwich Village must have thought it was pretty weird. As they walked into the targeted area they were exposed to highly focused sound, picked up not by their ears, but by their skulls. The otherwise inaudible sound waves are experienced via bone conduction–the sound resonates inside the passerby’s head.
The system is being developed for commercial use by Holosonic Research Labs which besides the billboard stunt has installed systems at the Seattle Space Needle, at museums, and at Disney EPCOT center.
Here is a clip of an ABC news story about use of the technology in a CourtTV promotional campaign that has reactions from, um, victims that are amazingly like the one recounted about the insurgent.
Now, what if captured said insurgent, or similar, and measured his brainwaves to certain messages? Sound far-fetched? Not necessarily. Message Science is doing that now, at least domestically. I’m curious if they have the socio-cultural database to properly shape messages for effective counterinsurgency operations.
We use our own groundbreaking, cutting-edge, proprietary scientific technology, PerceptionMapper® brain mapping. It is the only methodology of its type in the industry. We can literally see your message hit the target in the brain. We also use proven, conventional, cutting-edge psychological methods.
Perhaps these are both part of a PSYOP campaign to get insurgents and your everyday extreme religious nut to wear a tin foil hat to make them easier to identify. Question: will a the new headcovering change the impact of millimeter pain rays?
Understanding the village
Kent’s Imperative describes some multi-use software that is interesting to me and probably of interest to some of you:
The following piece from Marginal Revolution catches our attention as yet another example of the growing utility of interdisciplinary approaches to those aspects of the intelligence that have not been traditionally served by the national and technical collection apparatus.
The tool is strikingly simple – a piece of software designed to ease data collection and processing burdens for studying epidemics in developing nations. The package will run on common mobile phone platforms, typically ubiquitous in such environments – or otherwise exceptionally cheap to obtain and circulate. Strategic communication branding, anyone?
The potential applications however go far beyond epidemiology – or even other aspects of medical intelligence. We can immediately see a use for such a tool in a number of information operations, civil affairs, and cultural intelligence settings – not to mention any of the political intelligence activities that require survey information. Less obvious mechanisms for overt human derived reporting also suggest themselves, given a degree of preparation and planning.
There are distinct limitations to what might be accomplished using this approach, but with those limitations in mind it is quite possible to develop new and innovative collection programs leveraging this capability against the kinds of questions it may suitably answer. This is precisely the kind of experimentation – and extensible designs – that ought to be coming out of the intelligence studies academia, in support of forward deployed intelligence professionals.
Hmmm
Social engineering through flirting, robot flirting
Interesting story at CNET (h/t Kurzweil):
Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.
A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.
The artificial intelligence of CyberLover’s automated chats is good enough that victims have a tough time distinguishing the "bot" from a real potential suitor, PC Tools said. The software can work quickly too, establishing up to 10 relationships in 30 minutes, PC Tools said. It compiles a report on every person it meets complete with name, contact information, and photos.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s got a blog!
The president of Iran is posting what he calls his "personal musings". From the Guardian (h/t Opinio Juris):
When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, wanted to create a forum to trumpet his populist political message without the interference of media and opposition catcalls he launched his own blog….
Somewhat gleefully, the reformist newspaper Etemad reported yesterday that some respondents were venting their spleen with little regard for pleasantries.
One writer – calling himself Sadegh Al Ebrahim – sarcastically congratulated Ahmadinejad on his success in creating new jobs through last summer’s decision to ration petrol. "In our city before rationing there were two petrol stations, of which one was always shut. But now, due to you, we have 3,000 petrol sellers," the message reads, hinting at the rampant black market.
Another, claiming to be "on behalf of the more than 50 million people who didn’t vote for you", berates Ahmadinejad for high unemployment and high inflation. The writer says: "Instead of useless provincial trips, fake propaganda on state TV and unrealistic news fed to you by your aides, you should come to the heart of the society."
The blog’s been around for a while, but Ahmadinejad made his first post two weeks ago after a five month hiatus. Promising at least fifteen minutes a week and writing in his most recent post that he spent much more reading the comments, he may have laughed at the irony in this comment, ostensibly from an American:
I hate you. you are retarted [sic]. that simple mentally retarted [sic]
Public diplomacy goes both ways with a blog. Perhaps the comments on a blog really can shape perceptions. Hmm…
Update: See Hamid Tehrani‘s article on HNN for more insight on Iranian blogging.
Iranian Islamist blogs probably provide one of the best places to learn information and news about power and state-related issues in the Islamic Republic, because some of their writers have close ties with Iranian leaders and some of them even are leading figures in the regime….
In the last two years, Islamist bloggers became much more active and organized than before. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s victory played a key role in mobilizing these blogs in different ways. Reformist bloggers found themselves out of power and started to use the blogs as instruments to get votes. Government itself supports — directly or indirectly — organizations such as the Office for Religious Blogs Development (ORBD). This office has a project to help every religious student get a blog. But we should emphasize that Islamist bloggers existed before the Ahmadinejad era.
History Channel show on MilBloggers…tonight
Band of Bloggers on History Channel tonight, 8p (which for some of you is in a few minutes):
Explore the impact of blogging as a new medium for immediate and raw information. In the midst of modern day combat examine the unfiltered and raw evolution of military blogs and bloggers. Listen as soldiers who during their recent Iraq deployments reflect on the important connection they had with their blogging and how the band of military bloggers has revolutionized the way we understand combat. Experience firsthand, unfiltered accounts of the pain, the hardship, and even the simple beauty found in Iraq; stories that often go unseen in the media’s coverage of the war.
(H/T Cannoneer No. 4 at SWJ)
A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods
Mash-up for Thursday, November 8, 2007
Returning to the lazy "I can’t make the time to comment on these individually" post, here’s the mash-up for today:
Dan at TDAXP has an interesting survey for bloggers. Please fill it out and help marginalize my response.
Christian at Defense Tech posts on RAND’s call for Web 2.0 approach for building COIN awareness and accessing and leveraging knowledge with the "integrated counterinsurgency operating network", of ICON. This deserves a post by itself, but I’m pressed for time, so I leave it to others to get into this.
The study, aptly titled “Byting Back: Regaining Information Superiority Against 21st Century Insurgents,” takes a novel, “web 2.0” approach to the problem of gaining information to fight an insurgency. RAND rightly states that the information requirements for conventional war – the basis upon which most of the Pentagon’s intelligence apparatus is based – are very different from those of a counterinsurgency.
“If winning war requires understanding the terrain, winning counterinsurgency requires understanding the human terrain: the population, from its top-level political structure to the individual citizen. A thorough and current understanding of individuals and their community can help rally support of the government by allowing the government to meet the needs of the local population. Because insurgents do not identify themselves as such on sight, knowledge at the individual level is often what it takes to make such necessary distinctions.”
The study suggests utilizing local “wikis” compiled by the population, security services and government officials; leveraging cell phone networks to push information and to potentially track insurgents; incorporating the use of video and voice recorders on individual weapons to compile information and lessons learned and the institution of a detailed government census of the population.
David Axe at War is Boring quotes Wired’s Clive Thompson on the makings of a suicide bomber… in Halo 3. Clive backed his way into the psychology of a suicide bomber inadvertently but ultimately his reasoning is the same as many asymmetric "warriors":
Because after all, the really elite Halo players don’t want to die. If they die too often, they won’t win the round, and if they don’t win the round, they won’t advance up the Xbox Live rankings. And for the elite players, it’s all about bragging rights.
I, however, have a completely different psychology. I know I’m the underdog; I know I’m probably going to get killed anyway. I am never going to advance up the Halo 3 rankings, because in the political economy of Halo, I’m poor.
Via MEMRI, hopefully this Egyptian won’t follow the lead of American broadcast efforts in the region:
Millionaire Egyptian Copt Najib Suwairis has announced his intention to set up two new satellite television channels aimed at dealing with the rise of religious conservatism in Egypt, both religious and social.
As Slate, MountainRunner friend Phil Carter lists the incentive programs the Army is using to hit their numbers. See also Phil’s post on his blog where he cites Gordon Lubold’s CSM article:
Barely one quarter of American youths aged 17-24 are eligible for military service because of medical conditions, drug/alcohol use, low aptitude scores, or criminal records. 11% of eligible youth are in college, leaving just 15% of the 17 to 24-year-old cohort (men and women) for the services to recruit from.
And for something completely different, via Andrew Sullivan, Ron Jeremy impersonating Britney Spears:
That darn new media
New Media should be obligated to link to alternative political views? Steve Boriss at Future of News write about such a proposal:
U of Chicago law professor and former DC bigwig Cass Sunstein has penned yet another book telling us that the people cannot be trusted with this information. His first book on the subject, Republic.com (2001), is now laughable to the extent one can laugh at those who would be tyrants. Believe it or not, he suggested that the government should consider forcing web site operators to include links or pop-up windows to advertise sites with alternative political views. Apparently feeling he had not done enough in his assault on the free speech clause of the First Amendment, he now has a sequel, Republic.com 2.0, that batters freedom of association. He insists that something must be done to prevent people from giving too much attention and weight to views they already hold, rather than to opposing views.
I suppose Sunstein would argue Hamilton and Franklin and Jefferson should have been forced to include inserts or references to opposing views as well.
And what does Opinio Juris think about this? Or Mr. TDAXP?
Globalization comes to Afghanistan
Coming Anarchy notes that connecting Afghanistan to the global marketplace means they get to see lots of things, including what’s under those burqas. In the spirit of Swedish Meatballs, this article (which is not Coming Anarchy’s post) has an artistic photo that isn’t work safe (for those who went to Swedish Meatballs from work without prior knowledge, I forgot to warn M1 of SM about the article…):
From entering puberty to old age, almost all women still wear burqas, which cover them from head to toe. Most men have never seen a naked woman outside the circle of their families.
It is therefore no surprise that the first encounters with satellite channels that offer 100% hardcore porn are the equivalent to the close encounters of the third kind. Men from Kandahar, cut off from the outside world for decades, accustomed to conflicts and uncompromising Taliban laws, have never seen anything like this, even though it is in fact exceptionally soft porn by western standards, usually aired between hotline ads.
A strange discomfort can be felt, but no shortage of curious glances. A group of Taliban wearing overgrown beards are sitting in a bar with their eyes riveted to the screen. A western woman enters the room and one of them frantically changes the channel.
Abdul Wasi, the owner of one of the many new satellite equipment stores, says that business is doing exceptionally well. “I sell digital receivers and satellite dishes for about 350 dollars and I import the equipment from Pakistan. I started the business a month ago and by now I have sold almost four hundred receivers. My store is always crowded, everyone wants to watch satellite television,” says Wasi.
A Second Life that can look like your First Life
From KurzeilAI.net:
Rumors of Google‘s plans to create a virtual world that rivals that of Second Life have popped up once again.
It would be a 3D social network tied into Google‘s current applications of Google Earth and Google Maps.
A virtual world is a natural progression of Google Earth. Users could create avatars. The "street view" feature of Google Maps could be incorporated, as well as Google SketchUp, with avatars able to walk around on actual streets and enter real buildings to check out what’s inside and socialize with other avatars.
Mash-Up for Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Al-Jazeera has a cartoon depicting what may unfortunately be an Arab view of American democracy through our diplomacy of deeds to date. (Courtesy Memri)
The Chinese have published a new English-Chinese Dictionary of Military Terms.
This dictionary contains 23,000 English terms and 20,000 Chinese terms, including army organization, operational command, training, ordnance material, minor tactics, service support, space technology, computer, electron, autocontrol, biology, nuclear energy etc.
IED-porn on YouTube is the old rage. Now it’s being used to share simulations of VBIED attacks, presumably for training. (h/t Internet Haganah)
Swedish Meatballs posts their own version of RAND’s “Enlisting Madison Avenue” report.
Bob Pape applies his book’s thesis that most suicide attacks are from groups fighting against a military occupation of their country to today’s Iraq. His prediction:
If foreign occupations do indeed provide the strategic fuel for insurgencies, Pape said, Americans should expect to see a spate of Shiite suicide attacks. He said he could not predict when the insurgency would take that disturbing turn but said it would be soon: “We’re heading toward the cocktail of conditions that favor suicide terrorism from the Shia.”
And, finally, from Danger Room comes the observation that terrorists keep blogs too (the guy heading DOD’s Office to Support Public Diplomacy knows that, but don’t tell Karen Hughes, you’ll ruin her day).
Islamists use the Web to spread propaganda, communicate anonymously, share training guides, get organized — even sell t-shirts. So it’s not exactly a shock that Muslim extremists are blogging, too.
Dancho Danchev reviews a handful of terrorist blogs — and warns that “these are just the tip of the iceberg, but yet another clear indication of the digitalization of jihad.”
One particularly active site Dancho highlights is Jihad Fields are Calling: Allah Send Us To Bring People Out From the Slavery of The People to The Slavery of Allah. And it’s got all the features you’d expect from a top-flight — if crude — propaganda operation. Here’s a diary from a woman who claims she was drugged and raped in Abu Ghraib. There’s a silly, downloadable, anti-Bush wallpaper for your PC. Over here is another one, celebrating “the most feared weapon in Iraq” — the improvised bomb. In another place are theological justifications for “waging a war against atheism.” You get the idea.
The point is, these guys are using all the tools they can to spread their message, and wage the information war. Is the U.S. really prepared to do the same?
Why does the US continue to lack high-speed Internet connectivity?
I’ve posted on the myth that the US has high speed Internet access before. Yesterday, Stephen DeAngelis at Enterprise Resilience Blog posted on the latest mainstream news article about this myth.
Continue reading “Why does the US continue to lack high-speed Internet connectivity?
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Hizballah lays cable to own local comm network
From the Counterterrorism Blog:
[Lebanese] Defense, Interior, Telecommunications and Justice ministries would launch an “immediate” investigation into the creation of new telephone cables by Hizbullah.
The source, the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star, writes this is not an isolated closed loop network:
“We have discovered by accident that a new telephone network is being created along that of the state in Zawtar Sharqieh,” [Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh] told Voice of Lebanon radio.
“Technical reports also showed that cables have reached Yohmor and other Tyre regions,” he added.
Hamadeh also said there was information that similar works were being conducted in Beirut and Dahiyeh.
The government describes this as violating state sovereignty. I am not familiar with the telecommunications market of Lebanon, but if it weren’t a group seeking the overthrow of the government, would the ministries be this upset if it were a normal privatization of infrastructure? Would they simply be upset at not issuing (or denying) permits and collecting associated fees (or bribes, again I don’t know the intricacies of the Lebanese telecom market)? In the American media system it’s like Google buying dark fiber, if Google was seeking to destabilize the government (see previous post on Google’s foreign policy). But Google isn’t outright trying to destabilize the US government.
One can already argue the Beirut government ceded some sovereignty to the private sector, in this case Hizballah, when they were slow to respond to the destruction of the recent war. Funny thing about governing people, but given the choice, they will choose and many are choosing Hizballah, which has been providing other infrastructure and social services in the absence of the government.
You have to ask yourself, what can be done to dissuade, or make unprofitable (in other than economic terms), Hizballah’s venture to own media distribution? The government must become a better provider across the board.
Shift Happens
Version 1 of Did You Know?
Version 2 is below (updated stats, longer, and less interesting)
Monday Mash-Up for July 30, 2007
If you want another example of America’s failure to understand the importance of building a bigger and badder Internet infrastructure (hell the report I referenced misses the fundamental requirement!), compare the US e-Government initiative and the UK’s. It isn’t pretty.
“Universal internet access is vital if we are not only to avoid social divisions over the new economy but to create a knowledge economy of the future which is for everyone. Because it’s likely that the internet will be as ubiquitous and as normal as electricity is today. For business. Or for individuals.” – former Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2000
There are advantages to technology, although this example doesn’t include a resolution, in “the F-16 Does What?” segment Noah Schachtman clipped from Michael Yon’s post from .
Bourbon and Lawndarts and SWJ (don’t skip the comments on SWJ’s post) both have good posts on passing up H.R. McMaster, author of the superb Dereliction of Duty and COIN expert, for a promotion.
Foreign Policy cites the latest Pew Global Attitudes Survey showing Muslim support for suicide terrorism is waning. Think the attack on Iraqi soccer fans will be included in a public diplomacy campaign? What about an information operation?
Jason at ArmchairGeneralist also looks at American readiness today, another installment in his ongoing series titled “They’re Breaking My Army.”
Phil Carter posts on the growing girth of Americans and asks about its impact on recruiting in the future.
Paul Kretkowski at the Beacon posted his comments on the DNI Open Source Conference.
Steve Aftergood of FAS noted the Army has revisited its manual on Civil Affairs.
Lastly, adding to my earlier post IEDs as a Weapons of Strategic Influence, Noah writes on JIEDDO’s “strategic flaw” using an insider study (Word doc).
However, what the paper concludes, ultimately, is that the American effort against improvised bombs has been an “unsatisfactory performance [with] an incomplete strategy.” What’s more, the JIEDDO-led struggle against the hand-made explosives has a “strategic flaw” that may keep the U.S. from ever gaining the upper hand on the bombers, Adamson notes: The lack of authority to knock bureaucratic heads. He recommends instead establishing a separate, Executive Branch agency with a “laser-like concentration on the hostile use of IEDs.”
Ideally, every element of the U.S. government would be teaming up to fight IEDs, Adamson writes. Spies would be uncovering rings of bombers; FBI investigators would be helping examine forensic evidence; diplomats would be applying political pressure to catch bombers; other countries could even be chipping in, offering their own experience with improvised explosives.
In practice, however, such coordination has been uneven, at best. The “IA [interagency] process lacks a comprehensive strategy for defeating the global IED threat.” Outside of the military, few agencies have viewed bomb-beating “as essential to their collective or unilateral missions.” So they have given the problem short shrift. For example, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms decided that, “due to resource constraints, [it] could not support greater involvement with DOD’s [the Department of Defense’s] IED effort,” Adamson notes. Same goes for the nation’s spies. “Internal reform and mission overload in the IC [intelligence community] cripple[d] its capacity for additional effort.”
“We in the United States are in deep technological trouble.”
No kidding?! A first-time computer user gets a 40gb connection, Korea enjoys 45mb service (South Korea of course, DPRK does have its own national intranet, but the speed… ?), and meanwhile PeoplePC still advertises dial-up in the US where “high-speed” is considered 3mb-8mb.
But wait, President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology doesn’t think America’s backbone is a source of trouble. The three problems are: visas, the lack of grand visions, and the third are pervasive sensor networks (“tiny, self-powered motes that spread through the environment, collecting data on pollution, or climate, or population movements and relay it back to users). Oh, and fourth is a more reliable Internet.
Actually increasing speed requires infrastructure investment, something the Administration clearly thinks is best left up to the private sector (update here).
I want that
75 year old, first time computer user has 40 gb (yes gigabit, but not gigabyte) connection. She can download movies in about 2 seconds.
Monday Mash-Up for July 9, 2007
This Thursday, the New America Foundation is hosting a discussion on the very interesting report from RFE/RL on Sunni insurgent media blogged here earlier.
Meanwhile, Clark Hoyt, the new “public editor” for the New York Times, looked at the Administration’s media strategy of aggregation: everything is Al-Qaeda.
While Al-Qaeda is probably happy with the brand promotion by Washington, America must do a better job of changing its media image. Our office of public diplomacy might consider reading Washington Post’s Susan Kinzie and Ellen Nakashima look at “reputation management” as relabeled public relations that works at a most granular level: person to person.
In Iraq, the mini-Americas that double as bases are might be confused for suburban malls if you take away the guns according to the Los Angeles Times’ Molly Hennessy-Fiske. She writes about the (too) expansive menus of “fattening fare, from cheese steaks to tacos and Rocky Road ice cream” that is causing hungry soldiers to gain more than 15 pounds on a deployment.
And if the money spent on fattening up our warfighters with unhealthy food, and the lives endangered by transporting all of that crap, isn’t enough, consider IraqSlogger’s post on Colin Powell describing his two and a half hours trying to convince President Bush not to go into Iraq.
Randomly, here are the top 5 Google searches used to find MountainRunner on July 5th, 2007:
cheetah cubs
arab mobile email reports
somalia uranium
ivory coast private military
the worst directors in nollywood
Brief reminder, if you want to read MountainRunner on your Google homepage, get the MountainRunner gadget. Comments on the gadget are welcome.
Growing Google
From the Financial Post, Google: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
…Google is interested in so much more than that. It has reportedly approached the Federal Communications Commission recently about obtaining wireless spectrum…
Google Inc. has been putting together a massive cable network to provide customers around the world with telecommunications services ranging from broadband Internet to home and mobile phones…
For at least the past three years, the company has been buying up swaths of unused fibre-optic cable — so-called “dark fibre” — around the world…
The company is estimated to have between 40 and 70 data centres filled to the brim with computing and storage power, with at least five new facilities under construction in the United States alone. By comparison, Canada’s second-largest telephone company Telus Corp., has eight…
recent reported moves have been even more indicative of its move into telecommunications. Rumours surfaced this week that the company is looking to buy GrandCentral Communications, a Web startup that allows users to consolidate their different home, work and mobile phone numbers into one through an Internet application…
Google may not want to be a phone company per se, Mr. Surtees says, but the old definition of what a phone company is no longer applies. Just as Google redefined search and advertising, so too is the company changing the definition of telecommunications.
This makes questioning Google’s foreign policy a bit more interesting.
(h/t KurzweilAI.net)