Intelligence Community | Shepherd's Pi

Healthcare: It’s the Data, Stupid

Posted on July 7, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: Today’s L.A. Times has a startling report: “A stunning number of people who work in healthcare settings lack paid sick time — as many as 75% of all home health aides, for example… Federal data indicate that as many as 29% of all workers in the ‘healthcare and social assistance’ job sector lack paid sick days. Healthcare employees who work while ill may end up hurting the people they are hired to help….”

Analysis: Mark Twain said the only two sure things in life were death and taxes. So it’s no surprise that the two presidential campaigns are focusing on healthcare and the economy, since people are universally affected in personal ways. Forget taxes for today, I’m interested in technology’s role in healthcare, which is growing, and there’s no more potentially game-changing facet of that than the role of data.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: Amalga, American Journal of Epidemiology, Azyxxi, BCBS, Blue Cross Blue Shield, business, Carlton Doty, data, data mining, datamining, DIA, doctors, Epidemiology, Forrester Research, Google, Google Health, Guardian, health, health records, healthcare, HealthVault, innovation, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, James Carville, Kaiser Permanente, LA Times, Los Angeles Times, Mark Twain, McCain, medical, medicine, Microsoft, National Health Service, NHS, Obama, Perot Systems, personal health records, phr, politics, R&D, research, ROI, TMCnet, Vanderbilt University, William Stead, workplace | 4 Comments »

So Long, Long Tail?

Posted on July 2, 2008 by lewisshepherd

I’ve been known to disagree with Harvard eggheads before 🙂

And now, perhaps, another opportunity. A new Harvard Business Review article (“Should You Invest in the Long Tail?” by HBS Professor Anita Elberse) throws water on Chris Anderson’s paradigm, arguing that “hit products” are still more valuable than the conglomerated also-rans in the tail; her research is mostly in retail products. Chris has responded on his blog, sparking many comments and debate, and today the Wall Street Journal covered the back-and-forth debate.

I’m interested in the debate mostly because of the interest in the Long Tail way of thinking in some circles of the intelligence community. I’ve written about the approach and its relevance to some intelligence issues (see “Tradecraft in the Long Tail” and “IARPA and the Virtual Long Tail“).

I’m just not certain that even a total debunking of the retail-oriented paradigm would undercut its value as applied to intelligence analysis.

For intelligence analysts, obscure “facts” and patterns hidden snugly within the low-scale noise are all important – whether or not they gain numerative bulk in any accumulative way. The paradoxical “unknown unknowns” are what’s being sought by dogged collection and analysis, and I’m not sure that’s analogous to Elberse’s acknowledged findings.

Your thoughts welcome, here or by email back to me.

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, Society, Technology | Tagged: analysis, analysts, Anita Elberse, Chris Anderson, Harvard, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Business School, HBR, HBS, IARPA, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, long tail, research, social science, social sciences | 5 Comments »

Sales Guy vs Web Dude

Posted on July 2, 2008 by lewisshepherd

The website where I first saw this video wrote, “This would be funny if it weren’t so true.” No – it’s funny because it’s so true! Yes, even in government IT settings.

The video’s here; adolescent language warning, a la South Park. If you don’t get the jokes, just reboot your system. 3 times.

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Filed under: Government, Society, Technology | Tagged: comedy, computer, computers, DIA, DISA, funny, Government, government IT, humor, IC, information technology, Intelligence Community, IT, sales, tech, Technology, web, website | Leave a comment »

Semantic Reality (Microsoft Acquires Powerset)

Posted on July 1, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: At last, the public announcement this afternoon of one of the most-rumored secrets in tech: Microsoft is acquiring Powerset, taking us one major step forward in semantic technologies.

Analysis: There’ll be plenty of analysts looking at this, and I expect the acquisition will get a lot of buzz just as Powerset did originally when launched. After all, Microsoft is buying a company which was called a “Google-Killer” by everyone from the New York Times to various esoteric search-technology blogs. [Update: it’s already started on TechCrunch.]

If you haven’t used Powerset’s first announced product, semantic searching of Wikipedia, check it out on their site and you’ll begin to see why there’s been so much interest in their technical approach. I’ve known founder Barney Pell for a while now, and we’ve mused about the possibilities of adding Powerset’s strengths to Microsoft’s global scale. The more I played with PowerLabs, before its full launch, the more I was convinced of its power.

When I was working at DIA, one of our dreams was a semantically enabled intelligence enterprise. IC analysts and advanced users within any other enterprise vertical are going to find some very interesting capabilities finally possible when Powerset technology is wedded to the FAST search software already being deployed at web scale. But that’s only the beginning. Continue reading →

Filed under: Technology | Tagged: analysis, Barney Pell, blews, blogging, blogosphere, blogs, campaign, Craig Mundie, DIA, FAST, graph, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, internet, internet economy, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, Mindnet, MSR, political, politics, Powerlabs, Powerset, semantic, semantic graph, semantic reality, semantic web, semantics, social graph, social networks, software, software plus services, TechFest, web, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, web graph, www | 2 Comments »

Innovation in Robotics: Government Uses?

Posted on July 1, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: Last week’s Automatica 2008, the big international robotics and automation trade-show, had “over 30,000 trade visitors from around 90 countries,” visiting 900 exhibitors’ booths, according to the conference wrap-up.

Analysis: When I spoke recently at an IARPA conference in Orlando, and was asked to give a glimpse into Microsoft’s vision of R&D trends, one of the possibly surprising areas I highlighted was robotics. We’re making a major push in that area, for reasons that might not be intuitive based on an old-fashioned impression of what Microsoft offers in the government realm. More on the intelligence community’s potential use below.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: 3D, Arizona State University, ASU, Automatica, Automatica 2008, automation, BASIC, Bill Gates, Bryn Mawr, computer, DARPA, EC, Economist, enGadget, EU, Europe, Georgia Tech, Government, Gregory Dudek, hardware, IARPA, industry, information week, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, IPRE, McGill University, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio, Microsoft Robotics Studio, modeling and simulation, MS-DOS, MSRS, MySpace, R&D, RoboChamps, Robosoft, robot, robotics, robots, ROI, Scientific American, simulation, Society, software, software development, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Tandy Trower, tech, tecnology, Tyco, University of Massachusetts, virtual, virtual worlds | 5 Comments »

Tradecraft in the Long Tail

Posted on June 26, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: Chris Anderson, WIRED editor in chief and author of the Internet-era classic book “The Long Tail,” also runs a couple of Ning social networks focusing on what the intelligence community would call IMINT, or imagery intelligence – specifically DIY Drones, “a site for all things about amateur Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs): How-to’s, videos, discussion and more,” and PictEarth, “a Social Network used to collect, link and geotag RC, UAV/UAS or Kite derived Earth imagery for use in 3D Globe Programs including Google Earth, Virtual Earth, World Wind and ArcGIS Explorer.”

Analysis: With these sites, Chris Anderson is promoting what he calls “Crowdsourced Aerial Imagery.” In the mission statement for DIY Drones, he writes that “Reasons to make your own UAV range from a fun technical challenge, student contests, aerial photography and mapping (what we call “GeoCrawling”), and scientific sensing. We are primarily interested in civilian, not military, UAV uses here.” (Emphasis is in the original.)

Let’s presume that individual DoD or intelligence-agency personnel have an interest in such issues, and maybe even in spending their personal time by keeping current and following the crowd’s interest in such topics, by participating in these new social networks. One can then assume that others from foreign intelligence might have some interest in tracking those very IC personnel, by observing their activities within social networks (and not just Ning ones). No spectacular logic needed for that.

The CIA has had some challenges in understanding their field presence within the Long Tail.

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, Society, Technology | Tagged: Abu Omar, aerial, ArcGIS, Chris Anderson, Chris Rasmussen, CIA, computer security, computers, cookies, DIY, DIY Drones, DoD, drone, drones, espionage, ESRI, Expedia.com, geograwling, geoint, geospatial intelligence, Google Earth, grid, IC, id theft, identity theft, imagery, IMINT, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, IT, Italy, long tail, mapping, maps, Microsoft, Milan, NGA, Ning, off the grid, OTG, PictEarth, security, social network, social networks, spies, spying, tech, Technology, trustworthy computing, twc, UAV, UAVs, Virtual Earth, Washington Post, Wired, World Wind | 2 Comments »

How to Find Research: Here, There, Everywhere

Posted on June 16, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: The Washington Post today has a story in the Business section (“Intelligence Agency Joins U-Md. Research Center“) about the relationship between IARPA and the University of Maryland, the location of the planned new IARPA headquarters.

ANALYSIS: UMd has a set of valuable relationships with the public- and private-sector national security community, and the IARPA startup is just the latest agency to benefit. Proximity is key, for research and bureaucracy. In Maryland’s case, IARPA Director Lisa Porter told an IEEE interviewer last month that “It’s nice not to be sitting right next to one particular agency. It’s also nice to be near a university because we’re sending a message that we want to bring in nontraditional partners: academia, industry. It sends a nice message that we’re embracing the broad community to help us solve these challenging problems.”

I lament sometimes that Charlottesville (home to my undergraduate alma mater) is a good two hours away from DC, as even that distance puts a frustrating limit on the amount of joint work that winds up being done with Virginia faculty and students.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: Abe Lederman, academia, academic, blogs, Charlottesville, China, computer, DARPA, database, Deep Web, DeepWeb Technologies, Defense, DoD, Europe, federal, federal government, federated search, Google, Government, IARPA, IC, IDA, IEEE, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, internet, IT, Lisa Porter, Maryland, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, MSR, OSTI, policy, politics, public policy, R&D, radius, RAND, ReadWriteWeb, research, Russia, scholar, science, search, search engines, STPI, tech, Technology, UMD, University of Maryland, University of Virginia, UVA, Verity, Virginia, web, White House, WorldWideScience | 1 Comment »

How to Run a State-of-the-Art Technology Program – Quietly

Posted on May 29, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: In the new movie “Iron Man,” defense-contracting billionaire and engineering genius Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) designs and builds a suit capable of individual flight (highly engineered control surfaces powered by an “arc-reactor” – it is Hollywood after all). During his first test flight, zooming straight up from Malibu and stressing the system to its max, he asks his onboard computer, “What’s the altitude record for the SR-71?” His computer responds back, “85,000 feet,” whereupon he zooms past that ceiling.

ANALYSIS: Funny moment, and excellent movie. In its honor, below I’m going to give you access to a remarkable, recently declassified document describing one of America’s boldest Cold War technical achievements. If you’ve ever run (or wanted to run) a high-tech company or program, like Tony Stark in the movie, you’ll appreciate the startling scope of the work – and if you’ve recently worked in DoD or the Intelligence Community you’ll marvel at how they did it “in the good old days.”

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, R&D, Technology | Tagged: A-12, A12, Air Force, aircraft, airplane, airplanes, Area 51, astronaut, astronauts, Blackbird, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Clarence Kelly Johnson, computer, computers, Defense, Defense Department, DIA, DoD, DVTC, Eisenhower, espionage, F-117, Government, history, IC, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Iron Man, ISR, Kelly Johnson, Ken Collins, Langley, Lockheed, Lockheed Martin, management, managing, Michael Hayden, Microsoft, military, NASA, news, OXCART, Pentagon, pilot, pilots, project management, R&D, reconnaissance, Robert Downey Jr., science, secrecy, secret, SharePoint, Skunk Works, Soviet, Soviet Union, space, space program, spacecraft, spies, spy, spying, SR-71, stealth, tech, Technology, Tony Stark, UFO, USAF, VTC | 2 Comments »

Is It Even Possible to Connect the Dots?

Posted on May 25, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: Among the inspired ideas of polymath Danny Hillis (pioneer of parallel computing) was establishing the Long Now Foundation, whose projects include the millennial Long-Now Clock (“the world’s slowest computer”) and the notion of “Long Bets.” A Long Bet is an “accountable prediction,” meaning one that has a specified end-date and a testable, wagerable, proposition. One of the early Long Bets posted wagers $2,000 that “By 2020, no one will have won a Nobel Prize for work on superstring theory, membrane theory, or some other unified theory describing all the forces of nature.” That particular bet is one of many signs of scientific skepticism about string theory.

ANALYSIS: Even without the ease of hyperlinks, old-fashioned newspapers foster serendipitous connections between articles, particularly if you’re reading a Sunday morning paper with lots of sections. Sunday the Washington Post did me a service by placing in different sections a couple of articles which I connected, about intelligence “failures” and about stock-market prediction, leading me to some web-surfing about the questionable validity of string theory and some related observations about the difficulty of predicting human behavior.

In the Outlook section, the Post has an opinionated and thought-provoking op-ed piece by Mark Lowenthal, one of the most “intelligent” individuals in the recent history of the U.S. intelligence community (after all, he was the 1988 Jeopardy grand champion, as well as a former assistant director of CIA).

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Filed under: Technology | Tagged: 9/11, analysis, CIA, Columbia, Columbia University, computer science, cryptography, Daniel Kahneman, Danny Hillis, failure, foreign affairs, future, Government, human, hyperlinks, IC, Intelligence, intelligence analysis, Intelligence Community, intelligence reform, international relations, iraq, Jennifer Chayes, leather, Long Now, Mark Lowenthal, market forecasting, math, mathematics, media, membrane theory, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, newspaper, newspapers, Nobel, Nobel Prize, parallel computing, Pearl Harbor, Peter Woit, physics, prediction, predictive analysis, Princeton, Ramones, science, Serendipity, social, social networks, social science, social sciences, Society, stock market, string theory, superstring, superstring theory, terrorism, terrorists, The Times, Times of London, war, Washington Post | 6 Comments »

Business Executives for National Security, and Dana Carvey?

Posted on May 16, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Went to the big BENS gala last night (Business Executives for National Security) in downtown Washington, along with some Microsoft colleagues – the company was a sponsor – and several guests who fit right in with the rest of the crowd, military brass and IC muckety-mucks. I first met BENS founder Stanley Weiss back in the late 1980s when he came to Silicon Valley to recruit support for the new group, “a nonpartisan business organization aiming to cut through ideological debates on national security issues.”

The evening’s billed highlight was the awarding of the annual BENS Eisenhower Award to Sec. of Defense Robert Gates, who gave just a phenomenal speech (see Reuters and AP coverage today, and the full text here). I blogged a couple of days ago about his speech to the Heritage Foundation, which I read the text of, but seeing Gates deliver this speech really impressed me, to be honest. He comes across as sincerely dedicated to fixing some of the fundamental problems of DoD and the intelligence community (his career after all was at CIA and he is obviously a thoughtful critic of the DNI structure and “reforms”). I sat there wondering whether Gates would be willing to continue at the Pentagon in the next Administration (odds are much higher of that with a McCain victory, obviously, and infinitesimal otherwise).

Brent Scowcroft introduced Gates with a warm and witty tribute, and it was nice to see him in person. He told several jokes making fun of the Beltway culture, getting big laughs. Gates continued in kind at the beginning of his remarks, before he got serious – keep reading for one of Gates’s best jokes:

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, Microsoft, Society | Tagged: AP, Beltway, BENS, books, Brit Hume, business, Charles Krauthammer, CIA, Civil War, Confederacy, DC, Defense, Department of Defense, diplomacy, DNI, DoD, Fords Theater, Fox News, Fred Barnes, history, humor, IC, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, James Swanson, Jefferson Davis, John McCain, John McLaughlin, John Wilkes Booth, jokes, Lincoln, Manhunt, McCain, McLaughlin Group, media, Michael Hayden, National Portrait Gallery, national security, Pentagon, political, politics, Reuters, Robert Gates, television, TV, University of Virginia, UVA, Virginia, Washington | 1 Comment »

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Healthcare: It’s the Data, Stupid

Sales Guy vs Web Dude

Innovation in Robotics: Government Uses?

How to Find Research: Here, There, Everywhere

How to Run a State-of-the-Art Technology Program – Quietly

Business Executives for National Security, and Dana Carvey?

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