Pentagon | Shepherd's Pi

Three Key Promotions in U.S. Intelligence

Posted on July 26, 2008 by lewisshepherd

In the old days of Kremlinology, our side’s “Soviet analysts” (I was one as a kid, back in 1985-86) would pore over personnel lists and announcements of Politburo or Central Committee appointments, seeking clues to the direction of Party doctrine and intent. Military personnel promotions and reassignments were also studied closely to divine any insight into Soviet military policy.

There’s not a direct analogy to American military leadership promotions, but those lists are also studied intently, by peers and colleagues within the military branches, and also by experts throughout defense industry circles who can often decode Pentagon politics by watching who gets an extra star and who gets passed over.

Friday the U.S. Senate confirmed several key Army promotions, including three which I consider to be the most critical military intelligence positions in the nation.

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, Technology | Tagged: Army, Army Intelligence, Auburn, baghdad, Bob Gourley, Bolling, Bush, camp slayer, CIA, Defense, defense intelligence agency, DIA, DNI, DoD, Don Rumsfeld, espionage, IC, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, iraq, Jeff Kimmons, Keith Alexander, kremlin, Kremlinology, Mike McConnell, Mike Pflueger, military, news, NSA, ODNI, Pentagon, Perfume Palace, Politburo, president, President Bush, Rick Zahner, Ron Burgess, ROTC, Senate, Soviet, Soviet Union, spy, spying, Twitter, USMA, USSR, war, Web 2.0, West Point | 5 Comments »

Pentagon’s New Program for Innovation, in Context

Posted on June 9, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: According to an article in today’s Washington Post, the Pentagon has announced “the selection of six university professors who will form the first class of the National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellows Program. The professors will receive grants of up to $600,000 per year for up to five years to engage in basic research — essentially a bet by the Pentagon that they will make a discovery that proves vital to maintaining the superiority of the U.S. military.”

ANALYSIS: This new program is an innovation from DoD’s Director of Defense Research and Engineering (DDR&E), and since tomorrow I’ll be at Ft. McNair for a two-day conference sponsored by DDR&E on Strategic Communications, I’ll congratulate John Young and his staff for the good idea.

But the Post article falls short in two ways: one immediate (it leaves out key information about next year’s program and the upcoming deadline!) and one longer-term (it ignores the overall context of federal support for R&D). I’ll fill in the blanks below.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: AAAS, acoustics, adhesives, astronautics, astronomy, astrophysics, atmospheric science, aviation, behavioral science, biochemistry, biological science, biotechnology, Boston University, business, CalTech, chemical engineering, chemistry, China, civil engineering, communications, computer science, computers, countermeasures, CTO, DARPA, DDRE, Defense, Department of Defense, development, DoD, earth sciences, electrical engineering, electronics, engineering, engines, faculty, federal, federal budget, federal government, fluid mechanics, Ft McNair, future, Government, industrial engineering, information science, innovation, internet, invention, investment, John Young, Johns Hopkins, lab, marine engineering, math, mathematics, mechanical engineering, media, medical science, metallurgy, meteorology, Microsoft, military, military science, networks, news, Northwestern, nuclear physics, oceanography, optics, Penn State, Pentagon, physics, prediction, predictive analysis, propulsion, psychology, R&D, research, robotics, science, social network, social networks, social sciences, south korea, space, spectroscopy, statistics, tech, Technology, textiles, UCLA, university, Washington Post, weapons, web, William Rees, WMD | 2 Comments »

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 »

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 »

IARPA and the Virtual Long Tail

Posted on May 2, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: This week, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, an arm of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), launched its new unclassified website. What’s there is initially fairly minimal, but they’ll be adding to the public information posted there regularly.

ANALYSIS: I spent the week in Orlando, as a Keynote speaker at the IARPA “Incisive Analysis Conference.” I’ll be writing a little more about the conference in the near future, as I saw some great demo’s and spoke to the principal investigators on many excellent and far-sighted advanced research projects sponsored by IARPA. It was great to be there and to see so many old friends from the intelligence community, the national labs (PNNL, Sandia, Oak Ridge, Livermore), DoD, and innovative commercial R&D outfits. Also, as the first IARPA conference since the organization’s launch, it was an opportunity to hear new director Lisa Porter communicate her vision and principles, which she did well and I’ll discuss those soon as well. (She also kidded me about my efforts to make her a cultural phenomenon, but I blamed it on WIRED magazine.)

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: analysis, analyst, analysts, cloud computing, computer, computer science, computers, computing, DARPA, data, Defense Department, DNI, DoD, geospatial, Government, IARPA, IC, innovation, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, IT, Lawrence Livermore, Lisa Porter, long tail, longtail, mashup, mashups, Microsoft, Microsoft Research, mirror world, mirror worlds, modeling, MSR, national laboratories, national labs, Oak Ridge, OODA, Pentagon, PNNL, R&D, research, Rita Bush, robot, robotics, robots, Sandia Labs, science, scientific, security, semantic, semantic analysis, semantic computing, semnantics, simulation, Society, tech, Technology, virtual world, virtual worlds, visualization, Wired, WIRED magazine | 3 Comments »

SecDef Blasts Air Force on ISR

Posted on April 21, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: U.S. military use of airborne drones (UAVs) dawned at the turn of the millenium, with nearly 100 vehicles in use before the Sept. 11 2001 attacks. By the end of that year the number had doubled, with the majority in use in Afghanistan. Today, according to a speech today by Sec. of Defense Bob Gates, “We now have more than 5,000 UAVs, a 25-fold increase since 2001.”

ANALYSIS: The Gates speech today, to an Air Force audience, is being covered mostly with a focus on his “harsh criticism” of that service. For example, CNN’s headline was “Defense Secretary Scolds Air Force for War Effort,” or Fox News “Gates Says Air Force Must Step Up Efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan.” And there was plenty of raw material for the tough stories, including CNN’s inclusion of the Gates soundbite that getting the Air Force to send more surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft to Iraq and Afghanistan has been “like pulling teeth.”

Others (like a Reuters story) struck a less frenzied tone, including more depth about his proposals going forward, and the Defense Department’s actual plans for improved acquisition and use of Intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, or ISR. I’d encourage you to read the full transcript (get it here). (By the way, here’s some background on ISR and its variants.)

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, R&D, Technology | Tagged: 9/11, Afghanistan, Air Force, Bob Gates, CNN, defense intelligence, defense intelligence agency, Defense Separtment, DIA, DoD, drone, drones, Fox News, GWOT, IC, Intelligence, iraq, ISR, JFCC-ISR, Mike Maples, military, news, peace, Pentagon, reconnaissance, SecDef, secretary of Defense, STRATCOM, Strategic Command, surveillance, terrorism, terrorists, UAV, UAVs, unmanned aerial vehicle, unmanned aerial vehicles, US Air Force, USAF, war, war on terror | 2 Comments »

Air Wars: the Air Force Takes Heat for its PR

Posted on April 16, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: A heated online debate is erupting about a particular photo posted online, and the brouhaha around it focuses on whether or not classified details are contained therein, thus revealing them.

ANALYSIS: Given that others are even now writing extensively about this photo and its controversy I thought I would add a couple of thoughts. Don’t bother blaming me for linking to the photo, by the way; given the attention and reposting/rehosting it has already received, the glare of publicity can only serve to prod better security practices.

I expect to see parody versions on Flickr soon, with “Area 51” touches.

And so to my related thoughts: recently, an active-duty USAF officer and regular reader emailed me about one of my posts concerning Rod Beckstrom and the new National Cyber Security Center, which he had not previously heard of. He wrote that in discussing it with a colleague, the response was “I thought the Air Force Cyber Command already had the mission to coordinate all cyber security efforts.”

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, Society, Technology | Tagged: ads, advertising, AFCC, Air Force, Army, Boeing, business, commercials, Cyber Command, cyber defense, cyber security, cyberdefense, cybersecurity, Defense, Defense Department, Department of Defense, DIA, DoD, hacker, hackers, internet, IT, IT security, Marine Corps, marketing, military, National Cyber Security Center, Navy, northrop grumman, Pentagon, PR, publicity, Rod Beckstrom, secret, secrets, security, tankers, tech, Technology, TV, United States Air Force, US Air Force, USAF, web | 5 Comments »

A Roadmap for Innovation – from Center or the Edge?

Posted on March 28, 2008 by lewisshepherd

Fact: In marking its five-year anniversary earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security released a fact sheet touting the department’s accomplishments in that time, including “establish[ing] the Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) to provide a 24-hour watch, warning, and response operations center, which in 2007 issued over 200 actionable alerts on cyber security vulnerabilities or incidents. US-CERT developed the EINSTEIN intrusion detection program, which collects, analyzes, and shares computer security information across the federal civilian government. EINSTEIN is currently deployed at 15 federal agencies, including DHS, and plans are in place to expand the program to all federal departments and agencies.”

Analysis: I’m not going to write, in this post at least, about US-CERT and EINSTEIN in particular. I will point out that some writers have been skeptical of “Big DHS” progress on cyber security up to now, and the anniversary was an occasion for much cynical commentary.

Charles Cooper in his popular Coop’s Corner blog on CNet wrote that “when it comes to network security, DHS appears to be more of a wet noodle than even its sharpest critics assumed… Talk with security consultants and former government officials involved with DHS and you come away wondering what these folks do all day.”

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, Microsoft, R&D, Technology | Tagged: 2.0, AJAX, back-office, budget, bureaucracy, business, CERT, Charles Cooper, cio, cloud, cloud computing, cloud services, cm, CNET, cocom, cocoms, code, configuration management, Coops Corner, cyber defense, cyber security, cyberdefense, cybersecurity, danoviz, data, data centers, datacenter, datacenters, Department of Defense, development, DHS, DIA, DoD, e2.0, EA, einstein, enterprise, Enterprise 2.0, enterprise architecture, finance, gadget, gadgets, Government, hardware, Homeland Security, information assurance, information management, information security, infosec info sec, infrastructure, innovation, Intelligence, intrusion detection, iraq, IT, IT management, j2, korea, management, Mary Legere, mashup, mashups, Microsoft, Microsoft PopFly, Mike Pflueger, MNF-I, NCSD, network, network security, networks, operations management, ops management, patch management, Pentagon, pflueger, PopFly, programming, R&D, Rod Beckstrom, ROR, Ruby on Rails, S+S, SAIC, service-oriented, services, SOA, software, software plus services, south korea, tech, Technology, USFK, web, web services | 6 Comments »

Expect Some “New Thinking” on Cyber Security…

Posted on March 24, 2008 by lewisshepherd

FACT: Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff last week: “I am pleased to announce my appointment of Rod Beckstrom as the first Director of the National Cyber Security Center. Rod will serve the department by coordinating cyber security efforts and improving situational awareness and information sharing across the federal government.”

ANALYSIS: There are people who think inside the box, those who think outside the box, and those who ask: What box?

Then there are “the anti-box people.” They see the box, shove it on its side, stomp on it to squeeze it flat, and consign it to recycling where it belongs.

One of those kind of people is Rod Beckstrom, a well-known Silicon Valley successful entrepreneur and author. I knew him at Stanford, aeons ago, and like others recognized his leadership drive when he ran successfully for student body president, and he left with both a BA and MBA on the way to forming his first successful software startup.

I was surprised when I read last week that Rod is moving to Washington to take a high-level government job.

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Filed under: Government, Intelligence, R&D, Society, Technology | Tagged: al Qaeda, Bob Gourley, Chertoff, Craigslist, cyber defense, cyberdefense, cybersecurity, DHS, Global Peace Network, Government, Homeland Security, information assurance, information security, INSA, Michael Chertoff, Middle East, National Cyber Security Center, NCSC, Pentagon, Rod Beckstrom, security, Silicon Valley, Stanford, Technology, wiki | 5 Comments »

Puncturing Circles of Bureaucracy

Posted on March 7, 2008 by lewisshepherd

In my airplane reading this week was the February issue of Defense Systems magazine, with an interesting article on the Department of Defense’s “Rapid Reaction Technology Office,” or RRTO.

(Also in my reading stack was a hilariously disturbing article in WIRED about the merry pranksters of Second Life, but it has nothing to do with my topic right now.)

RRTO is facing great challenges inherent in trying to innovate DoD practices, and I’d argue some of the problem is evident right there in its title: there’s rarely anything truly “rapid” about a reactive approach to technology innovation.

After I joined DIA in 2003, leading that agency’s efforts at “innovation” in information technologies, I began to structure my thoughts about the impediments to change and improvement.

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Filed under: Government, innovation, Intelligence, R&D, Technology | Tagged: bureaucracy, cio, Civil War, Clinton, Defense Systems, DIA, DoD, Government, Hillary Clinton, IC, IM Destler, innovation, Intelligence, Intelligence Community, Maginot Line, Microsoft, Obama, Pentagon, politics, R&D, research, Robert E Lee, RRTO, Second Life, Sherman, Silicon Valley, tech, Technology, US Grant, Wall Street Journal, Wired | 6 Comments »

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Three Key Promotions in U.S. Intelligence

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

Business Executives for National Security, and Dana Carvey?

SecDef Blasts Air Force on ISR

Air Wars: the Air Force Takes Heat for its PR

Expect Some “New Thinking” on Cyber Security…

Puncturing Circles of Bureaucracy

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