Islamic Societies Review WEEKLY

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Peak Intel: How So-Called Strategic Intelligence Actually Makes Us Dumber

Sunday, April 08, 2012 No comments

by Eric Garland

An industry that once told hard truths to corporate and government clients now mostly just tells them what they want to hear, making it harder for us all to adapt to a changing world -- and that's why I'm leaving it.

A lone worker looks out the window at an otherwise empty London office. Reuters

I recently quit my job as a "futurist" and "strategic intelligence analyst" after a successful 15-year career of writing books and consulting to corporations and governments around the world. I spent a decade and a half analyzing disruptive new technologies, predicting the effects of the Internet on the international construction industry, helping executives decide whether to spend billions in the nuclear power market, profiling the customer of the future -- and training thousands of executives to do likewise for their own companies. It was exciting and fulfilling, but this is the end of the road. My employment status is interesting to nobody except my wife and I, but why I am leaving the business of intelligence is important to everybody, because it stems from the endemic corruption of how decisions are made in our most critical institutions.

I am not quitting this industry for lack of passion, as I still believe -- more than ever -- in using good information and sophisticated analytical techniques to decode the future and make decisions. The problem is, the market for intelligence is now largely about providing information that makes decision makers feel better, rather than bringing true insights about risk and opportunity. Our future is now being planned by people who seem to put their emotional comfort ahead of making decisions based on real -- and often uncomfortable -- information. Perhaps one day, the discipline of real intelligence will return triumphantly to the world's executive suites. Until then, high-priced providers of "strategic intelligence" are only making it harder for their clients -- for all of us -- to adapt by shielding them from painful truths.

Many people have not encountered the job title, "intelligence analyst." For the past 50 years, since the rise of the Central Intelligence Agency as a clearing house for information about the Soviet Union, this has been a job that involves researching trends, analyzing their potential impact, and reporting the possibilities to decision-makers. In the age of nuclear weapons, the world was changing too fast for leaders to make decisions based only on their own outdated assumptions. Organizations learned to critically assess their futures -- or literally lead humanity into possible mass extinction. The model mostly worked, and eventually the CIA was joined by other agencies, as well as for-profit consulting companies, which mimicked many of the techniques pioneered in the Cold War. Since the middle part of the 20th century, both corporations and governments have used strategic intelligence, forecasting, scenario planning, and other intelligence tools that keep decision-makers informed and ready to lead their institutions safely through tumultuous periods.

According to the private intelligence industry's view of itself, a phalanx of analysts collect data, assess the risks and opportunities inherent in trends, and provide a series of scenarios that help their clients make contingency plans, such that no matter what future arrives, people will thrive. But the reality of 2012 is quite different. A large number of people promise these services, from generalist mega-consultancies such as Booz Allen, Accenture, and McKinsey, to more boutique providers such as Global Business Network, the Institute for the Future, Frost & Sullivan, and countless individual practitioners. And many executives claim to practice state-of-the-art strategic management, dutifully using the insights of these providers in their day-to-day operations. Still, the culture of intelligence has been in free-fall since the financial crisis of 2008. While people may be pretending to follow intelligence, impostors in both the analyst and executive camps actually follow shallow, fake processes that justify their existing decisions and past investments.

U.S. intelligence gains in Iran seen as boost to confidence

Sunday, April 08, 2012 No comments

More than three years ago, the CIA dispatched a stealth surveillance drone into the skies over Iran.

U.S. spy drone downed in Iran in 2011.

The bat-winged aircraft penetrated more than 600 miles inside the country, captured images of Iran’s secret nuclear facility at Qom and then flew home. All the while, analysts at the CIA and other agencies watched carefully for any sign that the craft, dubbed the RQ-170 Sentinel, had been detected by Tehran’s air defenses on its maiden voyage.

U.S. officials say Iran's leaders are gathering the materials for a nuclear bomb but have not decided to build one. If they do, they'l have to overcome technical hurdles and risk having their work discovered by outsiders. Here are steps Iran might follow to make its first weapon.

“There was never even a ripple,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official involved in the previously undisclosed mission.

CIA stealth drones scoured dozens of sites throughout Iran, making hundreds of passes over suspicious facilities, before a version of the RQ-170 crashed inside Iran’s borders in December. The surveillance has been part of what current and former U.S. officials describe as an intelligence surge that is aimed at Iran’s nuclear program and that has been gaining momentum since the final years of George W. Bush’s administration.

The effort has included ramped-up eavesdropping by the National Security Agency, formation of an Iran task force among satellite-imagery analysts and an expanded network of spies, current and former U.S. officials said.

At a time of renewed debate over whether stopping Iran might require military strikes, the expanded intelligence collection has reinforced the view within the White House that it will have early warning of any move by Iran to assemble a nuclear bomb, officials said.

“There is confidence that we would see activity indicating that a decision had been made,” said a senior U.S. official involved in high-level discussions about Iran policy. “Across the board, our access has been significantly improved.”

The expanded intelligence effort has coincided with a covert campaign by the CIA and other agencies to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program and has enabled an escalation in the use of targeted economic sanctions by the United States and its allies to weaken Iran’s resolve.

The Obama administration has cited new intelligence reports in arguing against a preemptive military strike by Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Saturday, April 07, 2012

Turkey has one of the world’s zippiest economies, but it is too reliant on hot money

Saturday, April 07, 2012 No comments

Visitors to the top of the Galata Tower in Istanbul are treated to a panoramic view of the old town across the Bosphorus. Originally a wooden lighthouse dating from the sixth century, the tower was rebuilt from stone in 1348 by Genoese merchants. It is an enduring symbol of the benefits of foreign capital to Turkey.

Bustling below is a city of 15m that lies at the heart of one of the world’s fastest-growing economies. Figures released on April 2nd showed that Turkey’s GDP rose by 8.5% in 2011 after a 9% increase in 2010 (see chart 1). These are the sort of growth rates that mighty China would be pleased with. Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs, who coined the acronym BRIC to denote the big emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, has included Turkey in MIST, a second tier of biggish rising stars, alongside Mexico, Indonesia and South Korea.

Friday, April 06, 2012

Obama’s signal to Iran

Friday, April 06, 2012 No comments

By David Ignatius

President Obama has signaled Iran that the United States would accept an Iranian civilian nuclear program if Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei can back up his recent public claim that his nation “will never pursue nuclear weapons.”

This verbal message was sent through Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who visited Khamenei last week. A few days before traveling to Iran, Erdogan had held a two-hour meeting with Obama in Seoul, in which they discussed what Erdogan would tell the ayatollah about the nuclear issue and Syria.

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Antonin Scalia, the master of logical fallacies

Wednesday, March 28, 2012 No comments

Justice Antonin Scalia asked the Obama administration's lawyer Donald Verrilli Tuesday to defend the controversial individual mandate provision of the Affordable Care Act and wondered why Washington bureacratics couldn't also make citizens buy vegetables.

"Could you define the market -- everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food, therefore, everybody is in the market; therefore, you can make people buy broccoli," Scalia asked during the second day of oral arguments.

"No, that's quite different. That's quite different. The food market, while it shares that trait that everybody's in it, it is not a market in which your participation is often unpredictable and often involuntary. It is not a market in which you often don't know before you go in what you need, and it is not a market in which, if you go in and -- and seek to obtain a product or service, you will get it even if you can't pay for it," Verrilli said.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

The White Savior Industrial Complex

Sunday, March 25, 2012 No comments

TEJU COLE

A week and a half ago, I watched the Kony2012 video. Afterward, I wrote a brief seven-part response, which I posted in sequence on my Twitter account:

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1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.

2- The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

3- The banality of evil transmutes into the banality of sentimentality. The world is nothing but a problem to be solved by enthusiasm.

4- This world exists simply to satisfy the needs—including, importantly, the sentimental needs—of white people and Oprah.

5- The White Savior Industrial Complex is not about justice. It is about having a big emotional experience that validates privilege.

6- Feverish worry over that awful African warlord. But close to 1.5 million Iraqis died from an American war of choice. Worry about that.

7- I deeply respect American sentimentality, the way one respects a wounded hippo. You must keep an eye on it, for you know it is deadly.

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These tweets were retweeted, forwarded, and widely shared by readers. They migrated beyond Twitter to blogs, Tumblr, Facebook, and other sites; I'm told they generated fierce arguments. As the days went by, the tweets were reproduced in their entirety on the websites of the Atlantic and the New York Times, and they showed up on German, Spanish, and Portuguese sites. A friend emailed to tell me that the fourth tweet, which cheekily name-checks Oprah, was mentioned on Fox television.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

On Nowruz, President Obama Speaks to the Iranian People

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 No comments

In a video message earlier today, President Obama sent his best wishes to all who are celebrating Nowruz.

Nowruz is a time when so many Iranian families and loved ones come together in celebration. Moreover, it is a holiday that reminds us of the rich culture of the Iranian people, and the extraordinary contributions that they have made to human history. Yet even as holidays like this underscore the connections that we share as human beings, the Government of Iran is going to great lengths to isolate the Iranian people by cutting them off from the outside world.

For far too long, the Iranian regime has tried to control the flow of information and ideas to and from the Iranian people and the outside world. As people everywhere are making their voices heard through new technologies and social media, the people of Iran often find their voices stifled and their ability to connect denied. Like the Iron Curtain of the 20th century, an Electronic Curtain is descending as the Iranian regime attempts to control what its citizens see and hear.

The Iranian people have a universal right to access information, and to freely assemble online. Yet the Iranian regime increasingly denies these rights, and uses technology to suppress its people. Reporters Without Borders named Iran an “Internet Enemy” for 2011, and the Committee for the Protection of Journalists calls Iran one of the world’s “Ten Online Oppressors.” Below are just some of the many ways Iran’s government has earned these titles.

Syria: Armed Opposition Groups Committing Abuses

Tuesday, March 20, 2012 No comments

End Kidnappings, Forced Confessions, and Executions

Armed opposition elements have carried out serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said today in a public letter to the Syrian National Council (SNC) and other leading Syrian opposition groups. Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha. Human Rights Watch has also received reports of executions by armed opposition groups of security force members and civilians.

Leaders of Syrian opposition groups should condemn and forbid their members from carrying out abuses, Human Rights Watch said. Some of the statements collected suggest that certain armed attacks by opposition groups were motivated by anti-Shia or anti-Alawite sentiments arising from the association of these communities with government policies.

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Monday, March 19, 2012

The Great Inequality

Monday, March 19, 2012 No comments

by Michael D. Yates

Growing inequality of income and wealth have characterized the U.S. economy for at least the past thirty years. Today, this inequality has become a central feature of politics, both mainstream and within such radical uprisings as the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon. This essay attempts to uncover the roots of inequality, showing that the source of it is in the nature of the capitalist economy. The magnitude of inequality ebbs and flows with the balance of class forces, but great inequality is built into the system’s fundamental structures.…

Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Islamic legacy of scientific research

Saturday, March 17, 2012 No comments

by Sajjad Shahid

al-Farabi

Intellectual attempts at identifying defining parameters of Islamic culture have proven to be a complex exercise which is often limited to attempts at isolating points of cultural unity among Muslims from different parts of the world. Realisation of the fact that religion alone cannot be considered the defining parameter of identity had led early scholars to attempt evaluation of the legacy of Islam through a division of its cultural canvas on religious and secular grounds. Understandably such academic pursuits proved to be incomplete and were invariably inconclusive leading to the recent trends which encourage the study of Islam as an aspect of the cultures of regions with sizable Muslim populations.

The cultural achievements of Muslims cannot be attributed to Arab intellect alone as a bulk of the Islamic ethos was built up on contributions made by old and established cultures brought into the Muslim fold. The rapid spread of Islam in its initial stages gave almost no opportunity for cultural development to keep pace with the requirements of an ever expanding sphere of influence. With no other options available, Islamic culture from its nascent stages developed a tendency to absorb elements of other cultures enabling early emergence of a distinct ethos which it could claim as its own. The resulting cultural canvas was a unique blending of the best elements derived from the individual cultural repertoires of Persia, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Spain.