5 ms·

The open source intelligence revolution is coming – ex CIA spy

77 points by rosser 12y ago

thyrsus 12y ago
In this context "Open Source" means publicly available (as in published or broadcast), not some variant of copyleft.
dang 12y ago
Can anyone suggest a less baity title? Edit: we took out "it will conquer the 1%" and added "intelligence" to make it clear that he's not talking about software.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Spook techno-commies spawn Armageddon for establishment with terrifying data-nuke.
- logn 12y ago
  Shortening the subtitle, 'Ex-CIA spy calls for re-invention of intelligence to re-engineer Earth'
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  The article itself is very baity, but maybe something along the lines of "Ex-CIA officer suggests new intelligence sharing framework"? IDK, I'm not even sure why OpenBTS gets a mention in there.
- contingencies 12y ago
  Ex-Marine/CIA expert: open source everything revolution inevitable
ChuckMcM 12y ago
Ok, what I got from that (and to be honest I didn't give it a close read, so its fair to say that this is completely wrong) was that the subject of this article, Robert David Steele (which strangely was the name I took for a fictional secret agent), is an avid reader but not a very discriminating one. And by that I mean there seems to be little in the way of systemic analysis of the validity of what he reads or in the application of various bits toward testable hypothesis in an effort to deduce what is real and what is fanciful. Almost a caricature of the Robert Redford character from "3 Days of the Condor."
hyperion2010 12y ago
I think an analogy to alchemy is very apt in this situation. Prior to the scientific revolution alchemy was always practiced in secrecy. Techniques for finding out about the world were guild secrets and hidden away. Many early scientists would almost certainly have been classified as alchemists in their own times. With the advent of the scientific revolution (which in part necessitated a political change) the 'methods' of the alchemists could now be openly discussed and tested in public. How to measure or name something became a matter of open debate and experimentation, and the rest is history. Gathering "intelligence" is no different than making any other measurement about the world, economists do it all the time. Right now intelligence agencies are operating in the alchemist mode, hoarding their methods and hiding them from view to protect themselves, in this case form inquisitions that might be led by various governments if they discovered how poorly vetted and reviewed some of these data collection techniques really were ("How do you know that eating this herb will make me better?" "Well..."). I think the argument made by Steele is spot on in the sense that as our world is now monstrously complex, we MUST subject our data gathering methodology to rigorous and public review or we will flounder. Not only that but if we take the analogy to alchemy seriously then perhaps we will see a revolution not unlike the one witnessed around about the latter half of the 1600s. tl;dr Current intelligence agencies are alchemists and what we need more of is science.
lukifer 12y ago
Robert David Steele has been talking about the value of open source intelligence for many years, and has given several fascinating talks at hacker conferences. Hackers on Planet Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txugDFRVbeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txugDFRVbeQ Gnomedex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb8H-1fcYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb8H-1fcYU
- gdewilde 12y ago
  In the first link he mentions that if we read one thing in our lives it should be "philosophy and the social problem." (It is on my todo list, I haven't actually read it.) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42880/42880-h/42880-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42880/42880-h/42880-h.htm
jqm 12y ago
It seems pretty obvious to me that capital can't continue to concentrate indefinitely. And there is a limit to what people will tolerate from those in power. Is this guy right and we are about at the limits and ready to make real changes? I don't know. But... interesting take on the situation.
platz 12y ago
This is funny coming right after this: http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/ Technology is concentrating wealth, not spreading it. Letting folks download some source code won't help; that's not where the value is.
- rosser 12y ago
  Letting folks download some source code won't help; that's not where the value is. Did you read the article? It's less about open source code than it is open source intelligence.
  - contingencies 12y ago
    Did you read the article? It's clearly about both, but more so I'd say it's mostly about the abstract observation that our world appears to rest at the cusp of great social change where decentralized systems with bottom-up, opt-in, democratic, geographically distributed qualities are about to usurp the balance of power from barrel-of-a-gun hierarchies such as the establishment US political / military intelligence community, which Steele pulls no punches in describing here as "working for Wall Street and the City of London". It's definitely worth reading the whole article again in depth if you missed this.
spikels 12y ago
Since when did the opinions (half-baked ones in this case) of the CIA count for anything at the guardian? It's interesting how as long as someone is saying something you want to hear is doesn't matter who they are but once they start saying thing you don't like you immediately want to attack the messenger. This is one of the many weaknesses of human thought.
- lukifer 12y ago
  Steele left the CIA quite some time ago, after his advocacy for open source intelligence gathering failed to gain any traction. He's specifically criticizing their methodology: "I'm a spy who's telling you that spying doesn't work."
rdtsc 12y ago
Just FIY, "Open Source" in spy-speak is not typically talking about software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence In other words the title is not about open source software revolutionizing intelligence agencies. It is about something else.
- contingencies 12y ago
  Actually it is largely about that and applying the same principles to other areas of society, such as finance. The subject of the article, Robert David Steele, calls this Open Source Everything and draws attention to the strength these disparate applications derive from cooperation: The open source ecology is made up of a wide range of opens – open farm technology, open source software, open hardware, open networks, open money, open small business technology, open patents – to name just a few. The key point is that they must all develop together, otherwise the existing system will isolate them into ineffectiveness.
lifeisstillgood 12y ago
Commoditisation of everything is attempt to place markets / exchanges in the market and so introduce efficiencies in allocation of resources. This is hard to argue as a bad thing, and hard to argue as a recent thing too. In an open source world an exchange is an excellent approach to openly finding a price for a commodity, and so the radicalism espoused might be more effective if it focused on improving intelligence about the world not blaming "finance" for something that is simply regulatory capture not evil plans
Apreche 12y ago
I've seen this guy in person before. He's just a conspiracy nut. Do not give him any more attention than he deserves, which is zero.
m0llusk 12y ago
There is already a notably successful example of this strategy in the form of Thomas PM Barnett's http://www.wikistrat.com/ http://www.wikistrat.com/ which has gotten some attention such as this article at New World Notes: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2005/10/the_second_life.html http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2005/10/the_second_life.html. Interesting projections include the ascent of Turkey as a middle east power player, which is something not predicted or emphasized by most traditional intelligence agencies including the CIA.

77 points by rosser 12y ago

In this context "Open Source" means publicly available (as in published or broadcast), not some variant of copyleft.

dang 12y ago

Can anyone suggest a less baity title? Edit: we took out "it will conquer the 1%" and added "intelligence" to make it clear that he's not talking about software.

lotsofmangos 12y ago
Spook techno-commies spawn Armageddon for establishment with terrifying data-nuke.
logn 12y ago
Shortening the subtitle, 'Ex-CIA spy calls for re-invention of intelligence to re-engineer Earth'
voltagex_ 12y ago
The article itself is very baity, but maybe something along the lines of "Ex-CIA officer suggests new intelligence sharing framework"? IDK, I'm not even sure why OpenBTS gets a mention in there.
contingencies 12y ago
Ex-Marine/CIA expert: open source everything revolution inevitable

ChuckMcM 12y ago

Ok, what I got from that (and to be honest I didn't give it a close read, so its fair to say that this is completely wrong) was that the subject of this article, Robert David Steele (which strangely was the name I took for a fictional secret agent), is an avid reader but not a very discriminating one. And by that I mean there seems to be little in the way of systemic analysis of the validity of what he reads or in the application of various bits toward testable hypothesis in an effort to deduce what is real and what is fanciful. Almost a caricature of the Robert Redford character from "3 Days of the Condor."

hyperion2010 12y ago

I think an analogy to alchemy is very apt in this situation. Prior to the scientific revolution alchemy was always practiced in secrecy. Techniques for finding out about the world were guild secrets and hidden away. Many early scientists would almost certainly have been classified as alchemists in their own times. With the advent of the scientific revolution (which in part necessitated a political change) the 'methods' of the alchemists could now be openly discussed and tested in public. How to measure or name something became a matter of open debate and experimentation, and the rest is history. Gathering "intelligence" is no different than making any other measurement about the world, economists do it all the time. Right now intelligence agencies are operating in the alchemist mode, hoarding their methods and hiding them from view to protect themselves, in this case form inquisitions that might be led by various governments if they discovered how poorly vetted and reviewed some of these data collection techniques really were ("How do you know that eating this herb will make me better?" "Well..."). I think the argument made by Steele is spot on in the sense that as our world is now monstrously complex, we MUST subject our data gathering methodology to rigorous and public review or we will flounder. Not only that but if we take the analogy to alchemy seriously then perhaps we will see a revolution not unlike the one witnessed around about the latter half of the 1600s. tl;dr Current intelligence agencies are alchemists and what we need more of is science.

lukifer 12y ago

Robert David Steele has been talking about the value of open source intelligence for many years, and has given several fascinating talks at hacker conferences. Hackers on Planet Earth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txugDFRVbeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txugDFRVbeQ Gnomedex: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb8H-1fcYU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Afb8H-1fcYU

gdewilde 12y ago
In the first link he mentions that if we read one thing in our lives it should be "philosophy and the social problem." (It is on my todo list, I haven't actually read it.) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42880/42880-h/42880-h.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42880/42880-h/42880-h.htm

jqm 12y ago

It seems pretty obvious to me that capital can't continue to concentrate indefinitely. And there is a limit to what people will tolerate from those in power. Is this guy right and we are about at the limits and ready to make real changes? I don't know. But... interesting take on the situation.

platz 12y ago

This is funny coming right after this: http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/ http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/21/welcome-to-extremistan/ Technology is concentrating wealth, not spreading it. Letting folks download some source code won't help; that's not where the value is.

rosser 12y ago
Letting folks download some source code won't help; that's not where the value is. Did you read the article? It's less about open source code than it is open source intelligence.
- contingencies 12y ago
  Did you read the article? It's clearly about both, but more so I'd say it's mostly about the abstract observation that our world appears to rest at the cusp of great social change where decentralized systems with bottom-up, opt-in, democratic, geographically distributed qualities are about to usurp the balance of power from barrel-of-a-gun hierarchies such as the establishment US political / military intelligence community, which Steele pulls no punches in describing here as "working for Wall Street and the City of London". It's definitely worth reading the whole article again in depth if you missed this.

spikels 12y ago

Since when did the opinions (half-baked ones in this case) of the CIA count for anything at the guardian? It's interesting how as long as someone is saying something you want to hear is doesn't matter who they are but once they start saying thing you don't like you immediately want to attack the messenger. This is one of the many weaknesses of human thought.

lukifer 12y ago
Steele left the CIA quite some time ago, after his advocacy for open source intelligence gathering failed to gain any traction. He's specifically criticizing their methodology: "I'm a spy who's telling you that spying doesn't work."

rdtsc 12y ago

Just FIY, "Open Source" in spy-speak is not typically talking about software. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_intelligence In other words the title is not about open source software revolutionizing intelligence agencies. It is about something else.

contingencies 12y ago
Actually it is largely about that and applying the same principles to other areas of society, such as finance. The subject of the article, Robert David Steele, calls this Open Source Everything and draws attention to the strength these disparate applications derive from cooperation: The open source ecology is made up of a wide range of opens – open farm technology, open source software, open hardware, open networks, open money, open small business technology, open patents – to name just a few. The key point is that they must all develop together, otherwise the existing system will isolate them into ineffectiveness.

lifeisstillgood 12y ago

Commoditisation of everything is attempt to place markets / exchanges in the market and so introduce efficiencies in allocation of resources. This is hard to argue as a bad thing, and hard to argue as a recent thing too. In an open source world an exchange is an excellent approach to openly finding a price for a commodity, and so the radicalism espoused might be more effective if it focused on improving intelligence about the world not blaming "finance" for something that is simply regulatory capture not evil plans

Apreche 12y ago

I've seen this guy in person before. He's just a conspiracy nut. Do not give him any more attention than he deserves, which is zero.

m0llusk 12y ago

There is already a notably successful example of this strategy in the form of Thomas PM Barnett's http://www.wikistrat.com/ http://www.wikistrat.com/ which has gotten some attention such as this article at New World Notes: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2005/10/the_second_life.html http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2005/10/the_second_life.html. Interesting projections include the ascent of Turkey as a middle east power player, which is something not predicted or emphasized by most traditional intelligence agencies including the CIA.