Human Intelligence (humint): All Humans, All Minds, All the Time Robert David steele vivas

HUMINT for the President

In 1994 I conceptualized the end of the linear paradigm of intelligence, and the emergence of the diamond paradigm.²³

As the Secretary of Defense seeks to address the “Valley of Death” in defense acquisition,²⁴ along with the continuing recalcitrance of the three big services reluctant to risk budget share becoming faster, better, cheaper,²⁵ he would do well to remember Howard Odum’s counsel on the need to understand (and I would add, influence) the system of which one is a part of.²⁶ Put bluntly, not only can the military not “do it alone,” which the Secretary recognizes, the military also cannot succeed in the future unless we first restructure and rebalance all of the instruments of national power.²⁷

Absent a complete make-over of national and defense intelligence as well as defense engineering, DoD will continue to operate in the context of a pathologically deficient policy-making environment divorced from holistic reality; a 1950’s government structure that is severely deficient in every respect beginning with a stove-piped planning, programming, and budgeting system (PPBS); and an international spectrum of players, what I call the “eight tribes,” ²⁸ that is seeking leadership—intellectual and intelligence leadership or decision-support, on how to create a prosperous world at peace.²⁹

The Secretary is overlooking the actionable truth right under his nose: until he asks the right question, he will continue to get the wrong answer.³⁰

Max Weber is renowned for his theory of bureaucracy, a model or system for controlling people, things, and most importantly, information. Under this theory, “lanes in the road” or “stovepipes” become sacrosanct fiefdoms. Under this theory, applied in the academic world, specialization leads to segregation, and segregation ultimately leads to stupidity—ignorance of the whole, even ignorance of the role the special element plays in the whole. Buckminster Fuller’s exposition, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth, is actually less about operating the earth, and more about how sea captains and merchants who could see the whole managed to subordiniate, separate, and scourge kingdoms in isolation from one another. Finally, we have Rule by Secrcy, where secrecy is a term that encompasses a full range of information asymmetries and data pathologies, all with terrible consequences for the many at the hands of the few. Most secrecy is commercial and political, not at all having to do with espionage or what some call the discipline of intelligence. I illustrate only the middle one of these below, large depictions of all three can be viewed online.³¹

Human Intelligence (broadly and properly defined) will be the heart, soul, and brain of 21^st Century intelligence, not only within governments, but within all eight tribes of intelligence.³² In addition to CI and Security, I explicitly include both analysts of individual technical collection disciplines and all-source analysts; and consumers at every level from President to Action Officer (AO).³³

HUMINT at the strategic level will be about Smart Nations, Clever Continents, and the World Brain. At the operational level it will be about multinational information-sharing and sense-making to achieve mutual objectives by harmonizing up to $1 trillion a year in spending via an online Global Range of Needs Table that harmonizes organizational budgets by location and policy objective while also inducing direct charitable giving by the 80% of the one billion rich that do not now give now. The harmonization will occur voluntarily through the use of shared decision-support.³⁴

At the tactical level, HUMINT will become the Queen of the intelligence chessboard, providing direct support to the King—any decision-maker—by harnessing the distributed intelligence of all humans in all languages all the time—both those in the specific area of interest, and those outside who have something to contribute—and by restoring human primacy in relation to all technical intelligence operations—technical will excel with HUMINT, not alone.

Financially and technically, HUMINT should control and redirect SIGINT, IMINT, and MASINT because for the first time, the managers of HUMINT will understand the HUMINT Trifecta:

1. Educate and nurture the all-source analysts and consumers;

2. Demand Return on Investment (ROI) metrics for all sources and methods of intelligence. This will cut technical funding in half to the benefit of education, HUMINT, and research; and

3. Provide the decision-maker with concise, contextually-grounded all-source insights in a “just enough, just in time” manner that leaves no decision—whether of policy, acquisition, or operations—without a firm foundation³⁵ such that we eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse.