The intelligence community (IC) can’t agree on what intelligence is or isn’t, but they generally agree that analysis is a process that can be taught. Right now, it’s fashionable to emphasize the nearly endless number of trendy “though processes” that people have dreamed up. Apparently - or so the theory goes - the more one becomes aware of thought itself, and the more one thinks about thinking, the better one becomes at analysis. Personally, I think this is a dangerous policy, because - from my perspective - the emphasis seems to be on codifying thinking strategies as a means to supporting and adding legitimacy and credibility to analytic products. Given my admitted skepticism about some of these trendy thought processes, I can’t help but feel that analysts are being prepped to “dazzle with bullshit”, if you will. “How did you come by these estimates?” “Through a collaborative process of six-hat, mind-mapped systems analysis.” “Wow. Okay, good job!”

I know it’s a necessary evil we all have to live with, but I can’t help but feel that many of the skills being taught have more value for playing politics than they do for actual analysis.
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The U.S. Coast Guard this week listed its criteria for considering individuals or organizations as “journalists” - at least for the purpose of Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, fees. Perhaps surprisingly, at least to some, they take a fairly hard-line approach to the issue, and do not automatically equate “media” with “journalist”. What this means is that - among other things - bloggers aren’t automatically “journalists”, at least to the USCG.

As a blogger myself, you might think this would upset me. You’d be very wrong.
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A couple days ago, I pointed out some farcical attempts by the USAF to conceal the location of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing, who are deployed at “an undisclosed air base in Southwest Asia” - actually Al Udied, in Qatar. I believed - and still largely believe - that this secrecy is a really badly misguided attempt at operational security, or OPSEC. A reader, however, contacted me and suggested an interesting aspect to the whole thing: The Air Force, he or she says, are concealing their presence in Qatar so as to not draw unwanted pressure from other Arab nations onto their host country, who are, perhaps, not as enthusiastic about having a permanent American air base on their soil as they could be.
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From England comes the fairly amazing details of that country’s metal-theft problems - an international crime ring costing authorities around a million dollars a month - and one relatively novel idea for tackling manhole cover theft: making covers and grates out of plastic, which has very, very little value - if any - as scrap.

It seems like an obvious solution, on the surface, so you have to wonder why it hasn’t been tried before. My educated guess is that there are rather a number of problems with this plan that haven’t been fully examined: tensile strength of the new lids, for one; is the plastic as strong as cast iron? If it’s overweighted, how does it fail: flexing and cracking, or completely shattering? Does the plastic degrade with exposure to sunlight? Exhaust fumes? Hydrogen sulfide? How abrasion resistant is it, compared to iron?
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Over the weekend, I was browsing the Air Force Central news website, when I came across an interesting set of human-interest photos of a Senior Airman painting the logo of the 379th Air Expeditionary Wing on “one of two new barriers located in front of the distinguished visitors lounge” at “an undisclosed air base in Southwest Asia”. Wait - “undisclosed air base”? Right away, I smacked my forehead - hello, how many air bases in Southwest Asia could the 379th AEW be operating from? Well, according to Wikipedia - and Global Security - one: al Udieb Air Base, in Qatar. But, the internet has been wrong before, right? So, can we prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this confidential, hush-hush location is actually in Qatar?
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