Dive into the archives.
- Paper-pushers
A few weeks ago I introduced intel blog Kent’s Imperative. They kindly replied with a welcome message that made reference to a comment I made about “paper-pushing spooks.” In many other fields being a paper-pusher is usually considered ineffectual, but not in the intel business. I think Neil Burnside, a character from the best damn [...]
- “Trust in the Gods But Verify”
Following Curzon’s interesting post on the historicity of the heart symbol my blog of recent discovery — Kent’s Imperative — calls for new insights and interpretations on historical intelligence studies. We at Coming Anarchy highly endorse looking to the past, and the field of intelligence is certainly a neglected field. KI refers us to a [...]
- Towards more rigorous analysis
As of late I have been reading and enjoying Kent’s Imperative, a blog about “the art & science of intelligence analysis.” One of my favourite “thinking blogs” Zenpundit turned me on to them and I must say these guys produce high quality posts every day.
The title of the blog is a reference to Sherman Kent, [...]
- The Lives of Others
A Stasi officer with a heart of gold? For those interested in the Cold War, intelligence and East Germany, Das Leben der Anderen or The Lives of Others is a film to see. Already released and on dvd in Germany after much fanfare and many awards, it should be released in the United States this [...]
- The Russian intelligence apparatus
With all the recent Russian spy activity I thought it would be interesting to outline the various parts of the Russian intelligence apparatus, which has become highly complex after the splintering of the monolithic, Cold War era KGB.
The KGB, or Committee for State Security (Ã?Å¡Ã?¾Ã?¼Ã?¸Ñ”šÃŒÂ?Ã?µÑ”š Ã?“Ã?¾ÑÂ?уÃ?´ÌÂ?Ã?°Ñ€ÑÂ?Ñ”šÃ?²Ã?µÃ?½Ã?½Ã?¾Ã?¹ Ã?”˜Ã?µÃ?·Ã?¾Ã?¿ÌÂ?Ã?°ÑÂ?Ã?½Ã?¾ÑÂ?Ñ”šÃ?¸), was both an internal and external security organization. [...]
- Trotsky’s Shadow
Is Russia’s government simply unable to handle critics? In the Western tradition, freedom of speech has been widely advocated since Voltaire, and forbidding government from outlawing speech critical of the government has been a founding concept of modern states for centuries.
As Alexander Litvinenko lay dying from an apparent poisoning of Thalium days ago, he [...]
- Is It There or Isn’t It?
Noticed this confusing piece from last week on IWPR:
As Indian newspapers continue to speculate that the country will secure a military base in Tajikistan, analysts in Dushanbe are dismissive of the idea, because regional neighbours would strongly oppose it. Following President Imomali Rahmonov’s recent visit to Delhi, the Indian press began reporting that there was [...]
- New CIA Factbook
The latest version of the CIA World Factbook is out. It’s as recent as October 17th 2006. As Curzon has already noted, our intelligence services are providing this as a free service and for bloggers, it has become an essential one. While Wikipedia has been known to contain errors, the CIA Factbook is one [...]
- Adaptive Information Classification
One of the big hurdles between the way the INT biz is currently run and its potential with recent advances in ICT is the way information is classified. Zenpundit points to an article on decentralization and ‘good enough’ security who quotes from Ross Mayfield’s post on a De-centralized Intelligence Agency:
The agency perhaps has the greatest [...]
- Kissinger advising Bush
Journalist Bob Woodward is about to publish a new book on the administration called “State of Denial.” And in a recent interview with ABC, he revealed, among other things, that Henry Kissinger is advising the White House on Iraq.
“The truth is that the assessment by intelligence experts is that next year, 2007, is going [...]
