A washingtonpost.com article from: spaf () acm org

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: spaf () acm org
Date: July 21, 2004 11:01:52 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: A washingtonpost.com article from: spaf () acm org

You have been sent this message from spaf () acm org as a courtesy of  
washingtonpost.com

 Personal Message:
 This may be of interest to some IP readers....

 Crippling Innovation  -- And Intelligence

 By Michael A. Wertheimer

    On Dec. 8, 1941, the Signals Intelligence elements of the  U.S.  
government were in a quandary. How could Pearl Harbor have occurred,  
given their spectacular success in breaking Japan's top diplomatic  
code? The answer was simple: In their zeal to succeed in the diplomatic  
arena, they had failed to place enough emphasis on Japanese naval  
traffic, the one source that could have given some warning of the  
attack.

  Although they are more than a half-century old, Pearl Harbor's  
lessons are  relevant today. Indeed, given the current debate about the  
role of intelligence in assessing Iraq's efforts to develop  weapons of  
mass destruction and in disasters such as that of Sept. 11, 2001,  
history compels us to ask if we are once again allowing technological  
success to blind us to an emerging threat.

  Consider today's "diplomatic code" analogue: voice communications.  
The numbers are staggering. In 2002 there were  about 180 billion  
minutes of international phone calls representing the communications of  
roughly 2.8 billion cellular and 1.2 billion fixed-line subscribers  
worldwide. Excluding North America, the bulk of these communications  
are made possible by several hundred satellites orbiting  the globe.

 Despite these daunting statistics, our nation has turned the  
challenges of accessing and "mining" these communications to discern  
the intentions of our adversaries into an immeasurable success. But  
ironically, as with the focus of code breakers before Pearl Harbor,  
this very success represents the single greatest threat to the  
continuing viability of Signals Intelligence. Specifically, it inhibits  
critical investments to create equal capabilities for the  
communications medium of choice for a growing number of commercial  
providers and their customers: the Internet.  The reasons are  
threefold.

  First, the demand by Congress for better business practices in the  
acquisition and development of systems inevitably forces decision  
makers to choose investments that provide the surest near-term returns.  
Developing solutions to access and process communications in the  
high-speed world of the Internet is expensive, risky and  
time-consuming.

  Second, customers of intelligence, such as the CIA, FBI, State and  
Defense departments, and the White House, have come to rely on -- and  
demand -- an uninterrupted stream of intelligence. But the sources and  
methods used to obtain this information are kept tightly guarded for  
fear that inadvertent disclosure will tip off our adversaries and deny  
us critical intelligence in the future. This means we are effectively  
keeping these customers in the dark about strategies for new types of  
collection they might wish to influence.

 Third, recent perceived intelligence failures have dramatically  
shifted longer-term strategies toward temporary fixes of dubious value.

  To gain an appreciation of the emerging challenge, consider these   
facts. A single strand of fiber-optic cable  exceeds the capacity of  
all the telecommunications satellites  orbiting the globe. This year  
alone, e-mail volume is expected to be the equivalent of 40 copies of  
the fully digitized holdings of the Library of Congress.

  Another important medium, instant messaging, is now estimated to  
generate  530 billion messages per day. Complicating matters further,  
phone calls can now be sent directly over the Internet using a  
technology called Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP). AT&T, Teleglobe,  
British Telecom, Time Warner Cable, Telecom Italia and Deutsche Telekom  
began  offering VoIP services  this year, signaling  the beginning of a  
major conversion away from traditional telephone networks. Indeed, by  
2005 enough fiber-optic cable will have been laid to carry, by similar  
analogy, one Library of Congress every 14.4 seconds.

 What has been the reaction to this challenge? In the National Defense  
Authorization Act for fiscal 2004, Congress revoked the National  
Security Agency's "milestone decision authority," effectively stripping  
the NSA of its ability to directly manage its own modernization  
program. This authority now rests with the undersecretary of defense  
for acquisition, technology and logistics -- a situation that will  
severely restrict the NSA's ability to invest broadly in unproven but  
highly promising, and in some cases competing, technologies. The  
additional delay this introduces in acquiring such systems will be  
devastating, particularly since the turnover of technologies on the  
Internet typically spans months, not years. Moreover, the people who  
know the most about what is needed will be further removed from the  
point of decision.

  The emergence of transnational and terrorist targets as national  
priorities has made intelligence consumers in the government eager for  
intelligence on demand. Tactical requirements for near real-time  
intelligence supporting operations by ground troops and law enforcement  
 continue to grow. Given a dollar to spend on intelligence, the most  
profitable near-term return continues to come from existing systems.

  This inverted cycle of demand and supply comes at the expense of  
laying the groundwork for future capabilities, an expense largely  
hidden from customers who might wisely choose to demand less from the  
intelligence community in the near term, given the long-term stakes.

  Perhaps the most profound, and discouraging, event for the  
intelligence community in the past three years is the message sent by  
the various Sept. 11 investigative commissions: The failure to share  
data was the single greatest  factor in the failure to detect the  
attack plans, a conclusion that clearly underlies the more provocative  
fact that no "smoking gun" was found. Indeed, the provocation is this:  
It would have been worse to have collected clear and compelling  
intelligence  before Sept. 11 and not to have analyzed it than to have  
had no such information in the first place. And the subtle consequence  
is this: Analysts are hesitating to pursue new sources for fear that  
they will be unable to process the resulting data without new tools and  
technology -- investments that are difficult to justify because their  
return  is unproven.

  In his influential book "The Innovator's Dilemma," Clayton M.  
Christensen describes how extremely well-managed, successful companies  
can ultimately fail when confronted by  "disruptive innovations." Such  
innovations are often mistaken by incumbents as too expensive, without  
proven applicability and lacking a sufficient customer base. Much like  
the code breakers shortly before Pearl Harbor, we risk not heeding the  
disruptive shift that is occurring with the growing dominance of the  
Internet. History -- and best business practices -- obligate us to  
encourage "disruptive innovators" to create new sources and methods for  
intelligence and let the natural evolution of innovation deliver  
reduced costs, greater capability and larger markets. To succeed we  
must demand far less near-term intelligence product from the Signals  
Intelligence community, give it control of its resources and allow it  
to plan for a disruptive future, a future that is presaged by videos   
that show an Afghan warlord exhorting his terrorist followers not to  
use satellite phones for fear of American capture.

  We would do well to understand that today's cryptologists must no  
longer look only to the sky for answers.

  The writer was a cryptologic mathematician with the National Security  
Agency for 21 years, the last three as the NSA's senior technical  
director. He is  with RABA Technologies LLC, an information technology  
consulting company in Columbia.



 Would you like to send this article to a friend? Go to
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/admin/emailfriend? 
contentId=A477-2004Jul20&sent=no&referrer=emailarticle



Visit washingtonpost.com today for the latest in:

News - http://www.washingtonpost.com/?referrer=emailarticle

Politics -  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/politics/?referrer=emailarticle

Sports -  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/sports/?referrer=emailarticle

Entertainment -  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/eg/section/main/index.html? 
referrer=emailarticle

Travel -  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/travel/?referrer=emailarticle

Technology -  
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/technology/?referrer=emailarticle




Want the latest news in your inbox? Check out washingtonpost.com's  
e-mail newsletters:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?node=admin/ 
email&referrer=emailarticle



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as interesting-people () lists elistx com
To manage your subscription, go to
 http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip

Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/