On Intelligence: Spies and Secrecy in an Open World

by Robert David Steele

This is the second edition of the book, identical in all respects to the first but with the addition of a single page detailing the six intelligence and counterintelligence failures that allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur. This book is about the reinvention of national, defense and business intelligence within the larger context of an open world--a world where "Evil Empires" and the Berlin Wall have fallen--but also a world where transportation, power, financial, and communications infrastructures are so open as to dramatically increase the vulnerability of America to trans-continental epidemics, anonymous information terrorism, and nation-wide power black-outs and financial melt-downs. As the world enters the Information Century, and simultaneously confronts the fragmentation of many nation-states and the emergence of widespread ethnic, tribal and criminal gang terrorism and confrontation, no topic can be more important to federal, state, and local governments--and to international, national, and local businesses than the topic of "intelligence". Thankfully, there are many positive lessons and methods to be drawn from the U.S. Intelligence Community, and there are a wealth of open sources and services that can be drawn upon to make both government and business "smarter" about their environment, their customers, and their competitors. This book is a primer on the role of intelligence qua sources, methods, and community at the dawn of the 21st century.

495 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[adric · Rating 3 out of 5]

Its a dry read, but the man makes many very good points about how fu**ed out intelligence community is.

spies only know secrets, and 98% of the worlds hot intelligence data is in languages we cant deal with and in mediums we cant tap/record/google.