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Sunday, February 19, 2012
This is a draft FOUO (For Official Use Only) document that has already been approved and imlpemented by U.S. DOD (Department of Defense) for Repression of Americans, International Public
The 5th Estate
02/19/2012
L-3 communications, an $11 billion a year organization long-dedicated to the special needs of the Department of Defense (DoD) and the complexities of sensor to shooter communications as well as business management systems, has spent the past year pulling together an extraordinary team intended to help DoD migrate rapidly from the existing legacy systems, toward a new DoD Global Information Grid (GIG) that substitutes design, leadership, business management, and private sector innovation for the current melange of stove-piped procurements and incremental configuration fixes. Within the planned focus on Joint Intelligence or Information Operations Centers or Commands (JIOC), augmented by regional Multinational Information Operations Centers (MIOC), we can create a global information sharing network that can be harvested up to the high side at no additional cost to DoD.
Central to our design solution is an understanding that Google does not work well alone, Oracle does not scale, and middleware is the choke point. CISCO has brought out two new revolutionary offering around which we have designed a global solution: the CISCO Application Oriented Network (AON) enables both content-based routing, and global information management through a rule-based system that can be updated, world-wide, instantly. Content-based routing creates smart dots that find one another at every level (e.g. tactical, without reachback), and then go find the humans that need them as well as the databases and modeling programs. CISCO’s Internet Protocol Interoperability and Collaboration Systems (IPICS) enables the rapid integration and inter-operability of all radio systems, regardless of design, through the conversion of their signals into digital packets. The two systems together offer a foundation for the transformation of the DoD GIG at the same time that DoD impacts on the Department of Homeland Security and the State and Local constituencies through the U.S. Northerm Command and the evolving role of the National Guard as a unique element able to touch both law enforcement information under Governor’s commissions, and national foreign threat intelligence under their military commissions.
We believe that by combining the CISCO offerings, which include global security solutions at every level of the network, with Google Enterprise, the only scalable real-time search & retrieval option that can be shared with coalition partners and non-governmental organizations, as well as very low cost leasing of the Googleplex (one third the cost of normal racks), with IBM’s DB2 with OmniFind as a participating in-house data management standard, we can help DoD create a new DoD GIG that is also the hub for a “World Brain” that is able to integrate all information, in all languages, all the time. We seek nothing less than to help DoD achieve the mission objective established by Dr. Stephen Cambone in January 2004, when he called for universal coverage, 24/7, in all languages, at sub-state levels of granularity. We are doing that now in support of several of the Combatant Commanders and Services, and we are prepared to scale this up quickly, within the existing acquisition authorities and allocated budgets.
We have carefully considered a variety of issues, and are prepared to present this team and our architectural design solution at any time. On the next two pages, before beginning the original White Paper that has also been shared with the Director of National Intelligence and the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, we list some of the immediate benefits that could be realized if DoD adopts our proposed ideas. This proposal addresses GAO concerns about the DoD GIG.
Leadership Concept. Our concept for a transformative migration is open to all vendors and all legitimate governments and their militaries, as well as non-governmental organizations, universities, and other private sector parties able to contribute cash or information. If DoD is willing to ask the Department of Commerce for an anti-trust waiver such as was granted to the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation (MCC) under Admiral Inman, and also willing to ask the Department of State to create an Office of Information-Sharing Treaties and Agreements, perhaps with DoD non-reimbursable funding, we believe we can create a skunkworks focused initially on integrating the needs and capabilities lined up for the U.S. Strategic Command, the U.S. Special Operations Command, and the U.S. Northern Command. We have a plan for rapidly migrating capabilities not only to the regional Combatant Commanders (COCOM), but also to their entire regions, such that the existing United Nationsl Joint Military Analysis Centers (JMAC), the existing regional information-sharing networks (e.g. the African Early Warning and Information-Sharing Network), and the existing COCOM Joint Intelligence Centers, can all share unclassified and some classified information securely, via the Internet, without major investments in unilateral proprietary systems.
Technical Approach. We agree with internal DoD reports as well as the GAO reports that suggest that a design win, an architectural solution, is necessary, rather than a continuation of the patchwork of configuration management and “digital dashboard” solutions that are stop-gap measures, nothing more. While there are other routing solutions, CISCO’s combined offering of AON and IPICS, and its 85% share of the non-DoD marketplace, makes its technologies, in combination with our architectural design concept, a logical place to jump-start a transformative migration from the industrial era systems to the information network era. Put bluntly, the beltway bandid body shop model does not and will not meet DoD needs. A design model is needed where all participants must be compliant with data sharing standards best achieved through CISCO initially, and then as other CISCO competitors respond to DoD leadership, by all parties. This design model includes an appreciation of open source software as a low-cost means of integrating external parties into the DoD network; of open source information as a means of enticing many parties to exchange and share information relevant to force protection and mission accomplishments, and of open spectrum, using smart devices and smart information to explode the bandwidth availability for DoD’s intense spectrum needs.
Business Benefits. We have over time realized that the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) is the best possible ally of the Chief Information Officer (CIO), because a transformative migration to more efficient and effective informaiton sharing and information exploitation capabilities, capabiltiies that enhance accountability and support decision-making, would allow DoD to not only stop a great deal of waste in the form of dysfunctional investments, but would recover so much in the way of savings that the information revolution within DoD could be accelerated at the same time that the savings could fund needed Stabilization & Reconstruction programs as well as support to Homeland Defense and Civil Authorities.
Migration Path. In our view, the planned investments at the Strategic, Special, and Northern Commands could be orchestrated in a manner that leveraging incumbents while enabling a more rapid and more scalable solution that can be easily replicated by others, including other legitimate governments. We believe that we are engaged in a World War in which information is the most important munition and the most importance resource. We believe that Information Operations, and the converse of Information Warfare, Information Peacekeeping, are the center of gravity for victory into the future. We respectfully ask for an opportunity to discuss this White Paper with a broad range of DoD experts responsive to the CIO.
Specific Opportunities for DoD Advantage
Free Access to Global Open Source Information. Our concept, seventeen years in development with over 40 countries as well as the United Nations and elements of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, is the only approach that explicitly seeks to capture and harvest all global information at no additional cost to DoD. We can integrate all foreign media monitoring and other information that DoD is buying, and use that to develop “in kind” exchanges with non-governmental organizations, coalition militaries, universities, and private sector parties that pay in cash and kind for access to the larger aggregation of unclassified information.
Creates Network for Sharing Secret Information Securely. Just as FedEx is used today to move SECRET information, we believe that the Internet, not the existing government stovepiped systems, is the least expensive and most flexibile means of sharing secret information both domestically, and internationally, on a by-name basis.
Decision Support at All Levels. We completely endorse and are ready to integrate the ideas of Capt Scott Philpott, USN, the originator of the Special Operations “pit” and to develop tactical, operational, and strategic decision support modules that can support each function within each Service and within each COCOM.
Strategy & Force Structure. The integration of real-world open source information including geospatial visualization with rapid-response modeling and simulation will significantly enhance decision support in this critical area of transformation.
Inter-Agency Collaboration. Being able to understand the real-world challenges, as well as what is being done by all agencies of the U.S. Government and other governmental and non-governmental actors, will enable each COCOM to “matrix” needs and responses, and better orchestrate the application of all sources of national and international power.
Domestic Monitoring. Open sources of information are completely legal and ethical means of monitoring both political and acquisition or contractual and technical issues, and domestic sources of support for terrorists.
Force Protection. Forty percent of the all-source needs of the U.S. Special Operations Command are being met through international open sources, at a cost of under $1 million. A global monitoring network that extends planned purchases and is able to harvest unfunded sources, will enhance force protection everywhere.
Early Warning. Our concept dramatically increases not only what can be known in all languages all the time, but it also engaged the human experts across all national, organizational, and cultural boundaries. It utilizes information as a form of glue or “scent” to rapidly form and expand communities of interest that can be helpful to DoD via civil affairs or diplomatic channels.
Training & Education. Our advanced visualization and semantic web applications will make all of this information immediately usable for on-the-fly training and educaiton, a form of “virtual” university with training colleges for all countries and topics.
Mission Accomplishment. In the Age of Information, when Information Operations (IO) is central to DoD’s performance, the rapid adoption of this integrated design approach to information sharing and information exploitation, will be helpful to mission accomplishment across the full spectrum of conflict and engagement.
Executive Summary
The end of the Cold War and the emergence of terrorism, radicalized religion, the proliferation and commoditization of weapons of mass destruction, and the increased informational and economic power of Arabia, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, among others, has brought Information Operations to the forefront of the unified national security strategy. The Administration and Congress both recognize that Strategic Communication, Public Diplomacy, and inter-agency information-sharing and collaboration must be core competencies within a transformed national security arena. Robust inter-agency information-sharing and collaboration practices will be most effective if there is a common understanding of the real world based on global foreign information acquisition and analysis. With this White Paper L-3 communications and its extraordinary partners offer a campaign plan for meeting the requirement established by the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence (USDI) in January 2004: universal coverage, 24/7, in all languages, down to the tribal and neighborhood levels of granularity. This capability addresses the needs of the Department of State, which wishes to be a consumer of open source information rather than a collector; of all DoD elements, of the Department of Homeland Security and its state and local constituencies, and of all other elements of the U.S. Government (USG)..
L-3, the only defense contractor to be included in the WIRED 40, masters of innovation and technology with strategic vision, plans to partner with three other U.S. companies listed in the WIRED 40 (IBM, CISCO, Google), and with the top open source information companies in the world—including the leading provider of foreign geospatial and foreign information acqusition services—as well as world-class providers of man and machine foreign language translation services as well as multi-lingual operational field support services. We are integrating these global scalable capabilities with our existing analytic and technical services, and adding the extraordinary statistical analysis and pattern recogntion capabilties—including early warning from information that should be present but is not—of IcoSystem and Texas A&M University. PRNEWSWIRE completes our team and is our partner in evaluating key communicator biases and content trends, and in creating direct email, facsimile, and voice paths to influentials in every country and every domain. We deliver the message “by name.” We will integrate a global 911 service that will allow any individual to call in and receive both interactive secure real-time translation and subject-matter expert support, as well as secure locationally-aware cultural intelligence, using Tacticomps and other commercial hand-helds, as well as a 119 service for “bottom-up” dots from citizens to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and to the elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community..
L-3, with leading roles in support of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and the Homeland Security (HS), believes that Open Source Intelligence should be the linch pin for a new out-sourced approach to global information acquisition and exploitation that also provides a basis for a “Manhattan Project” approach to global information sharing and sense-making. This White Paper presents our unique scalable approach to the twin challenge of global information monitoring and related decision support as well as multnational, multiagency, multidisciplinary multidomain information sharing (M4 IS). L-3 is pioneering the concept of burden-sharing in two important ways beneficial to our clients’ mission: we are increasing the amount of information that is available by obtaining free access to United Nations (UN) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGO) and academic databases world-wide, and by implementing a global clearinghouse concept, an Open Source Information System (OSIS-X), that permits other governments and corporations to share the cost of acquiring information not now affordable by the USG. Our team strengths are shown on the next page (Figure 1). We anticipate that we will be able to earmark several hundred million dollars to build a “virtual back office” and hub for all USG OSINT, that can be subsequently expanded to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), UN agencies, and thence to a wide variety of regional coalition partners and organizations. We wish to do this is careful coordinatioin with the DNI, and with all relevant elements of the USG.
Figure 1: Team L-3 for Global Information Grid Challenges
Our foreign language translation partners are shown separately in Annex A. We have structured our team along six lines—clients may hire any of the team members as “prime” contractor.
1. By promoting and perhaps even subsizing global adoption of IBM’s DB2 with OmniFind, we will substantially reduce the cost and increase the speed of accessing globally distributed private databases. By integrating CISCO’s Application Oriented Network (AON) with Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) and disk level security features, and Google Enterprise, we resolve all of the latter’s security issues, while retaining its superb capability. We can also use Google to see what’s popular at the tribal level. Licensing the Googleplex reduces overall network computing costs by two thirds.
2. Our contracting of FedEx (including globally-distributed Kinko’s capable of digitizing daily), and Amazon, which can apply its technologies to foreign language books and documents, to include understanding of what is popular at the provincial level and across ethnic groups, is innovation at its best.
3. Our open source intelliigence (OSINT), decision-support (DM), machine translation, and data mining and statistical analysis pioneers, and our adoption of INTER-4! Tacticomps as our generic hand-held device for both inputing and receiving OSINT, are the guts of our global strategic objective of accomplishing the defense vision of universal access, 24/7, in all languages, at sub-state levels of granularity (provincial, tribal, neighborhood), along with tactical access from anywhere, to global information and imagery.
4. Geospatial depictions and fully integrated 1:50,000 geospatial data points are the foundation for our scalable and flexible data extraction, dissemination, and visualization. We leverage all available vendors, and add to this a rapid response modeling and simulation capability.
5. PRNEWSWIRE, with our help, will be able to reach influentials everywhere “by name,” at the sub-state level (provincial, tribal, neighborhood). Public diplomacy and strategic communications will be enhanced.
Our Executive Summary is completed with two depictions, one on this page (Figure 2) and one on the next page (Figure 3) of our ten-year plan for creating a global open source information system, and eventually a global all-source information system, that fully exploits locationally-aware devices including Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, and our plan, already discussed with the United Nations, Scotland Yard, and selected others, to change the global information paradigm by making possible universal access to shared information at three levels: public, government-only, and restricted. Access can also be controlled “by name.” Finally, page 5 is an implementation schedule for the first 100 days, and for the two-year plan for elements to be funded under contract.The recent decision of the United Nations to work toward a global UN information-sharing network open to our exploitation in return for access to OSIS-X, is one of our most important opportunities. If we can add the World Bank as an early adopter, the entire USG will benefit. We fully expect global multi-national corporations to co-invest and share the cost and the collection burdens for creating the Open Source Information System – External (OSIS-X).
Strategic Depiction of Ten-Year Development Plan for Global Intelligence System
General Al Gray, testifying to Congress in the 1990’s, explained why he was the only Service chief to place both communications and intelligence under the same flag officer. He said:
“Communications without intelligence is noise;
intelligence without communications is irrelevant.”
Writing in Forbes ASAP in August 1998, Peter Drucker, the dean of American business innovation, said (here we paraphrase a much longer commentary):
We’ve spent 50 years on the T in IT, now
it is time we spent 50 years on the I in IT.
The printing press started the industrial era. The Internet started the information era. Team L-3, in the service of America and of the U.S. Government, is prepared to start the new era of global collective intelligence—a new, safe, intelligent network for profitable information-sharing that is directly responsive to the Defense Science Board studies on Strategic Communications (July 2004) and Transitions to and from Hostilities (December 2004).
L-3 has identified funding needed over two years, to refine and scale up the capabilities listed in Annex E, following the milestones and objectives listed on the next page. L-3’s commitment to creating a global Open Source Business Unit is consistent with both classified and unclassified government needs for improved access, with one big difference: it is open to all possible contributors of raw foreign language information in all media forms.
This vision is so bold and so far-reaching that we provide here a summary of the implementation plan for the first 100 days and for the two-year investment period. Team L-3 knows who to hire to execute this plan, and will meet this schedule with a collection of world-class “brand name” individuals. What we build will be the new, safe, intelligent information-sharing network for the world, one that is in the service of legitimate governments while helpful to all participating individuals and organizations including non-governmental organizations active in stabilization and reconstruction operations.
First 100 Days
Day 1: Publicize the Commitment, Announce Mission and Goals
Days 2-10: Meet with Constituencies, Establish Consensus Among Stakeholders
Days 11-20 Hire Key People at Premium Scales, Avoid Re-Locations—Global Virtual Team
Days 21-30 Establish OSINT Academy, OSINT Help Desk, and Translation Web
Days 31-40 Establish Information Technology Skunkworks for IC, DoD, UN, and World Bank
Days 41-50 Establish Web-Based Federated OSINT Requirements (Tasking Request) System
Days 51-60 Establish Web-Based Federated Collection Management (Tasking Order) System
Days 61-70 Establish Web-Based Federated Data and Production Management System
Days 71-80 Finalize Personnel, Facilities, Equipment, Funding, and Focus of Global Effort
Days 81-90 Test-Drive the Commercial Open Source Agency (COSA)
Days 91-99 Adjust
Day 100 Open for Business
Regardless of how many corporations are competing for US and other government dollars, there needs to be at least one “hub” company that can help both US and foreign parties share information without regard to citizenship, clearances, or other caveats. L-3 plans to be that hub for the good of the larger group. We see this as a transformative strategic endeavor of enormous value.
Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The 5th Estate.
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