Partnerships — Info Analysis

The Pentagon’s Latest Recruits: Professors (Washington Post)…Stephen Barr, June 9, 2008 Pg. D1

Military power requires brainpower, and the Defense Department is moving to engage a new generation of scientists and engineers to conduct research that may pay off in technological breakthroughs for the nation’s military.

One of the ideas mentioned in the article is development of models for improving data analysis, that would help predict innovations and avoid being technologically surprised by another nation or adversary.

Next Internet: IPv4 to IPv6

FEATURES: The Next Internet, By Carolyn Duffy Marsan Government Executive May 1, 2008

“If you believe that you will want your cell phone to be reachable along with your [personal digital assistant], your home network and your car . . . you will need all of the address capacity of IPv6,” says Diana Gowen, senior vice president and general manager of Qwest Government Services in Fairfax, Va. “Every North American business and government needs to make the conversion.”

With IPv6, “everything can be addressable, from a soldier to a sensor to an aircraft to a tank,” he says. “With IPv6, we have unlimited address space. . . . We could have a sensor network of hundreds of thousands of nodes. When you scale that, address space becomes important.”

Defense also needs the end-to-end security that IPv6 offers as well as the ability to prioritize packets of data sent over the Internet and to create ad hoc networks in the field. “In Iraq, when we initially went in, it took weeks or sometimes months to get networks up and running,” Strance says. “With IPv6, it would take hours or at most days to do the same task. We need to be able to move from theater to theater, region to region, and to build seamless networks without network administration issues.”

Next internet includes migration from IPv4 to IPv6. Value added? Unlimited addresses and greater connectivity which leads to increased need to be able to separate signals from noises and an increased demand for smarter software that is self-generating …

Information: Absorbing, processing …

Moving Beyond Globalization , May 13, 2008.

Recently, New York Times columnist David Brooks penned an interesting piece on globalization and how people have used it to create paradigms for everything from economics to politics. He thinks it’s time to move on [“The Cognitive Age,” 2 May 2008].

DeAngelis’s posting on Moving Beyond Globalization, references an article by David Brooks on the Cognitive Age. Brooks states:

It’s the skills revolution. We’re moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and globalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked.

The Information cycle consists of .. data, which can lead information, information to potential knowledge, knowledge to potential wisdom.

I rarely use absolutes, but leveraging information to achieve the best outcome with the least amount of effort requires an awareness and understanding of variation. A concept so simple, it’s hard for people to understand.

Iraq, Politics, Information

The Quit-Iraq Time-Travelers, (New York Post)…Ralph Peters
May 29, 2008.

Whenever retreat-now activists or their favored presidential aspirant are confronted with our progress in Iraq, their stock reply is, “Al Qaeda wasn’t in Iraq in 2003.”

It’s as if, in June 1944, critics had argued from facts frozen in June 1939. (“Why invade Normandy? Hitler’s content with Czechoslovakia.”)

In the course of a war – any war – the situation changes, enemies evolve and goals shift. A war to preserve the Union becomes a war to end slavery; a war to defeat one set of totalitarian systems empowers a new network of tyrannies. It’s a rare war whose end can be forecast neatly at its outset.

Highlights the need for for an improved method of communicating facts and information to include the expected long and short term indicators of success.

Iran: Signal Noise Ratio

Iran Gulf Buildup Not Aimed At Challenging U.S., Cosgriff Says
(Bloomberg.com)…Tony Capaccio, May 28, 2008

Iran’s build-up of its naval forces in the Persian Gulf remains consistent and doesn’t suggest any short-term intent to confront the U.S. Navy or disrupt oil traffic, the head of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf said today.

Don’t `Hyperventilate’ … Cosgriff urged the public, including oil-industry analysts, not to “hyperventilate” over such encounters.

“Put it into context — you should be able to see the difference between something really extraordinary and something where it looks like they got a little close and nothing really happened,” he said. “Don’t get hyperventilated over these things.”

Great example of applying the variation principle. “Something really extraordinary” is a conceptual reference to a “Signal” or special cause of variation as opposed to normal (nothing unusual) common cause of variation.

France: Military Shift – Signal

Go-It-Alone France Shifts Military Stance, (Washington Post)…Molly Moore, May 25, 2008 , Pg. 17

…After decades of a go-it-alone military strategy, France has become one of Europe’s greatest advocates of an emerging European Union defense force and is considering allowing French forces back into the NATO command structure after a 43-year absence.

Conceptually, change represents a “Signal” … e.g., special cause of variation.

Iraq: Drop-off in Violence – Signal or Noise?

Iraq Violence Falls To Four-Year Low, U.S. Says, Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2008, ..Alexandra Zavis

The U.S. military said Sunday that the number of attacks by militants in the last week dropped to a level not seen in Iraq since March 2004.

Understanding the basics of variation provides a little more insight on assessing results communicated with numbers. A Signal may represent “special” cause; Noise refers to common cause.

A quick self-assessment on determining signal vs. noise.

Memorial Day, May 5, 1866

“On May 5th, 1866, veterans and residents of Waterloo, New York, placed flowers on the graves at each of the town’s cemeteries to honor the local Soldiers and Sailors who had fallen during the Civil War. Proposed by a local pharmacist, Henry c. Welles’, the act of remembrance centered on his belief that while praising the living veterans of the Civil War, it was equally important to remember the patriotic dead. This tradition has grown for a century and a half- it is Memorial Day.”

“Let no ravages of time testify to the present or the coming generations that we, as a people, have forgotten the cost of a free and undivided republic. Upon the graves of our war dead rests not only the memories and the pride of valor past, but the hope and the vision of a better, more peaceful future.” — Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cited the importance of remembering the cost of freedom in a Memorial Day message to the armed forces.

Red Teams and Predicting Variability

To Battle Groupthink, the Army Trains a Skeptics Corps
(U.S. News & World Report)…Anna Mulrine, may 26, 2008, pg.30

In the wake of chaos and a lethal insurgency in Iraq, blamed in no small part on poor decisions and a lack of planning at the highest levels, the U.S. Army has had a startling insight that is upending conventional thinking about how the military works. That epiphany is that the force needs fewer yes men.

… The program at Fort Leavenworth’s University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies is more commonly known by its nickname, Red Team University.

Application of the Red Team concept can develop an awareness and understanding of variation. Everything varies. One measure of success is accurately predicting the gap between the actual and expected result.

For example, given all the variation inherent in a daily commuting process, how close can you predict your arrival time?

Information – Objectivity Questioned

OPINION: What The Pentagon Was Feeding Us (Fort Worth Star-Telegram)…Joseph Galloway, McClatchy Newspapers, May 19, 2008, Pg. 13B

…There’s little doubt that this program violated laws against covert propaganda operations mounted against the American people by their government. But in this administration, there’s no one left to enforce that law or any of the others that the Bush operatives have been busy violating. The real crime is that the scheme worked. The television network bosses swallowed the bait, the hook, the line and the sinker, and they have yet to answer for it.

Joe Galloway s a military columnist for McClatchy. Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf has called him “the finest combat correspondent of our generation — a soldier’s reporter and a soldier’s friend.” He is co-author of the book: We Were Soldiers Once… and Young.

A follow-up to the New York Times story regarding the objectivity of military analysts on the cable shows – see previous posting in the Information category.