Money quote(s):
"One of the biggest flaws in our national security is the lack of any serious human intelligence capabilities. I do not mean to demean those who do practice this most dangerous craft, but to point out our lack of focus on this area."
We do have folks whose (dangerous) business this is; CAA has had the privilege of working with some of them in the past.
"I am saddened by the amateur nature of it. We decided back in the days of Jimmy Carter that spying was too nasty a game for a civilized nation to play and consequently we have blundered about like Mr. Magoo since then. We rely on signal intercepts to learn what is going on, and while this is valuable, absent the context and reality check of human intelligence it is guess work. Sadly all too often our guesses have turned out to be wrong."
Within the IC, the "science is settled" on this; the post-Vietnam focus on technical intelligence and severe cuts our human intelligence capabilities were a mistake.
Post-9/11, much time, effort, and money has gone to re-building our human collection capabilities but this isn't something that can simply be achieved, it's a moving target.
"If we want to avoid big wars, then we need a true intelligence gathering capability. That means spies, real spies, spying on people. We can scarf up all the data we want, but the value of an insider telling us what is really going on trumps all that. So let's thaw out some of the Cold War tactics that kept us safe. It may not be Boris & Natasha (or it might) but we need to keep an eye on all kinds of folks."
11/21
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