

Data intelligence complex is the real story - teawithcarl
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a1dd626c-cf80-11e2-be7b-00144feab7de.html

======
hga
This article by Walter Russell Mead says a massive intelligence effort is an
necessary corollary of Obama's position that the Global War on Terror is over,
that we can return to a 9/10 mindset: [http://blogs.the-american-
interest.com/wrm/2013/06/06/public...](http://blogs.the-american-
interest.com/wrm/2013/06/06/public-peace-secret-war-the-snooping-scandals-and-
the-presidents-war-strategy&#x2F):

Key bits:

" _From the day he took office, President Obama has sought to defuse the war
and decrease public concern about it....

"It is in many ways an excellent strategy, but it has one serious flaw: it
leaves the President terribly vulnerable if a significant terror strike should
succeed....

[ Details the intelligence effort required. ]

"More than that, he has to be able to act. If terror is to be nipped in the
bud, drones must fire down from the skies. If the al-Qaeda leadership is to
remain stunned, scattered and incapable of large scale actions against the
United States, houses in Waziristan must mysteriously blow up. American
citizens making war against their homeland must die, even if that means they
don’t get to hear their Miranda rights first.

"President Obama’s core war strategy depends on massive intelligence
capabilities that were undreamed of twenty years ago. It depends on the
substitution of drones for troops. PRISM and similar programs aren’t a ghastly
misstep or an avoidable accident. They are the essence of Obama’s grand
strategy: public peace and secret war. To cool down the public face of the
war, he must intensify the secret struggle._"

~~~
gasull
This reads like pro-Obama propaganda. Why does Obama want to decrease public
concern about war? I'd say he doesn't want a public debate about it. He
doesn't want a public debate about PRISM/NSA either.

~~~
hga
Oh, but Obama says he welcomes the latter, even congratulates us for wanting
to have one, " _[...] it 's a sign of maturity because probably five years
ago, six years ago we might not have been having this debate._"
([http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/06/07/obama_on_n...](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2013/06/07/obama_on_nsa_surveillance_i_welcome_this_debate_i_think_its_a_sign_of_maturity.html)).
Who could possibly complain?

~~~
hga
Heh, Richard "Wretchard" Fernandez points out in an essay
([http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/06/07/all-we-are-
sa...](http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2013/06/07/all-we-are-saying/))
that quotes Mead's essay that this total surveillance state puts a rather
sinister cast on "Obamaphones".

" _[...] he had no difficulty convincing his base ... that it could have free
Obamaphones. He forgot to say there was one problem with those phones …._ "

------
Achshar
Is the site behind paywall? I don't want to register just to read one article.

~~~
hga
Last time I checked it's a staged paywall. You get X articles for free without
any action, X+Y articles if you register, there may be another "free" stage,
and of course you can start paying and that may have more than one level.

They compete with _The Wall Street Journal_ , which is famously about the only
paper that made a success of on-line subscriptions a long time ago.

~~~
carbocation
FT apparently requires you to register to see your 8 free articles every 30
days. So you have to do something, not just nothing.

Any other sources on this story? The fact that the US spends $80 billion
(overall?) on signals intelligence would not be particularly surprising.

~~~
hga
I guess they've changed their policy and I didn't notice because I registered
a long time ago. Not a good idea, there should be no friction until you've
tasted a bit of the fruit they're offering. Then again, such mechanisms tend
to make it too easy to entirely circumvent the subscription system.

------
omarali
The article is free if you click on it from google's search results. Here is a
link:
[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=data%20intelligence%2...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=data%20intelligence%20complex%20is%20the%20real%20story&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC4QqQIwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fa1dd626c-cf80-11e2-be7b-00144feab7de.html&ei=W12zUa29O8jnqAH7u4DwDA&usg=AFQjCNH7qCOhtl9YgRoHYyW206cuJ-4Vag&bvm=bv.47534661,d.aWM)

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jrokisky
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budget_of_NASA)

~~~
cstross
NASA = National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

NSA = National Security Agency.

~~~
cobrabyte
Pretty sure they were trying to demonstrate that we could have continued to
fund NASA at a full burn rate for a few years with these funds.

------
gasull
William Binney talks about the military-industrial complex in this video from
the last HOPE conference:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqN59beaFMI)

------
elorant
Well if you look it the other way, that's a good market to build a start-up
for.

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film42
You have to admit, the US is doing a pretty good job with that $80 billion/yr.

I mean, what's the alternative? Spend $0 on secret data intelligence
gathering? Of course not! I for one am happy to know that there are people on
my side, looking for people who are not.

Furthermore, I can't seem to understand why people are so up-in-arms over US
data gathering. I for one, have nothing to hide. Every crime I've committed
online is so small, the NSA simply doesn't care. Obama said in his latest
press conference, "We collect the meta data, not the data. We can see who is
calling who, and if we need to listen to that call, we need to go before a
judge."

I, a person of the people, am fine with the government spending this kind of
money on secret data intelligence, because it keeps me safer. Period.

------
ovoxo
The individual in me says "Wow, that's a lot of spying". Yet, the larger,
money-hungry side of me says "what service/product could I develop to get a
chunk of that $80 billion".

------
suredo
while the education budget is less then 70 billions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ed...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Education)

~~~
newnewnew
That's just at the federal level. Total is about $800 billion[1].

The US is regularly on top of the OECD for spending per student in school. The
idea that it doesn't spend much on education is one of those bad memes that
never goes away.

[1]
[http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20...](http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/us_education_spending_20.html)

------
Sven7
Patroits don't work cheap.

~~~
ivanca
Maybe call it "nationalism" to avoid implanted emotional implications of the
word.

~~~
Sven7
Maybe I'll just wait a day or two for someone at the Pentagon to leak
guidelines on how to provide constructive criticism of their budget.

Meanwhile enjoy this quote from Nicholas Negroponte - "Nationalism is the
biggest disease on the planet. Nations have the wrong granularity. They’re too
small to be global and too big to be local, and all they can think about is
competing."

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yoster
We should use that money to drop bombs via drones 24/7\. Eradicate them out of
existence.

~~~
hga
Errrm, and what, exactly, tells us _who_ to "drop bombs" on?

~~~
apostlion
It's obvious — the terrorists that hate your freedoms!

Your skin is brown? DROP A BOMB. You're a Muslim? DROP A BOMB, AND ONE MORE,
TO BE SURE. You're a goddamn Ruski commie? BOMB, BOMB, BOMB.

~~~
yoster
Calm down before you get a stroke. I wasn't serious.

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pfortuny
This is exactly what terrorists want: the impact of a terrorist act is, in the
end, measured in money much more than in lives.

They are not going to kill that many people in the end, what they want is to
make people afraid and pervert all the freedom in a country. Because what they
hate is our freedom, do not forget it.

EDIT: BTW, being wrong (if I am) is a cause for downvotes? Grow up, you
people.

~~~
jmduke
The terrorists do not want to see the U.S. turn into a police state.

The terrorists do not hate our freedoms.

The terrorists -- and specifically I'm talking about al-Qaeda and related
groups -- want "atrocities against Muslims" to end, they want support for
Israel to end, they want U.S. presence in the Middle East to end.[1]

Terror sects aren't B-movie villains.

[1]: [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military/july-
dec96/fatw...](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/military/july-
dec96/fatwa_1996.html)

~~~
pfortuny
I probably explained myself badly.

What they want is to terrorize. Their success is measured in money.

Any economist will just point out that money is how most things are measured
as regards human relations in a normal society.

~~~
danielharan
No, their success is measured in how well they achieve their goals such as
ridding an invader from land they consider sacred.

You know why they're pissed off, right?

Knowing our enemy is rather essential if we want to stop this war one day.

