
The CIA Says It Can Predict Social Unrest as Early as 3 to 5 Days Out - gscott
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2016/10/cia-says-it-can-predict-social-unrest-early-3-5-days-out/132121/?oref=DefenseOneTCO
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dogma1138
Given the fact that they misjudged every coup, revolt and civil unrest since
the bay of pigs i find it highly doubtful.

The only time the CIA came close to accurately predicting a regime change is
when they cause it and even then they can't be sure if they'll still play
ball.

Intelligence doesn't work on large scales with many variables this is what
makes mass surveillance worthless.

Humint works when you have case officers dedicating their life to study a
single tasked asset and even then they are only slightly more accurate than
tossing a coin.

Sorry but as an agency that misread the fall of the Soviet Union and more
recently the Arab spring I would be keeping my mouth shut in shame.

This isn't to say that the CIA is not relevant and that their officers aren't
doing a good job, their crystal balls do need realignment tho.

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secfirstmd
Also misread intelligence and allowed themselves to be manipulated by Neocons
into invading Iraq

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dogma1138
I'm not sure how much they got themselves manipulated, Iraq isn't a clear cut
case as many people would like to believe.

Saddam worked hard to make sure that the west thinks he has WMDs ready to use
(and that he is willing to use them) he kicked out inspectors, he staged
activity at sites that were decommissioned and suspected sites, and he had his
troops marching in NBC suits.

And the US and the Iraqi government does still finds chemical weapons spread
over Iraq, the US has recovered 1000's of chemical munitions over the years.

[https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-
s-m...](https://theintercept.com/2015/04/10/twelve-years-later-u-s-media-
still-cant-get-iraqi-wmd-story-right/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleea...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/10/14/world/middleeast/us-
casualties-of-iraq-chemical-weapons.html)

Large amounts of precursor material and known stockpiles have also went
missing during the invasion, some of it has been suspected as the source of
the reported chemical attacks in Syria. And overall the condition of these
weapons made them not particularly field ready especially considering that the
Iraqi army was in a state of total collapse even prior to the invasion, Saddam
put a show that oddly he didn't had too.

Iraq didn't had nukes, but it had plenty (as in more than enough to cause a
lot of nasty incidents, but not nearly enough to sustain a war) of chemical
weapons during the time of the invasion even if they were at a pretty degraded
state, and Saddam staged a pretty good show in an attempt to thwart a looming
US invasion. Saddam's WMD's were never a threat to the US, not to any extent
beyond it's regional presence, and it likely not have been a real threat to
the region at large (yes he could've killed a lot of people, but conventional
weapons work just as well for that matter), but it's also not a case of these
things being non-existent.

The intervention in Iraq is probably one of the best examples that the road to
hell is paved with good intentions in recent history, it can be judged by many
factors as unwarranted and counterproductive but it wasn't some conspiratorial
scheme by the "neocons".

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Spooky23
I don't buy it.

Cheney wanted to "finish the job", and was able to use the post-911 chaos to
push it through.

Chemical weapons are available in a variety of "bad" or potentially "bad"
places. Yet the United States hasn't invaded any of those places.

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tetromino_
So if I understand this right, they're saying they can now organize social
unrest [1] with as little as 3-5 days lead time?

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution)

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applecore
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

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douche
This being the CIA, I wonder if they can't improve their forecasting rate by
taking a sightly more active role.

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opless
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_\(fictional\))

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poshli
This must be incredibly new technology, given the CIA's long history of
incorrectly forecasting just about everything.

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dsabanin
And that is the real reason behind all the surveillance we're witnessing.

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throwwit
Economy->Stocks->Valuations on 20+Years->Social Unrest

It's important.

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nickik
That's what they said before the Iranian revolution as well.

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matt_wulfeck
I bet a significant portion of this data comes from Twitter. Who says twitter
can't be profitable? Just charge the government a $1 million dollar "early
warning unrest" fee!

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cloudjacker
quantitative easing on three continents couldn't make twitter profitable

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justs0medude
I remember reading about things like this in "Behold the Pale Horse"...it
seems possible but I doubt we'll ever know what's really going on.

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jwtadvice
Project MINERVA.

