Cyber Deterrence Symposium webcast

As I type this, I’m sitting in a seventh-floor conference area at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, listening to the keynote speaker for the second of five panels today in the “Cyber Deterrence Symposium,” a joint production of INSA (the Intelligence and National Security Alliance), and the Homeland Security Policy Institute.
If you’re [...]

DCGS Worldwide Conference 2009 is next week

US Joint Forces Command is sponsoring next week’s third annual DCGS Worldwide Conference in Virginia Beach, and I’m looking forward to participating on a great panel. If you don’t know much about the world of the ”Distributed Common Ground/Surface System,” you can find some slightly dated background information at http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/dcgs.htm. DCGS is in many ways all [...]

Once you get past Filter Failure

How do intelligence analysts handle the long-discussed problem of information overload? (The same question goes for information workers and government data of any kind.)

Seeking Semantics in Government

Anyone who uses Twitter and has to cram thoughts in to 140 characters knows that technology doesn’t always mix well with “semantic meaning.” That reminds me of an old Hollywood story (here’s a version from Wikipedia):
Cary Grant is said to have been reluctant to reveal his age to the public, having played the youthful lover for more [...]

Obama Team Infighting on Intelligence

The easiest prediction in Washington is this one: “bureaucratic turf war.” The Obama Administration isn’t immune. Several months ago when the president-elect announced his names for DNI and CIA director, I put forth this idea:  ”Swap Blair and Panetta: A Modest Proposal.”  In it I wondered, between the two of them, “Who gets the top bunk?”
Well, they still haven’t [...]

The Spy Chief and Bohemian Rhapsody

Very often, complaints about the stasis of the reform-resistant Intelligence Community recount the same old complaints, about how little the bureaucratic and stovepiped mentality has changed inside its oh-so-thick walls.
Yet I find some encouraging signs, and this week featured another one: the ceremony for this year’s winning entries in the IC’s “Galileo Awards” program, designed [...]

DNI Flags at Half-Mast

Only the second-ever Director of National Intelligence, Mike McConnell, resigned today effective immediately. As the Associated Press reported this afternoon in the wake of the announcement, “Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess, Jr. is temporarily serving as acting national intelligence director… McConnell’s letter did not explain why he resigned before the Senate’s confirmation of his replacement. [...]

Swap Panetta and Blair: A Modest Proposal

First, a quick story from when I was working in government.
Not long after the initial establishment of a “Director of National Intelligence,” the DNI CIO held an inaugural “DNI Information Sharing Conference” in Denver in the summer of 2006. I was asked to sit on a panel about “Innovation across the Intelligence Community,” representing the [...]

Cloistered with The Prisoner

“The Prisoner” [a 2009 remake of the classic British cult-show] “will retain a retro 60s charm, while presenting us with technology far beyond what we have today.”
    – recent reporting on QuietEarth.com, a site “dedicated to genre films and all things post-apocalyptic.”
Analysis: I spent the long weekend after Christmas a bit bifurcated — alternately singing [...]

My bold decision to withdraw from consideration as Obama’s CTO

To: President-Elect Barack Obama
From: Lewis Shepherd
RE: My Imminent Selection as Chief Technology Officer for the United States
Mr. President-Elect, I am hereby reluctantly but insistently withdrawing my name from consideration as your appointment to the newly created position of Chief Technology Officer for our nation.
No, no, please don’t try to persuade me otherwise. My decision is [...]