Intel Agencies Learn To Drink From The Hose

The NYT ran an article on how the military is “awash in data” from its remote-controlled drones. In short, the aircraft produce more video than can be watched and analyzed.

It’s worth noting here that information sans analysis is not intelligence. Drone-camera video of people with guns in the Afghan desert is almost meaningless without some sort of context and interpretation. (Who are they? Men or women? Where are they headed? What are their intentions? Are they planting a bomb or attending a funeral?)

The drone-video issue reflects a growing problem that the US military and intelligence agencies have faced in the last decade. There’s too much information, and too few people to read or translate (let alone analyze) it. Certain individuals have suggested that the CIA/NSA et al develop ‘their own Google’, but this underestimates the scale of the technological problem faced. Terrorists and others communicate in foreign languages and via telephone, in slang and chartroom patois. Speech recognition and analysis software is primarily designed around English and other Western languages, not the many dialects of Arabic or (God forbid) Russian mat. Computers already have plenty of trouble interpreting still images, and there is no automated solution for video, let alone the grainy footage produced by a Predator’s thermal camera.

However, drones are only a small slice of a much larger problem. In an interconnected world crisscrossed by fiber-optic cables and satellites there is more information to monitor, and more paths upon which it may travel. This growing complexity must be untangled somehow, whether by technology or manpower. The solution may lie in inter-agency cooperation, but even that isn’t a save-all end-all. Given funding constraints and the fundamental flaws faced by all large, unwieldy bureaucracies, it appears likely that the intelligence system we have is about as good as it is going to get.

–Evan Johnson