Intel innovations

American intelligence and national defense 2.0

On 06/17/11, I wrote the first instalment of National intelligence and national defense, published at the Campaign for Liberty, suggesting that we could both cut the secret intelligence budget by three quarters, and radically increase the amount of open source decision-support (as opposed to secret mass surveillance).

Of course nothing happened, but now, to my enormous delight, I am hearing that there is a very tentative discussion in some of the darkest corners of the US government of a proposal to terminate three of the secret agencies that reside within the Department of Defense (DoD) – the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), the National Security Agency (NSA), and the National Geospatial Agency (NGA). This should happen, if not in the closing year of the Obama Administration, then in 2017 under the first Independent president and a diversified Congress in which Independents, Greens, and Libertarians and others (e.g. Constitution, Working Families) win the 20-30 seats being vacated.