Michael V. Hayden -- The assault on intelligence
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In some ways "The assault on intelligence" is yet another critique
and criticism of the Trump administration in the U.S.A.  However,
this one is particularly interesting because it is written from the
point of view and via the thinking of someone (Hayden) whose method
is always (1) to collect information (what Hayden would call
intelligence, I believe); (2) to analyse that information; (3) to
write up a briefing paper or a position paper based on that
information; and then (4) to make decisions and formulate a plan of
action based on that information and that analysis and those papers.

Honestly?  Is Donald Trump's attention span long enough to support
that kind of effort?  In a sense, that's unfair.  That is not what
Trump is.  He's erratic; he's impulsive; he does not want to do
detailed analysis; and he does not want to be hampered by facts,
information, or analysis.

It's bizarre but seemingly accurate to say that the goals of the
Russian active information operations and Donald Trump are similar:
to destroy confidence in and to weaken American institutions and
U.S.A. alliances with its allies.  That's what's behind his
(Trump's) repeated attacks on "mainstream media" and frequent claims
that the U.S. presidential election in 2016 was "rigged".

Hayden, as an intelligence officer deplores the de-valuing of truth
and facts, and the lack of awareness of truth by Trump.  And Hayden
regrets that Trump's demands for loyalty applies pressure to those
around him to support and align with him in that respect.

One thing that makes Hayden's book especially important is the
current volume and diversity of mis-information, especially on the
Internet and social media, which is an enabler for those who want to
spread a warped point of view.  Hayden is warning us about how we
need to learn how to protect ourselves from mis-information and from
the use against us of information collected about us.  As an expert
on intelligence collection and on counter-intelligence operations,
Hayden has especially interesting things to say in this area.

Hayden seems to believe that we need "meta-cognition", i.e. the
ability to know that we know something and the ability to determine
whether something that we believe is true or not etc.  This has
always been an important ability, but in a post-truth age, an age of
"truthiness", it is all the more important.

The Internet and the Web is the new battleground and arena for
political strife and for conflict between nations.  Some of those
actions within that conflict are being directed at each of us.  We
definitely need to learn how to recognize these activities and how
to protect ourselves.

Quite a bit of Hayden's book is organized around phases of Trump's
presidency: the campaign and election, the preparation for office
and the transition, the first 100 days, and afterward.  These
chapters are an analysis of what has happened and a severe critique
of those events.  But, there is a difference to this critique: it's
done from the point of view of an intelligence officer.  So, it's
done through intelligence gathering and analysis.  And, it's done by
someone with serious expertise and knowledge about the intelligence
and counter-intelligence and information operations being conducted
both by the U.S.A. and its adversaries.

The chapter "Trump, Russia, and truth" is a perceptive description
of what active information operations in the world of online
information and social media have become.  Hayden can't tell us how
it works (and how to do it), since that's likely classified.  But,
he can and does describe its goals and effects.  These online
information operations have and will shape our world, influence our
opinions, and have significant effects on our elections.  The
Russians are already active here, but we should expect other
organizations both inside and outside the U.S.A. to attempt to learn
from and operate in similar ways.  And, this chapter also stresses
how these operations to weaken the institutions that support our
democracy are backed and supported by many of Trump's own
statements, speeches, and "tweets".  Hayden also stresses the
corrosive effects of Trump's demand for loyalty from his staff
members and of his demands that they back him and support him after
even his most egregious claims.

Hayden is organized and methodical.  He believes in process.  He
wants those inside the Trump administration to (1) collect and
analyse intelligences, (2) prepare and study briefings and briefing
papers, and (3) prepare an agenda and a plan of action.  None of
that seems to occur within the White House.  Trump is not like that;
he is the extreme opposite.  Trump acts on whim and instincts and
inclinations, and he resists those who attempt to restrain him from
doing so.  Hayden worries that demands for loyalty within the
Administration pressure Trump's aids to assist him in following and
carrying out his whims and gut preferences, whereas those staff
members actually should be helping and encouraging Trump to
formulate a more rational agenda.

In part because of his regularity and rationality, Hayden finds the
activities inside the Trump administration to be weird.  An extreme,
but likely not that atypical, case of weird activities was the
Higgins memo, written by Rich Higgins (a Trump campaign loyalist in
the NSC strategic planning office), which required a knowledge of
alt-right jargon in order to decipher it.  But, really, we should
ask, is this memo, written from a white-nationalist point of view,
and colored with ideas about threatened Christian institutions,
anti-Marxist, anti-socialist, anti-European, anti-United Nations,
anti-diversity, and anti-tolerance rhetoric all that strange or
extreme for the Trump administration?  And, isn't it a good reminder
of where this administration stands and what its leanings and
positions and attitudes are, or at least those of Trump himself?

At many points Hayden is extremely critical of Trump and his
Administration.  He describes it (1) as being permeated by an
ethno-nationalism suspicious of multilateral institutions and
agreements; (2) as having an "American first" attitude that measures
success in terms of win-lose, short-term deals; (3) as being
controlled by economic mercantilism and obsessed with balance of
trade statistics; and (4) as having difficulty dealing with the
control of someone (Trump) having an all-encompassing narcissism
that is vulnerable to parades, banquets, and sword dances.

Hayden also criticizes our susceptibility to the Internet and social
media.  Here are some of the reasons he gives for why the promise of
the Internet and the Web and, in particular, social media went
wrong: (1) The old mediators, the news sources who used to filter
our news have been removed or are, at least, less effective.  (2)
Social media helps like-minded people to find each other and to
reinforce each others' extreme opinions.  (3) Web search engines and
other Internet tools put "confirmation bias" on steroids; we can
confirm anything and everything we want to believe.  (4) There is no
culling or cleansing facility for the Web; information, no matter
how skewed or misleading or wrong stays on the Web.  And, anyone can
put any ideas on the Web, no matter how crack-pot they are: anyone
can comment on forums; anyone can have and post to their own blog;
etc.  (5) Social media helps each of us to set up filters so that we
only see what we want to believe and in many cases what we already
believe.  Actually, setting up those filters is not even something
that we have to explicitly do; some social medial sites use
algorithms that figure out what we want to see and believe and that
filter the content presented to us automatically.

The Web and social media are enables of all that, because allow
anyone to publish without credentials or identification or
filtering.

There is an interesting article in the N.Y. Times by Zeynep Tufekci
(10/4/2018) about why these problems related to the Internet are
going to be hard to solve.  See:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/03/opinion/midterms-facebook-foreign-meddling.html.

We are all going to need to learn to be more sophisticated about how
we use the Internet and how we use what we find there.  At some
time, perhaps we'll see the development of products and software
that help us with this.  Wait.  No.  We do not even seem to want to
be helped.

A recent issue of "Foreign Affairs" magazine has several articles
about the conflicts and difficulties that the U.S.A. and other
nations will be having on and through the Internet and the World
Wide Web.  See: "Foreign Affairs", September/October 2018 (v. 97, #5),
various articles.

Even though opinion polls show that there is widespread support for
stronger alliances between the U.S.A. and foreign nations, show that
we want more and freer trade with other nations, and show that we
believe that immigrants and immigration are good for our country,
we've apparently given a good deal of control to a government that
feels the opposite.  Incredibly, that government, the Trump
administration and the Russian efforts to influence the last
presidential election converge on the same issues: Clinton emails,
rigged elections, "fake media", etc.

Hayden makes an interesting distinction between cyber intelligence
operations (both defensive and offensive) and cyber information
operations.  He seem to feel that the Russian efforts to skew the
results of our latest presidential election were information
operations, whereas the operations engaged in by our intelligence
agencies, the NSA  in particular, are intelligence operations.  And,
I'm wondering how long it will be before others besides the Russians
are engaged in that cyber information operations and how long it
will be before anyone with enough (campaign) funding can hire some
organization to do that for them.  The chapter titled "Russia,
Trump, and truth" provides help with thinking about that sort of
problems.  That is, by the way, a central and organizing theme about
Hayden's book: information, intelligence, information collection,
intelligence operations and counter-intelligence operations, and
disinformation operations.

If you are interested in learning more about the new world of
intelligence gathering, intelligence operations, and the use of the
Internet in those activities, then Hayden's book is a valuable
resource.

10/04/2018

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