Quote Originally Posted by Jedburgh View Post
The quick answer is that contracting out capabilities that should be developed internally weakens rather than strengthens our national intelligence structure.

We've already done long-term damage to military intelligence by "outsourcing" critical capabilities while concurrently reducing internal capabilities for expediency's sake. As we continue to reform and develop our national intelligence capabilities, the last thing we need to do is step out along that path across the IC..

Too late. DIA and CIA are heavily outsourced - well over 50% by some estimates.


Also, as Rex stated, and I thought was implied in my post, open source information isn't assessed in a vacuum - it is simply one of many sources of information that the analyst must absorb.
As I said to Rex, many analysts are already specialists, not generalists, and they like it that way. The agencies specialize as well (NRO, NSA, NGA, to name a few). It may not be the ideal, but that's how it is and it isn't changing anytime soon.


The "acceptance" of the value of OSINT within the IC is mainly a generational issue. Many "senior" guys are uncomfortable with the broad spectrum of open source media (both currently available and emerging) and prefer working with traditional sources, while the young'uns are perfectly capable of working in both worlds and of effectively integrating the two.
Agreed, and we don't have the time to wait for that "generational issue" to cease being an issue, which means that it's currently a problem which isn't going away.

I'm not suggesting that is a permanent fix, however considering how far behind we are, we need to run, not walk, towards getting up to speed to confront the variety of technological threats that threaten the U.S., and that are growing daily and that fact should compel us to keep an open mind as to where solutions can be found.