Counter Terrorism (merged thread)

[davidbfpo]

The original article's title was: Lessons of the Counterterror Campaign in the Digital Age (Opinion):http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2012/0...l-age-opinion/

The author being:

Philip Mudd served as the FBI’s deputy director for national security and, prior to that, spent most of his career at the CIA. He held various positions and was eventually named the deputy director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. Mudd is now a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation.

His opinion is markedly upbeat:

The lessons of how U.S. military, intelligence and law enforcement developed tactics during this long campaign, though, likely will be more enduring. Like international terror groups, emerging threats - organized crime, drug cartels, human trafficking groups, and child pornography rings - have common characteristics. All are led by a central cadre (a leadership network) of criminals who communicate, travel, and manage finances. Increasingly, each of these elements that make up organized networks is trackable through the digital trails that we all leave behind during everyday life, from bank transactions to e-mail and other messaging traffic on the Internet.

I would argue that organized crime and drug cartels have been around for a very long time. They both show remarkable resilience to modern methods, notably in the so called, failing 'drug war'. Let alone the billions in 'dirty money' floating around despite all the "spin". Human trafficking groups and child pornography rings maybe somewhat newer. I assume 'trafficking' is not the same as illegal migration; the later is evidently nowhere near state control.

Even starker IMO when Mudd writes:

Adversaries cannot beat the digital supremacy of America’s national security agencies, if that supremacy supports interdiction...

That is not supremacy, that is a capability that may give an operational edge.

Mudd ends with:

we should consider it as a template for how to look at this new age of global, networked, non-state actors and how similar they are to the adversary that we so effectively crippled after 9/11, using intelligence fusion to devastating effect. The wars of the past should be consigned to the past; the lessons of those wars remain relevant.

Well that really opens up a lot of the debate SWC has had over the years, including asking how effective is this, let alone the political, moral and cost aspects.

[davidbfpo]

From SWJ 'A Review: Ten Years Later: Insights on al-Qaida’s Past and Future through Captured Records', which contains these lessons:

Dr. Mark Stout of John Hopkins University, discusses the evolution of intelligence assessments of al-Qaida to 2011, and perhaps the most insightful aspects of his remarks are is the identification of hysteria that detracts from the real business of counter-terrorism, which is the blaming of Islam itself and 1.5 billion adherents, thereby allowing al-Qaida to hide within Islam, and not recognize that al-Qaida ideology and actions have been harmful to Muslims and non-Muslims alike....While Islam is relevant in threat analysis, Stout discusses how intelligence analysts fought back these ideas needing a more refined and realistic definition of the threat in a real world in which Muslims play an integral part in assisting in countering al-Qaida.

On that aspect of campaigning, document exploitation which gets little coverage:

Ms. Jessica Huckabey of the Institute for Defense Analysis...she eloquently warns that captured documents are a time capsule and should be contrasted with current events, more importantly Huckabey reminds us that AQ evolves based on failures and pressures.

I am sure others will find stimulation in the variety of articles within.

SWJ article link:http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art...ptured-records

The free book, 218 pgs:http://issuu.com/johnshopkinsaap/doc...ode=doublePage