Many different knowledge models have been applied to the marketplace of ideas and motivations over the ages. Knowledge models can be characterized as communities who employ characteristic methodologies used to gain advantages for their respective stakeholders. The SWJ/SWC and USG knowledge models make for an interesting comparison.

SWJ/SWC could be described as a digital community frequented by stakeholders in the nuts and bolts of America’s day-to-day efforts to make the world a better place. The demographics include experts and students of the myriad facets of security, economics, and governance from various lands. Pacing daily changes, ‘best of breed’ ideas, concepts, and Tactics Techniques and Procedures (TTP) are examined and debated in a non-hierarchal, open, Socratean manner. The community is an example of the results of democratization and globalization of information and knowledge, in that transactional costs associated with gathering and analyzing information are very low and flash mobs of stakeholders can form, as time and resources permit, for 24-hour analysis of interesting/vexing problems. The quality of output from the SWJ/SWC knowledge model varies (trending towards stochastic) as a factor of the educational, experiential, and motivational levels of the participants.

The USG could be described as a physical and digital community comprised, primarily, of paid stakeholders in the nuts and bolts of America’s day-to-day efforts to make the world a better place. It uses a more common, closed model of vertical and hierarchical integration (with high transaction costs) in which information gathering and analysis is, more often than not, primarily limited to in house personnel specialized in the myriad facets of security, economics, and governance (among many other topics). Standardized training, and educational experiences are part of an attempt to provide a regulated and dependable (trending towards deterministic) output from stakeholders.

It is my thesis that the SWJ/SWC model offers the added potential for involving local stakeholders in a way, perhaps, that the USG does not currently attempt. It would be interesting to see if stakeholders who live in the area of interest agree with the proposed framework outlined by jcustis in post #18 of this thread.

It would also be interesting to see what the two communities could do to develop solutions, and how solutions would differ with the information available to each for an agreed upon area of interest.