Shortly after the Paris attacks, it was learned more widely that the heads of various Intelligence agencies–the CIA, the DGSE, and former heads of the Mossad and MI6–had met a couple weeks earlier in Washington, DC.
Dahboo7 reported briefly on this:
The meeting took place on the campus of the George Washington University (where I taught Creative Writing for many years, and prior to that, various Composition and Writing courses in the English Department’s Writing Program) under the aegis of the George Washington Center for Cyber and Homeland Security (no doubt creative in its own way;), which describes itself on Youtube thus:
The Center for Cyber and Homeland Security (CCHS) at the George Washington University is a nonpartisan “think and do” tank whose mission is to carry out policy-relevant research and analysis on homeland security, counterterrorism, and cybersecurity issues. By convening domestic and international policymakers and practitioners at all levels of government, the private and non-profit sectors, and academia, CCHS develops innovative strategies to address and confront current and future threats.
The occasion for the meeting was ostensibly a panel conducted as part of a conference titled the (2nd Annual) Ethos and Profession of Intelligence Conference, which was co-hosted by the Central Intelligence Agency and the George Washington University, and was held on October 27, 2015.
The panel was titled, interestingly, “The Shared 21st Century International Mission,” and featured CIA Director John Brennan, former UK MI6 Chief John Sawers, Director of the French Directorate for External Security Bernard Bajolet, and former Israeli National Security Advisor Yaacov Amidror. The panel was moderated by David Ignatius, Columnist at the Washington Post.
The whole panel may be watched on Youtube (video below), and, given the power that Intel agencies currently have appropriated for themselves, and the level of self-congratulation aired here, is just a little disturbing to watch and listen to, but is posted here for a couple reasons. While it’s no secret that Intelligence agencies in the West–and Israel–probably work together anyway on all sorts of issues related to security and intelligence, counter-intelligence, and counter-terrorism, it’s interesting to note that there now appears to be an obvious, emerging bent now among Intelligence agencies to openly merge and combine their efforts and missions, much in keeping with other global initiatives, such as evinced in Global Policing and the current push toward One World/Global Governance.
To this end, I found two moments of note in this panel, one by former Israeli Advisor Yaacov Amidror sounding just un peu frantic about the crucial need for increased collection and sharing of information among Intel agencies in order to “win in the arena of digital/cyber warfare,” and the second featuring current CIA Head John Brennan holding forth on the changed terrain post 9/11, acknowledging the sophistication of current systems but noting the current-day complexity of pulling together vast collections of data and information from all sorts of sources, including, “something from Youtube, something collected clandestinely,” and the need for “pulling it all together and pulsing it, at the speed of light”–a need for a “System of Systems approach” to be established and evolved and improved, as data improves (a subject immediately picked up by the rest of the panel as an opportunity to praise the gargantuan collection of data by the NSA).
Actually, that led to something else that’s disturbing though–John Sawers talking about “threats to the homeland” (Does the UK also have a “Homeland”? How language creeps along!) and David Ignatius pointedly asking Mr. Amidror about Palestinian “lone wolf” terrorists. (Who praised Israeli Intel for their efforts in intercepting “95% of planned terrorism” and confining attacks to ones by the “lonely wolves.”) This excerpt is prefaced by the French DGSE Head Bernard Bajolet talking about international co-operation among Intel and his own efforts in tracking suspects who tended to travel between Europe and the Middle-East and can be viewed from 41 minutes in to about ten minutes down.
What’s notable is that there seemed to be a distinct attempt by all at this panel including the moderator to highlight this Global Systems approach, as well as to deliberately spotlight Domestic Intelligence, Domestic Terrorism or Extremism, and Lone Wolves–all focuses that we have seen before, and are still seeing today, resulting in increased and repressive, secretive, surveillance and counter-terrorism measures being unleashed on domestic populations, both in the US, the UK, and in other countries in Europe.
Panel at GW, 21st-Century Intelligence Sharing
In relation to the above, it is interesting to note the following excerpt on supercomputers crunching massive amounts of intelligence in an Artificial Intelligence scenario from an article on Remote Neural Monitoring–a secretive, probably-classified neurotechnology which directs electromagnetic/scalar energy remotely onto human brains, bodies, and nervous systems, which is nevertheless widely described today, reported worldwide by non-consensual experimentees, and discussed online, and which will be covered here more extensively shortly–posted at Deepthought.newsvine.com:
“‘Mr Computer’ is a general artificial intelligence with greater-than-human level reasoning capability. Whilst not what many envision as being the technological singularity, it is certainly the leading practical implementation of this notion. For the less romantic, ‘Mr Computer’ is a HCI solution to a vast decentralized data warehousing solution jointly operated by the CIA and NSA. Its role in RNM is a CIA black op with stated objectives of controlling all aspects of human behavior, thus it is possible for individuals to know of this AI in a different capacity and not have access to RNM directly.
Outside of its role in RNM, ‘Mr Computer’ is a force multiplier that enables the US intelligence community to connect-the-dots in gathered intelligence from every available source. This system is the ultimate destination of any data the US Federal government collects. Forget notions of hacking or attacking this system, not only can it literally vaporize you, but its also a better programmer, physicist and engineer than all humans combined. It’s as secure as they come and its bugs are not of the conventional exploitable type. I’m sure it finds modern notions of cyber-warfare and IT security ‘cute’ and ‘charming’, but ultimately not in the same league as it and certainly not a threat.” More can be found at Deep Thought.
In which vein, also see this informative 2013 article on Skynet and AI taking over NSA surveillance data: Skynet Rising: Google Acquires 512-Qubit Quantum Computer: NSA Surveillance to be Turned Over to AI Machines
