Isiah 10:3

Change is going to come to law enforcement like it did to Intelligence Community. Maybe not this year, maybe not next…but it is coming.

In December 2004, President George W. Bush signed into law the establishment of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), ending the primacy of the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who, as Director of Central Intelligence, ran the US Intelligence Community for nearly six decades. The creation of the ODNI was fueled, in part, by high-level investigations into the terrorist attacks of 2001 and Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. In short, some cultural and structural challenges were deemed resolvable only through external pressure made manifest in law.

As a newly-minted analyst in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, I was taught about historical intelligence failures and abuses, the externally-mandated reforms that often followed them, what those failures and reforms meant for how we worked. While The 9/11 Commission Report took over a year and a half to complete, there was a widespread recognition before the report was released — even among then junior analysts such as myself — that how the CIA went about its business needed to change.

For the past week, some police officers have acted with casual impunity in brutalizing protestors even as they knew they were being filmed doing so. That is both stunning and horrifying, and reinforces and spreads the view that profoundly toxic structural and cultural forces are at play in many of the nation’s law enforcement agencies.

Since Mr. Floyd’s death at the hands of the Minneapolis Police, I — like most Americans — have been watching a steady stream of egregious, if not savage, police violence targeting protestors and journalists. These documented abuses of police powers and displays of police violence over the past week, let alone in the historical context of police discrimination against and violence toward BIPOC communities, are outrageous. Samuel Walker of the University of Nebraska, in a paper that was presented to National Institute of Justice Police Planning Research Workshop, wrote:

Lawfulness and legitimacy, in turn, are essential if the police are to achieve their goals of reducing crime and disorder, enhancing the quality of neighborhood life, and serving community needs.

If this holds true, there have been too many documented cases of lawlessness and illegitimate behavior for police departments to reasonably think that they are going to emerge from these lawful and righteous protests operating like they have in the past.

Someone, somewhere, is compiling and correlating the data that documenting unlawful and illegitimate police actions from around the country. The data will come from social media platforms and news outlets. It will be a messy task, but enough people are outraged by what they are seeing that it will be done — building a database and cleaning data is only a matter of time and energy, and many people have that in abundance as they shelter at home and are appalled by police violence directed at black people, protestors, and the press.

Patterns of misconduct will emerge. Right now, most people are too overwhelmed in the moment to record, “That is [named police department] at [location] at [time / date]” with their videos. That does not mean that those details won’t be chased down or that the public’s findings won’t have impact. Given the incompleteness and dirtiness of the data, apologists might be inclined to argue that any findings are skewed or somehow meaningless. That argument is a red herring and is likely to be an invitation into greater official scrutiny.

The Department of Justice, for example, launched an investigation into alleged patterns of excessive force employed by the Seattle Police Department (SPD) in 2011. Within nine months of launching the investigation, the DOJ found

…reasonable cause to believe that SPD engages in a pattern or practice of excessive force, in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

Given that The 9/11 Commission Report took some 20 months to complete, and the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction took 13 months to compile and release its findings, the nine months it took the DOJ to establish patterns of excessive force in Seattle suggest that, with access to official data, patterns will not be difficult to discern.

While some police departments and unions might be able to fend off local reforms, the question might become one of legislation or monitoring as a means of forcing change. In 2016, for example, the federally appointed monitor found that the SPD to be “…in initial compliance with requirements of the Court-ordered agreement.” The City of Seattle, in light of citizen complaints related to SPD’s response to public protests, has retreated from its planned request to withdraw from federal oversight.

(A side note: the Department of Justice under President Trump, perhaps unsurprisingly, has retreated from the use of monitoring. That is not to say that monitoring will not return.)

At some point, business owners and Chambers of Commerce are going to see rioting in response to police excess as being an economic problem of police making and demand change. Similarly, citizens will eventually tire of have to pay for municipal settlements of lawsuits rooted in police excess and lawlessness. Given the choice between protecting police forces in the face of documented cases (if not patterns) of excess and abuse and the risk of being voted out of office, I suspect politicians will opt for their own professional survival. They are, after all, politicians. It might take time for protestors and reformers to develop local-, state-, and national-level strategies for police reform as protests continue, but small victories related to police accountability and transparency will only energize and embolden groups pushing for police reform.

The larger question is the degree to which governors, mayors, police commissioners, police chiefs, and rank and file guide, contribute to and own reforms. The formation of the ODNI was…is…something of a mixed bag for the CIA in my opinion. From my cubicle-level view from somewhere in the middle of the GS Scale at the time, keeping fledgling DNI-reforms at bay seemed to be the strategy of the day (and, to be fair, the ODNI, in its rush to do something / anything to show “leadership,” churned out a lot of ideas of questionable value). Arguably, the biggest benefit of the ODNI was that it forced the major players in the Intelligence Community to self-police themselves (often without ODNI involvement) so that the ODNI could later “own” or “bless” joint solutions. This analogy is imperfect because communities are not only customers of police services but stakeholders by virtue of the fact that they pay taxes.

If this experience can be extended to police departments and law enforcement organizations, police departments and police unions should be having candid internal conversations about the things that they know to be wrong and identifying corrective solutions that can be implemented immediately. I have a hard time seeing how public confidence in police can do anything other than falter — like the CIA, law enforcement agencies are more likely to be judged by their failures and misdeeds than their successes, and the memory of those failures last years if not decades. Some police departments across the country are generating decades worth of bad will across their communities by being inappropriately aggressive and outrageously violent. Even successes by some officers and departments to de-escalate departmental responses are likely not going to be enough to mollify public outrage: consider for a moment that the idea of abolishing police departments, impractical as it is, is resurfacing as part of the national discourse.

An easy first step should be surveying police practices from around the country and world that have proven to be effective and aggressively implementing them as quickly as possible. The choice, even if over the long-term, is simple: own necessary and sensible reforms or have them required of you. Obvious opportunities include:

§ Demilitarizing police departments in terms of the equipment issued and the conditions under which are issued to police officers.

§ Restricting use of, and increasing training around, less-than-lethal weapons.

§ Retraining police officers in safer ways to restrain suspects who are resisting arrest.

§ Training police officers to de-escalate potential conflicts.

§ Routinely screening for mental health issues such as PTSD that could contribute to excessive behaviors.

§ Developing policies to increase transparency into police operations, particularly as they relate to citizen complaints.

§ Developing policies — to include counseling, suspension, and termination — to increase accountability for excessive force and inappropriate behavior.

§ Assuming that a redefinition of qualified immunity is coming, and embracing the redefinition as a means of taking preliminary step to establishing trust with American communities.§ Enactmenting robust and meaningful community policing and engagement programs.

§ Establishing and empowering meaningful and diverse civilian oversight boards.

All of these areas for reform should be thought of systemically (even if they are pursued independently): how might collegiate criminal justice programs, police academies, on-the-job training, and meaningful community engagement come together to create more effective policing strategies and operations? The challenge is likely to be one of police cultures: at the CIA, we often found ourselves acknowledging Peter Drucker’s observation, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Reforms that any police department makes today are likely to be viewed skeptically and with good reason: superficial change is easy and is too easily discarded once the precipitating crisis is over.

“Today?” you might ask.

Yes. Today. The need for reforms has been known for years; putting them off for one more day is only going to cost you. Take four of your smartest and most insightful officers and stick them in a room and have them start thinking through urgently-needed reforms. Draw in community-adjacent partners if you are wary of presenting your ideas to the public in the near-term. Have senior, executive-level ownership and championship of the effort. Make it clear that the members of this working group are to be aggressive and imaginative and disregard how their proposals might upset internal stakeholders (securing broader buy-in and ownership will take time).

Change is hard. After what I have seen on social media over the past week, I cannot imagine a case where anyone can seriously argue that it is not needed. Police and political leaders need to pursue police reforms immediately and with a profound, if not unprecedented, sense of urgency. Some, like the mayors of Louisville and Buffalo and the Denver Police Department firing one of its officers over an outrageously unprofessional post, already are. Time spent defending against the need for reform is likely to only further erode public confidence, an outcome that some police departments simply cannot affored.

The tool? Committee hearings.

That’s right: committee hearings, the stuff of C-Span.

Unlike the “news,” which is dominated by pundits and political operatives, witnesses testify under oath. While the inclination of any person to take any oath seriously varies, hearings can be designed to explore, or contextualize, complex issues that are given often short shrift in print and broadcast news as investigative reporting is a costly and time-intensive activity and there is a sense that Americans are unwilling to devote chunks of time to current events.

Ironically, hearings do not need to be effective to affect change.

In 1975, the White House, the Senate, and the House of Representatives investigated perceived abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Internal Revenue Service. Despite the questionable efficacy of these investigations, they continue to cast a long shadow over intelligence operations as they remind practitioners that there are — and should be — limits on the power that the government exercises in pursuit of US national interests.

I wonder, for example, what an in-depth examination of America’s immigration policy and the Department of Homeland Security’s and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s policies and practices would reveal not just about the morality (if not legality) of their implementation, but also about the potential near- and long-term demographic and economic implications of these policies (let alone the morality of these practices).

One also can imagine in-depth hearings on the long-term effects of recent changes to US tax policy; a multifaceted inquiry into how this administration defines America’s national interests and the means by which Washington is pursuing them; healthcare policy (as it relates to the physical and financial well-being of the average US citizen); and the state of — and likely futures of — the US economy in light of tax breaks, tariffs, and potential trade wars.

Some of the policies that we now see as “bad” (if not reprehensible) were created and implemented by former administrations, to include Democratic ones. This is nothing to shy away from: we, as a country, must own — and learn from — the past if we ever hope to be better than we were.

Hearings, at the very minimum, put on public record the analyses and informed opinions of subject matter experts (read: not lobbyists or pundits), the agendas and strategic objectives of senior appointees, and the actions and activities of the bureaucracies…and might fuel more complementary investigations, analyses, and reporting.

At best? Hearing might give birth to a new consensus about what we want America to be or to become.

For this to work, though, Congress needs to do at least two things:

1. Work more. In 1975, the members of the House of Representatives were in session for 163 days; this year, they are scheduled to be in session for 121 days. Imagine if just 20 of these “lost” days were used for hearings. How much better informed would they — and the US electorate — be? How much more pragmatic might their legislation be? How might bureaucracies, and perhaps even the private sector, in face of rigorous oversight self-regulate so as to stave off legislative action?

2. Prepare. Full disclosure: I still have not recovered from Senator Orrin Hatch’s stunningly embarrassing question to Mark Zuckerberg about the source of Facebook’s revenue because of the degree it suggested that Mr. Hatch (and/or his staff) was out of touch with the world in which many of us live. To avoid such obvious gaffs, Representatives should have their and committee staffs educate them so they don’t stumble in ways that (further) undermine Congress’s credibility. Ask Questions for the Record that can be made part of the public record. Find experts from across the political spectrum and who can authoritatively speak to the various facets of an issue because diversity of perspective is incredibly important. Schedule these experts in ways that allow Committee members and the public to deepen and broaden their understanding of the issues at play around the most pressing policy issues.

This administration’s incessant assault on the press at a time when many media outlets are fighting for the attention of the consumer cum citizen clearly represents a threat to the belief that a well-informed citizenry is essential to democracy. The Democratic Party has a chance to enlighten the electorate and, at the very least, compel the professional bureaucracy to explain not only what their departments and agencies are doing today, but force a more serious discussion about futures that are unlikely to be linear extrapolations of today.

To avoid information overflow, we create curated information diets or allow ourselves to be sucked into the gravity wells of ideological echo chambers.

Click-baity headlines, listicles, and the blurring of the lines between news and entertainment that are the common features of our information landscape hurt us even as they speak to the limited amount of time and attention we can give to any issue, regardless of how important it might be.

The presidency of Donald J. Trump and its potential impact on the trajectory of the United States is one such issue — an issue made all the murkier by the approach that he and his staff take to dealing with the American people.

The simple fact of the matter is that President Trump has a tenuous relationship with objective reality: most of what he says falls somewhere between a half-truth and a bald-faced lie.

In this, the President is supported by people who are no less disingenuous than the man they serve. While Kellyanne Conway’s role in this administration is the subject of discussion and debate, her declaration that this administration presents “alternative facts” in support of its agenda continues to ring true: in what other way could a Director of the Office of Management and Budget say, “I don’t believe the facts [about the financial implications of the American Healthcare Act] are correct.”

The press — which historically has been able to interact with the President, his Cabinet, and other senior officials and bureaucrats and, to a greater or lesser degree, hold them accountable for their statements and actions — tends be viewed as either friendly or adversarial, with access to the administration being dependent on the tone of their coverage (if not ideological orientation of their editorial board). The New York Times, which has won 122 Pultizer Prizes and citations over its 165-year history, is routinely dismissed as “fake news” whereas the conservative Fox News Network, which recently suspended one of its on-air personalities for making baseless claims about British intelligence operations, was praised by the President just this week for repeating his unfounded assertions about being spied on.

Unquestioning loyalty, if not abject fealty, seems to be the measure by which President Trump judges the people and the organizations around him. Dissent — and perhaps even the lower bar of independent thinking — seems to be tantamount to disloyalty, even when the dissent is based on compelling evidence (e.g., questionable ties between Trump’s advisors and the Russian government).

Trump further amplifies his ideas and ideology through his very effective use of social media: Trump the celebrity’s personal Twitter account has just over 29 million followers and 17.2 million people follow the official account for the Office of President. Of America’s major news outlets, only The New York Times commands more of a following with its 36 million followers.

Social media allows Trump to directly speak to his supporters and bypass any critical examinations of his assertions. As a result, the press is forced to react to Trump’s bluster and lies, rather than get out ahead of them through investigation, research and analysis.

The problem for those who do not agree with Trump or actively oppose the President and his policies is that his supporters often seem willing to take his assertions with a pound — and sometimes a ton — of salt: while Trump’s approval rating remains low for a new president, a recent poll conducted by a Republican consultancy found that “20% of those asked believe Trump never lies, while 37% believe he exaggerates the truth with good intent and 43% believe he intentionally lies.” Trump, for his part and probably with good reason, believes there will not be any consequence to even his most egregious statements and actions.

Historically, Americans viewed with deep skepticism — if not outright condescension — governments that lie about their accomplishments, the health of their economy, or the productivity of their people. Remember how we snickered about the 2002 Iraqi Presidential referendum when the entire Iraqi electorate voted for Saddam Hussein?

Why are we, as a people, now so willing to give the rest of the world very good reasons to laugh at us?

A wall along the length of the Mexican border to stop illegal immigration? Laughable to a degree that even the Republican members of Congress are discomforted by its impracticality and expense.

Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort as the “Southern White House”? That the price of access to a de facto presidential residence can be purchased for $200,000 per year (with the average American taxpayer footing the bill for government-funded security) puts our country in the same category as the tyrants and strongmen that have long been anathema to our national values.

Trump famously declared that he “…could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” The sad fact of the matter is that he seems to be correct: despite implementing policies that disadvantage the majority of Americans, or target the very people driven by frustration and desperation to buy into his economically unviable campaign promises, a cross-section of Americans continue to support a man who would be king.

How do we respond? Americans protest even as the men and women who represent either try to duck the consequences of their actions or to enact laws meant to stifle protest, which has been a cornerstone of our country since we dumped British tea in Boston Harbor.

Increasingly, I think the answer to our future lies in looking at how people who have been in cults are deprogrammed: for nearly twenty years, Americans have been subjected to the relentless drone of talking points repeated throughout the course of a daily news cycle.

To be fair, lies and half-truths make for an easy diet as they eliminate the complexity of so many of the issues that confront our country and the world.

That said, a lie is still a lie.

I would rather not have America’s legacy be a poorly conceptualized wall built on a foundation of demagoguery that is the butt of jokes around the world. I want to see America made great again through the relentless pursuit of big ideas; the betterment of our people through relevant, fact-based education; and compassion toward those who are truly in need of help.

As a federal employee, this was an important question: having your analyses, operations, or programmatic ideas, or decisions splayed across the front page of the Post all but ensured that there would be inquiries from Congress as its members fulfilled their oversight roles.

Suffice it to say, we did not always pass the test: inevitably, you would read a story about someone, somewhere making a decision that could only be described as a “head scratcher.” “What were they thinking?” you would ask. “How did they think that would play out in the press?”

Even in the secretive world of the CIA, the press and its role as a check on government power was real: its curiosity and scrutiny was the cost of being the beneficiary (and steward) of the taxpayer’s hard-earned dollar.

While “The Washington Post Test” was sometimes frustratingly used by risk-averse colleagues to squash new and different lines of thinking, I have to begrudgingly admit that it had a huge value to me as an individual: it forced me to think through the business reasons behind an idea and frame them in ways that were not only consistent with the public’s expectations of the CIA, but, ultimately, American values.

Last week, when I read of the White House’s decision to exclude The New York Times, CNN, Politico, and others from a “gaggle” with Press Secretary Sean Spicer, I was fairly astounded.

First, don’t get me wrong: I do not have any great, romantic affection for our modern media.

I often find what passes for reporting to be simplistic and lacking important (but inexplicably easy to find) bits of context. I find the more partisan outlets and their reporters / commentators on both the far left and the far right to be boorish at times. While I understand how the Internet has disrupted the business model that has long underpinned the media, trying to bolster revenue by retreating behind firewalls is a disservice to citizens trying to better understand what is happening, why it is happening, and what current events might mean for them.

Returning to last week: what astounded me about the White House decision was that I have a hard time believing that this administration did not think about how its decision would play out in the broader press or, if they did, that they concluded that the decision would be worth the cost of fueling the perception that they are unwilling to subject their thinking to scrutiny, discussion, and debate.

Again, don’t get me wrong: I have no problem with semi-private conversations between the press and government officials: I assume that sort of arrangement, if not relationship, underpins every story that is festooned with the word “exclusive.”

What bothers me is that this administration seems to lack even a basic understanding of how to manage its relationship with the press, which plays a central role in a modern democracy, and, ultimately, the American people.

Criticism is not “so unfair;” it is part and parcel of holding public office or of being a public figure.

While the administration remains oddly preoccupied with last year’s election, we, as a country, are beyond it: this administration now represents all Americans and We the People have the right to voice dissent, agreement, or apathy with the people in power and to dissect the policies they promote.

So, while I never had to deal with the pressures of a highly-visible public office and I am a long ways off from being a public figure, I knew that as a federal worker that I had to be ready for the possibility of unanticipated press coverage and that the press coverage might not be favorable or even entirely accurate. That said, the press was there to do a job. “The Washington Post Test” was there to help me do mine.

Dennis J. Gleeson is formerly a director of strategy in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Analysis.

We do this because we typically do not have access to unlimited resources: supporting one idea means limiting the amount of money available to support any other idea or the other bills that we must pay like our mortgages, our rents, and our grocery bills.

As a citizen, this example — as ludicrous as it is — represents how I feel when I see the incoming administration try to circumvent the vetting process.

I am familiar with being vetted for a job: for over a decade, I worked at the Central Intelligence Agency as an analyst.

Before I could become a civil servant, I was subjected to an intensive — if not fairly invasive — background check, which included a lie detector test. Over the next twelve years, there were periodic background investigations: using information that you supplied, investigators would interview your coworkers and friends in an attempt to determine if you were worthy of the trust of the American people. After all, as a government official, you would be handling information and be responsible for decisions that involve taxpayer dollars. In the parlance of the CIA, it was incumbent that you, as an employee, be “a good steward of the taxpayer dollar.”

Perfectly reasonable, right? All of us have been (rightfully) outraged when we learn of wasteful spending…and we should be. Our elected officials, the officials they appoint, and the bureaucrats who work for them should be held to a higher standard because of the trust that we have to put in them.

More ominous than wasteful spending, however, is the unwitting or deliberate erosion of our national security: a core element of the background check is to make sure that you are not beholden to a foreign government or vulnerable to manipulation by a foreign government. None of us like being manipulated by others, be it by family, friends, or coworkers. To think that our country is being or might be manipulated should disgust us, even though we tend to be shockingly naïve when it comes to diplomacy. The United States has no friends: frenemies and adversaries abound.

For most of us, we never have to worry about these things. When you decide how and to whom sizable sums of your money is given, or when you handle information on which peace and prosperity (read: lives and jobs) depend, this becomes a real concern. When meeting with foreign officials and businessmen, being above reproach is paramount. I — and the overwhelming majority of my colleagues — went out of my way to avoid even the perception that someone was influencing my thinking by buying my favor.

As someone whose career with the government is in the past, I can honestly tell you that I thought that the time and paperwork associated with ensuring my trustworthiness was burdensome and, given the spying and leaks that occurred during my tenure with the government, far from perfect.

That said, I believe that thorough background checks represents a form of deterrence, if not security: while I might not have liked or respected all my colleagues, my opinions about them never revolved around concerns about their ethics. Between the periodic background checks and complaint-driven investigations by offices of inspectors general across the government, I was confident that my taxpayer dollar — by and large — was being handled responsibly.

We, the people, have been increasingly distrustful of our own government. The seemingly mysterious ways in which the government works do little to foster understanding or appreciation for its work (particularly when viewed through our unique, and uniquely limited, experiences). In light of that uncertainty, we should absolutely expect any person from any party who aspires to senior government posts to be subjected to some scrutiny.

You wouldn’t give me $4 trillion dollars without thinking it through. Why would you give it to anyone else?

Dennis J. Gleeson is formerly a director of strategy in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Analysis.

Amazon’s recent announcement to release a second generation of the Dot prompted a hasty order or a six-pack with no clear sense of what we might or could do. Arguably, this sense of unclear possibility is one of the things that makes Alexa appealing.

That said, as a consumer, Amazon — and the companies that make Echo-compatible devices — could do a couple things to improve my experience as a customer:

Better anticipate likely user questions. One of the first questions I asked Alexa was, “How much is the Mega Millions jackpot worth?” The response: “Sorry, I couldn’t find the answer to your question.” This surprised me because the answer quite knowable. I understand that Amazon is not a search company. That said, I imagine the number of “random” questions a person might ask over the day is finite both in terms of scope and structure.

Worth noting here: Alexa’s speech-to-text transcription is amazing in terms of its accuracy. Going into the app to see every question asked and request made of Alexa is kind of convenient, though given that Alexa also records every user interaction, it begs all sort of questions concerning privacy and, ultimately, security.

From an analytic point of view, you have one or more microphones (that are on most, if not all, of the time) tied to a named user with a fair amount of known information about that user: (some) financial information; most commonly used shipping address(es); the type of computers and mobile devices that I use (and likely the metadata generated by those devices); purchasing behaviors; tastes in television, movies, and perhaps music; and a limited glimpse of the user’s social network (through the Wish List).

With Alexa, you also start to get some sense of the user’s pattern of life: when do lights come on or off? When is the home made more comfortable?

As much as I tend to dream of privacy, this is a case where the best I can hope for is security: barring a really good information architecture where different types of information are stored securely in different places, and the implementation of corporate policies that make snooping into non-anonymized and non-aggregated data a fire-able (if not criminal) offense, a “data breach” takes on a whole new meaning with wide-ranging ramifications for me as a person.

But I digress…

Do a better job integrating with Amazon.com. I am kind of surprised that I even need to write this. The use case was that my brother was looking at razors on Amazon’s website on his laptop. On a lark, I asked Alexa how much the razors cost: I was basically reading off the laptop’s screen. Alexa could not answer the question, which kind of blew my mind. For better or worse, Amazon increasingly defines how we shop; that I cannot shop by simply asking Alexa a question about a product carried on the site is surprising.

In many ways, this is a variant of anticipating a user’s questions: while Amazon is not a search company, its reliance on Bing as a search engine adds (at least) one friction point to my user experience: what if I want to know if my favorite ice cream is on sale at any of the three grocery stores closest to me? Or if another retailer (that I have some degree of brand affinity, if not loyalty, to) has a product I like or use in stock or on sale?

As virtual personal assistants continue to be more of a norm, and as I can use Alexa as a virtual personal assistant, increasing (or decreasing) the friction associated with my behavior as a consumer becomes a matter of competitive advantage. It would be interesting to know to what degree, if any, has Amazon engaged chains and retail stores to teach them how to create great consumer experiences with Alexa. Conversely, it would be interesting to hear what official consumer advocacy groups like the Federal Trade Commission make of these new technologies.

Another digression. Sorry.

Stop with the bridges already. This is not directed at Amazon as much as at the manufacturers that make Alexa-compatible devices.

Stop with the bridges.

Please.

As a consumer, I have a myriad of brands in my home.

Even if I look at just home electronics, there are multiple brands at play.

Assuming that I am representative of the majority of consumers, I do not have the patience — or the outlets and ports — for a proprietary bridge for every brand.

While this might seem like a way to force me to commit to a brand, it doesn’t: it pushes me to find workarounds or it causes me not to spend money on a product that I see as consumer unfriendly (if not deeply flawed), possibly to a degree that I change brands.

There are two smart home standards, though Google is fielding a third. It would be nice to see the manufacturers of peripherals build to existing standards in ways that allowed me as a consumer to use the Echo as the bridge.

In Closing…

As if need be said, I am not an engineer nor do I aspire to be one. I do, however, aspire to a smart(er) home that reduces the friction in my life in a manner that is intuitive, easy-to-use, and, ultimately, secure (or secure enough). Alexa seems to offer me that that experience. As a consumer, I have (reluctantly, begrudgingly) come to grips with the idea of trading privacy for convenience. It would be nice if the manufacturers of the products I use (or might use) in a smart(er) home made a similar (reluctant, begrudging) compromise: rally around standards in a bid to create a positive sum consumer experience that delight — or, at the very least, does not consternate — me as a user, consumer, and, ultimately, person.

My decision was a bittersweet one: for over a decade, I worked as a political analyst, editor, and manager of analysts. It was a privilege and honor to be a part of the CIA. This is not to say that it is, or was, perfect: no organization is. At the end of the day, the CIA is a large federal bureaucracy.

For some time, when I talked to new officers, I joked that they would — over the course of their careers — go from seeing the Agency as the all-powerful Wizard of Oz to eventually realizing that the big green flaming head was an illusion and that they were the ones frantically pulling the levers behind the curtain.

It turns out that I lied to them.

The Agency is simultaneously the big green flaming head and a mass of men and women frantically pulling and pushing levers. Some levers are pulled to remarkable effect while, at the same time, other people are insisting that a working group be formed to formulate an organization-wide policy for lever pulling.

Snarkiness aside, the CIA is not the simple caricature that many hold it to be: like any organization, there is a bell curve of inspired leadership, managerial acumen, and intellectual prowess. In my experience, that curve is shifted further to the right than in many organizations, be they in the public sector or private.

One my frustrations is the recurrent and simplistic presentation of the Agency as a monolithic whole: there are a myriad of factions and coalitions around rank, bureaucratic assignments, and functional responsibilities. Diversity abounds even within those factions and coalitions. It is difficult to appreciate this diversity of perspective from outside of the Agency’s walls.

Many work to make the Agency more efficient and effective within the bounds of its missions and the oaths they swore upon entering the civil service. Like any organization comprised of competing interests, equities, and egos, though, it periodically makes decisions that simply defy logic and are embarrassing, at a professional — if not personal — level, to many of its staff.

Another of my jokes: that the CIA has intelligence failures is nowhere near as surprising as the fact that it has intelligence successes given the political, bureaucratic, and technological challenges its people face every day. Worth noting: those successes are often the result of the sheer force of human will.

For the past five or so years, I had the fortune of working with a small group of incredible analysts and contractors to reimagine how the Agency might align data, information technologies, and analytic methodologies to improve the quality of analysis in the face of unprecedented volumes of data, a growing percentage of which is available to anyone with a connection to the World Wide Web.

While I was not always as successful as I had hoped that we would be, the simple fact of the matter is that I loved — still love — the idea, if not the ideals, of the Directorate of Intelligence (DI; rebranded the Directorate of Analysis). It performs a critical function: thoughtful analysis without the pressure of supporting the political (or ideological) agendas of its parent organization.

For the DI, the ideal was the unapologetic pursuit of high-quality analysis; the Agency’s unofficial motto (“And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.”) became a near-religious belief in “speaking [often unpalatable] truth to power.”

This ideal was not accompanied by angelic choirs: it was a rough-and-tumble, high-stakes game played by people with keen intellects, strong personalities, and sharp elbows. I often remarked that “In the dog-eat-dog world of the DI, every written product was a fire hydrant that people felt compelled to scent mark.” You had to defend a thesis every time you put pen to paper and, despite being colleagues, discussing the nuances of a piece of analysis was not always a collegial endeavor.

As an analyst, however, you accepted these lumps — and a myriad of other indignities — because you were trying to tell clear and compelling stories about the trends and events that were likely to affect US national interests and, ultimately, the safety and well-being of our fathers and mothers and siblings and neighbors and several million other people who you would never know.

Being an intelligence officer is rarely someone’s job: it’s their vocation. Their passion.

So, if being an intelligence officer is a vocation and a passion, why did I resign?

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer.

Part of me points to the fatigue of working in a large, conservative bureaucracy: when I joined the Agency in the aftermath of the attacks of September 2001, there was a clear sense of urgency that superseded bureaucratic posturing and maneuvering. Unsurprisingly, that sense of urgency has diminished with the passage of time. I am certain some would dispute this assertion and I respect their contention to the contrary. The Agency is an innovative place, but — in my experience — the pace of innovation is often determined by its most conservative and risk-averse elements.

If I am to be totally honest, though, part of me simply despairs for my country. Politics — irrespective of the branch of government being discussed — has become a zero-sum game where we, as a country and electorate, lose out to the relentless and thoughtless pursuit of naively simplistic ideological agendas. I never thought that I would think back to the presidency of Bill Clinton and the days of the Republican Revolution as a model of reasonably effective bipartisan politics.

Now, there is no unifying American interest. There is red versus blue, and blue versus red. Any idea that does not fit neatly into an existing ideological narrative — no matter how fanciful or divorced from reality that idea might be — fuels a relentless stream of talking points based on half-truths and presented without context or consideration. Worse, pragmatic (or novel) solutions are all too often the basis for calling into question one’s commitment to a party (using any one of the countless ideological “litmus tests” in play) or one’s loyalty to the country.

This is no way to govern, or be governed, if one is serious about creating, nurturing, or contributing to the conditions for liberty, prosperity, and the pursuit of happiness.

But I digress.

All that having been said, would I do it again? Would I become an analyst, and a manager of analysts, again?

Part of me likes to think — or pretend — that the answer is a forceful “No.” The costs of working for the Central Intelligence Agency are high, particularly in terms of the sacrifices that one is required to make during (and after) employment and in terms of the scorn heaped upon the Agency — and implicitly its workforce — by unthinking critics (n.b., there are plenty of perfectly good reasons to criticize the CIA, but those criticisms often involve insights and investigation that are inconsistent with how information is compiled, packaged, and presented in today’s media).

The reality, however, is that I absolutely would: one simply does not turn down an invitation to Oz knowing the characters and adventures that you might have along the way.

Dennis J. Gleeson, Jr., is formerly a Director of Strategy in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Analysis. He left government service in 2015 to pursue opportunities as a corporate strategist and technology evangelist in the private sector.

The challenges associated with innovation (let alone “disruptive” innovation) are fairly well known through the work of folks like Clayton Christensen: somewhere between imagination, (technological and/or market) awareness, and corporate culture lies a range of opportunities.

In my experience, moving imagination past culture (ref. Drucker’s “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”), particularly the facets of culture focused on risk (which, ironically, often is its own form of hope- or fear-based imagination), can be difficult. The often unspoken question is “To what degree is are we willing to risk wandering into the ‘here be dragons’ part of the map?”

The most effective means of doing so (again, in my experience) comes in the form of prototypes that demonstrate “the art of the possible.”

IDEO’s Brian Mason put the purpose (and value) of prototypes nicely when speaking at Dartmouth University’s Thayer School of Engineering: prototypes inspire people, involve them in the experience (and create opportunities for gaining insight and soliciting feedback), and validate the potential and power of the underlying idea.

In thinking about innovation-oriented prototypes as they relate to “the art of the possible,” I am beginning to settle on three features of such a prototype:

• At the risk of being self-evident, prototypes that demonstrate “the art of the possible” leverage existing capabilities and functionalities in new ways or against different challenges or (unaddressed) opportunities;
• The prototypes are, in Mason’s language, more about inspiration and (maybe) involvement than anything else. As such, they do not need to be “perfect” solutions; rather, if would-be users (especially subject matter experts) can catch a glimpse of the power and potential of “the art of the possible” (even if the prototype is klugey or heavily caveated) then that glimpse should enable additional iterations that improve design and functionality); and
• A demonstration of “the art of the possible” creates a sense of wonder and awe. Yes, wonder and awe have a short half-life; and yes, as Tom Peters notes, a fair amount of the innovation is frustration- or outrage-based. In both cases, though, delight and awe are likely to exist…however briefly before becoming a norm or expectation. I suspect that we all have had enough experiences with unexpected small changes in our daily lives that left us oddly impressed in a “why didn’t someone think of that before?” sort of way. Disruptive? Probably not. Kind of awesome? Yes.

In trying to think of a good example of “the art of the possible,” I found myself circling around to Jeff Jonas’ recent keynote at Strata + Hadoop NYC: his G2 application was not designed to track asteroids…but it can…and is. Is this profitable as a vertical? I am not sure…but it makes for a pretty powerful, intriguing, and compelling story about the technology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWDIkfpbTmQ&feature=youtu.be&t=8m37s

The thing about prototyping the art of the possible is that it is inherently risky. It should be an informed risk based on an understanding of the capabilities that one is playing with, and it shouldn’t be expensive by virtue of the fact that it leverages existing technologies or technologies at hand (think Apollo 13 or internal hackathons). There is a chance that the only return on investment will insight and experience (e.g., “If we had only known…”, “We did not expect…”, “Who would’ve thunk…”) but that the value of insight and experience should not be discounted: they are the fuel for organizational learning and future innovation.

(Coincidentally, as I was wrapping this piece up, David Heinemeier Hansson published “Reconsider.” From my perspective [especially relative to “disruption”], it made for an excellent and thought-provoking read. If you have not read it, I’d suggest that you take a few moments and do so.)

The funny thing is that during the intervening 14-plus years, our language (and, in some cases, our thinking) has not evolved at the same pace as the reality of the data we use, the tools we use to help make sense of it, or the interfaces that we use to understand and explore it.

“Big data” isn’t really “big” anymore: it’s just data.

Increasingly, the data that we think about and use comes in from social applications, financial transactions, and mobile devices and, just as increasingly, everything seems to be — in some way, shape, or form — a social application, a financial transaction, or mobile device. The data we generate often says something about our location; movement; proximity to others; relationships; personal beliefs, preferences, and tastes; patterns of life; and a myriad of other facets that emanate from (and are reflective of) our modern, connected, Web-based lives.

There are legal and ethical issues surrounding this data, sure, but there is no denying that the data exists and that we play a role in generating and using it: this data is absolutely massive in terms of its size and mind-boggling in terms of its diversity.

As analysts, though, we tend not give a second thought to how many tables or columns or rows that we are dealing with: we are focused on questions we are trying to answer or on the problems that we are trying to gain insight into.
So if the scale of the data is essentially a moot point, what matters?

I think that the first thing that matters is the (analytic) user and the technologies they use to do their jobs.

I posit (and am happy to get shouted down for writing) that the most widely used analytic tool in the world is the spreadsheet. Admittedly, I am not sure how frequently anyone uses a spreadsheet as spreadsheet any more: they’re databases, models, planners, forms…

The spreadsheet has evolved into the Swiss Army knife of productivity tools.

When talking with people, though, I tend to use the term “analytic fabric.” By this I mean an interface that allows the user to see all the data in one place and lets them manipulate, envision, and explore that data in ways that the good, smart people who design purpose-built applications might not have been able to imagine.

Black-box solutions are arguably worse.

As an analyst, I need to have confidence in the data I am using: my job depends on it. Transparency is the path to confidence.

So, back to the analytic fabric that is the humble spreadsheet: its intuitive interface and inherent flexibility all but eliminate the barrier of entry for even the most basic users when it comes to playing with and experiencing the data for themselves.

Now contrast that with many of the technologies and tools used by data scientists.

Ideally, everyone in every analytic shop would be a data scientist armed with the statistical and programming skills needed to determine which tool is most likely to solve an analytic problem and how best to work their way through that problem. It is this combination of analytic and imaginative thinking — and the developer skills to support it — that makes their work so incredibly powerful and valuable.

Unfortunately, data scientists — as they are currently conceived, trained, and branded — are a scarce resource…and are likely remain so for some time to come. I might try to work my way through the Khan Academy and Code Academy and try to become more like a data scientist…but the learning curve is justifiably steep (even as those sites and others like them do a laudable job of helping aspirants ascend those learning curves).

One can also talk about machine learning — and deep learning is absolutely fascinating — but it is still, to most organizations, years off from being a routine part of their analytic processes.

Even saying something as simple as “All the analyst has to do is write a couple lines of code” dramatically increases the cost of curiosity and creates a formidable, if not impenetrable, barrier of entry for many analysts.

So, if we can stop thinking about “big data” and just think of it as “data,” I suggest that we stop thinking of information technologies as such and start thinking of them as cognitive aids: cognitive aids that need to support the full range of analytic users, be they quants or quals.

For better or worse, the lingua franca that is understood by both is the analytic fabric commonly known as a spreadsheet.

System performance certainly matters…as does storage capacity and computational power. Given how inexpensive storage and compute power are, however, I tend to assume those things away…unless a system is slow; budgets force data into some odd bureaucratic trade space (“Do you really need all that data? Can we get rid of some of it?”); or it takes so long to arrive at an “answer” that the analyst either has forgotten what sparked the original question or has been deterred from asking a follow-up. If those problems exist, a more fundamental conversation needs to take place.

The user experience, however, cannot be assumed away: regardless of their technical sophistication, analysts have to discern the interesting and the important (and the potentially or conditionally important) in large and diverse data sets. What happens upstream and downstream of the analytic user is important, but if we think of those stacks of technology as contributing to a a larger, seamlessly integrated cognitive aid, then the analytic user becomes the driving force behind all architectural, design, acquisition, and implementation decisions….and most analytic users are not technologists or data scientists.

Dennis J. Gleeson, Jr., is formerly a Director of Strategy in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Analysis. The views and opinions expressed in this piece are his alone and should not be construed as being those of either the Central Intelligence Agency or of the US Government.

In no small part, my desire to see Offices of Whacky Analysis is rooted in the fact that I believe that with the data, computational tools, and analytic algorithms we have (or could have), we should see more analyses that delight, awe, and inspire new and different avenues for research, collaboration, and business opportunity. There would be dead ends and spurious correlations, sure, but, at the end of the day, we almost certainly would expand our collective knowledge and thinking in interesting ways.

To give you a sense of what I am thinking about when I talk about an Office of Whacky Analysis, let’s turn to the deep blue sea and deep learning (n.b., the Office of Whacky Analysis clearly needs to work with marketing professionals to ensure ideas are not packaged like this in the future).

The Nagging Idea

How might we go about trying to understand the language of whales?

I posted a tweet about this some time ago but have yet to find it (n.b., the scroll wheel is something less than an optimal search tool). Regardless, Medium provides me with more space to flesh out my thinking.

This question came back to me when I recently read Lev Grossman’s The Magician’s Land: Grossman crafts an entertaining description of the protagonist’s experiences as a blue whale traveling to Antarctica.

So, again: How might we go about trying to understand the language of whales?

The Data

Unburdened by any substantive expertise, I wonder what we might learn from some simple experiments around a handful of things we know.

We know a bit about whales. There are some outstanding research institutions like the Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab at the University of California, San Diego: they not only help teach us about the sounds that different types of whales make, but also the technologies used to collect those sounds. Other information that probably would be useful include Wheelock College’s Satellite Tracking Program data as well as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Cetacean Health and Life History Program data.

The nice thing is that the data is diverse: it is acoustic, geospatial, and observational. Awesome.

With this data, we can create context using other data. If we know where a pod of whales is (from the satellite data), we can draw on other data to put context around their communications. What time of the year is it? What is the weather like? What can oceanography and bathymetry tell us about the environmental conditions in the areas where the whales are at the time they are communicating? How are local stocks of the sea life they eat? Are there ships in the area, and what types of ships are they (which we might be able to glean from Automatic Identification System data)? What about written descriptions, images, and videos of their observed behavior?

I am all but certain that cetologists and oceanographers are cringing as they read this but, hey, I am a recovering political analyst: please be charitable.

We also know a bit about language. OK, I am using the royal “we” here because for as little as I know about whales, I know less about language (a fact that I attribute to the naïve belief that I would consistently wake up in time for an undergraduate-level introduction to linguistics class that started at eight in the morning); if the cetologists and oceanographers were cringing, linguists likely will be gnashing their teeth.

In any case, in thinking about language, I am going to go old school and suggest that we start with Ferdinand de Saussure’s idea that languages are structural systems that relate particular signs to particular meanings. I recognize that the field of modern linguistics is far more diverse in terms of how it thinks about language, and I would love to see the day when linguists are debating over which theory of linguistics best applies to whale song, but, until then, let’s start with de Sassure.

The next step would be to look at how we think about human language.

There are a finite number of language families; how might the characteristics of those languages be described to serve as filters and, possibly, as alerts if or when we see a parallel? We think of language differently when we use technology to process it (vice try to derive meaning from it or try make sense of it); can we identify “stop words” for whales?

My thinking here is that if we can start making “simple” correlations between species-specific vocalizations, location, and local environmental conditions, then we might be able to develop theories around the possible significance of those correlations and craft follow-on experiments and lines of research to test those theories. Whacky, I know, but again, this is the Office of Whacky Analysis.

The Technology and the Analysis

The one technology I am really interested in this space is deep learning: specifically deep neural networks and deep belief networks. Do I know much about them? No…but there are a number of academics, engineers, and developers who do. Any Office of Whacky Analysis is almost certainly going to be thoroughly (and probably oddly) multidisciplinary.

In any case, we probably can come up with a bunch of interesting (but not necessarily meaningful) correlations; what might happen when we let deep learning algorithms run against the whale song and consider the song in light of the contextual data?

I have no idea.

We might not learn anything, which is not just acceptable but important. One of the problems with most analytic efforts is that we rarely document and reflect on our failures: failures help define the problem space. Our reflections also help us identify new approaches that we might take in the future.

We might become aware of correlations that we previously did not…could not…identify because they were unidentifiable:different (stove-piped) data, analytic methodologies from entirely different fields, etc. These correlations might prompt further research, which would be a success of its own.

We might crack (part of) the language of one or more species. Maybe some whales are complaining about how the oceans are getting warmer. Others might be discussing their opinion of the alcohol content of the urine-tinged waters around resort areas. Still others might simply be singing of the joy of being a whale and diving deep into the waters of the ocean. Maybe some are relating the history and stories of their species.

In any case, a glimpse into the meaning of whale song — no matter how fragmentary it might be — would be mind-blowing…and, hopefully, fuel more and more diverse research: is there a single language per species or do they speak multiple languages? Are there regional dialectic variations of the language? Are there variations in language between pods?

But we might not learn anything at all…and that is OK. We will leave the effort better informed than we walk in, which is a noble outcome for an analytic effort so long as the learning journey was well documented.

Author’s note: I did not do a simple search for “deep learning and whale song” until after I had completed drafting this article. It’ll come as no surprise that the first result was Daniel Nouri’s “Using deep learning to listen for whales.” Once I had recovered from the waves of chagrin and embarrassment that washed over me, I read Nouri’s paper: that he looked at whale song as an “image recognition problem” was really interesting in terms of methodology (I also thought his descriptions of the challenges he encountered in terms of collection methodologies and data quality were great). Further down the results list was ICML’s 2013 Workshop on Machine Learning for Bioacoustics. Note to self: start with a simple search or two before waxing poetic for 1,200-plus words.

Dennis J. Gleeson, Jr., is formerly a Director of Strategy in the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Analysis. The opinions expressed in this piece are his own and should not be construed as being those of either the Central Intelligence Agency or of the US Government.