Insurgent Consciousness

Information Access Inferiority in Libya

(AP / Kevin Frayer) Who are these guys?

    When I read the title of this Washington Post article a week ago, "CIA operatives in Libya to gather intelligence on rebel fighters" I thought there was a typo. Future tense? The lead cleared up any ambiguity: "The Obama administration has sent teams of CIA operatives into Libya in a rush to gather intelligence on the identity, goals and progress of rebel forces opposed to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, according to U.S. officials."

    How could we make strategic decisions like impozing a no-fly zone and launching airstrikes without intelligence assets on the ground? And why didn't we have anybody there in the first place? This is Libya, run by a madman who had orchestrated terrorist attacks against the United States and tried to acquire nuclear weapons. This is the country that has been sending the most fighters per capita to the global jihad. At first, I chose not to comment, realizing that, as a friend who had worked in the intelligence community noted, "always remember that the media has no [Gosh-Darn] idea what they are talking about when it comes to intel/defense." But as more information comes out, it looks like WaPo was spot on.

    As reported today, "Obama administration officials have said recently they are leery of arming the rebel fighters until they have a better grasp of who, exactly, their leaders are, both politically and militarily, and whether they have any connections to radical Islam." It seems a little late, as we're already tied to the rebellion. As we mentioned almost a month ago, back when there was still time to decide if we wanted to throw our lots in with the rebels, there is reason to believe we may be assisting a second Mujahadeen. Another factor that would have been good to know before intervening was how much and what sort of help the rebels needed. The no-fly zone has proven insufficient and looks to be leading to a stalemate, while strikes against Libyan artillery have led to a shift to mortars which turned out to be equally dangerous.

     Time and again, our defence policy proves that our advanced warfighting machines, airplanes and missiles generations ahead of the opposing forces, are insufficient when they operate in Information Access Inferiority.

By Alex Olesker

 

Each Year is the Bloodiest

Mexican Marines at Checkpoint - From AFP

    The official death toll in Mexico's drug war has already reached twelve and a half thousand in 2010, not counting deaths never reported to the government. Just like last year and the year before, this has been called the bloodiest year yet.

    According to the L.A. Times: "Although the administration has contended that the vast majority of those killed are drug gang henchmen, the bloodletting has left many Mexicans convinced that the government has lost control of entire regions, such as the crime-ridden northern border state of Tamaulipas.

    In a recent survey by the Mitofsky polling firm, 59% of respondents said organized-crime groups were winning the war against federal forces. In a separate poll, 4 in 5 respondents said the country was more violent than a year before."

      Such feelings are not remarkable when you consider cities like Guadalupe, where the last remaining police officer after the rest of the force resigned has just gone missing. The deterioration is particularly problematic considering that, according to the Mexican Defense Secretary Gen. Guillermo Galvan, the drug war is expected to last another 7 to 10 years. This comes from a leaked cable that also explains that the military is operating in information access inferiority. They cannot trust law enforcement, which is corrupt and feeds information to the drug cartels, and requests U.S. assistance particularly in the real of intelligence, which Galvan believes to be the key to shortening and winning the conflict. Back in 2008 we noted that the cartels use informants and intelligence to stay ahead of the forces of order, and it seems that, two years later, the information gap has only expanded.

By Alex Olesker

 

Information Access Inferiority in Marjah

    This article on the challenges Marines face in the Afghan town of Marjah describes the state of Information Access Inferiority so well Russ Greene could have written it. Some examples:

    "The only time we see [the Taliban] is when we're in contact" in a gunfight, said Cpl. Chuck Martin, 24, of Middletown, R.I.

    And even catching a glimpse of them during gunbattles can be rare...

    The Taliban never left — they simply went underground, blending in among civilians, taking advantage of the region's terrain of agricultural fields and irrigation trenches to stage daily ambushes of American patrols...

    "It's like fighting ghosts. They're in and they're out. They're quick. They've been doing this a long time ... (and) they're good at it."

    When U.S. forces go out on patrol, children and farmers come out of their homes and watch them closely. Some are just curious. Others use cell phones to tell insurgents what the Americans are doing....

    Firefights often last around 15 or 20 minutes because the Taliban know how long it takes for troops to call in helicopter gunships or mortar barrages, Marines say...

    "We try and get them. They hide their weapons ... then they just come back to the same location, pick up the same rifle, shoot at us again."...

    U.S. forces across Afghanistan say the key to turning the tide in the nine-year war rests largely on civilians turning against the Taliban. In Marjah, though, that has yet to happen on any significant level, despite the steady presence for more than eight months of two Marine battalions and their Afghan counterparts....

   "They don't know who to trust," Long said.

    Neither do the Marines.

    The insurgents have information access superiority in every sense- they know the people, culture, language, and lay of the land better than the Marines. they know more about the Marines than the Marines know about them, and they weaken information flows to the Marines through Human Network Operations. Not only do they infiltrate civilian populations but they intimidate the rest and hurt our networks by weakening trust. If we could do the same, as the French did in Algeria, their networks would crumble faster than any military victory, arrest, or  targeted killing could achieve.

Alex Olesker

 

Biggie Smalls, Counterterrorism Guru

    Christopher George Latore Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls a.k.a. the Notorious BIG, was one of the first to convince me of the value of intelligence gathering in his Information Access Superiority anthem, Warning. Did you think this song was just about shooting haters after your paper? Let's take a closer look at Biggie's narrative.

    It starts with him recieving a page at 5:46 in the morning (crack of dawnin') from Pop from the barbershop, who seems to be Biggie's human intelligence specialist. He states that "he was in the gamblin spot and heard the intricate plot/ some people wanna stick you like fly paper neighbour."

    The scheme begins to unfold. Pop  heard from "them kidz from the hill up in Brownsville /that you rolled dice wit/ smoked the blunts and got nice wit," which I assume is the street version of drinking tea with village elders in the Afghan mountains.  They "school" Pop on some former acquaintances of Biggie who, through their own intelligence networks, discovered that he was "blowin' up like nitro" and now want to "stick [Biggie] for his papers."

    Thanks to the warning, the tables are turned. "There's gonna be alot of slow singin'/ and flower bringin'/ if [his] burglar alarm starts ringin'." As Biggie Smalls reminds us, "Watcha think all the guns was for?" Not only does he have "rottweilers by the door" but he makes sure to "feed them gunpowder/ so they can devour the criminals." See, Biggie is a lot like out military- better armed and better trained than his criminal adversaries, but he needs reliable intelligence so that he "won't slip" and  get "the calico with the black talons loaded in the clip." The song ends with the approach of the would-be burglars and what sounds like harsh street justice.

    Here's how I see this song. The Notorious BIG knows a thing or two about Human Network Operations. He has Pop brilliantly imbedded in a barber shop where he can overhear and report relevant conversations, but his network doesn't stop there. Pop, in turn, has informants at "the hill up in Brownsville" who then, presumably over a dice game, discover the plot to rob Big. If we could penetrate criminal and terrorist networks like that, we would already have found Osama. Now Biggie has acquired Information Access Superiority. He has environmental information access because he knows his crib better than anyone, knows about the curiously malnourished rottweilers, his impressive arsenal, etc. He also has access relative to his enemy as he now knows more about them than they do about him, and, most importantly, he has undiscovered information access. This means he has information that his adversaries do not know he possesses, and  still expect their heist to be a surprise. They are unprepared for such stiff opposition and the artist keenly exploits this information asymmetry: "he had a gun he should've packed it." Well played, Mr. Smalls.

By Alex Olesker

Expanding on Information Access Superiority

 

   In Sid Heal's classic work on tactics, Sound Doctrine: A Tactical Primer, "good intelligence" is properly noted to be the "linchpin for all tactical operations."  Heal agrees that Information Access Superiority is crucial, not only on the strategic level, but also the tactical, as it allows the operator to take the initiative from the enemy or suspect, acting first, forcing the antagonist to react, and imposing the operator's will on the opponent.

    As a quick review, we break InfAc Supperiority into three components:

1. Environmental Information Access – You know more about the human and natural environment than the enemy knows.
2. Access Relative to Enemy– Your know more about the enemy than the enemy knows about you.
3. Undiscovered Information Access– You have access to information that the enemy isn't aware that you have.

Heal, however, focused most on a fourth element present in all three: timing. To quote, "Anything that decreases the effort of obtaining information automatically increases the value." In other words, information that is easier to obtain, the access component of Information Access Superiority, will be available faster. Information that can be used quickly is automatically more valuable than information which is delayed. Knowing something basic, like, for example, the location where hostages are being , is much more valuable than finding out important operational details like the the building layout and position of the captors a few hours later, and of course finding out either piece of intelligence is more valuable today than tomorrow. Given the fluid nature of tactical operations and the importance of maintaining the initiative, the timing of intelligence may be even more critical than the content.

    So how do we decrease the effort of obtaining information? When combating networks like the Mexican drug cartels or terrorist cells, Human Network Operations can be key. When successful, our drones may be able to gather video intelligence on insurgent activity as it's happening, but if you want to know weeks in advance, you need someone at the planning meeting, or at least access to that someone. Cooperative Human Network Operations are also important for ease of access, as it allows, facilitates, and simply speeds up information sharing. Effective HNO means that valuable information from your or affiliated networks does not have to be drudged up and is instead readily available.

By Alex Olesker

Drug Submarines and the Intelligence Cat-and-Mouse Game

    In the most important drug and submarine combination since the Beatles and a prime example of non-state actor super-empowerment, the Ecuadorean police recently found a 100 foot drug smuggling submarine in a jungle shipyard. Unlike the numerous semi-submersibles we've been catching which skim the surface, this vessel does not need to keep an air intake and exhaust pipe above water and thus "could evade radar and heat-seeking technology of drug-interdiction aircraft."

    Nobody is surprised. We've been getting better at catching semi-subs so it was only a matter of time before smugglers took it to the next level. This is indicative of the cat-and-mouse game between detection or enforcement and crime. We see it all the time in technical intelligence, and the forces of order tend to be on the loosing end. In part this is just the nature of TECHINT- you generally need to be a few steps ahead of a system to crack it and listen in- but illicit non-state actors also tend to have information access superiority with regards to detection. In this case, drug cartels know much more about our drug-interdiction technology, which is not classified or particularly dynamic, than we do their capabilities or shifting methods. They know where our bases, borders, and patrols are, but we don't necessarily know what route they will take.

    Consider how this sub was found. It wasn't caught at sea, and in all likelihood it wouldn't be. Instead, it was found on a tip while in construction, likely due to the huge supply chain needed to build such a sophisticated craft. To regularly find these submarines with TECHINT, we would need to upgrade our fleet and increase our patrols, a huge effort, and still it would be an uphill battle. We may already be letting such submarines slip by. Last year, Colombia caught 22 semi-submersibles along its coast, but this year it only found one. I don't think the traffickers just gave up.

-Alex Olesker

Wikileaks: Media Insurgency or Information Vandalism?

Steven Aftergood of Secrecy News has a good post on Wikileaks and how it failed a "due diligence" review.  According to The New Yorker, Wikileaks founder “[Julian] Assange is an international trafficker of sorts. He and his colleagues collect documents and imagery that governments and other institutions regard as confidential and publish them” on the web.  Since it went online three and a half years ago, the site has published an extensive database of secret material.  Wikileaks has published files ranging from military documents and the “Climategate” e-mails, to the contents of Sarah Palin’s private email account.  Any government or company that wanted to remove content from WikiLeaks would have to practically dismantle the Internet itself to do so because the site has numerous, unknown backup locations across the globe.  Some have described it as a modern-day “media insurgency.” Aftergood makes some very good points about the nature of Wikileaks, namely that some of what it does is downright unethical:

WikiLeaks says that it is dedicated to fighting censorship, so a casual observer might assume that it is more or less a conventional liberal enterprise committed to enlightened democratic policies.  But on closer inspection that is not quite the case.  In fact, WikiLeaks must be counted among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law nor does it honor the rights of individuals.

Last year, for example, WikiLeaks published the “secret ritual” of a college women’s sorority called Alpha Sigma Tau.  Now Alpha Sigma Tau (like several other sororities “exposed” by WikiLeaks) is not known to have engaged in any form of misconduct, and WikiLeaks does not allege that it has.  Rather, WikiLeaks chose to publish the group’s confidential ritual just because it could.  This is not whistleblowing and it is not journalism.  It is a kind of information vandalism.

As The New Yorker reports, “Assange must confront the paradox of his creation: the thing that he seems to detest most–power without accountability–is encoded in the site’s DNA, and will only become more pronounced as WikiLeaks evolves into a real institution.”  Indeed.

- Andrew

Quantom of Solace and Information Access Superiority

It's official- in today's world of counterterrorism, assymetric warfare, and international criminal networks, even James Bond needs Information Access Superiority. Yes, Quantum of Solace is an action movie and hence not overly realistic, but then neither is much of American intellegence policy. On a serious note, for a popular film, Quantum of Solace does give a good depiction of Information Access Superiority.

"Mr. White: The first thing you should know about us is that we have people everywhere."

"Us" refers to Quantum, the organization that serves as the antagonist to Daniel Craig's Bond and MI6. While past Bond villains might boast about lazers, dastardly schemes, and superhuman assassins, Mr. White brags about his organization's Human Intelligence. This, operatives embedded deep around the world and not mad science or the Russians, is the source of their super-empowerment. Note that Mr. White does not say that they can tap phone calls everywhere or have satellites pointed everywhere. They have people, and because of that even the mythical James Bond has trouble dealing with them.

"M: Who the hell is this organisation Bond? How can they be everywhere and we know nothing about them!"

This again refers to Quantum, but it might as well refer to al Qaeda some years ago, growing cells in countries where we had no people on the ground (again, the importance of "having people everywhere"). Throughout the film, much like the nations now combating terrorism, Bond tries to get out of his state of Information Access Inferiority. He does not hunt down the villains for revenge but rather information, which he spends the entire film acquiring. Every encounter results in Bond finding something new, making him more and more formidable. Further proof that James Bond, like any good super-spy, greatly values Information Access is his choice to bring Rene Mathis, a retired agent with South American contacts, with him to Bolivia. Mathis is old, initially unwilling, and generally a liability but because he knows the area and has a network there, he is an invaluable part of the mission, a means to at least bring Bond to Information Access Parity.

In short, all signs point to James Bond himself understanding the value of Human Network Operations and Information Access Superiority, so clearly we are on to something. Let's hope that the real American intelligence agencies catch on.

Information Access Superiority in Conventional Warfare

While conventional warfare and tactics are not our focus, it is important to note that the ideas developed and explored here are not limited strictly to one domain. We speak of information access superiority in asymmetric warfare because that is where it is chronically lacking. Yet knowing more about the human and geographic terrain than your enemy, knowing more about the enemy than the enemy knows about you, and having more information than your enemy knows you have are all deciding factors in modern warfare.  This is especially when forces clash that are even remotely matched.

Ivan Oelrich, the Vice President of the Federation of American Scientists' Strategic Security Program, emphasised in a recent talk how weapons today are exponentially more lethal than ever before. During the Mexican American War, Ulysses S. Grant commented that with the muskets still used in the Mexican army two soldiers could stand 50 yards apart and shoot repeatedly with little danger to either party. Infection and disease were greater killers than swords and bullets. All of the factors that make weapons deadly have advanced in orders of magnitude in the last century and a half, including accuracy, rate of fire, damage, and reliability. Deaths in combat today, however, have gone down down relative to troop sizes. Almost paradoxically, with deadlier weapons came less deadly warfare.

The reason, as Oerlrich pointed out, is less defensive technology like body armor than it is defensive tactics that are aimed at mitigating the effectiveness of modern weaponry. Killing an enemy is now remarkably easy, often as simple as pressing a button to drop a smart bomb or covering an area with machine gun fire or mortar rounds. Finding, exposing, and targeting  the enemy, however, is not. Without a very substantial technical and numerical advantage, tactics and training decide the outcome.

The difference in kill ratios between US soldiers and their opponents in a modern, conventional battle far outstrips differences in technology, weaponry, and firepower. While some of the skill-based and tactical advantages come from better accuracy, rate of fire, and maneuvering, most come down to information. If a soldier finds himself in an enemy's line of fire for long, he will get shot because even the most backwards modern soldiers can fire dozens of rounds a minute. Twenty might miss, but only one has to hit.

The same applies for minefields, air strikes, and artillery. All are more than lethal enough when used correctly, whether high tech and brand new or a generation old. The key is superior information, both acquiring it through knowledge of the terrain, the enemy tactics, capabilities and movement, and not giving information away through sloppy movement, poor camouflaging, and predictable tactics. Even with the best rifle a sniper can't shoot what he can't find.

After drawing a contrast with the vast infantry columns meeting on an open field in the warfare of centuries past, Oerlich asked "What do you see thirty seconds before a modern battle? Nothing." If one force saw the other clearly, had pinpointed their positions, and had enough time and information to target their enemy without giving themselves away, the battle would be superfluous.

Whether facing insurgents in urban asymmetric warfare, tracking drug cartels through the rain forest, or on a conventional battle field, there is no escaping information access superiority.

Information Access Superiority

Terrorists are easy to kill, but hard to find. 

Imagine that you are an American soldier in Iraq in 2005.  You spend much of your time patrolling the streets on foot and in jeeps.  Your military uniform gives your identity away immediately.  You most likely don't speak the local Arabic dialect, so you don't know what anyone around you is saying.  You can only communicate through hand signals or an interpreter, if you have one. The Iraqis know you are coming from a mile away. 

You can't tell who the enemy is and who is a civilian.  You most likely don't know where the insurgents are, or when they're going to attack you.  Meanwhile, the insurgents have learned your rules of engagement and tactics, and have come to anticipate your movements.  They can ambush you at will, but often they would rather just mine the road you ride on every day with I.E.D.'s. 

One day you discover that someone has placed a $10,000 reward on your head.  Your enemies, who are faceless to you, have been photographing your unit and have begun to piece together your organizational structure. 

You are in a state of information access inferiority.  If you could just face these insurgents on the battlefield, you could overwhelm them with your superior firepower and better training.  But most of the time you're getting sucker-punched by weaker forces who instead of having conventional military superiority, have the advantage in the amount and quality of information that they can access. 

The side with information access superiority has the advantage in unconventional warfare.  Information access superiority is a necessary prerequisite for successful special operations, a category that, in our opinion, includes terrorist attacks.

Information access superiority has three components:

1. Environmental Information Access – You know more about the human and natural environment than the enemy knows.
2. Access Relative to Enemy– Your know more about the enemy than the enemy knows about you.
3. Undiscovered Information Access– You have access to information that the enemy isn't aware that you have.

Information access inferiority is the biggest obstacle facing the United States in the 21st century security environment.  It is the reason that the U.S. has been unable to destroy the Al Qaeda and Taliban safehaven in Pakistan.  This safehaven is the main reason that the U.S. is still fighting struggling with the insurgency in Afghanistan. 

The U.S. does not lack the material ability to blow up targets in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan; it has predator drones that can destroy any target in the region, as it has repeatedly demonstrated.  The U.S. lacks the information access necessary to destroy Al Qaeda central, not the military capacity.

In many areas like the FATA, where terrorists have avoided our attempts at signal intelligence, information access superiority is only possible through human sources.  In this field, the United States is especially weak.  We will discuss the development of human sources at length in a later post.