The Air Force is looking to harness advances in bio-science so they can “degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive abilities.” It’s all part of a $49 million dollar bio-research effort unveiled last month by the Air Force Research Lab’s “Human Effectiveness Directorate,” and it’s the latest in a series of out-there military ideas to mess with adversaries’ heads.

For years, armed forces and intelligence community researchers have toyed with ways of manipulating minds. During the Cold War, the CIA and the military allegedly plied the unwitting with acid, weed, and dozens of psychoactive drugs, in a series of zany (and sometimes dangerous) mind-control experiments. In the 1970s and 80s, a small group of special operations soldiers at Ft. Bragg supposedly tried to teach themselves how to kill with psychic power – the basis for the upcoming movie The Men Who Stare at Goats. In 1994, one Air Force researcher proposed spraying enemies with “strong aphrodisiacs [which] caused homosexual behavior.” Last year, the National Research Council and Defense Intelligence Agency pushed for pharmaceutical-based tactics to weaken enemy forces.

This new Air Force project looks to do just that – and boost the cognitive abilities of U.S. troops at the same time. One component of the research effort, called Biobehavioral Performance, is looking for military specimens who are already resistant to physical or mental stressors. By analyzing the biochemical brain pathways of troops who are cool under pressure, the Air Force wants an “external stimulant” that can act as a synthetic version of optimal cognitive stress response and keep airmen operating at top level.

Resisting stress is good, but destroying your enemy with stress is even better. “Conversely, the chemical pathway area could include methods to degrade enemy performance and artificially overwhelm enemy cognitive capabilities,” the Air Force call for proposals notes. No further details are given. Researchers will just have to be creative, if they want to look for ways to turn military foes insane.
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In unveiling an unclassified version of the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), Blair asserts he is seeking to break down “this old distinction between military and nonmilitary intelligence,” stating that the “traditional fault line” separating secretive military programs from overall intelligence activities “is no longer relevant.”

As if to emphasize the sweeping nature of Blair’s remarks, Federal Computer Week reported September 17 that “some non-federal officials with the necessary clearances who work at intelligence fusion centers around the country will soon have limited access to classified terrorism-related information that resides in the Defense Department’s classified network.” According to the publication:

Under the program, authorized state, local or tribal officials will be able to access pre-approved data on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. However, they won’t have the ability to upload data or edit existing content, officials said. They also will not have access to all classified information, only the information that federal officials make available to them.

The non-federal officials will get access via the Homeland Security department’s secret-level Homeland Security Data Network. That network is currently deployed at 27 of the more than 70 fusion centers located around the country, according to DHS. Officials from different levels of government share homeland security-related information through the fusion centers. (Ben Bain, “DOD opens some classified information to non-federal officials,” Federal Computer Week, September 17, 2009)

Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the federal government has encouraged the explosive growth of fusion centers. As envisaged by securocrats, these hybrid institutions have expanded information collection and sharing practices from a wide variety of sources, including commercial databases, among state and local law enforcement agencies, the private sector and federal security agencies, including military intelligence.

But early on, fusion centers like the notorious “red squads” of the 1960s and ’70s, morphed into national security shopping malls where officials monitor not only alleged terrorists but also left-wing and environmental activists deemed threats to the existing corporate order.

It is currently unknown how many military intelligence analysts are stationed at fusion centers, what their roles are and whether or not they are engaged in domestic surveillance. If past practices are an indication of where current moves by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) will lead, in breaking down the “traditional fault line” that prohibits the military from engaging in civilian policing, then another troubling step along the dark road of militarizing American society will have been taken. U.S. Northern Command: Feeding the Domestic Surveillance Beast

Since its 2002 stand-up, U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) and associated military intelligence outfits such as the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the now-defunct Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA) have participated in widespread surveillance of antiwar and other activist groups, tapping into Pentagon and commercial databases in a quixotic search for “suspicious patterns.”

As they currently exist, fusion centers are largely unaccountable entities that function without proper oversight and have been involved in egregious civil rights violations such as the compilation of national security dossiers that have landed activists on various terrorist watch-lists.

Antifascist Calling reported last year on the strange case of Marine Gunnery Sgt. Gary Maziarz and Col. Larry Richards, Marine reservists stationed at Camp Pendleton in San Diego. Maziarz, Richards, and a group of fellow Marines, including the cofounder of the Los Angeles County Terrorist Early Warning Center (LACTEW), stole secret files from the Strategic Technical Operations Center (STOC).

When they worked at STOC, the private spy ring absconded with hundreds of classified files, including those marked “Top Secret, Special Compartmentalized Information,” the highest U.S. Government classification. The files included surveillance dossiers on the Muslim community and antiwar activists in Southern California.

According to the San Diego Union-Tribune which broke the story in 2007, before being run to ground Maziarz, Richards and reserve Navy Commander Lauren Martin, a civilian intelligence contractor at USNORTHCOM, acquired information illegally obtained from the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet). This is the same classified system which fusion centers will have access to under the DoD’s new proposal.

Sound familiar? Call it standard operating procedure in post-constitutional America where high-level officials and senior officers walk away scott-free while grunts bear the burden, and do hard time, for the crimes of their superiors.

Fusion Centers and Military Intelligence: Best Friends Forever!

Another case which is emblematic of the close cooperation among fusion centers and military intelligence is the case of John J. Towery, a Ft. Lewis, Washington civilian contractor who worked for the Army’s Fort Lewis Force Protection Unit.

In July, The Olympian and Democracy Now! broke the story of how Towery had infiltrated and spied on the Olympia Port Militarization Resistance (OlyPMR), an antiwar group, and shared this information with police.

Since 2006, the group has staged protests at Washington ports and has sought to block military cargo from being shipped to Iraq. According to The Olympian:

OlyPMR member Brendan Maslauskas Dunn said in an interview Monday that he received a copy of the e-mail from the city of Olympia in response to a public records request asking for any information the city had about “anarchists, anarchy, anarchism, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), or Industrial Workers of the World.” (Jeremy Pawloski, “Fort Lewis investigates claims employee infiltrated Olympia peace group,” The Olympian, July 27, 2009)

What Dunn discovered was highly disturbing to say the least. Towery, who posed as an anarchist under the name “John Jacob,” had infiltrated OlyPMR and was one of several listserv administrators that had control over the group’s electronic communications.

The civilian intelligence agent admitted to Dunn that he had spied on the group but claimed that no one paid him and that he didn’t report to the military; a statement that turned out to be false.

Joseph Piek, a Fort Lewis spokesperson confirmed to The Olympian that Towery was a contract employee and that the infiltrator “performs sensitive work within the installation law enforcement community,” but “it would not be appropriate for him to discuss his duties with the media.”

In September, The Olympian obtained thousands of pages of emails from the City of Olympia in response to that publication’s public-records requests. The newspaper revealed that the Washington Joint Analytical Center (WJAC), a fusion center, had copied messages to Towery on the activities of OlyPMR in the run-up to the group’s November 2007 port protests. According to the paper,

The WJAC is a clearinghouse of sorts of anti-terrorism information and sensitive intelligence that is gathered and disseminated to law enforcement agencies across the state. The WJAC receives money from the federal government.

The substance of nearly all of the WJAC’s e-mails to Olympia police officials had been blacked out in the copies provided to The Olympian. (Jeremy Pawloski, “Army e-mail sent to police and accused spy,” The Olympian, September 12, 2009)

Also in July, the whistleblowing web site Wikileaks published a 1525 page file on WJAC’s activities.

Housed at the Seattle Field Office of the FBI, one document described WJAC as an agency that “builds on existing intelligence efforts by local, regional, and federal agencies by organizing and disseminating threat information and other intelligence efforts to law enforcement agencies, first responders, and key decision makers throughout the state.”

Fusion centers are also lucrative cash cows for enterprising security grifters. Wikileaks investigations editor Julian Assange described the revolving-door that exists among Pentagon spy agencies and the private security firms who reap millions by placing interrogators and analysts inside outfits such as WJAC. Assange wrote,

There has been extensive political debate in the United States on how safe it would be to move Guantánamo’s detainees to US soil–but what about their interrogators?

One intelligence officer, Kia Grapham, is hawked by her contracting company to the Washington State Patrol. Grapham’s confidential resume boasts of assisting in over 100 interrogations of “high value human intelligence targets” at Guantánamo. She goes on, saying how she is trained and certified to employ Restricted Interrogation Technique: Separation as specified by FM 2-22.3 Appendix M.

Others, like, Neoma Syke, managed to repeatedly flip between the military and contractor intelligence work–without even leaving the building.

The file details the placement of six intelligence contractors inside the Washington Joint Analytical Center (WAJAC) on behalf of the Washington State Patrol at a cost of around $110,000 per year each.

Such intelligence “fusion” centers, which combine the military, the FBI, state police, and others, have been internally promoted by the US Army as means to avoid restrictions preventing the military from spying on the domestic population. (Julian Assange, “The spy who billed me twice,” Wikileaks, July 29, 2009)

The Wikileaks documents provide startling details on how firms such as Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), The Sytex Group and Operational Applications Inc. routinely place operatives within military intelligence and civilian fusion centers at a premium price.

Assange wonders whether these job placements are not simply evidence of corruption but rather, are “designed to evade a raft of hard won oversight laws which apply to the military and the police but not to contractors? Is it to keep selected personnel out of the Inspector General’s eye?” The available evidence strongly suggests that it is.

As the American Civil Liberties Union documented in their 2007 and 2008 reports on fusion center abuses, one motivation is precisely to subvert oversight laws which do not apply to private mercenary contractors.

The civil liberties’ watchdog characterized the rapid expansion of fusion centers as a threat to our constitutional rights and cited specific areas of concern: “their ambiguous lines of authority, the troubling role of private corporations, the participation of the military, the use of data mining and their excessive secrecy.”

And speaking of private security contractors outsourced to a gaggle on intelligence agencies, investigative journalist Tim Shorrock revealed in his essential book Spies For Hire, that since 9/11 “the Central Intelligence Agency has been spending 50 to 60 percent of its budget on for-profit contractors, or about $2.5 billion a year, and its number of contract employees now exceeds the agency’s full-time workforce of 17,500.”

Indeed, Shorrock learned that “no less than 70 percent of the nation’s intelligence budget was being spent on contracts.” However, the sharp spike in intelligence outsourcing to well-heeled security corporations comes with very little in the way of effective oversight.

The House Intelligence Committee reported in 2007 that the Bush, and now, the Obama administrations have failed to develop a “clear definition of what functions are ‘inherently governmental’;” meaning in practice, that much in the way of systematic abuses can be concealed behind veils of “proprietary commercial information.”

As we have seen when the Abu Ghraib torture scandal broke in 2004, and The New York Times belatedly blew the whistle on widespread illegal surveillance of the private electronic communications of Americans in 2005, cosy government relationships with security contractors, including those embedded within secretive fusion centers, will continue to serve as a “safe harbor” for concealing and facilitating state crimes against the American people.
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US military Hi-Tech bureau DARPA has outdone itself this time, issuing a request for “intelligent” electronic components and chemicals which can “self-organise” themselves to form complex items such as routers, fuel cells, biofuel factories or medical drugs.” Indeed, reading between the lines it appears as though the our American killboffins are seeking nothing less than the creation of something that approaches magic and artificial intelligent lifeforms.

The Pentagon’s  wacky tech chiefs’ name for this initiative is “Physical Intelligence”, and full details were released last week. According to DARPA, humanity at present has only a dim grasp of what intelligence actually is and how it came into existence:

For the past 50 years, the dominant paradigm for intelligence supposes that the brain is the seat of intelligence and is functionally equivalent to a computer capable of executing any algorithm… the goal of true machine intelligence remains distant… our understanding of the evolution of life is rooted primarily in observations of the natural world… With some exceptions, current approaches to understanding intelligence, conciousness and evolution are disconnected and often lack grounding in fundamental physical principles.
The idea behind “physical intelligence” seems to be to achieve a much better, hard-science understanding of what intelligence and life actually is and how it evolves as a matter of physics. And now DARPA, being who they are, intend to harness this almost God like intellectual toolkit as their own.

Although the idea that life is “a struggle for entropy” (Boltzmann) has been supposed for more than a century… applications to engineered systems are scarce. The Physical Intelligence program aspires to change this situation… The objective is to demonstrate the first human-engineered open thermodynamic systems that spontaneously evolve non-trivial “intelligent” behavior…
Specifically, bidders for DARPA Physical Intelligence cash will be invited to design one of two things: electronic gizmos or “basic units that might be described variously as ‘gates’ or ‘cells’ or ‘neurons’”, or alternatively “an open chemical environment”.

The electronic “units”, which may initially exist only in a simulated environment “comparable in complexity to simple video games (eg, Tetris)” are expected to “self organise” and “evolve” into a complex configuration, presumably one demonstrating some non-trivial aspects of intelligence. As a starter for ten, the super Tetris-block electronic neurocells should be able to spontaneously form into “a continuously self-organizing router for internet traffic or similarly complex application”. One should then be able to “extract the algorithm, and map it to a conventional computer” – effectively turning that computer into an intelligent lifeform.

As for the vat full of smart-chemicals, they’re expected – without human intervention – to be able to form themselves into drugs, organic fuel cells, solar powered biofuel supercrops or “a similarly complex system”.

It won’t have escaped alert Reg readers that the Physical Intelligence DARPA wonder-ware will be quite capable of becoming intelligent life – potentially much more capable life than humanity itself. The AI algorithms which evolve from the spontaneously self-organising Tetris blocks might far outclass the human noggin: the fuel-celled, solar-powered, self-medicating lifeforms which emerged from the smartware vats would be immeasurably superior to us physically.

Full details are available here (https://www.fbo.gov/utils/view?id=eae3b7e276226b092f17fe69359f31d4)
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A new report from the National Academy of Sciences’ National Research Council (NRC) argues that the Pentagon should harvest the fruits of neuro scientific research in order to enhance the “war fighting” capabilities of U.S. soldiers while diminishing those of enemy personnel.

The 151-page report issued by a 16-member blue ribbon commission, “Cognitive Neuroscience Research and National Security,” was quietly announced in an August 13 National Academy of Sciences Press Release.

Commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), the Pentagon spy shop, the study asserts that the U.S. intelligence “community” must do a better job following cutting-edge research in neuroscience or as is more likely, steering it along paths useful to the Defense Department. According to the NRC,

A 2005 National Research Council report described a methodology for gauging the implications of new technologies and assessing whether they pose a threat to national security. In this new report, the committee applied the methodology to the neuroscience field and identified several research areas that could be of interest to the intelligence community: neurophysiological advances in detecting and measuring indicators of psychological states and intentions of individuals, the development of drugs or technologies that can alter human physical or cognitive abilities, advances in real-time brain imaging, and breakthroughs in high-performance computing and neuronal modeling that could allow researchers to develop systems which mimic functions of the human brain, particularly the ability to organize disparate forms of data. (“National Security Intelligence Organizations should Monitor Advances in Cognitive Neuroscience Research,” National Academy of Sciences, Press Release, August 13, 2008)

Unlocking the secrets of the brain is projected as the next growth industry for the military, academia and corporate grifters hoping to land huge Pentagon contracts. As defense analyst Noah Shachtman reported in Wired, the “Army has given a team of University of California researchers a $4 million grant to study the foundations of “synthetic telepathy.” Unlike “remote viewing” research funded by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency between 1972 and 1996, variously known as “Grill Flame,” “Sun Streak” and finally, “Star Gate” before the plug was pulled, the Army-U.C. Irvine joint venture are exploring thought transmission via a brain-computer mediated interface.

Recently New Scientist reported on a series of bizarre experiments at the University of Reading in the UK. Researchers there have connected 300,000 disembodied rat neurons suspended in “a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics” to 80 electrodes at the base of the growth medium. As journalist Paul Marks informs us, the “rat neurons have made–and continue to make–connections with each other.” The voltages sparked by the firing cells are displayed on a computer screen.

Welcome to the “brave new world” of neural prosthetics and the militarists who are exploiting science and technology for new weapons applications.
Declaring that emerging technologies such as brain imaging and cognitive and physical enhancers are “desired by the public,” NRC avers “such forces act as strong market incentives for development.” But as Rick Weiss cautions on the Science Progress blog,

But even more interesting to me is the report’s discussion of the emerging market in brain-targeted, performance-degrading techniques. Some experiments, it turns out, suggest that magnetic beams can be used to induce seizures in people, a tempting addition to the military’s armamentarium. More conventionally, as scientists discover new chemicals that can blur thinking or undermine an enemy’s willpower, and as engineers design aerosolized delivery systems that can deliver these chemicals directly to the lungs (and from there, the brains) of large groups of people, the prospect of influencing the behavior of entire enemy regiments becomes real. (“Minding Mental Minefields,” Science Progress, August 15, 2008)

The use of so-called calmative agents as non-lethal weapons are already under development. As Antifascist Calling reported last month in “The Calmative Before the Storm,” the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) are carrying out experiments into what it euphemistically calls “Human Effects Research” and developing an “Advanced Total Body Model for predicting the effects of non-lethal impacts.”

Apparently the DIA has taken this a step further and will now explore the possibility of creating aerosolized pharmacological agents that can disrupt and perhaps influence, the mental functioning of targeted populations abroad, enemy soldiers or dissenting citizens here in the United States.

Neil Davison, a researcher with the Bradford Disarmament Research Centre (BDRC) at Bradford University in the UK, wrote an important 2007 study, “‘Off the Rocker’ and ‘On the Floor’: The Continued Development of Biochemical Incapacitating Weapons.” Davison examined the historical differentiation made by weaponeers between “off the rocker” agents such as LSD, PCP and psilocybin in their allegedly weaponized forms versus “on the floor” agents such as sedatives, opiate analgesics and anesthetic chemicals.

As the NRC would have it, academics in thrall to corporate funding and state agencies staffed by war criminals now expect us to believe that “ethics” will guide those exploring pharmacological methods to obtain more insidious means to subjugate humanity.

Weiss reports that the NRC notes in its report, the motivation, or lack thereof, to fight, is of great concern to Pentagon bureaucrats and policy makers. “So one question,” for military-corporate-academic funded research “would be, ‘How can we disrupt the enemy’s motivation to fight?’ Other questions raised by controlling the mind: ‘How can we make people trust us more?’ ‘What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain?’ ‘Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?’…As cognitive neuroscience and related technologies become more pervasive, using technology for nefarious purposes becomes easier.”

But as is usual with all such screeds, the psychoanalytic theory of projection comes in handy when deciphering the monstrous intent of Pentagon weaponeers. It is all-too-clear whether we are discussing nuclear, biological, chemical or contemporaneously, cognitive weapons that Western proponents of preemptive war, always couch their acts of violent imperialist aggression in purely defensive terms.

In this light, Freud and his followers have defined projection as a form of defense in which unwanted feelings are displaced onto another person, and where aggressive impulses then appear as a threat from the external world. In the case of corporate defense and security grifters, their militarist pit bulls and the academic sycophants who fuel their deranged “cognitive warfare” fantasies, the other–a nation, a dispossessed class or a bogeyman such as “international terrorism”–are always the external harbingers of apocalyptic death and destruction, when in reality such fantasies are wholly reflective of their own desire to aggressively dominate and plunder other nations.

Therefore, the NRC maintains, and note the ideologically-skewed reference to the eternal verities of “the market,” the Holy Grail of capitalism in its hyperimperialist phase:

The fear that this approach to fighting war might be developed will be justification for developing countermeasures to possible cognitive weapons. This escalation might lead to innovations that could cause this market area to expand rapidly. Tests would need to be developed to determine if a soldier had been harmed by a cognitive weapon. And there would be a need for a prophylactic of some sort. (NRC, op. cit.)

Who, pray tell, is driving this “escalation” and counting on academia to produce “innovations” in “this market area”? One might also quite reasonably inquire: Who profits?

As Christopher Green, the chairman of the NRC investigative panel championing neuroweapons research avers in a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists,

Big Pharma is global. Drug discovery research is both ponderous (not as much as arms control, however) and increasingly beyond the control of governments and the public. The development of cognitive enhancers and anti-aging aides during the next two decades (the time needed for drug discovery to become successful) will be…ethically worrisome. But it will be beyond opprobrium. Drugs will be developed and marketed, and not necessarily under the auspices of traditional Western controls and good laboratory practices. (“The potential impact of neuroscience research is greater than previously thought,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9 July 2008) [emphasis added]

While Green claims he is opposed to developing drugs “with safe and efficacious properties for military use,” the NRC study, after all, was funded by the Defense Intelligence Agency, hardly a “neutral party” when it comes to “enhanced interrogation techniques” and other horrors of this horrible system!

One must also dissect the linguistic formulations and assumptions deployed by those advocating this line of research. By referring to neuroweapons production as a “market area,” those contemplating unleashing devilish pharmacological forms of warfare on unsuspecting populations behave, in you’ll pardon the pun, as if they were brainstorming the release of a new video game or suite of luxury condominiums in an American city “ethnically cleansed” of its urban poor!

Green and his acolytes claim that “battlefield commanders of all nations hold sacrosanct the right to determine the applications” of weapon deployments that may cause “collateral damage” to civilian noncombatants. Therefore, Green argues that “if governments or scientists were to try to develop a system to pre-screen neuroscientific cognitive manipulators, which would be HIPAA approved and tested, and robust in its core science, success would be as likely as it was with mines and cluster-bombs–meaning not likely.” Translation: full-speed ahead!

While the NRC allege that their approach to monitoring neuroweapons research is “ethical,” the committee ponders whether “the concept of torture could also be altered by products in this market. It is possible that someday there could be a technique developed to extract information from a prisoner that does not have any lasting side effects.”
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With the entire Internet and thousands of databases for a brain, the device will be able to respond almost instantaneously to complex questions posed by intelligence analysts. As more and more data is collected—through phone calls, credit card receipts, social networks like Facebook and MySpace, GPS tracks, cell phone geolocation, Internet searches, Amazon book purchases, even E-Z Pass toll records—it may one day be possible to know not just where people are and what they are doing, but what and how they think.

The system is so potentially intrusive that at least one researcher has quit, citing concerns over the dangers in placing such a powerful weapon in the hands of a top-secret agency with little accountability.

Getting Aquaint

Known as Aquaint, which stands for “Advanced QUestion Answering for INTelligence,” the project was run for many years by John Prange, an NSA scientist at the Advanced Research and Development Activity. Headquartered in Room 12A69 in the NSA’s Research and Engineering Building at 1 National Business Park, ARDA was set up by the agency to serve as a sort of intelligence community DARPA, the place where former Reagan national security advisor John Poindexter’s infamous Total Information Awareness project was born. [Editor's note: TIA was a short-lived project founded in 2002 to apply information technology to counter terrorist and other threats to national security.] Later named the Disruptive Technology Office, ARDA has now morphed into the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA).

A sort of national laboratory for eavesdropping and other spycraft, IARPA will move into its new 120,000-square-foot home in 2009. The building will be part of the new M Square Research Park in College Park, Maryland. A mammoth two million-square-foot, 128-acre complex, it is operated in collaboration with the University of Maryland. “Their budget is classified, but I understand it’s very well funded,” said Brian Darmody, the University of Maryland’s assistant vice president of research and economic development, referring to IARPA. “They’ll be in their own building here, and they’re going to grow. Their mission is expanding.”

If IARPA is the spy world’s DARPA, Aquaint may be the reincarnation of Poindexter’s TIA. After a briefing by NSA Director Michael Hayden, Vice President Dick Cheney, and CIA Director George Tenet of some of the NSA’s data mining programs in July 2003, Senator Jay Rockefeller IV, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote a concerned letter to Cheney. “As I reflected on the meeting today,” he said, “John Poindexter’s TIA project sprung to mind, exacerbating my concern regarding the direction the administration is moving with regard to security, technology, and surveillance.”

Building “Hal”

The original goal of Aquaint, which dates back to the 1990s, was simply to develop a sophisticated method of picking the right needles out of a vast haystack of information and coming up with the answer to a question. As with TIA, many universities were invited to contribute brainpower to the project. But in the aftermath of the attacks on 9/11, with the creation of the NSA’s secret warrantless eavesdropping program and the buildup of massive databases, the project began taking on a more urgent tone.

In a 2004 pilot project, a mass of data was gathered from news stories taken from the New York Times, the AP news wire, and the English portion of the Chinese Xinhua news wire covering 1998 to 2000. Then, 13 U.S. military intelligence analysts searched the data and came up with a number of scenarios based on the material. Finally, using those scenarios, an NSA analyst developed 50 topics, and in each of those topics created a series of questions for Aquaint’s computerized brain to answer. “Will the Japanese use force to defend the Senkakus?” was one. “What types of disputes or conflict between the PLA [People's Liberation Army] and Hong Kong residents have been reported?” was another. And “Who were the participants in this spy ring, and how are they related to each other?” was a third. Since then, the NSA has attempted to build both on the complexity of the system—more essay-like answers rather than yes or no—and on attacking greater volumes of data.

“The technology behaves like a robot, understanding and answering complex questions,” said a former Aquaint researcher. “Think of 2001: A Space Odyssey and the most memorable character, HAL 9000, having a conversation with David. We are essentially building this system. We are building HAL.” A naturalized U.S. citizen who received her Ph.D. from Columbia, the researcher worked on the program for several years but eventually left due to moral concerns. “The system can answer the question, ‘What does X think about Y?’” she said. “Working for the government is great, but I don’t like looking into other people’s secrets. I am interested in helping people and helping physicians and patients for the quality of people’s lives.” The researcher now focuses on developing similar search techniques for the medical community.

Thought policeman

A supersmart search engine, capable of answering complex questions such as “What were the major issues in the last 10 presidential elections?” would be very useful for the public. But that same capability in the hands of an agency like the NSA—absolutely secret, often above the law, resistant to oversight, and with access to petabytes of private information about Americans—could be a privacy and civil liberties nightmare. “We must not forget that the ultimate goal is to transfer research results into operational use,” said Aquaint project leader John Prange, in charge of information exploitation for IARPA.

Once up and running, the database of old newspapers could quickly be expanded to include an inland sea of personal information scooped up by the agency’s warrantless data suction hoses. Unregulated, they could ask it to determine which Americans might likely pose a security risk—or have sympathies toward a particular cause, such as the antiwar movement, as was done during the 1960s and 1970s. The Aquaint robospy might then base its decision on the type of books a person purchased online, or chat room talk, or websites visited—or a similar combination of data. Such a system would have an enormous chilling effect on everyone’s everyday activities—what will the Aquaint computer think if I buy this book, or go to that website, or make this comment? Will I be suspected of being a terrorist or a spy or a subversive?

Controlling brain waves

Collecting information, however, has always been far less of a problem for the NSA than understanding it, and that means knowing the language. To expand its linguistic capabilities, the agency established another new organization, the Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL), and housed it in a building near IARPA at the M Square Research Park. But far from simply learning the meaning of foreign words, CASL, like Aquaint, attempts to find ways to get into someone’s mind and understand what he or she is thinking.

One area of study is to attempt to determine if people are lying simply by watching their behavior and listening to them speak. According to one CASL document, “Many deception cues are difficult to identify, particularly when they are subtle, such as changes in verb tense or extremely brief facial expressions. CASL researchers are studying these cues in detail with advanced measurement and statistical analysis techniques in order to recommend ways to identify deceptive cue combinations.”

Another area of focus explores the “growing need to work with foreign text that is incomplete,” such as partly deciphered messages or a corrupted hard drive or the intercept of only one side of a conversation. The center is thus attempting to find ways to prod the agency’s cipher-brains to fill in the missing blanks. “In response,” says the report, “CASL’s cognitive neuroscience team has been studying the cognitive basis of working memory’s capacity for filling in incomplete areas of text. They have made significant headway in this research by using a powerful high-density electroencephalogram (EEG) machine acquired in 2006.” The effort is apparently directed at discovering what parts of the brain are used when very good cryptanalysts are able to guess correctly the missing words and phrases in a message.

Like something out of a B-grade sci-fi movie, CASL is even trying to turn dull minds into creative geniuses by training employees to control their own brain waves: “The cognitive neuroscience team has also been researching divergent thinking: creative, innovative and flexible thinking valuable for language work. They are exploring ways to improve divergent thinking using the EEG and neurobiological feedback. A change in brain-wave activity is believed to be critical for generating creative ideas, so the team trains its subjects to change their brain-wave activity.”
__________
James Bamford is the author of three books on the National Security Agency, including the 2008 The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, from which this article was adapted with kind permission of Doubleday. Bamford coproduced, with Scott Willis, NOVA’s “The Spy Factory,” which was based on this book.
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The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security.

The committee also wants to censor reporting of police operations that are deemed to have implications for national security. The ISC is to recommend in its next report, out at the end of the year, that a commission be set up to look into its plans, according to senior Whitehall sources.

The ISC holds huge clout within Whitehall. It receives secret briefings from MI5, MI6 and GCHQ and is highly influential in forming government policy. Kim Howells, a respected former Foreign Office minister, was recently appointed its chairman. Under the existing voluntary code of conduct, known as the DA-Notice system, the Government can request that the media does not report a story. However, the committee’s members are particularly worried about leaks, which, they believe, could derail investigations and the reporting of which needs to be banned by legislation.

Civil liberties groups say these restrictions would be “very dangerous” and “damaging for public accountability”. They also point out that censoring journalists when the leaks come from officials is unjustified.

But the committee, in its last annual report, has already signalled its intention to press for changes. It states: “The current system for handling national security information through DA-Notices and the [intelligence and security] Agencies’ relationship with the media more generally, is not working as effectively as it might and this is putting lives at risk.” According to senior Whitehall sources the ISC is likely to advocate tighter controls on the DA-Notice system – formerly known as D-Notice – which operates in co-operation and consultation between the Government and the media.

The committee has focused on one particular case to highlight its concern: an Islamist plot to kidnap and murder a British serviceman in 2007, during which reporters were tipped off about the imminent arrest of suspects in Birmingham, a security operation known as “Gamble”. The staff in the office of the then home secretary, John Reid, and the local police were among those accused of being responsible – charges they denied. An investigation by Scotland Yard failed to find the source of the leak.

The then director general of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, was among those who complained to the ISC. “We were very angry, but it is not clear who we should be angry with, that most of the story of the arrests in Op Gamble were in the media very, very fast … So the case was potentially jeopardised by the exposure of what the story was. My officers and the police were jeopardised by them being on operations when the story broke. The strategy of the police for interrogating those arrested was blown out of the water, and my staff felt pretty depressed … that this has happened.”

The ISC report said the DA-Notice system “provides advice and guidance to the media about defence and counter-terrorism information, whilst the system is voluntary, has no legal authority, and the final responsibility for deciding whether or not to publish rests solely with the editor or publisher concerned. The system has been effective in the past. However, the Cabinet Secretary told us … this is no longer the case: ‘I think we have problems now.’”

The human rights lawyer Louise Christian said: “This would be a very dangerous development. We need media scrutiny for public accountability. We can see this from the example, for instance, of the PhD student in Nottingham who was banged up for six days without charge because he downloaded something from the internet for his thesis. The only reason this came to light was because of the media attention to the case.”

A spokesman for the human rights group Liberty said: “There is a difficult balance between protecting integrity and keeping the public properly informed. Any extension of the DA-Notice scheme requires a more open parliamentary debate.”

DA-Notice: a gagging by consent

The D-Notice system was set up in 1912 when the War Office (the Ministry of Defence in its previous incarnation) began issuing censorship orders to newspapers on stories involving national security.

In 1993 it became known as a DA-Notice with four senior civil servants, with an eminent military figure as secretary, and 13 members nominated by the media to form the Defence Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee.

Contrary to popular conception DA-Notices are a request and not legally enforceable. Civil servants fear making the agreement legally binding would lead to hostility from the media. There would be apprehension among journalists about new restrictions, as the committee has in recent times been robust in resisting pressure from the Government to send DA-Notices if it thinks the motives are political. At present most DA-Notices are issued regarding military missions, anti-terrorist operations at home and espionage.
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Message from the Director: Promoting an Effective Transition

Presidential elections are a centerpiece of our democracy. Now that the American people
have had their say, their federal government assumes an additional responsibility.
Beyond all the tasks in place on November 4th, the public expects us to do what we can to
ensure a smooth, effective transition to a new administration. Our Agency would have it
no other way.
For CIA, on duty since 1947, this is familiar ground. As intelligence officers, we know
that the insights we provide are national assets, a decisive advantage for any President.
We understand that our mission of protecting America and advancing its ideals and
interests abroad is constant. And we recognize that the challenges facing our country,
and the enemies who would do it harm, are not about to disappear for the next few
months.
That means that we in the Intelligence Community will have—until noon on January
20th—two sets of consumers. As we continue to serve the current administration, we are
also in touch with President-elect Obama and his national security team. Through
expanded access, greater than what he had in his briefings as a candidate or as a Senator,
he will see the full range of capabilities we deploy for the United States.
As you would expect, CIA will play a central part in the Intelligence Community’s
outreach to the President-elect. The Agency leadership will meet this morning to discuss
the transition. We have already prepared a great deal of information about CIA for the
Obama team. The goal today is to review what has been done and to ensure that every
part of the Agency is well-placed to contribute in the weeks ahead. DNI McConnell, who
will launch the first briefing of the incoming administration, has asked Michael Morell,
our Director for Intelligence, to be his representative throughout that process. The two
principal briefers for the President-elect are also CIA careerists. That is but one
reflection of the deep expertise that resides here.
With every transition comes speculation about personnel changes across government. At
this point, I would urge you to ignore it. I certainly have. Those privileged to lead this
organization understand that they serve at the pleasure of the President. I am proud to
represent you and your work to the President and the country at large. CIA has had, in
the past few years, many successes against some of the toughest targets imaginable. The
job of senior leadership at CIA is, more than anything, to create conditions that allow you
to excel. What counts most is your further success. It is what our nation needs and
deserves.
Your dedication, skill, creativity, and courage are true sources of inspiration. I have no
doubt that your hard work—defined by integrity—will earn the trust and confidence of
America’s new leaders, just as it has before.

Mike Hayden
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A team of intelligence briefers has been named and is ready to discuss with Obama the Presidential Daily Brief, similar to the one provided to President Bush, says a message from CIA Director Michael Hayden to CIA employees obtained by CNN.

According to McConnell’s outlook, economic and population growth will strain resources. “Demand is projected to outstrip the easily available supplies over the next decade,” he said at the annual conference.

The intelligence community’s forecast indicates oil and gas supplies will continue to dwindle and production will be concentrated in unstable areas, he said. And there appears to be no relief at hand.

McConnell said studies have shown that new energy technologies — such as biofuels, clean coal and hydrogen — generally take 25 years to become commercially viable and widespread.

The lack of access to safe, reliable water will reach unprecedented levels over the next 20 years, he said, and 1.4 billion people in 36 countries are likely to face water shortages that will have a substantial impact on food production.

“Climate change is expected to exacerbate those resource scarcities,” he said.

McConnell spoke of the unprecedented transfer of global wealth from West to East. By 2025, China is projected to be the second-largest economy and on its way to becoming the largest. India will grow to be the second- or third-largest economy.

All of this adds up to an unstable future. “Given the confluence of factors from a new global international system, increasing tension over natural resources, weapons proliferation … we predict an increased likelihood for conflict,” McConnell concluded.

Among the problems that aren’t going away is terrorism — an issue that did not get as much play as it initially appeared it would during the presidential campaign. McConnell said the descendants of long-established terrorist groups “will inherit organizational structures, the command and control processes and the training procedures necessary to conduct sophisticated attacks.”

He said he is particularly concerned that a terrorist group will acquire and use biological agents to create casualties greater than the September 11, 2001, attacks.

In addition, he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would “sow the seeds of instability and potential conflict” in that region on a scale that could affect the entire world.

Although the risk of a nuclear attack is “very low” over the next 20 to 30 years, McConnell said, “That possibility is grayer in the future than it is today.”

So what does this mean for the new president?

“After the new president-elect’s excitement subsides after winning the election, it is going to be dampened somewhat when he begins to focus on the realities of the myriad of changes and challenges we are going to face in the future,” McConnell said.

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The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has begun granting contracts to software firms to create algorithms that can be applied to the real-time video feeds from drone aircraft so the data can be sorted and stored on a wide range of human activities, from digging a ditch to climbing into a car to kissing someone.

The contracts represent the latest step in the Bush administration’s seven-year drive to develop high-tech spying capabilities that can be applied to a variety of situations and locales to detect terrorist or insurgent activities.

The new DARPA project would develop algorithms that would identify specific human activities – both by individuals and by groups – and evaluate if these actions suggested behavior that would justify a military response.

The list of activities that would draw attention to a single person include “digging, loitering, picking up, throwing, exploding/burning, carrying, shooting, launching, walking, limping, running, kicking, smoking, gesturing,” according to DARPA’s contract description.

For person-to-person activities, the project would identify and catalogue cases of “following, meeting, gathering, moving in a group, dispersing, shaking hands, kissing, exchanging objects, kicking, carrying together.”

Categories relating to vehicles include getting into or out of a car, opening or closing the trunk, driving, accelerating, turning, stopping, passing and maintaining distances.

According to DARPA’s description, the research project addresses challenges faced by intelligence analysts in processing and retrieving the vast amounts of visual data created by live video feeds from Predator drones and other aerial surveillance over Iraq and Afghanistan. By identifying and indexing specific actions, the analysts would be helped in evaluating potential threats and could retrieve video regarding similar behavior.

“The U.S. military and intelligence communities have an ever increasing need to monitor live video feeds and search large volumes of archived video data for activities of interest due to the rapid growth in development and fielding of motion video systems,” said the DARPA document, written in March but withheld from the public until September.

Kitware, a software company with offices in New York and North Carolina, won an initial $6.7 million contract for what is technically called Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool, or VIRAT.

In a statement about the contract award, Kitware projected that through its proposed system, “the most high-value intelligence content will be clearly and intuitively presented to the video analyst, resulting in substantial reductions in analyst workload per mission as well as increasing the quality and accuracy of intelligence yield.”

Anthony Hoogs, Kitware’s project leader, said, ”This project will really make a difference to the war fighter.”

To carry out the project, Kitware said it was teaming up with two leading military technology companies, Honeywell and General Dynamics, as well as a number of academic researchers. [See Kitware Awarded $6.7M DARPA Contract.]

Repression Works

Though this DARPA project is not expected to be completed until early next decade, other technological breakthroughs reportedly have helped U.S. forces identify and kill insurgents in Iraq.

In his latest book, The War Within, Bob Woodward writes that highly classified U.S. intelligence tactics allowed for rapid targeting and killing of Iraqi insurgent leaders, representing a more important factor in undermining the insurgency than President George W. Bush’s much touted troop “surge.” However, Woodward withheld details of these secret techniques so as not to undermine their effectiveness.

Still, there have been previous glimpses of classified U.S. programs that combine high-tech means of identifying insurgents – such as sophisticated biometrics and night-vision-equipped drones – with old-fashioned brutality on the ground, including on-the-spot executions of suspected insurgents. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Global Dirty War” and “Iraq’s Laboratory of Repression.”]

However, the marriage of advanced technology and military repression has raised concerns among some human rights advocates that these techniques could open the door to an Orwellian future in which authoritarian regimes repress popular resistance.

DARPA, with its mandate to push the envelope on the application of technology for military and intelligence purposes, also has been caught up before in controversies about balancing security against liberty.

In 2002, DARPA came under criticism when it unveiled plans for Total Information Awareness, a project that sought to detect terrorist activities by mining electronic data about virtually everyone on earth, anyone who participated in the modern economy.

The plan was to map out “transactional data” collected from every kind of activity – “financial, education, travel, medical, veterinary, country entry, place/event entry, transportation, housing, critical resources, government, communications,” according to the DARPA Web site.

The program would then cross-reference this data with the “biometric signatures of humans,” data collected on individuals’ faces, fingerprints, gaits and irises. To run the sensitive project, the Bush administration selected retired Admiral John Poindexter, who was convicted of five felony counts in the Iran-Contra Affair (though a conservative-dominated appeals court later reversed the jury verdicts).

Public and congressional outrage over this massive data-mining operation supposedly killed the TIA program in 2003, but the National Journal revealed in February 2006 that the project was ended in name only, kept alive within the secret budget of the National Security Agency.

One TIA component, called the Information Awareness Prototype System, was renamed “Basketball” at NSA, but still provided the basic architecture tying together information extraction, analysis and dissemination tools developed under TIA.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration began deploying similar advanced technology to Iraq with the goal of throttling the insurgency that was challenging the U.S. military occupation.

In effect, Iraq was transformed into a test tube for modern techniques of repression, including use of night-vision optics on drone aircraft, heat resonance imaging, and firepower that is both deadly and precise.

The new techniques marked a modernization of tactics used in other counterinsurgencies, such as in Vietnam in the 1960s and in Central America in the 1980s.

In Vietnam, U.S. forces planted sensors along infiltration routes for targeting bombing runs against North Vietnamese troops. In Guatemala, security forces were equipped with early laptop computers for use in identifying suspected subversives who would be dragged off buses and summarily executed.

Last year, a conservative counterinsurgency expert sent me a video, spliced together by the U.S. military in Iraq, showing how some of the modern techniques worked in Iraq. The video showed night-vision aerial surveillance of suspected “terrorists” as they moved in the dark with what was described as a truck-mounted anti-aircraft gun, the muzzle still warm from firing.

The tiny figures of these “terrorists” then walked into a forested area where they were mowed down by miniguns from an AC-130. Their truck also was blown to bits.

Biometrics

Besides using Predator drones to monitor the movement of Iraqis from the sky, massive amounts of biometric data have been collected on the country’s people for use in identifying suspected insurgents.

Explaining the value of this computerized database, Pentagon weapons designer Anh Duong told the Washington Post that it gave valuable information to soldiers on the ground.

“A war fighter needs to know one of three things: Do I let him go? Keep him? Or shoot him on the spot?” Duong said.

Though Duong is best known for designing high-explosives used to destroy hardened targets, she also supervised this Joint Expeditionary Forensics Facilities project, known as a “lab in a box” for analyzing biometric data, such as iris scans and fingerprints, that have been collected on more than one million Iraqis.

The labs – collapsible, 20-by-20-foot units each with a generator and a satellite link to a biometric data base in West Virginia – let U.S. forces cross-check data in the field against information collected previously that can be used to identify insurgents.

Duong said the next step would be to shrink the lab to the size of a “backpack” so soldiers who encounter a suspect “could find out within minutes” if he’s on a terrorist watch list and should be killed. [Washington Post, Dec. 1, 2007]

By identifying and indexing a wide range of human activities captured on surveillance videos, the new DARPA project could augment some of these other security projects, already in place or in development.

Regarding the video analysis, however, DARPA specifically prohibited inclusion of biometric algorithms for identifying people by their gaits or other individual features. However, those elements, which are being developed separately, presumably could be added to the overall technological package at a later date.
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The report, previewed in a speech by Thomas Fingar, the U.S. intelligence community’s top analyst, also concludes that the one key area of continued U.S. superiority — military power — will “be the least significant” asset in the increasingly competitive world of the future, because “nobody is going to attack us with massive conventional force.”

Fingar’s remarks last week were based on a partially completed “Global Trends 2025″ report that assesses how international events could affect the United States in the next 15 to 17 years. Speaking at a conference of intelligence professionals in Orlando, Fingar gave an overview of key findings that he said will be presented to the next occupant of the White House early in the new year.

“The U.S. will remain the preeminent power, but that American dominance will be much diminished,” Fingar said, according to a transcript of the Thursday speech. He saw U.S. leadership eroding “at an accelerating pace” in “political, economic and arguably, cultural arenas.”

The 2025 report will lay out what Fingar called the “dynamics, the dimensions, the drivers” that will shape the world for the next administration and beyond. In advance of its completion, intelligence officials have begun briefing the major presidential candidates on the security threats that they would be likely to face in office. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) received an initial briefing Sept. 2, with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) expected to receive one in the coming days, intelligence officials said.

As described by Fingar, the intelligence community’s long-term outlook has darkened somewhat since the last report in 2004, which also focused on the impact of globalization but was more upbeat about its consequences for the United States. The new view is in line with that of prominent economists and other global thinkers who have argued that America’s influence is shrinking as economic powerhouses such as China assert themselves on the global stage. The trend is described in the new book “The Post-American World,” in which author Fareed Zakaria writes that the shift is not about the “decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else.”

In the new intelligence forecast, it is not just the United States that loses clout. Fingar predicts plummeting influence for the United Nations, the World Bank and a host of other international organizations that have helped maintain political and economic stability since World War II. It is unclear what new institutions can fill the void, he said.

In the years ahead, Washington will no longer be in a position to dictate what new global structures will look like. Nor will any other country, Fingar said. “There is no nobody in a position . . . to take the lead and institute the changes that almost certainly must be made in the international system,” he said.

The predicted shift toward a less U.S.-centric world will come at a time when the planet is facing a growing environmental crisis, caused largely by climate change, Fingar said. By 2025, droughts, food shortages and scarcity of fresh water will plague large swaths of the globe, from northern China to the Horn of Africa.

For poorer countries, climate change “could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back,” Fingar said, while the United States will face “Dust Bowl” conditions in the parched Southwest. He said U.S. intelligence agencies accepted the consensual scientific view of global warming, including the conclusion that it is too late to avert significant disruption over the next two decades. The conclusions are in line with an intelligence assessment produced this summer that characterized global warming as a serious security threat for the coming decades.

Floods and droughts will trigger mass migrations and political upheaval in many parts of the developing world. But among industrialized states, declining birthrates will create new economic stresses as populations become grayer. In China, Japan and Europe, the ratio of working adults to seniors “begins to approach one to three,” he said.

The United States will fare better than many other industrial powers, in part because it is relatively more open to immigration. Newcomers will inject into the U.S. economy a vitality that will be absent in much of Europe and Japan — countries that are “on a good day, highly chauvinistic,” he said.

“We are just about alone in terms of the highly developed countries that will continue to have demographic growth sufficient to ensure continued economic growth,” Fingar said.

Energy security will also become a major issue as India, China and other countries join the United States in seeking oil, gas and other sources for electricity. The Chinese get a good portion of their oil from Iran, as do many U.S. allies in Europe, limiting U.S. options on Iran. “So the turn-the-spigot-off kind of thing — even if we could do it — would be counterproductive.”

Nearly absent from Fingar’s survey was the topic of terrorism. Since the last such report, the intelligence community has projected a declining role for al-Qaeda, which was deemed likely to become “increasingly decentralized, evolving into an eclectic array of groups, cells, and individuals.” Inspired by al-Qaeda, “regionally based groups, and individuals labeled simply as jihadists — united by a common hatred of moderate regimes and the West — are likely to conduct terrorist attacks,” the 2004 document said.

The new assessment saw a continued threat from Iran, however. Fingar predicted steady progress in the Islamic republic’s attempts to create enriched uranium, the essential fuel used in nuclear weapons and commercial power reactors. For now, however, there is no evidence that Iran has resumed work on building a weapon, Fingar said, echoing last year’s landmark National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which concluded that warhead-design work had halted in 2003.

He said Iran’s ultimate decision on whether to build nuclear weapons depended on how its leaders viewed their “security requirement” — whether they thought their government sufficiently safe in a region surrounded by traditional enemies.

Iranians are “more scared of their neighbors than many think they ought to be,” Fingar said. But he noted that the United States had eliminated two of Iran’s biggest enemies: Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

“The United States took care of Iran’s principal security threats,” he said, “except for us, which the Iranians consider a mortal threat.”
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