Notes by Retraice

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Re3: Tell Everyone On problems of information: 'careless leaks' and 'giveaways'.

Dulles - Craft of Intelligence, Chpt. 15, 'Security in a Free Society', Part 2.

Air date: Wednesday, 9th Sep. 2020, 7pm Pacific/US.1

America is a delightful country in which to carry out espionage…. One of the weakest links in the nation's security … is the yearning friendliness of her people…. they crave public recognition…. I was able to find one American after another who seemed impelled—after a drink or two—to tell me things he might never have told his own wife.2

We talked yesterday about Allen Dulles, his book, and the various problems that arise in reading his chapter 15, 'Security in a Free Society', and any such writing. Main Points

We can break chapter 15 into three categories:

1. problems of information: openness; the desire to tell (careless leaks) and to be told (giveaways);
2. problems of trust: vulnerability to attacks by friends (contrived leaks) and foes (betrayals);
3. problems of survival: preventing a group's own destruction by its enemies (those who would exploit information and trust problems) and by its own (those who would do anything to solve information and trust problems, e.g. Angleton).

Here, we'll focus on problems of information.

Problems of Information: 'careless leaks' and 'giveaways'

We want to give valuable information because it makes us look good, in the know, smart, and because it sometimes seems to further our ends, especially if we spin it, or select it carefully.

We want to get valuable information because we then have it to give, and because it might further our ends, and because we are at a disadvantage compared to others who have it.

Our spies try to get information from others, and hide our information from them.

Others' spies try to do the same.

The question always recurs: Who are 'our' spies, and who are the 'others'?

Compare the Times article: "In Poland there is a variety of forms of intelligence…. In any case, the assumption in Warsaw, true or not, is that Colonel Monat knew whatever was to be know…. This reporter learned of the Monat story a couple of months ago. To have written it in Poland would have meant immediate expulsion and possibly arrest. There is also the possibility, which has to be considered by Western newsmen working in a Communist country, that a secret already known to the West was dropped into a correspondent's ear by a Communist contact as a provocation—to find out whether he knew about it or to entice him into using it while still within the territory of the Communist state and subject to reprisals for 'espionage.' "3

'Careless leaks'

1. Monat (opening excerpt).4
2. "The careless leak, one not due to malice or plan, may be the result of some astute reporter."5
3. The letter and memorandum of Woodrow Wilson to William Jennings Bryan (Dulles's uncle Robert Lansing's predecessor as Secretary of State), 'suggestions for safeguarding the more important diplomatic proceedings': "One person to draft all despatches [sic]…. to transcribe all such despatches [sic]…. to do all the enciphering and deciphering…."6
4. The guessing reporter: "There are times, of course, when sources are not given [by reporters] because… their stories might have been the product of their own intelligent guesswork. In the case of able reporters, these guesses often hit quite close to the mark."7

'Giveaways'

1. "But it was obviously in published form that Monat found his most precious sources. 'Americans,' he says, 'are not only careless and loquacious in their speech, they also give away far more than is good for them in public print.' "8

   Dulles goes on to say that the 'house organs' (print publications) of branches of the U..S. military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines) "fight 'the battle of interservice rivalry' in print" (Dulles quoting Monat) and (further) each branch publishes a "stream of manuals and reports".9

   Consider the question: Is the competition net-good or net-bad? How would we know? How would we experiment?

2. " 'It must be extremely difficult', Monat adds, 'for the U.S. Military to try to defend the nation and its freedoms when the very sinews of its defenses are being exposed, day by day, to anybody who can read.' "10
3. On Douglas Cater's The Fourth Branch of Government: "President Truman once claimed [that]… '95% of our secret information has been published by newspapers and slick magazines'…. "11

   Compare Vallee's 'Major Murphy': "Suppose I gave you [a scientist] 95 per cent of the data concerning a phenomenon. You're happy because you know 95 per cent of the phenomenon. Not so in intelligence. If I get 95 per cent of the data, I know this is the 'cheap' part of the information. I still need the other 5 per cent, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it…. Hitler had 95 per cent of the information about the landing in Normandy. But he had the wrong 95 per cent!"12

   Dulles again: "Cater also refers to a statement by Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson in which Wilson estimated that this country was giving away military secrets to the Soviets that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars if we could learn the same type from them."13

4. The (Bedell) Smith test: "In 1951 he enlisted the services of a group of able and qualified academicians from one of our large universities…. to determine what kind of an estimate of U.S. military capabilities the Soviets could put together from… unclassified sources…. [T]he findings… were deemed to be so accurate that the extra copies were ordered destroyed and the few copies that were retained were given a high classification."14
5. "Is there any way to stop the giveaway?"15

   "I, of course, recognize that… committees of the Congress need to receive a substantial amount of classified information from the executive. Does it necessarily follow that this must be published in great detail? It is often the intimate and technical details that are the most valuable to the potential enemy and of little interest to the public. I question whether, with respect to these technical details, there is a public 'need to know.' "16

   "A more difficult area is that of the press, periodicals and particularly service and technical journals."17

   "Undoubtedly it is of the greatest importance in this nuclear missile age to keep the American people informed about our general military position in the world…. [W]hat we don't really require is detailed information as to where every hardened missile site is located, exactly how many bombers or fighters we will have or the details of their performance."18

Recap

We've divided Chpt. 15 into problems of information (discussed today), problems of trust (later) and problems of survival (later).

Problems of information include Dulles's terms 'careless leaks' (e.g. saying too much, answering dangerous questions) and 'giveaways' (e.g. the publishing of superfluous details by public and private entities, open government hearings and investigations).

Problems of information ultimately rest on our senses of what makes information valuable—subjectively at least, objectively perhaps.

Giving information can feel good, and be good for us; and we have to get it to give it, and to stay ahead of others. The question is: When does the quantity or quality of the information, however told, cause, or risk causing, a net loss of what's good for us?

Compare Bostrom19 on 'information hazards': "[R]isks that arise from the dissemination or the potential dissemination of true information that may cause harm or enable some agent to cause harm."

NEXT

Problems of trust: Dulles's 'contrived leaks' and betrayals.

References

Bostrom, N. (2011). Information Hazards: A Typology of Potential Harms from Knowledge. Review of Contemporary Philosophy, 10, 44–79. Citations are from Bostrom's website copy: https://www.nickbostrom.com/information-hazards.pdf Retrieved 9th Sep. 2020.

Dulles, A. (2016). The Craft of Intelligence. Lyons Press / Rowman & Littlefield. First published 1963. This edition copyright Joan Buresch Talley, daughter of Dulles. ISBN: 978-1493018796. Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Craft%20of%20Intelligence

Rosenthal, A. M. (1959). Polish spy chief defects to west. New York Times. 22nd Nov. 1959 https://nyti.ms/1GZQ0Ku Retrieved 9th Sep. 2020.

Vallee, J. (1979). Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. And/Or Press. ISBN: 0915904381. A different edition available at: https://archive.org/details/MessengersOfDeceptionUFOContactsAndCultsJacquesValle1979/mode/2up

1Retraice works on the question 'What's going on out there?' Our point of departure is the concept of intelligence, which seems to have at least three kinds: natural, artificial, and strategic. Here, we're working on strategic intelligence.

2Dulles (2016) p. 237, quoting Col. Pawel Monat, a Polish intelligence officer trained by communists who defected to the West in 1959 (Rosenthal (1959)), and later wrote a book.

3Rosenthal (1959)

4Dulles (2016) p. 237par7a. Paragraph numberings, such as 'par7a', are done by Retraice; they are useful for company purposes, but must be done manually by the reader. Page numbers, specific to the cited sources, should be preferred for reference.

5Dulles (2016) p. 241par23.

6Dulles (2016) pp. 242-243pars24-27.

7Dulles (2016) p. 247par39.

8Dulles (2016) p. 237par7b.

9Dulles (2016) p. 237pars8-11.

10Dulles (2016) p. 237par10.

11Dulles (2016) p. 237par11.

12Vallee (1979) p. 68, his emphasis.

13Dulles (2016) p. 238par12b.

14Dulles (2016) p. 238par13.

15Dulles (2016) p. 238par14.

16Dulles (2016) p. 239par15b.

17Dulles (2016) p. 240par19.

18Dulles (2016) p. 240par20.

19Bostrom (2011)

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Ma4: Assumptions (A Wrestling Match)

On fundamental hypotheses, testing and MVPs.

Air date: Thursday, 22nd Oct. 2020, 07 : 30 AM Pacific/US.

1 What you're supposed to be doing

We are not supposed to just guess; per Ries, we're supposed to build an organization that will test our fundamental assumptions, our life-or-death business beliefs, as quickly as possible.1

Side note—don't tell plans

When you tell outsiders your plans, the weaknesses of your predictive powers become an awkward burden of conversation, even when you're doing everything right on the business side.

Your boss

Your customers are your boss, and until you have customers, you're applying for jobs.

Wrestling with the question

Are we building an organization that will test our fundamental assumptions?

'Don't make me bankrupt'

Businesses do not have forever to run such tests. See Doug Edwards quoting Sheryl Sandberg quoting Eric Schmidt:

"Even with Larry [Page] and Sergey [Brin]'s high tolerance for risk, no one wanted the company to die under a load of corporate IOUs, especially the new CEO, Eric Schmidt. 'Don't make me bankrupt,' Sheryl Sandberg recalls Eric telling Salar [Kamangar]. 'Don't run out of cash.' "2

Business death

It is a cousin of physical death. You can only do something about it before it happens.

Assumptions we've tested

Retraice assumption: Lots of preparation would lead to content that presents well. (somewhat false)

Margin assumption: Minimal preparation would lead to content that presents well. (also false, but less so)

Pinching

Retraice and Margin are approaches to the problem from different, opposing directions. See mathematician Jordan Ellenberg:

"[I]t's a common piece of folk advice—I know I heard it from my Ph.D. advisor, and presumably he from his, etc.—that when you're working hard on a theorem you should try to prove it by day and disprove it by night. (The precise frequency of the toggle isn't critical; it's said of the topologist R. H. Bing that his habit was to split each month between two weeks trying to prove the Poincaré Conjecture and two weeks trying to find a counterexample.)"3

Assumption 1, 2

1: 'The more preparation the better, but you can't do too much if you're going to produce every day.'

2: 'No preparation might be good, but for a different kind of product.'

Running out of time

If your assumption is true, and you don't test it, fine, great. If it's false, you're walking into traffic.

'Minimum viable product'

An MVP should test fundamental business assumptions as quickly as possible.4

Delivering the wrestling match to customers

Talking on mic about wrestling with assumptions is an attempt to deliver the value of the wrestling to customers.

If customers can't buy, you aren't testing

Dan Norris on payment buttons:

"It's imperative that on Day 7 you have a page with a payment button on it, because that is the only way you'll learn if people want what you are offering."5

The Retraice, Inc. case

A single podcast segment can't be a product iteration: the product is the podcast (as a whole), not particular segments; and everything that affects the customer experience might be part of the product, from website to thumbnail to paywall.

The boundaries of the MVP

How much of the business, beyond the ostensible product (in our case, an mp3 file), is part of the MVP? How would you know if you found the boundaries?

And if you do find them, you then have to ask the Ries question: Is the MVP testing your fundamental hypotheses?

2 Now, the wrestling match

For Margin, a central hypothesis is that entrepreneurs will pay for a podcast that walks the fine line between being pleasant listening and unvarnished reality.

Honorable mention—Linus Sebastian on competition

(Side Note) Asked about having any regrets, Linus Sebastian said something like this: In hindsight, thinking competitively about his fellow content producers was a mistake, because cooperating with them would've lifted the whole industry to command more advertising dollars.6

Empty chairs and a ketchup bottle

Almost every detail of, say, a coffee shop, might be part of the minimum viable product: the tables, the chairs, the wall decor, the trees outside (or lack thereof).

You are the experiment

Again, while there is much experimenting that an entrepreneur and a business can do, ultimately they aren't running the experiment—they're in it.

It's like AI (go listen to Retraice)

Experimental results depend heavily on environmental conditions. In AI, the joint concept of agent and environment is central. We'll talk about this in Retraice soon.

Having a dog in the fight

In business, as in science, one must be biased in favor of one's own assumptions, because the exciting possibility of guessing correctly is a source of much-needed energy. But if that bias is blinding, if the response to falsified hypotheses is denial, failure is inevitable. Responding well to falsification is preferable.

And, wherever possible, don't build businesses to be vulnerable to falsification.

References

Edwards, D. (2011). I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN: 978-0547416991. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0547416991 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0547416991 https://lccn.loc.gov/2010052588

Ellenberg, J. (2014). How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0143127536. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0143127536 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0143127536 https://lccn.loc.gov/2014005394

Norris, D. (2014). The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch. Dan Norris. ISBN: 978-1502472397. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1502472397 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1502472397

Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Currency / Crown / Penguin Random House. ISBN: 978-0307887894. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0307887894 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0307887894 https://lccn.loc.gov/2011012100

Index Eric Schmidt, 1

Larry Page, 1 Linus Sebastian, 2 Linus Tech Tips, 2

MVP (minimum viable product), 1, 2

Salar Kamangar, 1 Sergey Brin, 1 Sheryl Sandberg, 1

1Ries (2011), e.g. p. 20, p. 81.

2Edwards (2011) p. 279.

3Ellenberg (2014) p. 433.

4Ries (2011) pp. 93-94.

5Norris (2014) p. 110.

6We couldn't find the source for this. From memory, it was either in an ask-me-anything thread (text) or in a video Q&A. Write to us if you find it.

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Ma3: It's Not About Love

On want, need, Fridays and competition.

Air date: Wednesday, 21st Oct. 2020, 08 : 35 AM Pacific/US.

TOPIC: You don't have to love it

If love is a prerequisite of starting a business, most of the work we're willing to pay for wouldn't get done.

Double coincidence of wants

It's convenient if you love to do work that I want done (and can pay for), and vise-versa. But putting that constraint on all work is ludicrous. Perhaps such a world is imaginable, but the experiment is hard to run.

Fridays and rough spots

Mondays can be very bad, whether or not you love what you do.

'Independence', capital and overhead

There's no truly independent business. Capital is a major factor. Capital needs are relative. And chasing capital means not rethinking costs (another trade-off).

Doing things you want to do more

People arrive at entrepreneurship from different backgrounds, but they share the sense that it's an improvement over the alternatives.

Flat lines and exponential curves

It's bad news when you discover how disappointing your first offerings are. (And many business people accept producing crap.)

It doesn't feel good to not know whether you're in the long slow stage of being successful, or dead in the water.

More entrepreneurs, more competition

It seems like more entrepreneurs would be good, but that's not obviously true for an entrepreneur.

It's not clear what to think about competitive buyouts. Consider Instagram and WhatsApp (now owned by Facebook), and Youtube (now owned by Google).

Blue ocean, red ocean

Perhaps you want to compete on price, or on quality. If you don't want to compete at all, you want blue ocean.1 In typical business pep-speak:

"The best way to drive profitable growth? Stop competing in overcrowded industries. In those red oceans, companies try to outperform rivals to grab bigger slices of existing demand. As the space gets increasingly crowded, profit and growth prospects shrink. Products become commoditized. Ever-more-intense competition turns the water bloody. How to avoid the fray? Kim and Mauborgne recommend creating blue oceans—uncontested market spaces where the competition is irrelevant. In blue oceans, you invent and capture new demand, and you offer customers a leap in value while also streamlining your costs. Results? Handsome profits, speedy growth—and brand equity that lasts for decades while rivals scramble to catch up."2

The FT graphic that says it all: bigger and bigger sharks.3 Want and need, life and death

You have to want something, or need something. Maybe you want out of a job, or to avoid the job hunt. Maybe you look at your future and don't see anything good.

Andy grove talked about 'strategic inflection points', forks in the road that lead to life or death.4 And before that, he painted another clear picture:

"Now, you may be tempted to look around your workplace and point to your fellow workers as rivals, but they are not. They are outnumbered—a thousand to one, one hundred thousand to one, a million to one—by people who work for organizations that compete with your firm. So if you want to work and continue to work, you must continually dedicate yourself to retaining your individualcompetitive advantage."5

Business and marriage

Like marriage, business can be about love, but isn't necessarily. And even if it is about love, dumb expectations lead to bad results.

Pushing a car

Yes, manage your energy, not your time.6 And get and keep momentum whenever you can.7

But work is not so much about an ethic, but a skill set. One has to learn how to push a car when there's no gas in the tank.

References

Grove, A. S. (1995). High Output Management. Vintage / Random House. ISBN: 978-0679762881. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0679762881 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0679762881 https://lccn.loc.gov/96110812

Grove, A. S. (1996). Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company. Currency / Doubleday. ISBN: 0385483821. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0385483821 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0385483821 https://lccn.loc.gov/96013509

HBR (2011). HBR's 10 Must Reads Boxed Set: The Essentials. Harvard Business Review Press, Kindle ed. ISBN: 978-1422172018. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1422172018 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1422172018

Kim, W. C., & Mauborgne, R. (2004). Blue Ocean Strategy. At 75%, location 19,695 (no pagination) in HBR (2011). Originally published in October 2004.

Norris, D. (2014). The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch. Dan Norris. ISBN: 978-1502472397. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1502472397 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1502472397

Schwartz, T., & McCarthy, C. (2007). Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time. At 25%, location 6,413 (no pagination) in HBR (2011). Originally published in October 2007.

Index Facebook, 1 FT (Financial Times), 1

Google, 1

Instagram, 1

WhatsApp, 1

Youtube, 1

1For a brief write-up of the idea, see Kim & Mauborgne (2004)

2From an unattributed summary in Kim & Mauborgne (2004)

3https://images.app.goo.gl/d6CurWTKSKKc5pWr6

4Grove (1996) p. 32.

5Grove (1995) p. xix.

6Schwartz & McCarthy (2007)

7Norris (2014) p. 186.

For proper formatting (bold, italics, etc.) and graphics (where applicable) see the PDF version. Copyright: 2020 Retraice, Inc.

Ma2: Guessing Before Feedback On guesses vs. feedback, audience vs. customers, words vs. deeds.

Air date: Tuesday, 20th Oct. 2020, 09 : 35 AM Pacific/US.

Clarification

In Margin 1, we said Margin is 'probably not for you'—but our meaning wasn't clear. It's because Margin will be unprepared remarks by an unprofitable business, which presumably narrows our market considerably. But market segmentation is often a good thing.

1 TOPIC: Guesses before feedback Feedback

Customers have the information that businesses need, but it's hard to get.

Businesses that don't seek and get such feedback will die, eventually.

The paradox is that you can't get feedback from customers, which you 'need', before you have customers.

Reis makes this point:

"Before new products can be sold successfully to the mass market, they have to be sold to early adopters. These people are a special breed of customer. They accept—in fact prefer—an 80 percent solution; you don't need a perfect solution to capture their interest."1

Norris makes this point:

"There is a very big difference between someone entering their email and someone paying you each month for a product. I've consistently discovered that once I launch a product, on page conversions go down. It's easy for someone to enter their email to be notified. It's much harder for someone to sign up, try, and use a new service."2

There's a no-man's-land between your idea and your first customer, and between your first customer and profitability. Until you have customers, you're guessing. Ries calls some of these guesses 'leaps of faith', which need to be tested ASAP. You can't test everything

You are the experiment. Your life is a one-time event.

Spending time on guesses

It's easy to know in retrospect whether your time was well spent or not. It's hard to know in the moment, or in prospect.

There are myriad stories of wasted (business) time. In the beginning, and at other times, you just don't know.

Side note: guessing and intelligence

Guessing is a very interesting sidelight on (natural) intelligence. See Barlow.3 He gives the illustration of a dog learning to correctly guess that certain sounds are the refrigerator opening. More on this to follow in Retraice.

You want to be intelligent

You want to be the most intelligent entrepreneur, don't you? Watch your guesses.

Entrepreneurs everywhere

Even in established companies and positions, being some kind of entrepreneur is preferable.4

Audiences are not necessarily customers

Customers are always an audience, but audiences aren't always customers. Twirl a sign on the street, you get an audience. But customers?

It's different when you turn your audience into a product (as in advertising models). They're still not customers, but they're no longer at risk of being moot—as they are when they pay attention to you, but don't pay you. That said, attention is a kind of currency, by some definitions. Ries5gives four kinds of currency: time, money, skill and passion. His 'time' would correspond roughly to attention.

'Adding value'

At Retraice yesterday, after Margin 1, the rest of the day was 'adding value', a ruined termed.

Ideally, you love and live your business

Norris:

"You should be more excited about Monday than you are about Friday. If that's not the case, there's a good chance things aren't going to work out."6

Even burdensome process fixes are lovable. Liker makes the point:

"The right process will produce the right results."7

So loving the results means, ideally, automatically loving process work.

Of course, business can be done, and done successfully, without love.

What audiences say vs. what they do

An audience will say one thing, and do another. See Dan Norris's harrowing examples.8

How to listen to customers

Listen to what they do, yes. But to do that, you need well-designed experiments.

2 TODAY: more QC

We're improving what can be improved about the first segments, without breaking the process for future segments.

The details you miss—bubbles

Beware the details you miss, which can cost you audience and customers. The Internet is a shopfront.

Example: stickers in windows—and air bubbles.

Customers know what you want to know

Consciously or not, they know what they do or don't like about your business. But they generally can't or won't tell you. You have to get that information, one way or another. It's a recurring problem.

Know about color theory.

References

Barlow, H. B. (2004). Guessing and intelligence. (pp. 382–384). In Gregory (2004).

Gregory, R. L. (Ed.) (2004). The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. ISBN: 0198662246. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0198662246 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0198662246 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004275127

Liker, J. (2004). The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. McGraw-Hill. ISBN: 0071392319. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0071392319 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0071392319 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004300007

Norris, D. (2014). The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch. Dan Norris. ISBN: 978-1502472397. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1502472397 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1502472397

Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Currency / Crown / Penguin Random House. ISBN: 978-0307887894. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0307887894 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0307887894 https://lccn.loc.gov/2011012100

1Ries (2011) p. 94.

2Norris (2014) p. 49

3Barlow (2004)

4See Ries (2011) e.g. p. 253.

5Ries (2011) p. 215 and p. 298 (note).

6Norris (2014) p. 189.

7Liker (2004) p. 87.

8Norris (2014) pp. 50-51.

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Re2: Tell the People, Tell Foes

On Dulles, evidence, trust, 'is' and 'ought', and capacities.

Dulles - Craft of Intelligence chpt. 15, 'Security in a Free Society', Part 1.

Air date: Tuesday, 8th Sep. 2020, 5pm Pacific/US.

Retraice works on the question 'What's going on out there?' Our point of departure is the concept of intelligence, which seems to have at least three kinds: natural, artificial, and strategic. Here, we're working on strategic intelligence.

Allen Dulles

It is hard to know what to believe about Allen Dulles, the first civilian CIA Director (DCI) (1953-1961). 1. John Kennedy said this about him, during a ceremony awarding Dulles the National Security Medal:

"Allen Dulles's career as a citizen of this country, and as one who has made his vast resources, personal resources, available to the country, stretches all the way back to the administration of President Woodrow Wilson. I know of no other American in the history of this country who has served in [the] administrations of seven presidents, varying from party to party, from point-of-view to point-of-view, from problem to problem, and yet at the end of each administration, each president of the United States has paid tribute to his service, and also has counted Allen Dulles as their friend."1

2. Journalist (and later Dep. Dir. State Policy Planning Staff under Carter) Peter Grose2 1994 quotes James Angleton's (Dulles's long-time chief of counterespionage) eulogy, Fish's and others' and Buckley's remarks, p. 565 ff.:

"Angleton…. prepared the eulogy…. '[Dulles was] a splendid watchman… a familiar and trusted figure…. the least passive of humans, the most active and open of men. He stood in full view and was ever accountable in our good society.' … William F. Buckley [said] 'he knew at least who the enemy was, and that, those days, is practically a virtuoso performance.' … But across the restive Third World… Dulles became the symbol of all the oppression they had suffered from the early and later days of CIA meddling."

Journalist David Talbot3 2015 says about the eulogy, p. 616:

"The soft-spoken church minister, who was used to writing his own funeral orations, balked at reading the bombastic address that had been written by longtime Dulles ghostwriter Charles Murphy, with input from Angleton and Jim Hunt. But the Dulles team quickly set the cleric straight. 'This is a special occasion,' the minister was informed by an official-sounding caller the night before the funeral. 'The address has been written by the CIA.' "

3. The journalist Joseph Trento4 2001 claims that Angleton said this in his dying days5, p. 479:

"Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars. The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. These people attracted and promoted each other. Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power…. Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, Carmel Offie, and Frank Wisner were the grand masters. If you were in a room with them you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell."

We can pause to reflect on the significance of this claim. If it is true, it is profound (Who was Dulles?); if it is false, it is profound (Who is Trento?). 4. And journalist Talbot6 2015 said Dulles had Kennedy killed, p. 560:

"Over the final months of JFK's presidency, a clear consensus took shape within America's deep state: Kennedy was a national security threat. For the good of the country, he must be removed. And Dulles was the only man with the stature, connections, and decisive will to make something of this enormity happen. He had already assembled a killing machine to operate overseas. Now he prepared to bring it home to Dallas. All that his establishment colleagues had to do was to look the other way—as they always did when Dulles took executive action."

So Dulles may have been a good guy, a bad guy, or any mixture of the two. We can set aside the question as essentially out of reach for the outsider (the evidence is almost entirely documents of one form or another, and they are numerous and conflicting).

The Craft of Intelligence

What is not disputed is Dulles's expertise in the domain of strategic intelligence. And there is a book7, The Craft of Intelligence, which he is supposed to have written, about the subject.

That would seem to be great news, for those interested in (strategic) intelligence. But we should hold off believing that he actually wrote it, or wrote every word of it.

1. Talbot8 says it's a 'predictable Cold War screed', and by multiple authors, CIA and otherwise, p. 486 ff.
2. CIA.gov confirms Dulles did seem to work with Charles Murphy as a ghost writer, in a letter reply (1960) from Dulles to Murphy about a planned book.9
3. Grose10 1994 says the book was a compromise of sorts, between a policy book and 'now-it-can-be-told' stories of espionage, p. 539.

So we've established that we don't know Dulles, and we don't necessarily know who is talking when we read his book. But it does seem like certain chapters are all or mostly his voice. Chapter 15 is one of them.

The Gist of Chpt. 15: 'Security in a Free Society'

The central premises and arguments, p. 235 ff.

1. We should say less.
2. Free people have the urge to talk, and to know. (This is a problem for strategic intelligence.)
3. This urge can cause them danger, because enemies listen too. (This is an overlooked consequence of the urge.)
4. It doesn't make sense to spend on intelligence if we're going to undo it by bad policy and practice. (This is an overlooked logical error, or failure to prioritize.)

That's the case he aims to make; but the chapter has more in it than just his intended argument. Some preparation, anticipating the problems of reading this (or perhaps any such) case, will be worth the effort.

Four kinds of problems

There are at least four general kinds of problems revealed immediately in Dulles's chpt. 15, and in any such case being made.

Problems of Evidence

1. Text: It can be altered or elided from edition to edition. Machines and automation might help with this, but machines can also more efficiently worsen the problem, depending on who (or what) controls them. Cf. deep fakes and block chains.
2. Context: There is an enormous amount of information surrounding any event, including the assumptions of the author(s); out-of-context quotes are unavoidable. And the further back in time one goes, the harder it is to relate to anything, because the context is so unfamiliar.11
3. 'We': The question 'Who is we?' is a recurring one for the reader. For example, Dulles p. 236: "The question is whether we can improve oursecurity system, consistent with the maintenance of our free way of life and a free press, and whether, on balance, it is worthwhile to try at least to limit our security lapses and indiscretions."
4. Evidence of thoughts: We can't read his thoughts, we can read his writing (or writing attributed to him). We can't hear his thoughts, we can hear his words.
5. Evidence of events: We can't witness past events, we can witness the evidence that reaches us, from the events and from elsewhere. We can't know who killed Kennedy. We can't know whether Dulles was good, or evil, or otherwise. We can only know what reaches us, and what we manage to reach for ourselves.
6. Events and ideas: So we have history, which is not knowable, but somewhat bounded by probability (cf. Horwitch12); and we have ideas about how the world works, which can be tested, though such tests are history unless we conduct them ourselves, presently.
7. Beliefs: While the whole truth is, strictly, out of reach, what others believe to be the truth is always present, and sometimes within reach (if they are open talkers). The word 'others' includes both persons and any things that might be said to have beliefs, e.g. machines, or intelligences more strange than machines.

Problems of Trust

1. Deception and error: Every single line could be deceptive toward an end; the author might also be error-prone on the subject, or the in kind of thinking, underway
2. Reputations: For every conventional account of his life, there is an opposite. So the issue becomes trust: which sources to trust. But if we only trust based on reputation, then the destruction of someone's reputation can take down any true statements or good arguments they make (and take them from us, in a sense). This is a common strategy.13
3. Power (control) and incentives: There is endless material, old and new, about intrigue. It seems our trust can only be placed, with any shred of confidence, in persons who
   1. are in a demonstrable position of power (control) to know what they claim to know, and
   2. have a significant incentive to share that knowledge with us, or anyone.

On control, cf. Weizenbaum14 1976 p. 124-126, while talking about 'science and the compulsive [computer] programmer':

First, on belief systems:

"How… do…magical systems [of thought] remain at all a force in the minds of men?… [A]ny contradiction… is explained by…other magical notions…. [E]very new embarrassment [is] a special case to be… incorporated into [the] over-all system…. '[And contrary] evidence cannot accumulate… if each [bit…] is disregarded… for lack of [an alternative system of thought].' [quoting Michael Polanyi]"

Then, on control:

"The test of power is control. The test of absolute power is certain and absolute control."

Weizenbaum is not at all the last word on power, or on control. And such concepts will come back into view clearly when we examine natural and artificial intelligence.

On incentives, Nobel economists Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee15 argue that "[f]inancial incentives are nowhere near as powerful as they are usually assumed to be…":

"If it is not financial incentives, what else might people care about? The answer is something we know in our guts: status, dignity, social connections. Chief executives and top athletes are driven by the desire to win and be the best. The poor will walk away from social benefits if they come with being treated like a criminal. And among the middle class, the fear of losing their sense of who they are and their status in the local community can be an extraordinarily paralyzing force."16

So, in decided whether to trust a source, we have to ask: Would they know (power)? And would they tell if they did (incentives)? Secrets kept are powerful; senses of right and wrong are powerful; self-preservation is powerful; the desire to be loved, or to be feared, are powerful. What is the difference between the Pentagon Papers, the authenticity of which we do not question, or Sy Hersh's My Lai story, and other, more 'unbelievable' documents or testimonies? Why is one so universally believed and another not? Problems of 'Is' and 'Ought'

1. Good guys and bad guys: What is said, and done, by an actor (e.g. an author) does not reveal as much as we need in order to know the person. And good guys tend to have disadvantages, and associated consequences:
   1. Openness of good guys gives advantages away—therefore good (smart) good guys might be more closed off;
   2. Errors of good guys can lead to harm—therefore good guys might misleadingly appear bad;
   3. Need for 'the bloodthirsty' to sometimes preserve groups with good guys in them has ugly implications. On 'the origins of cruelty', Victor Nell17 p. 230:

      "[P]redation… is very hard work…. Hunting… 'involves a great deal of effort and prestige' [quoting Richard Lee]…Given these high costs, the predatory and hunting adaptations could not have emerged without massive conditioned reinforces that derive from the prey's terror and struggles to escape… the shedding of its blood, and its vocalizations as it is wounded and eaten, often while it is still alive…. A working hypothesis is that it is this stimulus array… that reinforces and sustains human cruelty and accounts for its high reward value."18

2. Violence: The monopoly on violence combines with the ever-present threat of violence (crime, war) that (partially) organizes a society.19Fear and security are, perhaps, preludes to all else.
3. Kinds of war: Psychological warfare, and cyberwarfare, are preludes to kinetic war:
   1. Psychological warfare: Rumors. The military historian Patrick O'Donnell20 quoting George Piday, an OSS agent, on rumors, p. 230:

      "[O]ne thing was evident, the rumors hit the spot. The Hungarian newspapers were screaming their heads off, cautioning and threatening the population not to listen or believe [them]. It is my firm belief that rumors are one of the best MO [Morale Operations] weapons: it is easy to get one started from a neutral country or by agents inside the enemy country and [it] has a very damaging effect on the army and civilian population."

   2. Cyberwarfare: Probing defenses. The physics major21 turned security expert Bruce Schneier 2016, says 'someone is learning how to take down the Internet':

      "Over the past year or two, someone has been probing the defenses of the companies that run critical pieces of the Internet. These probes take the form of precisely calibrated attacks designed to determine exactly how well these companies can defend themselves, and what would be required to take them down. We don't know who is doing this, but it feels like a large nation state. China and Russia would be my first guesses.…. It doesn't seem like something an activist, criminal, or researcher would do. Profiling core infrastructure is common practice in espionage and intelligence gathering. It's not normal for companies to do that. Furthermore, the size and scale of these probes—and especially their persistence—points to state actors. It feels like a nation's military cybercommand trying to calibrate its weaponry in the case of cyberwar. It reminds me of the U.S.'s Cold War program of flying high-altitude planes over the Soviet Union to force their air-defense systems to turn on, to map their capabilities."22

Problems of Our Capacities

We will have to hold three general pictures of Dulles in mind: good guy, bad guy, neither guy. We'll aspire to F. Scott Fitzgerald's23 definition:

"[T]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function."

He continues:

"One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the 'impossible' come true. Life was something you dominated if you were any good. Life yielded easily to intelligence and effort, or to what proportion could be mustered of both."

Recap

Dulles's argument that we shouldn't and don't need to tell so much, whatever points he goes on to make, will be made complex by the myriad problems that affect all such arguments (and all arguments): problems of evidence, trust, what is and ought to be, and our individual capacities. Such difficulties are really problems of philosophy and experience, uniquely solved (or not) by each of us, to some degrees, and unmeasured—though perhaps, with the aid of machines, measurable in some sense.

NEXT

We'll look closely at what Chapter 15 says about 'security in a free society'.

References

Duflo, E., & Banerjee, A. (2019). Economic incentives don't always do what we want them to. New York Times. 26th Oct. 2019 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/26/opinion/sunday/duflo-banerjee-economic-incentives.html Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.

Dulles, A. (1960). Letter to Mr. Charles JV Murphy from Allen W. Dulles. cia.gov. 9th Jun. 1960 https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP80B01676R003600130033-5.pdf Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.

Dulles, A. (2016). The Craft of Intelligence. Lyons Press / Rowman & Littlefield. First published 1963. This edition copyright Joan Buresch Talley, daughter of Dulles. ISBN: 978-1493018796. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1493018796 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1493018796 https://lccn.loc.gov/2016017105 Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Craft%20of%20Intelligence

Fischer, D. H. (1970). Historians Fallacies: Toward A Logic Of Historical Thought. Harper & Row. ISBN: 0061315451. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0061315451 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0061315451 https://lccn.loc.gov/69015583 Similar edition available at: https://archive.org/details/HistoriansFallaciesTowardALogicOfHistoricalThought/

Fitzgerald, F. S. (1936). The crack-up: A desolately frank document from one for whom the salt of life has lost its savor. Esquire. 1st Feb. 1936 https://classic.esquire.com/article/1936/2/1/the-crack-up Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.

Gregory, R. L. (Ed.) (2004). The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. ISBN: 0198662246. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0198662246 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0198662246 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004275127

Grose, P. (1994). Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN: 0395516072. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/gentlemanspylife00gros

Hamblin, C. L. (1970). Fallacies. Vale. First published 1970. This Vale Press edition 2004. ISBN: 0916475247. Different edition available at: https://archive.org/details/fallacies0000hamb/page/12/mode/2up.

Horwich, P. (1982). Probability and Evidence. Cambridge. First published 1982; first paperback 2011; this Cambridge Philosophy Classics edition 2016. ISBN: 978-1316507018. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1316507018 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1316507018 https://lccn.loc.gov/2015049717

Kennedy, J. F. (1961). Remarks Upon Presenting The National Security Medal To Allen W. Dulles. jfklibrary.org. 28th Nov. 1961 https://www.jfklibrary.org/asset-viewer/archives/JFKWHA/1961/JFKWHA-058-003/JFKWHA-058-003 Retrieved 1st Sep. 2020.

Nell, V. (2004). Cruelty. Article in Gregory (2004).

O'Donnell, P. K. (2004). Operatives, Spies, and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of the Men and Women of World War II's OSS. Free Press / Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 074323572X. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/operativesspiess00odon

Retraice (2020/10/25). Re6: Interface. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re6 Retrieved 26th Oct. 2020.

Schneier, B. (2016). Someone is learning how to take down the internet. schneier.com. 13th Sep. 2016 https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2016/09/someone\_is\_learning\_.html Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020. Also published at https://www.lawfareblog.com/someone-learning-how-take-down-internet

Talbot, D. (2015). The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government. Harper Perennial. ISBN: 978-0062276179. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0062276179 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0062276179 https://lccn.loc.gov/2015487367

Trento, J. J. (2001). The Secret History of the CIA. Forum / Prima. ISBN:0761525629 https://archive.org/details/secrethistoryofc0000tren/mode/2up Retrieved 8th Sep. 2020.

Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN: 0716704633. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/computerpowerhum0000weiz

1Kennedy (1961)

2Grose (1994)

3Talbot (2015)

4Trento (2001)

5Trento says Angleton cooperated with him in the writing of his book, on the condition that he not publish anything said by Angleton until ten years after his death. p. xvii

6Talbot (2015)

7Dulles (2016)

8Talbot (2015)

9Dulles (1960)

10Grose (1994)

11Cf. Fischer (1970) on the proximity of evidence to an event, p. 62: "[A]n historian must not merely provide good relevant evidence but the best relevant evidence. And the best relevant evidence, all things being equal, is evidence which is most nearly immediate to the event itself. The very best evidence, of course, is the event itself, and then the authentic remains of the event, and then direct observations, etc."

12Horwich (1982)

13Cf. Hamblin (1970) p. 41 on ad hominem: "when a case is argued not on its merits but by analysing (usually unfavourably) the motives or background of its supporters or opponents."

14Weizenbaum (1976)

15Duflo & Banerjee (2019)

16Note the parallel, when thinking about power, between physical power (defined in part by the SI unit of force) and this different use of the word force, applied to fear (which we might call a psychological phenomenon), something that has the power to 'paralyze'.

17Nell (2004)

18We can wonder about a similar mechanism behind Angleton's 'liars'.

19This choice of words resembles a line from Oliver Stone's movie JFK. There is a complicated and uncertain trail of sources and repeaters who might have been responsible for the idea, in its more strict form, that "The organizing principle of any society is for war", including the (likely) satire piece, The Report From Iron Mountain. We have no special information on any of this.

20O'Donnell (2004)

21We said during the livestream, incorrectly, that Schneier was once a physicist. This correction will be mentioned in Retraice (2020/10/25).

22Schneier (2016)

23Fitzgerald (1936)

For proper formatting (bold, italics, etc.) and graphics (where applicable) see the PDF version. Copyright: 2020 Retraice, Inc.

Ma1: Intro to Margin; QC'ing Retraice

On Margin, Retraice, Inc., and what we're working on today.

Air date: Monday, 19th Oct. 2020, 10:05 AM Pacific/US.

Topic: Intro to Margin

Margin is probably not for you. But if you want:

∙ unprepared remarks by a currently unprofitable business, and ∙ inescapably auto-biographical content,

...maybe it is.

Owners do everything at Retraice, Inc., because employees cost money.

Purpose of Margin

The purpose of Margin is to help good guys start businesses, and to make money by selling that help. (Bad guys work differently than good guys, e.g. in the context of taxes or laws.)

Unhappy with Crap

Being unhappy with the product is ok, and being happy with crap is not good business.

Margin's Value

We're creating value in starting Retraice, Inc., and Margin is an attempt to capture it by selling it.

We would've paid for this podcast, had it existed.

We're doing this to help your business, not to help you compete with our business.

Business means paying and getting paid. If you're not paying, you're the product.1

We are experts on the subject of our business, if not on any other subject.

So Margin will be necessarily autobiographical, and personal, in a way that Retraice isn't and shouldn't be.

Profit

Always ask, 'Yea, but are they making money at this yet?'

Many big businesses are not profitable (for long periods of time, or perhaps even to this day). Think Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, WeWork. Not being profitable goes in and out of style.

Profit must be measured using time. And profit is one kind of margin—there are others.

Business commonalities

There are many things that all businesses have in common. For example, the three accounting reports: income statement (profit-and-loss), balance sheet, and cash flow statement.

Fast and slow movers

What matters is not absolute speed, but the margin between the advantage of fast and the advantage of slow. It's a trade-off.2

Know your customer

We think you're more likely to be listening before being in the throes of business, than during or after it. But that's a guess (cf. below on hypotheses).

Domains were bought.

Paywalls, doors, windows, exteriors

If you're getting it for free, it's not the product. You might be the product, or something else might be going on.

We should call them 'paydoors', and distinguish between the presence and absence of windows. Consider: WSJ, FT, The Information, and the 'ten free articles' model.

In business, you're not prepared

It's like sports: on day one, you don't know where to stand.

Things start out bad

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."3

Today at Retraice, Inc.

We're moving slowly, partly because of where we are as individuals (approaching middle age), partly for other reasons.

The Social Network is a good cultural reference point—and fiction.

If you're a 'kid'

You can start a business, but not the business you can start with more time to think about it.

Again, it's a trade-off: the advantage is in the margin.

Today—QCing segments and workflow

We've done a first week of Retraice, but the segments can be helped by adding features (better show notes, functionality in the podcast players); and our workflow has lots of room for improvement.

Things are trying to be crap

—Ira Glass.4

Measures toward better

To make our product good, we need lots of measures to avoid mistakes and wasted time. Example: FTP vs manual uploads.

Our workflow has to be as Toyota-like as possible. Otherwise: waste.5

Business is not about ideals

Nothing is awesome out of the gate, the way you imagined it. But work can make it awesome.

Experiencing your business

We go crazy waiting for the next episode, but we have to do what makes sense for the business, what adds value to what we're selling.

Hypotheses

But every product, service and business is a hypothesis.6

References

Glass, I. (2009). Ira glass on storytelling 2. Youtube. Uploaded 11th Jul. 2009. Date of recording unknown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx2cI-2FJRs Retrieved 19th Oct. 2020.

Liker, J. (2004). The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. McGraw-Hill. ISBN: 0071392319. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0071392319 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0071392319 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004300007

Martin, R. (2018). Clean Architecture: A Craftsman's Guide to Software Structure and Design. Prentice Hall. ISBN: 978-0134494166. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0134494166 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0134494166 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017945537

Norris, D. (2014). The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch. Dan Norris. ISBN: 978-1502472397. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1502472397 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1502472397

Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Currency / Crown / Penguin Random House. ISBN: 978-0307887894. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0307887894 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0307887894 https://lccn.loc.gov/2011012100

Serra, R., & Schoolman, C. F. (1973). Richard Serra "Television Delivers People" (1973). Youtube. Uploaded 2nd Feb. 2011. Date of recording 30th Mar. 1973. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvZYwaQlJsg Retrieved 19th Oct. 2020. See also: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/07/16/product/.

Index Amazon, 1

FT (Financial Times), 1

SpaceX, 1

Tesla, 1 The Information, 1 The Social Network (movie), 2

WeWork, 1 WSJ (Wall Street Journal), 1

1Serra & Schoolman (1973) at 0:54.

2Cf. Martin (2018) p. xviii: "The only way to go fast, is to go well."

3Norris (2014) p. 154, attributed to Reid Hoffman.

4Glass (2009) at minute 1:55.

5On waste, see Liker (2004) p. 27 ff. and Ries (2011) pp. 273-274.

6Ries (2011) p. 56 ff., and Martin (2018) p. xviii: "Architecture is a hypothesis, that needs to be proven by implementation and measurement." Attributed to Tom Gilb.

For proper formatting (bold, italics, etc.) and graphics (where applicable) see the PDF version. Copyright: 2020 Retraice, Inc.

Re1: Three Kinds of Intelligence On natural, artificial and strategic intelligence; intellectual hazards; secrets.

Air date: Monday, 7th Sep. 2020, 3pm Pacific/US.

Russell on Knowledge

Philosopher Russell1, 1948, on human knowledge, p. 526 ff.:

"The forming of inferential habits which lead to true expectations is part of the adaptation to the environment upon which biological survival depends…. [S]uch inadequacies as we have seemed to find in empiricism have been discovered by strict adherence to a doctrine by which empiricist philosophy has been inspired: that all human knowledge is uncertain, inexact, and partial. To this doctrine we have not found any limitation whatever."

Retraice

Retraice is a private company started by individuals who want to do a certain kind of work. Retraice has no other financial backers; it's as independent as a new company can be. The kind of work we do is a response to the question, 'What's going on out there?', and the kind of thing we sell is what you're hearing right now.

Today: our point of departure (intelligence) and the immediate presence of danger that follows.

Three Kinds of Intelligence

If we want to know what's going on out there, a good point of departure is to look at the meaning of the word 'intelligence'. For our purposes, we can distinguish at least three ways the word is used:

1. natural intelligence: what animals, humans and groups of humans have, or what they do, that makes them different from their surroundings.
2. artificial intelligence: whatever it is that makes certain machines and computers seem to know things, and to act like they know things.
3. strategic intelligence (we're calling it): espionage, counterespionage and covert action (e.g. two competing groups keeping and stealing each others' secrets). We can justify using the word 'strategic' by pointing out that the precursor to the America CIA, built during WWII by William Donovan, was called the Office of Strategic Services, an organization that conducted espionage, counterespionage, and covert action.2 We'll reluctantly adopt the term 'strategic intelligence' to cover all these phenomena, and to distinguish them from 'natural' and 'artificial' intelligence. It is important to note that strategic intelligence is not the exclusive domain of government entities.

Each kind of intelligence is powerful, and can make use of, if not subordinate, the other two. But they seem, at a glance, to be very different from each other:

Natural intelligence:

Nueroscientist Michael O'Shea3 2005 on neurons, pp. 21-22:

"[T]he difference between insect and human neurons does not at all betray the gulf between insect and human intelligence…. Like it or not, the astonishing conclusion from comparative studies is that the evolution of our brains, capable of such extraordinary feats, did not require the evolution of 'super neurons'. The basic cellular components of mental functions are pretty much the same in all animals, the humble and the human."4

Artificial intelligence:

Philosophers Paul and Patricia Churchland5 2000 in their von Neumann6 foreward, on electronic brains, pp. xlii-xliii:

"[A] synapse-for-synapse electronic duplicate of your biological brain could enjoy, in only thirty seconds, a train of thought that would consume a year's time as conducted by the components within your own skull. And that same machine could enjoy, in half an hour, an intellectual life that would consume your entire three-score-and-ten years, if conducted within your own brain. Intelligence, clearly, has an interesting future."

Strategic intelligence:

Historian Niall Ferguson7 2017 on the 19th century Rothschild banking family, p. 140 ff:

"[T]he Rothschilds [had] an exceptional intelligence and communications network…. Major political events as well as confidential information could be relayed from one city to another well ahead of official channels…. [T]hey soon developed a reach that extended far beyond their original European bases…. Nor was this network of formal influence all; of comparable importance was the larger but looser network of links to other banks, as well as to stockbrokers, central banks and financial newspapers."

Hazards: secrets, minefields, blind spots

So far so good. But we might detect an uneasy transition when talking about strategic intelligence, entry into a gray area, a danger zone.

Outsiders who speculate about likely secrets, such as those that are known to be kept by intelligence organizations, and unlikely secrets, such as those claimed by some so-called conspiracy theorists, are on dangerous ground. The subject of espionage, and terms such as "UFO" or "ESP" or even "conspiracy", are intellectual and therefore reputational mine fields—and rightly so. If a person's thinking is so loose and excitable that he or she will believe almost anything, it's obvious that problems will soon follow. Even physical safety might eventually become hard for such a person to achieve.

But it is always possible that a given unlikely secret is really being kept (think of the Manhattan Project); and to dismiss them all would be to accept large attentional blind spots.

Tests and reminders

Another reason to take the hazardous subjects seriously is that they provide a constant test of one's mettle, of whether one's methods of thinking have become too lax, too weak, too mushy.

With these things in mind, let's get some reminders about careful thinking—and thinking carelessly.

Knowledge

What is knowledge? Russell8 1948, p. 516:

" 'Knowledge', as we have seen, is a term incapable of precision. All knowledge is in some degree doubtful, and we cannot say what degree of doubtfulness makes it cease to be knowledge, any more than we can say how much loss of hair makes a man bald."

Evidence

What is evidence? Paul Horwich9 1982, p. 1:

"[It's an] obvious yet frequently neglected fact that belief is not an all-or-nothing matter, but is susceptible to varying degrees of intensity…. [Further,] diverse elements of scientific method may be unified and justified by means of the concept of subjective probability."

Fallacies

What is a fallacy? Charles Hamblin10 1970, p. 224:

"A fallacy is a fallacious argument…. [It] may be made up even out of true statements, if they occur in proper form; that is, if they constitute or express an argument that seems valid but is not."

Anthony Weston11 2000 on the two major kinds of fallacy, p. 71 ff.:

"One of our most common temptations is to draw conclusions from too little evidence…, generalizing from incomplete information…. A second common fallacy is overlooking alternatives…. Don't rush; there are usually many more alternative explanations than you think."

Secrets—Likely and Unlikely

We've offset some of the fog of strategic intelligence with reminders about how to think clearly. But what sorts of real things might that fog be hiding?

The price of information

Astronomer turned computer scientist Vallee12 1979 on counterespionage and the price of information, p. 66 ff.:

"Now, the UFO phenomenon could be controlled by alien beings. 'If it is,' added ['Major Murphy'], 'then the study of it doesn't belong in science. It belongs in Intelligence.' Meaning counterespionage…. 'You are a scientist. In science there is no concept of the "price" of information. Suppose I gave you 95 per cent of the data concerning a phenomenon. You're happy because you know 95 per cent of the phenomenon. Not so in Intelligence. If I get 95 per cent of the data, I know this is the "cheap" part of the information. I still need the other 5 per cent, but I will have to pay a much higher price to get it.' "13

Deception

Intelligence analyst Cynthia Grabo14 2002 on deception, p. 119:

"Confidence [in our] judgment of the adversary's intentions fades as one contemplates the chilling prospect of deception. There is no single facet of the warning problem so unpredictable, and yet so potentially damaging in its effect, as deception…. [T]he most brilliant analysis may founder in the face of deception and … the most expert and experienced among us on occasion may be as vulnerable as the novice."

Intelligence in warfare

Sun-tzu 5th-3rd century BC (Ames15 1993) on natural intelligence, strategic intelligence, and war, p. 171:

"[O]nly those farsighted rulers and their superior commanders who can get the most intelligent people as their spies are destined to accomplish great things. Intelligence is of the essence in warfare—it is what the armies depend upon in their every move."

Next

We'll start by looking more closely at strategic intelligence, and the assessment of an undisputed authority on the subject, DCI Allen Dulles, who, in the early 1960s, wrote (or perhaps helped to write) a book.

References

Ames, R. T. (1993). Sun Tzu: The Art of Warfare. Random House. ISBN: 034536239X. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=034536239X https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+034536239X https://lccn.loc.gov/92052662

Churchland, P., & Churchland, P. (2000). Foreward to the second edition of Von Neumann's The Computer and the Brain. In von Neumann (1958).

Ferguson, N. (2017). The Square and the Tower: Networks and Power, from the Freemasons to Facebook. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0735222915. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0735222915 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0735222915 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018418429

Grabo, C. M. (2002). Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning. Center for Strategic Intelligence Research. ISBN: 0965619567 https://www.ni-u.edu/ni_press/pdf/Anticipating_Surprise_Analysis.pdf Retrieved 7th Sep. 2020.

Hamblin, C. L. (1970). Fallacies. Vale. First published 1970. This Vale Press edition 2004. ISBN: 0916475247. Different edition available at: https://archive.org/details/fallacies0000hamb/page/12/mode/2up.

Horwich, P. (1982). Probability and Evidence. Cambridge. First published 1982; first paperback 2011; this Cambridge Philosophy Classics edition 2016. ISBN: 978-1316507018. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1316507018 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1316507018 https://lccn.loc.gov/2015049717

Lowenthal, M. M. (2020). Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. CQ Press / SAGE Publications, 8th ed. ISBN: 978-1544358345. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1544358345 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1544358345 https://lccn.loc.gov/2019027254 Other editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=Intelligence%3A%20From%20Secrets%20to%20Policy

O'Shea, M. (2005). The Brain: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford. ISBN: 978-0192853929. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0192853929 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0192853929 https://lccn.loc.gov/2005027741

Russell, B. (1921). The Analysis of Mind. Macmillan. No ISBN. https://books.google.com/books?id=4dYLAAAAIAAJ Retrieved 6th May. 2019.

Russell, B. (1992). Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits. Routledge. First published in 1948. This edition 1992. ISBN: 0415083028. Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=Human%20Knowledge%3A%20Its%20Scope%20and%20Limits

Vallee, J. (1979). Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults. And/Or Press. ISBN: 0915904381. A different edition available at: https://archive.org/details/MessengersOfDeceptionUFOContactsAndCultsJacquesValle1979/mode/2up

von Neumann, J. (1958). The Computer and the Brain. Yale, 3rd ed. First published 1958. Third edition 2012. ISBN: 978-0300181111. Searches for this edition: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0300181111 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0300181111 https://lccn.loc.gov/2011943281 Different editions available at: https://archive.org/search.php?query=The%20Computer%20and%20the%20Brain

Weston, A. (2000). A Rulebook for Arguments. Hackett, 3rd ed. ISBN: 0872205525. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/rulebookforargum00west_3

1Russell (1992)

2Lowenthal (2020) pp. 20-21

3O'Shea (2005)

4Cf. Russell (1921), p. 41: "[F]rom the protozoa to man there is nowhere a very wide gap either in structure or in behaviour. From this fact it is a highly probable inference that there is also nowhere a very wide mental gap."

5Churchland & Churchland (2000)

6von Neumann (1958)

7Ferguson (2017)

8Russell (1992)

9Horwich (1982)

10Hamblin (1970)

11Weston (2000)

12Vallee (1979)

13Vallee does not challenge the idea that there is no concept of the price of information in science, but we can assume that many scientists (e.g. those seeking to do experiments in the Arctic or on Mars, or those filling out endless grant proposals) would disagree. The question, then, is whether there's a difference between information that is expensive by accident (being on Mars) and information that is expensive on purpose (being camouflaged).

14Grabo (2002)

15Ames (1993)