{"id":367,"date":"2016-12-10T15:59:28","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T15:59:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=367"},"modified":"2016-12-10T15:59:28","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T15:59:28","slug":"trump-and-intelligence-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/?p=367","title":{"rendered":"Trump and Intelligence Community"},"content":{"rendered":"

Does the President need to know what is true or what everyone thinks is true? \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

This question that did not first arise with Donald Trump’s election. \u00a0It is a function of the growing power of social media. \u00a0Political leaders have to make decisions and lead the American people. Facts may not be the most critical element. \u00a0Yet it still is important for leaders to know what they are (to the extent possible). \u00a0The intelligence community may have to rethink its service to their clients to include assessments on both–i.e what is true (as best they can tell) and<\/strong> what everyone thinks is true.<\/p>\n

Consider the circumstance during 2011 when US policy decisions were being made about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Tahrir Square was filled with thousands of protestors. \u00a0In retrospect, the images of the opposition and social media trends were out of sync with the “reality” of views among the broader population. \u00a0Glibly stated, Mubarak was trending down on twitter so we dumped him?<\/p>\n

This is simply meant to illustrate the need to know and evaluate both what is true and what everyone thinks is true.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Then next pernicious question is more difficult. \u00a0Intelligence organizations not other collect and analyze data, but have the ability when directed by the President, to shape events through covert action. \u00a0If the intelligence can collect and analyze what populations think is true, then can they shape that as well? \u00a0This is nothing new. \u00a0Fake news stories are not new. \u00a0They just spread faster now. \u00a0The cold war history is full of efforts to shape thinking on both sides. \u00a0One simple example. \u00a0Stories were promoted by Russia that the US created and spread AIDS in Africa–stories that are still widely believed in the region.<\/p>\n

Social media offer an amped up opportunity to do the same things today. \u00a0Russian services have a long history in covert actions and it would be surprising that they would not use this to their advantage. \u00a0It seems they have tried to undermine the American image of its election process by hacking.<\/p>\n

What will the US do in response? \u00a0There will be some big policy issues<\/strong> for the next administration on how to use the intelligence community in a world more defined by image than so-call reality. \u00a0The world the President needs to understand is not the simple factual, physical world that intelligence analysts have typically assumed. \u00a0Their objective reality, while pure and important, is not all the President needs to know or deal with.<\/p>\n

And, Donald Trump is not wrong to be skeptical about the products of the intelligence community. \u00a0They make mistakes. \u00a0The Iraq WMD assessments were wrong. Political leaders made decisions based on broadly held and broadly wrong assessments of reality. It was, ironically a case where what “everyone” (or most people) thought was true was not true, but the intelligence community did know there was a difference.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Does the President need to know what is true or what everyone thinks is true? \u00a0 This question that did not first arise with Donald Trump’s election. \u00a0It is a function of the growing power of social media. \u00a0Political leaders … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,70,77,74],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":368,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367\/revisions\/368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.charlesduelfer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}