To counter bin Ladenism, the military is planning a two-stage war. The first is being fought in open battles in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere and looks a lot like the kind of war most Americans assumed we'd wage on al Qaeda and terror-sponsoring states after the Sept. 11 attacks. The second stage is what senior military planners -- including Mr. Rumsfeld -- call "the Long War." It involves countering one set of ideas with another.

Enter here the business plan for General Memetics.

Lisa: They can't seriously expect us to swallow that tripe.
Skinner: Now as a special treat courtesy of our friends at the Meat Council, please help yourself to this tripe.

Hmmm, tripe.

Getting back to that war thing ...

Djibouti is a success story that hasn't made it into the news because U.S. soldiers aren't getting killed there.

This is consistent with the story that Robert Kaplan tells.

They're not much, but here are two recent Washington Post stories on "The Long War":

Rumsfeld Offers Strategies for Current War
Ability to Wage 'Long War' Is Key To Pentagon Plan

Did you notice the not-so-subliminal message back there?)

The Western Front

This is a rather unorthodox (but welcome) way for the military to do business. Basically, you pay Danny Hillis lots of money to bring dazzlingly brilliant minds to bear on your problems.

Applied Minds, Glendale, Calif., and Raytheon Co., Tucson, Ariz., was awarded on 1 December 2005, a $30,000,000 indefinite delivery/ indefinite quantity contract to establish Innovation-Nodes (iNodes), which will be small, flexible organizations that execute Rapid Reaction Innovation solution efforts or tasks. iNodes assemble teams from a network of experts, supply teams with the infrastructure and enablers that allow them to accomplish their jobs quickly and effectively, and quickly innovate, demonstrate, and deliver prototypical hardware, software, integrated systems solutions, or services to solve urgent operator or other user problems. The Air Force can issue delivery orders totaling up to the maximum indicated above, although actual requirements may necessitate less than this amount. At this time, $100,000 has been obligated. This work will be complete by November 2008. Solicitation began September 2005 and negotiations were complete November 2005. The Air Force Research Laboratory, Kirtland Air Force Base, NM, is the contracting activity.

See this presentation.

DoD Buys iNodes from Danny Hillis' Applied Minds

From the Report:

Achieving Net-Centricity

The Vision Thing: Harnessing the power of information connectivity defines net-centricity. By enabling critical relationships between organizations and people, the Department is able to accelerate the speed of business processes, operational decision-making and subsequent actions.

Achieving the full potential of net-centricity requires viewing information as an enterprise asset to be shared and as a weapon system to be protected.

The foundation for net-centric operations is the Global Information Grid (GIG), a globally interconnected, end-to-end set of trusted and protected information networks. The GIG optimizes the processes for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, managing and sharing information within the Department and with other partners.

What To Do: To move closer toward this vision and build on progress to date, the Department will:

* Strengthen its data strategy -- including the development of common data lexicons, standards, organization, and categorization -- to improve information sharing and information assurance, and extend it across a multitude of domains, ranging from intelligence to personnel systems.

* Increase investment to implement the GIG, defend and protect information and networks and focus research and development on its protection.

* Develop an information-sharing strategy to guide operations with Federal, state, local and coalition partners.

* Shift from Military Service-focused efforts toward a more Department-wide enterprise net-centric approach, including expansion of the Distributed Common Ground System.

* Restructure the Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program to "spiral develop" its capabilities and re-phase launches accordingly, and add resources to increase space-based relay capacity.

* Develop an integrated approach to ensure alignment in the phasing and pacing of terminals and space vehicles.

* Develop a new bandwidth requirements model to determine optimal network size and capability to best support operational forces.

Quadrennial Defense Review 2006 - Report

This book presents an assessment of the importance and content of network science as it exists today. The book also provides an analysis of how the Army might advance the transformation to network-centric operations by supporting fundamental research on networks.

[...]

Research on networks is fragmented. It is supported in disciplinary stovepipes that encourage jargon, parochial terms, and local values. Fundamentals of network structure, dynamics, and simulation are being rediscovered by different groups that emphasize uniqueness rather than a common intellectual heritage and methodologies. The fragmentation is aggravated by funding-agency policies and procedures that reward narrow disciplinary interests rather than results that are demonstrably usable for addressing national problems. Nor is funding focused in areas with widespread application, such as the development of predictive models of social networks, which could directly impact vital national problems, from secondary education in urban slums to military command and control.

Although researchers, especially the best researchers, are reacting rationally to the incentives placed before them, these incentives reflect poorly the national interests of the United States in a globally connected world.

Network Science | National Academies Press

This report builds on a series of roundtable discussions held by CSIS. It provides a basic description of how data-mining techniques work, how they can be used for counterterrorism, and their privacy implications. It also identifies where informed policy development is necessary to address privacy and other issues.

Data Mining and Data Analysis for Counterterrorism [PDF]

The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) is seeking information on potential sources with the capabilities and facilities to provide cost effective turn key cradle-to-grave design, engineering, acquisition, sustainment logistics, and production for vehicle, manpack and aircraft variants of the Family of Loudspeakers II (FOL2).

FOL2 will be the second generation loudspeaker for use on the battlefield by tactical PSYOP teams to broadcast messages to target audiences. The current vehicle system is a 1990's design which utilized multiple components connected by numerous cables. The future systems will be required to provide additional volume and clarity while utilizing a compact wireless design and minimal cables. Commonality in the FOL family allowed the vehicle system to be utilized on watercraft with few changes. Manpack versions currently utilize a two-horn system, interface box and multiple cables in a design which is not very flexible. The future systems will be required to be configurable in multiple army common truck systems. The current aircraft variant is used on the UH-60A/L. The next generation will be utilized in additional rotary wing aircraft. The next generation will field several other variants that will be developed for emerging capabilities such as unmanned vehicles and loudspeakers which can be scattered from the air.

You know where to go.

Family of Loudspeakers II

If perhaps you once dismissed the business plan for General Memetics Corporation, consider briefly the $300 million value of the contracts discussed in this article.

The Pentagon awarded three contracts this week, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years, to companies it hopes will inject more creativity into its psychological operations efforts to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military.

"We would like to be able to use cutting-edge types of media," said Col. James A. Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, a part of Tampa-based US Special Operations Command. "If you want to influence someone, you have to touch their emotions."

"What's changing is the realization that in this so-called war on terrorism, this might be the thing that wins the whole thing for you. This gets to the importance of the war of ideas."

Pentagon Funds Diplomacy Effort

Did you ever wonder where they go after they get out?

In a computer-crammed space at Savage Beast Technologies, divergent melodies seep softly from headphones worn by young men and women who listen to music with the intensity of submarine sonar operators.

Their job is to discern and define attributes in tunes by artists as diverse as teen diva Hilary Duff and jazz legend Miles Davis.

The listeners classify hundreds of characteristics about each song, including beat, melody, lyrics, tonal palette and dynamics, then plug the data into a music recommendation engine -- software designed to find songs that share similar traits.

Musical Tastes Get High-Tech Analysis

The answers are technical realities that must be considered in any policy analysis of space weapons and anti-satellite weapons. Unless debate about these issues is grounded in an accurate understanding of the technical facts underlying space operations, the discussion and policy prescriptions will be irrelevant or, worse, counterproductive.

The Physics of Space Security

The new Presidential directive, if approved, would constitute a historic change in policy as radical as President Bush's doctrine of pre-emptive war.

"It is it is our destiny," said General Lord.

Immaculate Destruction