Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration and DoD Chief Information Officer John G. Grimes signed the “DoD Information Sharing Strategy” today and established a new information sharing vision for the Department of Defense: “Delivering the power of information to ensure mission success through an agile enterprise with freedom of maneuverability across the information environment.”

The DoD Information Sharing Strategy will be supplemented with additional integrated guidance to synchronize the many information sharing activities, initiatives and investments supported by the DoD.

It seeks to guide the Department’s exchange of information with ... tribal ... organizations.

New DoD Strategy Outlined For Information Sharing

Potentially of interest.

With the arrival of digital technology, we’ve become a nation “of multitaskers, snackers and samplers,” says Jonathan Miller. A longtime player in the media industry, Miller perceives two distinct trends emerging: the fragmentation of consumption, due to “an incredible explosion of choice,” and the consolidation of money and power in the business.

If consumers like it “they choose to pass it on to their friends ... you can’t spend your way there.”

Last week, Miller spoke at a Milken Institute conference on "shaping the future", during a panel session entitled, Predicting the Future in a Fractured Media World.

Emerging Technologies and Trends in Online Entertainment and Business

The death is not al-Masri. What makes this guy a 'figure' is that he was involved in "hiding" and "moving" Jill Carroll.

General Caldwell said there may not be any Mr. Baghdadi.

Competing claims seemed to arise from repeated recoveries of the same body.

I am oddly compelled to quote Shakespeare:

Enter ABRAHAM and BALTHASAR.

ABRAHAM
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

SAMPSON
I do bite my thumb, sir.

ABRAHAM
Do you bite your thumb at us, sir?

SAMPSON
[Aside to GREGORY] Is the law of our side, if I say ay?

GREGORY
No.

SAMPSON
No, sir, I do not bite my thumb at you, sir, but I bite my thumb, sir.

I would also accept references to Monty Python and Reno 911!.

Qaeda Figure in Iraq Is Killed, US Military Says

Let me turn first to the Catholic side of the house. We'll come back later to the Fine Gael side of the house; eventually we'll also get to the Fianna Fail side of the house.

To lure customers to higher-speed services -- and keep them in the AOL tent -- the company wants to offer splashy content such as movies and music. But the Time Warner side of the house worries that releasing its valuable assets online could open the door to unauthorized use, diluting their value.

"We're on both sides of this," acknowledges Joe Cantwell, AOL Time Warner's vice president for broadband affiliate marketing. But Paul Kim, an analyst at Kaufman Brothers, a New York investment bank, says the company is straddling the fence while it waits for the murky issue of digital piracy to clear up.

Over on the hip-hop side of the house, every third artist is starting his own label. That's smart business.

I’ve worked with every big name in Toronto, from Anabolic Frolic, Silver1, Frisky, D-Minus, and Tyco, to Capital J, Rez-Q and Doublecross on the jungle side of the house.

The seven regional RBOCs had a need for design and development capability, so a goodly portion of the Bell Labs staff moved from the AT&T side of the house to the operating company side of the house, and became known as Bell Communications Research (Bellcore). That didn’t work too well.

I'm new to the web host and ISP side of the house. Got any advice? "Memorize polite phrases when a client blames you for their problems and yet you have to fix it anyway."

Meanwhile, Black Rod and Garter have moved to the spiritual side of the House ...

"Having our one aggressor squadron brings stability and consistency to the red air side of the house," said Capt. Ron Strobach, the 353rd CTS team chief.

"She has seen things on the enlisted side of the house that she hopes to improve."

One of the reasons some BI pros seem leery of PM is that it mostly originated on the financial side of the house.

"Men, on the other hand, take care of the technology side of the house."

"As the digital era continues to alter the industry, we’re seeing the walls between previously disparate functions beginning to crumble as the strengths of IT are increasingly relevant and needed in the creative side of the house," said Gabriele Di Piazza, managing director, media and entertainment, communications sector, Microsoft.

Computerised newsroom systems greatly improved the situation, at least for the text side of the house.

Just like <a href="http://www.itbusinessedge.com/b</blockquote></blockquote></blockquote>

By rushing into Iraq instead of finishing off the hunt for Osama bin Laden, Washington has unwittingly helped its enemies: al Qaeda has more bases, more partners, and more followers today than it did on the eve of 9/11. Now the group is working to set up networks in the Middle East and Africa -- and may even try to lure the United States into a war with Iran. Washington must focus on attacking al Qaeda's leaders and ideas and altering the local conditions in which they thrive.

Al Qaeda Strikes Back

This report extends research on using scenarios for strategic planning, with experiments in what can be called massive scenario generation (MSG), a computationally intensive technique that seeks to combine virtues of human- and model-based exploration of “the possibility space.”

Enhancing Strategic Planning with Massive Scenario Generation

To assist in moving intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) planning and execution forward from a fixed target and deliberate planning focus to one centered on emerging targets, the authors propose enhancing the collection management process with a strategies-to-tasks and utility framework. By linking collection targets to operational tasks, objectives, and top-level commander’s guidance with relative utilities, planning for the daily intelligence collections and real-time retasking for ad hoc ISR targets could be enhanced. When current tools are modified to provide this information, planners will be able to link collection targets to top-level objectives for better decisionmaking and optimization of low-density, high-demand collection assets, and intelligence officers will be better able to deal with time-sensitive, emerging targets by rapidly comparing the value of collecting an ad hoc collection with the value of collecting opportunities already planned.

A Strategies-to-Tasks Framework for Planning and Executing ISR Operations

Does the United States need a new information service to wage an information war?

Recruiting is not merely meant to fill operational needs. It is an end in itself: It aims at creating a new mindset.

... Self-radicalization begins the day that an individual seeks out jihadist websites.

... The message from the global jihad is aimed directly at the
individual.

Submission is voluntary. ... A component of our counter-recruiting strategy must be to always offer a safe way back from the edge.

... the US Army is reportedly preparing an assault on jihadist websites.

Testimony by Brian Michael Jenkins, presented before the House Homeland Security Committee, Subcommittee on Intelligence, Information Sharing and Terrorism Risk Assessment on April 5, 2007.

See also, Unconquerable Nation: Knowing Our Enemy, Strengthening Ourselves:

Brian Michael Jenkins presents a clear-sighted and sobering analysis of where we are today in the struggle against terrorism. Jenkins, an internationally renowned authority on terrorism, distills the jihadists’ operational code and suggests how they might assess their situation very differently from how we might do so. He distills the jihadists’ operational code and outlines a ferociously pragmatic but principled approach that goes beyond attacking terrorist networks and operational capabilities to defeating their entire missionary enterprise by deterring recruitment and encouraging defections.

Jenkins believes that homeland security should move beyond gates and guards and become the impetus for rebuilding America’s decaying infrastructure. Americans need to adopt a realistic approach to risk and get a lot smarter about security. We need to build upon the nation’s traditions of determination and self-reliance. Above all, we need to preserve our commitment to American values. Preserving these values is no mere matter of morality, he argues; it is a strategic imperative.

Jenkins brings to his prose the driving rhythm, no-nonsense language, passion, and energy of a warrior, and he brings to his analysis the steady, informed perspective of a historian. Unconquerable Nation is a rallying cry from a man who has dedicated his life to defending America, who has been dismayed by the propagation of homegrown terror, yet who refuses to surrender his faith in what he believes are America’s finest, unconquerable values.

How America deals with the terrorist threat is one of the major challenges of this century. Jenkins points the way forward.

Building an Army of Believers: Jihadist Radicalization and Recruitment

Experts think this is a nonevent, regardless of its truth.

The leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, was killed Tuesday in an internal fight between insurgents north of Baghdad, the Interior Ministry spokesman said.

See also:

"Clearly taking a major terrorist off the battlefield is an important thing and if we can confirm it, if this did happen, without question it would be a significant and positive development," Crocker said. "That said, I would not expect it to in any way bring to end Al Qaeda's activities in Iraq. We saw the organization adjust to the death of Zarqawi.

"My sense is that it is a now a very decentralized terrorist effort, so while removing its current head would be a good and positive thing, I think we have to expect that we will need to continue dealing with further Al Qaeda attacks."

Do you know, or are you guessing?

Asked again to confirm Masri was dead, Mr Bolani said: “If he has not been killed today, he will be killed tomorrow.”

I get the impression that by "today" and "tomorrow", he did not mean specifically "May 1, 2007" and "May 2, 2007".

Leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq reportedly killed

Negative thinking may be exactly what we need.

I previously recommended Gawande's new book.

The Power of Negative Thinking | ATUL GAWANDE | NYT