Ok so what's the INR take on China-Taiwan?
The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
11–20 of 85 posts
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#12What a curious article... I wonder who the intended audience is.
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#133 things right over 70 years, that's.... quite a track record
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#14> The most important factor in building this culture, every veteran I spoke to stated, is the unusual way that INR selects and uses analysts. The CIA and DIA tend to favor generalists. Analysts rotate between roles every two to three years, often changing countries or even regions. At INR, the average analyst has been on their topic for over 14 years. “At most of the other intel organizations you rotate out of your portfolio every two to three years,” McCarthy says. “At INR, they die at their desks.”
That seems like lesson MBAs should take to heart.
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#15I'm guessing the purpose of the CIA is to produce information which leads to political actions that yield financial benefits for the country while the purpose of INR is to produce accurate information without concern for financial benefits. The fact that the government thought it needed 2 organizations to do what is supposed to be the same job shows that neither organization is doing the full job properly. It's almos…
That's a reasonable cynical take on it. Another is that different organizations have different biases, incentives, historical perspectives, and so forth. So it's reasonable to consider different points of view.
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#16Somewhat meta-ish question about the Vietnam War for someone who has perhaps studied the topic more: Did the US "lose" the war or did they simply stop 'bothering' with it?
In 1973 there was the Paris Peace Accords that crystallized (Communist) North Vietnam and (non-communist) South Vietnam, just like the two Koreas. Then in 1975 the north invaded:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975_spring_offensive
and the US (military) basically did nothing to help the south.
Kind of like Afghanistan more recently: as long as the US had an interest in it the Taliban could not "win", but the US simply concluded that they didn't want to be involved any longer and pulled out.
If the US had continued support and presence, like with South Korea, would it have been possible that South Vietnam would still be around? Bothering with (South) Vietnam wasn't of strategic importance (?) any more, and so the US pulled out and let the chips fall where they may. If the US had continued to care about Vietnam strategically, could they have continued to make tactical (military) decisions to support the south?
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#17Getting iraq not having WMD right probably isn't that hard.
Allegedly canadian intelligence knew this, but had it all marked "for canadian eyes only" because they were worried about consequences if usa found out they weren't on board. I highly doubt canada has super-spies, the problem is usa really wanted there to be WMDs, so they came to the conclusion there was.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-intelligence-asses...
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#18What I gathered from this is that not the INR is full of oracles or people who have the magic skill to foresee the future but rather really smart people who based on past experience can see patterns of behavior and infer future state from that. Then, they are so small they are required to innovate and iterate on intelligence.
For sources with similar protocols/track record that you can actually see the work of, I'd look at people like Sarah Kendzior and Cory Doctorow. One focuses on how corruption and autocratic rule become entrenched in a society, the other on tech issues, with an emphasis on corporate malfeasance wrt user freedom and safety. Both are a bit melodramatic, but they also both emphasize that their predictions are based in, as you say, inferring future state from patterns of past behavior.
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#19It's not that nobody listens, it's that the information disseminated via the media is not what's correct, but rather what is politically expedient at the moment. Case in point: where in the article is the INR's brilliant prediction about the future of the war in Ukraine?
>Case in point: where in the article is the INR's brilliant prediction about the future of the war in Ukraine? Maybe the INR doesn't reveal predictions of that nature to the public or media?
Presumably that's an important part of being able to get it right.
Re: The obscure intelligence bureau that got Vietnam, Iraq, and Ukraine right
#20Iraq was pretty easy to call. I got it largely right as a high schooler at the time it started. One thing that threw me was that we stayed so damn long, which put my “cross-border islamist group destabilizes Syria” prediction off by years. I underestimated our stomach for throwing money and lives away I guess.