on The Command

As you may or may not know, I enjoy reading Marc Ambinder. So it should not surprise anyone that when his short e-book on JSOC, titled The Command, was released, I devoured it in a weekend. If you are at all interested in America's Special Forces then I highly recommend the book. Ambinder and Grady really hit this one out of the park, go buy it.

What most fascinated me was the swift and extremely effective change that occurred right before the surge in Iraq in the way JSOC gathers, disseminates and acts open intelligence throughout the US military and Federal bureaucracy. I used to think what we see in the Bourne movies was pure fantasy, but now I'm starting to think it reflects reality fairly well:

Here is how a colleague of General Flynn’s described the change in procedures on the ground: “What would normally happen is: the shooters would kick down a door and snatch everyone and drag them to the front room, and then take everything with them, and put it in a trash bag. The bad guys would be taken to a detention facility and the pocket litter would come back to [the intelligence analysts]. Flynn thought this was stupid. Instead, he gave the shooters—think of this—the Delta guys, mini cameras, and schooled them in some basic detective techniques. When you capture someone, take a picture of them exactly where you captured them. Take detailed notes of who was doing what with what. Don’t merge all the pocket litter.”  

He continued, “Then, the shooters were supposed to e-mail back an image of the person they captured to Balad [JSOC’s intelligence headquarters], where analysts would run it through every facial recognition database we have, or fingerprints or names, or what have you. We’d get hits immediately. And so our intel guys would radio back to the team in the field, ‘Hey, you’ve got Abu-so-and-so, or someone who looks like them. See if he knows where Abu–other-person is.’”

And that’s what the shooters would do. They’d tell their captured insurgents that for a price, they could help them. A senior JSOC intelligence commander said, “They’d say, ‘I know you, you’re so-and-so. And if you want us to help you, you need to tell us where this other person is.’ And it would work. And then, when we got a new address, sometimes within twenty minutes of the first boot on the door, we’d have another team of shooters going to another location.” Follow-up interrogations were plotted out like dense crime dramas, with dozens of participants, including some by video teleconference.  

Instead of three operations every two weeks, JSOC was able to increase its operations tempo (or “optempo”) significantly, sometimes raiding five or six places a night. This completely bewildered insurgents and al-Qaeda sympathizers, who had no idea what was going on. In April 2004, according to classified unit histories, JSOC participated in fewer than a dozen operations in Iraq. By July 2006, its teams were exceeding 250 a month. McChrystal’s operations center was open for fifteen hours a day, regardless of where he was. There is a strong correlation between the pace of JSOC operations, the death rate of Iraqi insurgents and terrorists, and the overall decline in violence that lasted long enough for U.S. troops to surge into the country and “hold” areas that used to be incredibly dangerous.

They went from under 12 operations a month to over 250 a month! That's just insane! Ambinder & Grady don't mention it explicitly here but what I really think is the revolutionary thing is not the change in tactics per se but the trust and decision making placed in the hands of the "shooters". By empowering them to do the on the ground investigation and analysis it enabled the intelligence to be acted upon much earlier and more than likely put the enemy on their heals. A lot like when an offense goes no huddle in football and as a result of the defense not being prepared the entire momentum of the game shifts.

on The Big Short

I used to feel bad when I thought of layoffs on Wall Street, no one should go wanting for work, least of all those trained for a particular trade. Then I read Michael Lewis's narrative of the financial crisis and came to a much different mindset; Wall Street attracts the ambitious and that ambition is promptly wasted. Innovation is directed at ways to better fuck over one's counterparts through convoluted and hard to understand financial vehicles. So it is my opinion that the less attractive the finance industry appears to be then the the fewer talented individuals will be lured away; which in turn leads to fewer morons (Germans in this case) being fucked over.

While I was aghast at the over all ruthlessness of the industry, Mr Lewis is more focused on how the lack of responsibility and accountability has led to a culture in which fees and personal enrichment purvey rather than loyalty and good faith in regards to ones clients. A likely outcome when the utter destruction of a clients portfolio at worst leads to an early, yet cushy, retirement from finance.

To me what is most striking about the book is the lack of mention of the authorities. This is not a testament to the reporting, on the contrary, the characters reported on in the story approached the authorities only to be rebuffed (more like stared at with confused looks). It's shocking to think that such pervasive fraud and deception went on with the authorities having little to no knowledge of it. Those with the responsibility protect the markets should never have to rely on the market players themselves to do the right thing. We should be spending vast sums of money to employ individuals to understand the markets and their potential weaknesses. The cost is a fraction of the lost productivity that occurs after a financial crisis and in my opinion is money well spent.

In closing I find it rather humorous that Martha Stewart received more jail time than any individual that was complicit in the largest financial disaster since the Great Depression. We could do better.