GLOBAL THREATS EQUATE TO UNIVERSAL VULNERABILITIES
Our world is inescapably intertwined with unconstrained globalism and populated with formidable hybrid-terror powerbrokers largely unforeseen before the Information Age.
Generating an unprecedented nexus between crime and terrorism, these non-state and state actors have affected a paradigm-shattering amalgam of warfare. One that fuses terrorism, guerilla warfare, insurgency, criminal enterprise, technological advancement and global communications into a lethal transnational terror-acceleration network.
Most alarming is once their best practices have been proven; they can quickly be distributed for replication and cross-fertilization just about anywhere.
Protecting Lives is a Proactive Venture
The key to life-protecting antiterrorism intelligence analysis today isn’t just validating known patterns, but rather searching for observable new criminal intentions, methodological overlaps, contextual adaptations, modus crossovers, trajectories and emergent indicators. We don’t just want to reduce the impact of terrorism – we want to anticipate and negate the probable means of attack.
Security Intelligence Does Not Have to be Sanctioned to be Effective
Just as common-sense is not assumed as it crosses cultures and time, neither are intelligence values.
Intelligence capabilities and performance should be predicated on adapting all useful information toward prevention-based solutions within any given system of cultural, political, organizational and environmental complexities. What may have clung for decades as primary indicators to localized threats are today morphed among advanced technological variants. Globalization further obscures many of these indicators when crossing continents, cultures and causes. Most critical, transnational criminal campaigns are now managed and executed within the parameters of instant global information transfer.
To counter this epic shift, intelligence collaboration and analysis efforts must match or exceed the ability of terror-groups and their affiliates to exchange, replicate or improve upon each other’s criminal best practices.
Open Source Intelligence Matters More Than Ever
Open source intelligence aids immensely in the crossing of organization lines fast enough to generate discovery applications ahead of accelerated terror decision-cycles.
Convergence of information into predictive and actionable prevention-based measures necessitates perpetual dialogue across all boundaries. Employed without restriction or politics, open-source intelligence presents us with our most efficient option for exposing deadly global terrorism methodologies and trends as they occur. It has the ability to amplify networked investigation and collaboration—exposing the very evolution of security risks associated with police protection, over-lapping business interests, government partnerships, military support activities, international aid efforts and other processes. Importantly, it has the flexibility to uncover problematic boundaries, seams, gaps and factors relevant to the integrated security and humanitarian operations often missed by siloed dialogue.
Pushing Information is Critical
Pushing information is far more effective than pulling it. Traditional collaboration-by-request efforts often lack the depth needed to address the complexities of terrorism—tasking small groups with insular, often siloed, clue and data investigation. Such an approach also assumes those tasked have the wherewithal to determine what should or should not cross examination boundaries—a severely flawed methodology. In contrast, maximizing clue exposure across multiple disciplines not only increases the scope and speed of information dissemination, it innately facilitates holistic diagnostics and, in turn, improved predictive analysis.