[Genuine Realist]

And I thought my post drifted this thread...

We can simplify GR’s questions down to a couple explanations.

- All disasters are intelligence failures; either not collecting, or failing to use what is provided.
- All organizations only perform as well as the person at the top of the org chart allows.

Yesterday’s reporting that the U.S. IC was warning of a serious pandemic in November is a demonstration of the first point above, a failure to use intelligence to protect the U.S. And the rest of the explanation is provided by the second point.

I made a post last week explaining that I can see how some governments were not taking the developing pandemic seriously because China was not providing accurate information to demonstrate the severity of it.  That said, we now know in the U.S. case the IC had way better information than China made available publicly. And why wouldn’t it? I can only imagine the SiGINT and HUMINT collected, processed and provided to the POTUS and others well before the seriousness of the Chinese outbreak became clear publicly. So rather than intelligence being used to mobilize serious, expert-led action, public China information (propaganda) was used to justify doing nothing. The U.S. is suffering more than it had to because the person at the top accepted Chinese propaganda over truth provided by his own IC.

I get people want to move past blaming someone who seems not to be in charge of everything, but the reality is this is how all organizations work and why it is so critical to have competent, responsible, leaders. What we have now is someone at the top of the org chart who is unfit for the role and ill-equipped to see to it the levers of power are used to achieve less costly and damaging outcomes.

Most people are able to see this clearly. Others don’t really care about better outcomes and want as much pain and suffering as possible. Some even want better outcomes but are incapable of accepting truth because they don’t want to admit someone they judged to be fit, in fact is not, for whatever reason.

The CDC is a great institution but only when fully supported. The U.S. IC is incredibly capable of finding truth and providing insight into what is happening in the world, but if its customer isn’t interested in facts, and only information that bolsters a desired world view, it’s product isn’t worth much. If states are left to fend for themselves because the POTUS is more interested in finding scapegoats than taking responsibility to protect the country in accordance to his oath of office, the overall outcome will be much worse than it could have been, in countless ways.

Any leader takes responsibility for what goes wrong and praises others for what goes well. Our problem, as simple as it sounds, is we have no leader. It shows up so many places we find it hard to believe poor leadership at the top can possibly be why so many things go wrong. It may be hard, but it is the truth. A perfect proof point: James Dolan, New York Knicks.

It turns out that the report yesterday was phony. There is no such intelligence report.

[Genuine Realist]

And I thought my post drifted this thread...

We can simplify GR’s questions down to a couple explanations.

- All disasters are intelligence failures; either not collecting, or failing to use what is provided.
- All organizations only perform as well as the person at the top of the org chart allows.

Yesterday’s reporting that the U.S. IC was warning of a serious pandemic in November is a demonstration of the first point above, a failure to use intelligence to protect the U.S. And the rest of the explanation is provided by the second point.

I made a post last week explaining that I can see how some governments were not taking the developing pandemic seriously because China was not providing accurate information to demonstrate the severity of it.  That said, we now know in the U.S. case the IC had way better information than China made available publicly. And why wouldn’t it? I can only imagine the SiGINT and HUMINT collected, processed and provided to the POTUS and others well before the seriousness of the Chinese outbreak became clear publicly. So rather than intelligence being used to mobilize serious, expert-led action, public China information (propaganda) was used to justify doing nothing. The U.S. is suffering more than it had to because the person at the top accepted Chinese propaganda over truth provided by his own IC.

I get people want to move past blaming someone who seems not to be in charge of everything, but the reality is this is how all organizations work and why it is so critical to have competent, responsible, leaders. What we have now is someone at the top of the org chart who is unfit for the role and ill-equipped to see to it the levers of power are used to achieve less costly and damaging outcomes.

Most people are able to see this clearly. Others don’t really care about better outcomes and want as much pain and suffering as possible. Some even want better outcomes but are incapable of accepting truth because they don’t want to admit someone they judged to be fit, in fact is not, for whatever reason.

The CDC is a great institution but only when fully supported. The U.S. IC is incredibly capable of finding truth and providing insight into what is happening in the world, but if its customer isn’t interested in facts, and only information that bolsters a desired world view, it’s product isn’t worth much. If states are left to fend for themselves because the POTUS is more interested in finding scapegoats than taking responsibility to protect the country in accordance to his oath of office, the overall outcome will be much worse than it could have been, in countless ways.

Any leader takes responsibility for what goes wrong and praises others for what goes well. Our problem, as simple as it sounds, is we have no leader. It shows up so many places we find it hard to believe poor leadership at the top can possibly be why so many things go wrong. It may be hard, but it is the truth. A perfect proof point: James Dolan, New York Knicks.

It turns out that the report yesterday was phony. There is no such intelligence report.