Architecture for Intelligence
Written by William Murray
GIF 2012 Volume: 10 Issue: 1 (February)
As Pentagon officials prepare their proposal for an architecture to enable data sharing between intelligence organizations, key contractors are expecting the framework to better enable sharing and exploitation of geospatial and other data—even though policy and cultural issues in the intelligence community stand as obstacles.
The Defense Intelligence Information Enterprise (DI2E) is the next iteration of the Distributed Common Ground/Surface System Integration Backbone. Contractors hope that it will effectively lay the framework for how vendors could create applications that would work using standard operating systems, secure infrastructure and web services environments through a mandate for non-proprietary systems.
The proposals could help with what Bob Noonan, senior vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, calls the “exploitation dissemination problem.” Intelligence analysts spend about 80 percent of their time gathering data for reports to their supervisors, he estimates, and only 20 percent analyzing the data.
While recognizing the limits of technology in the face of cultural hurdles and policy differences, Noonan said he remains guardedly optimistic. “With DI2E, I hope they would be able to spend 20 percent gathering information and 80 percent analyzing it.”
Kevin P. Meiners, deputy undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, heads up the DI2E effort at the Pentagon. He said recently that the DI2E request for proposals should be released by April.
Too Much Sharing?
But while the drive to improve intelligence information sharing is a major factor in development of DI2E proposals, some intelligence analysts and industry observers also point to two high-profile incidents in the past two years that have underscored the contrasting need to closely guard intelligence information.
“There was too much information shared about the Osama bin Laden take-down,” said Mark Bigham, vice president of business development for Raytheon Intelligence & Information Systems and a former Air Force intelligence analyst, pointing to reports about the methods used by the U.S. military used to track down and kill bin Laden in May 2011. Wide publicity about the methods used could make it more difficult to use the same methods in the future, he warned.
“There are reasons that we protect that data,” Bigham said, noting that, in a given instance, intelligence analysts need to ask themselves, “How much do you want to share?”
There is also the case of U.S. Army Private First Class Bradley E. Manning, arrested in Iraq in May 2010 and charged with transmitting more than 250,000 secret documents, which for many has offered a second cautionary tale about the sharing of “too much information” in the U.S. intelligence community.
The arrest of Manning and allegations about his sharing of classified information has “set back sharing between intelligence communities more than anything in the last 10 years,” Bigham said. Particularly with operational information, “the fewer people who know about it, the better. Sharing exactly what operation you’re planning to do as a result of connecting the dots,” is not a good idea, he said.
Even taking into consideration Manning’s arrest and its reverberations in the intelligence community, however, Bigham said that information sharing has improved greatly since 2001. He called information sharing a “two-sided coin.”
Manning doesn’t actually represent anything new from an insider threat perspective, said Noonan, pointing to CIA traitor Aldrich Ames, a KGB double agent, and John Walker, a former Navy chief warrant officer who also spied for the Soviet Union, as examples of those who conveyed secret information to adversaries via more traditional methods.
According to Noonan, the fear of insider threats causes some intelligence analysts to take this standpoint toward geospatial data: “I’ll let you know what you need and when you need it.”
One good scenario when intelligence analysts should share data is when they feel that others might have other missing elements that could help them solve a more complex problem, according to Bigham. In July 2001, two months before the 9/11 attacks, FBI agents in Arizona warned FBI headquarters officials to be vigilant for Middle Eastern students training in U.S. flight schools, urging their headquarters counterparts to discuss these issues with other U.S. intelligence officials.
In that particular case, Bigham pointed out, al-Qaida had benefited from surprise and the fact that there was no precedent for an attack using commercial airliners. “In the case of such cataclysmic events, if no one has done something like that before, we wouldn’t have known the pattern to look out for,” for improved situational awareness and context, he said.
Open Formats
One key ingredient to the success of DI2E, according to Rob Mott, vice president of the Military Intelligence Solutions Group at Intergraph, is the requirement to develop data using open file formats so that end-users and agencies won’t have to purchase software developed by a particular vendor. “It should not be proprietary,” he said.
Such a requirement “levels the playing field,” according to Mott, because it enables smaller companies and academic research organizations to compete with larger companies. This competition benefits the intelligence community through greater technological innovation, lower prices and quicker speed of service, he said.
Mott is excited about the potential of DI2E since it will enable intelligence analysts to subscribe to web services with UAV data about a particular area of terrain that is dynamic for hourly, daily, weekly or other regular updates.
Regarding the sharing of information, “We’re not where we should be,” Noonan said. “It’s beyond a technology issue. It was a problem when I arrived in the military, when I was in command, and when I retired. It’s still a problem today.”
What has changed in recent years is the booming volume of geospatial data collected by drones and UAVs, which has added to the challenge of properly analyzing and sharing it.
“Everyone knows it’s an issue,” Noonan said of cultural obstacles, which can only be effectively overcome through policy overhauls to encourage data sharing in the intelligence community.
Despite the problems, Noonan praised the work of the National Security Agency and National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. He also pointed to Army Lieutenant General Michael T. Flynn, assistant director of national intelligence after serving as a military intelligence leader in both Iraq and Afghanistan, as a thought leader on exploiting and disseminating intelligence data. Noonan made clear that he doesn’t want to see individual intelligence communities set up their own information clouds.
What would be accomplished by moving from server farms to multiple clouds, he asked, since individual clouds will act as a hurdle for sharing information. “I would submit that multiple clouds don’t make things better,” because they mean that intelligence analysts will continue to spend about 80 percent of their time gathering information and only about 20 percent analyzing it, he said.
From DI2E, Noonan would like to see standard operating systems, web security and web services prescribed, along with the ability to plug individual applications into the DI2E, much as one could plug a computer or DVD player into a home entertainment system.
A retired lieutenant general who commanded the Army Intelligence and Security Command before joining Booz Allen, Noonan is impressed with the data that intelligence analysts can access through the NIPRNet and SIPRNet. He recalls serving in Afghanistan and using geospatial technology to overlay four maps—one U.S.-produced, two Russian-made and one Britishproduced— of an Afghan airfield that American troops were about to overtake, since U.S. forces couldn’t exclusively rely on NGA maps. The maps helped U.S. troops to detect where landmines could be laid to better ensure the safety of the landing party.
“There needs to be leadership from the top down,” that dictates changes in policy and culture within the intelligence community, according to Mott. “This isn’t just a good idea,” he said of sharing data using open file formats that are readable and adjustable. “It’s a requirement.”
The “Apple store” model for creating applications and allowing users to subscribe to them and download them within a cloud is a useful one to consider for DI2E, in part because it accommodates both mobile and desktop users and has been a successful commercial model, Mott said. The limit to the Apple store model, however, is that it requires users to operate a device provided by a single company. It is a proprietary model that would have limited applications in an environment such as the Department of Defense.
“There are a lot of lessons learned from the commercial cloud community about what could work in a secure DoD intelligence community,” Bigham said.
Web Services
Intelligence analysts have the need to overlay different geospatial data sources to build a comprehensive view of a particular area of interest, according to Mott. In some cases, intelligence analysts might then be building their own applications to enable them to exploit multiple geospatial data sources, such as UAVs, commercial satellites, government satellites, infrared and signals intelligence.
Open web services within DI2E will enable the intelligence community to require proper authentication of users and create a secure environment for the exploitation and dissemination of such geospatial data, Mott said.
Bigham foresees an 18-24 month contract for the DI2E framework architecture. Contractors are closely monitoring whether the Di2E request for proposals will bar winning contractors from later creating applications and integrating them into DI2E.
Noonan agreed, speculating that by the end of an eight- to 10-year period using clouds to share information securely could give way to some entirely different technology. “The framework has to have some agility,” to accommodate changes in technology and practice, he said.
“Moore’s Law is now considered an anachronism,” he said, arguing that technology change and innovation are now outstripping that well-known prediction of the rate of technology growth. To be successful, the DI2E framework architecture will successfully address “edge users,” and satellite communication terminal users who can’t “easily touch the network,” Bigham said. “DI2E absolutely has to be secure at multiple levels,” and it should have the ability to certify where classified data is within clouds. It will be easy to search DI2E for information, he predicted.
Bigham compared DI2E to a city planner, who provides guidelines for home builders and other developers to design their plans to fit within the municipality’s infrastructure and regulations.
Another potential major player in this field is IBM Federal, which last year debuted its Defense Operations Platform (DOP), a reusable, and interoperable software platform that company officials hope will meet the emerging DI2E standards.
“I don’t think you’ll see one platform selected,” since that wouldn’t likely be in DoD’s best interests, said Andras Szakal, vice president and chief technology officer with IBM Federal. “I think you’ll see multiple companies develop their own stacks, including open source options.” Szakal estimated that IBM has a two-year jump on its competition, however, arguing that IBM is the first to market with its DOP offering.
DOP reportedly has interested Defense Information Systems Agency, Marine Corps and intelligence agency officials because it provides a platform for a service-operating environment that would give DoD agencies that need to rapidly deploy a reliable, secure operating platform with virtualization capabilities. Szakal estimated that it could take some organizations a year to deploy routing, messaging, protocols and up to 50 other applications that make up DOP. ♦
