Intelligence Community, Industry, and the Academic World: Leveraging Research Knowledge and Expertise

1. Intelligence Community, Industry, and the Academic World: Leveraging Research Knowledge and Expertise Bill Nolte University of Maryland June 5, 2007

2. A history of changing relationships • Government (IC), Industry, Academe • Part of a larger set of relationships, involving government, industry, and the academic community • We think we’re in a period of “unprecedented” change in those relationships, but that’s simply an illusion brought about that we don’t think often enough or hard enough about the long term history of those relationships • Government – Private Sector • In the 17th century, armies were largely “private enterprise” • By 19th century, not only were militaries state run, so were many supporting industries • By May 1941, the presence of a few private shipyard workers on HMS Prince of Wales was worth note in every book on the Bismarck affair • In 2007, the relationship between Defense and the “Military Industrial Complex,” and the IC and the “Intelligence Industrial Complex” has, to a significant degree, overtaken our sense of inherently governmental functions

3. Changing Relationships (cont) • Government – Academic: • In the United States, very close ties from Land Grant Act on • Many public universities made cadet training compulsory for male students until well after the first world war • Continued through second world war and early cold war • Breached over Vietnam • Only slowly repaired • Continued concerns • Restrictions on “secret” work, but these can be dealt with • Academic – Industry: • Relatively strong ties in engineering, business, sciences; • Less so in social sciences, humanities • Painfully (dangerously) weak in foreign languages • Not only in, but dangerously in the sciences • Government – Industry • Is industry – the intelligence/industrial complex - giving the intelligence community what it needs or just providing what the agencies want? [Gansler] • How do we get agreement on the need for a longer lens that encourages conversation on strategic needs? • The answer to this may take us back to the trilateral relationship, bringing in universities to take on more of the strategic and conceptual.

4. Issues for the 21st century • Maintaining American leadership – political, economic, s&t – into the 21st century • Doing so in a way that preserves American values • Doing so in an environment in which almost all “national security” issues have a domestic component • Issues for the intelligence community: • Different operating environment, • Not the single monolith adversary • But issues involving culture, language, energy, public health • And, at least the possibility, long-term, of peer or “selectively peer” adversaries • Different information environment: Another 20 years of Moore’s Law, anyone? [See David Ignatius]

5. Ground Rules for IC, Corporate, Academic Cooperation • Understand ground rules for each: • Private sector’s profit motive • Government’s continued – perhaps inevitably – reliance on the bureaucratic model • 9/11 Commission may have urged imagination • But bureaucracy exists largely to promote standardization • Academic community will place high premium on academic freedom of inquiry • Issues of Common Concern: • Katrina and the Virginia Tech shooting did not involve secrets. Nor did, to cite an even more recent example, the case of the traveling TB patient. [Hsu article] • They involved problems of moving 21st century information through late 19th century structures • Industry, IC, and the Academic Community have resources to provide in dealing with the problems of life in a democratic society inundated with the effects of the information revolution • For the IC, coming to grips with the Total Information Environment, in which intelligence will be more about information than about secrets. • Issues that matter to America’s future – national security, economic competitiveness, environmental and energy policies – are taking place with extraordinary levels of speed, volatility, and complexity • Incremental, compartmented responses are likely to produce “success” that does not keep pace with the external environment. Such “success” is a long-term recipe for failure • Information sharing, mastery of the “total information environment,” and the development of 21st century information handling tools – including security practices – are essential for real success, that is, change that keeps pace with the environment in which we must live and operate