The Woodward Secret Operation

The Woodward Secret Operation

In Bob Woodward’s new book he speaks at half length about a Secret Operation in Iraq that has the proportions of another Manhattan Project, the program that created the Atomic Bomb and which was a huge employer during the Second World War, employing most Scientists and hundreds of thousands of additional people … although most people didn’t know what they were working for or why. Anyway, this new Secret Operation is purported to be just as big and historically momentous as all of that. And this is coming from Bob Woodward who can be expected to understand the proportions of scale before using words like ‘big’ or ‘momentous’.

Anyway, I was curious. Bob gave a few hints but basically begged off because everyone swore him to secrecy (probably telling him they would block future interviews unless he held his tongue, and of course we can trust a journalist to do the right thing). Besides, we already suspected that if we want to know about the Truth of Government, the Media certainly wasn’t going to be much help. The Media gets their Paychecks from the same People who are paying off the Politicians. They’re all one big happy family.

So I called a few old friends that had friends in various Black Ops Organizations. Now the trick about dealing with Ex-Military Spook Types is that Military Culture is a bunch of drunks, when reduced to simplest terms. And drunks talk. The good stuff they brag about. Now this Super Secret Operation that Woodward was talking about, so effective, so momentous… well, there would of course be bragging about THAT. I know, I know… its SUPPOSED TO BE Secret. But the thing about talk is that it is only just talk. Its Documents they worry about. Yes, it would raise a great good many red flags if one were to actually reprint some specific Secret Papers. But drunken talk is customarily assigned the Status of Conspiracy Theory, right next to UFO conjectures and Elvis sightings. The Government would not wish to draw attention to it by shushing it… and so it is that in the shady bars of Spook World everybody knows everything, at least in broad strokes if not in every detail. And so everybody was glad to tell me everything that had been churning through the rumor mill. You know, it’s not so remarkable. It’s probably the same way Bob Woodward found out everything. And if they gave me a million dollar book deal NOT to say anything, I’d keep it a Big Secret too.

And, yes, Wow! Bob was right!... in what he did allow himself to say. It is big… and getting bigger every day. It started small enough. Intelligence Analysts were only looking for a way to cut through all the Data that was piling up – surveillance data from satellites, from airplanes and drones, aerial balloons… it was swamping them. They just didn’t have time to comb through it all. At first they tried to write Computer Programs to sort through the information, but the IT guys were taking forever with it, and getting further behind the longer that they worked at it. Then someone somewhere combined two promising Technological Trends – Computer Generated Design and Artificial Intelligence. Even ten years ago Engineers had noticed that Computer Generated Design was developing a kind of mind of its own – through apparent trial and error CGD was formulating original and innovative design concepts that no human being had even imagined… its what would happen when Computers were allowed to do their own Thinking. And Artificial Intelligence builds even upon that, systematically pursuing objectives while continuously learning from experience. Anyway, regarding the Birth of the Secret Operation, they patched together an Artificial Intelligence Algorithm into a Computer Generated Program Writer. All they wanted it to do was catalog data, and it sure did!

As I have hinted above, the Computer Engineers were surprised at how well the new programming worked, while at the same time sort of expected to be surprised. The Most Important Surprise came when the Program suddenly was able to so effectively catalog Identity. You see, in order to cut down on the total amount of Data which would have to be saved to memory, the Program found a way of reducing Identity to the most basic terms. The Program looked at all sorts of variables that no human Programmer would have thought of. Not that anybody really KNOWS how the program is really working. The Results are fine, and who needs to know how it works anyway. Its Artificial Intelligence doing its thing. But there were requirements. It began asking for specifics. “Don’t give me that! Give me this!” The Engineers had not expected that. The Program wanted Data Surveillance in several Light and Energy Spectrums. Given a few overlapping surveillance photos, reflecting different spectral qualities, the people being observed, even if they appear to be the tiniest of dots, are effectively ‘marked’, can be catalogued in just a few numbers, and will be remembered if they ever pop up again… even as the tiniest of surveillance ‘dots’. This was the real Big Secret Golden Nugget within the Big Secret.

Were the Program Tags perfect? Well, probably not, or not at the beginning. But what was soon discovered was that the Program was great at Tracking and Sorting. As long as the Surveillance Cameras were running individuals could be followed, and nobody could ever be lost in the crowd. Even if thousands of people were to go into an Opera House… I mean Mosque… out of sight for hours, well, as soon as they would leave, everyone would be re-identified and picked up again. Once ‘tagged’ there was never any getting away, and this was with a system that required only the barest levels of stripped down data. Huge areas could be kept under surveillance, quantifying the interactions of hundreds of thousands of ‘targets’.

Of course this could be useful. Think how it might work -- if a Satellite picks up an Insurgent Attack, all the insurgents can be tagged and followed. They don’t need to be instantly arrested, or assassinated, but can be allowed to follow their day by day routines… business as usual. Every move they made would be catalogued.

Woodward tells us that the Secret Operation targets the Leaders. Well, yes, in a way. What the Algorithm is really doing is identifying Nexus Personnel. Yes, often enough tactical level insurgent Personnel will report to official Leaders, and these are identified by the Program. But they also report to various supply clerks, pay clerks, even religious clerks… all the logistical and moral support people that keep day to day terrorist operations going smoothly. So while Leaders are included, the Program is really set up to target all of the necessary support personnel. Leaders are over-rated anyway. The other day I heard the Israelis announce they had just assassinated another Hamas “Leader”… they murdered some young guy who was only 24 years old. If that’s what they call a ‘Leader’ it would probably be more useful to take out somebody really important, like a Supply Clerk. Anyway, the Program takes care of assigning all of these targeting priorities – who sees whom, who reports to whom and how often. The important targets begin to stand out, not necessarily because they are “Leaders” but because they are the people that all the tactical personnel and foot soldiers find it necessary to meet with.

Bob Woodward told us that this Secret Operation is Big and getting bigger. It needs to. As you can guess, such an Operation would be ravenous about sucking up Computer Memory and Power. Although the bulk of the Program is about Cataloging the Important Stuff and tossing out the rest, still, at the onset there needs to be a great deal of Raw Data – surveillance of an entire Country in two or three Spectrums of Light Energy. That chews up a lot of Disc Space. Then, the Cataloging requires a huge amount of Computer Capacity. Records need to go back in time, and even compressed data takes up space in the long run. Indeed, the day to day improvements to the Program are almost entirely measured, not in how it has refined Target Acquisition, but in how it has learned to work just as well with less and less saved data. The limiting factor is Computer Power.

All those Programs we hear about, set up in certain Universities, that ask people to lend over their personal computers for various kinds of Data Crunching, that they say is concerning Global Warming and all such Green Things… well, the rumor is that all such Programs are supplying the necessary Computer Power for the Secret Operation in Iraq. Also, I have been keeping my eyes on my Intel, Cisco and other Computer Technology Stocks. As much as I wish I could say so, I see no sign that the Government is on a Spending Binge in Hi Tech. So, apparently, this Secret Operation was probably something of a lucky accident, at least as far as Government Funding was concerned – doing a lot with what had been an old original limited budget. Anyway, nobody has noticed much of a Supply and Demand distortion in the Civilian Marketplace. My Stock has not gone up. Just think how well this Secret Operation could work once they start really throwing money and resources into it.

Bob Woodward has told us that revealing the Truth about this Secret Operation would get people killed. Well, maybe, at first it would have. You see, at first nobody trusted the Program and they were sending in Intelligence Operatives to check on the Program’s Information. Were the Terrorists reporting to actual Leaders or just going to favorite neighborhood deli stores? They needed to see for themselves. But, since the program has evolved, they have learned to trust it. When the Tactical Teams finally go in, they find very much exactly what the Program had projected.

So why did all the Government Weenies tell Woodward to shut up about it? Well, they are probably afraid of chasing away what is left of the Insurgents and Terrorists who have not already gotten the big message. You see, the Algorithm is easy enough to beat – if you are a Terrorist, then just stop taking any meetings. Stay away from everybody. Of course, terrorism cannot conduct much business like that, but isn’t that what we want? The more they know about this Secret Operation, the more they can be expected to shut down and run for it. If they all go back to herding goats, afraid for their lives, then We have won the war, haven’t we?

Oh, I suppose there might also be concerns about Privacy Issues. Somebody MUST be thinking about bringing the Secret Operation back home. And it would be SO much more effective if people were kept in the dark about it. It could just as well be used against Organized Crime – to shut down Auto Theft, Drug Trafficking, even discrete instances of individual crime – there is nothing very special about Insurgent Operations that a few tweaks in the Program couldn’t turn it into being primarily a Crime Fighting Tool. For the Law Biding Good Citizen, it would be like God watching over us all. But Criminals, Corrupt Politicians and Police, and Privacy Fanatics would have a reflex opposition to it all. So they told Bob to keep it all a Big Secret.

Well, they couldn’t keep the Atom Bomb secret for very long either.