"Information Operations" is an important and original book on how to greatly improve the ability of the U.S. National Security Establishment to cope with the conditions of the 21st Century. Steele, who appears to be something of a maverick, provides nothing short of a brilliant analysis of the national security threats and challenges to U.S. security in the post-Cold War World. Having identified the problem, he proposes a new kind of intelligence program based on, as he himself puts it, "sharing not secrecy" which is predicated on the concept of multinational global intelligence production. To this end, Steele advocates a new U.S. national intelligence system centered on open and international sharing of information (I would say of relevant information) using multi-national "Regional Information Centers" for collection, processing, and analysis of all source information. At the heart of the new system Steele would like to have an "Open Source Agency", presumably where information from the regional centers could be collated, evaluated and disseminated to all interested parties. All in all, a bold and comprehensive proposal that ought to be considered very seriously by the U.S. Intelligence Community. As an added bonus, this book has an annotated bibliography of books that Steele has identified as relevant to this book, which is almost worth the price of admission by itself. It is a book worth reading.
Still this reviewer has to question the primary theme of the book which is based on a quote from Steve Cambone (former Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence) that his objective for intelligence was "....universal coverage, 24/7, in all languages, in near real time, at sub-state levels of granularity...", but the context of this statement is not clear. On the face of it, Cambone is talking complete nonsense. Although we live in the so-called `Information Age', there is a lamentable tendency to confuse information (i.e. anything that conveys meaning) with knowledge (i.e. evaluated information that enhances our understanding of something). My guess would be that Cambone conflated the two terms and then failed to think through the implications of such an impossible and unnecessary objective. In point of fact, a more sensible objective would be to use target knowledge (subject matter expertise) and robust information management systems to transform an ever increasing amount of information into relevant and accurate packages of knowledge that reflect the real needs of the national security establishment. This would use targeted not universal collection of all source information on specific targets such as individuals, groups, and public and private organizations.
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