Semantics and intelligence

The odd/interesting war-o-phile blog over at Wired "Dangerroom" had an interesting story on the British sailors held in Iranian captivity. You didn't have to speculate much to think that their "confessions" came after pressure - but now we have some semantic proof. By analysing the sentences you see some Persian traits - namely the lack of articles. Hostage Letter Written by Tehran

Ethymology of intelligence

William S. Lind muses a bit over the the litteral meaning of the Swedish word for intelligence "underrättelser" - which he translates to "corrections from below".

The translation is very direct - and a bit dubious. But the resulting "Corrections from below" is a nice illustration of what 3rd generation intelligence gathering should embody - not amassing data in piles to get the rationalistic "hard facts", but doing qualitative intelligence, bottom-up.

In Danish, intelligence is called "Efterretning", is related to the Swedish term, but in the same literal translation it means "Corrections after". And in a strange way that might actually reflect strategic intelligence at its most effective: using all that data to understand - after things have happened.

New issue of Intelligence and Counterintelligence

There is a new issue out of International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence. Traditionally being a bit more light than Journal of Intelligence and National Security this print features some interesting stuff on academical intelligence research, namely William J. Lahneman's article on a Revolution in Intelligence Affairs.