Best Intelligence Agency in the World?

Blackmailing your most powerful allies into doing what you want?

 

If you're interested, an absolutely fascinating book is "Relentless Strike" (available on Amazon) by Sean Naylor. It is the story of JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command. It takes you through its evolution from its infancy to a mature agency that does both intelligence and kinetic strikes all under one roof.

 

Intelligence is almost never about killing anybody. The most succesful operation is one where the other side never knew anything happened. And most of the time it is never known until years later, when they finally decide to declassify it themselves.

And in many ways, the US seems to have had the greatest success. I can think of 3 operations in particular, which were never revealed until after they were finished.

The first is MAGIC, which was the decyphering of most of the Japanese codes during WWII. This was never declassified until 1978, 23 years afte the war ended. Most of the Japanese leadership went to their graves, believing that their codes were unbreakable. One of them was Admiral Yamamoto, shot down because of MAGIC.

Next is VENONA. The CIA intercepting and decrypting Soviet diplomatic messages from 1943-1980. For 37 years we were decrypting a great many messages from the highest level of security. Among the things this let us discover was the identiy of such individuals as the Rosenbergs, Alger Hiss, Klaus Fuchs, and the Cambridge Spy Ring. This was not declassified until 1995. 4 years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist, and 15 years after the decryption was no longer effective.

Finally we have Project Azorian (also known as Project Jennifer). The raising of the Soviet K-129 Golf-II class submarine. Sunk in 1968, and discovered in 1968 by the US Navy. By 1974 a ship was built to try and recover her, and a significant part of the sub was raised with many highly classified Soviet components (including 2 nuclear missiles). Over 6 months later in 1975, the story was made public by reporter Jack Anderson, who claimed it was a huge waste of taxpayer money.

These are classic examples of the real life operations of intelligence organizations. The vast majority of information is not revealed for years or decades after it happened. People who believe it is all going around seducing women and assassinating enemies watch far to many spy movies.

And let me mention yet another. The "Canadian Caper", mostly known to the public because of the movie "Argo". The smuggling of American diplomats out of Iran after the hostage crisis started. The operation took place in 1980, but was not declassified until 1997.

With these examples, I would probably go with the CIA and other US agencies. Many of the operations that have been declassified are amazing, which makes me wonder what else has happened (and is still happening) that will not see the light of days until years after I am dead. Many like Israel and the USSR-Russia may have been flashy, but the US has shown that it can conduct operations and keep them secret for decades.

 

Agree with most of that but there's a new game about to be unleashed, the rise in power and influence of computer driven systems ( such as autonomous drone swarms) that through genetic algorithms may begin to see our species as the enemy and an obsticle to it's survival. If that happens no intelligence agency on the planet will have a hope in hell of defeating such forces. If we are stupid enough to create a form of intelligence that has no experience of physical or psychological pain and consequently nothing like a conscience I'll be heading for the bomb shelter.

 

Sorry, I only deal with reality, not science fiction.

"Autonomous drone swarms"? Indeed.

 

This is not science fiction or anything like a conspricy theory, I wish it was. The US military is devoting a huge chunk of it's budget into developing these technologies.

 

Autonomous is a bit of a reach, semi-autonomous would be more accurate surely.

 

Does it exist now?

No, it does not. Therefore it is science fiction.

Like Artificial Intelligence, Cold Fusion, and Killer Androids.

Let me know when these things are real.

 

Don't worry, 'these things' will eventually let you know themselves but I doubt you'll enjoy the experience.
http://www.onr.navy.mil/Media-Center/Press-Releases/2015/LOCUST-low-cost-UAV-swarm-ONR.aspx
https://erc.europa.eu/projects-and-results/erc-stories/flocking-drones-swarming-pigeons
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/autonomous-drone-research-2013-10?r=US&IR=T

 

You see, here is the problem.

I have worked for many years in the Air Defense - Missile Defense aspect of the US Military. I have spent many-many months at White Sands, and seen a great many other projects in development. I also realize that 4 out of 5 of them failed and resulted in nothing. Far more military projects result in nothing then result in a working system.

So I do not take such concepts very seriously so long as they are only concepts.

 

Neither do I but the potential for this technology outside of the hands of national military forces is probably more scary than within.
But hey, autonomous genetic algorithm programs are easily unleashed onto the web. They don't need to be operating swarms of armed drones to be dangerous. As that ancient Chinese curse has it:- "May you live in interesting times".

 

Do you even know what "Genetic Algorithm Programs" are?

Here, this is a good video giving in layman terms how such things work.

[video=youtube;qv6UVOQ0F44]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44[/video]

I have actually worked in setting up such programs, their biggest use is in working with databases, searching and sorting for data. And what, you think these are some kind of borg weapon or something?

And yea, we have had such programs out on the Internet for well over a decade. They are known as "spiders".

This is not the tinhat area of the forum.

 

Given your view of genetic algorithms as benign you've understood far less of their potential than anyone with your supposed background should.
For a start you might want to think over the term 'genetic' and it's implications.

 

What, do you think it has that name because of human DNA being placed in the code?

Genetic, as in generational. It repeats actions over and over again, creating a branching tree as it goes. It prunes unsuccesful results and only keeps the ones that are succesful. It is not intellgent, it simply "learns" from mistakes and eliminates them in future iterations until it finds a parrtern that achieves the end goal.

The thing is, I understand what these are, and do not attribute magical powers to them, nor do I see them as some kind of super-powerful Doomsday Program that will cause them to become Skynet.

 

Now here we get to the hub of the matter. Allow any form of artificial intelligence to determine what is or isn't successful in relation to it's own survival and we will end up being regarded as superfluous to it's requirements. Simply really. No need to even go onto the command line to work that one out.

 

Nothing that is worth more than his own personal safety? Surely that's the most sane reason for going to war, to preserve one's personal safety and in doing so protecting the safety of all those in one's community.
I'm not sure however that Mills was thinking of autonomous drone swarms when he penned this.

 

Actually, he was not even talking about a war his own country was involved in. That quote was in reference to the American Civil War. And if you were not aware, Mr. Mill was a British citizen.

To him, the world was his community. He was not so near-sighted as to only care about those who lived close to him.

 

I'm James Bond (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)! /end thread

 

I've voted Mossad, but I could add the Shin Bet [Shabak] as well [it deals with internal intelligence in Israel] with the Aman [IDF intelligence].

Anyway, if we want to focus the attention on the best intelligence in the comprehensive sense of the word, today Mossad has got something more.

 

The ONI

 

No mention of IMF?

 

My guess is the Mossad because they have pipelines into the CIA. They have their own intel plus tentacles into every US agency.

 

FOX NEWS. hands down, no contest.

 

China they are big, they are good at their jobs and they ignore every humane rule when it comes to doing their jobs - assassination, bribery, extortion, torture and openly cyber-spy and don't give a crap what the world says so they beat us we have rules.