Hacker News Reader

Comment by StopHammoTime | Hacker News Reader

Should the Marines get rid of their intelligence units since the Navy has them already?

P.S. I don't mean this facetiously: what I meant specifically was - what is the bar for maintaining an independent Intelligence apparatus with this opinion? Do we consider a Secretary/Department to be the cutoff? I'm of the opinion that if the two deviate enough, then there is no reason for them to be conjoined.

View on HN

> then there is no reason for them to be conjoined.

What about, the worst attack on US soil might have been avoided if different agencies had shared data?

The counter to that is what if one agency detects an attack that no other noticed because the culture and practices of that agency diverge from the others in a way that turns out to be positive.

There are both benefits and costs to centralization and standardization. We don't want too much taxpayer-funded redundancy, but some redundancy can be a good thing.

> if different agencies had shared data

Do you think they're not sharing data? Why?

Different agencies is about different collection techniques and domains.

Please read the 911 report. It goes into fact that our agencies weren't sharing data properly and what could have been done to prevent the attack with data we already had in our possession. This is well walked ground.

> Please read the 911 report.

From a quarter of a century ago? Before they founded an entire new department? Really not sure it’s relevant for how things are done today.

>> the worst attack on US soil.

I think it is pretty strong to suggest that 9/11 was the worst attack on US soil ever without further justification. During the Battle of Gettysburg, for example, more than 7,000 soldiers died after Lee's army attacked the US army. The Attack on Pearl Harbor might also be in contention, depending on how severely you rate the crippling of the US Pacific Fleet.

I think you're right, Pearl Harbor was a major attack but it also had aspects of 9/11 in that there were major intelligence failures.

This underscores the need for better more effective military intelligence.

An attack 80+ years ago does not underscore the need for any reform today, nor for that matter does an attack 20+ years ago. Not unless you think nothing has changed between then and now, which would be silly. Introspection and reform after both those attacks happened years ago. It may be the case that we do need additional reform today, but that isn't evidenced by attacks which occurred generation[s] ago.

Does a centralised agency guarantee that this data is shared correctly?

This is different from the Intelligence Apparatus that shares inter-service intelligence. The Intelligence Community is already a thing and is organised under the Director of National Intelligence (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Com...). The point of each service's Agency is to be good at collecting pertinent intelligence data, analysing it, then sharing it with each other if relevant. This way you're not duplicating Intelligence efforts and getting your best value. Inter-Agency communication is a completely different ball game and should be handled separately from organisational structure.

Maybe, but it always seems like people doing various bad things are known to the agencies and they don't have anything specific enough to act on. So we give them even more funding and manpower to prevent it next time and the cycle repeats.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com