Quote of the Day - Vice Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff on Differentiating our Secrets

In his keynote address, General James Cartwright of U.S. Marine Corps, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff made it clear that, "We have to be able to differentiate between what we want to keep secret versus the perishablity of that information." Cartwright gave a specific example of sharing information between coalition partners specifically if you are in a combat situation. His message was that he felt that sometimes if you hold back your intelligence from those who are fighting with you side-by-side, even though they are not US forces, may cause lives to be lost.

Cartwright talked primarily about threats and the ability to plan for threats, not just today but in the long range future. "The incentive structures are inherently wrong. There is not a technical architecture that tells you what to do and there is not an incentive structure in place to help correct this." He was referring specifically to the working relationship between the government and private industry and I got the impression he was impatient with the way it works today. He also spoke frankly about our current situation in battling the insurgency both in Iraq and around the world. "There is not going to be a peace dividend in this war. You need to think of this in terms of the 100-year war."

GEOINT Surpasses Attendance from Previous Years

I spoke briefly with Stu Shea, president of the United States Geospatial Industry Foundation (USGIF) and VP at SAIC, before the opening plenary who said that “We have the largest attendance of any conference we’ve had in any previous year with about 3096 attendees and we expect 400-500 onsite registrations. We also have representation from all the major intelligence agencies for the first time." I asked if there as any reticence on the part of the CIA to attend and Mr. Shea said that General Mike Hayden, Director of the CIA, wanted to attend as he has for the past three years but Hayden is out of the country at the moment.

The theme for 2007 is: Integration for collaboration: Enabling a seamless enterprise. The program is broken into blocks, with each block representing a part of that collaboration:

• Supporting the Warfighter – Delivering actionable intelligence
• Analysis Transformation
• GEOINT is the foundation for the seamless enterprise
• Integration of Foreign and Domestic Intelligence
• Advancing geospatial intelligence

Clearly, however, the focus is on getting "actionable intelligence" to the warfighter. From the opening presenations it was clear that analysts, many being supported out of NGA, are making a difference as forward-deployed support personnel. But there is a very heavy emphasis as well on training more people as geospatial analysts. As such, the USGIF Educational program awarded 12 scholarships this year totalling $54,000 to students who have chosen GEOINT as a field of study.