{"id":65609,"date":"2015-10-26T12:00:12","date_gmt":"2015-10-26T12:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=65609"},"modified":"2015-10-26T12:41:42","modified_gmt":"2015-10-26T12:41:42","slug":"drones-ibm-and-the-big-data-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/10\/drones-ibm-and-the-big-data-of-death\/","title":{"rendered":"Drones, IBM, And the Big Data of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo:<\/a>

Photo: Johannes Eisele\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

23 Oct 2015 – <\/em>Last week The Intercept<\/em>\u00a0published a\u00a0package of stories<\/a>\u00a0on the U.S. drone program, drawing on a cache of secret government documents leaked by an intelligence community whistleblower. The available evidence suggests that one of the documents, a study\u00a0<\/a>titled \u201cISR Support to Small Footprint CT Operations \u2014 Somalia\/Yemen,\u201d was produced for the Defense Department in 2013 by consultants from IBM. If you look at just one classified PowerPoint presentation this year, I recommend you make it this one.<\/p>\n

Like a good poem, the ISR study has multiple meanings, and rewards careful attention and repeated reading. On its surface, it\u2019s simply an analysis by the Defense Department\u2019s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Task Force of the \u201cperformance and requirements\u201d of the U.S. military\u2019s counterterrorism kill\/capture operations, including drone strikes, in Somalia and Yemen. However, it\u2019s also what a former senior special operations officer\u00a0characterized<\/a>\u00a0as a \u201cbitch brief\u201d \u2014 that is, a study designed to be a weapon in a bureaucratic turf war with the CIA to win the Pentagon more money and a bigger mandate. The study was also presumably an opportunity for IBM to demonstrate that it can produce snappy \u201canalysis\u201d tailored to the desires of its Defense Department clients, as well as for current Defense employees to network with a potential future employer.<\/p>\n

But the presentation\u2019s most compelling meaning is much deeper: It\u2019s a rare, peculiar cultural artifact that opens a window into the deep guts of the military-industrial complex, where the technologies of assassination and corporate sales converge, all described in language as dead as the target of an ISR platform kinetic engagement.<\/p>\n

Edge Methods<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2010, IBM employees delivered a\u00a0talk<\/a>\u00a0at IBM\u2019s Analytics Solution Center in Washington, D.C., titled \u201cAn Introduction to Edge Methods: Business Analytics and Optimization for Intelligence.\u201d The audience was \u201cthe Defense and Intelligence communities,\u201d and IBM\u2019s goal was to explain to them how the company could help them with \u201cmanaging large volumes of data\u201d to derive \u201cinvaluable\u201d insights. Among its already-existing governmental customers, IBM explained, was the ISR Task Force.<\/p>\n

Although buried in\u00a0reams of corporate management gobbledygook (IBM, it turns out, is \u201cMission Focused\u201d and \u201cPerformance Driven\u201d), the talk\u2019s\u00a0key theme was that IBM was offering prospective new government clients its \u201cexpertise in integrating business and technology services\u201d using its \u201ccommercial consulting methods.\u201d That is, IBM was bringing what it had learned from managing Big Data for corporate America to the military and intelligence worlds.<\/p>\n

Keep that in mind as you examine the secret ISR study, and you\u2019ll see that the Pentagon\u2019s drone program uses data analytics in almost precisely the same way IBM encourages corporations to use it to track customers. The only significant difference comes at the very end of the drone process, when the customer is killed.<\/p>\n

\"An<\/a>

An Introduction to Edge Methods: Business Analytics and Optimization for Intelligence, page 4.<\/p><\/div>\n

For instance, according to the ISR study, the drone program seeks to \u201cfind,\u201d \u201cfix,\u201d and \u201cfinish\u201d its \u201chigh-value individuals.\u201d Meanwhile, in IBM\u2019s\u00a0description of Big Data<\/a>\u00a0for the private sector, there are precisely equivalent goals: to \u201cacquire,\u201d \u201cretain,\u201d and \u201cpersonalize\u201d a corporation\u2019s \u201chigh-value customers.\u201d<\/p>\n

The drone infrastructure uses Big Data to \u201cbuild target packages\u201d about its high-value individuals, while corporations can \u201cbuild profiles of the most profitable current customers.\u201d Drones attempt \u201cto maintain 24\/7 persistent stare,\u201d just as\u00a0corporations need\u00a0\u201cto get a 360 view of the customer.\u201d<\/p>\n

The successful \u201cfinish\u201d stage of a drone strike is termed a \u201cjackpot,\u201d while for businesses the \u201cpersonalization\u201d stage is where it all comes together, \u201cconverting insights into relevance to deliver targeted messages.\u201d High-value customers receive an emailed coupon informing them that they haven\u2019t bought new socks in nine\u00a0months, whereas for high-value individuals the targeted message takes the form of a Hellfire missile.<\/p>\n

Likewise, the language of the drone study mimics corporate Big Data\u2019s uncanny lack of affect. In both cases, highly trained technicians discuss how to make the system work more efficiently, with no room for unprofessional emotions. After examining the drone study, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg noted its \u201creliance on abstract euphemisms for methods of mass murder, acronyms, and bloodless jargon to assure you were communicating with people who were cleared, in the know, and dependent for their income and advancement on uncritical devotion to the objective.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bloodless<\/em> is exactly the right word: The ISR study is bloodless both metaphorically and literally. Whether the U.S. drone war is right or wrong, wise or mind-numbingly stupid, it\u2019s like half of history\u2019s\u00a0science fiction novels come to life simultaneously\u00a0\u2014 billions of dollars, thousands of people, and hundreds of years of physics and chemistry all combined to deliver 18 pounds of explosives to one tiny target. Yet the study\u2019s language has less zest than the wiring diagram for an air conditioner.<\/p>\n

There is also no actual blood in the presentation. The high-value individuals marked for death barely possess human names; instead they are objectified<\/em> with code names such as Objective Peckham or Objective Rhodes or Objective Canton. They are not shredded by shrapnel into scraps of wet, red flesh, but rather experience a \u201ckinetic engagement\u201d or \u201cfinishing action.\u201d And while the drone program attempts to monitor them with unblinking HD video, there is no suggestion\u00a0they ever had any existence beyond that of a target. Nor is there any sign of the American human beings who make the drone program run on a day-to-day level \u2014 just\u00a0FSs, MFWs, and JWICS<\/a>, hundreds and hundreds of International Business Machines.<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s the most important aspect\u00a0of IBM\u2019s identical Big Data approaches to death and customer service: Both are extremely powerful systems that have escaped any kind of human, democratic control. As Ellsberg puts it, the drone study is \u201cunintelligible to anyone who might ask, \u2018to what end is all this?\u2019 or \u2018do we have the right to be doing this?\u2019 or \u2018is this making us more secure, in the mid- to long-term, or on balance less so?\u2019 or \u2018is this creating more people who hate us \u2014 including the families of EKIAs (unintended victims) \u2014 and wish to harm us, than it is eliminating?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, after his retirement, Gen. Stanley McChrystal\u00a0made a similar point<\/a>: \u201cAlthough to the United States, a drone strike seems to have very little risk and very little pain, at the receiving end, it feels like war. \u2026 If we were to use our technological capabilities carelessly \u2026 we should not be upset when someone responds with their equivalent, which is a suicide bomb in Central Park, because that\u2019s what they can respond with.\u201d<\/p>\n

There Are No Nations<\/strong><\/p>\n

As a resident of New York City, I feel this viscerally. I don\u2019t mean that figuratively; I feel it in my viscera, right underneath\u00a0my stomach. If you would like to feel it too, try walking down West 45th Street in Times Square, past the offices of MTV. In 2010 Faisal Shahzad parked his Nissan SUV there, near Broadway \u2014 about 15\u00a0blocks south of McChrystal\u2019s hypothetical Central Park terrorism\u00a0\u2014 in an attempt to set off a non-hypothetical\u00a0car bomb. Shahzad\u00a0later specified<\/a>\u00a0that he was retaliating for, among other things, \u201cthe drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen\u201d \u2014 i.e., the subject of the classified\u00a0ISR study.<\/p>\n

But Big Data will never be used to examine these questions, even with figures as significant as McChrystal asking them, just as Apple will never hire IBM to help it determine whether the world finally has enough\u00a0iPhones. As IBM\u00a0says<\/a>, one of the \u201cbasic structural components\u201d of Big Data is to \u201cincrease profitability.\u201d And if the 14 years since 2001 have proven anything, it\u2019s that the drive to \u201cincrease profitability\u201d is at the core of all significant decisions by the people who run the United States. The drone war could generate bombings in 100 U.S. cities, accidentally obliterate 100 weddings in Yemen, or cause the few countries still standing in the Middle East to dissolve, and the killing would continue. If the drone war somehow became unprofitable for large corporations, however, it would\u00a0be over that afternoon.<\/p>\n

You may know the famous scene from the 1976 movie\u00a0Network<\/em>\u00a0in which the chairman of Communications Corporation of America\u00a0explains<\/a>\u00a0to Howard Beale that \u201cthere are no nations, there are no peoples \u2026 there is no America, there is no democracy.\u201d But you likely don\u2019t remember which corporation came first when he describes what actually does exist: \u201cThere is only IBM and ITT and\u00a0AT&T<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0DuPont<\/a>, Dow, Union Carbide, and\u00a0Exxon<\/a>.\u00a0Those are the nations of the world today.\u201d IBM received over $1.34 billion in federal contracts in fiscal year 2014, an increase of $108 million over FY 2013.<\/p>\n

(A Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment or answer questions about IBM\u2019s role in producing the ISR study, saying \u201cthe report you reference is an internal classified document. As a matter of policy we don\u2019t comment on the details of classified reports.\u201d IBM did not respond to a request for comment.)<\/em><\/p>\n

_____________________________<\/p>\n

Read the complete Drone Papers<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Contact the author: <\/em>Jon Schwarz<\/a> – <\/em>jon.schwarz@\u200btheintercept.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 theintercept.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere are no nations, there are no peoples \u2026 there is no America, there is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.\u201d IBM received over $1.34 billion in federal contracts in fiscal year 2014, an increase of $108 million over FY 2013.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[197],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-special-feature"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65609"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65609\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}