Will it?
The government has suddenly gone back to the attitude that, for every problem, there is a government program that can solve it, if enough money is thrown at it. We already spend more on "Intelligence" than any other country, by a very wide margin. I, too, heard the story about the old computers.
IMO, what's needed (in general, and in particular for our "Intelligence" agencies) is a kick in the butt, not being handed more money. What's needed is reorganization, a focus on results rather than process. I'd say we need motivation too, but I think CNN has done that for every American, in the last 2 weeks.
A lot of the organizational boundaries (between domestic and foreign, civilian vs. military) are obsolete. And, frankly, there is a lot of deadwood, a lot of fat, lazy, complacent institutions.
Our Intelligence people need to get out from behind their computers in comfortable Virginia suburbs. They need to be out in the field, go to dirty dangerous places like Uzbekistan and Oman, looking and listening, or directly supervising those who are looking and listening. There will be a lot of institutional resistance to this. |
