This is great, but as some of my readers have said, kind of creepy. lol
I am impressed, but I will be really impressed when quadrotors like these can play music with these instruments by ear and autonomously. Or that they create their own music…. Imagine a swarm of these, all throttling their motors differently to create notes and pitches for some battle song? Then they could play something appropriate before an attack. lol
Pretty cool and the future is now. –Matt
Thanks to POGO for posting this news and I would love to hear some feedback from our community on this. As an American and as a tax payer, I am all about contracting reform that leads to savings and minimizing waste and fraud. As a contractor, I am also enthused because I want to see good companies rewarded, and poor companies punished in this industry. Any tools that help make this process called contingency contracting more efficient, an asset to national interest and security, and rewards good behavior/punishes bad when doing business with private industry, is a good thing.
Below I have posted two videos made by the Senators that describe this legislation and all of the work that went into it. POGO provided a basic summary of some of the key points in this legislation on their website and here is a PDF of the legislation.
I guess the only reservation I have is the secondary effects of legislation like this. It is very hard to tell how some of this stuff will impact the guy on the ground. Will it increase the quality of contracts out there? Will it hinder my ability to provide security services on these contracts? Will this legislation hamstring national security, or enhance it?
Another fear is that now that the wars are winding down, that the lessons learned about contracting during war time will disappear or be marginalized. They mentioned this fear in the videos below, and it is food for thought.
My final point is that bravo to both Senators for recognizing the value of contractors. We are the other ‘All Volunteer’ force that makes our current volunteer military system work. These wars would have been radically different if the forces and support forces were raised by a draft. I personally think that a military supported by a contractor force is far more effective than a ‘slave army’.
A slave army is one where many of the participants are there because they are forced to be there. There is quite the difference between a military and contractor force filled with folks who want to be there or want to fight, and a conscripted military partially filled with folks who do not want anything to do with fighting or being in a war.
This system makes all the difference for war planners and political leaders who need time and flexibility when fighting an enemy and/or country that is not easily defeated within a short period of time. They need that flexibility for the politics of war, and they need that flexibility when situations change dramatically in a war–like losing partners in a coalition.
Does it make it easier for a country to go to war? Maybe. Or maybe we have developed a way of warfare that fits well within the mindset and fabric of a modern liberal democracy? It also fits well within the plans of strategists and leaders tasked with protecting this country and supporting national interest. –Matt
McCaskill, Webb Introduce Comprehensive Contracting Reform Legislation
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
On Wednesday, February 29, 2012, Senators Claire McCaskill and Jim Webb introduced legislation to overhaul the federal government’s planning, management, and oversight of wartime contracting. The Senators’ comprehensive reform legislation (S. 2139) builds on the recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan – an independent, bipartisan panel that Senators McCaskill and Webb created through legislation they introduced in 2007.
Press release here.
This is another great use of technology and leveraging the established networks and their personal technologies to increase the security and commerce in a rural place. Notice the tools being used? Basic cell towers, cellphones with SMS capability, basic low cost cell services, and an administrative chief building a snowmobile out of all of those pieces. The end result is that a government can communicate with it’s people, and the people can communicate back. A people scattered and remote, yet still brought closer together because of technology like this. That network has now increased it’s security and commerce, because it can plan and react based on better information coming in.
Some other things with this is that the local populations are using this technology and getting educated on all the various ways of connectivity with the tools they have. They have learned how to post a tweet using their text messaging feature and basic services on their phone. Wow, that is awesome. Just imagine each village with a smart phone or computer? It will happen, they will learn how to use it and exploit it, and governments need to pay attention. It empowers the citizenry, and it empowers the government to react to the needs of that citizenry. Doom on that government that does not pay attention to this interconnected and knowledge empowered citizenry. Especially if a government has depended upon it’s people not knowing what it is doing, or what it has done in one city/region versus the other. The light is definitely threatening the darkness…..
I also like the addition of this technology to what is already popular and available. That would be radio. A broadcast on a radio can now be met by a population that can answer back with their cellphones. That is quite the capability if used correctly. You could create offense industries with that set up, and possibly use RIM and these networks to find guys like Joseph Kony and his army. –Matt
Urgent tweet in Kenya village: Help, sheep missing
By TOM ODULA
Feb 15, 2012
When the administrative chief of this western Kenyan village received an urgent 4 a.m. call that thieves were invading a school teacher’s home, he sent a message on Twitter. Within minutes residents in this village of stone houses gathered outside the home, and the thugs fled.
“My wife and I were terrified,” said teacher Michael Kimotho. “But the alarm raised by the chief helped.”
The tweet from Francis Kariuki was only his latest attempt to improve village life by using the micro-blogging site Twitter. Kariuki regularly sends out tweets about missing children and farm animals, showing that the power of social media has reached even into a dusty African village. Lanet Umoja is 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of the capital, Nairobi.
“There is a brown and white sheep which has gone missing with a nylon rope around its neck and it belongs to Mwangi’s father,” he tweeted recently in the Swahili language. The sheep was soon recovered.
Kariuki said that even the thieves in his village follow him on Twitter. Earlier this year, he tweeted about the theft of a cow, and later the cow was found abandoned, tied to a pole.
A big hat tip to Danger Room for putting this one out there. Awhile back I posted a Building Snowmobiles concept dealing with RIM or recursive incentive mechanism. This is what MIT came up with in a DARPA contest to find ten red balloons scattered throughout the US, using social media and a bounty system. MIT blew away the competition for this contest, and I suspect they will participate in this game and do well. But you never know?
So why is this important? In the new rules of war that I have talked about in the past, finding the enemy is key if we want to destroy them or capture them. Especially if today’s enemies hide amongst a population.
If we can leverage the power of these people networks that are already established on places like Twitter and Facebook, and incentivize and reward these networks for finding and reporting wanted fugitives or terrorists, then that is a significant capability. With everyone carrying a computer called a smart phone in their pocket, we have nodes walking around all over the place that could potentially help. The key is tapping into these networks, and then those networks use their computers/cellphones/smart phones etc. to communicate/seek/find/report to win the game.
On a side note, notice how all of this stuff really lends itself to a rapid OODA decision making cycle? Games like this get people engaged and incentivize them to really tap into these tools and networks to build their personal OODA machine–to win the game.
I have also argued that our current systems of bounties or incentives suck, and it is smart to really explore the realms of offense industry here if we want to get good at ‘finding’ folks.
On the other hand, organizations with ill intent might also use these methods to find folks. So to me, it is imperative to figure out what works and capitalize on it first so as to stay one step ahead of competitors/criminals/enemies.
So we will see who wins this game, and what the results will be. Also, if you would like to participate, go to the website and check out the rules. This is a world wide game and there is a nice little prize. Check it out. –Matt
State Dept. Sponsors International Game of Tag with Cash Prize
Gamers challenged to locate five “jewel thieves” in U.S. and Europe
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The 2012 Tag Challenge calls on technology enthusiasts from several nations to set their sleuthing skills loose on a mock gang of jewel thieves in an international search contest to take place Saturday, March 31.
The social gaming contest will have participants use technological and social resources to locate and photograph five “suspects” in five different cities—Washington, D.C., New York City, London, Stockholm, and Bratislava—based only on a picture and a short description of each one.
The first person to upload pictures of all five suspects to the Tag Challenge website will earn international bragging rights—and a cash prize of $5,000.
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