dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Anonymous ID: 694ac6 April 16, 2018, 2:11 p.m. No.1068471 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>8607

The US Navy appears to have fooled Russia and Syria with a warship ruse before the strike

When President Donald Trump threatened to strike Syria, the US Navy had only one destroyer in the region — leading people to assume it would take part.

But when the attack occurred, that ship didn't fire — suggesting it may have been a distraction ploy.

Instead, ships in the Red Sea fired a large portion of the missiles, while Syria and its ally Russia apparently failed to defend against them.

Russian threats to counterattack ultimately did not lead to anything.

When President Donald Trump threatened to send missiles at Syria — despite Russia's promises to counterattack— all eyes turned toward the US Navy's sole destroyer in the region. But that may have been a trick.

Pundits openly scoffed at Trump's announcement early last week of the US's intention to strike, especially considering his criticism of President Barack Obama for similarly telegraphing US military plans, but the actual strike appeared successful.

In April of last year, two US Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean steamed into the region, let off 59 cruise missiles in response to gas attacks by the Syrian government, and left unpunished and unpursued.

But this time, with the US considering its response to another attack against civilians blamed on the Syrian government, Russian officials threatened to shoot down US missiles, and potentially the ships that launched them, if they attacked Syria. A retired Russian admiral spoke candidly about sinking the USS Donald Cook, the only destroyer in the region.

https:// twitter.com/carpedonktum/status/985969692492824576?s=21

In-Q-Tel: A New Partnership

Between the CIA and the Private Sector

[IN-Q-TEL-CIA] DIG

On 29 September 1999, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was treated to something different. In many of the nation’s leading newspapers and television news programs a story line had appeared that complimented the Agency for its creativity and openness. The media was drawn to a small corporation in Washington, DC that had just unveiled its existence and the hiring of its first CEO, Gilman Louie. Mr. Louie described the Corporation, called In-Q-It, as having been formed "…to ensure that the CIA remains at the cutting edge of information technology advances and capabilities." 1 With that statement the Agency launched a new era in how it obtains cutting edge technologies. In early January 2000, the name of the corporation was changed to In-Q-Tel.

The origins of the concept that has become In-Q-Tel are traceable to Dr. Ruth David, a former CIA Deputy Director for Science and Technology. She and her Deputy, Joanne Isham, were the first senior Agency officials to understand that the information revolution required the CIA to forge new partnerships with the private sector and design a proposal for radical change. The timing of the proposal was fortuitous. The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), George Tenet, had just launched his Strategic Direction initiative that included technology as one of its areas for review. The study made a direct link between the Agency’s future technology investments and improving its information gathering and analysis capabilities.

By the summer of 1998, the Agency had assembled a few senior Agency staff employees with an entrepreneurial bent and empowered them to take Dr. David’s original concept and flesh it out. Aided by a consulting group and a law firm, they devoted the next four months to making the rounds in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, putting the concept through the wringer. Much of the time was spent listening. Many they met with were often critical of one aspect or another of the concept. But, whether they were venture capitalists, Chief Executive Officers (CEO), Chief Technical Officers (CTO) or congressmen and staffers, they all eagerly immersed themselves in spirited debates that enriched the Agency team and drove the concept in new directions.

By the end of 1998, the Agency team reached a point at which the concept seemed about right. Though it had changed considerably from that which had been proposed initially by Dr. David, it remained true to its core principles. It was time to hand the product of the Agency’s work over to someone in the private sector with the experience and passion necessary to start the Corporation. To the delight of the DCI and the Agency team, Mr. Norman Augustine, a former CEO of Lockheed-Martin and four-time recipient of the Department of Defense’s highest civilian award, the Distinguished Service Medal, accepted the challenge. By February 1999, the Corporation was established as a legal entity, and in March it received its first contract from the Agency. In-Q-Tel was in business, charged with accessing information technology (IT) expertise and technology wherever it exists and bringing it to bear on the information management challenges facing the Agency.

>>1068737

Imperatives: Why was In-Q-Tel Created?

As an information-based agency, the CIA must be at the cutting edge of information technology in order to maintain its competitive edge and provide its customers with intelligence that is both timely and relevant. Many times the Agency and the federal government have been the catalysts for technological innovations. Examples of Agency-inspired breakthroughs include the U-2 and SR71 reconnaissance aircraft and the Corona surveillance satellites, while the creation of the Internet was led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

By the 1990s, however, especially with the advent of the World Wide Web, it is the commercial market that is setting the pace in IT innovation. And, as is the nature of a market-based economy, the flow of capital and talent has irresistibly moved to the commercial sector, where the prospect of huge profits from initial public offerings and equity-based compensation has become the norm. In contrast to the remarkable transformations taking place in Silicon Valley and elsewhere, the Agency, like many large Cold War era private sector corporations, felt itself being left behind. It was not connected to the creative forces that underpin the digital economy and, of equal importance, many in Silicon Valley knew little about the Agency’s IT needs. The opportunities and challenges posed by the information revolution to the Agency’s core mission areas of clandestine collection and all-source analysis were growing daily. Moreover, the challenges are not merely from foreign countries but also transnational threats. 2

Faced with these realities, the leadership of the CIA made a critical and strategic decision in early 1998. The Agency’s leadership recognized that the CIA did not, and could not, compete for IT innovation and talent with the same speed and agility that those in the commercial marketplace, whose businesses are driven by "Internet time" and profit, could. The CIA’s mission was intelligence collection and analysis, not IT innovation. The leadership also understood that, in order to extend its reach and access a broad network of IT innovators, the Agency had to step outside of itself and appear not just as a buyer of IT but also as a seller. The CIA had to offer Silicon Valley something of value, a business model that the Valley understood; a model that provides those who joined hands with In-Q-Tel the opportunity to commercialize their innovations. In addition, In-Q-Tel’s partner companies would also gain another valuable asset, access to a set of very difficult CIA problems that could become market drivers. Once the Agency’s leadership crossed these critical decision points, the path that led to In-Q-Tel’s formation was clear.

Anonymous ID: 694ac6 April 16, 2018, 2:40 p.m. No.1068748 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>9079

A Snapshot of In-Q-Tel

In-Q-Tel’s founder, Norm Augustine, established it as an independent nonprofit corporation. Its Board of Trustees, which now has ten members, functions as any other board, initially guiding and overseeing the Corporation’s startup activities and setting its strategic direction and policies. The CEO, who was recruited by the Board and reports to them, manages In-Q-Tel. The Corporation has offices in two locations – Washington, DC and Menlo Park, CA – and it employs a small professional staff and a smaller group of business and technology consultants. In-Q-Tel’s mission is to foster the development of new and emerging information technologies and pursue research and development (R&D) that produce solutions to some of the most difficult IT problems facing the CIA. 3 To accomplish this, the Corporation will network extensively with those in industry, the venture capital community, academia, and any others who are at the forefront of IT innovation. Through the business relationships that it establishes, In-Q-Tel will create environments for collaboration, product demonstration, prototyping, and evaluation. From these activities will flow the IT solutions that the Agency seeks and, most importantly, the commercial opportunities for product development by its partners. To fulfill its mission, In-Q-Tel has designed itself to be:

agile, to respond rapidly to Agency needs and commercial imperatives;

problem driven, to link its work to Agency program managers;

solutions focused, to improve the Agency’s capabilities;

team oriented, to bring diverse participation and synergy to projects;

technology aware, to identify, leverage, and integrate existing products and solutions;

output measured, to produce quantifiable results;

innovative, to reach beyond the existing state-of-the-art in IT;

and, over time, self-sustaining, to reduce its reliance on CIA funding.

At its core, In-Q-Tel is designed to operate in the market place on an equal footing with its commercial peers and with the speed and agility that the IT world demands. As an example, it can effect the full range of business transactions common to the industry – it is venture enabled, can establish joint ventures, fund grants, sponsor open competitions, award sole source contracts, etc. And, because of the many degrees of freedom granted to it by the Agency, In-Q-Tel does not require Agency approval for the business deals it negotiates. 4 As such, In-Q-Tel represents a different approach to government R&D. It moves away from the more traditional government project office model in which the program is managed by the government. Instead, the Agency has invested much of the decisionmaking in the Corporation and, hence, In-Q-Tel will be judged on the outcomes produced – i.e., the solutions generated – and not by the many decisions it makes along the way.

Anonymous ID: 694ac6 April 16, 2018, 2:40 p.m. No.1068751 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>9079

In-Q-Tel’s IT "Space"

As with many aspects of the In-Q-Tel venture, the Agency took a different approach in presenting its IT needs to the Corporation. It bounded the types of work that In-Q-Tel would perform – its IT operating "space" – by two criteria. In the first instance, it made the decision that In-Q-Tel would initially conduct only unclassified IT work for the Agency. Second, to attract the interests of the private sector, it recognized that In-Q-Tel would principally invest in areas where there was both an Agency need and private sector interest. Whereas in the past, much of the commercial computing world did not focus on those technologies useful to the CIA, the intersection zone between intelligence and private sector IT needs has grown tremendously in recent years. Many of the underlying technologies that are driving the information revolution are now directly applicable to the intelligence business. Examples of commercial applications that also support intelligence functions are:

data warehousing and mining,

knowledge management,

profiling search agents,

geographic information systems,

imagery analysis and pattern recognition,

statistical data analysis tools,

language translation,

targeted information systems,

mobile computing, and

secure computing.

Moreover, information security (INFOSEC), a critical enabling technology for all intelligence information systems, is now a mainstream area of research and innovation in the commercial world, due in no small part to the exponential growth in Internet e-commerce. Thus, there are a number of commercially available security technologies:

strong encryption,

secure community of interests,

authentication and access control,

auditing and reporting,

data integrity,

digital signatures,

centralized security administration,

remote or traveling users, and

unitary login.

It is, no doubt, the case that the commercial investments flowing into information security outpace the spending made by the Intelligence Community. Thus, In-Q-Tel will be poised to leverage the investments of others to the benefit of the Agency. Having bounded In-Q-Tel’s IT space with these two criteria – unclassified work with commercial potential – the Agency defined a set of strategic problem areas for the Corporation.

Information Security: hardening, and intrusion detection, monitoring and profiling of information use and misuse, and network and data protection.

Use of the Internet: secure receipt of information, non-observable surfing, authentication, content verification, and hacker resistance.

Distributed Architectures: methods to interface with custom or legacy systems, mechanisms to allow dissimilar applications to interact, automatic handling of archived data, and connectivity across a wide range of environments.

Knowledge Generation: geospatial and multimedia data fusion or integration, and computer forensics.

These four areas have the added and obvious benefit of spanning the needs of all the Agency’s directorates and, hence, its core business functions of collection and analysis.

The IT space that In-Q-Tel will occupy for the Agency will no doubt raise questions with some who will believe that it or the Agency have other motives. It is, therefore, important to highlight what In-Q-Tel is not and what it will not do. First, it is not a front company for the Agency to conduct any activities other than those spelled out in its Articles of Incorporation and its Charter Agreement. As a nonprofit – 501(c)3 – corporation, it will operate in full compliance with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations and, as with all similar non-profits, its IRS filing will be a matter public record.

In-Q-Tel is openly affiliated with the Agency, as was made obvious to the world during its press rollout on 29 September 1999. Of equal importance, it will not initiate work in areas that lead to solutions that are put in so-called "black boxes" – that is, innovations that the government subsequently classifies. To do so would undercut In-Q-Tel’s credibility with its business partners to the detriment of the Agency.

Finally, In-Q-Tel is a solutions company, not a product company. Working through its business partners, it will demonstrate solutions to Agency problems but will not generate products for use by Agency components. In-Q-Tel-inspired products will be developed through separate contractual arrangements involving Agency components and other vendors.

Anonymous ID: 694ac6 April 16, 2018, 2:43 p.m. No.1068780 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>8928 >>9079

The Road Ahead for In Q Tel

Those of us at the Agency who helped to create In-Q-Tel are endlessly optimistic about its prospects for success. The early indicators are all positive. Among them is the caliber of the people who stand behind and lead the Corporation and the initial reaction from industry and the trade press to its formation. In-Q-Tel’s Board of Trustees is at least the equal of any large corporation’s board. 9 They are committed to the Agency’s mission, the new R&D model that In-Q-Tel represents, and have invested much of their time to its formation. The Agency and the nation are in their debt. The Board also recruited an outstanding CEO who brings with him the experiences and contacts of his Silicon Valley base and an established reputation for starting and growing new IT companies. 10

The favorable press coverage of In-Q-Tel combined with the industry "buzz" engendered by the Board and CEO have brought a flood of inquiries by those interested in doing business with the Corporation. And, most importantly, its work program is already beginning to achieve results that the Agency can use and that its partners can commercialize. Judging by the record to date, the road ahead appears promising. But, In-Q-Tel’s fate also rests in part on those institutions charged with oversight of the Agency and its budget.

Congress is to be congratulated for its support to the Agency as it launched this new venture. Congress seeded the venture with start-up funding when it was still in its conceptual phase, but asked hard questions of the Agency throughout the design and formation of In-Q-Tel. Members understood that starting an enterprise such as In-Q-Tel is not risk free. As with all R&D efforts in government and industry, there will be some home run successes but also some failures. That is the price the Agency must be prepared to pay if it wants to stay on the leading edge of the IT revolution. With In-Q-Tel’s help plus the continued support of Congress and OMB, as well as from the traditional Agency contractor community and others, an "e-CIA" of the next century will evolve quickly, to the benefit of the President and the national security community.

IN Q TEL

taxes…

November 18, 2013

The following tax returns for the CIA’s venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, Inc. were collected from a number of sources including Bulk.Resource.Org. The returns span from tax year 2000-2011. A ZIP archive containing the returns from all years is also available.

IN-Q-TEL, INC. 2107 Wilson Blvd Arlington, VA 22201

703-248-3000