Ultra AI versus Human Spies - The War of Secrets

Not What You Know About Them but What They Know About You and About to Do to You - Building Competitive Intelligence Strategies

by Thomas B. Cross CEO TECHtionary.com

History rarely fails us because it is the past and you cannot change it but you can certainly learn about it. Turing set the bar and the stage for machine computing (bombes and other systems) and artificial intelligence in the form of the Turing Test which are very different concepts in his mind and many others. 

Having a machine decrypt enemy messages does not require any intelligence just continuous repetitive efforts like that of an electric or gasoline motor until the task is completed or the destination reached. Deciding on what messages mean or where to go in your journey requires intelligence, thinking, planning, resources and more. Machines don't move without guidance, nor to computing systems. The idea that a machine has intelligence on its own without human guidance is really absurd. Much as we like to think that machines can think the really don't. Indeed, they can model the weather, build simulations of atomic particles and more but don't really think about creating new ways to cure cancer, go to space and analyze what I am writing about just now. The history of machine analysis during WWII gives us deep insights as to what we are doing now and the role of humans and machines in the future. 

Here are some interesting quotes from The Secret War, “The Office of Naval Intelligence is in danger of degenerating into a graveyard for statistics because it is inclined to regard intelligence as an end in itself . .” Throughout the book and throughout the war there was a battle between "humint v. signint" or human intelligence versus signal intelligence. That battle rages today between signal intelligence now called AI or artificial intelligence and human intelligence where humans do the real thinking. There is also a battle between humans rather business competitors that also needs to be addressed. For example, regarding a new Japanese torpedo, the reaction by the US Navy "was a reflection of the tribalism of many nations’ armed forces: if We have not created such a weapon, how could They have done so.” The Secret War really drills into the details about how Ultra the British system built by Turing to break the German Enigma code which not only shortened the war but also by many reports saved up to 5 million lives. Drilling into this system the book noted, “It must be made quite clear that Ultra and Ultra-only put intelligence on the map. It is no more possible to measure the contribution of Bletchley Park to the timing of victory than that of Winston Churchill, Liberty ships or radar.” However, Ultra was not a panacea as un-intelligent humans began to believe in, trust and make decisions for better or worse on Ultra cypher decrypts. “Ultra in the latter part of the war fortified the confidence – latterly over-confidence – of the Allies’ ground commanders. They believed that they could launch their own operations without fear that the enemy was about to unleash some fearsome surprise of his own.” There is much more to this and highly recommend the book for further study in humint and sigint. In the ~70 years since WWII what have we learned and what can we use to bring about better decision-making in the future. First, AI is not another panacea to bad data or as it was said long ago - garbage-in equals garbage-out. Data is only really useful after a human has analyzed it in their own mind and often with others. In making strategic marketing decisions, the amount of data can be ponderous, however, just organizing data into bar and pie charts or graphs that often only show high-altitude trends but not the underlying fundamental changes which often occur at the street level. This is where humint comes into play to gather live data interactions and integrate that knowledge into the AI system for further analysis. Humans like to "think through" things before they make important decisions with a proportional delay in direct relation to the complexity of the problem and number of people involved, the longer it takes to make decisions. Second, humans are biased with their own fears of failure or success and generally driven not by another person's success but for their failure.

Summary - First, build your own corporate influencer internal intelligence-driven communications platform and only if necessary, post to public social media via your own platform to maximize competitive positioning and protection and strategic outlook. That is, focus your internal social media on internal user engagement and promotion of employee contributions to the company and importantly to the community and beyond while devising ways to protect corporate IP-intellectual Property in all its forms. Second, build your own Ultra AI system but with both humint and sigint.  AI is meaningless without human intervention, analysis and thought leadership balancing humint versus sigint. Third, have an UltraAI-enhanced corporate confidential competitive analysis system that like "Ultra would have told us that . . . The Germans have this time prevented us from knowing enough about them; but we have not prevented them from knowing far too much about us” ensuring you have knowledge of what they also know about you. Take the position there are known and unknown competitors know more about you than you know about yourself, are building solutions steps ahead of where you are, talking to your customers and positioning themselves for the leapfrog and seek your demise as fast as possible.

This article is part of a webinar on the Top 10 Critical Concepts in Crisis Management Communications Webinar 9/18 included other topics presented: Communications, Context, Contact, Collaboration, Connections, Consistency, Channels, Compliance, Cynchronicity and Customers will review, navigate and provide actionable tools to help you manage the upcoming crisis coming to you and your business.

This discussion is also part of a Marketing Data Driving You to Distraction - Webinar 8/14 - “Are you missing the mark by focusing too much on the point”