Politics

Maybe the CIA is a Bad Idea

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Photo by Carol M. Highsmith for the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Public Domain)
Photo by Carol M. Highsmith for the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Public Domain)

That’s the thought that I had as I read this article from the Washington Post: ‘Eyewash’: How the CIA deceives its own workforce about operations. Prior to this article, I was already something of a skeptic. For one thing, the CIA doesn’t seem to have actually done us a lot of good, historically speaking. High-ranking double agents like Kim Philby (actually in British intelligence) meant that in the early days of the Cold War the only limits to Soviet supremacy were their own suspicions. When it comes to the CIA’s biggest operations, the CIA either bungled them horribly (like the Bay of Pigs Invasion), succeeded only to bring serious blowback on the United States (like Operation Ajax) or–perhaps worst of all–never bothered to show up at all (as with the Hungarian Revolution of 1956). Then there’s the plain old villainy of Project MKUltra. Altogether, this is not a track record to inspire either trust or gratitude.

One of the problems that run through these examples is the fact that the CIA brings intelligence and operations under one roof. As I understand it, this is considered a bad idea by most national intelligence agencies. It is why, for example, the British have both MI5 (operations) and MI6 (intelligence). The main problem with merging the two functions into a single organization is that it creates a conflict of interest: operations folks have the ability to interfere in research gathering and analysis to support their plans (ahead of an operation) or obscure mistakes (after an operation).

The idea of splitting the CIA might seem crazy. Don’t we have enough intelligence agencies already? Why yes, we do. We have an “intelligence community” of 17 distinct federal agencies that are supposed to coordinate to handle national intelligence. But note that that’s all intelligence. We could certainly use some streamlining and consolidation of intelligence agencies, but merging intelligence and operations is precisely the wrong kind of merger.

The one thing that has kept me sort of on-the-fence about the CIA is the notion of trust. I don’t think of myself as an overly trusting person, but I do think of myself as fairly pragmatic. As a conservative, I have the tragic vision of the world. That’s the idea that the world, in its natural state, is full of limited resources and conflicting incentives. It doesn’t go as far as Hobbesian paranoia, but it is a view of the world where most choices require tradeoffs and where conflict with other players[ref]In the sense of game theory, which isn’t really about “playing” or “games” at all.[/ref] is something that has to be managed and navigated but cannot be entirely avoided. George Orwell’s statement resonates with me: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence upon those who would do us harm.” A nation state needs an intelligence apparatus and it needs some covert operational capabilities as well.

Most importantly, the declassification of early Cold War era documents served to me as a kind of delayed verification of what the CIA was up to.[ref]Stuff like the Venona Project, which was declassified in 1995.[/ref] Even though declassifying something decades after the fact may not provide the kind of immediate public scrutiny that is important for other government action, it seemed like a good balance of the need for secrecy with the need for public oversight. After all, the incentives of a typical member of an organization are to not only look after their own needs and desires but–to at least some degree–to those of the organization they belong to. This is where concepts like loyalty and legacy and prestige all come into play. If CIA leadership knows that eventually the public will find out what they have done, I think that’s a useful incentive.

And so we come back to the WaPo article:

Senior CIA officials have for years intentionally deceived parts of the agency workforce by transmitting internal memos that contain false information about operations and sources overseas, according to current and former U.S. officials who said the practice is known by the term “eyewash.”

OK, so that sounds kind of bad, but you could see how that would actually be an important counter-intelligence strategy. If you want to know where a leak is, then you give different information to different suspects and you see what gets turned over to the other side. And obviously if you can dole out fake information this makes it easier to come up with different “facts” to check against more leaks and it also prevents the betrayal of real operatives and real operations. You could see how it could be abused, but also how the CIA would need the flexibility to do this from time to time. But then I read this:

Officials said there is no clear mechanism for labeling eyewash cables or distinguishing them from legitimate records being examined by the CIA’s inspector general, turned over to Congress or declassified for historians.

And that’s when I threw my arms up in the air and thought to myself, “We probably need to dismantle this entire institution and start over.”

If the false information is not documented somewhere, then the one and only reason I had for hoping the CIA could be kept in check–eventual declassification, scrutiny, and some form of (perhaps watered down) accountability–is gone. If the leadership of the CIA gets to release false information in official documents without any distinction between the lies and the truth, then the potential of abuse seems basically limitless and the opportunity for accountability (even indirect accountability through ideas like reputation and legacy) disappears.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of honor and about the important of principle not just in an idealized world, but in a very practical one. I think our country has made a fatal mistake in our abandonment of these concepts in favor of real politik. The amount of goodwill that the United States has squandered all around the world is incalculable, and it’s not just about feelings. It has real impacts on our safety, our foreign policy, our economy, and global stability. If we had traded that for real and tangible benefits, you could make the case that it’s a tough but necessary tradeoff, but I just don’t believe we can rely on that anymore.

If the CIA has license to lie to the people of the United States indefinitely and without recourse, then in what conceivable sense does it remain an arm of government by, for, and of the people?

Deflecting Asteroids: The AEI-Brookings Poverty Report

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The American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution have come together to produce a report on reducing poverty. Recognizing the increase in child poverty with in the U.S., the group recommends multiple policies to combat it, including:

  • Promote marriage as the most reliable route to family stability and resources.
  • Promote delayed, responsible childbearing.
  • Promote parenting skills and practices, especially among low-income parents.
  • Promote skill development, family involvement, and employment among young men as well as women.
  • Expand opportunities for the disadvantaged by improving their skills.
  • Make work pay better than it does now for the less educated.
  • Expand both work requirements and opportunities for the hard-to-employ while maintaining an effective work-based safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society, especially children.
  • Make more jobs available.
  • Increase public investment in two underfunded stages of education: preschool and postsecondary.
  • Educate the whole child to promote social-emotional as well as academic skills.
  • Modernize the organization and accountability of the educational system.
  • Close resource gaps to reduce education gaps.

The project is based on three core values:

  1. That all Americans should have the opportunity to apply their talents and efforts to better themselves and their children, regardless of the circumstances of their birth;
  2. That all Americans have a responsibility to provide for themselves and their families to the best of their abilities before asking others for help;
  3. That all Americans are entitled to a basic level of security against the vicissitudes of life and, in a nation as rich as ours, to a baseline level of material well-being.

Perhaps even more interesting than the data and policies is the backstory of the project. It was ultimately the brainchild of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt (who has been mentioned frequently here at Difficult Run) known as The Asteroids Club. He explains, “The metaphor was that American political life consists of each side pointing to real threats, real asteroids hurtling toward the Earth, but neither side is willing to turn its head for a moment to look at the other side’s perceived asteroid. If we could at least acknowledge that the other side’s concerns are valid, maybe we could help each other deflect our asteroids.” You can see him describe the origin and results of the project below.

This is what our political system needs and Haidt’s successful project provides me a little hope.

National Review: “When Abortion Suddenly Stopped Making Sense”

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lifeI know we’ve had a lot of pro-life pieces here recently, I guess the March for Life that coincides with the anniversary of Roe v. Wade brings it out in us.  The National Review has a great piece from an early 70s “anti-war, mother-earth, feminist, hippie college student” who once believed the pro-choice message.  The piece explores how she was eventually persuaded otherwise (hint: science, the absence of rarity, and pro-womanhood.)  It includes great quotables like

Abortion can’t push the rewind button on life and make it so she was never pregnant. It can make it easy for everyone around the woman to forget the pregnancy, but the woman herself may struggle.

and

Abortion gets presented to us as if it’s something women want; both pro-choice and pro-life rhetoric can reinforce that idea. But women do this only if all their other options look worse. It’s supposed to be “her choice,” yet so many women say, “I really didn’t have a choice.”

and

We had somehow bought the idea that abortion was necessary if women were going to rise in their professions and compete in the marketplace with men. But how had we come to agree that we will sacrifice our children, as the price of getting ahead? When does a man ever have to choose between his career and the life of his child?

Bam. Bam. Bam.  It’s great, check it out.

“You Can’t Use Media If You Want To Understand the World”

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So says statistician Hans Rosling in the Swedish Deadline interview below. Modern journalism often distorts our perception of the world, making many believe that we are headed to hell in a handbasket. But we’re not. Rosling explains to his skeptical interviewer that most countries are “in the middle” in terms of prosperity and the people of these countries “go to school, they get vaccinated, and they have two child families.” The overpopulation scare is nonsense, according to Rosling, because “the number of children in the world has stopped increasing[ref]This happens when people become more prosperous.[/ref] because most people use contraceptives.”[ref]Whether we should be happy that the population has stopped growing is another matter. Of course, there is the factor of abortion. However, both the support for and practice of abortion may be waning in the U.S. The American pro-life movement has made some progress in the last 20 years.[/ref] In response to the claims of “war, conflicts, chaos,” Rosling points to Nigeria’s “fantastic election,” the 2014 election in Indonesia, and India’s elimination of tetanus. The problem, in Rosling’s view, is that news outlets “only show a small part and call that “the world.”” When challenged as to what evidence provides the base for his worldview, Rosling’s concluding remark is priceless: “I use normal statistics that are compiled by the World Bank and the UN. And that’s not controversial. This isn’t something to discuss. I am right and you are wrong.”

If you haven’t seen Rosling’s site Gapminder, you should. Check it out.

Colbert Palin-Endorses Each Presidential Candidate

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Stephen Colbert did an incredible bit on Sarah Palin’s endorsement of Donald Trump.  It begins with Colbert enjoying Palin’s strange speech, and then he Palin-endorses the other presidential candidates.  I only wish he had done Bernie Sanders. Enjoy.

Gun Safety vs. Gun Control

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Nicholas Kristof has an excellent piece in The New York Times on what he calls “inconvenient facts” surrounding gun violence and gun laws. These include:

  • “The number of guns in America has increased by more than 50 percent since 1993, and in that same period the gun homicide rate in the United States has dropped by half.”
  • “A 113-page study found no clear indication that [the assault rifle ban] reduced shooting deaths for the 10 years it was in effect.”
  • Overblown fears regarding open-carry and conceal-carry laws.
  • “One poll found that 74 percent even of N.R.A. members favor universal background checks to acquire a gun.”
  • “New York passed a law three years ago banning gun magazines holding more than seven bullets — without realizing that for most guns there is no such thing as a magazine for seven bullets or less.”
  • “Some public health approaches to reducing gun violence have nothing to do with guns. Researchers find that a nonprofit called Cure Violence, which works with gangs, curbs gun deaths. An initiative called Fast Track supports high-risk children and reduces delinquency and adult crime.”[ref]This may be particularly important given that, statistically speaking, gun violence is experienced differently depending on race.[/ref]

Kristof concludes, “In short, let’s get smarter. Let’s make America’s gun battles less ideological and more driven by evidence of what works. If the left can drop the sanctimony, and the right can drop the obstructionism, if instead of wrestling with each other we can grapple with the evidence, we can save thousands of lives a year.”

Give it a read. And then give Nathaniel’s piece on the subject another read.

 

Atheist + Pro-Life

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embryology_stickerKelsey Hazzard, president of Secular Pro-Life, an organization that promotes a pro-life stance based on science, has a excellent piece at Opposing Views about the religious tone of many abortion advocates.  Hazzard discusses how this “magical thinking” was the basis of the Roe v. Wade decision and is a current pro-choicers are happy to ride, even if they are stereotypically the kind of people who would promote science first, as long as the result is more pro-choicers and more abortions.

Indeed, magical thinking is embedded in Roe v. Wade itself. The majority opinion discusses a variety of views concerning when human life begins… The notion that science is just one possible approach among many is a hallmark of magical thinking. The consensus of modern embryologists, and the beliefs of a civilization that thrived a millennium before the invention of the sonogram, are not equally valid. That the Supreme Court of the United States pretended that they were, and that such a farce remains good law more than forty years later, is an embarrassment to our legal system.

Check out the full piece here.

Subsidies Increase Tuition: Exhibit B

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“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I offer you Exhibit B…”

In July of last year, I wrote about a study that found subsidized loans to be the culprit behind rising tuition. Now, a newer study comes to similar conclusions:

With all factors present, net tuition increases from $6,100 to $12,559. As column 4 demonstrates, the demand shocks— which consist mostly of changes in financial aid—account for the lion’s share of the higher tuition. Specifically, with demand shocks alone, equilibrium tuition rises by 102%, almost fully matching the 106% from the benchmark. By contrast, with all factors present except the demand shocks (column 7), net tuition only rises by 16%.

These results accord strongly with the Bennett hypothesis, which asserts that colleges respond to expansions of financial aid by increasing tuition (pg. 36).

“Remarkably,” writes economist Alex Tabarrok, “so much of the subsidy is translated into higher tuition that enrollment doesn’t increase! What does happen is that students take on more debt, which many of them can’t pay.” This just provides further evidence that “the Econ 101 insight that subsidies increase prices (even net for those who are not fully subsidized) holds true.”

Education, IQ, and Mating

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I’ve written about assortative mating and income inequality before, pointing out that the more educated tend to marry each other and therefore increase their economic earnings. Ronald Bailey at Reason weighs in on the discussion, adding to the mix evidence that shows assortative mating isn’t just about education, but intelligence. Quoting a 2015 study, he writes,

For example, if spouses mated randomly in relation to intelligence, highly intelligent women would be just as likely to mate with men of low as high intelligence. Offspring of the matings of women of high intelligence and men of low intelligence would generally be of average intelligence. However, because there is strong positive assortative mating, children with highly intelligent mothers are also likely to have highly intelligent fathers, and the offspring themselves are likely to be more intelligent than average. The same thing happens for less intelligent parents. In this way, assortative mating increases additive genetic variance in that the offspring differ more from the average than they would if mating were random. The increase in additive genetic variance can be substantial because its effects accumulate generation after generation until an equilibrium is reached. 

He concludes, “To the extent that intelligence is correlated with socioeconomic status, assortative mating will further exacerbate trends to greater income inequality.”

University of Washington professor Tony Gill once shared a thought experiment he employs in his classes during a Facebook discussion:

Most students are for higher marginal taxation on the rich (defined as the dollar amount of people who have a wee bit more than them).

I propose centrally planned sorting by either IQ or socio-economic status (noting some studies that show how IQ might have a hereditary component and how IQ might be related to long-term income potential). I also note that we tend to marry people who are educationally and socially close to us (e.g., people meet at Harvard or in the same upscale neighborhood bars). Some of us use mail order catalogues, but we usually get a box on education to check.

Students freak out. First, they say that this has never been done. Then I note how arranged marriages are not an uncommon fixture in history. Then they say it isn’t possible because of data concerns, and I remind them about all those tests they took in 3rd, 7th and 11th grade and their “permanent record,” not to mention all the income data the IRS has on their parents.

Then they squeal that this isn’t right because it limits their freedom to do what they want. And then I say, “Oh, so now you’re worried about centrally-planned limits on freedom, eh?”

So, next time you get the social justice itch to redistribute wealth, ask yourself the following:

  • Are the adjectives smart or intelligent used to describe your spouse? Are they some of the reasons given as to why you love them?
  • Did you meet your spouse at college?
  • Would it have a negative influence on your choice to date an individual if they were a waiter/waitress, barista, fast food employee, Walmart cashier? (And not one who is working there part-time while they go to school.)
  • Would you date someone you thought was uneducated?

If you answered “yes” to the first three and “no” to the last, congrats: you’ve officially contributed to income inequality.

2015: The Best Year in Human History

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What we often think is the case.

The Atlantic cuts through much of the pessimism found in the media with data that should make us smile:

From Paris to Syria through San Bernardino to Afghanistan, the world witnessed obscene and unsufferable tragedy in 2015. That was on top of the ongoing misery of hundreds of millions who are literally stunted by poverty, living lives shortened by preventable disease and malnutrition. But for all of that, 2015 also saw continued progress toward better quality of life for the considerable majority of the planet, alongside technological breakthroughs and political agreements that suggest the good news might continue next year and beyond.

And their evidence?:

  • A 35% decline in violent crime rates in the U.S. since the 1995, with a 6% drop in homicide rates worldwide between 2000 and 2012.[ref]Based on countries for which data was available.[/ref]
  • While terrorism and war is up slightly in the last couple years, “across the globe, the numbers of ongoing wars and battle deaths are still far below their levels of the 1970s and 1980s. Furthermore, terrorism, war, and murder together remain a minor cause of death worldwide.”
  • “Famine deaths are increasingly rare and increasingly limited to the few areas of the world suffering complete state collapse. Related to that, the proportion of the world’s population that is undernourished has slipped from 19 percent to 11 percent between 1990 and today.”
  • Vaccines have nearly exterminated diseases like polio and measles, while new ones (such as the recent one to combat Ebola) may prevent future outbreaks. “Meanwhile, the UN reported this year that global child mortality from all causes has more than halved since 1990. That means 6.7 million fewer kids under the age of five are dying each year compared to 1990.”
  • “[T]he number of electoral democracies worldwide remains at a historic high…”
  • Greater LGBT rights worldwide.
  • Increased wealth worldwide.
  • Increased globalization.
  • Increased commitment to battling climate change.

Chris Smith over at Approaching Justice has his own list of “good news” stories from 2015, including:

  • Advances in treatments for cancer and Alzheimer’s.
  • Plummeting U.S. school dropout rates.
  • Women in Saudi Arabia voting and running for office for the first time.

And much more. Check out these links and remember that despite the bad news, the world continues to get better.

Happy New Year.