Not A Blog™

Some of the most fun I’ve ever had was doing live video production. The setup I ran was four inputs: three cameras, plus “channel four”, which could be output from a computer, DVD player, VCR, or whatever other multimedia stuff we wanted to plug in there. The event—in this case, Sunday morning worship services—was live: one take, one chance to get it right. With four or five people looking to me for direction every few seconds, and taking in such a massive amount of data from different sources and outputting a product that thousands of people see immediately, and hundreds more watch later—this is an experience not quite like anything else I’ve done.

The goal, naturally, was to have a 100% perfect shoot where you hit every entrance, every dissolve was smooth and beautiful, and all shots were properly exposed. This never happened. It wasn’t always something the director could control. Everyone was a volunteer, so there would be inexperienced camera people who had trouble with the camera. Some times it would be a loose connection we couldn’t track down, and sometimes we were perfect, but the people on stage messed up, at which point you’re magnifying their failure, even if you didn’t do anything wrong on the production end.

After I had been there for a few years, I had a few teams that were absolutely phenomenal. There were a few of us (not unsurprisingly, the best cameramen were those who were directors themselves), who were practically able to read each others minds. One time we were so on the ball, I shot about ten minutes of video without asking for a single shot. Every camera person knew exactly where to go and how to set up their shot, and the only thing I did was call out my takes so they knew who was live and who was next. It was simple to execute, but the result was complex. It was like a ballet. Exquisite.

No one noticed.

That is the mixed blessing and curse of the technical team. Our unofficial motto at the church was, “No one notices when you do it right.” In a typical (non-church) control room, there is all kinds of cursing going on. We were supposed to keep it clean back there, but a few shits or damns got out. I think I dropped an F-bomb once. But no one holds it against you when you’re working the problem. So we can be back in the room, swearing, groaning, sighing, and running around like maniacs trying to get some dirty signal sorted out, as long as our output is calm and collected.

Out in the service, everything would be fine. The astute might notice that we’ve been on this one camera for longer than usual, but it’s nothing awkward. Either we work out the problem, or we don’t, but either way, if no one notices—if the worshipful reverent atmosphere of the service is not interrupted—we did our job well. And when things are going smoothly, no one notices that either—because smooth is what we strive for all the time.

In live production, those who are behind the scenes want to be behind the scenes. They get recognition for their work from the only people who matter: the other guys who work behind the scenes. While it would be nice to get recognition for our fantastic saves and our even more fantastic, complex productions that go off without a hitch, that is not in the cards. Those of us who choose to stay out of the spotlight recognize this, and we accept it. This our blessing. And our curse.

But for some people, it is a curse only.

There is a compelling parallel between live video production, and intelligence work. They are very nearly the same thing. In the intel world a “perfect production” is the one no one hears about. Data collected on a terrorist cell, correct analysis of intent, a terror plot thwarted: these things may get out to the media in the same way that produced signal gets to the eyes and ears of the audience, but the behind-the-scenes goings-on, and the recognition of people who made it happen, always stays under wraps. Again, for those making it happen, this is not unexpected. But for the politicians and leaders who have to justify it, it is a huge problem.

Churches fund their own video and audio production based on their perceived need for the service. The pastor or his staff was allowed to walk into the production room any time they wanted, of course, because they “owned” it, in a sense.

But with intel, the people who “own” the agencies—FBI, CIA, NSA, DIA, ONI, etc—the people who “own” and fund these agencies are the American people. And they are not allowed in.

The only person the pastor of the church needs to justify the AV team to is, perhaps, the accountant (or the board, in a larger organization). If the church is in debt and can’t afford the equipment, the congregation might demand an explanation for that, but the congregation is not analogous to the taxpayers, because they’re not required to tithe, and they can go to a different church. If the church has the money and they want an AV team, there you go.

When it comes to the alphabet soup agencies, the ultimate appeal for justification needs to be made by the politicians to their constituency. But the politicians have a really tough job because they have to justify the need for this without permitting the people to see whether it’s working or not. It could be that without these agencies we’d have 127 9/11’s a year. They do have successes, of course. Maybe not that many, but there are some terror plots that are prevented. Unfortunately, with these preventions comes silence in many cases, and nobody knows that it’s working at all.

No one notices when we do it right.

The only time someone notices when the technical team screws up is when the picture goes wonky on the screen, or the audio feeds back. The only time the American people notice when the intel community screws up is when Americans die in an attack. It is the curse of intel that only 100% perfection is effective, and when this is accomplished, people question whether or not we need the agencies at all, because we haven’t had an attack in a while.

But the greater curse is that because intelligence is like video production, it begats Orwellian governments. I think very few people would argue that we should have no intelligence gathering agencies whatsoever. We can debate all day about whether or not we have too many with too much power now, but no government can properly protect its citizens if they have no intel.

So let’s postulate a 100% Perfect Intelligence Agency (the PIA). The janitors make James Bond look like an incompetent bank robber. This theoretical PIA would be so good at getting and analyzing information that no terrorist could ever set foot within the country’s borders without simultaneously stepping into a jail cell.

It would only take a few years before people would begin to question why they needed the PIA. After a decade or so of complete peace and security, someone would notice that the country spends 278 billion on the PIA, while public schools only get 47 billion and grants for college students are a measly 24 billion. We haven’t had an attack in ten years. Does the PIA really need that 278B dollar budget?

But the PIA employs thousands of James Bonds and Jason Bournes who all have families and lives. No one wants to be out of a job, so they’re going to petition right up through their ranks to the politicians and impress upon them how important their jobs are. They are only human, and threatened humans take drastic measures to secure themselves. They might lie about their effectiveness. They will boost the numbers.

Besides, no politician wants to slash the PIA’s operating budget because what if a terrorist attack happens then? Anyone who voted to “cripple” the PIA (as the media would spin it) would be out of their job. So they’re all going to do their darndest to keep the terrorist boogey man at the forefront of the hind brain.

But the PIA is so good, there is no sight of the boogy-man anywhere! There are only a few things one can do to protect one’s self interest in this case. Politicians can lie about the nature of the threat. They can vote to aid terrorists in roundabout ways such as financial aid for the legitimate government of the country in which terrorists operate, hoping a few will slip by the PIA. The threat needs to grow in order that all the people involved with securing the threat can live the American dream—all because a perfect intelligence agency is so good that it eliminates the justification for its existence in the first place.

However, you may have noticed that we do not have a PIA. We have dozens of intel communities, and terrorist attacks still happen. Even worse, we wrongfully imprison people all the time, because unlike the PIA, real agencies catch false positives.

With our swiss-cheese intelligence, politicians have no need to exaggerate or lie, or covertly fund terrorism in order to provide justification for the community. I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, only that there’s no particular need for it. In fact, it most certainly does happen, which serves to accelerate the process.

Politicians are like wanna-be video directors, but they can’t keep their mouth shut. They crave the attention of the spotlight. This is not an exaggeration. At the church, there was one pastor who was a politician through-and-through. He was an empty suit, always smiling, always saying the nice things people want to hear. He also stopped back in the production room all the time, and tried to tell us how to run things. Not stylistic things like “can you reposition the lights so they don’t glare off the pastor’s bald spot?” but technical things like “why do you have three expensive VCRs in this stack? You should only have one.”

He had no idea why there were three $2,000 VCRs there (recording, recording backup, and playback), only that he only ever had need for a single VCR, so why did we get to have so many?

So the politicians get themselves elected because they want to run the show, and they want to be seen running the show, but they have no idea how the show is actually run most of the time. They cut and splice the budget, and move agencies and responsibilities around, and in some cases form entirely new agencies (the Department of Homeland Security) in order to make the show run the way they think it should be running, but is not. But if they get everything they asked for, and the hard-working intel analysts (or tech guys) behind the scenes make it all work beautifully despite the convoluted bureaucratic processes, then this solution is not what the politicians want. Because now, if the analysts are all hard working, the threat is secured and we’re back to square one: justifying the need for an agency amidst the lack of a visible threat.

The only way to justify the continued need for government intelligence agencies is for enough high-profile terrorist attacks to slip through that people can see for themselves that there’s still a problem. But when terrorist attacks do happen, everyone wants the “problem”—the intelligence gap—to be fixed. This spawns the funding and development of new agencies, which either must be flawed, or they appear to negate their own purpose again.

The ultimate reduction of this process is George Orwell’s 1984; he saw it just as clearly as anyone. Naturally this ultimate reduction is the result of a slippery slope fallacy—but that doesn’t mean it won’t lead us into a terrible state of affairs. You don’t need to have a 1984-esque political climate to violate human rights and abolish habeus corpus in the name of security. Both of these things have already happened in America, so the slipperiness of the slope is not without merit.

There is no solution to this, in the same way there is no solution for eliminating glitches in video productions. There are collections on YouTube devoted to professional television networks and their on-air technical problems. No matter what you do, you can’t eliminate all the problems. Even when you run the production perfectly, if the on-screen talent does something stupid, it’s out there for the world to see, and the only person at fault is the one who performed the action.

In the same way, there is no solution for the multiplication and growth of intelligence agencies in the middle of an intelligence war. The best we can do is recognize that it happens in ourselves, and approach this recognition rationally. Information can be helpful, but no one can ever eliminate all the problems. People make mistakes. In video production, it’s annoying. In intelligence, it costs lives, and while this serves to focus efforts, people are only human.

But the kicker is that the Perfect Intelligence Agency would just be like the Perfect Production Company. Even if they do their job properly; even when everything is right; every piece of information is collected, all things are analyzed properly, and the signal is transmitted without flaw—despite all these efforts, if the actors on the stage do their own thing and screw it all up, the behind-the-scenes guys only serve one purpose.

They magnify and project the extent that failure: far and wide and crystal clear for everyone to see and hear. Because that is their job.

-Ted