As the national security workforce ages, dementia impacting U.S. officials poses a threat to national security, according to a first-of-its-kind study by a Pentagon-funded think tank. The report, released this spring, came as several prominent U.S. officials trusted with some of the nation’s most highly classified intelligence experienced public lapses, stoking calls for resignations and debate about Washington’s aging leadership.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who had a second freezing episode last month, enjoys the most privileged access to classified information of anyone in Congress as a member of the so-called Gang of Eight congressional leadership. Ninety-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., whose decline has seen her confused about how to vote and experiencing memory lapses — forgetting conversations and not recalling a monthslong absence — was for years a member of the Gang of Eight and remains a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on which she has served since 2001.

The study, published by the RAND Corporation’s National Security Research Division in April, identifies individuals with both current and former access to classified material who develop dementia as threats to national security, citing the possibility that they may unwittingly disclose government secrets.

“Individuals who hold or held a security clearance and handled classified material could become a security threat if they develop dementia and unwittingly share government secrets,” the study says.

As the study notes, there does not appear to be any other publicly available research into dementia, an umbrella term for the loss of cognitive functioning, despite the fact that Americans are living longer than ever before and that the researchers were able to identify several cases in which senior intelligence officials died of Alzheimer’s disease, a progressive brain disorder and the most common cause of dementia.

“As people live longer and retire later, challenges associated with cognitive impairment in the workplace will need to be addressed,” the report says. “Our limited research suggests this concern is an emerging security blind spot.”

Most holders of security clearances, a ballooning class of officials and other bureaucrats with access to secret government information, are subject to rigorous and invasive vetting procedures. Applying for a clearance can mean hourslong polygraph tests; character interviews with old teachers, friends, and neighbors; and ongoing automated monitoring of their bank accounts and other personal information. As one senior Pentagon official who oversees such a program told me of people who enter the intelligence bureaucracy, “You basically give up your Fourth Amendment rights.”

Yet, as the authors of the RAND report note, there does not appear to be any vetting for age-related cognitive decline. In fact, the director of national intelligence’s directive on continuous evaluation contains no mention of age or cognitive decline.

While the study doesn’t mention any U.S. officials by name, its timing comes amid a simmering debate about gerontocracy: rule by the elderly. Following McConnell’s first freezing episode, in July, Google searches for the term “gerontocracy” spiked.

“The President called to check on me,” McConnell said when asked about the first episode. “I told him I got sandbagged,” he quipped, referring to President Joe Biden’s trip-and-fall incident during a June graduation ceremony at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, which sparked conservative criticisms about the 80-year-old’s own functioning.

While likely an attempt by McConnell at deflecting from his lapse, Biden’s age has emerged as a clear concern to voters, including Democrats. 69% of Democrats say Biden is “too old to effectively serve” another term, an Associated Press-NORC poll found last month. The findings were echoed by a CNN poll released last week that found that 67% of Democrats said the party should nominate someone else, with 49% directly mentioning Biden’s age as their biggest concern.

As Commander In Chief, the President is the nation’s ultimate classification authority, with the extraordinary power to classify and declassify information broadly. No other American has as privileged access to classified information as the president.

The U.S.’s current leadership is not only the oldest in history, but also the number of older people in Congress has grown dramatically in recent years. In 1981, only 4% of Congress was over the age of 70. By 2022, that number had spiked to 23%.

In 2017, Vox reported that a pharmacist had filled Alzheimer’s prescriptions for multiple members of Congress. With little incentive for an elected official to disclose such an illness, it is difficult to know just how pervasive the problem is. Feinstein’s retinue of staffers have for years sought to conceal her decline, having established a system to prevent her from walking the halls of Congress alone and risk having an unsupervised interaction with a reporter.

Despite the public controversy, there’s little indication that any officials will resign — or choose not to seek reelection.

After years of speculation about her retirement, 83-year-old Speaker Emerita Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., stunned observers when she announced on Friday that she would run for reelection, seeking her 19th term.

⁇ Scandal ⁇ Jeon Do-yeon Shin Jae-ha's white knight Syndrome ⁇

https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA319849/mode/2up

1996 - Armed forces are ever more likely to fight in cities as the world becomes increasingly urbanized. Accordingly, public and moral concerns about the costs of war borne by noncombatants increase as well. This report is a study of urban warfare and its challenges for U.S. armed forces constrained by having to minimize noncombatant casualties and collateral damage. America's armed forces are likely to have to confront the hell of urban combat. They have the potential to do so successfully. However, this environment's challenging character is unalterable; it will consume any force that fights unprepared. This study, based on an in-depth literature search and scores of interviews, has three primary objectives: (1) Describe the conditions confronting a ground force fighting under the constraints of minimizing noncombatant casualties and collateral damage, along with the difficulties of fighting under such conditions in urban areas; (2) Identify U.S. armed forces' current capabilities and ongoing efforts to enhance them; and (3) Determine current shortfalls and present potential remedies for identified vulnerabilities. Consideration of such solutions will include analysis of feasible changes in doctrine, training, and technologies that would give regular U.S. forces the capability to successfully perform constrained urban operations.

Today I Learned...

...that a few years ago the RAND Corporation (the strategic think tank famous for advising the U.S. government on the Cold War and Vietnam War based on wargamed scenarios) published a wargame:

Hedgemony: A Game of Strategic Choices

The RAND Corporation has long been known for using wargames as part of its strategic policy research. Much has been written about their Cold War Game, a strategic game of nuclear brinkmanship and annihilation that informed U.S. Cold War policy. But those RAND wargames from the Cold War were created and played mostly within the RAND offices, and sometimes shared with other think tanks and similar institutions; actually publishing these games is a relatively new development.

Although looking at the price, and reading the description of this game, it seems that the target audience for Hedgemony is still institutional and it doesn't seem to be intended for hobby wargamers.

And since the RAND Corporation, like all big institutions now, has a youtube channel, there's a video ad for the game:

I love the bit in the video where one of the RAND researchers talks about hegemonic stability theory and defines a global hegemon; then they cut to one of the other RAND researcher denying that the U.S. is a global hegemon, and instead is (admits that the U.S. is a global hegemon, only using different synonyms).

Prisoner's dilemma o el dilema del prisionero

El dilema del prisionero o prisoner’s dilemma es una situación en la teoría de juegos recogida en 1950 por Merrill Flod y Mervin Dresher, dos científicos de un laboratorio de ideas conocido como la corporación RAND. El dilema surgió durante los años de la Guerra Fría, cuando la administración de USA supo que había perdido la ventaja competitiva del Proyecto Manhattan después de conocer que su…

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Rand Corporation - Assessing & Suing an Algorythm - Original Document

https://berndpulch.org/2024/01/09/rand-corporation-assessing-suing-an-algorythm-original-document/

Teaching Skills In Jeopardy

Teaching skills took a decline during the pandemic, according to a report by an education think tank from Arizona State University. The 2022-2023 school year was considered the first ‘normal’ year since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, restoring a few priorities that had been allowed to fall by the wayside. Including teacher evaluations. Observing teachers’ instruction and students’ learning…

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The Rand Corporation, which acts under the orders of the United States Air Force and, among other activities, issues reports on technical progress in the Soviet Union, published in 1956 a study with the following statement:

But the Russians apparently dismissed the idea that it [the bomb] would be feasible for the war then raging. They made no attempt to conceal the fact that they had stopped atomic research; and they apparently did not assign priority to the subject of atomic energy in their foreign espionage. ... By 1943 the Russians had resumed an atomic development programme with the apparent intent of trying to acquire nuclear weapons.

"Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists" - Robert Jungk, translated by James Cleugh

How to imagine you've had input

A newly published survey says 54% of teachers believe carrying firearms in school would make kids less safe. Still, 19% said they would be interested in carrying a gun to school, according to the RAND Corporation's survey of K-12 teachers — which would equate to more than 550,000 of the nation's 3 million K-12 teachers.

The remaining 26% said it would neither make schools more or less safe, according to the survey of 973 K-12 teachers conducted by RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, between October and November 2022.

In 2022 alone there were 51 school shootings that resulted in injuries or deaths, according to Education Week, an education news publication.

Last year's shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 children and two adults dead – making it one of the deadliest school shootings in the U.S.

While such events have sparked debate on how to best keep kids safe from guns in school, the issue teacher said they were most concerned about is bullying, according to the survey.

"Despite the prevalence of anti-bullying programs, everyday school violence is a concern for teachers. Bullying, not active shooters, was teachers' most common top safety concern, followed by fights and drugs," said one of the report's authors, Heather L. Schwartz, a policy researcher at RAND.

When it came to school shootings, about half of the respondents saw physical security measures like locks, ID badges, cameras and security staff as positive. 5% felt these measures had a negative impact on the climate at the school.

About 80% of teachers said their school had physical safety measures. The most common of these measures are visitor systems, staff IDs and exterior and interior locks.

White teachers were more likely to believe carrying firearms at schools would make them safer, compared to Black teachers. Male teachers in rural schools were also more likely to say they would carry a firearm if the school allowed, according to the survey.

As of Tuesday, the 150th day of the year, there have been 263 mass shootings and 327 victims killed in the U.S. – both figures the highest ever recorded this early in a year.

Song Hye-kyo, New York City Met Gala Rizzatto

Source: k-star-holic.blogspot.com

Unweaving the Web - Deception and Adaptation in Future Urban Operations

https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA411783

Deception is widely appreciated as a powerful instrument of war, yet it is surprisingly understudied. There is much to be learned from the flexibility and innovation demonstrated at times by opposing forces. The authors believe that this holds as true in training exercises as in actual deployments. While there is no lack of ingenuity and guile among U.S. service members (at any rank), there is little training in how to craft and employ ruses and relatively few resources tasked to support deception operations. The authors have also noted that there is little analysis or doctrinal guidance for combatants or commanders to mull over when making tradeoffs regarding deception, even for so simple a question as whether to employ camouflage or decoys. This research was conducted in an attempt to delve more deeply into the theory of deception and, in so doing, to reveal new avenues of experimentation. These pathways may lead to new technologies or new training techniques, and hopefully will provoke a new look at deception doctrine applicable at every level of war. After reviewing the military deception literature, the authors examined a wide range of research on deception in the animal kingdom, where ruses of virtually infinite variety are applied to offense, defense, and intelligence gathering. What fundamentally ties animal deception to military deception? Since all entities seek accuracy in their perceptions, and accurate perceptions rely heavily upon the performance of an individual's sensors, improvements to sensors or sensory processing are significant contributors to survival; this is as true for human combatants as it is for any animal in any environment. It should not be surprising, therefore, that the reverse holds true: capabilities that engender inaccuracy in the perceptions of the foe (be it attacker or defender) tend to be highly advantageous.

The RAND Corporation is an analytical think tank based in California, which has provided research and analysis for the US Armed Forces since 1948. It receives its funding from the government, various universities, corporations and private individuals. The title of the company is named after Ayn Rand, the writer, who wrote several influential books [including Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead]. These novels explored her theory of ‘Objectivism’ – a moral code that highlights the importance of self interest and happiness, thus rejecting the need for or practise of altruism.

A seminar about the study “Moral Choices Without Moral Language: 1950s Wargaming at The RAND Corporation” by the author.

The RAND Corporation has been (fairly) criticized for their cold-blooded approach to contemplating nuclear annihilation through their “Cold War Game”.  But RAND researchers were not all the ‘thermonuclear jesuits’ of popular imagination.

John R. Emery’s study looks into the history of the “Cold War Game” and the conflict between RAND mathematicians and social scientists that went on within the RAND Corporation at the time.

The text of that study can be found here: Moral Choices Without Moral Language: 1950s Political-Military Wargaming at the RAND Corporation

La sconfitta incombe: la Rand guerrafondaia ora consiglia la pace

Ricordate il documento attribuito alla Rand Corporation e che girava per gli uffici dell’amministrazione di Washington e nel quale si diceva che uno degli obiettivi della guerra in Ucraina erano la Germania e l’Europa  che avrebbero dovute essere messe in condizione di non poter  avere sinergie economiche con la Russia? Questo documento riservato, portava la data del  25 gennaio del 2022 e…

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