Bloodless Coup

Ashton Carter: A Failure of Policy, Not Spying

I found this oped by Ashton Carter via Laura Rozen at War and Piece. It's one of the most succinct and cutting columns I've read in weeks. Carter's case is that if you are pursuing bad policies, the quality intelligence isn't going to make any difference, and your policies can easily get in the way of any attempts to improve intelligence.

If you don't have a policy, intelligence is irrelevant. North Korea's runaway nuclear program is a policy failure, not an intelligence failure. What's worse, policy failure has actually caused intelligence failure in North Korea.

It's well worth a minute of your time - go read it.