Since our last sojourn together the Intelligence Community (IC) continues to be a "target rich" environment for controversy and contemplation. As the last MAZINT was being posted Director of National Intelligence DNI) Clapper was being derided and chastised for assessing that the conflict in Libya could devolve into a stalemate. Given how things had transpired in Tunisia and Egypt along with the Obama Administration's policy decision to militarily support the Libyan rebels for humanitarian reasons the DNI was apparently wrong about the facts and in conflict with national policy. This stalemate assessment, however, has turned out to be real a "truth to power" moment that has largely gone unrecognized except for a CNN Op-ed by Mike Hayden.

Four companies pursuing technologies connected to manned orbital spacecraft are receiving $270 million from NASA in the second phase of an effort targeted at building a commercial manned space launch industry. The goal is to develop a launch capability that would replace the space shuttle and lead to commercial exploitation of manned orbital spaceflight.

I was recently treated to a demonstration of a mission-focused IT solution that made me proud of what technologists at FBI can do. What I saw was a best in class integration of search, discovery and analysis tools known as DIVS (Data Integration and Visualization System). DIVS includes a framework that allows multiple tools, COTS and GOTS, to interoperate in ways incredibly supportive of the most significant missions in the national security space.

It may be stating the obvious to say that the hardware you use has a direct impact on the functionality of your IT. That is so fundamental of a statement it really goes without saying. But for some reason decision-makers gloss over the importance of hardware to security design. Why? The hardware you pick has a direct impact on the security of your enterprise.

I was reminded this week (while at the NSA) of a common mistake often made by entrepreneurs in the DoD and IC market. It is tempting to claim that your firm is an expert at two dozen areas of focus. On one level, I understand this because the same personality and intellect that would launch a new business tends to see more, do more and want more… than the average professional. So, I understand (if you're guilty of this tendency) your "reach-of-the starts" mentality. It runs in your blood.

Until very recently, intelligence was a small, deeply secret aspect of public affairs. Terms like black chamber and secret service described functions that demanded to be performed but with little or no public notice. The name of the head of Britain's MI-6 was, as a remarkable reminder of this era, secret until very recent times. In the United States, the existence of the National Reconnaissance Office was classified until the 1990s, and we all know that the National Security Agency was often described, in jest but perhaps not fully in jest, as "No Such Agency."

An exercise in leveraging social media for humanitarian assistance and disaster response fostered global participation last month, with more than 39,000 people from 94 nations tuning in to a simulation of two seismic events and a tsunami set in the Adriatic Sea. Participants in the exercise used tools such as Twitter and Facebook to create a rich, real-time environment for crowd-sourcing solutions and other collaborative activities.