Disruptive By Design: Are You Ready To Tackle the Challenges To Come?
With the flood of federal employees into the workforce and the changes in the focus of the executive administration of the United States, a number of things are changing the atmosphere of the intelligence community as a whole.
In October of 1945, 50 individuals from around the world came together to sign the United Nations (U.N.) Charter. Amongst other tenets, the agreement “reaffirmed faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom.”
Even as the ink was drying on the U.N. Charter, another alliance was in the works. The UKUSA agreement was formed in secrecy to assure cooperation in collecting and analyzing signals intelligence. The agreement has become known as the “Five Eyes,” with the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand working together to maintain the dominance of signals that transverse the world over.
Every community, village or country maintains its own concerns and requirements. Some are unique to one location, while others are common worldwide. Those with similar goals began to form agreements, contracts and treaties. Every day new ones are signed and negotiated. Technology has only increased the ability to generate a new “smart” contract through the use of cryptocurrency and blockchain technologies, but the end goals are still the same: one for peace, another for dominance. One in front of lights and cameras, another in the shadows of a windowless basement.
The same year the UKUSA agreement was signed, another agreement was forged in the United States. The U.S. Veterans Signal Association and the American Signal Corps Association banded together to promote communication, dialogue and open and ethical exchanges of information between the public and private sectors. The beginnings of AFCEA International were forged with an understanding that nothing changes if we remain operating alone and in the shadows. At the same time, there really is evil in this world that manipulates others for their own gain, and the best defense against the manipulations, misinformation and lies is communication, dialogue and open and ethical exchanges of information.
The peace forged through these measures was a promise to work together for the good of future generations. Unfortunately, the peace is something for which we continue to fight.
And I believe there will be a cataclysmic shift within the intelligence community. The multipolar threats that we face run the gambit from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea to new alliances like BRICS (Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa) and the Collective Security Treaty Organization’s Eurasian military alliance between Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan. Every nation is working diligently for their current brand of “peaceful” domination; however, the threats do not stop there. The United States is facing a threat from between their own walls. Each individual, corporation and foreign government has spent the first few months of 2025 watching challenges within our democracy, and now it is time to show the world why the United States really is the best.
You hold the power to effect change in our country. You hold the power to stop threats before they ever happen because working to promote communication, dialogue and open and ethical exchanges of information is about learning how to listen, measure the output of energies and remaining cool when things seem to be going nuclear. The world needs us. Are you ready to tackle the challenges to come?
