Taking a break from "micronational spook country" (and everything else) this week - we are on holiday and will return to the silliness next week. In the meantime, we wish you and yours the very best of the season, and a happy and healthy new year!
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| This is what you get when you ask a Generative AI system for "A llama dressed like Santa Claus" |
Last week, we talked about how MicroCon seems to suit the bill as a good venue for diplomacy. However, what if you can't get to MicroCon, or are not sure where/how to start with diplomacy? Not everyone is a born diplomat, after all! Well, as with so many things in the Internet age, there are online courses you can take for that! I'm sure this sort of post is why Google claims my blog is "low-content", since it's basically just a number of links leading elsewhere, but whatever. I've given up on them ever agreeing to let me actually make money off of ads here anyway.
A good place to start seems to be the US Institute for Peace, disregarding their recent "rebranding". They sponsor something called the "Ghandi-King Global Academy" which has self-paced courses that are both free of charge and open to the public. According to one online document I found, they offer courses such as "Introduction to Peacebuilding", "Nonviolent Action", "Conflict Analysis", and several courses in "Civil Resistance". I've signed up for an account but I'm currently waiting for approval. Oh, and for the mobile-device-inclined, they seem to have apps in both the Apple and Google app stores.
Alison also offers a number of free courses to help learn diplomacy, such as "International Relations", "An Introduction to Foreign Policy", and "Conflict Management: Resolving Conflicts with Confidence".
I found this course on Coursera easily - "Global Diplomacy - Diplomacy in the Modern World", but I'm sure there's more. It has five modules, including "What is diplomacy?", "Success and Failure in Diplomacy", "The Qualities of a 'Good' Diplomat", "Diplomacy in Action", and "Reflections and Futures of Diplomacy". That seems like a pretty good first-glance treatment of the subject to me.
Finally, there are a bunch of United Nations bodies that offer online learning courses. There's a "meta-list" of the bodies (with links to each one's specific learning page) here.
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| Yalta Conference, 1945 - Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND |
If you're hanging around the intelligence community, or watching too many spy movies, then sooner or later you're going to hear the term "counter-intelligence". But what is it, and why would you need it?
Simply put, if intelligence is how you find stuff out, then counter-intelligence is how you prevent the other guys from finding out stuff. How do you do that? There are two basic techniques: obfuscation, and increasing the "noise" (if you've ever heard the term "signal-to-noise ratio"). As an aside, and broadly speaking, those are the same two basic techniques used in cryptography.
Obfuscation means hiding what your opponent wants to see. This includes things like fences and barriers to keep prying eyes away from your facilities (blocking HUMINT), covered or underground facilities to foil GEOINT, and encrypting communications to block SIGINT. Classification and control of information also falls under obfuscation, by (hopefully) making it harder for the other people to get the information. By extension, vetting your people before providing them access to that information would also fall here, although it's now stretching the definition of "obfuscate" beyond all reasonable use...
Adding noise means creating additional false data points to force your opponent to spend more time on analysis, and hopefully to draw incorrect conclusions. For example, this might include creating fake military sites or vehicles to fool air reconnaissance. There was a famous (alleged) instance in WWII where the Germans built a fake air field with ersatz planes and equipment manufactured of wood to fool the British, or so they thought. The British waited until the fake facility was completed, then sent over a single plane that dropped a single wooden bomb. (I will note that Snopes rates the anecdote as "unproven".)
Another even more famous example from the same conflict was Operation Mincemeat, in which the British used a deceased homeless man (dressed in a military uniform) to feed false plans to the German intelligence machine. Incredibly, the plan for Operation Mincemeat was conceptualized by none other than Ian Fleming, who would later go on to write the James Bond books.
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| Picture from Microsoft Word ClipArt |
Micronations are still nations of a sort, and where nations meet is the stuff of diplomacy (Will Rogers notwithstanding). Diplomacy is how international relations are managed, through means such as dialogue, negotiation, and communication, rather than by force or the threat of force. (Again, micronational war is dumb, and anyone who threatens or proposes it is also dumb.)
A lot of new micronations seem to think that diplomacy means signing treaties. There really isn't a point in signing treaties, though - treaties are generally focused on trade or mutual defense, but micronational trade is virtually nonexistent and micronational defense is sort of, well, pointless - see my previous comment about micronational war.
According to Saaida (2023), there are four core principles of diplomacy, including negotiation, communication, building relationships, and promoting interests. Saaida further states that these "serve as the foundation for effective diplomatic interactions."
Does MicroCon serve as a venue for fostering diplomatic relations? Using the four core principles of diplomacy outlined by Saaida (2023), I argue here that a strong case can be made that it does. (Note that I'm focusing on MicroCon since that's the event that I'm familiar with, but most similar events will bring similar attributes.)
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| The attendees of MicroCon 2025 |
First, we have negotiation. While MicroCon is not inherently a negotiating body, the face-to-face opportunities presented by MicroCon help to "put a face to a name", which is helpful in reaching agreement.
Next, we have communication. MicroCon facilitates communication in several ways, including the presentations and the socializing opportunities before and after the conference.
After that, we have building relationships. I can personally attest to the value of MicroCon in this regard, having formed multiple lasting friendships through this event.
Finally, we have promoting interests. Here, again, MicroCon offers multiple opportunities to do so, including doing a presentation on whatever your interest is as well as using your table display - every MicroCon since the first has provided space (usually a half-table's length) for displays. I've been lucky that at the last several MicroCon gatherings I've been able to have a separate display area for MEDALS, one of my own pet projects.
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| "Behind the scenes" - setting up the MEDALS display at MicroCon 2025 |
So, in summary, I would argue that a micronation interested in diplomacy would do well to attend MicroCon (or similar events).
(Sympathy for the Devil by The Rolling Stones - Lyrics by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard)
References
Saaida, M. B. E. (2023). The Four Core Principles of Diplomacy. Science for All Publications, 1(1), 1-12. Link.
This wasn't supposed to be an intelligence blog, but here we are...
Today, I want to talk about a very powerful technique of intelligence analysis called "Analysis of Competing Hypotheses" (ACH). And, crucially, this isn't something that needs to stay in the halls of Langley, VA (home of the CIA) - it's something you can probably use.
Previously I talked about "all-source intelligence" - where you take intelligence from a bunch of different sources to form a more holistic picture of what's happening. We also mentioned the possibility of contradictory evidence, i.e. your HUMINT source was saying that the Hostilian (we were still calling it XYZ then) fleet was undergoing retrofit, but your GEOINT was showing that the naval yards were empty.
The point of ACH is to prevent intelligence analysts from developing "tunnel vision" - from being so focused on "proving" some presupposed "fact" that they ignore any other evidence. One famous example of this confirmation bias is how the US intelligence community handled information about the Iraqi chemical weapons program - they decided that there were two possibilities, that either Iraq had a large chemical weapons program, or they had a small one, and all of their evidence was forced to fit into one of those two possibilities. They completely ignored the third possibility, that Iraq had actually done what they had committed to and shut down those programs, with tragic results.
So, how is ACH done?
It starts with identifying your competing hypotheses. Remember that these are competing hypotheses, meaning that they should be very distinct, almost opposites from each other. ACH isn't so useful in identifying degrees of difference in two similar options.
Next, you want to gather all relevant information - your all-source intelligence.
Draw up a matrix with all of your hypotheses along the top, and all of your information items along the side. For each intelligence item, assess whether it supports (S), refutes (R), or is neutral for each hypothesis. If you have intelligence that doesn't provide any value for any of the items (it's neutral all the way across), discard it.
Assess each hypothesis on the basis of the evidence you have. Possibly counter-intuitively, you want to disprove hypotheses, not prove them. This can help you identify a "tentative conclusion" - the one with the least amount of disproving data associated with it.
See whether there's any key pieces of evidence that are crucial - this is a measure of the "sensitivity" of the conclusion. If, for example, your conclusion depends completely on a single piece of intelligence, and that item turns out to be wrong, then so are your conclusions.
Finally, report your conclusions. This doesn't just mean you present the most likely hypothesis - it means you present all of your hypotheses (that haven't been completely discounted), along with any additional lines of questioning that should be pursued to solidify your conclusions.
So let's see what this looks like in practice. Returning to our example about the Hostilian fleet, our government wants to know if they're poised to attack us. We start with two hypotheses here that are (at least for now) pretty contradictory: that either they are on their way to attack us (we'll call this hypothesis 1, or H1 for short), or that they are undergoing refit (H2). Next, we gather as much information as we can: we've already talked about the HUMINT and GEOINT, but we also have MASINT (which doesn't show unusual levels of communication or activity at their Naval headquarters) and an OSINT report from the Hostilian newspaper about their government signing a big contract with a private shipyard earlier this year. So we put all of that together into a matrix as below:
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| ACH Matrix example |
Looking at the available data, it seems that H2 is more likely (and suggests that we need to get some GEOINT coverage of that private company's shipyards to confirm). So, based on the above, we can report to the government that it's unlikely that we will be attacked by the Hostilian Navy any time soon (although, once they're done with the refits, the situation could change).
So, how could you use this in your own life? If you've got a decision to make, you can use ACH to assess the pros and cons of each decision (and if any factors are key - remember what I said before about "sensitivity" to key data).
Apparently I'm not done speaking about micronational intelligence services - you know, that thing I said you probably didn't need, and then wouldn't shut up about?
Today I want to talk about sources, which are part of "sources and methods". First, I'll throw this out there: while we previously talked about intelligence classification schemes as part of this post, it's important to remember that most information is classified to protect the source, not because of the information itself. For example, if you've got a source inside the naval strategic planning office of your main opponent (let's call them the Hostilians), you don't want to accidentally "burn" that source, so you want to protect everything that comes from them (i.e. "need to know", "eyes only", "NOFORN" - that last one meaning basically "No foreigners"), and filter it carefully before disseminating it. As another example, if your information is coming from SIGINT (see below) because you've cracked the Hostilian codes and you're reading their emails before they do, you certainly don't want them finding out and changing those codes!
Broadly speaking, intelligence sources are described in terms of where they came from, and usually they are abbreviated. For example, OSINT is "open-source intelligence", which means intelligence that is gathered or derived from freely-accessible sources. Despite the free availability, it's frequently a very valuable source of information, with some estimates saying that up to 80% of intelligence being derived from OSINT. For example, if the Hostilian press is suddenly full of editorials slagging on your country, and their leader is at the podium saying what a horrible place your country is and that your government is full of crooks, well, it's pretty obvious that they don't have the best of intentions for you.
HUMINT, or "human intelligence", is derived from human sources - like the aforementioned mole in the Hostilians' naval strategic planning office. This can also be intelligence you gather from prisoners you've taken from the other side, from refugees running from the Hostilian regime, from your border security patrols, from debriefing travelers that have returned from visiting Hostilia, and so on. This is probably the oldest form of intelligence gathering.
GEOINT is "geospatial intelligence" - this can be Google Earth imagery or your own drone reconnaissance footage, for example. Aerial reconnaissance actually predates powered flight, with the use of tethered hot air balloons for spotting troop movement as well as directing artillery fire.
Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) often works closely with cryptanalysis. SIGINT will capture the transmissions, and then the cryptanalysis team will try to break the codes and determine what is actually being said (assuming your enemy isn't just transmitting in the clear!).
Measurement and Signature Intelligence (MASINT), which is distinct from SIGINT, can tell you a lot about what's happening even without being able to understand the enemy's transmissions. For example, if you can triangulate the position of a transmitter, you know where it is (and thus, over time, if it is moving). You may also be able detect what kind of equipment they're using to transmit, and this can yield additional information. Suppose, for example, that the Hostilian Navy has suddenly started using X-band radar. This is useful to know, because X-band radar is shorter range, but higher resolution, and it suffers in poor weather. This, in turn, could help form a battle strategy if it becomes necessary to engage the Hostilian fleet - use the weather to your advantage.
Finally, Technical Intelligence, or TECHINT, is information about the equipment and weapons being used by your opponent. For example, if you've discovered that the Hostilian Navy just bought a bunch of Motorola Talkabout T210 radios for their people, TECHINT will tell you that the maximum range for those radios under optimal conditions is about 32km (20 miles, for the metrically-declined), as well as which frequency ranges that family of radios operates in. The previous insight about X-band radar would also be TECHINT - MASINT identifies the use of the radar, and then TECHINT tells you its limitations, basically.
There's also FININT, or financial intelligence, which looks at financial transactions and the flow of money, but this is generally more useful in law enforcement contexts.
All of the above are ideally combined using something called "all-source intelligence" to create a holistic view of what your opponents are doing/planning.
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| All-source Intelligence |
This post is the 100th post on this blog - a bit of a milestone, to be sure. So this will be a bit of a meta-post, talking about the blog itself.
Of those 100 posts, about 40 were made between April 19, 2019 (when the blog started) and June of this year (just before MicroCon), which averaged about 8 posts a year. After MicroCon, I decided to get "serious" (for certain values of the word) about my social media presence, and decided on (among other things) a regular posting schedule. Originally I had a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, but switched it to Tuesdays and Fridays so that I could also do twice-weekly Instagram posts (MEDALS Mondays and Travel Thursdays), plus minor Wednesday posts on Tumblr and Facebook (where I currently have zero and six followers respectively). And, when I remember, I post a link to the newest blog post over on Bluesky (where I have 25 followers).
My blog posts seem to average around 20 to 25 views, although a blog post I did that provided some advice on starting your own micronation has 74 views, last time I checked. This is probably because, whenever anyone in the micronational Facebook groups posts "How do I start my own micronation?" I respond with a link to that post.
I usually try to include at least one related picture in each post, like the one at the bottom of this post. I started doing this so the blog post thumbnail wouldn't just be the first letter of the text in the post, but it also helps when I repost somewhere else - things with pictures always seem to garner more attention than things that don't have a visual accompaniment. I think I've used an AI-generated picture exactly once in a post, because I didn't have any other pictures to hand that fit the theme of the post.
Speaking of AI, I don't use AI to generate the post - these are my words, not those of some "answer machine". I know some people seem to think that AI is the inevitable future. Well, if that does happen, then maybe human-generated content will be a valuable niche, like how handmade products are in vogue in an era of factory-manufactured goods?
I don't currently make any money off of this, or any other social media. I did try to "monetize" this blog via Google Ad Network - twice. Both applications were rejected because Google considered this to be a "low-content blog". They don't provide any guidance as to what that means, they just say "Fix it and you can re-apply." As near as I can tell, they came to that decision because I often include external links to other sites, which is bizarre to me - in my academic career, providing references is a must, but apparently bloggers aren't supposed to do that?
When I started, I had a good list of blog post ideas, and I was able to build up a queue of posts. Those have all been posted now, and some days it's a bit of a struggle to find something to say - which is probably not helped by Google's claim that this is a "low-content blog". (But, you know, I'm not bitter or anything like that.) With the recent sequence of posts about micronational intelligence services, I've got a few new ones queued up now, just about to the end of the year in fact.
Anyway, 100 posts later, I'm still here, and I haven't run out of things to say yet! As I said, I'll probably delve more into micronational intelligence services in the near future, because (even though you probably don't need one) it's something I have some knowledge of (for, you know, reasons) and something that seems to be interesting to others.
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| Picture Source: Microsoft Word ClipArt Finder |
