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Yesterday, the NY Times ran a front page story about federal prosecutors accusing 11 people of being part of a Russian espionage ring, living under false names and deep cover in a patient scheme to penetrate what one coded message called American “policy making circles.” What was interesting about this story was that these Russian spies have embedded themselves deeply into quiet suburban lives in the U.S. Thought, what really caught our attention — surely Hollywood is working a script right now about this story — was today’s front page NY Times follow up story that had many IC leaders asking “why?”

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Welcome once again to our Friday’s Food for Thought post. The summer weeks are surely rolling by — oh my, tomorrow is August 1st already! Well, spend some time with us this morning. This post will surely slow down time and bring you to a place of pure peace and comfort. Who are we kidding. This post will most likely do the exact opposite — the theme is about too much information. We live in a harried world where we are overloaded with information. Is this a good thing? We will surely explore this question in today’s FFT post. Oh, and if you could not guess, our recent post about the military being overloaded with too much intelligence influenced today’s post. Enjoy.

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Welcome to the latest installment of Friday’s Food for Thought. While many of us work in the intelligence community, we often forget what the term “intelligence” is really all about. According to Wikipedia, intelligence is an umbrella term used to describe a property of the mind that encompasses many related abilities. From our perspective, it is about the development and analysis of actionable information that can help our nation defend and protect itself. But, really, both meanings are very intertwined. Scroll down and read more. Oh, and don’t miss the “slap chop” video at the end for a few laughs. Happy Friday!

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The recent explosion of commercial synthetic aperture radar (SAR) and its applications has provided tremendous opportunities for all users, including those in the Defense, Intelligence and Homeland Security communities. In addition, the recent DoD announcement that the Space Radar program will lose its funding further underscores the potential opportunities for commercial SAR providers to augment this defense capability.

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With all of the news surrounding the breach of the $300 billion Joint Strike Fighter program dominating the airwaves these days, there is a smaller and just as interesting story that popped up on Wired about a crackdown of Brazilian hackers who have continuously overtaken a U.S. Navy communications satellite.

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Once again, cybersecurity is coming to the top of the list of concerns/priorities for the security of our nation. You all may have seen our coverage yesterday of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) urging the Obama Administration to move forward with naming a czar to lead a cyber security overhaul. Well, INSA is right. We need to act soon because cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electricity grid.

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We certainly have been focusing plenty of attention on the intelligence community recruitment news — especially targeting young people. Hey, it’s a worthy cause to promote the next generation of intelligence leaders. So, when we stumbled upon this story, we had to continue with our coverage in this vein. The C.I.A. has partnered with University of Southern California to have marketing classes develop their own PR campaigns to promote – of all things – the C.I.A.’s recruitment efforts.

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The Pentagon recently came out with the new that it intends to spend $400 million to develop a giant blimp that will float 65,000 feet above the Earth It will fly for 10 years and will provide intricate radar surveillance of the vehicles, planes and even people below.

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This is certainly the biggest breaking news story surrounding the C.I.A. It was reported yesterday that the C.I.A. destroyed 92 interrogation video tapes — which was uncovered in a letter from the Justice Department. This disclosing of this information was part of an ACLU lawsuit that came about after 9/11. For those of you who missed the TV news coverage of this story, we have provided a number of YouTube clips of the coverage below:

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With a multitude of stories happening in the intelligence sector, we thought it would be prudent to do a Thursday morning “intelligence brief,” which should provide you with enough actionable information to get you through your morning coffee. We kick off with a story about Obama being briefed, daily, on the impact of the global economic crises on our nation’s security and end it with a story about using intelligence to combat gang violence. Hope you have a productive morning.

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