BOOK REVIEW: Geospatial Intelligence: Origins and Evolution
by Robert Clark / Georgetown University Press
Reviewed by Robert Cardillo
Cipher Brief Expert Robert Cardillo served as the sixth Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). Prior to that assignment, Mr. Cardillo served as the first Deputy Director for Intelligence Integration, ODNI, from 2010 to 2014 and as the Deputy Director of DIA. In the summer of 2009, Mr. Cardillo served as the Acting J2, a first for a civilian, in support of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
To call Robert Clark’s Geospatial Intelligence: Origins and Evolution the best GEOINT primer that I have read is necessary -- accurate -- and insufficient.
It is much more.
Clark takes the reader on a literary and historic ride of enlightenment and insight which could not be more appropriate as that is the same objective of GEOINT. His framing of future potential is especially illuminating given the import of location on everything from 5G to the Internet of Things (IOT).
Clark’s book provides an educational and entertaining look at how all of the inputs into the GEOINT machine become outcomes and provide advantage to decision-makers. Because as Clark correctly points out, the point of all is “comparative advantage”. And he deftly takes the reader through the transition from government owned and operated technologies becoming more and more commercially available. Given the continued growth in industry, Clark’s book would be welcomed addition to many US senior officers as they consider what they procure commercially vice build for the government.
I was especially gratified to see Clark dedicate so much attention to what I consider to be the foundation, both literally and figuratively, of GEOINT. Geodesy. As the sixth Director of NGA, I often said “Geodesy is the lifeblood of our Agency.” I meant that we could not do any of the value-added assessments or pattern-of-life analyses unless we had that firm baseline and framing construct. Because it is considered less glamorous, there is a challenge to recruit and retain the necessary skills to sustain this critical component of GEOINT. Clark does us all a service by putting it in its proper place.
Similarly, Clark’s treatment of human geography -- aka, sociocultural GEOINT -- was welcomed and appropriate. In that the GEOINT profession exists to help humans make better decisions as they interact with other humans, it is incumbent upon the profession to allocate resources and skill sets to the less tangible aspects such as religion, culture, and race. While I think that Clark could have spent more time here, I found it to be more than a useful introduction to a segment that is growing in importance.
After laying down such a detailed look at GEOINT’s past, for the final third of the book, Clark rightly points toward the future. And, to this reader, this is where the excitement lies. We are quickly moving into an era in which our planet is being continually sensed -- and much of that collection is commercial -- from visible imagery to synthetic aperture radar to radio frequencies. That brings daunting challenges and exciting opportunities. Clark deftly captures both.
As the world becomes increasingly flat from a technology standpoint, the plethora of sensors and resulting data sources risk overwhelming our ability to digest and understand. Thus, at the risk of oversimplification, I have called our challenge to create coherence from chaos. Clark takes a similar approach as he arrays all of the new entrants into the field and contextualizes for the reader how to move from individual components to a collective whole.
Therein lies our burden -- and our solution.
For those who have spent time inside the profession, Origins and Evolution will provide a comforting and, at times, nostalgic reminder of the birth of our proud profession. For those who benefitted from the GEOINT profession -- whether as an IC colleague or an end-user, you will enjoy a peek “under the hood” of what it took to create those products and services you came to rely upon.
For all my admiration of Clark’s detail, I note a few things that would have made this excellent book even better.
- In a discussion about geo-political maps, Clark cited China’s use of … but overlooked their infamous ‘Nine Dashed Line” that purports to document their extensive control over their nearby seas at the expense of neighbors such as Vietnam, Japan and the Philippines.
- As Clark appropriately discussed the use of lighter than air platforms during the US Civil War to observe the nighttime fires of Confederate forces, he neglected to cite the innovation of running a telegraph wire up to the balloon for the first instantiation of near-real-time electronic, reconnaissance reporting.
- The privacy and civil liberties aspects of a persistently sensed planet, 7x24x365 warrant more substantive treatment.
But those are nits.
This reader, who dedicated nearly four decades to this profession, closed the book with deeper pride for my profession and greater excitement about what lies ahead. For both of those, I am grateful to Robert Clark for Geospatial Intelligence: Origins and Evolution.
This book earns a respectable rating of 3.5 out of 4 trench coats.
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