Dead Drop: January 17

EXQUISITE INTELLIGENCE:  In defending the U.S. attack on Iranian General Qassem Soleimani over the past week or so, various administration officials have described “exquisite intelligence” which prompted the strike. This confused some talking heads, like CNN national security analyst Samantha Vinograd, who declared she was “befuddled” by the term. While there is no agreement on precisely what the phrase means – despite what some would suggest, the term is not an invention of the Trump administration.  The phrase was deployed on many occasions in the past.  For example, in 2001, then-SECDEF Donald Rumsfeld published a “Nuclear Posture Review” which said that a “new triad” would depend on command and control, intelligence, and adaptive planning and that “exquisite intelligence” on the intentions and capabilities of adversaries would permit timely adjustments to the force and permit improvement in precision of strikes. Then in 2009, Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter said that for the U.S. to strike pirates off the coast of Somalia it would require “exquisite intelligence.”  And in 2016, former CIA/NSA Director General Michael Hayden describing the changes in warfare he had seen over time, said that we had seen not only a transformation from mass attacks to precision – and an increasing demand for “absolutely exquisite intelligence” to facilitate the targeting.

IN POSITIVE IRANIAN-AMERICAN NEWS: Major Jasmin “Jaws” Moghbeli, USMC, is the first Iranian-American selected to be an astronaut. The MIT-grad is a helicopter pilot. And speaking of over achievers – also in Major Moghbeli’s class of new astronauts is Jonny Kim.  The naval reserve lieutenant is a former enlisted Navy SEAL who earned a Silver Star in Iraq and went on to get an MD from Harvard Medical School.