Disasters present opportunities for some U.S. intelligence agencies to step out of the shadows to lend a helping hand. Conversely, they create ripe environments for adversarial nations’ spy services to sow confusion, fuel anxiety and influence public opinion through disinformation.
Both are ongoing in Maui.
Before focusing on our fire-ravaged island, let’s look at how society in general benefits from U.S. espionage shops (beyond national defense). Modern conveniences derived from military research are legend — microwave ovens, the internet, duct tape, GPS — but less well known are the daily life tools given us by the U.S. intelligence community.
Take, for example, the algorithms used to analyze mammograms to detect breast cancer. They were originally developed by CIA’s Office of Research and Development to help analysts interpret images from the KH-11 satellite, launched by the National Reconnaissance Office in 1976. The CIA also gifted to the medical community the small lithium-ion batteries used to run pacemakers. They were originally developed to improve the performance of surveillance equipment and prolong reconnaissance satellites’ lives.
What about Google Earth? It is sitting on some of you readers’ personal electronic devices right now and was developed by the CIA-funded venture capitalist firm In-Q-Tel. The Identi-kits used by law enforcement to build sketches of faces of people described by witnesses was also developed and shared by Langley. After retirement in 1993, CIA disguise artist Robert Barron leveraged spycraft to start supplying high-end custom prosthetics to disfigured people.
The CIA is not alone. While browsing your favorite app store, have you encountered Mage, the new free situational awareness tool from the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) that puts sophisticated map overlays into the palm of your hand? Look up its work with academia and industry to produce for the public high resolution maps of the Arctic.
Have you seen the National Security Agency’s public service announcements, released earlier this year, derived from national counterintelligence programs, to help us all keep portable devices from being exploited by cyber criminals? It this year also released funding to select states to educate and protect small businesses from malevolent cyber operators.
Meanwhile, its Technology Transfer Program, created in 1990, continues to allow businesses to license technologies developed by the spy agency for commercial purposes — mobility features, cyber capabilities, data science, and the Internet of Things (smart refrigerators and whatnot) — and empower its inventors to share and collaborate on research with academia, nonprofits, private industry, and state and local governments.
(Fear that intel-agency-derived resources let Big Brother monitor us is misplaced. Common citizens are too numerous, too unimportant, security wise, to waste resources on analyzing their data. If you were a person of interest, from a national security perspective, infecting your devices with spyware would not require you to download anything and you would not know.)
Back to the Valley Isle. Building on a history of contributing to disaster relief efforts, NGA in mid-August dispatched two geospatial analysts to Maui. The officers were equipped with mobile satellite communications gear that allowed for connectivity with NGA offices in the nation’s capital, St. Louis and INDOPACOM. They worked with FEMA officers on the ground to develop products to identify search areas and drive rescue operations, and they provided local responders with remote sensing data in support of recovery efforts.
You may have heard about FBI’s use of DNA technology in Lahaina to identify remains. This falls in line with the public’s understanding of the bureau’s law enforcement role, but did you notice the tools and people that they brought to the disaster relief effort that also have applications in their counterintelligence work? Intelligence analysts were tasked with scouring collected cellphone data to help pinpoint the last known location of missing persons, not unlike tracking the movements of a foreign spy through Honolulu’s Chinatown.
“So … what buggahs are exploiting the situation?” We addressed in previous articles Russian intelligence services’ “active measures,” particularly “dezinformatisya.” Have you noticed recent social media posts calling for a diversion of taxpayer money away from Ukraine to help Maui?
Check out the covert influence analysis site Weaponized Spaces (weaponizedspaces.substack.com), where disinformation expert Dr. Caroline Orr Buend breaks down this Russian operation to turn American public opinion against Kiev. How about the claims online, supported by AI-generated pictures, that the fires were started by a secret “weather weapon” being tested by Uncle Sam? University of Maryland, RAND Corporation, Microsoft and others’ research ties this influence campaign directly to Beijing.
There you have it: Operation Lahaina. Not exactly “Mission Impossible” material, but plenty of intel angles.
J.P. Atwell is a former senior CIA operations officer. His two-decade career began as an intelligence analyst and took him to every continent, save Antarctica. He now calls Hawaii Island home. He welcomes your comments at island.intelligencer@gmail.com.