Throwing bucks and brains at intell

FRONT PAGE: "How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade," by Siobhan Gorman, Wall Street Journal, 4 September 2009.

As usual, the title is a vast oversell, but clearly, some progress is being made.

Palantir Technology, a Silicon Valley firm, is described as coming up with new software that makes it far easier to plot out terrorist networks through better searching techniques:

Palantir's software has helped root out terrorist financing networks, revealed new trends in roadside bomb attacks, and uncovered details of Syrian suicide bombing networks in Iraq . . . It has also foiled a Pakistani suicide bombing plot on Western targets and discovered a spy infiltration of an allied government.

One thing I have learned from years of working with the national security establishment: we got the bucks and the brains to throw at any problem in a big way, and that matters plenty.