Even a Congressman knew SQL wouldn’t connect the dots of the Christmas Terror

It is not easy to change things.  It is hard enough to build a new thing and then even harder to evangelize a new market.  I am encouraged by the growing understanding and need for a new analytic store – beyond databases, but as I watch the aftermath of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, a radical and more rapid shift is now a matter of survival.   The intelligence community has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary in its approach to technology since 9/11.   The data stores and rule-based processing are “so twentieth century”, using vintage 1980 technology.  The use of analytic visualization has grown but is still based on the same old data stores and manually-intensive connecting of “dots”, one by one.  We are still addressing the war on terrorism with evolutionary change rather than adopting revolutionary new technologies to address a radical new enemy.

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