Inspired Blog #2

Friday afternoon Sandy Brooks, from Joint Interagency Task Force South, spoke to a small group of Penn State students for about an hour. She is the Director of Intelligence and Security and the Chief of Innovation, she opened the discussion by meeting with everyone in the room and asking them a few simple questions about themselves.

Sandy then played a short video about the Joint Interagency Task Force South’s operations. Most of the video was about maritime drug busts. After the video, Mrs. Brooks spoke briefly about herself and her history. She was a student at Appalachian State during the Vietnam era, Sandy said she frequently protested the war when she was a student. Ironically she joined the Navy after college hoping to be a helicopter pilot. Instead she was placed into the Navy’s crypto community. She retired as a captain (O-6) after 28 years of service and was immediately employed at the Task Force Tampa center.  There she was luckily enough to be a “targeteer”, coordinating air-strikes during Operation Desert Storm.

She then discussed how Penn State was tied into the “targeteers.” Sandy said her intelligence staff would provide detailed maps of possible targeted areas for Desert Storm. She would then put on some special glasses and view the map in 2D and decide what targets needed to be bombed. In today’s war we need to fight smarter, not harder and at the same time eliminate as much unintended kills as possible. So, she decided she was going to make these map she used to pick targets visible in 3D. She visited many Universities across the Nation in search for ideas and designs that could help her turn the maps 3D. Penn State students were the only ones who could come up with a possible design that worked.

Mrs. Brooks then talked about the Nation’s poor communication skill between federal, state, and local agencies prior to September 11^th.  She said after 9/11 Joint Interagency Task Force played a major role in repairing the communication gap between these agencies. She didn’t really go into a lot of detail about how they improved the communications.

Towards the end of the hour she opened the floor for students to ask questions. One question was how technology plays a role in the drug busts (referring to the video she shared at the beginning of the discussion.) She said none of the busts would have happened if it wasn’t for the intelligence and information they gathered. Sandy said, they would fallow the money, which lead to drug, and eventually would lead them to the terrorists. Technology helps them collect and disseminate the information and intelligence for these drug busts. She also mentioned that every year the government cuts their funding yet the Joint Interagency Task Force continues to increase the drug busts every year because of the advanced technology they are able to use.

Sandy ended the talk by saying today’s information war isn’t only about protecting the information; it is also about attacking information security. 

Photo:(http://servicetoamericamedals.org/SAM/recipients/profiles/hsm10_brooks.shtml)