Author: Phil Gurski

The photo has already become iconic.  The picture of the little Kurdish boy lying face down in the water has touched the lives of tens of millions around the world.  It ranks up there with the girl running naked after a napalm strike in Vietnam and the vulture stalking a starving Ethiopian boy.  This photo […]

When our security and law enforcement agencies do their jobs when it comes to terrorism, violent extremists are detected, investigated, neutralised, arrested, tried, convicted and incarcerated.  And this marks the end of our problem, right? Unfortunately, not. Incarcerated terrorists remain a potential threat because, if given the chance, they can radicalise others in the prison […]

We make laws to reflect our values and to protect ourselves from those that would undermine them.  For instance, we say that murder is a crime because we value life.  We have laws against the theft of personal goods because we value our property.  In a more controversial vein, we have hate laws because we […]

In an earlier blog post I spoke of the dangers of allowing intelligence analysis to be driven by politics (Not Very Intelligent – July 22).  Now the US assessments on its campaign against the Islamic State (IS) may have been subject to the same scourge. In a front-page piece in the New York Times (see […]

In what seems likes eons ago,  former US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld once provided his take on what the US intelligence community knew about the terrorist threat during a news conference.  It is worth repeating here. “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is […]

So this guy gets on a train traveling from Brussels to Paris, pulls out a couple of weapons, including an AK-47, and fails to kill dozens only because three US citizens heroically take him out (see story here).  In the aftermath, the suspect is confused that he is being labelled a terrorist (despite the fact […]

Another group of young people disappears and ends up in Syria.  Another set of families devastated.  Another series of criticisms levied against the government for not stopping it.  Another lament of “we didn’t see this coming”. The departure in February of three bright, accomplished young women from Bethnal Green in East London has shocked many […]

Canadians remember the 1988 Seoul Olympics when “our” sprinter Ben Johnson won gold in the 100-metre dash.  Celebrations turned to sorrow quickly, however, when accusations began to surface that Ben doped up before the race (it turned out he had been doping up for years).  A hero became a pariah. What was interesting, however, about […]

I don’t normally pay attention to what politicians say, especially during an election campaign, but someone alerted me (thanks to whomever that was!) to an interview this morning (August 15) with Defence Minister Jason Kenney on CBC’s The House.  In the exchange, which covered a number of items (the economy, Mike Duffy…), the Minister talked […]

It is rare for an intelligence agency to get public credit for what it does or how it does it.  It is even rarer for a group of intelligence analysts to be featured in a news story and described as at the forefront of understanding a particular threat. Analysts are like the Steve Carrell character […]